Summer Garden

Azrael

Azrael screamed out an order as the hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end, but it was too late.

The first two lines of charging cavalry vanished like smoke as they crashed into the invisible barrier, and he flinched. There was a moment of chaos as the cavalry split, trying to regroup, whilst the mages waiting by the city walls continued their barrage of stone and fire. Horses and men screamed as they vanished into the earth in shockingly loud explosions of dust and debris.

He swung down from his horse, walking forward through the lines slowly, as the soldiers parted for him. The enemy hurled attacks in his direction, but they vanished before they stuck him. He was a paladin, a holy knight, consecrated to the service of a god, in this case, a goddess. As such, divine power flowed through him, tearing apart the heretical magical attacks.

He stood, looking at the barrier that no one could see, and traced his sword blade against the edge, watching the way it deconstructed, and how the energy flowed from the sword and into the barrier. A self-reinforcing spell. One of the most basic and effective of wards. However, this kind of ward wasn't commonly used to defend much more than a person because of how much magic was needed to maintain it. There were only a few possibilities that explained how it could be in use here.

There might be a circle of mages, somewhere in the town, maintaining a vigil, passing the harness for the magic from one to another. If that was the case then all that was needed was a series of attacks against the barrier that would exhaust their combined magic. The trebuchets would be erected in a couple hours, and would serve that purpose effectively.

However, he knew Vastras. She depended upon no one but herself.

No... She'd found a way to store enough magic to maintain this barrier herself. This was not some mage projecting a spell against their forces, it was an automated defence. The spell was fixed, rather than dynamic. This kind of sealing of spells usually made them stronger, but it also made them degrade quicker, draining whatever stored magic was linked against them. It also made them vulnerable, by creating a fixed point in the spell. A part of the spell that looked harder to break, but was in fact more fragile.

He stepped back from the barrier, and sheathed his damaged sword. He flexed his fingers in their metal gauntlets, and then snapped his hands together with an earth-shattering crash of metal. The ground rolled out around him in ever direction, crashing against the barrier and highlighting the shape of the matrix that held the spell together. He saw the origin clearly now. A fixed point, a sigil of protection, highlighted at the root of the spell.

The paladin leaned down onto one knee, and closed his eyes and raised his hands. He felt the blessing of the goddess flow through him, a violent river of lava surfing through his soul and crashing against the sigil. He felt his hair standing on end, static flickering between each fibre. The sigil seemed to be growing stronger as the enormous flow of power crashed into the surface. This was what he was waiting for, what he was expecting.

The paladin felt his raised arms beginning to tremble, the muscles cramping and tearing as the magic tore at his physical shell, trying to release his soul and drag him into the endless river of life. The protection sigil cracked suddenly, spidering out quickly.

Azrael fell backwards onto the ground, sweating heavily inside his armour. He knew that some of the liquid rolling off him was blood, rather than just salt water. That was the price he paid.

The man stood up shakily, feeling drained as the blessing of the goddess subsided, granting him his life. He raised a hand, and gestured. The cavalry charged past him in a flurry, and he snagged the saddle as his own horse flew past, landing atop it in a single fluid movement. He glared through the narrow slit in his visor as he saw the mages begin to panic as they realised their first protection was gone.