When Sowon finally saw the true form of the illusionist, she had to do her best not to throw up. The dark fog that cascaded off it’s body, the weird stench of destruction around it. She had fought creatures of the dark before on her missions and assignments but this one was potent in every way possible. Running at the beast quickly, she grimaced as her hand sank into the fleshy black but exploded her fist in a burst of flames with extra swirls of wind to make them stronger.

Dodging a swing from the beast’s elongated arms, Sowon cursed as she saw a vision fade in and out over the beast, even though it was a creature of darkness, it was able to use illusion magic. That was a thing that didn’t occur naturally, these creatures could not wield magic, according to the ancient texts because magic was innately good, it carried a sense of purification and cleansing with its usage. How this one was using illusion magic, although weak, scared Sowon. The magic hadn’t seemed to sap any bit of his soul, he didn’t appear weakened by the usage of magic and she really didn’t want to find out what else he could do with it.

Yerin kept up a good volley of flaming arrows, the occasional phoenix dive bombing the beast in the chest as Sowon dashed in and out trying to figure out it’s weakness. Yuju defended Yerin with an impenetrable wall of water as SinB and Umji held off the smaller creatures who had finally made it to the school from the broken barrier at the back of the school. Sowon cursed and wondered what to do. She couldn’t do everything at once, she had to trust that SinB and Umji could hold off the weaker monsters so she could deal with the big one.

Her wrists glowed stronger as she finally decided to use them, they had been burning away at her energy since the earlier activation, but she had yet to accept their power. Letting the cursed magic flow through her body, she gritted her teeth as she felt her magic stamina stagger a little to support the output she was generating.

The white cuff boosted her physical strength with a special move that allowed her open handed strikes to be boosted by a sheen of light that burned the beast on contact, the black cuff heightened her senses, allowing her to see through the minor illusions and granting her ability remove souls from the body directly by using her own body as the catalyst for depleting the enemy’s energy. She had used it once before when this demon was in their human form, when she had saved Chungha from them. At that time, she had drained the demon of its power to revert back or do any harm, but now? She didn’t know if she could keep a hold on it for long enough to drain an effective amount of power.

“Yerin! I need you to pin it down with your flames!”

“What? How do you suppose I can do that?!”

“Just keep it distracted! Heavily distracted until I hold onto it for thirty seconds!”

Yerin grumbled as she doubled her efforts, creating extra arrows of fire to launch over the water wall around her. Making flaming arrows were easy, controlling them were a little more difficult as flames didn’t burn as easily freely in the air. Her ability usually nullified that, seeing as she could control a flaming phoenix made entirely of flames. Shouting a warning to Sowon that she wasn’t going to control the aim, she just released the arrows aimlessly in the direction of the demon. Sowon dodged the arrows easily, getting closer and closer to the beast’s side.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eunha kicked another beast off the roof, cracking her knuckles and rolling her neck some, she sighed as more jumped up to take their fallen comrade’s place. These things didn’t even have compassion within their beings to even feel sorry for the others they trampled in the frantic flurry of wanted to eat humans. Blasting them off the roof with a large fireball, Eunha mentally thanked Sowon for making her flames so much more durable and stronger than they had initially started with.

She could see a cloud of darkness in the back courtyard, she guessed that it was a larger beast and hoped that Sowon would be there, so she could be useful for once in her life. But when she arrived, Yerin was being healed by Yuju, SinB and Umji defended them from the minor beasts of darkness and a large carcass of fading darkness and skeletal remains lay smoking as it disintegrated.

“Guys! What happened?!”

“No time to talk, Sowon unnie ran off after a group of masked men. One with such pink eyes. You should hurry and help her!”

Eunha nodded once SinB and Umji reassured her that they were going to be fine. Still, she helped incinerate one of the beasts that came too close before running in the direction Yerin pointed.

“Sowon unnie!”

“Oh look, your pet has arrived.”

“She’s not my pet!”

Sowon lunged forwards, exchanging punches and low kicks with the masked figure, if it wasn’t such a serious situation, she would have asked how he managed to keep the hood on even with the amount of motion they went through. Coming to a stalemate with both holding each other’s fists. Eunha was being pushed back by the other henchmen, three against one wasn’t fair, even if they three of them were weak, they worked well as a team.

The pain in her chest was increasing with time, Eunha panted as she tried to catch her breath, reminding herself that she had trained all that time in her village for this moment, to put an end to the darkness encroaching onto human territory. Tearing off her glove to let the heat from her glowing hand dissipate, Eunha hoped that her experiences from training against her brother would prove worthy of defeating three people at once.

“Often times, I wonder, why do things get passed to the next person that had the longest lasting impression? Why can’t the prophecy just end so that someone wins?”

The masked man with pink eyes threw Sowon off easily, he didn’t appear tired even though he had been matching up fist for fist with her. Finally removing the mask and shaking out his hair, Sowon’s eyes widened.

“I take it that those cuffs of yours, they’re working great, aren’t they?”

She growled as she recognized that face, he was a dead man. One that she thought she would have never seen again besides in pictures. The one who had told Chungha to give her these cursed cuffs as a parting present.

“Did you plan all of this beforehand?”

“Of course I did, dear.”

=================

Ohohoho more history! kind of you know....I kinda...nearly died tooday so this is a little late....just remember to double check that your stoves are completely off before you leave them....one of my roommates left it on for over 4 hours, had I been sleeping with my room door open, I would've been dead, but thankfully the gas didn't get into my room until my other roommate came rushing in wondering if I was in there, dead or alive. So please, please check your stoves for your own safety...well unless you have electronic ones which eh. oh well. :P man why am I so unlucky these days, its berfday month for crying out loud....am I not listening to Flower enough? geez...