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[h3]??? — Burning Town[/h3]
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Rayne saw the arrow coming just in time, the Knight Witch disappearing in a flash of light that began to race upwards, only for something unexpected (to her) to happen. The arrow somehow struck the light itself, and in an instant Rayne was back, clutching at her belly as the arrow tumbled down to the ground, having only been stopped from taking her life by her armor.

“Wha-” she began to ask, utterly confounded by what had happened. The arrow should have harmlessly passed right through her as she had blinked, and yet it had somehow struck her. It was only by coincidence that she had split second decided to dodge up rather than forwards through it, and though she did not know it due to not having perfect knowledge of the arrow’s flight path, if she had done that she would no longer have a throat.

As she floated and tried to work out what had happened, the sniper shot again, but rather than dodge this time she flicked a spell card, using a single point of mana to create a shockwave that knocked the arrow out of the air. That gave her enough time to come to the conclusion that she couldn’t rely on the blinks to bypass shots anymore. She didn’t know why. But it was terrifying. Without that ability she’d likely be dead several dozen times over or more.

In the time she had been thinking and avoiding being sniped, the battlefield continued to develop, and into it had floated a creepy magic child who was unleashing lasers on several of the others.

A child.

Rayne wanted nothing to do with that, and as luck would have it she could not afford to get involved, because the sniper seemed to have it out for her. Another arrow came, but this time, knowing her newfound limitation, the Witch Knight dodged to the side, ensuring that her profile got out of the way of the shot as quickly as possible. 

Then she started blinking in the shooter’s direction, moving unpredictably at diagonals. However this was, with the fixed distance of her jumps, not quite unpredictable enough as an arrow embedded itself in her hat right at the end of one of the blinks.

She cursed, and then bolted to the right, putting a building between herself and the sniper, and in doing so running right into one of the armored foes, this one sporting the classic sword and board combo. The warrior flicked a blade her way, only for her hand to flash and for Runedge to appear in it, blocking the sword. Her other hand instinctively formed a rune and pulsed a spread shot blast at him, only for the shots to slam into the herald’s shield. 

They strained for a moment, blade on blade, before both had an idea, the warrior bashing their shield forwards, while Rayne reached out towards it, hand glowing. Mit and metal met, and the shield was engulfed in the same glow out of which Runedge had been summoned, which now swallowed up the shield. Eyes behind the mask widened as Rayne (after shaking her hand once with an “ouch”) reformed the spell rune and fired again, the shots now slamming into their unshielded knee, chest, and face, the last of which caused a blob of mana to pulse off.

The Raven herald went down hard even as Rayne burst up and away, not wanting to look at just how hard it had been exactly. She cleared the building’s roof and hovered there for a moment, panting, not wanting to think about the lives she had probably taken, just wanting to find her original target.

Right on cue, another arrow came at her, but this time she was prepared. In a flash the (rather beaten due to her own actions) shield of the warrior appeared in her hands with which she blocked this latest attempt on her life. Then she started to burst towards again, blinking straight ahead this time, body tilted so she could fit her entire figure behind the shield as she rammed straight for where the shots had come from. 

She could see them now, a hooded figure in a gray cloak, and once she closed the distance she pivoted, bringing up her free hand up and unleashing spread shot blasts even as she kept the shield up to cover the rest of her body.

Only for the magic bullet enhancing weapon she had equipped to time out, leaving her back with just her basic projectiles. 

That’s what she got for being overzealous with equipping it as soon as she had the mana for it rather than when she specifically needed it.