An instant after the darkness comes, the frontmost barrier shatters, revealing that an inky goo effect had coated it and blocked their gaze. As the shards of now pitch-black construct fade to the ground, the demon mage looks at them with a shocked expression.
“Now isn’t that interesting,” he mutters to himself, “and annoying. Kill them!”
Alex acts before they can, conjuring a bonfire of white flame directly in front of them. However, before it can do any damage, the mage to the left, a woman with snowy hair that looks like a broom, gestures and ice forms around the fire and coalesces. The fire is snuffed out by the ice block in the instant before it falls to the floor and shatters.
“That… that doesn’t make sense,” Alex stammers.
“Aw, what a tasty little fire mage,” the ice mage says, licking her pale blue lips, “Zexle, may we keep him?”
“I said kill them!” the lead mage snaps, and the fighting begins in earnest.
Allia sends a torrent of spears at them, but the dark mage outstretches his hand, and every luminous projectile that leaves the safety of her barriers is immediately covered in inky blackness and shatters a moment later.
Meanwhile, about every two seconds, her outermost barrier is consumed in darkness and shatters, forcing her to continually refresh them. She tries to create a barrier directly in front of him to screen her attacks, but it seems that the effect’s strength is proportionate to proximity, and the barrier only takes an instant to shatter.
Alex continues to uselessly attempt to conjure flames at the trio, only for the snow-haired ice mage to immediately snuff it out with an offhand gesture. Sarrah shoots at her from a kneeling position, but ice crystals form in the bullets’ paths and stop them mid-air.
“I think the ice is merely a phenomenal impression rather than the core of her power,” Sarrah calmly assesses.
“Yeah, I’m getting that impression too,” agrees Alex after another of his fireballs gets snuffed out.
As they fight, two of the demon soldiers drag J into cover with pistols pressed to her chest. She seems disoriented, gripping her withered arm with the healthy one. The other two soldiers are in cover, continuously shooting into Allia’s barriers with the stolen carbines, destroying two or three with each burst. Alex gestures to them and engulfs them in flames, causing the ice mage to turn and extinguish it before it can do harm, but the act distracts her long enough for Sarrah to get past her defence and hit her with a burst from her carbine. The mage’s shield holds, but is fluctuating wildly on the verge of collapse.
“Jaxl!” Zexle shouts to the third mage – a portly bald figure who has been throwing balls of condensed… something into Allia’s barriers, maybe space or sound from the distortions. With each strike, a barrier shatters, but the rate is too low to be significant. “Retreat with the soldiers and our new guest to the surface.”
“I can break through! I just need to focus my…”
“Any blast you make that’s strong enough to end her could bring down half the school on us!” Zexle interrupts. “Go! Help whatever comrades we still have on the surface and keep them alive for evac! We can hold them off until Arzura can open the vault.”
His words draw attention to a fourth mage, partially obscured by the dust and intense exchange of energies, crouching next to the vault, frantically manipulating several holographically visualized spell arrays. Alex tries to engulf them in flame, but a grey maw thing appears and swallows the fire, then disappears. A second later, the maw appears again, and the white flame bursts against Allia’s barrier, shattering two of them before Allex can extinguish it with a gesture.
Seeing his leader’s point, the rotund mage and soldiers not guarding J run to the wall where a collection of bulky, spherical metal backpack-like devices are hooked to the wall under metal signs that says in capital block letters ‘EMERGENCY EVAC UNIT’ with diagrammed instructions. They strap them on and click the metal buckle, joining the two straps into place, then run over to J and the other two soldiers, whom they grab one each.
As they grab her, J seems to come to and shouts, “The roof.” Before she can say anything else though, the three with the packs all reach cross to their shoulders and yank a pull cord on the devices. There’s a sound of glass breaking and a dark purple flash, and the six figures are suddenly gone.
“Those can’t be more than short-range port units,” Allia says between frantic gestures to restore her barriers. “I’m guessing the destination is what J was trying to say. If we retreat, we could get to her.”
“Not likely,” Alex – who has finally deigned to use his carbine, switching between it and his flames to futilely try to catch his nemesis off guard – says between shots. “Too long! Ten minutes to the roof. Past my estimated lower bound for the army’s response time. They know that too, so their evac must be set for sooner. We need to get to a pack.”
Hearing this, Zexle waves at the units closest to them, which all immediately blacken and crumple in on themselves before weakly exploding in a whimpering protest. However, Allia manages to erect a barrier over one to save it, while Zexle intentionally leaves one for himself and his remaining subordinates on the opposite wall.
The two sides slowly make their way to their selected evac packs, still attacking each other, but now expanding their aggression to the opposing side’s means of egress in an attempt to divide their focus. Zexle gets to his first, and is about to put it on when the vault door slams open, revealing the reason for the night’s festivities.
It’s, unimaginatively, an orb. Shiny silvery metal with cables and tubes attached to it from the walls. The surface is covered in finely engraved enchanting symbols. There’s a hum to it, and the floors seem to vibrate with its power.
Zexle and the ice mage run into the vault, dragging the vault opener with them as they continue to gesture behind to ward off attacks. Seeing this, Allia gestures and covers the orb with a barrier dome. A few seconds pass, then the room is filled with light.
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It’s a white light, with the same iridescent quality as Allia’s constructs. The light is completely overwhelming, and even with their layered shades they’re reduced to covering their eyes with their arms. The room tremors and shakes, making it a struggle to stay upright, and they hear stones crumbling from the ceiling.
Suddenly, the light is gone…and so is the orb. In its place is a beam of light connected sinuously from where the orb sat – cables and tubes clattering on the ground – and Allia’s open palm. They all stare at the phenomenon, and Zexle moves to touch it.
Instinctively, Allia closes her fist and steps back, and the light snaps towards her. She jolts back as if struck as it goes into her, but Allex catches her as she nearly falls.
“Thanks…” Allia half mutters.
“Of…” Alex starts, but is interrupted by Sarrah, who has somehow managed to grab and put on the evac unit during the light phenomenon.
“Everyone grab on!” she shouts, gesturing towards the demons approaching them with a menacing expression. They do as she says, and she pulls the cord. There’s a purple flash, and they’re on the roof.
Allia’s constructs, however, have been left behind. Still feeling them down below, she gestures and sends them all slashing towards Zexle’s last position, only for a purple flash to deposit the demonic trio onto the roof an instant later.
Seeing this, Allia reforms barriers around herself and friends as Zexle shouts to his subordinates already on the roof. “Blast her, Jaxl! Full power!”
The portly demon turns from his fight with the security team and begins channelling an orb of distorted space, or sound, spending several seconds compressing power into it. The distortions wobble even before he throws it, and cracks form on the roof. He stands up and makes to throw it.
A jagged blue bolt of energy lances through the space between buildings, shatters Jaxl’s shield and penetrates his chest. His eyes go wide as he loses control of his destructive orb, and in a last moment of desperation, shoots it up into the sky so as to not destroy his allies. A second passes before a loud but lightless detonation is heard, and he falls to the ground.
“Stagnate waters of Zan!” Zexle shouts, and yanks Professor J away from the crouching soldier keeping her and holds her close to him so that any shield piercer shot would have to hit both of them. So standing, he twirls around to allow the snipers a clear view of his hostage. “Once again, the chance dancing monads conspire against us! After months of planning, dozens of spies invested, troops infiltrated? After all that, in our moment of triumph, with our goal in sight? Then? Then, some student so conveniently equipped to counter me snatches up the prize by mere accident via bizarre interactions of her gift? Absurd! So, you must forgive me if I seem suddenly prone to fits of pique.” He gestures threateningly to J’s neck.
His voice is raised and there’s a note of anger to it, but his eyes have the steely glint of control, and his movements are precise.
Allia buys the act. “It’s over, Zexle! You can’t escape. Give up, and things may go easier on you and your troops.”
“Haha!” He laughs precisely two exhales then abruptly stops. “You sound so convinced. As if a student would have the authority to negotiate with me. No, you stay back, and no luminant trickery. My power is a curse!”
The three friends exchange confused looks. “Um… Okay? Sorry to hear that? But that’s a bit of a weird thing to be bringing up right now.”
“What…? Oh, my apologies. I misspoke. What I meant to say was ‘my power is to curse things.'"
“Oh!... Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.” The three friends collectively exclaim to each other.
“Yes, yes you see,” Zexle continues monologuing theatrically, “I have cursed the good professor’s arm, and I am the only one who can undo it. Even if you recover her, the blackness will spread and quickly reach her heart; then she will die. So, there is really no point in this charade of yours. If you wish her to live, which I think you do, or you would have tried to kill her yourself, then you must let her leave with me.”
“…I’m sure we can figure something out to save her,” Allia says, unperturbed.
“Ah! The foolish optimism of youth!”
Allia shrugs. “Not really. I actually don’t know if you’re telling the truth at all about her condition, but I do know she won’t last long if you take her. Might as well bet on the unknown and try to save her.”
“…Fair enough,” Zexle concedes with a shrug. Suddenly though, sirens burst into sound all over the city, and his expression shifts into that of a cat with a mouse already in its jaws. “But I’m afraid you’ve just run out of time to do so,” he gloats, and drags J towards the ledge.
Sensing her moment, Professor J surges into lucid movement, body checking into him, which causes him to stumble and give her the needed space to turn to face him. Her functional arm is still being gripped, so she clumsily yanks her rotting, withered one up to her face, where it just barely nudges her eyepatch up to reveal what’s underneath.
Zexle screams in pain as a red light blasts from her face and shatters his shield, then cuts deeply into his face before subsiding. They stumble apart for a few feet, but Zexle regains his footing first and lunges after her. Allia, however, is just as quick and erects a series of dome barriers between them.
Zexle snarls in rage as he collides with the dome, pounding on it with his fist as his power corrodes the first layer. However, his emotions calm an instant later as he looks around at his now exposed position and immediately runs off the ledge – his subordinates quickly following suit.
The friends run after him, but stop dead when a thick tendril shoots down from the sky and catches him, then yanks him up into the dark night.
“Is that a…?” one of the friends stammers, but is interrupted when hundreds more tendrils shoot down from the dark sky and start grabbing the demons from the ground, whether alive or dead; outside or under several stories of brick. At the same time, a tendril smashes into the dome around the professor and constricts, quickly smashing through each layer before gingerly grabbing its target and yanking up.
However, Allia and her friends are better prepared this time, and the split second it took to destroy the barrier gave them enough time to react. Alex burns a spot above 20 feet above the professor, where Allia cuts with blades of light.
It doesn’t seem to be enough as the professor lifts, but with a ‘twang,' the tendril snaps and J falls safely back on the roof.
“Sarrah! Get the professor down!” Allia shouts to her friend and creates a platform on the ledge. “This place could collapse any second!”
Sarrah moves to comply, but before she can, the professor stumbles off the ledge, revealing that the roof is installed with a slowfall enchantment. Seeing this, Sarrah jumps after.
Allia follows slowly to the edge, but pauses to attack. Alex creates a massive burst of white flame high in the sky in the general direction of the tendrils. The entire city brightens from the illumination, and the outline of a colossal, bulbous creature floating thousands of feet in the air is revealed.
“Chance dancing leaves, it is a sky kraken,” Alex mutters as he moves his flames onto the creature. “How did they slip it so far into our territory?”
Instead of answering, Allia converts all her constructs into spears, then merges every group of six spears into one larger column of light and shoots them all at the several hundred foot wide, eye and tendril covered gas bag.
Not waiting to see if they hit, the two jump off the building to take refuge on the ground. While they’re slowly falling, they see more lights join the attack. Blue spheres of light explode in the sky from arcane cannons and shield piercer shots lance up after. In addition to the militant weapons, individual mages join the defences, shooting up lightning, fire and other energies to protect their city.
A scream that no doubt would be painful without the protective spells on their ears blasts the city, breaking numerous windows. A moment later, the beast pulsates and contracts to propel a jet of air – shooting itself off into the night and ending the night’s violence.
