"Well I see I have some hungry for power intuders in my dungeon." The sinister mage spoke while letting out a creepy yet hilarious laugh. "Its been a while since anyone decided they would step into this dungeon and be courageous enough to face me without preparing well. But at the end, I too would like to stack up on more dead beings, it's going to be...what do you want?!" He asked as he noticed a hand being raised from the far distance.
"Before you said all that, couldn't you try and introduce yourself so that we won't have a hard time calling you the 'Funny Iced Mage'? And I don't think you are exactly in your frozen state to be able to call you that." Aefia spoke while lowering her hand. Her face was partially shielded by shadow due to the hood and the low lighting.
"Who are you kid! How dare you trespassers describe me with such disgusting words! I am sure I look scary enough to prove that I am stronger than the most of you, and I am sure that you can already distinguish just how hard it will be for you all to accomplish your goal of stealing the Ice stone." His voice echoed back and forth across the room as he continuously stomped his stuff on the ground as it sent vibrations across the room.
"I am sorry but we all have ears, so no need to shout like a small baby who really just wants a bottle of milk to take to bed. I mean, you kind of look tired and hungry trying to monitor this entire dungeon, but who the heck do you want to protect? You can protect yourself I guess..." Aefia further provoked the mage. "And I am asking again, why is your name the iced mage? But you are not in your frozen state."
"If you have no intentions to fight, then move away and stay silent if you fear your life."
"I clearly have no intentions to fight, but if you ask why I came here with the rest of my team, well...can't we explore destroyed worlds?" Aefia asked. "I don't think you know this, but you have already killed multiple explorers like us and I clearly think that was just a misunderstanding, am I right?"
The iced mage was deeply maddened by her constant provoking and his face had portraited just how he was angered but despite that, he still said calmly. "And what makes you think a mage can make mistakes? That is some sort of information only a non-magic user says...so that must mean it hasn't been long for you since you had gotten your element, and how are you so confident that you can simply anger me and throw me into the traps you had played before?"
He pointed his stuff at Aefia's face as the bright blue light slowly illuminated her pale face with a smile matching his. "Hmm...You face seems like you are plotting something evil," he said finally after observing for a short while.
"You have gotten quite the number of facts right about me. Number one, you have successfully found out that I am not from around and I am not just anyone ordinary, meaning I must be some sort of alien being from another planet...but which planet you still don't know.
"Number two, you were scared that I had already found out about your true identity so you decided that you would let that go back around so you can seem like one. Number three, you have been observing me specifically, for so long that now you know what I might be doing next, don't you know that's stalking? Real mages won't stalk and they don't go around stealing things you know." She spoke while counting the numbers on her finger. "And you were also right when you said I must be planning something evil."
"Very impressive, a person with your brain would be more lucky than your friends you can say. This one here," he spoke as he pointed his stuff to her lady's direction. "She has already been here twice before, and if you knew that too, you won't have had her in your team or as your helper."
Helio looked at Aefia with a confused and shocked face as to ask what informations were not told or was not discovered. But she was already busy staring at the way the stuff moved up and down, left to right. But even if she had already known about all that regarding her lady, then she must have a very good reason as to why she had recruited her as a helper, it can't just be because of her skills and powers.
"And might you describe what she has done in particular during the time frame she had come here and gone back?" Her son asked while stepping in front of his own mother. "My mother doesn't do anything wrong, and even if she has done it, she didn't really mean to do it, I am sure of it."
"I don't think she had done it without her will, she had desperately needed something for a certain someone but she didn't acquire it due to her greed." The mage laughed, "and to think this girl was smart enough to bring the son along? Are you not afraid of your life?"
Aefia let out a sign and walked towards her lady while looking down. "I don't do anything while knowing the reason behind it, of course I can tell you that I didn't know this would happen, but I can tell you that..." She looked at the mage while standing beside her lady, "one sentence from the two parts that I have just said was a lie."
I am being tricked so easily by a mere human who just got their magic, and I doubt that she can even use it properly. The mage thought while gritting his teeth, both with anger and hesitation. I don't think going against her will do any right thing, but what is she going to do next to that woman? Stand with her?
"Now I am pretty disappointed how you didn't tell me that you had been to this dungeon twice before...were you afraid of someone who is hundreds of years younger than you? Or were you trying to take a revenge on something or someone in this dungeon when you chose to follow me to this mission? And that too you wanted to do secretly." Aefia asked while looking down at her lady.
Her lady quickly kneeled in front of the only girl who had the courage to gain the fear of a noble so far, and held out her hands as to represent handcuffs or shackles. Due to the dim light, Aefia was unsure if she was crying or just angry with what had happened until now, but she knew that most definitely it was a negative emotion that was rounding up more to frustration. "I believe I have broken a major trust with you, and I think you are willing to sacrifice me of your team."
"Sacrifice? Lady do you think my mentality is that small and I would go out of my way to execute a highly ranked noble like you? I already knew the reason behind why you chose to do all that, but it doesn't mean I would do such a nasty thing to you." Aefia crouched to grab her lady by her shoulders and stood her up. "I have my reasons for why I chose to recruit you in the first place and did you think it was unknown to me how you betrayed the 'trust'?"
"What! Are you insane kid? She is most definitely a criminal and you don't punish her for that?! You have been betrayed, you said it your self!" The mage held his head with his hands as to symbolize a head ache. "I don't know whether you have understood the situation and just let it fly by thinking that won't repeat, but if you already know she had broken your trust, why are you letting her stand! Keep her kneeling and punish her! You absolute idiots!" She smacked his forehead and rested his elbow on top of his staff to keep him from collapsing.
"I am not an idiot to think that her lady actually knows an adequate amount of information about this dungeon. I would say she knows more about this dungeon than you and your pesky insects combined. And her son was brought in order to protect her," Aefia replied. "In short, I already knew the reason why she came here in the first time and why she needed to come back the second time. The first time was just exploration when she unknowingly discovered you, wasn't it? And you created a 'trust' with her so that you could take some advantages with it."
The mage went silent at hearing such words from a human weaker then him. He covered his mouth as he picked up the stuff and pointed it at the ground below Aefia. Within a split second, she understood what was happening and a little too late for her realization to surface. The ground rumbled and changed colour as bright blue light appeared from the stuff and contacted the ground.
The light spread across the ground in vein-like designs until it reached Aefia's standing ground and she jumped back in response. Steam arose and instantly vanished as he noticed Aefia a little further away from where he had placed the ice to spike out from.
In the place where those sharp ice stalagmites were supposed to have popped out from, in its place was only water which was bubbling and boiling. Aefia stepped forward from the shadow, in front of where the newly formed water pool was. "I am expecting that if I were standing near the edges of this water boundary, you can easily form your icicles and use them as blades to kill me, but you have already done harm and lost."
She held out her hand to show a wound formed not long ago, a small stab that was recovering as new skin formed on top of it, sealing it permanantly. But the main thing she needed done was already completed and she just needed to wait a little longer in order to fully take out the plan she had in mind.
"You haven't let me finish explaining yet, but I appreciate what you tried to do to try and make me quiet. But since her son is here, I believe it should come to his attention too about what his mother had done and what she was forced to do." Aefia continued speaking despite knowing that the threat levels were high.
"Fine, I will let you speak this once. But you better hurry before I place the next attack in five minutes time." The mage dropped the stuff in front of him and stood still. "And if you fail to fulfil the terms, I will kill that woman." His eyes glowed a bright blue, making it hard to distinguish between who he was looking at, or what he was planning on doing.
"And I have a condition of mine too. That you won't pick up the stuff until it's already five minutes."
"Very, well. Make sure not to go out of the rule you created yourself, I know you very well as a person with a mentality of a tiger." The mage shrugged.
"The first time her lady had come here was because she had heard about a certain power source that could allow for a person to have their wish granted, but she failed to do enough research about who or what the power source was until she came face to face with the mage." She spoke to her lady's son while she looked down.
"And the wish, you probably already know. She had said this wish to over a hundred different Kings and Queens and still couldn't get the help she wanted. Until she asked me about it, I was easily able to decode who or what it was about. And that wish was to be able to find her own lost son."
"Mom, did you really do that?" Her son asked with a sincere face. "I understand that you were worried but you went a little overboard with that. Now you have gotten us into trouble too."
"I don't think we have the time to spare for discussions and confirmations. Now I will continue...when she came to this level of the dungeon, which she did so by skipping multiple other task, she was greeted by this mage here. He asked her what she was looking for and she told her wish to him.
"In return for listening and granting her what she wanted, the mage wanted two things. One, immeasurable strength and two, the ice stone. But her lady could only grant him one, and that was the ice stone which she had acquired by killing and slaughtering many ice elemental users.
"This had made the mage, who was earlier just a normal construction worker for this world, angry and threaten to kill her. That was her second visit as you can probably tell. She managed to make him senseless and escape back to where she was staying, but the mage was already planning a revenge for her since she had broken the 'trust'.
"You may ask what the trust is, it was a hand in hand approval about how for one thing, the other person would get another thing. But in truth, it was a curse set on each one of the entities until they both got what they wanted and the curse was set by the other one of course, to make sure it was equal. Her lady was able to remove the curse because she had secretly placed a protective spell on herself so that she could reject the curse and the mage would not know about it.
"That curse, was a negative spell which was broken later, but it was altered to another positive spell that allowed him to feed on energy from still objects in the dungeon and gain strength. That must be enough to tell you how long ago this was." Aefia finished explaining within the last five seconds.
"During the early destruction of this world." Her son spoke as he quickly moved his mother away while Aefia moved back.