Picture a battlefield. Broken hills full of ruins and monsters vying for that high ground. Then a fuming minotaur, his body torn, heaving hard. Then me. The broken clay golem laying in pieces behind my mistress.
And finally my mistress, the young lady with flowing black hair calling a mass heal spell.
Two things. First, healing was not for golems. So why it worked was for humans to figure out. But it also meant that it did not dull the pain. I enjoyed having my body violently put back together, hurriedly hid my face while squirming on the ground and forged a new mask with what mana I could gather.
She thankfully only approached me a bit late, in time for me to put the badger mask on.
The clay face of a laborer was too ugly for a human.
The second thing.
"You cast a mass spell?!" I yelled at her. I really should not yell at my mistress.
"Pretty neat, uh?" She gloated while checking her fixed body.
"You just healed your opponent!"
The minotaur was looking at its hands, its legs. Not an inch of it was scarred. The berzerk pattern wiped along with any wound or bruise. The regenerative runes still pulsed, half of them tarnished.
It started to laugh. A ferocious, delighted laugh. Loud enough to distract all the fighters.
Then, once it was done, it pointed at my mistress.
"You!" It thought with a mad grin. "I like you!" And he clenched. "Let's fight!"
"I like you too big boy!" She answered with almost equal joy. "Come on, don't disappoint me!"
New lesson for me: they were insane. So never getween between insane warriors.
At least the minotaur's logic, I could follow. It had prepared minutiously for this fight, planned to take a lot of damage and counted on it to return the favor. Now that its scars were gone, it had no way of accruing power.
But my mistress?
She did not even see him leap on her, a shadow for a fraction of an instant. The beast's bone axe shattered on her head, making her stagger. She had felt it.
Before she could recover, it had thrown her against the cliff. Above her the hill's terrace, weakened by the shock, fell on the human. It had not even finished that the beast, summoning a sphere of purple, fiendish magic, threw it.
Its attack got wiped by the mace's swing, along with all the rocks and debris. She was on him already, slashed and found he could block her. The small spheres still provided it shields in which all light vanished.
Blocked and blocked again, she was getting frustrated.
She massed her energy, struck hard and only whipped the air. The minotaur was behind her, crashed his axes against her back, making her cough.
Was she playing with her prey still? Probably. She had to be.
Getting hit and not able to land a single blow in turn, she offered a stunning display of powerlessness. Even if it only bruised her slightly, it was still taking its toll.
Yet the beast broke their exchange first, gave her time to recover by seizing its own forearm and, fuming, pierced its own hide to plunge its fingers in it. Trying to restore its scars? No, it was extracting... a crystal.
A magic crystal!
It bawled, cracked its catch and with the magic saturating its arm the beast punched! The whole valley shook, engulfed by dust and steam once more. I was in it and blinded in every way. Yet I could tell they were both still moving.
Punching each other while facing so close they could have danced.
The minotaur got pushed back several meters, fell on a knee and spit black blood. It got back up, its whole body crackling with black magic.
"Man!" My mistress moaned. "Your black holes are so cool! I want them bad!"
The moment the dust settled, her magic square flared. Yes, a magic square. Because humans could. They beast had moved like a ghost toward her, got hit midway and forced to protect against the blinding light, brought both arms in front of its skull.
She struck with a force that broke through its guard, slashed to the belly and then to the ground, whipping all the way to the opposite hill. And before it could recover, another magic square appeared before her hand, against its stomach.
Okay now she was just showing off.
Yet when the spell's blinding light subsided, the beast still stood before her. Its belly pierced open, only the exposed spine holding it somehow. Ice spreading on the wounds prevented all regeneration.
And it had not been enough.
The minotaur seized her arm. A crack! A scream! My mistress suddenly let a painful scream and wrestled to get free but her opponent was not finished. With its free hand it had already torn off another crystal from its body and cracked it as well.
When the wave of devouring energy hit her, I saw my mistress fall on her knee with an almost inhuman scream.
One, two, three magic squares appeared on the ground, several meters in size. The beast wavered at that sight, fear finally gripping its mind. It let go of the human's arm to retreat, too late to avoid the holy light. It was its turn to scream.
A burning beast escaped the bright blaze only to be hit by two light spears, to avoid the third one but barely. One after the other, they shot up in the sky, arched and fell on it, shattering on impact in a balls of fury.
The small spheres of dying light could scarcely block those strikes.
Its defense was weakening anyway. Its whole battered body slowly swallowed by a ghostly veil, akin to frost, that slowed down is movements, reduced its strength, faded the protective runes.
So it gave up on defense entirely; for the few seconds that it took the beast got torn off by the light spears while casting its own magic.
Tracing.
What?!
Magic circles was for babies, for miserables creatures like me. Magic squares? Highly potent, highly unstable, to draw one on a whim and not die was already basically unheard of.
And there were more complex shapes after that that only humans could know of but tracing? Tracing?! That was the stuff of legends.
Yet even pierced and weakened, the minotaur completed its spell. All three squares vanished in an instant. It seemed time itself had, in that small portion of the valley, been broken.
I needed to go protect her.
What was I doing standing there when my mistress was in danger?
Who cared if that thing would not even notice my presence, I had to do something!
She had gotten back up, thrown her mace away and put her limp shoulder back in place. My mistress had an aura on her that transcended magic.
"You want to play so bad, uh..." She muttered for herself, then yelled: "I'm done with that!"
Facing her the minotaur broke off the veil of paralysis that had devoured its body. Wounds struggling to heal. Fur still fuming. It could feel the remaining crystals slip away from its muscles and fall on the ground, all exhausted, breaking like frail glass.
It was struggling to breathe. Yet still grinned.
One hand stretched and its broken cleaver reappeared in its hand. To feed on the weapon's magic? No, the opposite. The blade cracked and broke, replaced by a spectral one. The beast grinned and paced toward my mistress.
The human meeting him at the same pace.
A walk, a run, a rush, they striked! Her glove met the cleaver and the whole valley shook one more, so hard that the surrounding hills broke. White tendrils stretched to try and prevent them from falling on the two warriors.
"Help me golem..." The parasite called. Its fibrous stems struggled with the task.
I could not care less but what else to do? This was what a clay golem was good at, earthworks. So all the matter I was storing to go help went into helping the hills collapse on themselves.
Hit after hit after hit the beast was seeking its opening, my mistress giving it none, hit after hit after hit both of them bloodied, the shockwaves overwhelming.
One small sphere above the minotaur's hand collapsed on itself, causing the beast to roar in pain. In turn the human seize the moment, punched and punched and sent the creature crashing on the ground.
It beat its chest on the ground, not in pride, no, to pierce its own hide and extract one last, large crystal, big as a bull's heart, that he shattered.
And in that moment he had reappeared before my mistress, cleaver swinging, falling on her with all the strength the beast had left. Everything! It hit with everything!
The attack never finished.
Because my mistress was not before it anymore.
She had reappeared slightly to the left, way out of reach, and had punched back the beast's bloodied belly. With her arm she had punched through it, made the whole body shake and stir.
She hit again, and again and again with her one valid arm and at each strike the beast fell back, its weapon long vanished. At each strike a piece of the minotaur just burned away. It was fair to say the creature was already but a standing corpse.
Still it tried to fight back, but without any strength left its arm swung large, missed completely. Another punch and it got thrown on the ground again.
Rose again, teetering. All the regeneration was now taking its toll, devouring it instead.
It was grinning mad. And when its maw fell, it was still grinning.
"Let's fight..." It thought loud and clear. Tried to pace forth.
Its knee prevented a complete fall. It tried to get up, only for the second knee to hold it up.
"Let's fight..." It kept thinking, all it could think anymore. "Let's fight... together..."
She was ready to give it one last punch, but the young lady held back, then lowered her guard. Before her the beast had ceased to move. The whole body degrading until the skull and spine alone collapsed on dry rock.
With that, what little of the bull horde had stayed to the end fled.
I had rushed to her, ready to hold her up but she turned before that happened, looked at me and offered a weak smile.
"See? You can trust me!" She offered a thumbs up and hid the pain on her face.
"You did well, mistress, but please! Please take better care of yourself!"
"Oh, worried?" The young lady gently pushed on my chest with three fingers. "I'll do it, but only if you start using my name." And at my silence she pouted, added: "I don't even like to fight, you know."
That was such a blatant lie.
"Don't say that..." The parasite butted in. "Korion sought a warrior... He fell to a warrior..."
"Say, Kaele," she was not even listening, "I really wouldn't mind a bath right now."
"We will head back to the pavilion, mistress."
She refused to heal, walked all the way back through the carnage and ruins, up the stairs and in the untouched mansion. I prepared her bath, helped her set in and, as I left, noticed her gesturing to hold me back, but she never finished.
So, I was out.
Before this whole fight had begun, I was doing something. Time to resume. In the great hall, the vast canvas still waited, its coat of white paint long dry. So I started to paint. It would take days but I would paint.
"The human is weaker..." The parasite pestered me.
"Nonsense."
"You need to help her... golem..." It insisted. "Your master is getting weaker... We need her mana..."
Shut up. That mushroom was getting too much of her magic as it was. All that talk about weakness, it was only waiting for a weakness, to prey on the human. A very slow predator.
So I ignored it and kept painting. Ever so slowly bringing colors to the canvas. The owners of that mansion. The portrait of a human family.
I would not rest.