Chapter 1890: Chapter 1890 The Burn
— Lily —
Lily sniffed the air as she looked around. Lily, along with Hedera had left Weaver’s house for the moment and were attempting to find some orbs of their own. The exit had dropped them in the middle of a random patch of forest. But what was odd for Lily… “Can you smell smoke? I can smell quite a lot of smoke,”
“Yes,” agreed Hedera as she looked around. “Though I can’t hear any fires burning so I think it’s burnt down, or it’s a moderately close campfire,”
Lily shook her head. “No it’s too much. There wouldn’t be this much smoke unless you were trying to make a bonfire. Do we want to investigate? Or head the other way?”
“Hmm… I don’t know. I’d normally want to avoid something like that, especially when we’re not looking for a fight… but if the fire is already burnt out we could perhaps get some clues? Do you think it was a monster fight or another contestant?” asked Hedera.
“Not sure…” mumbled Lily as she took another look around, and noticed for the first time that some of the mushrooms here had a bit of char on them. Not much, just thin lines of it… but the fire had burned here for a few moments. “Seems like the mushrooms don’t burn as well as normal trees do. It was burning… the vines maybe? Look around there are a few bits and pieces that have black char on them,”
Hedera followed Lily’s gaze and walked over, running her hand along the side of it as she sniffed at the ash as well. “Hmm… yeah but it doesn’t really smell like it? I think whatever this was burnt pretty clean. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it wasn’t whatever was burnt that left the mark but the fire burning a bit of the mushroom,”
“So are we going or not?” asked Lily.
Hedera frowned at the question. “I don’t know. Do orbs get destroyed by fire?” Lily raised an eyebrow that tried to convey ’how the heck should I know’ to Hedera. Based on the grimace and following sigh, it probably got across. “Fine let’s just ignore it then,”
Lily nodded and transformed before heading off in the opposite direction to the flames. As a team… they weren’t the most efficient. Hedera and Lily would spot things of interest, usually orbs or orb look-alikes and simply go to grab them. Neither would warn the other and while this meant Hedera was often just walking away without notice, Lily was regularly scaring Hedera with a giant shadow hand that would grab at whatever took Lily’s interest.
Of course, Hedera didn’t want to rock the boat and talk through the issue. That would be too easy. Lily was just as bad, not willing to transform back to human form to talk it out either, wanting to remain in her Memphis form. Lily felt much more ’combat ready’ like that and wasn’t willing to change back to human for a bit to have a proper conversation. At least, not without prompting from Hedera.
So instead they just awkwardly made their way until reaching their first challenge. It was… an archery range. Just a full archery range setup underground. It was easy to find though. You just had to take note of the massive sign that said ’archery range below’ and duck into the trapdoor. “That has to be a trap,” grumbled Hedera.
Lily shrugged and moved towards it. When she was about five metres out, she stretched a shadowy hand over and pulled the trapdoor open. Nothing happened. Lily cast a spell to summon a little paper plane and set it flying down into the opening. Nothing happened. Lily carefully moved to the trapdoor and looked down to find… a perfectly well lit area with a bunch of targets at one end. The area just below the trapdoor had a bunch of arrows and some spare bows. Lily decided to ’say’ as much. Stretching her shadow to say “It’s not a trap”
Hedera raised an eyebrow at this but trusted Lily enough to check it out… and she was right. “There’s no way this is natural. The slight indent behind the sign means the space here is distorted,” grumbled Hedera.
Lily frowned at that and stretched her senses out to show… Hedera was right. Space had been stretched here fairly significantly… and she hadn’t even noticed. *I know I was trying not to overload myself back in the forest last mission but… the fact I didn’t even briefly CHECK is dumb of me.*
While Lily was berating herself Hedera was reading the rules. Interesting, but nothing she had to worry about. It didn’t even specify that she had to use the provided arrows or bows. That meant it was an easy thing to hit every target on display. Four shots, for hits. Hedera was ready for her prize…
When the targets vanished into the ceiling and four more popped out. These ones were moving. “Oh they’re playing it like this are they?” Hedera sniped them all easily. They were just bouncing from one side of the room to the other at a constant speed. They weren’t all the same so there was theoretically SOME challenge. For other people. Hedera got them all easily…
And of course four more targets popped up. These ones moving in unique patterns… but still regular speed. Once Hedera had them locked in she hit the targets, still with no misses. The targets disappeared and for a moment Hedera thought she was done. Sadly, at least one more set of targets were between her and the reward.
The problem? These ones didn’t seem to have a pattern to them. They moved erratically, forward, backwards up down and sideways. They didn’t seem to have any limitations in three dimensional space. Worse, they’d also vanish for a few seconds every now and then. Usually after five, but no more than ten. Did they vanish completely? Where they just invisible? Without Kat here there was no way for them to know.
“Oh… hmm…” Hedera made a series of small, displeased sounds as she tried to puzzle out this last round.
“What were the rules exactly?” asked Lily.
“Ah!” shouted Hedera as she world around bow in hand to point at Lily, now in human form. “Sorry,” Hedera mumbled as she retracted her draw arrow. “Sort of forgot you were there…”
“It’s no real issue,” said Lily with a slight frown of her own. “Still, the rules vanished after you started and I didn’t read them, well not properly anyway.”
“Um… you have to stand behind the bench,” Hedera pointed at the clear divider. “You have to use a bow and arrow, the more targets you hit the better. You cannot throw the arrows with your hands. Magic hitting the targets doesn’t count as a hit… and I think that was it? Um… wait no. If you run out of arrows it’s considered a loss but…” Hedera gestured at the piles and piles of arrows. “Not really an issue,”
“Alright so… if I try to poke one of the targets with my shadow that’s not an issue is it?” asked Lily.
“Ah… I don’t think so? There’s nothing in the rules about it anyway…” answered Hedera.
Lily nodded. Some of the targets were a bit out of range but the first two were definitely inside it. Lily moved her shadow over to where the target was and ’pinched’ it for lack of a better word. The target didn’t stop at all, it just slid right out of her ’hand’ even without vanishing. “Hmmm” Lily summoned a bit of paper and picked it up with her shadow before draping it over the target.
It didn’t stay on long, and it didn’t cover the entire target… but it was enough. Enough to prove that the targets were in fact, always there even when invisible. Still didn’t help much with the erratic movement but it was something. “If I cover them in paper will that be enough? It doesn’t stay on but if I send out a wave of them, a couple of times even… would that be enough?” asked Lily.
Hedera studied the targets for a little longer than glanced at Lily. “I… yes I think so,”
Lily nodded “Just say go whenever your ready,” before transforming back. Spell sigil held at the ready.
“Now!” shouted Hedera. Lily unleashed a swarm of paper, saving mana where she could and also increasing the size. It wasn’t about damage at all, it was about coating something. She’d chosen a variation of the spell just for that and it was paying off. For barely five percent of her mana she was managing to coat the entire target range.
Hedera fired off her arrows quickly, not taking much time to line up the shot. Now wasn’t the time to overthink things, double checking each and every angle. It was about instinct. About those thousands of hours of practice she already had. The first target landed, a bullseye. Second target the same. The third just barely missed the dead centre, but still within the bullseye…
The fourth, right at the back. Was a miss. At least in Hedera’s mind. The target had jerked out of the way right before she’d fired and the arrow had only just barely stuck into the edge of the target. She was already lining up another shot, using the paper pinned to the target as a guide… when all four vanished. Signalling the round was a success.
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