Lady of Curses

Aella saw how the mage's eyes turned red, and then his body slowly rose. She looked as the mage in his madness disregarded his injuries and just stood up. His flesh was tattered and bloody, and his left hand looked like it was broken. Just looking at him sent a shiver down Aella's spine. 

Slowly the man turned where the chaos was ensuing, and then started to limp in its direction. The mage was slow and unstable on his legs, but somehow he got where he needed and when he was close enough he stopped and started to channel a spell, with his right hand aiming in the direction of one of the bandit groups, that were trying to restrain one of their teammates. After a while, she saw the mage let loose his spell. The wind blade traveled a distance before it shot right into someone's back, leaving a nasty cut. 

Aella continued to lie on the floor, she didn't have the strength or will to get up. She wanted her injuries to heal faster so she willed the mana she was passively absorbing to concentrate on her healing. The moment she did that she started to feel exhausted and sick, but she decided to bear with it, after all, the faster she heals the better. 

It was a little uncomfortable that now mana was going into her reserves as if a drought was happening in her very being. It was a new feeling that Aella wasn't too fond of, but it couldn't be helped, she had to do this for her own benefit. 

While she was healing she looked at the bandits for some entertainment. Right now there were twelve bandits, including the mage, going on a rampage, and on the opposite side, there were about twenty of them. At the start, they had more, but this madness has been going on for a while and in that time they had lost some bandits. 

Gazing at them Aella still couldn't figure out some things. One of them was, why they didn't kill the crazy ones. It wasn't logical from her perspective, she would understand if they succeded in restraining them, but they didn't and the sane bandits were losing manpower by the minute, so it was more logical to kill them, or even cut off a limb or two, but they didn't even do that.

Another thing that bothered Aella was, that the bandits looked like they didn't know how to wield a weapon as if they weren't too familiar with them. Aella wasn't an expert in this kind of thing, but even she could tell that these people didn't have much experience with a weapon. Expect some bandit here and there who looked like they knew what they were doing, most of them looked like they didn't use their weapons regularly. 

Plus looking at their armor she could tell that it was worn down and old, some bandits didn't even have any armor. She could just dismiss this and say that they didn't have armor on because the chaos she caused was so sudden, but still, it was kind of weird. 

It all could be just Aella overthinking, but at the same time why would a bandit group that had this many members, and is very successful by the looks of it, because how else they have so many things in storage, have their members so poorly armored and how they even are this successful with this low if skill. All this made Aella think that something fishy was going on. 

Aella looked on at the disorder that she caused, the mage was shooting his spells from time to time, the burly raging man, one of the first she cursed, was swinging his longsword trying to kill those around him, and the sane bandits were trying to capture them. From the sidelines, it looked kind of hilarious, but that was only for Aella, the bandits that were still sane would disagree with her.

''AGH...'' Aella saw how one of the bandits got struck by a wind blade, and because of that they didn't move in time and a longsword sliced his head open. The body fell to the ground as the madman was splashed with blood and brain matter, but he ignored it and turned to his next target. 

This kind of thing was happening all over the place, the bandits were slowly decreasing in numbers, they sometimes succeded in restraining one of the mad ones, but soon after the mad one just broke free, or the bandits restraining them got attacked, she even saw how one mad bandit ripped someone's through with his teeth when all his limbs were restrained. The scream and sight wasn't a pretty one.

Although the madness was still ongoing while Aella just lay there, she could see the maddened bandits slow down. She was sure that they will get to the end, but slowly they were losing their vigor. Mage was already on his last leg and would topple over at any moment, his body was ready to give up. His spells got slower and weaker, and took longer and longer for him to cast a spell, Aella figured that it wouldn't be long before he goes down, and to be honest, she was surprised he got this far. 

Seeing all she wanted Aella just started to concentrate on her healing body, she still had her eyes open and was on alert, but at the same time, she was staring into space, waiting for her body to heal, not minding what was happening around her. 

It took some time before she felt like she could move, she still wasn't fully healed, and there were some visible injuries on her flesh, but finally, she could start getting up. But before she got up she let the mana flow its natural course, and the moment she did, the uncomfortable dry sensation disappeared, as if rain was given to her body, Aella felt kind of refreshed, hurt, and in pain, but refreshed. 

Slowly she got up, her body protested against her moving, but Aella just ignored it at continued. After she was back on her feet, she took a look around to better see the situation. The mage was on the ground, probably dead, most of the bandits were dead or lying in a pool of blood slowly dying, and the only alive people, besides her, were three madmen going at it. 

They were so bloody and dirty that Aella couldn't distinguish their looks, and none used any weapons just their limbs and teeth. Looking around Aella saw the big guy who used a longsword dead as his corpse just slept on the ground, he had a knife sticking out of his left eye, probably the reason he died. 

As she walked and looked around Aella could see blood, guts, and limbs all around her, the smell was nauseating but it didn't bother her she just moved on. She let the remaining madman kill each other, while she herself started to look around trying to find something that would interest or benefit her. 

Unfortunately, Aella didn't find anything that could catch her eye in the close proximity, she was ready to give up, and just wait for the fight to end and then go see how the captured beastkin and the dark elf were doing. But then she saw a door that looked interesting. Different from other doors that were made from wood, this one was made from stone, and almost blended with the wall, so surely there was something important in there, right? 

Happy to find the door, Aella hastened her steps as she approached the door. Her bloody feet left red footprints behind her as she left the gruesome scene. 

Aella arrived at the door and quickly found the handle. After grabbing the handle, Aella started to pull. At first, the door didn't budge, not even a little bit, and Aella was starting to think it was locked, or she had to push it. But not even a moment later the door started to open. 

''HHHHHH...'' With loud dragging noise the door opened and Aella was greeted by bunch of stone stairs going straight up. Curios as she was, Aella didn't even hesitate to go up. Her body was still in tatters but by now she had already forgotten about it, the only thing on her mind was figuring out what was at the top of these stairs.