A few moments ter, Niphru felt something in the ambient mana shift, and quickly stopped. Assuming that the other fox was nearby, he covered himself in two yers of illusion to hide. He thehe third foxfire to form an image of himself ahead of where he actually was.

  After making the illusioo be poking around the area, a few moments passed before he saw a small fluctuation in the air pass through it. Si was likely the other fox, even if he couldn’t see it properly, he dropped the inal illusion and reformed it a distao the side, making it yip before turning to run.

  While this was , he spotted the misty copy of the world shifting, holes and spikes appearing in his illusion’s path, which he made it avoid. The illusion tinued shifting, before suddenly it became much denser, making it hard to tell what was reality and what was not. Following this ge, he put more effort into keeping himself hidden, sihe other fox was fog more.

  Making use of how his spells inated from his foxfire, Niphru formed several balls of fme around the illusionary fox before ung them at the faint disturban the mana. Immediately, it zipped away, and the fireballs smmed into the ground. A momehe damage they did appeared in the illusionary copy of reality.

  While this was happening, however, the other fox seemed to be moving closer to his real body.

  Trying a different tactic, he formed many smaller orbs of fire both around himself and the illusionary fox while hiding them with the illusion instead of allowing them to be visible. After setting them to begin orbiting, he had the false fox turn iaking small steps and barely moving.

  It appeared that putting them around himself was a good idea, as there was a yelp and the smell of burned flesh as a blur threw itself backward from Niphru’s side. He could just barely make out the outline of a fox rubbing its nose in the dirt as the illusions around him wavered. Not wanting to waste a good opportunity, he sent all the bolts of fire to strike the blurred fox, surrounding it as best as he could.

  Numerous yelps and screeches came from the increasingly fwed illusion, and Dawn asked in a paone if he was okay through their bond. A simple thought was all it took to reassure her that he wasn’t the source of the noises, and he focused ba the battle.

  Si had seen through his illusion, Niphru switched to using all of his power to hide himself and moved to another location, stumbling over a root that he couldn’t see along the way. sidering how difficult it was to hit a target he could not see, he pulled a bunch of sawdust from one of his pouches and used air magic to spread it fihrough the nearby area.

  As his magic spread, he felt resistao the flow of air and pushed the cloud of particles toward that location as he covered himself in with a shield. A moment ter, his surroundings exploded.

  After dropping his shield, he found the other fox stumbling around with its fur sm, but the illusion it had put up was pletely missing as it screamed. Not wanting to let Dawn be worried, he quickly sent her firmation that he was still unharmed.

  As he took in the maimed nose of his oppo, a thought that it might have been able to smell him earlier ran through his mind. Fortunately, with a badly damaged hat shouldn’t be an issue any longer. The rest of the fox’s body was surprisingly intabsp; There were a few minor burns through the fur, likely where multiple bolts of fire hit together, but most of the skin was still intad covered in fur.

  Even from a distance, however, once he was able to rex a bit, he was able to clearly feel energy crag across the beast’s coat, and occasionally there was even a visible spark or two. There were alse bdes ing off of each of its front legs, f wicked curves that would no doubt cause signifit wounds to any they struck.

  Niphru was even md for his illusions keeping him hidden, sihe creature would likely tear him apart if it could spot him. Unfortunately, the other fox seemed to be rec, and the illusion began to fall bato pce, though a bit less intehan before. To keep his enemy occupied, he shifted one of his illusions back to showing a target, this time a young girl, simir to Dawn in size, and had them stumble around as if they were lost.

  As this happened, he formed a rge fme several feet above the illusion while keeping it hidden, and had the girl trip and fall. Almost immediately, the blur of the other fox flew through the air, nding in the middle of the illusion, trying to savage the air before pausing. As it froze up, Niphru smmed his mass of fme into the beast.

  Once again, it let out ahly scream, and he again informed Dawn that he was still fine. The attempt did not go as well, however. Instead of poung at the illusion, he could see the faint blur walking around the target. Shogly, it let the new fake fox walk right up to it before taking a single swipe at it while leaping backward.

  Due to the leap, the dozen bolts of fme peppered the ground instead of striking their target. To Niphru’s amazement, it then stood still and shifted as if it was looking around. Wanting to take advantage of it not moving, Niphru quickly unched a rger bolt of fme at it, only to find the blur leaping away while the fire was still several feet from it.

  At this point, the illusioher fox had maintained fell, revealing it once again. This time, all of its fur was burned off, with many burns c its body. The gre in its eyes as it looked around showed clear madness and hate. A momehe fox stared right at Niphru, and he quickly pulled back his third illusion to assist in hiding himself while also using all three for f another fox several feet away behind a tree. As it walked into sight, his foe started to run before quickly stopping in pce again, warily looking at the sky.

  Si was looking for more fire, Niphru instead densed as much air into a small space as he could, then whipped the mass to sm into the side of the enemy’s head, causing it to stagger and lose its banbsp; As it fell to the ground, he quickly unched another mass of fire at it, only to hiss as it rapidly scurried away, the fmes pletely missing the creature.

  His head ounding from using so much focus on so many different things, but he didn’t want to give up. Instead, he pulled out some pieces of charcoal and used force magic to hold them up in the air a doze away befniting them. The other fox kept its eyes on the burning charcoal as it warily walked around, clearly ready to jump.

  The focus ointless, of course; he couldn’t move the charcoal nearly as fast as raw fire. It did allow him to pull dozens of smaller bolts of fme from it however, and he kept them attached to the fuel to reduce the strain on himself. Preparing himself to do something dangerous, he began to form a very durable pne of force to put between himself and his enemy.

  Once he repared, he dropped all three illusions, stood up, and shrieked at the other fox. It stopped for a moment before shaking its head, likely sensing the ck of any illusions, then uself at him. He moved his inactive illusions forward, with the pne of force right behind, and a momehe beast smmed into the shield with a horrible g noise.

  As soon as it impacted, Niphru densed his illusions bato foxfire, almost perfectly on target, and shifted them slightly for all of them to engulf his enemy’s head, with the singur io burn. As it thrashed, trying to get rid of the fmes, he pulled the dozens of orbs of fme he had been holding to the side into a hat he drove into the creature’s side, oer another.

  Not all of them struck the same spot, but they did cause their target tle to avoid them, rather than advan the very real fox before it. Additionally, they did cause several deep burns where multiple did hit the same areas. After a moment of thought, Niphru decided to pull all of the fme from the charcoal and send it at the other fox’s head as well, then dropped the fuel and flipped the barrier he had made, jumping atop it. He quickly asded into the air, and his oppo seemed to realize it had to attack him to stop the fire.

  Unfortunately for it, only one of the two could fly, and it wasn’t the one on fire. Siniphru found himself in a safe position again, he informed Dawn that the horrible screaming was the other fox again. Afterward, he focused purely on keeping himself in the air and the foxfire in pce over the beast’s head as it thrashed about.

  A few moments ter, after a shogly long amount of time for having its head on fire, the mutated fox fell to the ground, unmoving. Since he didn’t want to risk a surprise, he remained where he was and waited until the head was bare bone before nding. As he began to burn the rest of the body, he let Dawn know that the danger was resolved and they could e to him without worry.

  He was, however, quite done for the day, given his pounding headache. Fortunately, after telling Dawn, she talked to the others, and they all agreed to camp for the night after getting away from the site of the battle.