18. Unfriendly Competition

It’s gratifying to see that everyone except for Willard and Sir Thomas look exactly as lost as I feel. Unfortunately it also means the two of them are the ones to make the first move. Willard leaps forward as an explosion of air propels him forward into a slash straight at Sir Thomas’s neck, a tail of flame lingering through the air. It’s also incredibly pointless since Sir Thomas doesn’t even bother to block. The blade hits him in the neck, and stops dead without even breaking skin. Thomas all but slaps the sword away, shattering it into pieces of flaming shrapnel that imbed themselves in the nearby trees, hopefully not planning to start a forest fire. Thomas slams his other open hand into Willard’s chest, but flinches back as an explosion of electricity surges from the point of impact letting Willard dash back a few feet and pull out a dagger. Gwendolyn is apparently the first to get her mind around whatever’s going on here. “Will! What the hell are you doing? Stand down right now!”

Willard did not in fact stand down, instead a wind starts rushing between the trees, and … well I’m sure against anyone else something impressive would happen, but aside from giving Thomas a slightly asymmetrical haircut the winds don’t actually do anything. Thomas makes a show of brushing himself off. “Guild members, this man is a known associate to Dark Mages. One can only assume what vile actions he and his associates are planning. You’ll be paid most handsomely for your assistance in resolving this matter.”

Gwendolyn clearly just gives up on diplomacy. “Everyone! Get out of here. NOW!” At that things immediately turn into pure chaos. One of the guild members makes the first move, and as Gustav does a grand gesture the trees around the groups start growing to fill in the gaps and surround the entire area in a wall of wood. Still the effect only lasts a second before a flick of Elizabeth’s wrist burns a hole into the treeline. Before Elizabeth’s second shot can connect a geyser of water extinguishes it in midair, presumably that’s Peter’s magic, I remember he could do something like that when I saw him in the guild. The blast of water flows straight at Elizabeth but stops in midair as a wall of light meets it halfway, and the water doesn’t even stand a chance. What remains of Gwendolyn’s armor explodes into pieces and she hurls the resulting shrapnel at the guild group, but it can’t even get close as Alex holds out his hand and the two identical magics meet midair. Catherine’s the last guild member to act and the ground starts shaking and a storm of sharpened rocks shoots at Gwendolyn, only to be intercepted by a veritable hurricane sending them back into the ground.

I take a breath, I want to leave, and if I want to leave then I know which group I need to help. Any other considerations can kindly wait their turn. Elizabeth’s duplicate moves to another spot to hopefully provide some defense. Not that I can do all that much to help in a fight against actual people anyway, basically any sentient creature is going to figure out something’s up the second I use any of my illusions. A blast of rocks shoots at Elizabeth’s double, and I dodge her around them. I guess I can get some benefit from the illusion’s ability to dodge as fast as I can imagine a person dodging. Willard charges back in brandishing the dagger I made for him to defend with. It’s stupid, but a part of me is irritated that he completely lied about how he was going to use these weapons. I’d have recommended something else if I knew he wanted to charge in like this. This time Thomas doesn’t even wait and punches straight into the knife. Unlike the sword the reinforcements on the knife don’t completely fail, and it crumples instead of shattering. Willard gets struck in the chest by his own knife further crumpling it and breaking at least a few of the defensive runes on his armor. At least the knife’s illusion goes off as he drops it, and illusory sand seems to flow from the blade. Thomas half heartedly tries to brush the sand away as it flows at his face, but the illusion just passes through his hands. He sighs “I see Dark Mages and their ilk are still getting their hands on magic items. I must say I don’t see the appeal, it’s not exactly making you a more substantial threat on your own, and it certainly wouldn’t help a Dark Mage substantially. Although perhaps I’m simply seeing the dregs you’ve received that no others would touch. Disappointing regardless.”

I see Elizabeth start gathering fire around her more and more, and I have the illusion do the same. This will probably be a bit of a spur of the moment trick, but hopefully I can make my end of things work. Looking around the rest of the fight Johannes’s walls of light are holding back the majority of my guild member’s attacks as Gwendolyn is slowly winning her shoving match vs Alex. Technically Willard’s holding off Thomas, but that’s mostly because Thomas is just standing in Willard’s hurricane with mild amusement. Elizabeth’s magic hits a bit of an apex, before she launches a stream of white hot fire at the surrounding trees, I have the double do the same, and try to merge the impact points to make it seem like the double did the actual attack. Elizabeth wavers and collapses to the ground, and I run over to catch her. I definitely give her a bit of a scare, but she figures out what’s happening pretty quickly. Time for the fancy part, this should at least let the others in this group know what’s happening. I pull up the most generic female voice I can think of as Elizabeth’s double starts summoning forth more and more fire. “I’ll hold them off here, the rest of you run. I’ll try to catch up once we’re done.”

I’m apparently partnered with the worst actors in all of human history. It takes them a good few seconds of going through confused facial expressions before they finally seem to figure out the script. Johannes is at least the fastest to pick it up. “If you’re sure … just come back to us alright.” He’s really not a natural, hopefully it’s enough though.

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Willard’s hurricane starts wavering, and Thomas just gives an almost kind smile. “Why are you still doing this? Trying to find revenge for a Dark Mage is an incredibly unstable way to live.” He gives a wave and a massive swirling maelstrom of glowing wind surrounds everyone, cutting off the path Elizabeth just opened up. “I’d rather you not leave though, you’ve caused people more than enough harm with the one apprentice you did murder. I’ll at least give you the opportunity to request forgiveness from God though.” He gestures at Elizabeth’s double and a glowing breeze passes through it before I can react. “And don’t pretend like I should believe that poor facsimile.” Of course, my luck was due to get a bit worse, well I let the double keep charging up a fire, it might still fool someone else if they weren’t paying any attention whatsoever.

Johannes holds out a hand, and a glowing wall slowly starts forming to block the wind. The wall’s definitely stronger than the wind in terms of raw force, but the wind just fills any gaps in the wall, and Johannes is clearly stretching himself thin holding off everything at once. In contrast Thomas is clearly barely even trying as he keeps the maelstrom up even with illusory sand blocking his vision. As he slowly walks towards Willard he picks up the crumpled remains of the dagger. “Well at least this did better than your sword, perhaps the craft is improving. We’ll need to take at least one of you alive if only to ensure we get the source. It’s best to cut these sorts of things off at the head, after all if an actually threatening mage got a hold of this equipment it could perhaps cause some actual harm.”

Willard dashes forwards again and tries to punch Thomas who simply catches the punch midair. “I’d be disappointed if you were to claim that was anything but surrender.” Thomas’s gaze suddenly snaps over to the wind wall where Johannes’s walls are starting to slowly make headway. “Hmm, not particularly strong, but that’s definitely light magic. You’re not from the church, it’s a pity to see you led astray. You would have certainly been a skilled mage had you followed the rules. It’s truly sad to see what the corruption of Dark Mages has wrought.”

Alex has to catch Gwendolyn’s attack on his shield, and as his magic falters the force of the impact knocks him to the ground, it at least gives her a second to recover, but we’re effectively down two people with Willard indisposed, and Elizabeth currently leaning on me. If I don’t want to get captured with the rest of them I need to do something that’ll buy a bit more time against Sir Thomas even though he’s already seen through one illusion. As I’m thinking about it I see him turn his attention past Willard, and towards Johannes as glowing winds start swirling tighter and tighter around them both. He’s probably using the winds to see through the illusory sands, so I can’t even try to blind him. Even worse … I do have a solution, it’s just about as likely to make everything a thousand times worse in the long term. Johannes stops blocking off the rest of the guild focusing all his efforts on trying to protect himself from the winds, as a result Gwendolyn has to dodge out of the way of a swarm of rocks, and a jet of water goes right through Elizabeth’s duplicate. I could’ve maybe avoided that, I just wasn’t expecting anyone to try it still. Elizabeth’s clone holds out her hands towards the guild members as white hot flame twirls around her hands. “Everybody duck!”

About as I expected neither the guild nor my allies actually give the warning much mind, luckily Alex is already knocked back on the ground a bit, so I can ignore him, but I somewhat expected Thomas to turn, maybe it just takes a few seconds for him to register dark magic. A wave of flame shoots from the duplicate’s hands, and the temperature in the forest spikes up a few degrees. That certainly gets everyone’s attention as the illusion surges forward. I focus the illusion towards Sir Thomas, but a bit more of a ‘to whom it may concern’ sort of arrangement. The wall of flame surges past my allies, probably giving them a bit of an unpleasant sensation, but they’re not the targets, and I see the guild members start putting together whatever defenses they can, a defensive gale, a wall of stone, a clump of vines, a geyser of water, none of them actually matter of course, the attack’s still just an illusion, and it passes through those defenses harmlessly. The surrounding gale falters, and as Johannes manages to hold open a path through it, I grab Elizabeth, and the two of us break into a sprint deeper into the forest. I make a point to ignore the sounds coming from behind us, they’d just make me feel worse.

Eventually I come to a stop, hopefully we’ve gotten far away enough to not be followed, not to mention I have no idea where the others got to. I do … hope they got away. I drop my illusions, Elisabeth’s double disappeared at some point, I wasn’t really keeping track of when, but me and Elizabeth reappear regardless. She takes a minute or so to catch her breath, before turning to look at me … I can’t read her emotions, but I can pretty easily figure out the question she wants to ask. She of all people knows full well that the heat didn’t come from her. I … probably can’t avoid at least some of the truth. At least right now without Johannes at hand I can just run if things go too badly. “So … you probably want an explanation for what happened.”

She pauses before nodding, but before I can actually say anything though she pulls out the wax tablet from before. It takes a second as she scribbles something out on it. “Yes, but we need to find the others too.” She turns to go back where we came, and I follow her. Now to figure out how to phrase this right.