It was time, and all the racers were lined up and ready to roll. Mibbet had carefully ensured to position herself as far away from the magically assisted flying devices that looked likely to explode, implode, randomly sprout attacking tentacles, or slam their rider into the scenery hard enough to leave a crater as she could possibly manage. (Admittedly that was not as far away as she would have liked, and there were far fewer barricades protecting her from such an outcome as she would have liked. But hey, sometimes you just get what you get.)

Soon enough a young mage girl sauntered onto the stage, clad in a lumpy orange sweater. But clearly from the looks on the faces of many of the mages assembled they wouldn’t have traded that for all the bikini clad girls in the world. She took up position, as above her head light charms flashed, red, yellow, green. Then with a wave of the flag they were OFF. (Well most of them, as Mibbet predicted the treadmill powered corkscrew thing didn’t even leave the ground, but the guy in the explosion charm powered backpack thing? He definitely got off the ground, but he seemed to have not considered steering very well. So he may have been the first pilot in history to lawn-dart in the CEILING.

Mibbet kicked off as fast as she could, Puppy really seeming rather happy to be running alongside the others, while any potential rivals who got too close? Well? Mibbet had a RASCAL. Who was only too happy to act on the heritage of cats everywhere and claw at anything that came within range of their newly elevated position.

The guy with the carpet dropped out fairly early, for the simple reason that even more than a broomstick a rug was definitely not something built with aerodynamics, or any other aspect of speed and aeronautics in mind. At least he didn’t seem too upset about it as he fell back to the rear.

Meanwhile Charles, Bradley, and the other two unnamed lackeys were doing what they do best. Being a complete and utter nuisance. They would swoop in on a potential rival, and two of them would act as a distraction. While Bradley would get in close and do their level best to sabotage their competitors. Mibbet had taken to occasionally launching a marble at them in passing to keep them occupied. Hes meanwhile was making a solid show of herself by whizzing by close to the walls, and even using them to give herself the occasional bump start in speed.

The maze of course wasn’t letting all this fun happen without at least getting in on the action. Whenever a competitor it had even the mildest dislike for passed within spitting distance of a wall it would change itself enough to mess with them, (an act it seemed to find highly amusing, though it was dubious whether races going at goodness knows what speed suddenly confronted with an ambush wall would share that particular sentiment.)

Mibbet and Hagatha cheered, apparently a well thrown sleep potion from Wormy had managed to take one of Bradley’s goons out of the running, by putting them into the napping. Which it was fairly safe to say was not likely to allow for a return in the foreseeable future, as a sudden nap attack, plus a wall, will make you splat, and that is that. (In the audience Elvira could not suppress a wince on seeing the impact, that had to hurt. On the positive side if they were dense enough to work for Bradley odds were good that the wall would sustain more damage than his skull.)

OOOOOFT the many winged monstrosity was out of the running at the first turn (apparently even if you use multidimensional geometry that exists on as well as in multiple dimensions too many wings and things will always make your turning circle suck. This is why Escher would really not make for a very good magi-tech engineer aeronautic or otherwise.) The resultant crash seemed to tear a minor hole in reality for a few moments, as the audience did their very best to not remember what they had just seen. (Nobody wants to see an Elder God in the bathtub... OK.........OK, again somebody probably does, but likely nobody in the audience. Plus nobody asked the Elder God in question for permission. Consent is important, especially where multidimensional tentacle creatures are involved, because if there’s anybody you really really REALLY want to remember the importance of consent above all else, it’s probably those guys.)

Things were really heating up here now, as Hes, Hagatha, Wormy and Song drew up side by side, taking up the most solid formation they could figure out in case the competition decided to take them out. They were registered as a team anyway, so it really made no difference which of them crossed the line first, so long as nobody else did.

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Charles was livid, the race was barely started and already Chad (at least he thought it was Chad, it was so hard to tell them apart sometimes,) was already out of the running, he hated to admit it but the witches and the weirdo in the white gear could actually pose something of a problem.

Brad had already tried to get close enough to deal with the issue, but as expected he had failed. The commoner in the white robe seemed to have taken the witches cat cliche to the extreme, and currently had what looked like a mountain lion on fire guarding her broomstick, where did she even get a creature like that. Well there was only one option here, he still had two peons left, and one didn’t even match the naming pattern. Well it was time for Icarus to make himself useful and try to mess things up for the rivals.

Charles gestured to Bradley, then at Icarus, and issued his command.

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Icarus was new to the group, and never really fit in with them at all. But his parents had expectations, and it was up to him to live up to them, if that meant cozying up to the Toffington Smythes then so be it. It was a small price to pay for a lot of power in the future.

At least that had been his opinion earlier, now? He was in the middle of a massive flying race, with a set of wings strapped to his back, and they wanted him to attack a gaggle of witches, on brooms. One of whom was guarded by a massive cat...... which.... he couldn’t stress this enough was on fire and unhurt. He had gotten very good at flying but he also had a brain in his head. An unfortunate feature when you are being told to completely ignore it and do something that quite frankly was a really bloody bad idea.

Still it had to be done, and if anybody could pull it off it would be him. So plucking up the courage he attempted a swooping pass, just to see if he could do it. YEEESS he made it, he really could pull this off, his next pass went underneath the broom looking for potential vulnerabilities. He didn’t spot any (and a handful of marbles to the head really hurt too.) But that was two passes before that cat creature could even respond. Damn he was good. So good in fact that he decided to mess with the cat, passing just underneath and tapping the broom with a laugh before swooping round to attempt another pass.

No luck this time, marbles to the face again. But if she kept up at this rate she was going to run out of marbles, all Icarus had to do was keep winding her up while dodging around her shots. Unfortunately for him on his next pass it wasn’t marbles, he got too close. The flyer kicked out and he took a rather heavy boot to the head. Still that showed that she must be running low on ammunition, so on the next pass he would take them out.

Then disaster struck, as he was passing a set of burning claws struck his wings, that while not made of wax were still fairly flammable feathers. Then as he struggled to pull clear the cat creature hooked his wings again, ripping them clean off the backpack, and leaving him coming in without a wing or a prayer.

This was the day that Icarus learned, not only do you have to be careful not to fly too close to the sun. You should also steer well clear of infuriated infernal feline furballs.

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The race was really heating up now, (for some very much more so than for others.) With The Maze deciding to weed out the gullible by giving them the impression the racetrack was actually properly signposted. This lead to a number of competitors flying round multiple fake and increasingly complicated detours, getting into a massive (and very twisty) loop, only to discover that the loop opened out directly into the tail end of the race. Resulting in a fair number of collisions, and one magical device phasing through their rivals to avoid a collision, and unfortunately for them in doing so also passing out of the maze, and netting themselves an instant disqualification. Another racer found themselves suddenly face to face with the contents of the privies, as the maze let their dislike be known in the most obnoxious form possible. A poonami. (Or turdal wave if you prefer.)

Mibbet kicked off another strange looking flying creature, that resembled what would happen if a construct and a giant wasp loved each other very much, and tried to figure out which way to go next. The maps were all useless now, but she was fairly sure that going in the complete opposite direction to the signposted route was the way to go. (No way in hell this gods damned maze was going to make things easy.)

Bradley fell back after Song showed uncharacteristic violence and booted him one, all while stammering out the longest apology Mibbet had ever heard. Mibbet was fairly sure that if it meant more conversation in the future Song would even achieve immortality in one form or another, just in order to keep the chat going a little longer.) While Hes body slammed the last of Bradley and Charles’s lackeys into the wall. That would definitely stick, because what a gal as buff as Hes hits tends to stay hit.

The end was almost in sight now, and only twelve racers remained, a chap in a set of magitech armour who seemed to be using very small explosion runes as a method of propulsion. A young woman atop some kind of magical/mechanical bird, a couple of broomstick riders (apart from The Cacklers. They were of course still wearing spiky leather gear and a pointy hat though. Charles tried to pick a fight with one, only to get clobbered across the face with some kind of chain from her robes. After that he kept his distance,) Well so much for the guy in armour, it quickly became apparent that fuel efficiency was a problem there, as the gems suddenly went dark mid flight. With fairly predictable results. Luckily for him Song caught him and gently lowered him to the ground. Unluckily for him the ground was still in The Maze, which proceeded to open a hole in its wall and chuck him outside. (Well at least all that armour was finally good for something.) The flying turtle like thing was also a surprise entry, but since it definitely seemed to be in the slow and steady camp it wasn’t really all that much of a threat. The other racers were all atop things too weird and wonderful (well definitely weird,) to really describe as the finish line appeared in the distance. At last it was the home straight, as everybody piled on everything they had, and aimed for the victory flag.