A Second Generation Whateley Academy Story

Last Orders

by

Astrodragon
(with help from the usual suspects)

Part Two

Sunday, Jan 29th, Dunwich, Early Morning.

The early morning twilight was barely disturbed by the whisper of seriously stealthed helicopters, as a number landed in an open space in the wooded area north of the town. The only things to notice them were a few small furry animals, which immediately decided they had business elsewhere. A group of men in combat armour rapidly decamped from the helicopters, spreading out in a combat formation to make certain the area was secure. As soon as they gave the all clear more men followed, as well as two men in costume, who sauntered arrogantly out of the helicopter as if they owned the place.

The rotors whispered to a halt – even stealthed rotors aren’t completely noiseless, and some of the men quickly pulled camo netting over the helicopters. Meanwhile, a few of the men were putting together parts for a pre-prepared portal for Master Olrun to use later. Satisfied the landing was unnoticed and the area was clear, the team leader nodded to the men to remain in cover and wait. Master Olrun would emerge before the attack, once they had moved the components to the required area.

“Any radio traffic?”

The comms man shook his head at the leader. “Nothing, it's all as quiet as we would expect from a small, sleepy town. I’d say as quiet as the grave, but we aren’t supposed to kill our target”

The leader hadn’t really expected anything out of the ordinary, after all the nearby school was only a school. His team wasn’t equipped to notice the high-frequency high volume data traffic from the devisors at the school, after all.

“Anything on our targets?”

The comms man looked again. “Nothing, sir, just that they are expected in the town later this morning.”

The leader had a quiet talk with one of his men, who then piloted a small, stealth drone and left it atop a building where it would get a good view of his targets arriving. Nothing to do now but stay alert and wait. His only worry now was if for some reason the targets changed their minds and didn’t visit, in which case he’d have to abort the mission, which wouldn’t make Olrun happy. But then, not much did make the old man happy. Once his drone had spotted them, his men would finish taking the portal components to a suitable location and summon Olrun. Of course, it would have been easier if Olrun had come through now and moved through the town before the attack started, but that wasn’t dramatic enough for him.

Sunday Jan 29th, Dunwich, Late Morning.

The two girls stopped in front of a fairly unremarkable and understated shop front. Thulia looked up at the sign above the door and raised an eyebrow. “Cecilia Roger’s Fabric Boutique. Sounds a bit fancy.”

Her companion smiled. “It’s where I got my dress for Xmas and the cloaks I got for us, she does really good work.”

“Oh yes. The cloaks were really impressive workmanship.”

“Not only that, she did them both in 20 minutes.”

Thulia looked surprised at the comment from Morgana. “Really?”

Morgana nodded. “She has some sort of mutant power over materials as well as lot of skill. Watching her work is...impressive...”

“So since we’re here to get combat outfits I assume she works using tougher materials than normal?”

“Yes, she can get us all the special materials we got told about by Mrs. Ryan in costume class. And thanks to the little...donation... from the MCO we can afford good quality stuff now.”

“So how expensive is it going to be?”

Morgana shrugged. “Not cheap, but not excessive. I had a talk with some of the seniors in the Commonwealth as to what is the best value. And better protection for us both is worth paying for, isn’t it? I don’t want to see you on a stretcher if better protection avoids that. The really expensive bits of a professional combat outfit are the accessories, we can handle a lot of those with our magic, and sourcing the tech through the workshop isn’t too expensive. There’s no need to go too mad, we aren’t full-time heroes or something.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” The doorbell tinkled gaily as the two girls walked in, and Morgana called out. “Ms. Rogers? We’re here for our 12 o'clock fittings.”

A young woman stepped out from behind a curtain. Thulia was a bit surprised at how young Ms Rogers looked, but she did realise that a mutant's appearance often belied her age.

“Ah yes, the two of you want some proper combat outfits...”

Morgana nodded and took her coat off, showing the outfit she’d made in costume class. She’d worn it as the easiest way of carrying it and showing it to Ms. Rogers, and it helped keep her warm as an added bonus.

“I did this last term, and it works fairly well – there are a few spots where the fitting and free movement isn’t quite right – and of course, I used the free class materials from costume class.”

Cecilia made some muttering noises to herself as she inspected Morgana’s outfit.

“It’s not bad for a first attempt. It doesn’t quite fit right, does it?”

Morgana shook her head. “It does pinch occasionally with some of my movements. It’s OK for a limited time, like a combat final, but it isn’t quite up to being worn for a long time. It’s not very breathable, either. The heat build-up isn’t an issue for me, but I can do without the layer of sweat that builds up, which is rather disgusting. But I thought wearing it today might be helpful to show you what I’d done.”

Cecilia nodded. “Yes, that’s a help and I can fix those problems up for you. What about the colour? You want to stay with the dark blue and black scheme?”

“Yes please, although if you could make it a bit more snappy? I’d like it to look good.”

Cecilia grinned. “No problems. My outfits always look good as long as the wearer doesn’t get their own ideas. And what about your friend?”

Thulia smiled. “Well, I had been thinking about some sort of protected robes – I am a mage, after all – but freedom of movement would be useful for me, and Morgana pointed out that with this sort of outfit, I wouldn’t look so much like a mage. I got caught out with my robe exposing my back in the finals, and the result – wasn’t pleasant. So I thought basically the same thing as Morgana’s.”

Cecilia nodded. “That’s always useful, people do tend to target mages and a lot of them do tend to wear robes to carry stuff, which makes them a first target. I assume you’ve thought about that?”

Thulia nodded. “Yes, I don’t have so much need for storage in my costume as most, and I can carry the bits and pieces in a belt like Morganas.”

Cecilia was examining Thulia’s appearance and colour. “What about the colour of the costume? ”

“We were thinking a dark red would look good on her, and again if you could sharpen it up a bit that would be cool. But the utility belt would be the same as mine.” Morgana showed Cecilia a photo of Thulia in her swimsuit. “This looked pretty good on her.

Cecilia nodded “What about tech add-ons?”

“Nothing spectacular, ma’am. We will be adding some magic effects, but we’ll do that ourselves. Some way of carrying a wand or two would be useful, though, at least for me. For tech, just the basics. I have a small forcefield generator but that can slip onto my belt. A throat mike pickup under the throat, the usual glare filter on the eye lenses, oh and the utility belt for holdouts or bits and pieces. Also, can we have a way of projecting a head-up display on the eye lens? That would be better than having to wear glasses with the costume.”

“You have stuff you need to display?”

“For now, it’s basically the HUD for flying, I guess in the future we might want to add more, like a video feed or somesuch. It’s only the display we need, the actual display unit is external, and it’s only about the size of a cellphone. Being able to see things like Google Maps would be helpful, but not essential.”

“Oh, that’s no problem, those are pretty standard basic additions, I have some suitable units in stock that just need a small modification. Nothing really interesting then?”

Thulia coughed. “Well, actually...she slipped her coat off and pulled her jeans down a bit at the back as her tail snaked out behind her and her wings extended from her back, carefully furled to fit into the room. “I do need the outfit to cope with these...”

Cecilia grinned as she admired the black and scarlet patterning on the wings.“Oh, now that’s different! A much more fun challenge. Are they fragile, dear?”

Thulia shook her head. “Well, no more than I am. My wings are thinner, so a bit more delicate, but they aren’t fragile.”

“They do look very lovely, and the colours do give me some ideas for coordinating the colours with the costume.” She smiled amd took a few photographs. “ OK, I can arrange the costume to allow for your wings and tail. How about you, Morgana?”

“Not yet for me, ma’am. Maybe in the future.” She raised an eyebrow at Thulia, who gave a small nod in response.

“So you’ll be adding spell effects yourselves? I’ll need to know the size of the spell diagrams to make sure they fit.”

“Yes ma’am. We could work out which ones we want to add, then bring them in on paper when we come for the final fittings?”

“That will work well. With the extra bits and pieces, unless you’re in a tearing hurry, I can do all the preparatory work done in the week, and if you come back next Sunday we can do the fittings and make any corrections needed. I can give you the cost using different materials as well, then just put everything together. But before you go, I need you both to give me a full set of size readings.”

Morgana looked surprised. “But we have them from Whateley, ma’am?”

“Yes, but mine are accurate, much more precise, which I need for a combat outfit. They also do a full range of colour matching for your skin. Normal clothing allows a little bit of margin, but as you’ve noticed there isn’t nearly as much allowance for error in a combat outfit, a good quality of protection is rarely flexible in some places. My outfits fit properly ALL the time, which I why I arrange a final fitting and construction unless you are really in a hurry.”

Morgana waited patiently while Thulia got her measurements taken, then thought of the obvious question she’d almost forgotten.

“Um, Ms. Rogers? How much are we looking at for the two outfits?”

Cecilia grinned. “Well, the basic is pretty standard, the tougher materials aren’t cheap, but it’s not as if you were asking for mithril inserts, just a few metal/ceramic plates and reinforcements in places. The tech bits like eye protection are very common, and the only unusual part is the allowance for your friends' wings and tail. Fitting for those will be interesting, so I won’t charge much. Also, I do give a discount to Whateley students. So, for both costumes, made and fitted, we’re looking at around $15,000. I know that’s a lot, but the materials aren’t cheap and they will give you good protection. I’ll give you an exact estimate when you come in, in case you need to substitute cheaper materials. That’s what I call my Class B costume, the Class A uses more exotic materials and is considerably more expensive, but usually only professionals buy one of those. They are probably a bit over the top for most students, and you may need to do a resize if you grow any more. Which I can also arrange to do for you if required.”

Morgana thought about it, then nodded. “That doesn’t seem unreasonable.” She was pretty sure she could get her sister to transfer that amount to her, given that it was to keep them both safe.

“Good, I’ll email you some ideas on the costume colours and so on in a day or two, just decide on one before I sketch out the costumes. We’ll get everything prepared then I can build them for you the next time you are here.”

Thulia was looking thoughtful as they left the shop. “She certainly seemed to know what she was about.”

Morgana nodded at Thulia’s considering tone. “She does. Apparently she makes a lot of costumes for full time heroes and others who need protection, not just students. She has an international reputation for her costumes.”

“So what are we going to do until catching the bus back?”

“Well, they do have a few places that sell yummy treats that are probably fattening and terribly bad for you, but still, treats!”

Thulia grinned. “Are you trying to lead me into a life of debauched snacks and yummy but terribly bad for you cakes?”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“I was rather hoping you would.”

“Ok, then we just have to stay clear of the old bakery. It has a very unsavoury reputation.”

“The food isn’t any good?”

“Not that sort of bad reputation...”

The mercenary who’d found himself a comfortable perch on the roof kept an eye on his target as he reported, hiding behind a chimney as he used his periscope. He’d deployed once the drone reported the girls arrival, and he wanted a good spot to observe and ambush if necessary.

“The two girls have just left that dinky dress shop, and are heading east in the centre of town.”

His radio cracked a bit. “Ok, keep them under surveillance, we’re blocking everyones comms in two minutes, we’ll attack them once we know screaming for help is pointless.”

The man nodded and clicked twice in acknowledgement. He should be able to keep them in view until then from his rooftop perch, it wasn’t as if Dunwich was abundantly supplied with skyscrapers, after all. It was a shame the Archmage wanted the girl alive, he could probably have got a decent sniper shot from here. Although, he reminded himself, one of them was a demon. He didn’t know if a headshot would end a demon, it might just make it mad at him. He’d rather avoid that.

“That’s odd.”

Thulia turned to Morgana with a raised eyebrow, as the redhead held up her phone to show the display had changed from Google Maps to a fuzzed-out display of snow, a faint hissing sound coming from the speaker.

Thulia frowned at the screen. “I assume this isn’t normal?”

Morgana shook her head as she fiddled with her phone, to no avail. Not even an encouraging beep, just static. “It’s as if the signal is being jammed or interfered with.”

“That’s not good, is it?”

Morgana shook her phone, just in case that made a difference. “Nope. If someone doesn’t want us to call the school, we could be in trouble. I think we’d better assume we are in trouble, better safe than sorry.”

“So time to get out of here?”

Morgana nodded. “It’s not that far from the town to the school, and being away from the town would make it a lot more difficult to ambush us.” Or use some of the townspeople as hostages, she thought. And Thulia at least could fly home and warn the school.

“OK, this is raid boss, are you teams all in position yet?”

The response was a number of measured clicks, even with magic-aided security he wanted to keep chat to the minimum he needed for coordination, even if, in theory, their gear could cut through the jamming they’d arranged, keeping things simple was good. While he’d been told not to worry about the school the two girls attended, it was only a few miles away and did have some sort of security force. No point in taking unnecessary chances and getting a crew of rent-a-mobs who had delusions of being proper security people running around like headless chickens would be a nuisance. It wasn’t that he objected to killing them, it just offended his sense of neatness.

“Good. The targets are walking down the high street, we’ll take them in five minutes, let them get deeper into the kill box first. Remember not to kill the redhead. The demoness with her is fair game, but you probably can’t kill her anyway, leave her to the magic crew. Once we have established where the kill box will be, summon Olrun.”

It’s surprising how few humans bother to keep an eye out for things above them, even in a town like Dunwich where you would think the inhabitants knew better. But then the typical inhabitant of Dunwich was probably more concerned about the occasional wandering tentacle slithering out of a storm drain and looking to play. Thulia did indeed know better than to ignore the sky, but she was paying far more attention to her companion than any threats in what was supposed to be a casual walk through a safe town. The attack force was counting on that reaction, at least until first contact when things would become rather obvious.

The first signs of an attack were a number of small explosions. Nothing too large, but enough to rattle and panic the populace as they moved into their arranged formation. Oddly, some of the men noted that instead of the assumed panic reaction, the locals moved smoothly into hiding. But then the mercenaries didn’t know about the unusual environment around Dunwich. Which was slightly annoying, as they had intended the panic to make their operation easier by slowing down their targets. Instead, they slipped away from them with the ease of long practice.

A combat alert so close to the school had automatically started the threat response, and in Mazarin's case that had aborted his conversation and brought up his monitors in threat response mode. That was all automatic, and once they had more data on what was going on he could tailor the response accordingly. In the meantime, the school locked down and the students and non-combatants moved into sheltered locations, while combat-rated staff and security started to equip themselves on the assumption of a direct attack.

Mazarin's eyes flicked expertly between the multiple display screens in front of him as he took in the information being presented. So far it looked like nothing had crossed the school boundary, but he wasn’t going to take that for granted.

“Who have we got immediately available for a quick reaction squad?”

Falcon paused for a moment from getting his costume on to check his pad as he responded to the Headmaster.

“Wilson, Wildhammer, Ms Grimes, and myself. The recon team is almost at Dunwich, we should know more when they arrive. They’ve been instructed to report on the threat and identify anyone if possible. It would help a lot if we knew who was doing this.”

Mazarin nodded as he kept typing rapidly on his terminal. “Good, that should hold up or stop anything other than an A-class attack until we can ramp up a heavier response. Don’t show any mercy, but a prisoner or two to question would be helpful. Be careful in case there is any X-class involvement.”

Falcon gave his boss a twisted grin. “I’ll try and keep that in mind. I know Grimes will.”

Mazarin returned to reporting what they knew so far about the attack to various concerned parties outside the school. Even in his office he could hear the warning instructions to the students and the non-combat staff members to get under cover, so that was in hand. He still had no idea if the attack was aimed at the school or at a student currently in Dunwich, there were a few students booked out this Sunday, but he should know soon. His eyes were glued to the holographic displays, and as soon as Falcon left he would activate the force-fields surrounding and protecting his office. He was already having to fend off questions from some of the people interested in the security of the school as he waited for the scans he had requested from the orbiting satellites. All the firepower about to be at his disposal would be useless without reconnaissance, and even with A/G thrusters, it took time to reposition a satellite into the correct position. There was some seriously heavy firepower being made available to him – the school defences had been upgraded over the last 10 years - but he couldn’t make plans for it until he knew more about the situation. In the meantime, the Range staff were suiting up, and he had some more teachers flagged as combat-capable once the students were safely in the tunnels. ARC had been informed but was holding for the moment, waiting for more information.

Across the Campus various tannoys were blaring a warning, now the sirens had alerted everyone, copied to every student's phone and pad.

“Warning. An attack is underway just outside the school. This is NOT a drill. All students are to get into the sections of the tunnels designated as safety sections immediately. If you are in the tunnels, either shelter in place or go to one of the designated sections if you can get there immediately. Security staff are to help with the evacuation to the tunnels and then to report to security HQ. Teachers not combat-designated will shelter with the students and help guard them. Do NOT attempt to get involved, this is NOT a drill and we have yet to identify the attackers and the level of threat. “

There was a continual buzz of conversation from the students as they headed for the closest tunnel entrance. Despite the instructions, a few tried to stop and work out what they were going to do, but were herded into the tunnels by some very unamused seniors. Since trying to get the lab rats out of their workrooms was an exercise in futility that would have taken too long, after a short warning the doors to the labs were sealed. Given the sort of toys the kids played with in the labs, anyone breaking into one was in for an unpleasant – and likely terminal – surprise anyway. The Whateley Labs were not safe for strangers.

“Who on Earth would be crazy enough to attack Whateley?”

Bianca shrugged at Erica’s comment as they made their way deeper into the tunnel complex. “Well, they did say it was outside the school. But it does sound rather foolish, Dunwich is only a few miles down the road. I suppose it does allow them to say they aren’t attacking Whateley directly, but I don’t see that argument really holding up. Certainly it isn’t the family, we would never be so foolish.”

“So where is everyone?” by which she was referring to the rest of M3 in particular.

“Laura is probably in one of the Labs, I think they seal them off individually. Its pretty hard to get into a sealed lab. She said something about working on a car project today. Morgana and Thulia are...” she frowned. “Weren’t they going into Dunwich about some costume fittings? Morgana said something at breakfast about going to see Miss Rogers. You don’t think they’re involved?”

“Oh, I’m sure they aren’t. They’re both sensible enough to find somewhere safe and stay in it untill it’s all clear. What worries me is who’d be crazy enough to arrange an attack so close to the school. None of the organisations I know are stupid enough to try. Not even my crazy cousins are that crazy!”

Hadrian was trotting down to the tunnel entrance with some of the other kids from Poe. He’d had a nasty turn when the sirens went off, almost making him succumb to a flashback, but then he realised they didn’t sound like tornado warnings, and the tannoy messages showed it was just a raid of some sort near the school. He was much happier with that than with a tornado, and was happy to be swept along with the rest of the crowd as they headed for one of the safe locations. In front of them was some tape which seemed to be marking a construction area, and they were diverted around that. It wasn’t as if there weren’t multiple available routes in the maze-like tunnel complex. Behind the tape barrier he could see the figures of some of the senior students putting tools down as they themselves streamed out to join the main body of students. Presumably, that was the rumoured underground garden complex they were working on as this year's legacy project, certainly a few large holes in the walls and piles of dirt supported that conclusion. He wondered what they were going to do with all the dirt.

Back in Dunwich, the raid boss was smiling. He was annoyed he’d lost some of his men, but that was acceptable, as he nodded to the group of men carrying the parts for Olrun’s portal.

“Ok, it's going roughly to plan, we are herding the targets and channelling them into a kill zone. Set up the portal at the end of it, then summon Olrun. If we haven’t dealt with them by the time they reach it – if they reach it – he will finish them off. Once the conduit has been pushed through the portal, our part in this operation is done and we will withdraw. Make sure we destroy any evidence we can't take with us, there is no point in giving away more information than we need.”

Back at Whateley, the heavy mob were cramming themselves into a customised humvee. Customised in that it had no roof, which would have been inconvenient for any fliers, but did come with a pretty substantial forcefield generator. Clark Clauser was busy getting two more standard humvees full of an 8-man combat team, but he did take a moment to look at the first vehicle, wondering if he should feel sorry for whoever they were going to run into? Nope, he decided, as he watched Staff Sergeant Wilson wrestle a heavy belt fed 0.5 calibre machine gun – the NCO’s favourite personal weapon for such situations – into the humvee without the belts getting all tangled up, they looked like they were going to get what they probably deserved. His own men were just checking their personal combat armour and weapons as fast as they could. The combat drones were lifting off; they would be run by Admiral Everheart herself, so he wasn’t worried about them. Some of the combat and recon models would be held back to cover the campus, Belvedere would be operating those. Ms Grimes was stroking the head of her panther-sized familiar, whispering something to it which Clauser suspected was combat advice, while Wildhammer tapped a foot impatientely as she waited to cram into the vehicle.

“Has the recon detachment reached Dunwich yet?”

Clauser nodded to Sergeant Wilson. “They are just about there and following in a recon drone.” he cursed absently. “And... they just took out our drone with some sort of anti-aircraft missile.”

“Tell the recon team to take it careful and keep under cover, we need more information but I don’t want them killed.”

“On it.”

Clauser watched as the humvee took off in a shower of dirt and gravel. With any luck they’d get a recon report in time to show them the best way to get into Dunwich.

Cecilia Rogers peered through her shop window carefully. The town sirens had indicated an incursion of some sort, and at least judging by the tone of the sounds it wasn’t indicating a class X attack. That was good. The streets had cleared of people as the inhabitants had made their way into the town shelters or their basements, but she would be damned if she was leaving her shop. It was a pity those two girls had left earlier, she would have looked after them but with any luck they had the sense to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble. She had heard the sound of intermittent gunfire and at least one explosion, so she kept as quiet and hidden as possible.

Her eyes widened as she saw the two men walking down the street as if they owned the place. Soldiers of some sort, judging by their equipment and weapons. They seemed fairly alert, and she smiled. That wasn’t going to save them. Once the two had gone past, she opened her shop door slightly as a bolt of cloth and something that looked like fabric-covered wires slithered their way onto the street behind the men. One of the men raised his weapon and took a few semi-random shots at the buildings. She wasn’t clear why, maybe he wanted to frighten the inhabitants into hiding or maybe he was just bored and saw some pigeons he didn’t like.

The sounds of cloth brushing across the road must have alerted one of the men, as he spun around, gun raised. Only to relax and lower it when he saw it was just some cloth, probably being blown in the wind. She smiled to herself. Of course it was. As he turned back to scan the road in front of him, the cloth reared up like a cobra, and lunged forward as it wrapped itself around his face. Not only cutting off his vision, but the cloth made its best effort to push its way into his nose, ears and mouth. He stopped, making muffled and painful sounds as the material cut off his air supply and tried its best to choke him. His training had taught him how to respond to many combat situations, but an attack by self-powered cloth hadn’t been included. As expected, his friend tried to help him, with remarkably little success, allowing the cloth-covered wire to leap up behind him and wrap itself around his neck. His attempts to pull it away were futile, as the titan wire constricted, blood pouring from his neck as it cut through his flesh, his head slumping forward as the wire almost severed his spine.

It only took a few minutes, leaving two corpses, one still leaking blood, slumped at the side of the road. Cecilia smiled and recalled her cloth – she didn’t want to make it obvious what had happened - although the wire was still wrapped around the second man's throat, there was no point in bringing the blood-soaked stuff home. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty more, after all, and it made it look like someone had garrotted one of the men.

The girls could hear the loud crackle of gunfire coming from in the town. Neither of them was particularly expert at analysing gunfire, but it did seem to be getting louder and heavier. Since it didn’t seem to be aimed at them right now, hopefully, that meant a force from the school was getting involved. Thulia had already spotted a heavily armed security drone in Whateley colours, which gave credence to that conclusion. Also the streak of fire from a surface-to-air missile that had blown the drone into small pieces, dashing their hopes of an immediate Whateley rescue.

“At least you have your combat outfit.”

Morgana nodded. “I wish now I’d brought the forcefield Laura made for me, but Dunwich is supposed to be safe. What sort of suicidal idiot attacks students a few miles from Whateley?”

Thulia shrugged. She’d already changed to her own combat leotard, which would at least be some help, and she suspected she’d have to change forms at some point anyway. Her leotard was mainly intended to protect her against magic, but given that they were worried it was the Cabal, that might not be such a bad thing.

They paused for a moment as a fireball burst up from a street in front of them.

“That looked more like magic than a mundane explosion.”

Thulia nodded, “It was. You don’t think this is...?”

Morgana snarled. “The Order. It could be, they have mages and they seemed stupid enough to attack at Whateley.”

Thulia looked grim. “If it’s them, they will be prepared for you and your fire, at least.”

“Maybe. I’ve changed my skill set a lot since the summer,. But if it’s them they’ll probably be trying to capture me.” She looked sick. “They did that once before.” She didn’t mention her still-recurring nightmare about that, she’d rather be killed than captured by the order again, but she wasn’t about to load that particular thought onto Thulia.

“They did, but I wasn’t there then.”

Morgana’s half smile got a bit more believable as she eyed the determined expression on her companion's face and the glowing staff in her hand. There was something very reassuring about having an angry dragon in combat mode on your side in a fight.

“I could fly us both out, it’s not far to the school and we would be safe there?”

“Not unless it’s our only option. They have AA missiles, you saw what happened to that drone. And if you’re carrying me, you can’t dodge properly. I think sneaking out is our best option so far, if they had a drone up, there will be help from the school soon. We just have to stay alive till it arrives, no playing hero.”

“Are they still jamming our phones?”

Morgana nodded, looking at the static covering her phone screen. “Afraid so.”

Turning the corner brought them suddenly and unexpectedly face to face with a couple of armed men, from the paramilitary kit and weapons probably mercenaries. Well-armed mercenaries at that. At least, Morgana thought, they don’t have any unit insignia so they probably aren’t regular troops. Despite their surprise, the men acted quickly, bring up their weapons and spraying a hail of fire at the two girls. Morgana grunted as her uniform – and skin – only blunted the attack, and she could feel a few trickles of blood running down her body. Great, whoever these people were they seemed to have military-grade weaponry. She hadn’t put her forcefield up due to the amount of essence it drew, but it was obvious that she needed it now. That was an issue she needed to work on.

Thulia growled as a round went into her bare arm, and then her forcefield glimmered into being in front of her, the scarlet hexagons comprising it glinting and flaring as it stopped the remainder of the incoming rounds. Her eyes narrowed as she saw how much essence had been needed to stop the rounds. “Whatever they’re shooting, it’s powerful. Nothing like that mob of punks we ran into in Phoenix.”

“Yeah, they did warn us about the effects of mil-spec weaponry, remember? Enough rounds will nibble a forcefield to death. If we give them enough time to do that, of course.”

Thulia just grunted in response as she pointed her staff at one of the men, a white-hot bolt of fire lancing from her staff and striking him in the stomach. Despite his body armour, he screamed shrilly as the bolt impaled him and erupted from his back, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the disgusting smell of burning flesh and armour synthetics wafting towards the two girls. Morgana supposed she should have been upset at the sight of a man killed by a firebolt, but under the circumstances, she could worry about that when the men weren’t trying to kill them. If these men were working for the Order they deserved everything that happened to them.

Morgana eyed the remaining man as he backed away from them, still firing. After weeks of practice, she had a usable distance weapon and now was the time to try it out. Her hand snapped out, and her spellspear appeared in it. She narrowed her eyes as she judged the distance, then hurled it at the man as hard as she could. Hurled by a light brick, the weapon flew almost too fast for the eye to follow as it went through the man’s shoulder, and armour, and out again, leaving him collapsing to the ground and pouring blood onto the road. The spear had a nasty head on it, and it had ripped flesh as well as armour as it tore through them. She smiled as she banished and re-summoned her weapon. Looked like these guys needed better body armour, although she really needed to learn how to make her weapon flame like Thulia could. Now if this was the sort of opponent they had to face, she thought they’d have a decent chance of escaping. She had a worrying feeling that these were the expendable meat shields rather than the serious opposition. But there was likely to be more of them, enough troops could run them out of essence and overwhelm them, they hadn’t exactly prepared for combat this morning.

Outside Granny Hittons Old Bakeshop, Dunwich

Granny Hitton looked at the soldier walking in front of her bake shop, and smiled. Sadly for the mercenary, he didn’t see the smile, which might have given him a little warning of what was going to happen.

“Hello, dearie.”

The man stopped suddenly, aiming at the old woman before letting it lower – after all, it was only an old woman, nothing dangerous.

“Grannie, you’d better get off the street, its dangerous out here.”

She smiled as she proffered the plate of cookies she was carrying at him. “Oh, I’m sure no one is interested in an old woman like me. Why don’t you have a cookie, while you are here?”

She held the plate out for him, letting the spell on the plate take hold and make the cookies look even more attractive. He didn’t seem to have anything to protect him, as he hesitated, then looked around before taking one of the cookies.

“I guess it can’t hurt, and they do smell good.” He took a large bite and chewed it slowly, only to get an odd look on his face, as what little she could see of his face turned a greenish colour. She smiled and took a few steps back, as he collapsed on the ground, writhing in obvious pain as his body changed and shrank.

A few minutes later, she reached down and grabbed her new frog out of the pile of clothes and armour. It glared at her indignantly, throat working as it protested vigorously in loud and angry ribbits. She stroked its back. “Now now, no need to get all upset. I have a nice large lily pad for you at home.

“RIBBIT!!”

Acheron the Black saw the girls coming in his direction and made some comments under his breath at how useless those vaunted mercenaries were. Granted, their job was to herd the targets into the depths of the kill box they’d arranged for them, but it would have been helpful if they’d actually managed to do something useful first. Typical mercenaries, too concerned about their own skins than the importance of the cause. Time to see how the two of them coped with his magic. He started to intone as he cast some crystals down onto the ground in front of him, the words almost seeming to crackle and chill the air as they came from his lips. He smiled as the spell crystals first glowed black, then splintered and cracked into shards as the monsters he’d stored in them swelled to their full size, as he moved back out of clear sight of the girls, motioning his pets forward to do his fighting for him. No need to risk himself at this point.

The girls came to an abrupt stop as they saw what was heading towards them. Two monsters had emerged from the crystals. Some sort of giant scorpion-centipede-thing, which was scuttling towards Thulia, and what looked like a collection of ambulatory rocks thudding their way in Morgana’s direction.

Thulia eyed the pseudo-scorpion headed for her and raised her staff. A brilliant line of fire joined her staff to the charging monster, which splashed off some sort of barrier of purple light that surrounded it. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, and she put full power into her fire blast. This time a thicker column of coruscating fire hit the barrier and the two elements fought each other, this time at least some of the flames got through, but not doing major damage to the creature, just making its carapace smoke somewhat. Oh great, it’s an armoured insect, she thought. Hmm, she’d need something a bit stronger. Sadly her most potent attacks required time that the giant pincers, it was clacking at her aggressively, probably weren’t going to give her, so she needed to play for that time and try and conserve her essence. She was also rather worried about the purple glow surrounding the stinger. Her firebolt lowered, aiming at the road under the creature, turning it to a burning semi-solid goo that slowed it as it fought to get its multiple legs out of the sticky mess, allowing her to back away a little as she considered some of the options among her pre-prepared spells.

There were a number of her usual spells she could tell weren’t going to work. Tying down something so big and with so many legs would use a silly amount of essence in her gravity spells. Most of the effects she had for binding creatures wouldn’t work well on something so big and long, and it seemed pretty resistant to fire, not seeming terribly worried about the molten pavement it was walking in. While she had quite a range of damage spells available to her, nothing that she could cast fast was really designed for this sort of opponent. She growled in annoyance as she had to leap high over an aggressive claw which stove in a storefront without apparent difficultly, then decided to try something different. Leaping to the top of a nearby store, she drew out her bow and arrows. Let’s see how tough this thing was to physical force.

Pulling back her bowstring, she aimed a shot at its head. It wasn’t hard to miss, it wasn’t exactly small. Sadly the arrow glanced off the things skull with an angry keening sound, leaving a silvery gouge in the armour. Well, if the head was protected that well, maybe some of the segments would be better targets. She rapidly shot half a dozen arrows into some of the iridescent body segments. At least this time the heads penetrated, but the thing had a lot of segments and while her arrows seemed to have disabled a few, it wasn’t stopping, or even slowing much, heading for her again with its stinger raised and claws clacking angrily. She made a mental note to invest in some more damaging arrows, as the beast clacked its mandibles together at her.

She had to leap for her life as the stinger snapped forward, demolishing the building she was standing on, and making her drop the bow as she made a desperate leap for the next building and rammed her claws into the brickwork. This thing was getting annoying, and she needed a way of getting a killing blow into it so that she could help Morgana. She wondered how smart it was, as she estimated the distance to it then leapt – right onto the thing's back. The armoured segments were smooth and slippery, but digging her claws in hard gave her just enough purchase to hold on. Barely. She watched as the stinger raised itself again, then came down toward her. She grinned – she’d been waiting for that – as she leapt straight up as high as she could, as the stinger glanced off the spinal plates. It would have been nice if it had stung itself, but it didn’t seem quite that stupid. At the top of her arc, she summoned her spear, the crimson shaft glowing with energy, and aimed herself at its head. <it’s at the front, it’s probably its head> she thought. She landed hard, her weight and motion ramming the razor-sharp tip of the spear deep into the thing's head, cracking the skull plate as she grunted with effort as she forced the flaming spear as deep as it would go, the energy she’d pushed into the spear burning the air around it. The skull cracked further, and with a keening screech that made her glad for her ear protection it collapsed in a sprawling tangle of legs. She drew the head of her spear out of the disgusting mass inside its head and looked around.

Morgana was moving to keep that ambulatory pile of rocks from getting too close to her. For a collection of pieces of rockery, it was moving faster than she expected. It had managed to hit her once, and the pain in her abdomen was worrying. She couldn’t afford to let it pummel her.She could probably have run away from it in a straight line, but this was a town, and she didn’t want to let Thulia out of her sight. Given that this thing looked tough, she was trying to work out what she could do to affect it. It was a shame she hadn’t researched a rock to mud spell. She knew Bianca had one, she should talk to her about it.

She danced behind a building, and the monster showed how strong it was by casually demolishing part of the ground floor with a backhand blow. Morgana gulped, she wasn’t at all sure her forcefield would manage to protect her now. In the background, she could hear Thulia yelling, and the screeching of the scorpion-centipede she’d taken on, so at least she was still fighting.

Still, the pile of ambulatory geology, while fast for what it was, wasn’t that fast or agile. So the next time it swiped at her, she slid under its arm, skidding along the ground, and made a dash for its back, using her claws to dig in and scrabble up its back. That was if it had a back, she wasn’t quite sure about that. Sticking on like a claw-equipped limpet did make it harder for it to attack her, but didn’t really do anything to damage it. She drew her spear out and rammed it as hard as she could into its back. While it did force it in a few inches, that just seemed to annoy it more as it tried to dislodge her. She didn’t think she had a spell capable of doing much damage to it, so sheresorted to her standby – fire. The spear glowed as she channelled through it, the tip glowing a violet colour as the stone heated up, starting to glow from the heat. It must have annoyed it, as its thrashing became more agitated. She took that as a sign it was working, pouring her fire into it as the stone glowed yellow-hot. It also seemed to soften a little, as she managed to work the spearhead deeper into the rock that seemed to be its body. Even with the mass of the stone, something had to give eventually. Despite the pain of channelling so much fire through her, she clung on as the pile of rocks finally collapsed into a red-hot pile of rubble and lava as she pulled her spear back. Whatever had animated the walking rockery, she seemed to have dealt with it, at least for the moment. She gave it a suspicious look as a few of the bits rocked, but decided it was just the remains settling.

The Whateley combat team had a better idea of the enemy forces in the town now. At short range, the special communicators used by the reconnaissance team had reported a fairly large unit of mercenaries, as well as a few heavier hitters. They didn’t know if these were mercenary supervillains or mages who were part of the enemy forces, and until they actually did something they weren’t sure. They were guessing on them being villains based on the costumes they were wearing, but these could be misleading.

However the data feed had been useful in showing what was immediately in front of them, a handful of mercenaries, what looked like a supervillain who was either clad in metal or made of metal, and a man in robes who seemed to be attended by a group of monsters. They would take these targets out first, they were between them and the girls they were looking for, so they needed to be eliminated.

The first thing blocking their advance was the monsters. Grime took one look at them and their flame-dripping fangs and sniffed in annoyance. “Generic Hellhounds.”

Generic or not, they were nasty armoured creatures the size of a very large dog, drooling and snarling as they clashed their fangs at the team who didn’t seem terribly worried as their flaming spittle ate holes in the pavement. Grimes did put down her familiar, which grew in size of something more akin to a panther than a cat as it stood between her and the monsters, while the other three just set themselves ready to intercept the attacks.

It didn’t look like a fair contest at first – four hulking, drooling monsters against three people, but these were mutants and experienced fighters. They didn’t last much longer than it took the Whateley teachers to get into range. Falcon used his agility to grab his opponent and flew up to drop him from height, Sergeant Wilson tore one apart with heavy machine gun fire before it even got close to him, while Wildhammer simply grabbed one in her hands and tore it in two. The only one to last more than a second was in a furball with Grime’s familiar, and that wasn’t much more of a challenge. Grimes did have to call the cat back from enjoying himself to finish the hellhound off.

During this, the robed man had made a tactical withdrawal (i.e. ran away as fast as he could, not seeming to want to get involved with the group) while the mercenaries grouped themselves around the steel man. His colourful costume tagged him as a villain, although none of the group recognised him. Instead, he made a ‘come and get it’ gesture, showing a considerable amount of undeserved arrogance as Ms. Dennon advanced on him with a nasty gleam in her eyes as she accepted the challenge.

The two mercenaries immediately fired at the advancing Dennon, whose force field just ignored the fire from their assault rifles as she made for the metal man. Which meant that Sergeant Wilson could rip them apart with a sustained burst of 50-calibre ammunition. While the two men were wearing some sort of body armour, it wasn’t able to stand up to that sort of damage, especially as the sergeant had included armour-piercing rounds in his loadout. Both men collapsed, oozing blood from the holes in their body armour and not likely to take a further part in the proceedings. In the mean time Dennon had closed with the metal guy, and the two were grappling in what seemed to be an inconclusive contest of strength.

Grime’s eyes narrowed as she took in the fight. Metal or steel armour could always be a problem, but it did leave it vulnerable in certain ways, especially as he was currently distracted and unlikely to be paying attention to her. She raised a hand holding a blue crystal wand as the sky darkened and dark clouds began to circle over the fighting area, twisting in a circular pattern around her. Beside her the figure of her familiar crouched, protecting her just in case something unexpected happened. The air took on a febrile quality as the smell of ozone permeated it, and a few flickers indicated that electricity was crackling and sparking between the roiling clouds. Grimes held her magic ready, waiting to see what Dennon would do. She seemed to have hurt him, one arm bent in a way that didn’t seem natural, as he flexed with a grunt of effort and tossed the woman away, obviously not willing to carry on with the hand-to-hand fighting. Grimes just grinned as the contact was broken, and brought her hand down sharply. The man just had time to look up as the crackle from the sky distracted him, and to declaim “Oh shi...” He never finished, as the thunderbolt Grimes had been building hammered down from the sky like the wrath of Thor, starkly illuminating the area as it lanced into the man. A few seconds later, all that remained was the stink of ozone and burnt metal, and a pool of melted metal burning its way through the crater in the pavement. Grimes just smiled and blew on her fingers, while her familiar just looked smug.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to question him now, Elyzia.”

Grimes look at Falcon and just shrugged. “It happens.”

There wasn’t much left to investigate after the short but vicious fight, so the team moved on. They now had a better idea of where their students were, the fight between Thulia and the scorpion-centipede-thing hadn’t been subtle, and the coruscation of magic had been obvious to everyone, not just Grimes, who just pointed in that direction, the group forming up and moving out immediately.

The two girls stared at the pair blocking off what was nearly their final exit from the town. Well, one man and what looked like a small ambulatory robot on tracks. The man was wearing a supersuit in grey and black, and was smiling at them. It wasn’t a nice smile, as the robot moved to one side and then towards them. They could see weapons and what looked worrying like rockets along the front and side of the robot. It had a number of small antennae on top of it which seemed to be tracking them.

“Is it being controlled, or is it self-aware?”

Morgana shrugged at Thulia’s question. “I don’t know, but it would probably be a good idea to keep an eye out for a controller, if we find one we can take them out, which will probably be easier than taking out an armoured robot.”

“Which one first?”

Morgana considered. “The robot, I think, those look like ranged weapons it’s equipped with and the man hasn’t done anything – yet at least. He might not have ranged abilities.”

Thulia nodded and took a moment to reinforce her force field. “I’m running low on essence.”

Morgana was too, but there was nothing either of them could do about it right now. However, the man moved first, gliding towards them in a motion they recognised as the run of a skilled martial artist. The two girls stayed close together, hoping that if they were close to him, the robot wouldn’t be able to fire at them without catching him in its fire. There was an odd glinting in the air in front of his hand as if he was carrying a weapon that neither of them could quite see. Thulia squinted and hurled a lance of fire at him, always a useful opening move. Instead of him dodging, or taking the bolt on a forcefield as expected, that half-seen weapon parried the fire, a blue flare outlining a sword for a moment as the bolt was deflected to one side.

Morgana padded a few steps forward and made a stab at him with her spear. Again he parried expertly, and the haft of the spear glowed a bright yellow from the contact. Both girls decided they didn’t really need to be too close to the whatever-it-was he was wielding. However, a look at her weapon showed it wasn’t badly damaged, just glowing with heat from the contact. That could be coped with, as Thulia’s staff and Morgana’s spear kept him busy parrying them, while the robot moved to one side of them. That was going to be a problem as soon as it had worked itself into a suitable position.

“I think I can keep him occupied while you deal with the robot.” Morgana wasn’t quite sure that she could handle him, he was worryingly precise with his weapon and was obviously, from his movements, skilled, but one of them had to deal with the robot before they attacked together, and Thulia had a wider range of spells, one of which might be more useful. She’d seen her stop a robot before, even if was only one at the weapons fair, so she bit her lip and tried to remain hopeful. She didn’t feel she could take him in hand-to-hand combat, but keeping him occupied while retreating could probably work.

Morgana stood poised with her spear held in front of her. She wasn’t at all certain how she could cope with someone who obviously knew how to wield his weapon, but she had to try. It wasn’t like they had any choice at the moment. At least her spear seemed capable of parrying his weapon. She had no idea what it actually was, only that she could see what looked like a hilt in his hand, even though all she could see of the blade was a hazy image of a sword rising from the hilt with an edge glowing black. How could something glow black? Maybe an energy projection? She could see Thulia making for the robot next to them and knew she had to buy her the time she needed to reduce it to its component parts. From the confident look on his face he didn’t seem to think beating her would be a problem, so as long as it didn’t expose Thulia too much she’d defend and retreat. She just had to make sure she didn’t (literally) back herself into a corner, she suspected she couldn’t win a standing fight against him.

The blurred image of his sword swept towards her, as she parried and stepped back, making him move forward to carry on his attack. He grinned in the manner of someone who knew exactly what she was up to and knew how this fight would end.

“You can’t fall back forever, girl, even if I’ve been told not to kill you.”

Well, that was an interesting comment, although it did make her realise that the cult wanted her to use, rather than just eliminate her. Still, their attacks so far could have been much more lethal if all they had wanted to do was to kill her. Which left a cold pit in her stomach, she’d rather be killed that be in their possession again.

Thulia mentally ran through her spells as she looked at the robot. She’d dealt with one before, at the Weapons Fair, but this one was armed with long range weapons so locking it to the ground wouldn’t help that much. It’s little rotating antenna locked on her, and it spat out a couple of missiles. She knocked one to the side, but the other one hit her full on and took a noticeable amount of the energy in her force field. She gave a quick count of the missiles that remained, and that didn’t look good, she’d run out of energy before it ran out of missiles.Something more damaging to it was needed. She slipped to the side, she was aware of Morgana’s fight and she didn’t want her in the way of what she was going to try. Aiming her staff, she sent a lightning bolt at the robotic nuisance.

Well, as the bolt hit and all sorts of things happened rapidly, she decided it had almost worked. She’d hoped the electricity would have fried the circuits on the little beast, but it looked like its maker had put in some failsafes. As the electricity sparked and slid all over its case, it fired off its remaining missiles. She parried and dodged frantically, but still a number hit her, causing her forcefield to collapse in a despairing display of scarlet hexagons, as the concussions sent her flying. She staggered to her feet, and the robot released its final weapon at her, this time without a forcefield to stop it. Some sort of high-tech claymore mine exploded right at her, sending sharp high-velocity fragments tearing into her legs, and she screamed as blood spurted from the wounds. Not, fortunately, enough to stop her but her legs were in agony from the flesh wounds, blood running down her legs, as the robot gave a final despairing clank and shuddered to a final halt.

She looked at it for a moment, then turned to see how her partner was doing. Not well, it seemed. Morgana had managed to stop herself from being cut apart by the man's weapon by constantly falling back, but she was fast running out of room to do that. Even as she watched, he spun and jabbed his weapon into her chest, causing a spurt of blood to spray out. She was already bleeding from several new cuts, even though her force field was still trying to protect her, whatever it was he was using seemed able to penetrate it, even if not easily.

Thulia snarled and made for the fight. Let’s see how he handled both of them. She moved to Mogana’s side, making him split his efforts between the two of them, but sadly his skill seemed quite capable of doing that. It didn’t help that the injuries to her legs were slowing her down, even though she was pushing past the pain, the damage was having an effect on her.

Finally, the damage caught up with her. Parrying one of his blows, she skidded and fell to one knee, trying to get her staff up to protect herself. But instead of hitting her, he fooled them by stabbing the point of his sword into Morgana’s knee, making her scream as she collapsed, and then he drew back his sword for what would be a fatal attack on Thulia.

Morgana screamed again, not from the pain this time but from seeing the danger Thulia was in. Her staff was in no position to parry his cut, and without thinking she put the only thing she had in its way, her arm. Whatever the blade was, it glowed black as time seemed to slow for her, as she tried to parry it with her arm. Only succeeding at getting her arm in the way. She screamed again as it sheared through her forcefield, her armoured suit and her arm, leaving the body part to fall on the floor. But she’d almost succeeded; instead of the killing blow he’d planned, the slash had been pushed to one side, and all Thulia received was a blow to her shoulder. Stll bad enough, as blood spurted out, but at least she was still alive. The man scowled as he readied another blow, and Morgana did the only thing she could still manage to do, struck out with her leg in a sideways sweep that took his legs out from under him and making him fall to the floor, as she tried to stay conscious with her arm lying on the floor next to her.

Thulia snarled at the man, and took advantage of his temporary distraction to make a sweeping blow with her glowing staff. Given that he was off balance, it hit him a better blow than she was expecting, right on the hand holding the hilt of the whatever-it-was he was fighting with, as a flare of fire and some sort of black energy flared like a malignant flower in his hand, and the hilt he was grasping flew – somewhere, right now she couldn’t see and didn’t care. He looked around for it, then sighed and looked at her. Her hands were trembling from the force of the blow and the explosion, but she had a much better two-handed grip on her staff than he had had on his sword-hilt, even if half the length of the staff was glowing with heat.

“I surrender.”

She watched as he went to his knees, then onto his back in obvious submission. He was giving up so easily, after what he’d done so far?

Thulia stared down at the man lying prone on his back in front of her. Behind her, she could hear Morgana’s agonised whimpers as she tried to cope with her own injuries, as she bent down slowly to pick up a large piece of concrete rubble.

“Hey, I surrender, hero.”

The man looked up at her with a smug expression. “I give up, you can take me in, no need to keep attacking me, right?” He flung his arms even wider, obviously trying to show he wasn’t a threat. For some reason, he seemed to think that now she would stop attacking him. She didn’t care about his fantasies.

She looked down at him again, letting him see the rage on her face, as she lifted the rock high over her head. And without hesitation smashed it down hard on his head. There was a nasty squishy-thud noise like a melon being dropped from a high building, blood and pieces of his head squirting out from the sides of the dent the concrete had made in the road, and his body sprattled and went still. She spat. “I’m not a hero. They spare people like you rather than dealing with them.” Then she turned back to help Morgana, the man wouldn’t be an issue for them again.

Thulia knelt next to her lover, tears running down her cheeks as she saw what was left of her arm, using some of the last of her essence to hold her lower arm and stop the bleeding. Morgana stiffened as the blood stopped flowing, looking at her with pain and fear on her face, as she managed to gasp words past the agony in her arm.

“Can you help me up, we still need to get away and I don’t think I can stand on my own.”

“Oh come now, surely you aren’t going to leave so soon?”

The girls looked up to see the gloating figure of a man in robes sneering at them. They both remembered those robes, Abraxus had worn similar ones, as he stepped towards them, hands outstretched as he made some complicated gestures and blue-white fire rode from the spell diagram he’d prepared while he waited, surrounding the crouching figure of Thulia, as Morgana whimpered.

Thulia looked at the gloating Archmage and snarled in rage as the blue-white fire from the spell diagram he’d lured her into rose around her in a shower of incandescent sparks. He merely sneered in triumph as his spell trap drained her. “So, demon, you are powerless now. I would recruit you to my service, but you don’t seem obedient enough for my taste. A shame, you would have been acceptable in my bed.”

Thulia looked at him, her body shimmering, skin turning redder and more scaled as she changed into her full combat form. Sadly the form change didn’t heal any of her current injuries, but given how mad she was right now they were more a peripheral pain and annoyance that she put to the back of her mind. The pain was something she’d worry about later. She could see the faint circle of magic that betrayed the presence of a gate behind him and knew that his intention was to drag Morgana through it. She wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Her form change wasn’t affected by her lack of essence and in any case, she controlled it far differently, as she stalked forward on her prey, eyes filled with the red fire of her rage. She could sense the layers of magical defences still surrounding him, but she had no intention of using magic against him, he was obviously well-prepared for that, and she was now limited to the remaining essence in her staff, her well was running on empty. He gave a nasty smile and held his crystal rod ready, a dark purple glow running along it.

“Still, I have sufficient power to send you back to Hell where you won’t be bothering me for a long, long, while.”

Thulia paused for a moment. Hell? Wait, he still didn’t understand what she really was, and while that rod would probably hurt if she got hit by it, it wouldn’t send her anywhere. Her rising snarl of rage, the sign of a very angry dragon, changed to a fiercely predatory snarl as she leapt at him, her fangs bared as she screamed her challenge into his face.

He wasn’t completely unskilled, she found, as while she evaded his first two strikes the third one caught her in the shoulder with a shower of purple sparks. It hurt , and she staggered for a second as ripples of power snaked across her skin. She could feel the broken parts of her shoulder grinding together, but right now the pain only fuelled her anger. He gaped, looking at her, then at the mace. “Why didn’t it...?”

She finally stood close in front of him. “Because, idiot, I’m not a demon.”

It startled him long enough for her to make her strike, as she rammed one clawed hand into his chest, tearing his mundane body armour apart like so much cardboard, as she felt her talon close around his heart.

“I’m a dragon...” Then she closed her fist, and with a wet tearing noise yanked the bloody remains of his heart out of his shattered chest as his blood sprayed all over her, her claws crushing it completely, and letting the pulped flesh fall to the stony ground.

The combat team from Whateley had been too far away to help in the final fight as they raced along the rubble-strewn street. It had been too far away for them to get to and intervene, despite the interesting selection of curses from Wilson and Dennon. They had, however, had a good view of the way it ended, and they finally skidded to a halt when they reached Morgana’s body.

Ms Grimes looked upset at the extremely bloody end to the Archmage, but Ms Dennon merely gave a carnivore-like grin. “I knew there was a reason I liked that kid...” That comment got her a very old-fashioned look from Falcon, as the team skidded to a halt beside Thulia. Her body was covered in blood, although it wasn’t all hers, and she was obviously badly wounded, but instead of trying to heal herself, she was cradling Morgana’s body in her arms, rocking gently as she held her close, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Thulia, you need to let us look after her.”

Thulia looked up at Grimes, obviously not really seeing her.

“They took her hand. She tried to stop him from killing me and it cost her her hand. And now she’s dying.”

Grimes nodded as she held her hand out slowly and calmly, trying to reassure the girl. “Let me help her, we have to get her to Doyle as fast as possible. It’s her best chance.”

Thulia looked up at her, her immediate reaction being to hang on to Morgana and not let her go, but Grime’s soft words finally got through to her and she nodded. “You promise?”

“On my word as a mage, we’ll do everything possible.”

The dragongirl gave a reluctant nod and passed Morgana’s unconscious body to Falcon, who took it gently as he went airborne. Thulia followed the pair with her eyes until Grimes coughed. “And we need to get you there as well, you’re in a hell of a mess yourself.” She nodded. “I guess...” Then she slowly collapsed sideways, only being held up by Mrs Dennon. “Get her onto a stretcher and we’ll get her straight to Doyle. Meanwhile...” She turned to the plastic bag Wilson was offering her, wincing at the sight of Morgana’s bloody hand inside it. “Let's get this frozen.” She wrapped the piece of arm in a protective wrap to stop it getting frostbitten, then muttered some words and ice and snow fell into the open bag until the arm was hard to see under the white coating that was slowly turning red. “Hopefully that will preserve it and give Ophelia some better options.”

To Be Concluded