Chapter 13: Chapter 13: That Could Have Gone Worse?

Being led in chains towards a waiting barge wasn’t high on Illyxa’s to do list. Being led off that barge towards a large castle was… slightly less low on the list, at least. So it was a small improvement. After all, castles tended to have loot and ancient tomes and other good things to steal. Getting out of a castle’s dungeon was tricky, but probably slightly less tricky than a frontal assault. At least for Illyxa

So, really, being led into a castle was a net gain, even if there were chains involved.

At least if there had already been chains involved beforehand.

Still, she suspected the Prince of Mezora probably had a better dungeon than most, so it would probably be best to avoid going into the dungeon proper. She was just going to have to be quick with her tongue (both for negotiations and spellcasting). As soon as some sort of opportunity arose.

They were led through the castle’s gates, wherein Illyxa was far from surprised to see ornate gardens stretching on over at least as much ground as the outer port town had taken up. That was royalty for you. Fond of showing off all the space they could waste.

Crossing the palace grounds took longer than was reasonable, but, eventually, they were manhandled into the main throne room. It was a wide and mildly daunting chamber: all white stone, high ceilings, and vast windows to let in an impressive amount of light during the day (and seemed to let off a soft magical glow at this later hour). It reminded her a bit of temples to Nariph’m, all focused on sunlight and that. 

She really wanted to steal something from this place.

The Prince strolled forward, dropping himself onto the large golden throne and crossing a leg over his knee. As he did so, a number of half dragon and living armour guards moved into position between the pillars along the edges of the great hall. 

All several paces from where the prisoners stood. At least they were being given some breathing room at last.

Gragya leaned down to whisper into Illyxa’s ears. “Should I take the wraps off?”

“No,” Illyxa whispered back. “No use in having a secret weapon if you use it too often… especially with this many witnesses.”

“Also no use having a secret weapon you never use,” Gragya muttered as she stood up.

The Prince cleared his throat, drawing all eyes his way.

“I don’t appreciate you trying to sneak right through my city, N’ratha,” he bellowed. “I also don’t appreciate you lot trying to help her.”

Fuan raised a hand (and half raised his other hand as a result, due to the chained manacles). “You have her now, though.”

“I do,” the Prince replied, probably raising an eyebrow. He was too far away for the prisoners to be able to tell.

“So… do you need the rest of us?” Fuan asked. 

The Prince was quiet, leaving the air open for Fuan to continue.

“Well, we didn’t really know her. We merely hired her as a guide. If we were to surrender all connections to her… would we be allowed to leave?”

“Fuan,” Hyi hissed in a small voice, eyes revealing how horrified she was at her friend’s callousness.

“What? We barely know her,” Fuan replied. “I see no reason for us to be punished for her romantic complications.”

“Mhm,” the Prince replied, drawing eyes back to him. “I suppose I could take that into account. Perhaps shaving a few years off of your sentences.”

“Years?” Fuan squeaked, his voice cracking.

“You had still attempted to smuggle her past me,” the Prince said with a shrug. “So a punishment is still coming… now, though, N’ratha, I must ask where you Halflet man has gone? Broken apart already, have you?”

“I’m right here,” Pin said, his tone annoyed.

The Prince did a visible doubletake. “You are a goblin.”

“He’s polymorphed,” Illyxa muttered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

“A sacrifice I made to attempt to smuggle N’ratha past your obsessive eyes!” Pin shouted.

“Sacrifice!?” Illyxa yelped. “How is being a Goblin a sacrifice? It’s an improvement!”

“Ah, well, at least one of the Goblins is actually a Goblin,” the Prince muttered, before turning his attention back to N’ratha. “Still, what do you see in him? He’s tiny, currently a Goblin, and has nothing on a wealthy and attractive royal such as myself.”

“I think you just explained it,” N’ratha replied flatly.

“It is merely the truth!” the prince bellowed.

“She likes men with less ego, Prince-boy,” Pin shouted back. “Men who respect her.”

Getting tired of this, Illyxa figured it was time to move on to the fighting part. After all, Fuan had asked the question she’d been trying to work out a diplomatic version of, so there was nothing left to do. As such, she turned to Gragya and gestured for her to lean down again.

“Can you break Hyi’s chains before your own?” she whispered.

“Probably? If I call on Glorz… Is the, uh, anti-magic charm stuff in the chains or the actual wrist-bits?” Gragya asked, keeping her tone hushed as N’ratha, Pin, and the Prince argued.

Something about N’ratha happening to actually like short men, which flabbergasted the Prince.

“It’s in the chains. The manacles are focused on locking magic,” Illyxa replied, ignoring the argument.

Gragya nodded, straightening back up and shuffling over to Hyi’s side. She whispered some basic instructions to the Elf as Illyxa closed her eyes. With her solar rune tattoos covered they were weaker, but they still provided a flow of magic looping under the manacles. Solar magic was able to slip around most things. Old Nariph’m was the king of the gods after all, even if he was trying to sleep off an all-but-lethal wound at the moment. So it was no surprise that he’d made sure his magic exceeded all others within his realm.

Illyxa felt a thread of magic flowing along her skin and grabbed ahold of it with her mind. With that she could pull the magical energy of the world around through the space around her body. Moving the magic around her meant she could also let her own magical energies flow out, that anti-magic field beginning to break down. Her own magic of course being needed to guide the environmental chaos.

She opened her eyes a crack to focus her gaze on the chain in the middle of her shackles. It was starting to heat as she whispered a chant of solar magic under her breath. The glow from the heat was just starting to be visible when she heard a crack. Gragya had pulled Hyi’s chains apart. 

The next moment the party was enveloped in a magical shield.

“I do not know how good of a plan this is,” Hyi siad, focusing on holding up the shield, “but I shall do my best to do my part.”

The chain shackling Illyxa melted into slag and she flashed the other’s a smile, even as the various royal guards began charging from their positions.

“It’s an excellent plan, now that we don’t have to worry about them pointing daggers at you or Pin’s throats,” she said, before spinning on her feet and rushing over to melt the other’s chains.

Well, the others apart from Gragya, who had charged out of the shielded area and into the fray with the half-dragons and animated armour. Steel flashed, breath weapons flared, and Gragya roared. There were definitely too many of them for her to win against, but she could keep them busy for a while as Illyxa prepared some of her heavier hitting magic. Though she had to focus on releasing the others first.

“Is this a good idea?” Fuan hissed. “We’re surrounded by the Prince’s royal guards!”

“If they toss us in the dungeon the anti-magic wards will be way more annoying to deal with,” Illyxa shot back.

“Why didn’t we act before they brought us in the palace, though?” N’ratha asked as Illyxa melted her chains.

“Because the guards were too close to us then. They’d have stabbed someone before Gragya could have broken Hyi’s chains, let alone before Hyi could have raised a shield,” Illyxa explained in a sharp tone. “Now, buy us a bit more time so I can blow a hole in the wall and get us out of here.”

N’ratha and Fuan both seemed reluctant to leave the shelter of Hyi’s magical shield, the air around full of various elemental breath weapons from the assembled half-dragons. It was only the strained look on Hyi’s face as she shot them a pleading look that got them to move in the end. 

Fuan was able to summon another magical energy blade and charge out quickly. However, N’ratha had had her sword taken away and was left spending a moment trying to work out what to do. She decided to tackle a nearby suit of living armour, wrestling the blade out of its hands (or, more technically, gauntlets), before charging into the fray with the other royal guards. 

The fact that some of her opponents were former friends left Illyxa feeling slightly bad about the whole mess, but… it wasn’t really Illyxa’s fault. It was just how life had turned out, forcing them into Mezora. Realising dwelling on it was wasting precious seconds, she turned her attention to Pin (who was still looking like a goblin at the moment).

“Can you sing something?”

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“Pardon?” he asked, clearly confused.

“They stole your lute. Do you need your hands free to work your magic, or can I focus on making explosions?” she explained quickly, and, perhaps a little vaguely.

“Oh, uh. Yes. I can sing,” he replied, before clearing his throat.

He then began to belt out what Illyxa suspected was a narrative song, though it was in an old language she didn’t speak. Probably old Halflet, which no one ever wrote down any books of sorcery in, so she’d never bothered to learn.

The whole party active now, Illyxa then switched her focus to muttering in Goblinish, manipulating the flow of magical chaos in both her own body and the world around. She knew she couldn’t toss off any major solar magic spells with Hyi right there, and so she had to push out of her normal fiery comfort zone. (Plain fire magic wouldn’t do much against the stone walls surrounding them.)

Thankfully she’d dabbled a bit in ground magic, so she knew what she needed to do. It was going to take longer than she liked, however. Especially since focusing during the chaos of the battle was a bit tricky. Her eyes wanted to follow Gragya bouncing about off of the heads of guards and magical suits of armour. Or to check what Fuan and N’ratha were up to.

Pin’s music had a certain calming effect to it, though. That helped her focus, muttering out the long forms of spells, slowly warping magic to be prepared to kick off the avalanche of energy she needed. It was so unnatural, like having to wear someone else’s clothing, unlike fire magic, that felt as comfortable as well worn shoes.

Still, she managed to nudge the energies into place, finally releasing them in a burst towards the nearest wall with a shout.

“Maavirin!” she announced, a wave of instability crashing through the ground before her.

Various guards were forced to scramble out of the way as a crack drove its way across the floor, before reaching the wall and causing a portion to collapse, leaving a new doorway, perhaps one and half times Gragya’s height and wide enough for two or three tall folks to cross through. It was all rather less impressive than Illyxa had hoped for, proof she needed to expand her magical skills outside of her comfort zone.

Still, it was at least enough to make the Prince cry out in horror at the damage to his palace.

“Let’s go!” Illyxa shouted, blasting a few fireballs to clear the path towards the doorway. 

The others did not need to be told twice and began scrambling after her, the small battalion of elite guards hot on their heels.

“Alright, N’ratha, do you think you can get everyone to safety?” Illyxa asked as they ran down the side hallway they found themselves in.

“Yes. I know a few shortcuts that should work,” the half-dragon woman replied.

“Good. Gragya, you go with them to keep Fuan safe,” Illyxa ordered, getting a quick salute from her cousin. “Also, N’ratha, where’s the good stuff kept that I can steal?”

“What!?” N’ratha asked, nearly tripping in surprise.

“I can leave a palace like this without stealing something. That’s just being wasteful,” Illyxa replied.

“Uh… magical artifacts or gold and gems?” N’ratha replied, dodging a blast of ice from behind them.

“Gems and gold. Easier to sell,” Illyxa said.

N’ratha gave a small nod. “West wing, there’s a small gallery of art on the second floor. You can probably grab some statuettes.”

“Sounds good,” Illyxa replied, peeling off from the main group and lobbing some fireballs over her shoulder at the guards behind them.

She managed to get a decent number of guards to chase after her as she made her way towards a staircase. She had to scramble up on all fours, tall folk sized stairs being annoying to take in a hurry, but there was something delightfully primal about doing that.

Taunting the guards behind her, she hit some of the magic armour suits with lightning magic before hurrying along the balcony-like second level hallway. A gallery hallway… she was reasonably certain that was the term. No that she was thinking all that much about architectural terms when there were angry royal guards chasing after her. 

Her running was a bit haphazard as she went, though. The palace was obnoxiously large, had clearly grown through various stages of additions, and lacked any sort of convenient signage to make life easier for Goblin thieves. 

At least she didn’t have to worry about blowing up any friends, now that she was a good distance away from the rest of the group, so she could happily lob fireballs blindly behind her. 

Finally, though, she stumbled into the gallery. It was a grand display of wealth, all sorts of precious treasures just sitting there on plinths. There were even little name plates for most things. She slammed the doors shut, tossing up a brief warding spell. Then she began hunting through the items present to see what she felt like yoinking.

Too many things there were on display for ‘historic value’ to have an easy resale. Then some of the others were simply too big. But there were indeed a few statuettes and pieces of jewelry she could shove in one of her magical bags. Which she did with a smile on her face.

She was starting to think that getting arrested had been the best thing to happen on this whole mission when the doors shattered, snapping in half before those halfs snapped in half. And so on and so on. Until the door was nothing but splinters and collapsed into a heap.

An androgynous figure strolled into the gallery, long red cloak flowing around them.

Illyxa could feel the magical force they carried with them, and swallowed nervously as she realised the mage standing before her was a red dragon in humanoid form.

“I do not appreciate being dragged out of bed. Especially not by a mess caused by some little goblin,” the dragon bellowed in an impossibly deep and powerful voice for the form they currently inhabited.

“Don’t ruin too much of the gallery!” she heard the Prince’s voice call out from the nearby hallway.

“Yes, yes. I will try not to damage the trinkets,” the Dragon snarled, before turning back to stare at Illyxa as she tried to sneak one last item into her bag while the dragon had been distracted by the Prince. “Do you have no shame?”

That last question having been asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity.

“Of course not,” Illyxa replied, slipping into a posture that allowed for rapid defensive casting. “I’m Illyxa, the Living Inferno. A once in a millenia sorceress and the mightiest Goblin Mage ever to live. I fear neither mortals nor dragons… nor gods.”

“Inferno, eh? Shall we pit fire against fire, then?” the draconic mage asked, flames dancing across his human looking lips.

Before she could answer, he let forward a blast of flames from his hands and mouth, forcing her to raise a sloppy ice shield before scrambling back.

It was tricky to fight fire with fire when only the other party was fireproof.

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Bashing through the guards at the back gate had been difficult. The whole fight had been difficult, if Gragya was being honest with herself. Unlike the giants and bone constructs she’d been fighting lately (which were strong, but rather slow on the uptake) well trained Half-Dragons were a serious threat. They were nearly as strong as she was, even with how much she’d honed her body. They were also armed with high quality blades and polearms, and well armoured.

Not to mention the breath weapons.

Still, N’ratha had known her shortcuts, and had managed to get them to a minor servants’ entrance before the bulk of the defenders had thought they’d go that way, and now they party were scrambling along the cobblestone alleyway it had led into. They were making good ground, all knowing that it was a mistake to stop running until they were out of the city. Including the port town across the river.

Gragya was wondering how long they might have to run for when she felt a shift in the magical field around them. She was no sorceress, but she had been around Illyxa enough to get a feel for when powerful magic was being readied. This felt fairly distant, but also rather powerful. 

And familiar.

“Shield!” she shouted towards Hyi.

“Pardon?” the Elven priestess replied.

“Shield! Right now!” Gragya roared.

Hyi skidded to a halt, raising another magical shield. Gragya dove into it and the others, visibly confused, followed her. Fuan was clearly about to ask what, exactly, they were waiting for, when they received the answer.

A light as if the sun had risen shone out from the grounds of the palace, before growing stronger still, until it seemed the sun was physically rising inside the walls. The pure light energy grew for a few moments, until it seemed to pop, like the world’s most powerful bubble.

Bits of light energy blasted out alongside a more general shockwave, shattering the outer wall of the palace near them, and blasting the surrounding streets with the force of a minor hurricane. 

The blast washed over them in but a moment, though, and the party were left catching their breaths as small pebbles of rubble rained from the sky against Hyi’s shield.

“What, in the name of the gods, was that?” Fuan asked.

“Um… I don’t know?” Gragya said, in a very unconvincing tone.

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