Lady of Curses

Aella waited for some time to see if someone saw her and then came to investigate this place. Luckily for her, it looked like no one saw her, and she was in the clear. After confirming that she was safe for the moment, Aella took off her shoes to avoid making noise while she walked. 

Now barefooted Aella approached the tunnel's exit that led to the open space. Slowly she started to see the open area of the cave. The first thing she did was look around the elevated area where the tunnel's entrance was, but it looked like no one was there. Aella stayed in the shadows as she carefully continued to assess her surroundings. 

Further into the open room, Aella saw how the elevated surface ended with a ramp going down, and there she saw all the bandits doing their thing. She saw that most bandits were just more or less relaxing. Aella saw multiple groups of bandits just sitting either on the floor or by the table playing some cards. 

There were some bandits just chatting or tending to their armor and weapons, she even saw a bandit who was reading a book. But one thing that drew Aella's attention was that none of the bandits were drinking, some bandits were smoking, but none of them consumed alcohol. So this meant that although the atmosphere was relaxing they weren't too relaxed, or they just didn't have any alcohol.

But either way, it wasn't a little unfortunate for Aella, she was hoping that at least someone would be drinking, but she had no luck. After taking a look at the bandits she looked a little bit more around the room. She didn't find anything that interesting, just some wooden boxes and some wooden furniture, the only somewhat interesting thing that caught her eye was the magic tools that were illuminating the opened space.

She took another look around to see if she missed something but it didn't look like it, so she just retreated back into the tunnel. Aella took some time to make a plan, it wasn't anything complicated and was basic, but it should work. 

Aella again approached the tunnel's end but this time with the sack containing the fire potions over her shoulder. She still tried to stay in the shadows as she put the sack down when she arrived at the end. 

She took a quick look around and found her targets. Her eyes laid on three bandits, one was tending to his sword, the second bandit she selected was using a knife to make some kind of wooden totem, and the last of them was the one bandit who was reading a book. 

In her mind, she focused on those three and then used [Curse of madness]. Three crimson trials of smoke came out of her open mouth, and they instantly honed in on their targets. 

The bandits all saw this and froze in confusion for a second before they got ready. But before they could go into action the smokey tentacles arrived at their designated targets. In an instant two of the targets went mad as their eyes turned red, and they started to attack their closest ally. 

On the other hand, the one reading a book got hit, but Aella saw how he struggled for a bit before he shook his head and looked where she was now. 

''Fuck.'' Aella couldn't help but swear, she didn't expect that one of these bandits could resist her curse, and the one who wasn't affected was the one Aella wanted to go mad the most because he was wearing something that looked a mages cloak, and she hoped that if he went mad he would shoot fireballs and make a huge mess.

But now he was looking where she was and that wasn't good. Fortunately, he was the only one that resisted, the other two were now rampaging around. Well, one of them at least, because the one carving a totem was quickly apprehended, and was right now restrained by three other bandits, but the one who was tending to his sword was still on a rampage, he was a big dude and it looked like they had some trouble to get close to him, especially when the mad bandit swung his longsword. 

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to cause too much chaos, so Aella decided to use her curse again. She selected her targets and used her curse and five crimson smoke trials came out of her mouth and went for their targets. The curse's smoke came out of her mouth and because of that she had her vision blocked for a moment, and that was a mistake on her part. 

Although the smoke dissipated fast, clearing her line of sight, the mage had enough time to attack her, and Aella bearly avoided a wind slash that was targeted at her. Aella bearly saw the spell and instinctively threw herself on the ground, she impacted the ground hard, injuring herself in the process, but she at least avoided the spell that flew over her and left a gash in the stone wall next to her, and confirmed that he was a mage that could use wind magic.

Aella didn't have time to sleep on the floor, so she quickly got up and started the next step of her plan. The mage was distracted by the commotion that was happening, because now a total of seven bandits were going on a rampage, and they were trying to restrain them, it would be easier to kill them, but they didn't, so Aella took advantage of that.

She picked up a few fire potions from her back and then started to throw them around the open space. Aella wasn't a good thrower but she had enough skill and strength to land them in the general area she aimed at. 

Aella threw another potion but this time the potion didn't land where she wanted, but instead flew back to her like a boomerang, in panic, Aella jumped out of the way, and this resulted in her jumping out fully in the open. She was no longer in the tunnel and couldn't go back, because now the tunnel's entrance was on fire. 

She looked at the reason why the potion flew back at her and saw the mage holding his hand out. He probably figured that taking Aella out took precedence over helping his comrades because if Aella isn't taken out the chaos will just get bigger. This realization from his side wasn't good for Aella because now she had the full attention of a wind mage. 

Aelle thought fast because she saw another spell flying at her, she barely got out of the way and still got cut on her arm as the wind slash flew past her. The moment she felt the spell fly past her, she stretched out her hand while still on the move and used [Curse of weakness] on the mage.

The black smoke shot out of her hand and like a snake honed on the mage. He tried to use a gust of wind to blow the smoke away from him but that didn't work, and the next moment the smoke impacted him. 

For that brief moment, Aella looked around to see if she could find anything that could help, but all she saw were flames and some dead bandits on the ground, it looked like the mad bandits almost all have been restrained, and Aella couldn't have that so she randomly selected another four bandits and used her [Curse of madness] on them. She didn't like that she had to use so many curses because her mana wasn't infinite, and she didn't want to dig into her growth reserve. 

She remembered to not block her sight and let the crimson smoke leave from her hand, and it was a smart move because right after some of the smoke left her hand the wind mage aimed another spell at her. This time she was ready and got out of the way without sustaining any injuries.

Aella took a quick glance to see if the madness was still ongoing and when she saw that it was still going on now with more vigor she returned her attention to the mage. Now she had to figure out how to get rid of him.