In the border of the country of Firestone, in spring, approximately three months before the main timeline.
…
"We're almost at Firestone, the border should be just across the river over there. We'll be safe very soon, I hope… those brainless knights respect borders, right?" Thomas asked, with a jittery tone, he was petrified.
"We can't count on their intelligence, or the lack of." Roveera followed along, "We have to keep moving, and hopefully we'll get arrested by guards on the other side, that'll keep us alive, if not safe. They can't kill battle-mages as far as I know, not without a good reason, their king doesn't allow it. Though, us ladies might get raped there anyway."
"We'll burn their penises off, that's a minor issue." Another lady added, half-jokingly.
Minutes later, as they were getting ready to cross the fast running, twelve-meter wide river, the situation escalated for the worst! The knights found them, and this part was a predictable problem, however, the predictability didn't reduce the danger that this group of mages was in!
One of the knights shouted, "Purgers! For the pope, our motherland, and our kin!"
That shout was more of a battle call, as the number of knights doubled in mere seconds after he had yelled that out. Roovera, and her group of mage associates were in big trouble!
Roveera summoned the biggest fireball that she could muster, and prepared to answer the call that these knights had yelled out. She shot it against the biggest group of people that she could find, and this was very effective, because the fireball enveloped the targets like a blanket, a scorching blanket that is, and simply burned the skin off of their bones afterwards! Six of them were dead, but about fifty enemies remained standing, and odds are that more knights were marching here right now, so the mages weren't out of danger yet!
Nevertheless, Roveera's attack still bought her team a bit of time, a few mere seconds to be exact. These few seconds was all that they could ask for, because they were given the freedom to flee, efficiently! They headed towards the river, and it didn't take a direct command to convince them, they knew what to do.
"Faster, don't slouch you bastards!" She yelled out, and prepared another fireball on her palms.
This time, the fireball was so sizzling hot that the very shirt on her chest-side caught on fire, regardless of how she kept it two feet away from her torso. This fireball was particularly hot, because it was really compressed, it wasn't huge at all, but it was concentrated!
Roveera wanted to buy her friends a few more seconds, so she unleashed this fireball against the crowd, and split several men in half with it within the blink of an eye! Her attack was very effective, and come to think of it, she started to understand why these knights wanted to slaughter any and all practitioners of magic to begin with! Fireballs were just too effective, mages could slaughter hundreds of people if they were given enough freedom or motives to do so, and she was a live example.
Anyway, even though her attack was efficient, she still ended up being blindsided. Her shirt had caught on fire, her palms were pretty roasted too, and these couple of things built up against her, especially after the fire on her shirt reached her eyes! Her eyebrows were burned off, her eyelashes equally so, and she ended up half blind too! This was very disadvantageous, because she couldn't see her enemies approach, nor could she run because she was disoriented, and might miss the river completely.
With all of that said, her options narrowed down to one definite truth; She had to sacrifice herself, because she was dead either way!
As a result, Roveera started blasting fireballs randomly, and tried to ignore the pain, while her face was literally getting roasted by her own flames! She chose to do this.
The frantic fireballs that she shot out, only increased the heat that she was feeling on her skin and clothes, but she ignored it all. She continued shooting, and the desperate screams of her enemies numbed her pain for a bit, but at some point she could hear that they were getting too close, so she did the only thing that was left for her to do. She charged up another fireball, and bashed it against her head instead of anywhere else, because she refused to die in the hands of her enemies!
"The gods be damned," She mumbled, before killing herself. "Take me to hell, I'll come up there and hunt you down, just like your believers have hunted me!"
The scene was graphic, however, the sacrifice that she had made was worthwhile, it bought her associates a great advantage. It did so mostly on time, because then it didn't take more than a minute for the knights' numbers to multiply, they were all over the place, and their number reached over a hundred people now, regardless of how nearly thirty of them had been massacred by Roveera alone. There were plenty of them, so a third of the mages ended up dying anyway, before they even hit the waters, regardless of what it had taken to keep them alive!
The survivors, however, could be considered lucky. The river had been to the advantage of the mages, because fully-armored knights simply could not swim, which in exchange gave the mages a lot of time to move. This particular part was very advantageous, but to the mages' terror, the knights had plenty of arches within their group, and they eventually started shooting! The archers managed to kill a few people who were in the water, so overall, fifteen mages were killed!
All things considered, the group of mages could've held their ground, yes, but the death-count would have still been the same regardless, if not worse than now. There used to be only so many mages in this group, about thirty of them, and their enemies had virtually endless numbers, because a religion-led movement was rarely lacking of men and women. There were plenty of knights here who had been recruited from either kings or nobles, they were armed and dangerous, so there was no fighting them without suffering major casualties!
With that said, regardless of how some died crossing it, the river was neatly positioned for the mages to take advantage of. Some crossed it, and successfully ran away, while most had swam as deeply as they could, to avoid detection, and followed the river's stream until they swam far away from the battlefield!
Out of desperation, some mages even held their breath for up to two minutes, which was brutal, but their effort hadn't gone in vain nonetheless, because those same mages then made a run for it, approximately one-hundred meters away from the battlefield! There was no catching them, and in total, fifteen mages lived to see another day, half of the whole group survived.
On the original side of the river, the knights were steaming with rage as they saw the mages escape. They might as well be angry, because plenty of their brothers and sisters died in the hand of the mages, so it was fair to say that their hate towards the arcane arts had deepened! Furthermore, they were now traumatized by the burnt corpses of their friends that the knights were inspecting, they were petrified.
Mosinus, who was blessed by The Pope with some degree of responsibility, bore the heaviest burden here. He was an Administrator of Security, which didn't really make him a war general, but he was still trusted with the strategic elimination of any and all security threats! In other words, if he didn't have much good news to bring back to his superiors, then he may get castrated, because of his overall incompetence to fulfill his duties! Losing a dozen knights, and having mages escape, was a grand example of incompetence in the eyes of his superiors.
Mosinus was shaking in fear, and anger, so at some point he started kicking and abusing the corpses of the mages. He even figured out which corpse belonged to Roveera later on, and then he decided to cut her head off clean. He then slid his fingers in the same head's eyes, and muscled his way through the internal contents, until he found an organ to tug on!
Eventually, he pulled this organ out with his bare hands, and regarding details, this organ wasn't an eye, or anything else that was typically found in nature. Half of the frog kind didn't have this organ, humans definitely didn't have it, but its value was priceless due to numerous reasons!
Religious figures collected these organs as if for sport, but they of course did it for religious reasons. This was the organ that mages greatly depended on, to be exact, as it held their mana quantity! It was shaped like a clogged gut, it was less than two-inches long, and it was very tough, almost impossible to squeeze or dent if the 'harvested' mage had been powerful enough!
Mosinus held it above his head, looked at it, and said. "Yes… Pope Frusinis might spare me if I bring this back. This is the largest mana chamber I've ever seen, they'll all notice this! He may as well spare me, because these disgusting deviators have learned to fear me now, they fear us, The Purge, and no deviator will be safe from us, not even those that are hiding in Firestone! Borders be damned, I'm coming for them all!"