Verna, glanced at Jace, he nodded to her and she flickered away from his side, in a swirl of black smoke, appearing in the alley behind one of the nearby shops. She ducked down and braced herself. That stupid man was far more heroic then he had any right to be. This was subplan 4, it was the right plan for the situation but it was also the plan she hated the most. He had insisted they try this before resorting to plan 2, so she would let him try it.

She covered her ears and cast a shield. She had been unable to create the shield Jace had invented. Even with his explanation of what glyphs were melded and how they worked together she simply couldn’t understand the principle. Her shield should be enough. She just hoped this building would still be standing. It should be, the blast wouldn’t be directed in this direction.

A tremendous bang/rumble rang out; the rumbling noise that followed the much louder explosive bang seemed to shake the ground. She peaked around the corner of the building and saw people fleeing the streets and nearby homes and a gaping hole in the wall where those enormous gates once were. Huge multi ton stones were raining from the gaping hole as part of the wall started to collapse. Jace was standing in the middle of the street, that strange shield formed around him. That shield was stout enough she knew he should be relatively safe. Ignoring Jace’s impending battle, she cast out a scry, and instantly located a close target.

She vanished in a swirl of smoke, the sensation was much like floating in water; the world seemed to stretch to the spot she was looking at, and everything snapped into place. Glancing around the corner she saw a pair of Fairies creating a circle, likely a node for a larger circle meant to capture Jace. Flickering forward in a swirl of dark smoke, the world lurched again and she was standing directly behind the two fairies, her blade already moving, taking both of their heads. She then advanced to the next target.

Jace stood calmly and tall in the middle of the square, he watched the regular humans fleeing as he channeled into a massive, three layered circle the pair had created around the outside of the keep. A huge translucent dome appeared in the sky, sealing the whole keep inside. This dome took little of his strength to maintain as long as it wasn’t being damaged. His main concern was the army descending upon the keep, he wanted to keep the body count as low as possible, so locking the keep off from support was essential.

The Fairies were all within the dome as it was constructed. Verna’s concern about them had raised warning flags in his heart. He suspected they were not a simple foe, though he had never combated a fairy before, since the fairies took it upon themselves to eliminate human mages when found he suspected they had ways to combat him he wouldn’t expect.

From what his scrying was telling him, they were sticking mostly to the alleyways surrounding his position. Strangely he couldn’t see them even though his scrying told him several should be visible. They obviously were using some sort of cloaking magic, well he knew some of that as well, with a thought he vanished as well, and started to move in the direction of the nearest fairy; dropping the shield he had raised to protect himself from the earlier blast.

He had crossed part of the square when suddenly he stopped. “Eh?” Jace’s face twisted in confusion and at the last moment he reacted twisting on instinct, and drawing the huge blade, swinging it in an arc, He used the glyphs “strength, speed, and might” in combination, causing the blade to whip around in a one-handed grip. He felt the shock of the blade crashing into the body of someone and saw a spray of pink blood, almost a pastel pink in color spray out and the body on a Fairy, bisected in half at about the chest crash into the ground a look of surprise on his face.

He hadn’t detected this assassin via scrying but rather by instinct, he had heard or felt something behind him and panicked. He changed his scrying method to a sonic one, and instantly noticed that half the fairies he was picking up with his first method were fake. He was rapidly being surrounded by a large group of men he could not see. Cursing again, under his breath he quickly merged “ice” with “burst” and released the unorthodox attack.

An explosion of icicles like lances launched from his position radiating out in a circle, he could hear the crystals shatter as they came in contact with a number of the closest fairies. It was the exploding field of ice he was aiming for; of course, the ice probably wouldn’t even injure armored opponents, but he needed to be able to judge range for his next attack.

“explode/body/boil/blood” It was a combination of glyphs he had come across back on that island. He used it with the aid of magic circles to ruin that troop of soldiers earlier in their stay in this city. The trick was the area it could affect was a bit limited without a circle. However, with the sound scrying showing him where the nearest Fairies were, he could get ‘close enough’.

A series of explosions rocked the street as pastel pink blood sprayed everywhere, nothing resembling a corpse left behind not even a death scream. The pink blood of course painted the other invisible fairies he had yet to detect, allowing him to continue the series of explosive assaults. After less then a dozen breaths, dead silence was all that could be heard. The street in a circle around him was painted pink, with entrails and other chunks of flesh. Pieces of armor and weapons were all that was left from the assault.

Jace scanned the street carefully, wondering if that would be the end. Just as he was thinking the fairies were going to retreat he could hear the footsteps of hundreds soldiers; shortly after those footsteps turned into human soldiers holding blades who flooded the street, spilling out of the hole in the keep wall. Sighing to himself, he turned to face them. He knew that this was going to become a huge mess.

Verna flickered through the enemy like a ghostly apparition. She made no attempt to dual any of the fairy blademasters scattered about. As far as she could see they had no means to really threaten Jace. What that man was currently doing was boarderline awe inspiring. She had known grand wizards before. There always was a very definite point where their power stopped growing. She had seen no evidence his had stopped growing. He was clearly not a sorcerer, he wasn’t giving off the sorcerer feeling, but his power was immense, and as the battle progressed he was progressively channeling more and more power, maintaining more and more complex spell formations at the same time, while precisely assaulting his enemies.

The power he was handling could have leveled this city with ease, yet he was holding himself back and carefully slaughtering only those who were opposing him. It was a terrifying display of overwhelming might. She just wished he would be more viscous in his use of power. His soft heart would only hurt him in the end. This world was not kind to those who showed mercy to their enemies.

Flickering between two fairy blademasters, she drove her blade directly into the chest of one of the handful of powerful mages left; without bothering to draw the blade out of his chest she flickered over toward an officer who caught her eye. She had been on the lookout for officers, both human and Fairy since the battle began, this officer was a Fairy and likely was the legendary commander ‘Galin’ of this mercenary company, which she assumed was the “Black Eyes”. Not that the 'Black Eyes' really existed anymore. Between her work and Jace’s there was little left of them.

Flashing forward, her eyes narrowing she drove her sword forward, only for it to rip through an illusion of the man, her breath caught, and she spun to the side, just in time to see a circle ignight under her feet. Cursing inwardly, she knew she had made a critical error, and only hoped she could escape the circle before it triggered.

Easol was watching the fat king pace, sweating profusely while reports filtered in, they no longer were in the throne room but outside on an observation deck, observing the situation as it spiraled out of control. It had all gone sideways just ten minutes ago. She checked her own fate again and felt like joining him in the pacing. The future had changed again, and her paths out of this alive had been greatly reduced. What was worse is those paths were changing constantly now. She no longer had an idea of how to get out of this one alive, the poor fat bastard was in even more dire straits from what she saw of the future.

She was toying with trying to make it back to her Harkan, but she knew that was panic speaking. No, there was no escaping the keep right now. She thought back at when it all went wrong; just after having finished the reading for the king they had received word that Jace was at the gates. The king planned to welcome him like a hero, it was a smart play. Easol had to admit this plan probably would preserve the kings throne. Even the futures she saw seemed to solidify toward a good end for the king when he started making the orders. Then the whole palace was rocked with a terrifying explosion.

The reasons for the blast were uncertain until word came in that the famous mercenary company the “Black Eyes” had suddenly attacked the gates of the keep. Jace and the kindred woman were contending with the large company in a battle that was ruining the streets and even the walls of the keep. Unable to believe it, and against the advice of his guards the king, with Easol in tow had rushed to an observation deck to see the chaos outside.

It was a spectacular battle. At some point the guardsmen had joined the Black Eyes, in trying to put down this Jace and the Kindred women. Those two were easy to see. It made Easol’s eyes open like saucers. Standing some distance away from them used to be the gates to the keep. Now they were looking at a gaping hole in the wall. The street and the houses on the street were no better off. Surrounding two people, back to back, were perhaps a thousand soldiers and mercenaries. There was a huge translucent dome cutting the keep off from the rest of the city. She had no idea who cast such a thing, but she suspected it was the male, Jace. That was something only a Grand Wizard could do without a circle. And she knew without a shadow of a doubt the Black Eyes did not have a grand wizard.

The kindred woman was flickering back and forth in and out of the soldiers precisely killing one legendary Fairy mage hunter after another. The black eyes were famous, as a child she had memorized their faces and names, and dreamed of joining them. The kindred woman was terrifying. Of course, all kindred were terrifying. But she believed the Black Eyes probably had plans to deal with her. The problem as she saw it was the mage Jace. He was singlehandedly taking on the combined might of a thousand soldiers. What she saw stunned her, he was standing still in the middle of the opening, a circular translucent globe like shield absorbing attacks, while everywhere he cast out his hands a group of soldiers would explode as if detonated from the inside. He was killing dozens with every glance, and didn’t seem to even view the storm of attacks coming his way as trouble at all.

The king was moaning by her side about the idiots involved and started screaming orders for the soldiers to stand down, or even to kill the Black Eyes. Just as it looked like the battle was going to end as a one-sided slaughter, she saw the Kindred woman get captured, snared in a spell. When Jace saw that, the look on the man’s face chilled her blood. She had no idea how to get out of this one alive.

Jace was growing nervous. He was employing the shield he saw Kay’rin employ back on the island. Or at least he thought it must be the same shield; as thus far it was darned near invulnerable. It was really a marvelous spell. Obviously, these Fairies attacking them had never dealt with something like this before and were having just as much problem with it as the teachers at that academy were. It was a really mysterious shield, employing several glyphs including glyphs space and time, which seemed to make this some sort of dimensional wall, a bubble of disconnected dimensional space perhaps? He wasn’t too sure. It had taken weeks of theorizing and testing until he found a shield design that behaved like Kay’rins while sailing from that island. His problem was the number of soldiers and the way the Fairies were hiding themselves in them. Though he was fairly confident in this shield, he wasn’t completely confident in it. If they figured a way through it this was going to turn into a serious slaughter. Thus, far he was holding back most of the soldiers with a “gravity” glyph. They simply couldn’t get closer to him. He didn’t want to kill a bunch of slaves who were ordered to kill him by a bunch of corrupt freemen.

He was slaughtering the fairies whenever he saw them, and admittedly he wasn’t really being precise about it. He found they had a number of ways to avoid lower powered attacks, some of them even employed spells agilely to negate his attacks. As a result, he took to using the burst, fire and explode melded spell he found to be a pretty effective area attack; causing small explosions of fire which ripped through foes, his strength at a point where their shields were ineffective against the blast. The problem was it would usually take out dozens of normal soldiers at the same time.

Frankly, they had planned for this situation, he just didn’t want to activate the circle they had prepared beforehand, just yet. Right now, he thought they might be able to make their enemies retreat.

“HALT!” Jace heard a loud voice ordering a stop to the battle, he turned his head and felt his blood boil. The Fairy man was holding a bound and unconscious Verna. Every Fairy in his field of view had weapons and spells prepared to destroy her.

Jace didn’t even bother to speak to the Fairy, as his rage boiled forth, and he intentionally let his restraint slip, activating the first circle without hesitating anymore. The look of surprise on the fairy’s face was priceless, as Verna and himself teleported back down the street to the edge of the dome he had created. He then poured an immense amount of power into a 3-layered circle which had been laid down in advance which encompassed almost all of the street.

The world turned white, and he felt as if his skin was fried right off his body clean through the shield. This was followed by a blast so massive and sudden he felt the dimensional shield crack and almost shatter. It took him almost 30 seconds to blink his eyes clear enough he could see. He felt the huge dome shield over the castle shatter moments after triggering the blast.

A massive mushroom cloud was towering in the sky; the explosion ripped up half the keep and part of the street outside. It was a tremendous blast. Had it not been for the dome over the keep absorbing the initial blast he suspected half the city might have been leveled. Most of the keep clearly was.

It took ten minutes for the fires to stop burning. Jace didn’t bother to stop it himself. He had tried to politely enter the keep and they attacked him without warning. During those ten minutes, he waited for the fires to stop, he had healed Verna’s injuries. They weren’t serious. The real trick was the spell put on her to keep her asleep. Eventually he dissolved it, but it took a bit of effort.

Easol was staring at a scene like something from a story of a dragon caused apocalypse. The explosion tore down most of what remained of the south side of the keep walls, casting huge bolder sized stones inward, shattering half the palace and leveling most of the troop and slave barracks inside the walls. She almost had her own head taken off by a piece of far flung stone, and was bleeding badly from a wound on her forehead. The king had pissed himself and was curled up in a fetal position sobbing next to her, while his attendants tried to see to him.

She was stunned by the power of the blast, but the firestorm that followed it was so intense she was certain it WAS a dragon attack at first. It looked like the world was burning, and she could even feel the intense heat from this extreme distance. She saw very few people fleeing that flame. It seemed no one would get out of that conflagration alive.

However, there was a moment just before the blast she thought she saw Jace teleport away.

As horrifying as the firestorm was, it wasn't as bad as what fate was now showing her. She was surprised at how much she did not want to die. Yet no matter how she looked at fate, there was no longer any path to surviving this. She was heading rapidly to a horrid death; sometimes she died at the hands of the kindred woman, sometimes she died a painful death at Jace’s hands, and sometimes it was a screaming death in a magical firestorm, leaving no corpse behind. She had to change something fast, she just wasn’t sure what it was.