Next Step

"You're gonna see how wrong you are.." Ifri says laughing menacingly.

A bright light starts to shine above us. I look up and it was a start burning bright despite the sandstorm obscuring our vision. The bright light slowly descends and Seph is inside it burning up with the flames. Ifri lifts his hand attempting to negate the magic again.

"We won't let you!" Razz shouts as he shoots another magic arrow from his bow

Ifri dodges the arrow interrupting his magical negating ability. Domotraus enters into another clash with Ifri and I run up to assist them. Dom kept throwing out slashes that Ifri blocked one after another, and I supported by following up after every block, but Ifri is able to dodge it swiftly right after blocking. Razz sneaked up behind him and grabbed his legs to prevent him from moving. I slashed the same time Domotraus did, and both of our attacks were blocked. He blocked Domotraus' long sword with his hardened skin, and blocked my glowing short sword with his sword.

"Helloooo" Seph used her telepathy on us

"I can't hold on for long with this, so I'll only say this once. The three of you need to have him teleport away from you guys so I can fire out the fire I've been storing up here the-" Seph's telepathy ended

I look over to Dom while holding down the short sword on Ifri, he nods to me saying he also got the telepathy message. I leapt back and readied my attack in case he pushes of away and goes for me. Instead, Ifri and Dom continue on to slash while Razz pierced through the hardened skin with continuous stabs with his hidden blades from the gauntlet he wore. Ifri looks down noticing that the blades got through his armor, and he pushes Dom away with a heavy swing, and diverts his next attack onto Razz. Razz saw the swing happen and he dodged at the right moment before he got hit next. As we all had kept our distance, we stayed and waited for his next move. Ifri stayed as well readying his sword pointed at us. We kept our distance knowing this is the perfect time for Seph to hurl the flames at him. Who knew Seph had specialty for fire magic? How come she's never told any of us. Anyways, a few seconds have passed and she hasn't thrown out any flames yet. She must be waiting for the teleportation to happen. As Dom and Razz kept their place, I took the initiative to charge in myself. I enter a clash with Ifri, this pressure is terrifying. How does Domotraus even keep clashing with a monster like this? I continue on keeping up with my slashes, but my lousy sword skills didn't protect me as much as I thought it would and I relied on my quick reactions to avoid most lethal hits, with the help of the skill that I inherited from my father keeping up with Ifri's attacks and blows. We continue on clashing our weapons at one another until he decided to block my weapon with his arm, which my sword was able to pierce through his hardened skin easily. He jumps back.

"Tch, Sword imbued with holy magic.. I see how it is" Ifri says

"Anything here that isn't you can be considered holy" I reply back

I charge straight at him again this time Razz decided to join in. He got to him first from behind and stabs his back with his hidden blades from his gauntlet. He wasn't strong enough so the blades didn't pierce through. Ifri turned and slammed Razz's face with his arm turning his back on me, I used this opportunity to get the upper hand on him with my attack, but he was expecting me to do so his attack continued to twirl going towards me, I dodged it by ducking under his arm. My last dodge created an opening for me to slash, and I took it as soon as it showed. Then he disappeared.

"Athelstan!!" Seph screams from above us

I look up and see the flames being hurled right at me. I looked forward and did a dodge roll towards that direction to avoid the flames then looked back and saw that Ifri was about to appear. The moment he appeared he gets scorched in flames. Under the flames, I can clearly see his hardened skin slowly falling off as he burns, he attempts to swat the flames away but nothing happens. Ifri stays up for a while and raises his sword for one last attack, but drops it then falls to the ground after a few seconds of lifting it into the air. With the wind current spiraling around, it's making the flames burn even more, Ifri slowly lifted his head up to look at us.

"You..." he extends his arms at our direction and closes his fist before staying down.

The wind slowly stops and the sand fall back to the ground, with Seph falling. Razz immediately pulls out his magical bracelet and uses his magic to slow Seph's fall so that she wouldn't get hurt from the fall. Her descent was slowed, but she reaches the ground safely. Razz runs up to her as she lands.

"Seph! I never knew you were so skilled with fire magic!" Razz says cheerily

Seph looks away shyly then replies. "Well... I had been secretly practicing during our downtime..." she replies nervously

Domotraus approaches them.

"So, how'd you pull off this sandstorm while being able to control the fire and use your telepathy?" he asks

"The sandstorm was Ravenna's doing.. I asked her to use her wind magic to create a wind current going around the battle, which would naturally carry the sand particles along. As for stopping the wind, I used the flames to make the air warmer and it rises into the air" Seph answers proudly

Ravenna joins up with us looking pale and tired. I run up to her and help her walk.

"Well, you look messed up" I say

"You don't say" she replies

We walk up to the rest of the team.

"Seems like we're all complete here" I say

"Alright, captain. What's next in the to do list?" Razz asks

We all faced Ravenna waiting for her to give us the order.

For a while, we were filled with silence. Waiting for her to decide our next step. Now that we've defeated their leader Ifri, this is a step to being able to defeat Cilan Mamoru. I look over to Ifri, and he still kept burning, the fire wasn't as big as before when the winds were present but the flames stayed slowly disappearing as the remains of Ifri is just his burnt body. I look back to Ravenna before she gives us her answer.

"We're going to end this war. Then with the help of Zlatan, we can put an end to Cilan Mamoru" she says

That's perfect and all, but I was honestly expecting something that we can do, as in right now. The others looked at each other and nodded agreeing that we can stop Cilan with our power.

"Good, it's settled then. Let's first help them out in clearing the Gems of Rider. That will be our next step to stopping Cilan!" Ravenna orders