The Tears of Kas̆dael

The door tore right off its hinges as Jasper plowed into it, carrying him into the room beyond.

A glance was all he needed to take scope of the situation. Naklāti was sprawled out on the bed, with her hands and legs tied down to its four posters, but aside from a gnarly bruise on her cheek, she didn't seem to have been harmed. Yet.

A man and a woman stood on the far side of the bed, glancing up with angry faces as he burst into the room. Both wore white robes similar to the one the woman in the hall had worn, and, like her, their angular ears and azure eyes were tell-tale signs of northern heritage.

Time seemed to slow as they raised their hands, but Jasper had already counted on that. With a quick flick of his wrist, he released the Punishing Hand he'd been holding ready, muttering a regretful 'sorry' in Naklāti's direction as the pale hand arose from the wreckage of the door.

Naklāti and the other woman froze, eyes locked on the hand's macabre dance, but the man, with a visible effort, shook the spell off. "You never should have come here!" he roared as a glowing ball of light crystallized in his hand and shot toward Jasper.

The ball expanded rapidly as it flew across the room, exploding from the size of a small orange to a basketball and straight on to a wrecking ball. Jasper threw himself to the side, skin sizzling in pain as the orb brushed past him, and tore through the wall like it was paper. Naklāti, who'd been in the direct path of the orb, had fared worse, and as he bounced back to his feet, Jasper knew he had to get her out of there fast.

"Yo," he called out to the man, allowing Soul Sear to form on the tip of his fingers, "Anyone ever told you you sound like a Skyrim bandit?"

The man's face flushed in confusion, but as the orbs streamed from Jasper's hand, he quickly crystallized a blue wall of ice around himself and the still-paralyzed woman standing beside him.

But Jasper hadn't been aiming for the mage. Instead, he'd fired the orbs directly toward the floor at the base of Naklāti's bed. A quick cast of Circle of Forgiveness washed away the burns scarring her lower body as the floor collapsed, dropping her and the bed down to the lower floor. There, at least she isn't in the way of our spells now.

The other mage was quick to take advantage of the opening Jasper had given him, though. Dropping his ice shield, he flung an icy spear straight at him. Jasper tried to dodge, but in the cramped quarters of the tavern room, there was neither time nor space to do so. The icy spear punched through his chest, missing his heart by fractions of an inch, as it pinned him to the wall.

Unfortunately for the man, it wasn't Jasper he should have been worried about. With Naklāti safely out of the way, the Ophanim finally joined the fight, bursting through the tavern wall like a medieval Kool-Aid Man. The mage barely raised his hands in time, thick ice blunting the Ophan's claws just enough to stop him from being shredded as the creature struck him in the chest. He still went flying, though, knocking his paralyzed friend aside like a bowling ball before crashing into the corner of the room.

Jasper cursed as the friend dropped into the room below, where Naklāti was, and, yelling at the Ophan to keep the man busy, pried himself off the wall and jumped down after her. A quick cast of Circle of Forgiveness was not enough to heal the massive damage the mage's ice spike had done to him, but he didn't have the chance to prep another cast. The female mage, freed now from the hand's paralyzing dance, met his leap with an orb of pure light that slammed him into the ground.

Already mid-air, there was only one way he could dodge, and Jasper chose to meet the orb head-on. His body churned in a tight swirl as the metallic wings of Seraph's Burst enveloped him and, with a sudden burst of speed, he exploded straight toward the orb. Waves of pain racked his body as he punched through the heart of the star, his fire immunity no match for the pure light of the heavens, but the pain was worth it as he slammed into the mage on the other side, caught wholly unprepared.

Child of Fury. He wrapped the mage in a bear hug as the flames spread across his body, and a great cloud of steam rapidly enveloped them as the ice she conjured melted as fast as she could cast it. He held on tighter, confident in his ability to subdue her, and then he heard Naklāti's pained cry.

With a curse, he released his hold on the mage, realizing that while the fires of Child of Fury wouldn't hurt the soon-to-be empress, that wouldn't matter if the hyper-heated steam boiled her alive. I've got to get her out of here, he thought, as he cast Circle of Forgiveness on her for a second time, too distracted to notice the orb of light coming his way.

When he came to a second later, the pain he'd been experiencing was nearly gone - mostly because all his nerve endings had been burnt out entirely. He barely felt it as the mage put her foot on his chest, grinding her heel into the still somewhat open hole her partner's ice spear had created, and sneered down at him. "All you had to do was stay down, but since you couldn't manage that, I'll guess I'll just put you down."

Stolen story; please report.

Jasper fought desperately to wrangle his essence into a spell as a long shard of ice formed in her palm, but she was a faster caster than he. She raised her hand to strike, but bewilderment flooded her face as a pale, glowing blade blossomed between her breasts.

He blinked, in his abject state just as confused as she was, but his savior became clear as the sword slid up, bisecting the woman's upper torso to reveal a very weary Naklāti. Chains dangled from both of her wrists, still attached to broken remnants of the bed's pillars, as she cleaned her sword off on the mage's white robes.

"You've got to heal yourself, Yas̆peh. Qas̆pu-Rabîlī is still in the fight."

Pain flooded back into his body as he complied, his nerves voicing their silenced complaints as their pathways regrew, but gritting his teeth, he lurched to his feet. "Where?"

He needn't have asked. The entire backside of the tavern had been blown completely off, and in the courtyard aside, he saw the Ophanim and the other mage locked in battle. His summon was looking worse for the wear, with one of his burning eyes mangled beyond recognition, and its left arm hanging limply at its side, but the mage was not looking much better.

His formerly pristine robes were so stained by mud and blood you could barely guess their original color, and the mage tilted heavily to the side as he fought to maintain an icy shield above his head, his missing right leg replaced by a hastily summoned ice construct.

"Stay here, I've got this," Jasper ordered, casting Circle again to finish healing the wounds in his chest.

"I think I've proved I can help-" she protested.

"And I wouldn't have needed your help if I didn't have to hold back," he fired back angrily, though his anger dissolved into guilt as he caught the look in her face. "Sorry, it's just that most of my best spells will hurt you just as much as him. I've got this," he repeated.

"If you're sure…" she replied dubiously.

Jasper didn't stick around to argue; even those few seconds had been wasted as he saw the mage transform his icy shield into a spiked maul that he hammered into the Ophanim, taking out the second of its three eyes. Damn it.

Shadowy wings formed around him as he blurred into the courtyard. There was no point in casting Punishing Hand, as the mage had proved able to shake it off, but he cast Fiery Shackles at the man, hoping it would hold him for at least a few seconds, and followed it up with Breath of Bas̆mu.

Aggravated by the burning manacles that clamped around his ankles, the battered mage didn't notice the dark mist that formed around him until his skin began to peel. Then he tried to run, but though his icy pegleg might have been enough to hold him upright, it wasn't made for speed. The mage faceplanted in the poisoned cloud, and as he hit the ground, the shield around him flickered.

The icy shell exploded in a white cloud as the Ophanim hammered its one good arm into it and, without regard for the poison that ate at its flesh, plunged its claws into the man's chest. It should have been lights out, but the mage was made of sterner stuff. Hoar frost whitened the Ophanim's ebony arm as the mage, in a final last-ditch effort, froze the creature in place

He didn't see Jasper until it was too late, his final screams cut off as Jasper engulfed him in a torrent of white flame.

Afraid that the mage would somehow survive again, it was only when the nascent throb in his head reached a fever-pitch too sharp to ignore that Jasper finally cut off the flames, sinking to his knees as essence-deprivation neared. He waved a weary hand as the Ophanim turned to him with a questioning look, and looked away as it began its feast on the corpse.

"You alright there, lad?" S̆ams̆ādur limped out of the ruined shell of the tavern, leaning heavily against his axe as he supported a broken leg, with Naklāti beside him.

With a sigh, Jasper mustered the strength to stand, swaying as a wave of dizziness from essence deprivation washed over him, and offered a half-hearted grin. "Never been better. You should really try these mages' skin-rejuvenation therapy. It's like I got a whole new skin."

Though his comment only drew a puzzled look from the durgu, who hadn't seen most of the fight, it elicited a snort from Naklāti. Her amusement was replaced by a look of distress, though, as she caught sight of the Ophanim feasting on the mage's body. "Oh, oh Qas̆pu…"

"Uh," glancing behind him, Jasper realized what she was objecting to, and quickly offered to call him off, but the lady shook her head.

"No, your creature has earned its reward, but Qas̆pu deserved better than that."

"Sounds like you knew him. Were they friends of yours?" Jasper asked, remembering that they hadn't done much to hurt her. If anything, he thought with a touch of guilt, his spells had done considerably more damage to her than they had.

"Maybe once," she replied sadly, "And I imagine they still thought of me as a friend, but our paths had long since diverged. I assume you've already figured out their loyalists?"

"House Nūrilī partisans?" Jasper replied, fairly confidently.

"Aye. Like many nobles of the north, we all spent time in House Nūrilī's court in exile," she explained. "But I saw what they could not; though the current scion is a pleasant enough man, he's deeply unsuited for the throne. If the Empire is to survive right now, it needs a warrior, not a man too interested in painting and riding to bother learning to use a sword. Needless to say, they did not take the news of my engagement well," she smiled grimly.

While Jasper had more questions, the conversation was cut short as S̆ams̆ādur clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder. "Is it just my imagination, or is the mist fading?" He asked, his question punctuated by a familiar scream.