Mark took a punch to the face and staggered, blinking in shock at the petite brunette glaring at him. He had the good sense to step backwards when she pulled back for another go at him, allowing one of the security team to get between them. He rubbed his cheek, feeling so out of his depths it wasn’t even funny. Still, even as his feet tried to trip him and his heart broke for all the people around him, Mark’s fingers dipped into the front pocket of his mage’s kit and drew out another of the spell bombs they had prepared earlier and threw it.

The concussive magical blast did no permanent damage, but it definitely knocked people silly, ass over teakettle. His bombs weren’t as strong as Lucinda’s and mostly dazed those hit by it, leaving them to be peaceably detained by the security team. Or, well, that was the theory.

In practice, mass combat was a mess and Mark had no idea what was happening anymore.

There were almost a hundred people gathered for the ritual. Mark couldn’t afford to pull his punches. But he was pretty sure that at least a chunk of these people hadn’t been comfortable with the bloodletting and stabbing going up at the altar. Not that they’d left or objected, but Mark could only assume it would be hard to speak up against a miracle-worker wielding a knife and surrounded by loyal indoctrinated followers. He wasn’t exactly thrilled to be standing in the middle of those followers himself and he was much more damage resistant than a regular human.

Yet, there was nowhere else Mark could be right now, except here to help. One of the first parts of shaman training was on one’s duties to the pack and the responsibilities that came with having gifts. Those responsibilities included things like “make sure you know how to control your own powers so you aren’t a general hazard,” which was a concurrently early lesson, but Mark never forgot that being a shaman in a pack meant living for others first. A shaman was culturally not allowed to be selfish with their powers unless they were ready to leave the packs entirely, basically a self exile, which was a quick way to go crazy and come to their senses about the whole thing.

Mark never minded though. He liked that he could do something worthwhile with his life. As soon as his shaman gifts manifested, his path in life had been clear. He knew what he would study and what his job would be and it was something large and complex enough to keep him learning his whole life through. The current situation certainly highlighted that fact. Mark was learning how much he had left to learn rapidly, which wasn’t as helpful as one might think.

Lucinda was all composed and proper, giving orders and trying to round up their currently disorganized opposition. Mark was trying not to trip over his own feet and laying down AoE debuffs to assist in battlefield control. It said something that his gaming experience was where he got most of his current tactics from. That seemed wrong.

He’d buffed himself, his shaman’s mantle raised to protect him and in case he needed to seriously attack someone. Mark really hoped he didn’t end up against one of the death mages himself. A shiver ran through him. He remembered how it had felt to resist the blood compulsion and that had come from a small scratch in a physical fight that he would never have escaped from on his own. Well, maybe. It was his quills that gave them the chance to disengage, but Mark was still far more suited to being a support caster at his current skill level, though his buffs meant he could match the average security team member even without their physical training. Mostly. He’d never had to keep track of so many moving bodies in close proximity before. This was terrible.

Magical signatures flared around the fight and Mark tried to tag the locations and actors in his mind. Frankie was familiar and easy to identify. He saw her spiritual wings spread wide. He wasn’t tall enough for this, damn it. He couldn’t see who she was fighting, though the power flare said it was one of the death mages.

The rest of the feeling of death magic was at the tree and there was no sorting that out from magical senses alone. The ritual gave off waves of dread mixed with an anger that Mark felt on a spiritual level. He wasn’t sure how anyone managed to not notice it, much less how anyone was managing to fight right up at the altar. He’d gotten enough glimpse through the fight to see Quinn engaging someone there, his pale thin appearance being very distinctive even across the distance and chaos.

The ritual wasn’t abating though and that worried Mark. He’d seen the altar and around it, Billy, Norris, and Riordan, all looking helpless to defend themselves. What was going to happen if Quinn didn’t manage to stop it in time? Mark wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not that other affinities carried fewer chances of unintentional side effects than spirit magic. The other affinities, especially those using formalized rituals or spells, tended to either have the effect fizzle or explode. Mark knew which one he was hoping for in this case.

A shout rose from the center where the cluster of death mages were and a wave of black magic radiated outward. No, it grew up inside the cultists like ink packets released in water. For a second, the normal people of the cult, alternatively terrified, confused, and fanatically determined, froze. And then they turned as one, their eyes clouded with shadow and their hearts filled with a berserker passion, and fell upon Mark and his packmates with the fervor of a horde of zombies.

Paul, the security team member closest to Mark, was tackled to the ground under the graceless assault of four or five bodies launching themselves at him. Hands grabbed at Mark’s sleeves as he backpedaled. He couldn’t use a concussive charm on that pile without hitting Paul too. And possibly himself at that range. Mark flared his mantle, spirit quills spreading wide, and spun. The motion jerked him free from the current mess of grasping hands and let him direct his quills towards the wave of mortal mayhem much in the manner that a Claymore is directed. The quills hit, stunning their targets. He prayed that the competing effects didn’t rattle their minds too badly.

Normal humans weren’t equipped to be on magical battlefields. They were akin to stepping naked into a gunfight. Never mind stopping the spells that required the equivalent of a bulletproof vest, they had little resistance to anything. Mark couldn’t say they had no resistance. Even normal humans had magic, though most people didn’t count it since those humans had no awareness of it or access to use it. Still, those proto-affinities sometimes provided resistances, as did various mental and emotional and even physical traits.

These cultists were largely women caught up in the Daughters of the Divine Feminine because they had suffered abuse of some sort or otherwise felt that they needed kinship to fight for their rights to be equal. Some of them were survivors forged in a terrible fire. Too many were still damaged from their experiences and from the exploitation of the cult that had theoretically saved them. Not to mention, the cult leaders had plenty of time to lay the groundwork for nasty death magic compulsions. Mark was pretty darned sure this was a triggered effect that had already been cast.

Most of these people weren’t fighters, but they outnumbered everyone on Marks’ side at something like four or five to one, minus some that they had previously disabled. And that was if he included everyone on all the teams. His quills cleared an area, only for it to be rapidly filled again. Nearby, Lucinda was yelling for them to fall back and regroup. The flow of bodies pushed them back, threatening to bury them. From under the nearby pile of quilled bodies, a snarl sounded and Paul burst forth from the tangle of stunned people in his bobcat form, narrowly avoiding being trampled.

The stunned cultists weren’t as lucky. Under the effect of that berserker spell, the mob stepped on and over the bodies of those who fell with no concern at all, doing more real damage to their own people than Mark’s team had inflicted thus far. Wails of pain merged with howls of fury and roars of outrage. Mark could barely manage to keep his feet, resorting to using his boosted strength to bodily fling cultists back at their own people. He tried not to look when the people he threw, people who might be guilty of nothing more than being manipulated by the wrong people at the wrong time, fell to the ground and disappeared under the surging horde.

Something collided with his shoulder hard. Mark staggered, twisting and grabbing onto people to stay upright. He’d lost track of his team. Everywhere he looked appeared to just be magic-maddened women, their faces distorted in a rapturous agony. Hands grabbed him. He yanked his arm free with his strength, only to end up in the arms of more people who clung to him, dragging him down faster than he could fling them away. Mark’s knees faltered under the weight and force of the tugging, shoving bodies.

He stumbled again and went down, one knee upon the dirt, the other upon warm flesh. He tried to shift his weight and that of those burying him off of that person, but they didn’t care. New hands joined in from the woman he knelt on, holding him down. Crushing him to the earth.

Mark went down to the ground, unable to rise under this relentless onslaught. He curled into himself, protecting his head and other particularly squishy bits as he was pummeled with feet and hands and knees and elbows in a mash of humanity. When he stopped fighting to rise, the top layer of cultists peeled away from the pile in search of further prey, but Mark could hardly tell. He fought for space to breathe, pushing and shoving back against the forces trying to crush him. He wondered if the other people on the ground with him, lacking a shifter’s resilience, were dead or dying. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see. Not wanting to know.

Mark was lost, trapped, frightened. And then the mass of bodies shifted and hands began to drag him away.