But Velvet had already run out the door and ascended the staircase to the above deck to see what all the fuss was about. Hesitating for a moment, Loretta decided to follow her. A decision she would soon regret. They arrived at the upper level, where royal archers were already shooting arrows at the attackers. Spells were also flying, Miss Pampleton and headmaster Winkleshaw at the forefront, shielding the archers from the incoming projectiles while a few other royal mages joined them. Above their heads, dwarves on giant black birds were circling, throwing bottles with some sort of flammable liquid on the deck and setting the sails on fire. Not far away, three smaller ships could be seen sailing toward them, their pitch-black sails carrying them forward with great speed.
"It really is pirates!" the princess exclaimed, turning left and right frantically and searching for her family members. They were probably hidden below deck somewhere, like the rest of the non-military crew. The three warships positioned themselves between the pirate ships and their ship, effectively soaking up their attacks and reducing the incoming arrows significantly.
"Only the crow-riders can still reach us!" Priscilla shouted. "Focus them and pick them off!"
The archers and mages obeyed her command, aiming their bows and staves up in the air and trying to hit the dwarves circling above them. However, hitting fast-moving targets like that was very difficult, and practically none of their attacks hit their mark, giving the bird-riding pirates free reign over the skies.
"It's no good!" headmaster Winkleshaw exclaimed. "We need to get up there, Priscilla!"
"Did you forget?!" she yelled in retort. "I don't have any flying transformation available!"
Miss Pampleton had three types of magic at her disposal, but they were earth, water, and darkness, respectively. Darkness magic was the only one of those three that had any transformation that could fly. But the only strong one was the Darkness Dragon.
"Have you still not learned that damned dragon transformation?!" he shouted at her.
"I know it!" the elf replied. "Not confident enough to use it, though! I could lose control!"
"Damn it, I have to do everything myself!" the headmaster yelled in frustration. "How can you call yourself a member of the Council and not know the Darkness Dragon?!"
He ran to a more open space and spread his hands. "Transformation: Fire Dragon!"
Flames engulfed the man and his body started changing rapidly. A red dragon was standing in his place not a few seconds later, its wings spanning almost across half the deck.
"Hop on!" it turned its head toward his assistant, and Pricilla ran forward, jumping on its back. Not wasting a second, the dragon took off to the skies, breathing fire at the crow-riders while the elf on his back was hurling spells at them. They worked together to take them out.
"AMAZING!!!" Velvet couldn't believe her eyes. She just saw two Council members in action and was utterly taken aback by their performance. "I wanna help too!"
"No! Let's get back down!" Loretta pulled on Velvet's jacket. But it simply slid off her shoulders, and she fell back, rolling down the stairs they just came up and hitting her head. "Ow!"
"You all right?" the girl with the pointy hat turned back. "Sorry, I don't really wear my jacket most of the time! I just sort of throw it over my shoulders like a cape!"
"I noticed that!" the princess grunted from below. "I'm fine...mostly..."
"Good! Stay put; I'm getting in on the action!" she shouted and ran off.
"In on the action?! Are you crazy?!"
The elf's calls fell on deaf ears. Velvet was already running across the deck, looking for where she could get a good hit on one of the many crow-riders circling above them. She put out a few smaller fires with her water magic along the way before she decided to start retaliating. Light magic is the fastest magic there is! They may be able to avoid arrows and other spells, but they won't be able to dodge light!
Thinking this, she aimed her hand up and shot a Piercing Ray at a crow. It croaked and began to fall, tumbling onto the deck together with the person on its back.
"RAAARRRGHH!" the dwarf let out a battle cry, drawing his sword and lunging at the girl. "Light Veil!" Velvet exclaimed, and he slashed through thin air. He looked around, a bit confused when a Light Nova hit him and exploded, engulfing him in a bright light. When he fell to the floor unconscious, the young witch reappeared, wearing a smug expression.
"Too easy!" she said and glanced up at the sky. "But taking them down one by one like this is too slow. I need to take it up a notch and really let them have it! Transformation: Chalkydry!"
Loretta climbed back up the staircase just in time to see her friend turn into an enormous and majestic creature with a lion's body, a dragon's head, and two sets of gold-feathered wings.
"Velvet!?" Priscilla yelled in surprise when the beast whizzed past them. It flew above the warships and descended toward the three pirate ships, which were splitting up, one veering off to each side in an attempt to maneuver around the defensive perimeter. She decided to take the middle one and shot a beam of light from her mouth, ripping the deck and a mast apart, before turning back toward the swarm of crow-riders.
"This girl is doing more damage than you!" the dragon poked fun at the elf on its back.
"Velvet, this is dangerous!" she shouted, ignoring him. "Argus will kill me if something happens to you! Get under the deck this instant!" The girl didn't listen one bit, though. She was having too much fun knocking the bird-riding pirates out of the sky. One after the other, the birds got pierced by her light or slapped away by her paws, plummeting into the ocean below. Her own safety was the last of her concerns.
"Are you even listening to me?!" Priscilla yelled in frustration. "Stop fighting and get down!"
"Let me just knock out a few more!" Velvet seemed to have finally heard her. "This is fun!!"
"This human is crazy!" the dragon laughed while Miss Pampleton uttered an annoyed grunt.
After a little while, the dragon-headed lion finally landed and turned back into the girl with brown hair and a pointy hat. Much to the astonishment of the princess, who ran toward her.
"Are you all right?!" she shouted, her voice panicked. "I didn't know you could do that!"
"This is nothing," Velvet waved her hand. "Ah, fiddlesticks! They're coming from the sides!"
Two of the pirate ships outmaneuvered the three warships and positioned themselves on each side of their ships. Spells and arrows started raining on them once again.
"Light Barrier!" the girl yelled and put her hand up, shielding them from the incoming projectiles. "We have to get out of here now! I can't protect you from everything!"
Just then, an arrow whizzed past her shield of light in a moment of carelessness and headed straight for the princess. Neither of them had time to react... But it stopped. Loretta was staring at the pointy tip of it that was only a hair's width away from her face.
"You should head down now, your Highness," a calm, motherly voice said. It was Fumina.
"She caught it mid-flight!" Velvet couldn't believe her eyes.
The elf tossed the arrow she held to the side and smiled at Velvet. "I'd say you've had enough fun for now, don't you think?" The girl simply nodded, still in awe of what she had just seen. "Good. Then I can bring an end to this farce."
After she said this, the woman took off her shoes and broke into a sprint. She swung herself over the ship's edge, jumping into the ocean. Velvet ran up to the fence, looking down. She expected to see her falling into the water below, but what she saw took her breath away. The elf didn't sink into the water. Instead, she was running on its surface!
"How is this possible?!" she exclaimed. But this was only the beginning.
"Dead Calm!" Fumina yelled while she ran, and the waves died down, a wide area of the ocean suddenly becoming a flat surface. The enemies were shooting arrows and spells at her, but she dodged them all with ease. When she closed in on the pirate ship, she threw her hand up and slashed it down furiously. "Excalibur!"
The water flowed from the sea up her leg and engulfed her entire arm, shooting forward like a blade when she slashed down. It traveled faster and faster, picking up speed and growing in size as it did, looking like a giant knife gliding across the smooth ocean surface. When it reached the pirate ship, it was already the size of a mast. It slashed through the wood like butter and split the entire thing in half. Pirates shouted and scrambled to get to the smaller boats as their vessel sank. Velvet's mouth fell agape. "WOOOOW!!"
But the woman wasn't done yet. She fell into the ocean as if someone had torn the floor from beneath her feet. All the girl could see was a shadow moving below the surface at an incredible speed. It swam under their ship and Velvet ran to the other side, following her. The elf resurfaced on the other side, where another pirate ship was stationed. Once again turning the ocean into a walkable surface for her, she slapped her hands down on the watery ground, and the entire ship started shaking and rising higher. The pirate ship was getting smaller and smaller as a giant tidal wave formed, them riding it. A shadow fell over the pirates and the mass of the sea swallowed up their puny boat. Velvet gripped the fence tightly, feeling her insides rise into her throat as they descended with freefall speed. Barrels and elven soldiers rolled across the deck when the giant ship came crashing back down. The few crow-riders that remained scattered and turned away, as did the final pirate ship, which was already heavily damaged from the three elven warships pummeling it and Velvet leaving her own mark of destruction on it before. Just like that, the raid was over.
A water whip coiled itself around the fence Velvet was leaning on and Fumina jumped back on deck, squeezing her soaked light-blue, greyish hair. The red dragon landed and Priscilla jumped down from its back while the dragon itself turned back to the elf it once was.
Everyone watched in silence as Fumina casually strolled across the ship with her hands on her back, glancing left and right with a satisfied smile. "What are you all gawking at?! Put out the fires before our sails burn completely and we will have to get towed to our final destination!"
Shouting this, she descended the stairs and disappeared below deck. Velvet felt goosebumps all over her body. Loretta ran up to her, only to find her staring at her shaking hands and grinning maniacally. "Are...are you all right?" she asked hesitantly.
"That was...that was...THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER!! DID YOU SEE THAT?!"
"Yes," the princess felt relieved. For a second there, she thought something might be seriously wrong with her friend. Turns out she was only overflowing with excitement.
"How?!" Velvet grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "I have to know how to do that! That was water magic, right?! How was it so powerful?! She destroyed two ships on her own!!"
"That's Fumina for you," Miss Pampleton said, walking toward them. "Are you two all right?"
"We're fine," the elf replied, while the human was too excited to even acknowledge her.
"How do I get my water magic to that level?!" Velvet was still brimming with excitement. "This is nothing like what you taught me! What we did is splashing water against a wall compared to this!"
"You don't," Priscilla chuckled. "That woman is worlds apart from you and me. She has been training water magic her entire life to get to this level. Every. Single. Day. She has been the captain of the royal elven guard for over three decades now. Fumina Fanalis is not someone with whom you and I can compare ourselves. I wouldn't say it's taking it too far to say that she is probably the strongest water mage in all of Rumerra. That woman is a monster."
"I have to talk to her!" Velvet exclaimed, running off.
"Velvet! Leave her alone!" the scholar called after her, but her words fell on deaf ears as always. I swear, this girl just does whatever she wants all the time! Truly a student of Argus.
Velvet found Fumina sitting on a bench below deck polishing her boots. She plopped down on the bench beside her and stared intently at her.
"I suppose you want to know how I did that?" the woman guessed.
"YES!" she yelled in her face. "Please! Can you teach me water magic?! Miss Pampleton was good, but you are a thousand times better! I want to learn from the best!"
"And you think the best is me?" the elf cocked her thin eyebrow. "I am flattered."
"Of course you are!" the excited girl blurted. "Who else can do that?! Nobody! I want you!"
"I'm too old to teach," Fumina sighed, killing the light in Velvet's eyes.
"Huh? But...please! I want to become as good as you! Oh, can you do ice spells as well? And healing? I bet you do! I know a few healing spells, but they are only basic! I bet you can heal anything, right?!"
"Calm down, young one," the elderly woman chuckled. "This is too much energy for me to handle. And here I thought the princess was lively. Look. I am too busy to teach you. As Loretta probably told you, I am her assigned guardian. This means I have to be at her side at all times. In addition, I am the captain of the royal elven guard. Well, I might resign from that position soon because I am getting old...but that's not the point. The point is I have too many obligations to take a human girl under my wing to teach. And besides, I will probably die before you master the things I would be teaching you. So, why even start?"
"That's all the more reason to teach me while you're still alive!" Velvet wouldn't let up.
"You're really determined, I see," Fumina smiled gently. A smile one would not expect from someone who just condemned dozens of dwarves to a watery death. "I'll tell you what. I can't teach you. But I know someone who can. Actually, that someone might just as well be better than me if I am completely honest. You did say you wanted to learn from the best, right?"
"There is someone even better than you?!" Velvet exclaimed. "Is that even possible?!"
"Believe me; it is," the elf replied. "That someone is my granddaughter. She's a real gem. About as old as you right now, I reckon. It's been a while since I saw her, though."
"Your granddaughter?"
"Indeed. I taught that girl myself, so she knows everything I do. But she also has youth and talent like no other, coupled with the knowledge I gave her. That is why she is better than me. Well, maybe she's not better than me yet—but she definitely will be one day. I will tell you where you can find her. Go pay her a visit sometime if you want to learn water magic."
"I definitely will!" Velvet's eyes lit up again. "Tell me where she is so I can go to her!"
"You need to travel to my home village," Fumina explained. "The village is called Lyalin and lies about three days north of Eldar by horse or carriage. Just follow Elvar river until you come to a fork of three rivers—Elvar, Brithal, and Dera. There it lies, right in the middle. When you get there, ask for Mizumi Fanalis. That's my little girl."
"Lyalin village. Mizumi Fanalis," the girl repeated to memorize. "All right! I'll do that!"
"One more thing," the elderly woman added. "She is a bit shy and barely talks to anyone—especially not to strangers. If she happens to refuse to talk to you, tell her I sent you. This should soften her up a bit."
"Will do!" Velvet jumped up from the bench. "Thank you, Miss Fumina! You're the best!"
"I'm a bit too old to be called a Miss," she chuckled. "But thank you for the compliment."
The girl waved to her and ran back up the staircase to find Loretta.
Thank you for reading this chapter! It means a lot!
Next chapter we see what Arianna is doing!