8

Sami couldn’t see Hera from the other side of Hydro’s body as it reared up, calling forth its magical spears of ice, but she could imagine the look of terror on her face. Was one of her new friends going to die, just for this stupid quest?

She rushed forward, the cracked and brittle shields Hera had summoned to protect her earlier following autonomously, but there was no way she was going to make it in time. Even if she did, those icicle spears weren’t going to be dispelled.

Hera made a futile attempt to dive to the side, and Sami now had an unobscured view of what happened next. The spikes shot forward almost faster than the eye could see, several of them piercing straight through the mage’s body and pinning her to the ground…

But before either of them could cry out, she was suddenly completely engulfed in a blinding flash of light like white flame. The Hydro screamed and flinched back, the brightness piercing its eyes.

Through her own momentary blindness, Sami could only just make out Mari, trembling as she unsteadily stepped closer to the flame. The end of her staff was pointed towards Hera, and shining with that same brightness.

Hera herself was completely baffled. She had very clearly felt the spears stabbing into her, could still feel their presence in her body, but there was no pain.

Mari was maintaining an intense level of magic on her, somehow protecting her vitals and the very workings of her body itself from being disrupted by the foreign, solid masses… Needless to say, it was an extremely complex spell.

Wasting no time while the serpent was still recovering from the pain in its eyes, Hera evaporated the ice with her own magic. In order to create glass she had to melt and shape conjured sand, so melting ice was child’s play.

As soon as she saw that Hera was no longer impaled, Mari cut loose her spell and fell to her knees, physically exhausted as if she had just run a marathon. “I thought I said... not to... let your guard down, dammit!” she yelled breathlessly.

This was the first time they had seen her lose her cool like this in the short time they’d known her. Her mood was understandably tense given the situation, but she was outwardly furious.

Hera had survived, but she was just as exhausted as Mari. The cleric had done the most she could do, but Hera’s insides hadn’t completely healed into place yet. Feeling nauseous and dizzy from the internal disarray, she fell to the ground.

Finally making it, just in time, Sami struck her sword deep into the monster’s back. Everyone was mostly unharmed, but she couldn’t get complacent. They wouldn’t be safe for much longer in the states they were in.

Spotting a chance, Mari called out and hurled her vial through the air, and—with the help of a little midair glass manipulation from Hera—Sami was able to catch it.

She quickly pushed the opening of the vial against the freshly opened wound. It filled quickly with corrosive Hydro blood, but some of the liquid that sprayed along the sides badly burned Sami’s hands.

She was determined not to make a mistake this time, and held both the blade and the vial steady despite the searing pain until it was completely full… but once again, she didn’t account for the Hydro’s furiously flailing tails, and once again, she was flung bodily by the whipping appendage. Once again, her vial was crushed in the attack.

This quest was seriously looking to be more trouble than it was worth, and it certainly wasn’t worth their lives. It was time to consider escaping, if they could, and leaving the reward to some other group.

This thought only lasted a few moments as Sami writhed in pain on the ground. Mari stood up, swaying. The highlights had climbed up the strands of her hair, and it was now more pink than yellow.

She hefted her mace-staff with surprising vigor considering the amount of energy she had already spent, and swung it to the side so hard that she was practically throwing it.

Barely a second later, the raging Hydro was smashed by a horizontal column of light that struck like a massive hammer, knocking the creature to the ground despite its size. Mari pulled back and swung again—this time downwards, the flanged mace head lodging into the ground—and another massive impact followed.

After all their struggling, the monster had been crushed in mere seconds.

* * *

Claudia carried the exhausted Mari on her back, and Sami supported Hera with her shoulder as they returned to the city. The latter two were battered and bruised, but all things considered they had made it out with remarkably few injuries in the end… and of course, their objective had been completed. Hera’s vial had only just escaped destruction by the ice spikes by a few inches, and they were able to fill it to the brim.

“I only wish that I could have helped you three back there,” sighed Claudia.

“It’s fine, just focus on doing what you can actually do,” Sami replied, perhaps coming off a little sharper than she realized.

Claudia simply shrugged. The movement caused Mari to stir, groaning, “I’m sorry as well, I should not have snapped at you, Hera. That power of mine is only granted to me if I restore enough wounds with my healing magic, and it has the side effect of… shortening my temper.”

“You definitely don’t need to apologize for that,” Hera laughed, nearly back to her usual carefree tone, “You weren’t wrong to call me out, and I must say, you did cut quite the stunning figure when you smashed that thing over the head.”

Hera winked at Mari as she said this, but the attempt at flirtation went completely unnoticed by the other woman.

In the end, everyone was relieved and elated after their narrow victory, but unfortunately this good mood wasn’t going to last for much longer.

* * *

“What,” Sami asked slowly and coldly, “do you mean, ‘we don’t have your reward?’”

“I-I am so terribly sorry, it’s just… it’s just gone,” stammered Gina Rosen, put off greatly by the tone her previously enthusiastic customer, now standing in front of her with clothes torn and covered in bruises, was using with her.

“We always require anyone who posts a job to entrust us with the reward up-front so we have it ready to hand it off to whoever completes it, but we checked on their box and it… was empty, there must have been a mistake when they sent it in, or it was stolen, I can’t apologize enough for this, I…” poor Gina was nearly in tears.

If this was an act of some sort, it was an extremely convincing one, but Sami was not in the mood for sympathy

“We nearly died for this, can’t you—” Sami was cut off by her maid who began to speak in a much calmer tone than her own.

“Could you not check in with the employer who posted this job?”

“Well… they asked to remain anonymous, so…” Gina gulped as Sami narrowed her eyes sharply at her again, “...so, but, I suppose we could try to help you contact them. We have ways of magically tracking those who abuse our system, but…”

“Allowing employers to conceal their identity sounds like a rather dangerous and exploitable oversight,” Claudia remarked, still eerily calm.

“I suppose so,” Gina admitted, ashamed, “Please wait a moment, I’ll contact the mage who handles our tracking spells.”

The flustered receptionist wrote down a quick note on a short sheet of paper, and promptly cast a spell to teleport it away to who-knows-where.

* * *

The response came quickly. Whoever was on the receiving end of the magically transported letter had been prepared to do their job.

With a flicker of light, a small, folded scrap of paper appeared in front of Gina, who nervously caught it before it could flutter to the floor. Opening it up to read it, she found a reply of only a few words and numbers; an address.

“This should give you their rough location, or at least where they sent in their job listing from. I am sorry again, I sincerely hope this is enough to help you solve this. We would offer to pay your reward out of our own funds, but it would cut into other jobs’ rewards and it still wouldn’t be the full amount…” Gina explained as she handed Sami the paper.

Sami begrudgingly thanked her, and the group left the tavern. They all needed some rest to recover after their last excursion, but this rag-tag bunch all agreed that they would be prepared for part two of their ill-fated quest tomorrow.