The town of Cascana

16. The town of Cascana.

I sit next to the grand mage, she looks at me with a still expression.

“Can we talk now?” I ask her while facing her way.

“Yes, I will tell you the story about our healing magic and about the goddess who granted us this magic. This knowledge has been passed down generations from one grand mage to another in our village.

In the last days of the hero of old he told his dragonnier daughter that one day there will be a great evil coming to this world and when that happens the goddess will grant a power to certain individuals, so they can fight that evil.”

“So, the healing magic is the power the goddess has granted us, and the skeleton lord is the great evil?”

“I cannot be sure but it would seem that way. In any case what we need to do won’t change whether he is or isn’t the great evil.”  

She is right, what I need to do and what I want to do hasn’t changed. I want to help people and explore this wide and exciting world, if there is a great evil that I must fight so the world remains the way it is then I will do my best.

“Thank you for telling this to me.”

I stand up and go to my original spot next to Luna. We talk for a great while and eat while on top of the dragon. After talking for a bit more the grand mage comes and tells us that we are landing soon on the Cascana town it is a place where the various feline half man races all live together, around the town there are many small villages where the feline half man races live in.

I prepare my equipment and focus on the situation, fighting is almost guaranteed here so I need to concentrate. The dragon started to fly downwards and quickly we were able to see the things on the ground.

There were several spots on the ground in a distance that looked like buildings or places with multiple buildings. We keep heading down and soon I lost sight of them.

The ground shakes as the dragon lands near the town of Cascana. We walk down from the dragon in the same order we came on. As we get to the ground the grand mage says that the dragon won’t be fighting with us as the size makes it dangerous for us and for the survivors.

Also, her age is great, and she is tired from the flight, so she will not participate in fights if possible. The town in front of us seems quiet and in decent shape. There are no signs of fighting on the outside.

We start walking toward the town with me and Martin in the front, Luna and the grand mage in the middle and Alice and Marie in the back.

We approach a big wooden gate that is closed. We walk to it without seeing any movement in the town. Usually the guards would have spotted us for a far, but this is not the case now. I try to pull the gate and it actually moved, I pull the gate open and from the other side a bloody corps falls on the ground.

The corpse was a woman with cat ears and a tail on her, but she had a human body, her back had a great open wound as if something clawed it open.

I look inside the town and the streets were filled with dead bodies that had similar wounds. The sight and the smell from the bodies made me feel sick.

There was one person moving, it had animal ears and a tail and rest of her body was human, but everything was pitch black. It was eating one of the corpses and it made me gag.

As if hearing the sound, it turned its head in our direction which allowed me to see that it was a woman and her face was smeared with blood.

She ran toward us on all fours and the speed of hers was incredible, she shortened the distance between us in seconds and I could barely lift my shield to protect me.

The impact made me stagger and my arms went numb, if I had held my shield with one arm I probably couldn’t have hold on to it.

I feel heat behind my and look to see Luna doing a big fireball in front of her. The grand mage had put up an earth wall to shield them both from the enemy’s attack.

the black thing is on my right now and on everyone else’s left. I start running toward Alice, the black thing starts running toward her as well. Luna shoots her fireball at her but the black thing dodges to the side quickly and resumes running.

I jump between the two before the black thing reaches Alice and she hits me in the shield again with her head, I fly behind Alice and land on my back harshly. My back is hurting badly, and I can’t stand up immediately, I can see Alice swing her battle hammer on the black thing that is on the ground after the impact.

She hits the black thing in her side, and the black thing screams and spits out blood, she stands up while holding her side and stops the other swing from the battle hammer with her other hand.

She yanks it from Alice’s hands and tries to swing the handle at Alice, I stand up despite the pain to try to go help but Martin appears in front of Alice and he takes the hit with his shield.

From behind Martins back comes Marie and she stabs the black things stomach with it. More blood comes from the black things mouth and the wounds, but she smacks Marie with her free hand and takes the battle hammer with that hand.

Martin yells Marie and looks her way before looking back at the black thing that is holding the battle hammer the right way with both of her hands.

She holds the battle hammer in the air and smashes downwards with it toward Martin. The grand mage makes an earth pillar that forms under the black things foot making her lose her balance.

The strike still connects with Martins shield and it makes a huge dent on it. The pillar of earth then moves around the black thing that fell, enveloping her in the dirt.

In that moment Lunas big fireballs flies toward the black thing enveloping her on flames. The black thing screams while burning alive while the dirt keeps her still.

She screams for a few seconds before it gets quiet. We wait for the flames to go down and only after we made sure she was dead did we put down our weapons and relaxed. 

Chapter fifteen. Chapter seventeen.