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By Root 2029 0

so, clawing his attention away from the fascinating beginnings of Embra's weaving of a magic that would snatch them all from Flowfoam to the cavern he was seeing. He thrust his attention at the renegade baron, clinging to the edges of the awakened power of that other Dwaer. Something bright arose behind him as Embra did her work, caught him up as it surged forward in a mighty wave, and then threw them all through the mists, Darsar brightening and sharpening around them as they were suddenly -elsewhere, crashing into the midst of that glowing cage of magic, the shielding vanishing around them in a howl of flame. Embra had flung the Four together, breast to breast, and she slapped Craer's Stone and clawed at the humming cage of magic around them at the same time, shattering it in an instant.

Craer staggered in the thrall of magic clashing and roiling around him, pain and glory and savage fire all grappling in and through him, and cried with mocking enthusiasm: "For Aglirta! For glory! The Four are upon you! Obligingly surrender, or die!"

The snoring woman shot bolt upright with a shriek of surprise and dismay. The shielding that should have seared intruders to bones was gone, the Sword of Spells collapsed into whirling sparks around her, and!-a Dwaer glowed not a dozen paces away, in the hands of Embra Silvertreel

The Band of Four, all of them, here in his lair!

Ingryl Ambelter lashed out with his mind in a fury, goading the Melted into the best lurching, shuffling semblance of a charge they could muster. Clumsy clay they might be, but in this crowded room they were so numerous that they'd hamper his attackers as if the walls themselves were reaching out to grasp and bludgeon and blunder into the way. And that should give him time to The Dwaer flashed, and a Melted in front of him, along with most of the table he'd been seated at, vanished in a roar of flame and a shrieking spray of splinters that lanced out in all directions like deadly arrows. Snarling, the old woman that was Ingryl Ambelter threw himself to the floor behind the ruin of the table!-and into a drifting, flickering cloud of dying magic that had been his Sword of Spells ere the Dwaer had shattered it and drained much of its power.

He hissed a few swift words, and what was left flowed back into him, filling the disguised Spellmaster with more power than his body had ever held before. Like cool fire it flooded him, setting his fingers and teeth to tingling.

Gasping, he spent some of it on a shielding that would drain the next Dwaer-blast to come his way, and a mere trifle more on unseen eyes that soared to the ceiling of the cavern and showed him every cranny of it.

The Band of Four were wrestling with the Melted, that beast of an armaragor hacking at unliving limbs like a woodcutter, and the procurer doing his usual dance of leaps, twirls, and magpie grabs at anything that glowed or looked valuable. Phelinndar was crumpled into the farthest corner, trying to do something with the Dwaer, his face twisted into the grimace of the unpracticed and nongifted mind-struggling with greater enchantments. He was… trying to communicate with someone afar!

The baron's look of horror told the Spellmaster that he hadn't been expecting the Overdukes of Aglirta to make an appearance here, but his blunderings could quite well have summoned them! Well, by the Dark One, Phelinndar would the in a few moments- Graul, but he should have been slain days ago!

Embra's Dwaer flashed, and a dozen advancing Melted were shredded by a ravening light that cleared quite a space in front of her, their bones bouncing and crumbling into dust. Dark One look down! If she were to do that thrice more, she'd be facing a certain Spellmaster directly, and Gods! The other one, the little she-sorceress, had just hurled a handful of conjured fire into Phelinndar's face, and was making a grab for his Dwaer!

Desperately, Ambelter hurled most of the magic he'd just drunk along the lingering threads of the mind-lock he'd cast on Phelinndar days ago, seeking only to flood the Dwaer with fire, and-yes!