A Battleground of Kindness

by StormDancer

Cheap Shot

Sooooooo.

Watching the Master 'practice' is kind of like watching a mix of paint drying and the guy who pulled the short stick trying to juggle flaming chainsaws while balancing on a tightrope suspended over a pit full of broken bottle glass... while a witch doctor keeps throwing bottles of poison in to keep things interesting.

No, I'm not exaggerating.
Yes, that sentence was too long.
I'm evil, get over it.

But really, when the Master (someone who just casually dismisses the accepted laws of magic to do things like make a sandwich) decides to practice, it's kind of a game.

First, you pick a spot.
I chose a log.

Then you listen to her mutter.
It sounded like a mix of excited nonsense and desperate denial.

Follow that up with the simplest spells ever and viola! Accidents happen. Repeat as necessary to achieve complete mental breakdown and ensure the absolute destruction of whomever pulls the shortest straw and is sent to interrupt her.

Kind of like science! You know? Put a bunch of dangerous things in a small space, fill that space with chemicals and confused bystanders, put the lid on, shake vigorously, and then toss in a few lit matches before sealing it up for a minute just to see what happens.

You know... ~SCIENCE~!

So, there I was, sitting on a log, listening to the Master muttering darkly about 'being able to do this' when she started to float things around.

Yay... I'd offer her a cookie or something, but that would be far too insulting.

...

Also, I don't have any cookies.

ANYway — next came the light spells.

Then the spinning things.

Then the color changing.

Then the... well you get the jist of it. Boring stuff.

REALLY boring stuff.

I think I may have fallen asleep or something at some point, because when I blinked again, I was sitting in a little pile of ash and the log was clearly missing.

Meh, whatever. The Master was still going through her spells which, admittedly, is pretty darn impressive considering the amount of time I must have been asleep.

I mean, most warlocks only know a dozen or so spells off the top of their heads. Some (like the really powerful ones) might know 25 or even 30... mostly combat related with a few utility things in there like seeing the invisible, not needing to breathe, or raising the dead to become your invincible undead army of the damned — you know... simple stuff.

But there she was, still mumbling away like she was some kind of walking, extremely lethal, grimoire.

Honestly, I was getting bored.... more bored. I mean, where were the flames? Where were the screaming masses? Without a steady string of riots and terror, it's kind of pointless to know accurately how MANY ways you have to instill panic and all that.

So, I was just about to go and suggest we return to burn down the village when, all of a sudden there's a flash of pink light and she was gone.

What a riveting display of magic. Actually... pretty boring since she'd already done the same trick before making breakfast.

In all honesty, I was more excited by her flawless detonation of the lair's front door. Beautiful work, that. Smoking hinges and 4 inch thick, magically resistant, fire-proofed shrapnel flying all over the place.

But no, she just teleported.

And then, as if to add insult to injury, I hear her congratulating herself on a perfectly controlled teleport.

...

I mean, seriously? That's what she's getting all excited about? I successfully ~DON'T~ light things on fire ALL THE TIME and you don't see me patting myself on the back when I leave a room NOT an inferno!

Granted, most of the rooms I leave ~have~ been fireproofed by the Master, but that's not the point!

I was just about to hop up to follow her when I suddenly felt a build up of magic and found myself rapidly flashing between various places as the Master teleported without apparent control.

Repeatedly.

As in, I have NO IDEA where we went, how many times we jumped, why we ended up riding buffalo for a moment, or what the hells was going on when we finally ended up INSIDE a giant boulder.

Don't worry... it cracked nicely down the middle to allow us to rematerialize before we died from being reduced to a few atoms width.

And her mane was starting to spring out with her stress again. Great... trapped in a cracked boulder with a highly agitated, uber powerful warlock who has a nervous tick you can detect by noting the number of inanimate objects that start to register her frustrations as motion.

Actually, kind of reminds me of poltergeists. Wonder if they're related.

And then, my ears started to ache as someone bellowed loud enough to shake the ground.

At that point, I knew something was up.

-~oOo~-

So, imagine some dramatic music or something because, BAM, there we were, squished inside a boulder the size of a large house when, out of nowhere, the ground starts shaking! This scratchy, bassy, voice bellows out "Princess Twilight, You have something that belongs to me!"

Of course, the Master was prepared.

She, somehow, knew who was yelling and responded in kind with a battlecry fit for the ages!

...

Well, actually... her battlecry was kind of like the normal one.

...

but less battlecry-y and more "oh crap"-y.

...

Okay... fine. The Master kind of sounded like she was panicking. Like, badly.

Like, very badly.

In fact, she didn't even really make a battle cry so much as she just kind of gasped out "Tea-wreck"... which, in retrospect, is probably spelled differently since it's apparently a name. Aaaaaand she kind of freaked out when she heard him yelling. Double Aaaaaaaand, she apparently forgot that I was there with her in the boulder because, in true warlock fashion, the next thing she did was BLOW THE FREAKING BOULDER INTO RAZOR EDGED SHRAPNEL as she EXPLODED out into the sky with a trail of lazer beam purple death blur trail!

Okay, look. I get it. I'm not the best at explaining what the hells the Master is doing when it's not something I'm familiar with.

If she was, you know, shooting gouts of corrupted fel-fire out of her head-pike, stomping on the skulls of her enemies, cackling over the smoldering remains of villages or just feasting upon the souls of the innocent, I'd be all over this.

But, the Master kind of does things in her own... not-quite-so-firey way.

So, yheah. She exploded the boulder, while we were still in it. Then blew up the ground to give herself a flying start. Then launched herself with her weird purple feathery wings at near mach speeds into this giant loop through the sky before COMPLETELY missing the guy who was bellowing at her and coming around for another pass, all while leaving a dark purple trail of magic.

Oh.... and she still kind of sucks at the landings.

Like... seriously.
Hit the ground and didn't even move her legs. Just.... kind of dug another trench with her hooves until she ran her face into this big gray wall that came out of nowhe-RE-AND-OH-HELLS-THAT'S-NOT-A-WALL!

Yheah.

Turns out that not-a-wall thing? Yheah... That was Tea-wreck's hoof.

Nope, no joke. The guy who spooked the Master? Giant f-ing Centaur.

No... that's not really doing him justice. He was fekking MASSIVE. The Master is about 3 times my height. The Big Mac makes her look small. The White lard-ball Princess makes the Big Mac look like a toddler and this Tea-wreck guy? He made those multi-story doors at the palace look like a tight fit.

Seriously, he had to be at least a good few stories tall. As in, the Master? She was only about half as tall as his face.

And so, you know... when she crash-landed into a single one of his hooves, she could be forgiven for looking like someone just opened up a bottle of facemelt and added it to her morning coffee.

And then, be bellowed again, saying "You're going to give me what I want," as he manifested a miniature sun between a pair of horns that would make a dreadlord quiver.

Honestly, when I saw the Master powering up her little purple head-spear, I was expecting some catchy one-liner or a bone-chilling retort... at least the threat of some kind of comically under-powered punishment for disrupting her practice session. You know "Go to your room" or something like that. You know, something that would make this titan-sized pile of mutated horsemeat piss himself with doubt over the apparent dismissal.

Instead, there was a bright flash of light and the Master and I found ourselves back at the lair.

I blinked.

Hells. If the Master's running away, I'll have to do something to give her the time she needs.

The BASEMENT!

I left the table in the BASEMENT!

The Table that Spike and I repaired.

The Table that has a corrupted arcane spellform for FEL FIRE BOLTS etched into the LIVING WOOD of a WARLOCK'S LAIR, steeped in the magics of UNTOLD and UNCOUNTED horrors and positively SOAKED in chemicals both mundane and obscure.

A Table crafted by DEMONS, the Master's MINIONS, and a member of the freaking INFINITE DRAGONFLIGHT, destined to END CREATION.

A table that could give her the edge she needs!

So I ran down the stairs, threw open a door, fell down some more stairs, crashed into a box of broken glass bottles (because they were already broken and in no way met their untimely end by having my face hit them at speed), and through the various acids and reactive substances that they at one point contained...

... over to the table.

And then, I felt my little magic tether starting to tug at me. So I grabbed it right before being teleported back to the Master.

... Just in time to see Tea-Wreck, in the far far distance, lob that miniature sun right at the Master's lair.

I might have shrieked and covered my eyes.

There was a flash of pink light and then we were flying through flames and smoke and skidding across cobblestones.

Crap... Tea-Wreck set off the table with his little fireball of doom.

The Master released her secret doomsday weapon that looked suspiciously like a mundane owl, into the sky where, I assume, it went to prepare an ungodly horde for battle.

Feels like I should have known about that for some reason... eh, whatever.

...

Oh!
And when I looked up, the lair was a burning waste. That too.

Priorities.