Fallen Mage Regressor

Mal had gone through a lot at this point in his life. Even he had to admit having a vine try to choke him out from inside his own stomach was probably among the more horrific things he'd experienced.

The first thing he did was clamp down his jaw and try to bite into the vine. He crunched through a few layers, but couldn't get through the thicker center. Rolam and Holam were in the same position. Rolam was grabbing frantically at the vine trying to pull it out, while Holam's hands flickered with little specks of mana.

Mal touched his bracelet and it expanded out with a half-dozen little thorns. The vines inside him stopped wriggling.

No, not completely. They were still giving little twitches, but the growth had ceased.

In what had to be one of the most disgusting things Mal had ever done, he pulled out the vines inch by inch until, leaf by leaf. It grinded against his throat, rubbing deep divots into it and scratching it with hundreds of little scratches. He forced his hands to keep on until finally, with one spitty spit-filled gag, the last of it came out and dropped onto the ground.

He fell to his knees and hurled. Tiny little seeds mixed with vomit dripped onto the ground. They were white, barely bigger than a speck of dust.

And there were hundreds of them, all spilled out loosely over the floor.

A thud echoed from his side. Rolam had fallen to the ground. Holam was still frantically casting, tears at the tips of his eyes.

Mal held out his hand and the growth from them stopped. He crawled over to Rolam on the floor, then took the elf's forehead, grabbed the vines, then pulled.

The horrific mass fell with a wet thud. A second later, there was another thud. Holam backed up against the wall, his mouth free of the vines.

"What the hell?" Holam's legs lost control and he fell to his rear. "What the hell was that?"

Mal's shoulders drooped and his heart fluttered like a butterfly.

"You're the fifth-year academy student," Mal stumbled to his feet. "Aren't you supposed to know?"

"They were just supposed to be plant bunnies." Holam dug his fingers into his red hair. "Not whatever this was."

Rolam jolted and hacked his lungs out. After a few seconds, he wheezed for air and looked around, wide-eyed. "What happened? Where am I?"

"We were attacked by some kind of magical creature," Mal said.

Rolam breathed in and out quicker. "Did we kill it?"

"No." Mal tapped his feet against the floor and made to step out. "I need to go check on Lusia and Philo."

Holam quickly reached out his arm. "Wait!"

Mal froze in his tracks.

"You don't know any more than us," Holam said. "It would be a fool's errand to go out there without some sort of plan."

"Every second we waste is a second where Lusia could be in unimaginable pain and closer to death."

This was the difference between a student and a fully matured wizard. In terms of knowledge, by the fifth year you had most of the knowledge you could possibly need. Dual casting, a wide repertoire of spells, and probably an apprenticeship lined up for after graduation.

What a wizard at that stage lacked was decisiveness. The ability to think on your feet that came about with long years of experience.

Holam would be no good to him here.

Mal darted outside and quickly glanced around. Two shuffling figures caught his attention.

He slammed his hand against the wall. "Come out, whatever you are!"

Footsteps.

They turned the corner.

They were dressed in farmer's garb, two men. Their skin had turned a rotting gray, and the green vines had turned shades of black. They stumbled along like puppets, and if Mal didn't know any better, he'd say that it looked like their muscles were rippling.

He squinted his eyes. There were faint black pieces of mana floating from their mouths.

More withering-type mana, he thought. Now, isn't that interesting?

They were already dead. Mal could tell that much. The way their eyelids had closed and sunk in implied that they'd been plucked out. The skin was visibly degraded, the kind of decay that happens to a corpse.

So Mal didn't hold any compunction for what he was about to do.

He ran forward and the boots responded to his intent. He reared back his leg and kicked, a sudden burst of wind blasting out in the same motion. His foot collided with one's side and blew apart the body in half. Mal followed that up with a kick from his other boot and repeated the motion, splitting the other creature apart in half.

Their legs and torso collapsed to the ground. The upper body and chest spiraled around and hit the wall, then slid to the dirt against the wood.

Their internals were completely consumed with vines. Every inch of them had been replaced. The skin was nothing more than a suit.

Mal kicked what was left of the corpse and it crumbled into dust.

He sniffed the air. He honed in on that particular scent of Lusia, the scent of light.

Instantly detected. He broke off in a run toward where he roughly approximated the smell to be coming from. It was back in the direction where they'd come from. He came to a stop and saw deep grooves rubbed into the soil, like someone had been dragged across the ground.

Footsteps from behind him.

He turned around. Holam and Philo. Their expressions a little bit more calm compared to before.

What do they want?

"How can we help?" Holam said.

Oh, that would actually be helpful.

Mal nodded. "Take the rear flank. I'll be the vanguard. Let's get going."

They took off at a brisk pace. The recently plowed dirt was hard to move in, shifting and like it was trying to reach up and grab Mal's foot. Even so, he kept up the run.

Whatever was dragged across the ground moved fast, ridiculously so. How they'd done this, Mal didn't know. Mal, Holam, and Rolam had only been in that house for a minute, maybe two, but the fleeing party somehow crossed an immense amount of ground in that time. Mal wished he had access to some sort of spell that would allow him to move easier—

The air boots. They suppressed noise and allowed him to kick, but maybe he could manipulate the air around his boot to make movement easier?

He focused on his boots and tried to manipulate the air so that it was concentrated as a pad along the bottom. Instantly, he felt like he was running along smooth, hard ground.

Perfect, Mal thought. I'll need every scrap of energy I can get for the upcoming encounter.

The wither-type mana was the strangest part of this whole thing. Where had it come from? Why was it here? There was another wither-type creature, too.

"So, what's the relation between the two?" Mal said to himself.

"Relationship between what?"

Holam had spoken up.

Can't hurt to explain.

"In the Elder Oak forest," he said. "I came across a wither-type creature that had decided to take up shop inside of the forest. I didn't know how it'd gotten there, there's no wither-type ley lines around these parts, are there?"

Holam furrowed his eyebrows together. "You ran across a wither-type monster and survived?"

Mal waved him off. "Yes, I did. Can we stay focused on the bigger picture?"

"What's a wither-type monster?" Rolam asked.

Both Holam and Mal ignored him.

"It's not supposed to be here," Holam said. "Something like that is the result of very dark magic."

"Supposed to be?"

Holam's foot stumbled just a bit before he regained his pace.

"I've heard rumors of someone in the kingdom to the north. The far north, at the edges of Violeko. A necromancer, they say." He shook his head. "I thought it was all rumors, but..."

"So the withering-type monster is because of a necromancer?" Mal asked. "That makes sense."

Although necromancy was an unaligned artform, it passively created withering-type mana due to the way it destroyed and damaged the fundamental sanctity of life. At least, that was the way it was always explained to Mal. It was another one of those fields he'd never delved much into. Necromancy was far outside of his wheelhouse.

"I'll have to tell the people at the Academy about this," Holam said. "Probably my father, too. The fact that Violeko has allowed something like this within their borders is madness."

"Will they be able to do anything about it?" Rolam said.

Holam clicked his tongue. "Unfortunately, not. The north is sovereign territory of Violeko. We won't be allowed in to take care of things without their permission. And if they haven't taken care of that necromancer already, I don't see why they'd change their minds now."

They reached the end of the fence line. Something had visibly crashed through.

There was an eerie stillness to the air. Mal held up his hand. The three came to a stop.

Mal crept forward, his footsteps completely silent.

There was someone lying on the ground.

A woman with a black dress and a white apron.

Mal's heart stopped inside of his chest.

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