ROUND 2 : Group 1

Instructions

You have been split into three groups depending on where you placed in the last round (ie: 1st placings grouped together etc).

Each group will have one match opened for them and you will duel against all of the members of the group at the same time in a group battle.

You are allowed an unlimited amount of posts (though please do not double post) and you may use both creative spells and known spells from HP

You will not be marked purely on how long your posts are, or how many (though this will be one small factor of the marking) yet you will be marked on the following;

* Eye for surroundings
* Defensive and offensive spells (both what spells are used and how well they are used)
* Knowledge of spells
* Eye for detail (both your own posts and others posts)
* Inventiveness and creativeness as a whole
* Awareness of all members in your group



Those in this group are:

SilverLady
Raistlin The Wizard
Snapes_girl
streams of silver
Snape Lover

Streams halted right before entering the room. She had no idea if anyone had arrived yet or not...carefully, she raised her wand and said softly, "Rilevi la magia." (Detect magic) She pushed a strand of dark, wavy hair behind one ear, and watched the door glow red for a brief second. Streams cursed under her breath. Powerful magic had recently been used here.

Though she was disappointed that she hadn't arrived first, streams smirked and pointed her wand at herself, doing a complicated little twist with her wrist. This spell was a silent one, and streams concentrated hard as she thought, Custodiscalo bene. (Guard me well) This spell would protect her against the most common jinxes and hexes for a limited amount of time. For added protection, she muttered "Protego," though she was unsure of how the two shields would work together.

Drawing a deep breath, she flung the door open and rushed into the room, brandishing her wand. A huge cobra reared up in front of her, baring its fangs, and she groaned inwardly. She had not been expecting a vicious animal, and now she had only milliseconds in which to think. Streams frowned, and the cobra attacked.

At the last second it was her instinct that acted for her, because streams threw herself to the side, dodging the bite of the deadly snake. It hissed ominously. Before it had merely been doing what magic had commanded it to do. Now it was angry as well.

Quite suddenly, a mouse dashed across the room. The cobra was distracted for a moment, and that was all the time Streams needed to think of an appropriate spell. "Insegua il mouse," (chase the mouse) she said loudly, jabbing her wand in the cobra's direction. It stared at her for a moment with a cold, hypnotizing gaze and then slid away after the mouse.

Streams let out a breath and leaned against a wall cautiously, assessing her surroundings. Someone had to have conjured that snake...that same someone was probably in the room right now, watching her. Resisting a shudder, Streams pretended to let her guard down, and made a show of dangling her wand loosely from her fingers. But she was thinking of several damaging hexes, and she watched alertly for any movement out of the corner of her eyes.

Streams watched Rai oddly as he sat himself down in his skull square, a silly little smile on his calm face. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be in a trance. Shrugging to herself, she figured she was better off if he wasn't keeping an eye on things. And the other duellist, the one who had conjured the giant cobra, was still nowhere to be found.

She was paying attention to everything Rai did, and instantly noticed the sand floating throughout the air. So nice of Rai to warn us, she smirked when she heard him announcing exactly what he had just done. She certainly would not have been so accommodating. She searched her mind for an appropriate spell and at last decided on a little something she had learned while on vacation in Spain. "Ojo de la tormenta," (Eye of the storm, Spanish) she muttered, pointing her wand at herself. Rai, in his happy little dreamland, didn't appear to have noticed.

The spell streams had just cast would cause the entire room to be engulfed with wild winds and pounding rain, but none of this would affect streams, since she was in the eye of the storm. Anything physical that came toward her would simply be swept up in the winds swirling around her, and the best part was that this spell was not a usual one, and therefore it would be more difficult for the other duellists to think of good counterspells.

She watched the sand whirl away from her and sincerely hoped that they hit the mysterious invisible duellist, whoever they were.

Rai was still sitting happily unaffected in his little square, and streams decided to change that. She figured that probably a direct spell would have no effect, but decided to try on anyway. Pointing her wand at one of the small skulls, she said slowly and precisely, "Mueva el cráneo." (Move the skull, spanish)

To her great surprise, the skull moved a millimeter. Frowning slightly, she muttered, still pointing at the skull, "¡Rodillo lejos!" (Roll away!) The skull didn't move. A sudden thought struck streams and she deliberately walked over to Rai. The storm moved with her and she remained in the eye. She stopped at the edge, drew back her foot, and kicked the skull closest to her. It rolled away and smashed into the opposite wall. There was a loud, thundering sound, and then it disappeared in a cloud of silver smoke.

Streams nodded and backed off, wondering how safe Rai was now in his happy little square. He still had his eyes closed. Then she watched as they opened suddenly and he stared directly at her, looking betrayed. Too bad.

She considered for a moment making herself invisible, but decided against that. Instead, she conjured a thick, gray fog by whispering, "Niebla de la muerte" (Fog of death) Its name was considerably more ominous than what it actually did, but the fog would confuse everyone in the room except the caster. They would suddenly forget why they were there and what they were doing.

Smiling, streams tilted her head as she considered the chaos around her. She decided on just one more thing. "Mosquitos enfermos," she shouted, the sounds of the storm swallowing her voice. (Diseased mosquitoes) Her fellow duellists wouldn't see them in the fog and storm, and hopefully the mosquitoes would bite them and cause them quite a bit of trouble. Wherever they bit, large, pus-filled sores would form, and the poor victims would get raging fevers almost immediately afterwards.

Pulling an amulet with gold engraving out of her pocket, she stroked it softly as she sang,

May calm rest on the insects I conjured,

Let not a swat or spell affect them,

May they bite and whine to their hearts' content,

And thank you, mi amigo querido Quirnem

The amulet had been a gift from a friend she had made in Spain. Streams was just lucky in that she happened to have friends who were powerful in magic. Yeah right. She snickered to herself. But that was the story she told everyone, so why not tell it to herself as well? The amulet would do whatever she commanded, as long as she thanked her friend each time she used it. She put the amulet around her neck, fastening its chain with a simple spell. "Estancia cerrada." (stay closed)

Cris approached the duelling room excited about her upcoming match. She was just about to press the door handle when she heard a wild rustle coming from inside. The battle must be fierce, she thought worriedly. Knowing that her intuition was never wrong, she decided to use some protective spells but pondered upon the question as to which was best quite a while. Thinking back, she realised one of her favourite elements in fight was fire – it had almost always been of great help, so why not try it again? Casting “Transforme mon corps en feu” (Turn my body into fire, French), she felt more confident of her chances to survive, and opened the door.

The moment she had touched it, however, she was shocked to find out that the door was not exactly opening, but rather trying to eat her up. What the -, she thought, kicking it with her flaming arms and legs. She expected it to just burn away, but the spell had been a powerful one and the moment a piece of burnt away, it seemed to reform immediately. “Petrificus totalus!”, she shouted pointing her wand at the door and hoping it would also work on objects. She could sense the “battle” her spell and the door were having through the laden atmosphere around her, but in the end, the door froze in the sense that it didn’t regenerate again and Cris could burn it at free will.

Finally freed, she stopped in the door frame and stepped back, observing. A strange fog was spreading out in the middle of a stormy room and it certainly didn’t look inviting. A sniff of the fog was quite enough to make her shrug her shoulders and walk down the corridor that lead away from the dueling room, but she did it in a rather unconvinced manner, trying to reason with herself while walking very slowly and often stopping. Wait a second.. where am I? And why am I going? But why am I here in the first place? Why should I be here …and why not? Do I .. have to .. fight??? But who says so? Should I just go home now? It probably took her about 10 minutes until she got far enough to stop breathing the fog and came to a halt. And if what she had experienced so far had been confusion, this was worse – she was angry with herself for having let herself to be tricked in such a stupid manner. Ahhh now I’ve lost precious dueling time and who knows what other traps my opponents have set me in the meantime! She kicked her foot against the wall to let out her anger, shouted “Filter d'air magique “ (Magical air filter, French) to conjure an air filter right into her fire throat and ran back to the battle room.

She couldn’t detect any new sources of worry, so she boldly stepped inside. The moment she turned around to close the door, she realized there was no door left, just a heap of ashes, thanks to her fire body. She grinned and thought, Well, the next dueler might get to breather in the nasty fog even sooner… who knows, maybe they don’t show up here at all, with all the confusion… but now to our business. Just as turned around to face the middle of the storm – or rather, the area where she thought the middle of the storm was, as she couldn’t see anything, she observed with honest interest a mosquito that approached her flaming forearm – only to explode and be transformed to ashes as soon as it had gotten too close. Not bad, she thought yawning, but I don’t think some petty insects will do the job of defeating me… after all, invincible mosquitoes or not, how do you want to bite into fire? … nonsense…

She also observed another interesting effect of the storm – it was almost literally feeding her fire and causing her body to throw flames all over the place, which gave her an idea. She whispered “Vieille foret “ (Old forest, French) and she had barely finished her words, when she felt some dried branches scratch her back while a tree was shooting out of the ground. She was pleased to see that it didn’t take much longer than a minute for the tree to be completely on fire and decided to take a walk in the wood, just to see how many more trees she could light up. She wouldn’t even have to hurry though, because the wind would do most of the job for her. She smirked at the thought of her opponents … would they like her little … grill party?

Just while she was in the middle of creating a warm and friendly grill (or whatever her opponents would have called it), Cris was shock to see that her fire seemed to be at first stopped from expanding itself, then grew back and it didn’t exactly take hawk’s eyes to realise the room was being covered in a thin layer of ice crystals. “Thank god my body is fire right now – it doesn’t exactly look cozy”, she thought and shuddered out of habit, although she couldn’t feel the cold. “Oh well,”, she then said to herself walking on casually, “I’ll just have to invent something else…”, but it unfortunately didn’t take long for her to realise she was somehow feeling ever more tired and lifeless. Looking at her feet, she saw the snow was melting and slapped her forehead – of course, fire melts snow, but because of the natural balance of energy, some of her own energy was going into the metling process and she could oly too well imagine the fact that it was snow caused by a strong spell contributed to this effect quite radically.

Before she even had time to think about a solution, she heard Raisty’s voice: “Wow you sure give the sentence ‘I’m hot!’ a new meaning.”. “Yeah well, I didn’t like the old meaning – too frivolous!”, she answered playfully and was just about to stick out her tongue, when she realised a bunch of dangerous-looking needles where flying towards her from Raisty. She didn’t even have time to scream “Mummy!”, when she felt her body pierced in numerous places – she would have enough time to count them if she survived the attack, which she honestly highly doubted. She hadn’t expected to feel such a pain with her body of fire, though, but the energy she was losing every second definitely had a say in the problem. She fell with a loud thud, which made the needles pierce even deeper into her body, increasing the pain, if possible, by a tenfold. As determined as she was not to show her pain, she couldn’t help screaming and inserting a “Currrse you!” in between of many “AAAAAAAAAAH!”’s. Her view was becoming blurred and she couldn’t feel her limbs any more. She was afraid she would pass out any second, when she realised she was beginning to feel cold. “Hold on! That means I’m not a firebeing anymore!”, she manged to conclude despite her dizzyness and looked at her arm. It seemed like the cold was helping her back to her senses, but that also meant the pain was getting harder to bear. Searching in her torn and dirty robes, she finally, after what seemed like an eternity, found her wand and muttered “Verwijder de naalden uit mijn lichaam” (Remove the needles from my body, Dutch), a spell that was unfortunately only effective to the extent that the needles where no longer there – but the pain was still present. The fainting feeling was yet again coming and it took all her will to keep herself going for another few minutes, in order to form a plan.

It was clear to her by now that she wasn’t able to do anything else that required much physical work and she therefore had the idea of entering the world of under consciousness. She indulged a few seconds in a rather megalomaniac vision of her controlling her opponents minds through dreams, then decided to act. She blew softly against the tip of the wand, while thinking: “Feiner Staub, verbinde dich mit der Luft und fliege zu meinen Gegnern – oeffne die tiefsten Schichten ihres Unterbewusstseins fuer mich und lass mich sie kontrollieren.” (“Fine dust, unite with the air and fly to my opponents – open the deepest layers of their under consciousness for me and let me control them”, German). Indeed, from the tip of her wand escaped blue shiny particles, that seemed to disappear almost instantly. However, Cris knew the blue particles were only capsules which contained millions of particles so small, they couldn’t be seen without a high tech microscope. These particles would bind themselves to the oxygen in the air and rapidly spread across the room – her opponents wouldn’t even know they were breathing it. And as they were all well awake – as opposed to the coma-like state that threatened to take control of her in a few seconds – they couldn’t enter their under consciousnesses. To make sure she could use the situation well, Cris used her last power to cast “Unterbewusstsein, erwache!” (“Underconsciousness, awake!”, German) – this spell guarenteed that she would indeed be able to enter her own under consciousness in order to control the others from there.

What she was planning? Oh, nothing special – except sowing doubt into her opponent’s souls, making them give her their own life energy to the point of exhaustion and moreover creating the illusion of unbearable pain in their minds. Simple as that. As far as Cristina was concerned, this was the only escape left for her and she didn’t even need to worry what would happen to her body in case some them found a way out of her control – her health was already as bad as it could get and she knew no one would kill her out of fear of getting disqulified.

She had made these preparations not a moment too soon, as she felt that her body was growing numb and her vision was becoming ever more blurred. She could hear indefinite noises and then nothing – she just lay on the ground, her eyes closed, breathing slowly.

Inside her though, she discovered a confusing world full of objects from her past or symbols of things she wasn’t even aware she was worried about. It was a vast space that didn’t sem to end, but she didn’t have time to explore it – she had to get somewhere, and she seemed to miraculously know the way there. It was a dark corner with a lot of cables – yes that was it, where she was heading to. When she finally found it, the immaterial Cristina inside her head sat down on the smooth floor, waiting. Again, she didn’t exactly know why or how, but she knew it was there that she would contact the other duellers’ under consciousnesses, as they fell into her trap. She just had to wait.