147 Daughter of the flames

Leona didn't know how much longer she could keep it up.

Even with all her teammates sending their energy to boost her power, fighting two dragons at once was taking a heavy toll on her body. Probably not made any better from the fact that she already had to use this spell once today already during her fight against Evlin.

Even now, she still couldn't believe that one single mage managed to push her so far. Evlin really was as powerful as the rumors made her out to be, which completely caught Leon by surprise. If the crossbow mage hadn't decided to suddenly make a truce with Leona after finding out that they shared a love for animals, she wonders how that fight would have ended up as.

Her original goal of making the mage become part of her group of supporters of the goddess of the east seemed like it would end up as a massive failure after witnessing Evlin's insistence on not cooperating, but that all seemed to change the moment a woman named Lilith showed up and announced that a place very dear to Evlin was about to be attacked.

Leona realized that this might be a good opportunity to prove to Evlin that her group had no ill-intents and offered herself to help her protect the school, in exchange for Evlin promising to at least trying to talk a bit with the goddess of the East.

Evlin didn't seem to be such a big fan of the idea, but Leona noticed that the woman was extremely happy with the fact that for once, someone was offering to help her instead of trying to just kill or capture her.

The mage started to show a brighter expression after deciding to accept Leona's proposal, but that quickly changed once she tried to reach her niece and found out that the girl was not on their designed meeting place.

Evlin became worried. She was wondering if something had happened to her niece and wanted to look for her, but she also knew that the school was in grave danger and needed help. Leona wanted to get on Evlin's good side as much as possible, not only to succeed on her mission, but because Evlin was the first person that didn't try to mock her for her affection towards small creatures.

"You go after your niece!" Leona said while showing a face of conviction, "I swear, under the name of the goddess of the East, in the name of my honor as her follower, that I'll let no harm come to your school!"

Evlin looked like she wanted to cry. Leona started to wonder just when was the last time someone tried to help this woman if this small gesture was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

The woman called Lilith seemed like she wanted to go with Evlin as well since she appeared to be worried about someone named Lance. Evlin convinced her that as long as the eggs were inside the school, Lilith was the only one who could find them and retrieve them to calm down the dragons.

"You keep my students safe... And I'll keep Lance safe..." Evlin promised to Lilith.

So now there she was, facing off against one of the most powerful types of monsters with nothing but her fire magic, her allies, and the trust her lady, the east goddess, deposited on her, all in order to earn the respect from one of the greatest mages of legends as well as the safety of her children.

Leona right now had many reasons to not lose.

Her gigantic fire ape was being moved solely from her fighting will and desire to win by this point. Her body itself was begging to give up and just rest for a bit, but if she lost her concentration for even one second, all of those who depended on her would be betrayed. She could not afford to show weakness right now.

She noticed that her gorilla had gotten slightly smaller.

"Miss Leona... I'm sorry!! I'm at my limit!!", yelled one of her teammates before falling towards the ground from pure exhaustion.

Leona was not surprised. They all had already used most of their energy during their fight against Evlin as well. Leona wasn't just pushing herself past her limits, she was also pushing her group.

Another one quickly followed the last one's example and fell as well, making her fire avatar shrink once more.

The pair of dragons took advantage of the situation and charged their fire breaths at the same time to completely destroy her summoned creature.

Leone watched in despair as the only thing standing between the dragons and the school disappeared. The flying lizards then started to charge another blast aimed right at the building.

Using all the remaining power she had left, Leona raised a shield of flames to intercept the attack. The blast from the dragons was blocked but the beasts wouldn't stop attacking. Leona started to ask herself just how much power did these creatures possessed.

Daren realized that situation Leona was finding herself into and decided to help her, "Marcus!! She needs help!!"

[I'm on it!!] Marcus said inside Daren's mind. He then quickly transformed back into his human form and after making a pair of gauntlets for Daren to use against the monsters, dashed towards Leona.

"Ugh!!" The fire mage was standing on her knees trying the best she could to stop the flames from harming the school. She then noticed a young lad with silver hair tied up by a ponytail approaching her. She assumed he was one of Evlin's disciples and begged for him to go away, "Stay back!! I don't know how much I can keep this up!! I don't have much more power left!!"

The silver-haired lad stared at her and started to glow, "Then how about we give you some more power?"

Marcus then started to transform itself and became aa weapon for Leon, a pair of metal wings attached to her dragon staff.

As Leon kept holding her new weapon, she began to feel an immense surge of power overflowing inside of her. Her fire barrier became much stronger and its size was starting to grow as well.

The dragons panicked at the sight and began to increase their power outburst, but Leon simply kept increasing the power of her barrier.

The dragons finally could not keep it up anymore and stopped using their fire breaths. Using this window of opportunity, Leona gathered all the remaining power she had left and absorbed her fire barrier to turn it into a large ball made of flames. The heat was so big that even the fire mages by Leona's side were taking a few steps back.

Leona glared at the dragons, "Faol beasts that try to harness the power of fire against the masters of flames... I command you to vanish, and never harm this place again!!!"

Leona then pointed her staff that was now merged with Marcus in his weapon form and blasted the pair of creatures with a huge blast of fire energy that completely pushed them back high towards the sky until they disappeared among the clouds.

Leona fell on her knees and dropped her staff as she no longer had any strength left in her arms.

Marcus returned to normal and tried to help her so she wouldn't pass out, "That was amazing! You did great!"

Leona smiled at that comment, "Thanks! But I feel that was mostly thanks to you, to be honest..."

"My power is to simply bring forth the true potential hidden inside each individual... One day, you will be so strong you will be able to perform this kind of spell with a snap of your fingers!"

Leona opened her eyes even wider after hearing that last part. The idea of her becoming such a powerful mage one day started to set her heart on fire.

Some of her teammates approached as well to giver har aid, "Miss Leona, you did it!! You took down two dragons!!"

Leona wanted to share that excitement but she instead simply undid her smile, "No... That was just to give us some time... If we don't find their eggs soon, they will definitely burn us to a crisp the next time we face off."

The rest of her group started to sweat and shake with anxiety. Marcus, on the other hand, was already used to facing impossible odd and simply focused on the next step of the current mission.

He handed Leona to her friends and rejoined with Daren and Lilith who were just finishing of the monsters from before.

"You guys ok?" Marcus asked.

"All good... One of them scratched my arm but nothing worth making a fuzz about." Daren admitted.

"That mud man took a while to defeat... My sword has dirt all over it..." Lilith grumbled while swinging her blade up and down trying to get rid of the mud, "Glad to see you two awake again!"

"Sorry we took so long... Electric magic took a while to go away..." Daren explained.

"Looks like Mia is done playing around if she's sending all these guys out like this... We need to stop her for good!" Marcus stated.

Lilith and Daren both nodded at him, showing that they shared his sentiment.

"Let's finish things up in here and reunite with Evlin to put an end to this whole thing!" Daren replied, "Lilith, where are the eggs?"

"Hold on, let me check..." Lilith answered while activating her future sight ability once more and using it to find out where the baby dragons were, but what she saw was even more shocking than she expected, "Oh... This is bad..."

Marcus and Daren stared at her with puzzled faces. Daren then tried to clear his confusion, "What...? Are the eggs hidden in a hard to get place or something?"

Lilith simply shook her head while trembling her whole body and simply aimed her index at the clouds in a specific direction, "I think you were right when you said Mia was done playing Marcus..."

The other two followed her hand and after waiting a few seconds, they spotter a massive portal appearing in the sky, as if a giant scar had been opened by some invisible knife, and revealing a completely different image on the other side.

"Is that...?" Daren started to say, but unable to finish due to not being able to find the strength to spill the words. The scar on the sky revealed another land, a land of wizards, warriors, monsters, demons, spirits, and gods.

Chloe, Claire, and Joseph, who were still nearby were confused by the scene, but Daren, Lilith, and Marcus, as well as Leona and her team, knew what that place was, it was their home.

A huge portal to the other world had been opened in the sky.