For all the confident crowing coming from Clarissa and Prince Hresvelg, the sight that greeted them in the brief moment when the fog cleared wasn’t made much better. It was as daunting as they come: Surrounded on all sides by mages on rooftops, brigands in the mist, and capped off with the eerie thrumming of pegusi churning the air above their heads. The nurse raised a shield in time to stop a rain of fire and arrows from bearing down on them, saving their lives but also demonstrating the sheer might of the force that met them here. Or rather, ambushed them. Dammit. Lienna rarely took any pleasure in being right.
No wonder Kellen looked like his knees were about to go out from under him. By the looks of the rest of the party, he was the only one with any sense.
The fog closed around them too soon, concealing the bandits before Lienna had a good idea of exactly where they were. In an instant, she was alone, mist pressing in on all sides, her comrades reduced to dark silhouettes if she could see them at all. Without a weapon, she felt strangely empty-handed – but of course, she was here with a different arsenal. Drawing a deep breath, she stretched her hands out in front of her, frost crawling over her fingertips as she readied a spell. Her magic felt taut, like a bowstring held back by a pinky, ready to fly at the slightest twitch – and not made any easier by the knowledge that her magic was reluctant to cooperate on a good day.
Sounds of confrontation clamored around her, their origin distorted by the fog; the ring of clashing steel, grunts of effort in voices both familiar and foreign, the heavy thuds of bodies hitting grass. Add in a little more screaming and some fire and she’d feel right at home.
Lienna might have smirked if she wasn’t gripped with fear. She peered frantically around at the fog, forearms twitching with the effort of holding back a spell that increasingly wanted to escape. She was reminded too much of Luin, too much of home – were there woods nearby? That could afford her some cover, if she could make it, but damn her, she hadn’t paid enough attention when they—
“Gah-!”
All of a sudden, Lienna’s shoulder exploded with pain. In the space of an instant, she registered a few things: the flash of a symbol instantly recognizable as the Crest of Gautier in the air before her; a painful yelp in the fog somewhere off to her left; and, most importantly, the forceful snap of her spell going off halfway through her turn to see what had hit her. Just like in Luin, chest-high spikes of ice erupted from the ground before her, ripping a curved, jagged path into the fog until they found purchase in her enemy, as confirmed by a much louder – and wetter – cry of agony.
Stunned and pissed in equal measure, Lienna pawed her freezing hand – the one whose shoulder wasn’t killing her – at her shoulder, finding an arrow twisted in the fabric of her robe. She struggled a moment to free it from the thick fabric, casting it aside in disgust before exposing her shoulder to assess the damage. The wound oozed blood and hurt like hell, but fortunately, it wasn’t very deep; she figured the arrow probably would have kept flying past her if not for the robe. A shiver wormed up her spine when she realized the wound was mere inches from her throat.
Off to her right, the fog flashed gold; that had to be Clarissa. She recognized the colour from their magic classes; it was some kind of hybrid healing spell. What shocked her, though, was that Clarissa was not at all where Lienna thought she should have been. It was so easy to get disoriented in this mess, she must have gotten turned around.
Wait. Where did Kellen go?
Lienna’s heart jumped in her throat, and her feet moved before her brain could quite catch up. Dammit, as turned around as she was, she had no idea what she just shot at – what if she hit Kellen by mistake? The arrow almost got her, but it was a clumsy shot. So where was their clumsy archer?
Pulse filling her ears, Lienna followed her spell’s path of destruction through the mist until a huge, dark figure loomed before her. After swallowing her heart attack, she realized she’d come up to the side of a house – ah, and there was her quarry. It was a gruesome sight, much like the ones that haunted her nightmares from Luin, but there was enough left of the man to tell that it wasn’t Kellen. The relief allowed her to come back to the present, and immediately, she pushed her back against the wall, looking left and right for more bandits, for all the good it did.
"Does anyone have eyes on Rudolph?" Clarissa’s voice rang clear through the fog.
As if on cue, the sickening sound of retching drew Lienna’s attention up the wall to the roof. It looked like her spell didn’t stop with the archer; the spikes clawed their way up the wall, throwing stones from the masonry as they went, until they came to a stop at the edge of the roof. They were beginning to melt now, but strangely, the water dripping off the topmost ones ran pink…
She stepped away from the wall for a better view, and was greeted by the sight of a black-clad figure slumped near the edge of the roof with a body lying prone next to him, the hilt of some blade still embedded in its back. That was Rudolph alright; scarlet eyes wide with terror, vomit on his chin, and transfixed on something she didn’t need to see to know was probably the reason blood was dripping all over her icicles.
“I found him!” Lienna shouted, before turning her attention back to Rudolph. “What are you doing?!” she called, “Get down! You’re Pegasus bait up there!”
As if to prove her point, the air above was disturbed by the intimidating whump of wingbeats. She crouched down instinctively and backed up against the wall, frost gathering on her good arm as she readied another Blizzard.
