: Prompting Needed_

Fools, Everyone.

The ache in Quinn's left leg turned into a sharp cramp as it finally protested bearing his weight. He winced and fell back on his haunches as he grasped the offending muscle with his hands, trying to press on it through the boiled leather armor. As he massaged the cramp out and felt the flow of blood return to his foot, he chuckled to himself. Beside him, Astriv joined in the laugh. Quinn glanced towards the pale, skinny man, a sharp and sour frown coloring his stubbled face. "What are you laughing at, clown?"

Astriv's eyes – odd off-white orbs with deep black pupils – turned from the battlefield below to look at Quinn from the side of his head until his head slowly followed suit. A faint twinkling of bells accompanied the movement as his branched hat swung in the motion. The jester's bright white skin was shaded by the belled cap. Quinn had demanded the fool wear it as much keep the light from giving their position away as it was to keep the smell of his oily scalp from pooling around them. As they kept their eyes locked, Astriv's lips parted with a pop and he let his tongue fall out much like a dog's. He began to pant.

"Creep," Quin growled. He rolled back onto his knees and fumbled for the optic scryer he had dropped on the cragged rocks beneath them. The thin metal tube held some sort of bent and shaped glass and crystal inserts which allowed anyone who looked through it the ability to see leagues away with astonishing clarity. Of course, the field of view was limited through the tube, but the definition of the objects spied upon with the device was impressive. He held the tube to one eye while he closed the other. Beside him, Astriv finished his panting and then audibly licked his lips. Then he smacked them. The damned joker seemed to be close enough to kiss Quinn's ear. Quinn jumped and turned to glare at Astriv again. The jester's berry-stained mouth was stretched in a thin grin that looked sharp enough to kill. Quinn shivered. "Fall back, clown," he said through gritted teeth and barely parted lips. "You are here through our Grace's command. But I have no qualms with watching you fall to your death due to a slip of the toe and a lack of observation." The jester's smile rounded a bit as his features slackened and then the mad man sat back and hugged his own legs.

"Ebron the wise, wise enough to send the man with knowledge to win the war," Astriv said. As always, his voice was reedy and musically tilted, like a flute that was being played by a breeze. "And of course, a man in tow foolish enough to listen to the first," he said quickly. He slid a petulant glance towards Quinn, then back to the carnage below. "Hark!" His bony hand, white as his face and sheathed by his dirt-encrusted tunic, stretched out to stab the air. The fabric under the grime used to be brightly colored with reds and yellows, all swirled to give the illusion of a fiery wll of vines. Now it resembled a barren patch of soil. One long finger pointed to the grounds below with a brown, chipped nail. "The golem."

"What?!" Quinn slammed the optic scryer to his eye towards where the fool was pointing. Indeed, there was now a shimmering cloud of purple mist hovering above the dull earth that had been conjured by one of the duke's court wizards. A massive creature made from stone lumbered out of the nimbus with swinging arms of forged earth and legs fashioned of rough stone. Dust fell from the golem's form as it shook off the hole from which it had been ripped.

This was bad.

"This is bad," he breathed aloud, as if saying his thought would somehow grant him protection. He dropped the scryer and fumbled in his side pouch for the paper tube he had been given. He pointed the domed tip to the sky and then ripped out the small cord on the other end. A rush of incensed smoke dumped over them both as the powders in the tube ignited. A moment later, the domed end exploded with a stream of orange and green light that streaked towards the heavens with a banshee's scream. The time for secrecy was over. King Ebron's special form of arbitration was now required on the field of war.

He dropped the smoking tube with a soft, hollow clatter and replaced the scryer to his eye to sweep it over the collection of peaks and points along the ridge to his right. At one point, Astriv purposefully placed his horrid face in front of the lens and made cooing noises a dove. With his free hand, Quinn shoved the jester flat on his back.

There!

In the distance, sprouting from a hidden hole in a spire of sharp smokey quartz, an answering flare shot upwards and then another further away... then another, that one even closer to the castle where Ebron watched from his loft. Finally, after four more signals were lit, an answering boom split the sky with a blinding white crack of lightning that originated from the palace beyond the cliffs. There was an eerie stillness that gripped the combatants below as everyone stared up at the snapping and twisting bolt of magic as it lanced towards them. As the bolt reached directly overhead, the skies bent. As if a hand from the Blight God himself pressed from the heavens, the clouds and blue sky above curved inwards, accentuating the lightning bolt as it began to drip towards the ground below. Then, with an ear-collapsing 'whoomph' and a slap of air that made Quinn's joint slacken, the bolt loosened from the skies and split the earth. The world became a wall of light that Quinn could not shut out. Even through his closed eyelids, he caught the impression of his hands' bones as they covered his face.

A second passed and the magic was gone, leaving him with the fear he had been struck as blind as a stone. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but a dull purple that covered everything. An annoying ringing in his ears blocked anything else from his senses. He was blind and deaf. Gods. Then, something horrible and incessant began to burrow in his brain. Astriv's manic laughter was snaking in, filling the air around him. Quinn grimaced. Were he deaf, indeed, that would be a blessing.

Save for the mad man's twittering, the world beyond their roost seemed still. There was no roaring of warriors and creatures clawing at each other. No explosions buffeted the below land. No weapons clanged against armor. Slowly, the violet haze of the wicked bolt's afterimage cleared from Quinn's eyes as he rolled over and drug himself to the cliff's edge. A smell of burnt earth and charred flesh – not unlike pork, he thought with a heave of his stomach – washed over his face as he stared down into a yawning crater of smoking black.

Beside Quinn, much too close to his ear for comfort, the fool whispered, "The King did say, didn't he? He waaaarned them! For if they would attempt the sacred arts in a battle of well-intent, he would show his hand in force." Astriv cackled. Quinn said nothing He could hear. He could see. But he was now rendered mute.

What could he possibly say in the face of such power?

Where had Ebron gained this magnitude of horrible, exacting rage?