When Hyacinth comes home to her new apartment for the first time after a long day at university, it's to the sight of moving bots just finishing dropping off the last of her stuff and moving furniture into place. The full-immersion VR pod her parents gave her is safely hooked up in the pod room, her bed is in her bedroom, she has chairs and a desk and some bookshelves. Clothes are mostly still in boxes, waiting to be hung up in the closet. Holovid and a cozy chair occupy the living room. She doesn't have any food in the small kitchen yet.
Just at the goats start getting close enough to almost reach them, Hailey leaps out, wings spread wide.
She swirls her staff and tosses off the Repel Hailey needs for her launch, then quickly assesses the situation. All goats accounted for, can she toss a Flare into the ones stuck in the Glue?
The goats who'd been approaching get blasted off the ridge and land in the Glue field. A couple are struggling closer to the edge of the field, but not out of it yet.
Hailey soars out over the Glue and then dives down toward the near edge of the initial Flare.
Eat Flare, evil goats.
She hurls it at the front rank, the ones most likely to break through.
More panicked bleating and struggling ensues. The front half of the herd all catch fire as the field of flames spread around and ahead of them.
Meanwhile, Hailey darts forward, wreathing her blade in lightning. She stabs sharply into the back few goats, which stumble to the ground as their muscles spasm. A quick leap and some hard flaps bring her up the ridge, where she does the same to the lead goats in the fire. Would the goats like to have an even harder time escaping the flames?
Easy enough. She can just stand back and lob more selective Glue and Flares at the bunched-up pack. She watches her mana, but so far she's comfortable.
She kind of feels sorry for the poor goats.
Hailey darts back and forth through the goats, dodging slowed headbutts and cutting them open. Occasionally she switches to lightning for a burst of disabling stabs, but otherwise she keeps her shadow cutter going.
This is not a situation that bodes well for these corrupted goats. They quickly start dying.
Well, that seems to be well enough in hand. She'll lob another Flare and then take a moment to scan the area. Hopefully nothing has been attracted by screaming goats.
That's too bad, because there's a large brown bear tromping along the ridge toward her. It's currently about fifty meters away and closing.
She pulls a Flare and holds it, tracking the bear. Hopefully it's non-demonic and still afraid of fire.
"BACK," she yells, "BACK, BEAR, GET AWAY!"
Hailey looks up sharply, beheads the two healthiest-looking goats, and leaps into the air, heading toward the bear as fast as she can.
Does it count as non-demonic if it has red eyes and roars at Sin when she pulls out a Flare?
Ah, shit.
She releases the held spell and Flares the bear. She'll follow that up with a selective Glue atop it, but she's in a bad position here.
The bear roars again, and isn't slowed nearly as much as anyone would like by the Glue. If anyone Observes it by looking intently enough at it, it turns out to be a level twelve corrupted brown bear.
But that's when a scowling Hailey streaks toward it, flipping midair to hit its chest feet- and saber-first, her blade sparking with electricity. She kicks off after stabbing it, flipping backward to land between it and Sin.
"No. Bad bear. Our cute foxgirl, not yours."
It swipes at Hailey with a paw, missing her by inches as she flips away.
Hyacinth's had a chance to Observe it now.
"Level twelve!", she calls. "Fighting retreat!"
She drops another Glue on it, then turns and runs for it, dropping a Flare ahead of her and running headlong through it. Hopefully this thing isn't heavily fire-resistant like she is.
It's definitely not fire resistant, it just doesn't seem to care as much about pain as it should. It lunges forward in the flames and lashes out at Hailey with its claws again.