The scrying spell was going well enough. She saw the wolves through the flames and they even seemed to be looking at something behind her…or at her? She stared back, a confusion in her eyes as the mental cogs began to turn. She crafted a solid circle for the sigils; all the glyphs were correct and in the right order: she’d crossed every eye and dotted every fucking t. Her spell should have been invisible! A flicker to anyone who was really good at magic.
Yet they were looking right at her, staring her down. Then, there was a crash of green from behind her. She didn’t feel the thunder crash, or the lightning’s heat, just the sickly, rancid, world ending shade of green.
Jay-Jay didn’t move much, to be fair. She was still figuring out how the hell she’d been thwarted so easily. Rationalisation had previously been a weakness of hers, but a year with the most stubborn bird in the whole of existence had made her somewhat more meticulous and a hint more logical.
She was sure she’d done everything right. In fact, she had been so intent on proving her competence that she quadruple checked all of the variables that could fuck up. Then it hit her. The variable she didn’t control was what fucked it up. It must have been Fenrir himself that made the scrying spell so visible. Things started to make more sense: the wolf and the bird came from the same shrouded corner of myth: the same shard of the veil. Maybe their magic was similar, and that meant maybe some of her magic was the same…
Concentration and confusion were replaced by another emotion as she saw the full form of Fenrir. The bestial world ender was a terrifying sight to be sure: All muscle and fur and rage and ragna-whatever. In every other situation, Jay-Jay would be scared out of her mind. This was a creature that literally ended worlds. He could probably swallow her whole if it tried hard enough and she didn’t wriggle or something.
But there was no fear; no being scared and no stifling, strangling, suffocating weakness. There was something completely opposite to that filling the Fire-child’s bosom. There was anger, there was rage and humiliation and pure, fiery hate.
“You fucked up my spell.”
Among the chaos of the battlefield, the words would mean nothing. A little girl next to a mud circle saying something small and weak. When there was a Werewolf and a demon and an angry ass vampire and some sword wielding nut job and some mad lookin’ dead guy and…Thad (Did he class as undead now? Or Jesus, but really-really late?) it would be easy to ignore the little mage girl.
At least until she set the world ablaze.
Perhaps not the world, but suddenly a heat blasted over the area. A wall of very real and very violent fire rose behind Jay-Jay, threatening to engulf the entire group, with the previous scrying flame at the epicentre. The temptation was there for Jay-Jay, to just…let it burn. Incinerating the little scrap of the world was certainly a temptation, but something tempered her: Friends and a new-found fragility and the whispers of the Ifrit in her mind. Instead, she was going to have to be more tricky.
A year ago, it was Katago̱gí’s domain to manipulate the properties of a flame. She had used it with another newbie to the group to incinerate an entire nightclub of vampires. Now, she just had a god-killing-god to incinerate.
Thankfully, the wolf made an easy target. No one else in the group was even close to a god-killing-god wolf. The closest they had was a werewolf after all.
So instead of being subtle, Jay-Jay let the fire fall forward. It washed past her like an ocean of fire and slammed towards the rest of the group. None of the Bain and Hoyle group would feel any burning sensation: maybe the light heat of Jay-Jay’s magic, like a clingy hug or something, but nothing to cause damage.
Fenrir, on the other hand. That douchebag was getting none of Jay-Jay’s protection. The fire would cling to his fur like liquid napalm. There was no mercy for him: he’d fucked up her spell after all. Her chance to prove her training as purposeful and well-placed and something that made her as useful as the bad ass Veti or the easy goin’ Thad or the sexy Henry. Instead, he made her look like a screw-up!
The world ender could go burn, Fenrir just pissed off the American with a lot the firepower.