IWUAaDNW: Initiative 6.2

She nodded. “Yeah, like I thought, it’s pretty thin. Like, five feet or so.” She looked at Eira. “Think you can move a bit of dirt out of our way? Failing that, I can ask Raffaa to use those shovels he calls hands.”

[...]

At the same time, Eira ignored the battle, trusting in her party members to keep her safe. She had her wand raised and aimed at the wall, and was chanting.

“Spirits of determination, destroy this obstacle in our path; move aside the rock and stones so that our progress can go unimpeded, that nothing may prevent us from achieving our aims.”

[...]

The mage raised her voice. “…an opening that we can use to achieve our aims! TUNNEL!”

A wave of grey mana flew from the wand and washed over the wall––

OW!

I flinched, a flinch replicated by all of my bugs at the same time, as a sharp jabbing pain ran through my mind. It was like someone had just jabbed my kidneys with a knife, then started tugging on the handle for shits and giggles. The spell twisted my wall, disappearing dirt, stone, and decorative insects as it dug an opening from the pre-boss room to the one pre-stairs room.

It wasn’t even done digging through when Karjn called for a retreat down the tunnel.

I let them go.


My loss of focus had robbed my luminous pixies of their precious coordination. The resulting screen flicker had been noticed by my spectators, chief among them being Kamella. The village elder actually stood up to get closer to my sealed off entrance. Maryll followed closely.

“Are you alright, child? Is everything okay?”

I used a few spare pixies’ energy to show an image of my head and shoulders, the former of which nodded. It was a lie, though; I was still hurting a fair bit, but it was less knife in the kidney and more like trying to run with a couple of broken ribs. Four or five out of ten, maybe.

Her eyes narrowed. “Something went wrong, right? Did Eira’s spell hurt you?”

[...]

If my allies could use that trick, then so could my enemies––and if it was this obviously debilitating to me, they would use it.

In fact, I wanted my villagers to use it more, so I could learn to weather it without losing my focus. It wasn’t real pain, anyhow; no part of me was being permanently maimed. That wall would just grow back good as new in a few hours.