House of Amarin

The group was slowly edging forward in the tunnel system that seemingly went deeper and deeper, twisting and turning many times. Thankfully, the wormmole that carved it out was big enough that they had to only lean down and not go onto all fours as they followed the trail of blood.

"Where the hell is it going with it?" Sion asked while they arrived at an intersection, looking around a little before they spotted the blood again in one of the smaller tunnels, continuing going after it.

"I think it is bringing it back to its nest. He must have been tailing it, wanting to snatch some food from it when it was done with hunting. Now our little green lizard got itself a juicy lunch!" Ceiline explained calmly.

"I don't know if I am going to have the stomach to burn away small salamanders…." Keily murmured, and the others also looked at each other, sighing.

"Some things must be done," Lia answered after a brief silence. Her voice was low and more severe than ever before. "Even if it is morally questionable. I love the thought of an ideal world!" She murmured, not looking back, leading them forward. "But in an ideal world, the Undead would not exist."

"I know that quote!" Koa added after a moment later. "Grandpa used to say it whenever I was throwing a tantrum about something!"

"Erias said it." Aurora wrote to all of them, "When he was questioned why he sacrificed millions and refused to save cities and whole regions when they were retreating to the Windswept Fields. Many blamed him and called him a coward for it."

"I am just happy I never had to make a decision like that!" Sion sighed, shaking his head.

"We may have to. One day." Ceiline said absentmindedly.

"I hope not!" Keily shivered, "I don't know if I would be strong enough to sacrifice anybody!"

"You don't have to." Lia said, looking back over her shoulder, smiling at them, "As your leader, I would ensure we don't need to do it! Undead? Hmph! We will wipe them for the Realm, once and for a—aaaaaieeeeee!?"

Her sentence ended in a loud scream as she suddenly disappeared from view. The others rushed forward and noticed that the tunnel suddenly broke into a sharp drop, like an extreme slide, and Lia was gone.

"Damn it!" Aurora signed, sliding after her hurriedly, without hesitation.

"Boss never watches where she goes, does she?" Keily said hopping after them, and one by one, they all slid down, following their petite leader.

It took them a solid half a minute to land at the bottom, arriving at a humongous cavern, who knows how deep below the surface. Lia was a few meters away, looking around, already forgetting the initial scare, when she suddenly found herself falling. At first, when Aurora also arrived, she thought it was Lia's fire that lit up the cavern, but feeling the insane heat, she realized she was wrong. They were standing at the bank of a wide, slowly flowing lava river.

"How deep are we?" Keily asked after everyone was there, watching the bubbling stream, not daring to go too close as the heat coming from it was already making it hard to breathe.

"I can't tell," Ceiline whispered, and Raufon was also shrugging his shoulders.

"Just don't freeze it!" Koa joked, clapping Lia's shoulder. "You heard what this is! The engine of the Island! Freeze it, and we go diving from the sky! Probably straight into our home, considering our luck!"

"I can't even cast a stable water spell yet…." Lia murmured, raising her palm, and a bubble appeared above it, popping apart, splashing very little water into the air. "So… no worries!"

"Hopefully!" Koa added and stopped teasing her cousin.

"So… is this really magically contained here?" Raufon asked, walking closer but before he could approach the bank of the crimson river, accompanied by a splashing sound, a big, yellow lizard head popped up, watching him, hissing at him aggressively. "Oh…" He jumped back just before orange flames descended where he stood, coming straight from the lava.

“Thats a Goldback Salamander! It is the most aggressive one!" Ceiline shouted as they watched it climb out of the lava, followed by three more, high on its tail, one of them being the green one they saw before.

"Well, it seems like, it told its friends we are coming!" Sion said, looking on, ready to fight.

"Try to kill them in a way we can collect the important parts this time!" Lia shouted, first to engage, going straight for the biggest of the Goldbacks.

"I don't know where those parts are!" Keily shouted back, following his Boss like a shadow.

"Keep their heads, and we are good!" Ceiline instructed, aiming for a different Goldback with Raufon.

"I'll take care of the green one. It wants to escape!" Aurora wrote, watching the smallest scurrying towards a different hole further away.

"Have a good hunt!" Sion and Koa nodded, engaging the last salamander.

The first Goldback to climb out from the lava focused its golden eyes solely on Lia's and Keily's bodies. Opening its mouth, sharp teeth sprang out from its pinkish gums while a fireball gathered in its throat. When it finally spat, its teeth cut into the flames, separating it into four smaller attacks, bombarding both of them.

"Leave it to me, Boss!" the eager bunny boy shouted, casting two spells at once.

From his left hand, the same number of fireballs shot out, going straight at the salamander's, while from his right, a crimson-colored arrow of fire whistled forward, aimed straight at its open mouth. Keily's fireballs were smaller than the beast's, yet when they collided, they all exploded, canceling each other with a loud, echoey series of blasts.

"Tsk!" Keily clicked his tongue as the salamander was quick enough to close its mouth and block his arrow with its though, golden scales.

"Not bad!" Lia laughed, happy to see Keily's rapid progress.

Their teacher, Dayen, also realized Keily's talent, paying extra attention to the young boy's growth. The only one who was unaware that he was looked at as a budding genius was Keily himself. Casting two different spells simultaneously was not normal for others at his stage. He had never learned about magic before, and when Lia told him about the Amarin technique of casting different spells simultaneously, he thought it was completely normal. Not knowing, it was a highly advanced technique used mainly by the Amarins to train their people. It was so they could try to use the opposing elements at the same time one day. A training regime passed down for thousands of years in the family.

"Eat this!" Lia roared, arriving when Keily's double attack had just ended. She was coming down from above, having flaming wings behind her back, kicking at the broad skull of the fire lizard. Her whole body was surrounded by crimson flames, whistling like a meteor while hitting its target, whose attention was still on Keily's previous attacks.

With her speed, the Goldback had no time to dodge, and its head was smashed straight into the ground. The force behind Lia's attack was tremendous, making the hard rocks crack in a concentric circle, and the salamander's lower half rose towards the air helplessly after the impact. It let out a painful yelp, then its skull cracked and split apart, spraying blood and grey matter everywhere. Before it could blink, its golden eyes popped from their sockets, flying into the lava river. The spraying blood was smoking, hot as the lava itself, and wherever they splashed, they burned in a golden fire for minutes before dying down.

"Noooooooo!" Lia cried out loudly and painfully, scaring Keily, who was stunned by the lizard's death and the erupting 'volcano.'

"Boss!" He rushed in. He wasn't thinking but focused on her figure, jumping at her, grabbing her body, and dragging her out from the fire that was bursting out from the dead beast's body. He was afraid that Lia was burnt badly, and when rolling on the ground, he was trying to burn away the salamander's fire with his own. To his surprise, it was really easy to do so, and when they stopped rolling and managed to sit up, Lia was lying uninjured below him. "Boss…?" He asked, looking at her, trying to see where she was injured, but Lia just gulped back her tears, sobbing.

"Ceiline said its head is the most expensive… I forgot…"

"Oh…" Keily flinched, letting out a relaxed breath, climbing off her, and looking towards the others.

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……

While Keily and Lia were facing their salamander, the others were battling just the same. Raufon was unafraid of their fires from the start. Flexing his muscles, they expanded twice their size, and the ground around him tore apart, forming armor around him. He looked like a rhinoceros and rushed forward, wrestling the surprised Goldback to the ground. The beast had never before seen someone who simply bolted into its fire, shaking it off, and went to hold its body down.

"Stay still, you beast; that way, it won't be painful!" He laughed, climbing up on it, pushing it down, punching its scales with loud thumps.

"Hit it, twenty centimeters from its left eye! That will disorientate it!" Ceiline shouted, and when Raufon did as suggested, the salamander's body shuddered, swaying, its eyes squinting as it moaned painfully. "Be careful; its blood is highly flammable! The moment it comes into contact with the air, it is going to be ignited!"

"Okay!" He said, punching again, forcing the beast onto the ground, giving time for Ceiline to arrive.

She was not using any spells or throwing out artifacts. She climbed up it like Raufon did, standing atop its head, scanning it for a brief moment, then with an extended index finger, her claw stabbed down. The salamander went stiff and then collapsed with a loud thump, light fading from its eyes.

"Help me!" She said to Raufon, "I will pull out my finger, and you seal the hole! If we let its blood catch air, the whole lizard will-" then they heard Lia's loud cry. Snapping their heads, they saw the whole body of their prey go up in flames. Ceiline simply shrugged, already guessing what had happened. "Like that. So be quick!"

"Ahaha… sure~" Raufon chuckled, not surprised by Lia's predicament.

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"Let me do it!" Sion smiled, going forward before Koa could cast any water spells.

"Still salty because of the wormmole?" She asked with a smile, drawing back her arms.

"Kinda~!" He chuckled as two pistols appeared in his hands, taking aim. "It will be over in a flash anyway."

"Oh? Show me~!"

The Goldback opened its mouth as they spoke, ready to spew fire at them. Sion, taking aim, pulled the triggers, and two beams of light shot out faster than lighting. They landed straight in the salamander's throat, cutting through its spell and making it snap its mouth shut. It was already late, however. Sion's spell was bouncing inside its body, tearing it apart from the inside. The overgrown lizard groaned, vomited a large amount of blood with chunks of its innards in it, and then moved no more.

"Shit! Quickly!" Sion yelled, and luckily, Koa noticed the blood was smoking and about to catch on fire. If it spread back to the beast's body, it may blow up and rob them of a pricey ingredient.

"Ceiline! You forgot to mention this!" Koadriana shouted, summoning water from nowhere, splashing it on the blood, and killing the fire before anything could happen. That was when they also heard Lia's cry, and watching their side with the burning corpse, they sighed… hearing Ceiline's voice echo underground.

"Sorry! Hauuuuuh!"

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Aurora was rushing after the escaping green salamander, her eyes unblinking, staring straight at its twisting, retreating back. It was surprisingly fast and scurrying towards a hole at the far end of the chamber.

"No, you don't…." Aurora thought, making a throwing motion with her right hand, and multiple long chains made out of inky darkness rushed out from her palm. They wooshed through the air, wrapping around its tail, sinking into its flesh like barbed wires. "Get over here!" She moaned in her head, pulling on it with all her strength.

The green salamander was caught entirely off-guard. It could feel the pain in its tail but didn't expect the strength in Aurora's hands. When she wrenched the chains, the lizard's body jerked, and it landed on its stomach, its legs crumbling. It let out a painful and somewhat frightened yelp; it was clear the green-colored salamander was not used to battles and confrontations.

"Coward." Aurora mouthed silently as she looked at it, closing in quickly, meeting its panicked eyes.

It was filled with panic as it started to paddle with its four legs, trying to get back up and run but Aurora already arrived. She let go of the chain to hold two summoned, physical sabers as she slashed down. Yet her prey was not scared enough as it still had something up its sleeves. Or scales. Swishing its chained tail, it raised it, meeting Aurora's dual sabers. They carved into its flesh in an instant, making the salamander cry out shrilly, yet its scared eyes were full of drive. A will to survive. The moment its tail was severed, greenish flames burst out of it, engulfing Aurora wholly. The beast didn't wait, it rolled over, bleeding green flames from its stump where its tail used to be and it dived into the flow of lava, leaving behind sizzling sounds with more pained noises before disappearing.

"Maybe not that coward…." Aurora thought as she reappeared a few meters away, coughing, missing most of her clothes that were eaten away by the fire. Her white skin was spotless, unhurt by its fire, and she was unbothered by being low on clothes, watching the river of lava, squinting, not covering herself yet. "I'll get you next time…." She sighed when there was no sign of it retaliating. Turning her head after hearing Lia's cry and seeing their salamander go up in flames, she just shrugged. Then came Ceiline's guilty 'sorry,' making her smile, summoning a fresh set of clothes before heading back to the group.