"Gelter, Gelter! Can you hear me? Don't let that thing grow any further!" Antieeld kneeled next to her knight, lifting him up.
He was not yet dead, but he was not responsive, his means of communication had been targeted first, ensuring that no problematic things could be uttered.
"Hey… Hold on for a while longer, Miss Rosemary can surely heal you" the zone duel was still raging, neither of the two casters allowing the other to gain the upper hand.
The knight could make no sound, he instead raised one hand up in the air, clearing his lady's face off of tears, the weight she was carrying suddenly increased, Gelter's head tilted to the side, no more strength in his muscles.
Death had claimed him, and soon enough, the crimson growths claimed his remains as well, she wouldn't even get to give him a proper burial.
'A plague knight, huh…'
The area was torn to shreds, the clash between Rosemary and Unacunerra was of a small scale, but the sheer amount of damage they were causing was mind-boggling, the constant change in the ambient mana was akin to corruption.
'That witch, is rather problematic' the skeleton mage had the advantage of endurance and tolerance, however, he was definitely on his backfoot here, the volcano witch was pushing back against him with great ferocity, never weakening in all of this time, there were no doubts in his mind, his zone was going to lose soon, and once it did, he would be engulfed in hers without protection, instantly burning away into nothingness.
Now, this was something that impressed him, he had faced many mages bred and trained during the lengthy war of old, those times had called for life to surpass itself, the strong, collective desire of the living to fight back against the inevitable, against death itself had allowed a good quantity of heroes to be emerge, even if a zone remained a rare occurrence even in this age, he had had the occasion of clashing with a lot of them over the decades, some had been more difficult than others, some had attacked him in numbers, forcing him to struggle against three simultaneous zones, he had crushed them all, their corpses raised as undeads to instantly throw back at the filth of life.
However, now, countless years after, constantly refining his understanding and mastery, he was being defeated by a single mage, he had not grown rusty, an undead could not, he was stronger than back then.
'She is too dangerous to be left alive… Teaching those critters, but I am too weak to face her head-on, for now' grasping a small crystal in gloved hand, Unacunerra did not wait for the last moment to make his escape, using the spell trapped in this item by crushing the material, he vanished into thin air, his zone remaining standing even without his support, but without its caster, it was quickly crushed.
Rosemary did not bother to question what had just happened, no longer preoccupied with him, the entirety of the puppeteers and defilers fell victim, only a few of them left alive, there were a few questions they had to be asked about.
None of her beloved students had died, though, quite a lot of them had sustained injuries, many quite dire at that, but her healing prevented anything from worsening.
"Are you doing alright?" she floated down to Milo, who was closest to her, and had been in a rather tight spot.
"I thought I was going to die, but I didn't, I am pretty happy with that- How is Helena, I mean, the others?" the defilers had not been messing around for once, they didn't bother with any sort of banter, did not start monologuing about the strangest of things either, hell, none preached the goodness of becoming a depraved mess.
They had simply focused fire right at him, seemingly not even registering the presence of the puppeteers as they shot right through them, apparently, their pact of non-aggression or whatever wasn't tight enough to prevent acts of literal insanity.
"Your girlfriend is perfectly fine, none of them can reach her up in the air, she's this way" his teacher directed him, instead moving over to where Antieeld was standing.
The little commandant, as Gelter used to call her as a child, had gone onto her own mission, as if possessed, she had moved and decided to get information from the many enemies wandering around.
Even the lunatics did not feel like praising their puppet lord or heretical forefather, she was allowing the full might of her talent at point blank whilst shaking and slapping them in the head repeatedly, but they could only stutter and offer up useless information, those guys seemed to not have a clue about anything that had happened before today.
"Antieeld" Rosemary carefully placed one hand on the girl's shoulder, expecting anger and sorrow.
"Miss, they don't know anything, have you ever heard of a plague knight? He was clearly not affiliated with either of those two, maybe he is of Alizé instead? But he did say that he had been hired…" she was only met with disturbing calmness, her eyes and face still wet with tears.
"Hum…" knocking out the stray defiler that Antieeld had scooped up, Rosemary cupped up Antieeld's face.
"Don't you worry, Gelter was a proud knight, he was always ready to accept death for your sake, wherever he ended up, he would only think of you and your wellbeing still, tell me, what do you think is best for you right now?" she appealed to Antieeld logical mind instead of lingering on too long on the emotional stuff she was not very competent at.
The little commandant seriously thought about it, having been doing nothing but acting upon her wish for answers, in some sort of trance.
Without saying anything, she just hugged her teacher, her face directly up against Rosemary's clavicle, which was a bit uncomfortable but even if it felt like getting stabbed repeatedly, she wouldn't have said anything.
The volcano witch awkwardly rubbed her student's back, not quite certain how this whole process was supposed to go, handling people's crying their hearts out into your chest was not in her area of expertise.
She was more of the sort to suggest solutions to problems.
'What a goddamned disaster, why in hell would so many of them even be here to begin with? And where did they find someone with a zone? This guy was seriously competent too, and a plague knight? Never heard of that either'
'Oh, and she's moved her head down…'