[center]Skirmish in Stros M'kai part one
5th of Midyear, 4E 205
Hircine's Summoning Day[/center]

 "Brilliant thought, this battling against altmer mages!" Dorio said, ending in a shriek as he dived aside and behind a water trough. A lightning bolt blasted out the distant building's open front door, digging a small trench across the ground just to the side where Dorio had been.
 
"They are annoying," Kiainia said, accentuating her point by popping up from behind a barrel and letting fly three arrows in rapid succession from Skyfire. Her trusted longbow, one forged of ebony and enchanted with a very potent element indeed. All three missiles, magically sizzling like true lightning bolts of their own, disappeared into the darkness of the house and popped loudly against some unseen surface within. 

"We should move," Dorio remarked. "He-or they-knows where we are." 

Kiainia shook her head, her dark locks swaying with the motion, but dived low and cried out as a second bolt of lightning came forth. It hit the barrel in front of her, blasting it to kindling and sending out a thick spray of foamy beer. Dorio started to cry out for his friend, but stopped when he discovered that Kiainia, moving with speed enhanced by magical anklets, was already crouching beside him frowning. 

"You may have a point though," the Redguard women conceded. 

"Call reinforcements, at the least!" Dorio said, but Kiainia was shaking her head through every word. 

Kiainia and Dorio had traveled with a larger patrol of Redguard soldiers as part of an advanced scouting force earlier that day. They had come to the east end of the jungle to a small port town on the coast upon learning of rumors that agents of the Thalmor had been spotted in the area. They had been ambushed soon after arriving however, and learned quickly enough that most of the town had been harboring more than a few spies. Worse yet most of them were skilled mages, and that fact had forced Kiainia to split the patrol into pairs, least a stray fireball kill them all and mark them an easy target. However, well they were more flexible a force now, they could not as easily support each other beneficently. Small private battles had sprung up across the jungle town and it was hard to tell which side was winning. Kiainia could hardly believe that the Dominion had managed to get agents onto the island at all. Perhaps this was connected with the rather brazen pirate attacks? 

Dorio glanced back down the road the other way, at a column of black smoke that rose into the late afternoon sky. "Where is Taradyn?" He lamented. 

"Fighting at the bridge that leads to the harbor, as we knew he would be. If these agents escape we won’t learn what their planing or what they've learned." 

"Bah! The sentries in the area should have heard the fighting by now and come to our aid!" 

"We're forward scouts," Kiainia reminded. "It was not our place to engage." 

"Forward scouts in a battle that came to swiftly," Dorio remarked.

"Let us hope we can extract ourselves from this unwanted delay and at least capture one Thalmor." Kiainia remarked. 

Dorio turned his almost cherubic but frowning face up at Kiainia, recognizing from the women's tone that her words were a not so subtle reminder of why they had been spotted by the wizard's in the first place.

"I was thirsty," Dorio muttered under his breath followed by a shrug, eliciting a grin from Kiainia and a sidelong glance at the shattered barrel that had so lured the redguard scout into the open.

"Wars will do that to you." Kiainia replied, ending in another yelp and shoving Dorio down beside her as a third lightning bolt shot forth, skimming in across the top of the trough and taking out one of the higher boards in the process. Even as the ground shook beneath them from the retort, water began to drain out onto them. Dorio rolled one way and Kiainia the other, the woman coming up to one knee. "Drink up," she said, putting her bow to use once again, first through the open door, then shattering a glass window and another on the second floor for good measure. She kept drawing and letting blow, her magical quiver forever replenishing her supply of enchanted missiles. 

A different sort of missile came forth from the house, though, and a trio of small pulses of magical light, spinning over each other, bending and turning and sweeping unerringly for Kiainia. One split off at the last moment as the retreating redguard tried futilely to dodge. It veered right into Dorio's chest, singeing his vest and sending jolts of energy through him. Kiainia took her two hits with a grimace and a almost feral growl, and turned around to send another arrow at the window from which the missiles had flown from. As she let fly, she envisioned her path to the house, looking for barriers against the persistent magical barrage. She sent another magical arrow flying. It hit the doorjamb and exploded with a shower of magical sparks.

Using that as cover, Kiainia sprinted at an angle to the right side of the street, heading behind a group of barrels. She thought she would make it, expected to dive past another lightening stroke, as she lowered her head and sprinted full out. She felt foolish for so overbalancing, though, as she saw a pea of flame gracefully arc out of the second floor window. 

"Kiainia!" Dorio cred, seeing it too. 

And then the man's friend was gone, just gone, when the fireball exploded all around the barrels and the front of the building backing them...