Hope born of solitus

*

Did it hide? It must be waiting to pounce onto her. {Feed}!, [ingest] the entire train station. She spread her scarlet hued magic outwards, causing it to become thin and faint. There was some degree of an obscuring force that hides magic from the common people, something that's intangible like this should be safe.

With this, she could sense the relative density of magic energy in multiple areas of this train station, with enough disparity it will become obvious. The Trace should be a mass of magical energy that's at least denser the ambient magical energy in the train station. The absolute quantity isn't important here, magical energy doesn't obey natural laws, it fluctuates chaotically according to the whims of fate. What mattered... Was movement.

She turned around and smashed her fist against the air behind her. The force tore something black apart. It had the figure of a black ball with 2 small triangular horns and stick like hands and legs. They look akin to a child's drawing that would show up in a horror movie. Their visage seemed very out of place with reality, as if they didn't come from our world. She'll name it 'Black sprite'. It looked like a crayon drawing came to life, but when she killed it in that one hit, her fist punctured its body and deformed it like a worn out basketball.

Its makeup was homogeneous, a black mess stained the floor. At the corner of my eyes, a figure in a hoodie stopped walking halfway. They paused at an awkward position, leg outstretched and lifted into the air. Some otherworldly force was keeping them in place, preventing them from interacting with reality. Traces can eat magical girls to induce a grand evolution that shoots up their capabilities. However, these creatures don't seem to be able to harm humans.

Certainly, they might have caused an event that froze those passerbies. She felt it on the skin of her fist, it wasn't that durable. In fact it was like tofu for her own strength. They were uncharacteristically weak for Traces, only beating out normal humans with their swiftness. The air inside those people froze, their life functions along with any activity have been stopped in time, yet reality continues to pass by unhindered.

It's strange, staying like this for too long might instantly kill them. At the same time... Their body seemed to be perfectly frozen. Even their complexion, iris size and hair strands remained the same. They weren't paralysed and forced to continue living with a disfunctional body, the very act of consuming energy and oxygen has also halted, leaving them in a stasis.

She pulls her fist back and lowers her centre of gravity, the corridor needed to be wide for the large scale facilitation of train passengers. Her magic concentrates onto her fist, causing them to flare up in orbs of dark scarlet light. Using this much power, the black sprites might get dissolved upon contact. A storm of chirps echo throughout the underground tunnel, swift taps on the floors and walls rhythmically encircle her, their small builts and blinding tunnel lights obscure their whereabouts.

Discretely, she spread the influence of {Feed} onto the ground, expanding its range until it occupied a large volume of the corridor.

*Tap, tap, tap! *

Multiple of them made contact with the ground, triggering {Feed}. Their magic, the core of their compositions get sapped out. Scarlet tendrils extend off of the ground, staking these Traces. The remaining sprites remain on the walls, observing her next move. Her magic spreads into the air, occupying every volume of space. A particularly powerful wave of her magic spreads out like a sonar, alerting these Traces.

{Mockery}.

A magic that obscures ones existence. The basic application was to hide one into the environment, this was the usage that the black sprites have been utilising the entire time. There was another, more advance application. Obscuring one into their opponents. Alerted by the waves of scarlet magic spreading from Lastia's body, they engaged a communal defence response. Their usual activities involve sapping humans of their vitality and fortune, causing them to be fames as the mischievous sprites, fairy-esque beings that bring misfortune in legends.

When they sense a great threat, this additional response that was never recorded nor known to human kind arises. Rather, it might just have been forgotten as humans leave the world of the arcane. At a certain point in time, a great apocalyptic event caused an unprecedented number of magical girls to awaken, the arcane world and the material world collapsed onto one another. Great peace was what separated them once more.

Lastia sees a familiar figure, it stands in parallel to her. Its height and stance was the same, its eyes, hair and fingers were positioned the same. Complete mimicry, a {Mockery} of the highest level that obscures the value of their own existence in their opponent's, gaining their appearance and all of their abilities. With a leap, Lastia threw a punch at her double. It threw one back, causing their knuckles to collide...

Their appearances were identical, but the colour... She was pitch black like those sprites were. Her expression remained frozen and her iris was indistinguishable from her sclera, her eyeballs were a large patch of a single black colour. The sprites signature hue was so dark that one would immediately notice a large void when looking at them with night vision goggles.

Lastia threw a left punch, which the sprite raised her right arm to deflect. The sprite threw two punches with her left arm, caught by Lastia's right palm, before Lastia launched a high knee. Her knee struck the sprite, to which she ignored and threw her right knuckle, striking at Lastia's cheek. It doesn't seem to be much more intelligent than before, but it had perfect instincts for fighting. For Lastia who could never accrue combat experience, this was an arduous opponent to defeat.

The sprite side stepped to another angle on Lastia's right, before swinging a powerful kick with her right leg. Lastia caught the hit and grabbed onto the leg with her left arm. She wouldn't do much to punch the legs, the mimicry had no organs, fatigue or sense of pain. It was very troublesome, but mixed with its fighting instincts, she could see a way to outsmart it. After grabbing its leg, she closed the distance further and jumped at it with both legs.

The impact was great enough to send it flying, smashing its body into a wall and forming a web of cracks. It tried to block with its arm, but its entire body was sent into the air.