She came over her fear quickly but her heart was still raced like the horse with its tail on fire. The giant man that was flung almost to the other edge of the shore was already gaining toward her with rapid pace. Without wasting time she kicked the ground again and another pillar burst from the sand but the giant dodged it deftly with a roll. His movement was swift and smooth. Enough that she would even call them beautiful despite his massive and savage appearance.
She kicked again in two quick succession. Two more pillar sprout in a sandy explosion. He dodged the first one but was late for the second as it threw one of his legs up and him with it. She created spikes of sand under him, long and sharp that would drill and tear through him the moment he touched them. But the giant flipped in the air with the grace of an acrobat and flew in the air to land his foot and knee and well away from her trap. He looked at the spikes and then her, and suddenly she felt something in him change.
By then Bedona had also started running to her side, getting as much distance form him as possible while being out of the water. Still naked as the day she was born and was hoping that at least it would work as a distraction. But the giant had hardly paid her any mind. Even after she had turned to him and paused for a while moment to give him a full view, he didn't even blink. If anything he looked angrier.
She had to forcefully ignore her urge to cover herself. She was not in a habit of feeling this much air on her body, she shivered even when she didn't feel any cold.
It was humiliating, that he had reacted like that and that she had to take such a step. Standing on the dry sand she turned again and slightly spread her legs and settled on her position. Pointing her left palm toward him she flung her other arm upward. A wall of sand erupted in front of him and the man paused. Bedona threw the hand in the air forward and a sand pillar, erupted from the ground diagonally and struck him in his lower back with the force of a knight's lance. Anyone else it would have been fatal, of not outright death. But she didn't want to kill him again and make him angry if she failed so she made sure to use a flat tipped pillar. The giant was burst through the rock hard sand wall in front of him in another explosion of dust and sand and skidded on the ground only to roll and stand on his feet again.
Bedona cursed, not even a limp as he again started charging.
It seemed like her attacks were having no effect at all. But Bedona had felt it, his massive weight on the ground as he ran, and with it something else. A barrier, thin and smooth like silk on skin. That giant was a wizard and protecting himself with magic.
And she hadn't even seen or felt him cast a spell, just how skilled was he?
And once she had learned that, everything became just that much harder. Looking at him, who would even think he knew magic? Definitely not more skilled than Bedona was. But she felt it, despite what the scene before her that there was a vast gap between the magic the tow of them were using. In her thoughts she hadn't even noticed the man now standing only tens of feet away from her.
Bedona screamed in anger and panic and slapped both her hands on the ground in front of her, lifting giant dome slowly from beneath her. The sand rose like small hill, lifting her upward and pushing everything down the slope like flowing water. It had looked like that the sand was sheet and someone was rising a head from under it. Bedona knelt at the top and watched below between her pants. The man struggled to climb but the more he did the farther down he slid and eventually stopped trying.
The sand stopped moving when it stood about twenty feet high. Bedona heaved, her entire body shook as her vision blurred and she saw less and less by the passing moment. The biggest spell she had created so far. And she had been mad to do so. It could have killed her if she didn't stop. Only a thread of her magic remained and it accomplished practically nothing. She might be safe where she was now, naked and weak but the man just had to wait. That would be better but what if he just left leaving her like that.
No no no no!
He still had her medallion. She looked down and saw the man standing at the edge of the dome, buried to his knees in constantly shifting sand. He couldn't climb up at least for an hour. The sand will constantly shift around her, making it impossible for anyone to climb up the slope. Thankfully he didn't seem like he was in a hurry to move.
She was fading and fast. The images around her kept getting blurrier and blurrier. And stopped only when she could she only a couple of feet in front of her clearly. Looking down, still stood unmoving was a black blur.
Could she fight more?
No, she could barely stand or even see as it is. She was not ready for the spell she had just used, powerful as it was that kept her safe from anything that walked on land, it also left her stuck in a position. Seeing him run toward her, her instinct took over and did what would keep her safe.
Cold breeze on her bare back and she shuddered in its icy touch. She didn't have much time, she was too vulnerable in that state.
She had attacked first, she hadn't forgotten. Saw him holding the medallion and sent him flying in the air, if it was a normal man, he would have died. But then, if it was a normal man, he would not have been able to sneak up on her at all.
Deep breaths, feel the core, feel the well and steady it.
Old mantra she repeated in her mind. Again and again, until her breath calmed and her eyes cleared enough to make the details on the man. But she didn't really need to see him, his weight pulsated on the ground with his every heartbeat. Heavy and strong, not like a wild beast like she had first thought, but a sleeping giant, waiting for its time to wake. He had power, almost bubbling, it was seeping into the ground and she felt every bit of it. She saw that even more now, his size didn't make sense.
Mages, wizards and sorcerers were born with magic, which they later learned to harness the way that suited them. Among them some were born with something potent, too strong for their weak bodies and it would eat away at them from the inside. And so the belief, that the weaker the mage's body, the stronger his or her magic. And it was mostly true too. The strongest user of magic were mostly skin and bones that looked like they were suffering from something terminal. Bedona had met some in her quests, terrifying presence that made the land crack under the pressure of their power. Regardless of their age, they looked, old, feeble and weak, but magic sipped from them into the ground just like under the man below had been.
Not quite at the same level of intensity but the weight of the power was similar. This man should not be this size, it went against everything she had seen or learned. Even if he was this tall, he shouldn't have been this big. The question remained that just how his body was handling that much power.
The answer could of course be much simpler. A healer could repair their bodies sometimes, but it was usually too tedious and needed constant attention so most didn't do it. And there were very few master healers. It was mostly only a branch to their mains skill, which would something like boiling someone's blood by just a thought. Bedona had seen that happen, as a man writhed and screamed form the ground for hours before he was let released form the pain of fire flowing through the veins. She was left amazed, to hold such power, she too wanted a taste of that. At the time her partner Rollo had been disgusted with the cruelty, but he didn't understand. He was a spellsword, delving into magic and the blade both and mastering into neither. He was a fairly good one too but he didn't understand a true wizard and their hunger, the need for more. Bedona hadn't thought of that for quite a while.
After meeting Ava just a few hours back, she wasn't prepared to meet someone like him this soon. And to make it worse he might be even stronger than Ava. And she knew every known master wizards and this giant fit none of them. Implications were not good. Of course, not all of them were accounted for but to meet one and start a fight with him in her first meeting….
I am dead. She could almost laugh.