Blessings

The Dragon and the Willow

We were heading to a, what Katt tells me, an inactive volcano. I didn’t know why we were going there, but I needed something to do. We were driving in a rental car and we got halfway to our destination when, a group of monsters start blocking the road. Me and Katt jump out of the vehicle before one of the creatures fireballs destroys it. Shadow jumps out of my pocket and Katt materializes a staff and is casting spells in a language I don’t understand. My shadow grows into a scythe and I run into battle hacking away at the enemy. Katt has symbols passing around her and she makes trees sprout out of nothing and they grab at some, I’m gonna call them fiores, and limbs wrap around shrinking them into the roots. After the battle the monsters and trees dissolve into gold ash. “I didn’t know you could use nature magic,” I say.
“I can use all magic,” she tells me, “I am a supreme,” she says braggingly. I learn that a supreme mage can use all types of spells and learns them twice as fast.
   We start to walk the rest of the way and no sign of any more creatures. I sheathe shadow back in my pocket and Katt’s staff disappears. “So, why are we going to this volcano again?” I ask her.
“It’s for Lynx… Akari’s partner”.
“The red heads,” I say.
“Yes,” she says blankly.
“Well, than this is pretty important,” trying to cheer her up.
   We both walk the rest of the way in silence until we get to the bottom of the volcano. “So we should start climbing, I guess,” breaking the silence. “Yeah” she says quietly. As we start to climb the mountain I see a rock move out of the corner of my eye and see legs sprout from under it. “We should go… NOW!” I yell. We run up on rocks and small footholds that we can find when I look back once to see the entire side of the mountain move toward us. Shadow shapes into a bow.
“Why would I need a bow while fighting rocks,” I yell irritated. I shoot it anyway and I watch as the arrow circles the monster and shoots straight into the side of it. The monster shrieks with a sound like nails on a chalkboard and it dissolves.
   I soon realize why that was. “They have pressure points,” I yell to Katt, “Use a spell to find them,” I demand. She jumps to a small cliff and more symbols circle around her. “Azirak fortuga mongia,” She shouts. She holds her staff as a gun and shoots a small purple ball at each one of them and it sticks to a small point… their pressure point. I shoot more arrows into the air and each one of them hit the purple except one, bigger than the rest and faster too. Shadow starts to shape into something else while Katt is casting another spell and shoots pink orbs into its mouth. He drops and starts to, what sounds like snoring, very loudly and also scratchy. She whispers into the side of its head, “sleep”.
“What spell was that,” I ask confused.
“A sleeping spell, it should hold until we escape,” she rolls her eyes like I should know that already.
“Then I guess we should hurry”. We laugh and talk the rest of the way. It’s just about sunset when we get close to the summit.
“So, how did you meet Akari?” I ask thinking that maybe that was a little too personal. A long pause until she said something.
“I… met her when I was young, still in kitten form,” she says. “I was meowing at the guilds step and she found me, she was young also but she was strong even then,” she stares off into space. We walk some more up the mountain and we reach the top.
“Sorry about that… I just wondered,” she looks at me then the ground.
“It’s ok, I haven’t ever told anyone that so…,” she trails off and I say nothing more.
“Well lets jump in,” as we walk towards the edge we look into the volcano. All we see is… lava, lava, and more lava. We search for the tree and a way to get down into it but all we see left is a small piece of land with a willow tree and beady red eyes hovering beside it.