Tenebrim had that ordinary helpless smile on his face as everyone around him burst into motion. It was a smile that reeked of the luxury of casual excess. The smile seemed to convey that this wasn’t his first choice or even his fault, what could he do? Despite the fact that he was casually standing shoulder to shoulder with another white mage… in the middle of a street where swords, axes, lances, arrows, and spells flew back and forth in a tumultuous push of bodies. There was a strange sensation that everyone around them that was desperately fighting was purposefully avoiding him for some inexplicable reason.

“My friend here is on loan from the Mordred. His name is…” Tenebrim turned toward the man in white robes. The man in white robes immediately looked exasperated even as Tenebrim scratched his head through the hood and gave another soft shrug. “Sorry? What was your name friend?”

The Mordred. Aidan thought grimly. He wasn’t sure who the hell ‘the’ Mordred was, but he filed it away under the same folder he used when thinking about Fanciful, the person he was going to destroy for slandering Amelia on the forums. Ah. Slandering… It was on the forums right? Perhaps it was just libel.

“...is my name! I already told you.”

Crap, Aidan had missed his name while he was being spacey. He looked at Tenebrim and gave him a sort of apologetic look. Tenebrim nodded sagely as if he knew exactly what Aidan’s problem was. The other guy just looked… like a fool.

“So you brought someone extra because you weren’t sure you could take me?” Aidan grinned. “How dare you think the two of you are my match.”

“I can kill you all by myself, I’m a grown-up,” Tenebrim smirked and raised his staff.

“We should take him to together Tenebrim…” the other man muttered.

“Now ROGER,” Tenebrim cast a knowing glance at Aidan. Aidan for his part nodded his head in gratitude. “...be a good boy and cast aura on me and then just keep everyone from jumping me while I kill the Empire’s dog.”

“Woof,” Aidan uttered with a remarkably wounded tone. He once again raised the Unfair Stick and got ready. He wasn’t entirely sure what Tenebrim’s specialty was. He was Khiafin’s second, of course, but that just meant that he killed a lot of people for fun. No, not killed them… Aidan felt his enthusiasm slowly start to fade. People weren't killed here in this land of sickening sweet make believe.

No… not … now… don’t…

Tenebrim seemed to sense the light dimming in his eyes and frowned. “[Amorphous Shot].” A blue globule formed near the end of his staff, a crooked thing with the skull of a dead crow on the top, and then swirled slightly in a circle as Tenebrim twirled the end of the casting implement before lobbing it at Aidan.

The small blue globule arced slowly through the air, easily avoidable. Aidan’s eyes dispassionately followed it as he took a step back. It seemed like it was some sort of variation on a water magic. Tenebrim had obviously gone down a distinctive water bending type of pat-

The small blue slime bounced like pudding against the pavements and sprung back into a the shape of a slime rather than becoming a puddle. The pavement hissed slightly where it had struck and continued to hiss as the slime moved toward Aidan. It pulsed blue for a meter around it and the surroundings began to hiss and dissolve. The slime was highly corrosive.

“That’s adorable…” Aidan laughed despite himself, noting that it even had little black pinpricks for eyes. He started to look up to tell Tenebrim it was the cutest opening move he had ever seen but then the slime bounced once, an entire meter, toward Aidan and pulsed again. Only a meter separated them now. The sound of hissing stone and burning air sounded again as the slime righted itself once more with a little Pyoh sound. Aidan began to back away cautiously, studying the little thing. It didn’t move fast but it was following him with relative certainty.

Despite his lack of interest in this battle so far he couldn’t help but notice it seemed fixated on him… Aidan idly glanced upward to check his status and frowned. There was a hawkeye outlined in red under his statuses.

Tenebrim had somehow marked him with a [Mage Mark]. It was a marker that one cast on an enemy that was undispellable. The duration was about half an hour at baseline. The distance that it could maintain connection about two kilometers. More concerning was Tenebrim hadn’t vocalized the cast.

“...profound Mage Mark huh?” Aidan was slightly interested, but as much as he tried to latch onto his curiosity he found his attention beginning to wane even more…

Focus...focus…

Tenebrim smiled and bowed. “I wasn’t just making niceties when I approached. It takes me a few tries. Kind of like trying to wiggle your toes when your feet are numb? [Multiply - Amorphous Shot].”

Aidan looked down and watched as the slime Pyod’d a few times as it split into four blobs. They separated and began to hop toward him. With the Mage Mark on him they would follow him around corners, buildings, through water… Given the acidic nature of their form they would even probably choose to phase through objects to get to him. Walls, fences, doors… What a pain in the ass.

“I prefer to be more direct myself,” Aidan began walking at a brisk pace backward and held out his staff. “[One]!” The final form of white lightning arced from the end of the staff toward Tenebrim with a speed and ferocity that few visual spells could muster. Many considered the lightning Aidan’s signature move, after all. [One Two]!”

-----------------------

Tenebrim to his credit did not panic as the staff was leveled at him. While he had obviously been content to wait and see what Aidan would do with his tiny, cute, deadly, and slow slime army Pyoying after him, it wasn’t like he hadn’t expected Aidan to take a shot at him. Still, a look of absolute horror appeared on his face as if he couldn’t believe Aidan was shooting lightning! He stumbled dramatically to the side and grabbed Roger’s shoulder, pulling the surprised man in front of him. An explosion of light occurred, but not before Aidan saw the astonished look on the white robed man’s face.

“What the hell are you doing?” He screeched. Tenebrim would have felt bad if he didn’t despise him so much. Or if he didn’t look so damned hilarious while he was smoking from the aftereffect of the spell. His face was even covered in ash. Tenebrim kept his face studiously blank in order to keep from laughing.

“Sorry, sorry… Aggh!” Tenebrim pulled Roger in front of him again, anticipating a second flash of lightning since Aidan had called out One twice. When nothing happened he peeked around his irate Roger meatshield and saw that Aidan had vanished around a building. It was easy to tell where he went because his cutey slimes were bouncing toward the edge of a wall and heading toward a side-alley off to the side. Not that it would be hard to see where Aidan went anyway.

Tenebrim glanced up to his minimap and saw the layout of streets nearby. A red dot was moving hurriedly down the side-alley. A disappointed expression crossed his bland face even as he patted his angry fellow mage on the shoulder. “There… there.”

Tenebrim wondered what the spell Aidan had cast was when he ran away. While it was annoying that Aidan ran, it wasn’t that unsurprising. People often ran rather than fight. Still, he had assumed that…

A red line caught his attention as it became more and more prolific in his vision. A tether attached to something in the sky. For a split second Tenebrim froze, envisioning the continental catastrophe class spell [Empowered Meteor Drop] that Aidan was singularly famous for dropping on Blutonsi being utilized to strike him in broad daylight in the middle of this crowded street. The memory of the way that it had blotted out the sun in the video…

A moment later he breathed a raspy sigh of relief, staring disdainfully upward as he realized it was just a regular meteor drop. It wasn’t empowered and it sure as hell wasn’t the size of a city. It made sense that Aidan couldn’t cast something so sinister so quickly anyway!

“Come, Roger, let’s head into this nice flower shop for a moment while we wait for the the famous Devil's nice meteor drop to impact the roof…” He pulled the man indoors, ignoring the sound of crashing noises and screams from the street as the meteor drop smashed into the roof and cascaded fire down the walls on either side of the building. He stared at his mini-map and pursed his lips, watching the red dot flitter through doorways and side-streets with a speed a wolf would have envied. The dot seemed to circle backward somewhat, not moving too far in any particular direction. It meant that Aidan was planning to fight them and wasn’t focused simply on escaping. Two kilometers was a long distance but it was doable if Tenebrim and Roger were slower than him.

Gradually he turned to look at Roger, his full attention focusing on the man for the first time. Maybe… Maybe Mordred had been right to send him this man after all? It would certainly be easier to utilize his specific skills than it would be to chase Aidan through the street.

Tenebrim grimaced!

Agggh! I just want to kill him! What’s more fun? Chasing him and having a firefight in the street for several hours or hunting him with this fool, RoGeR?

Sometimes life sucked.

Before he could choose either option or come up with more fun, third option, he went silent and looked out the open doorway. The screams and intensely excited fighting continued. Even now he was watching red and green names clash beyond the doorway. Still. Something was changing. A grim and ghostlike pallor was starting to descend onto the street from above. The light became muted and grey, filled with various shapes of blues. It was like watching a movie where the director was one of those weirdos that was in love with everything about blue and made it their business to throw every blue effect in they could possibly think of even if it wasn’t necessary and made no sense.

The people outside were either unaware of the minute change or too busy to do anything when the effect began to show itself. As it completed however there was a brief slowing of combat and action as everyone used the moment to disengage and study the phenomenon.

As if that weren’t weird enough, human shapes began to distort and take shape. A man in white robes, Aidan, was taking form every ten or so meters in various points on the street. He raised his staff threateningly! He scowled and pointed in obvious threat! It was… strange. For as formidable as the images of the man were, they weren’t always pointed in the right direction. Sure, some of the images of Aidan were pointing at people and scaring them to death. The many Aidans appeared like grim specters from old Christmas tales. There were other images, however, that were not pointed in the right direction. Several Aidans were pointed toward walls or pointing grimly toward empty spaces, windows, doors, and potted plants. They all seemed to be promising violence… to the inanimate objects, architecture, and vacant lots.

“An illusion?” Tenebrim frowned slightly. “No? A job… That’s… clever.”

“What job? It has to be an illusion doesn’t it?”

“Our passive resistances would already be trying to defeat an illusion,” Tenebrim countered. “Also, if it was an illusion spell it would just be the Rebellion that could see it. The Empire forces on the street would just wonder why everyone else had stopped and would be gleefully hacking through the Rebels because the illusion magic would be friendly to the Imperial forces.”

Roger stared dumbly at Tenebrim, astounded at the analytical and curious tone of the other man. For the first time, he seemed to be regarding Tenebrim with a modicum of respect.

“Then what’s the point?” Roger finally thought to ask.

Tenebrim nodded, noting that even the dumb Roger could ask a good question now and again. “Indeed. What is the point?” The images from the job weren’t hiding Aidan from Mage Eye. He could still follow the dot on his mini-map with ease. Furthermore, while it had shocked many people in the surrounding area and stilled the conflict momentarily that wouldn’t last. Even now Tenebrim could hear that the hesitation in the battle had ended and everyone was simply trying to kill each other once again. It wasn’t buying Aidan any sort of time advantage at all. Trying to show off?

“Come. I shall begin relaying coordinates. Please use your Aerial Strike abilities at the locations I give you.” Tenebrim couldn’t figure out the point of this move. If he couldn’t figure it out, maybe it was pointless? If it wasn’t pointless… better to start attacking Aidan immediately.

He would use Roger.

“[Multiply - Amorphous Shot].” He cast the spell again as it came off cool-down, taking a moment to check to see if it had gone off. He always checked, despite the fact it was a one hundred percent success rate and there was no reason to suspect it would ever fail. Seeing the number always made him feel good.

Now there were nine slimes doggedly eating through buildings and jumping around streets chasing Aidan in a straight line. He smiled. They weren’t fast but they had varying speeds. Eventually, the faster ones would get ahead and the slower ones would, obviously, fall behind. Aidan would have to start choosing then. If he started to circle to keep Tenebrim and Roger in range the slimes would soon be coming toward him from different locations in his surroundings. Tenebrim, of course, would naturally keep increasing the number of slimes. He could maintain up to one hundred twenty-six now. One slime made three, three made nine, and nine would make twenty-seven. It wouldn’t be but a few more casts before he reached his limit.

He wished he could control more. The army of Pyoh’ing slimes in his imagination often made him chuckle to himself. After he killed Aidan, he wondered if he could find someone with the Graphic Design Job to help him modify the look of the slimes to be a bit more… debonair?

“I’m ready.” Roger roughly gave a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming near them. Tenebrim thought that prudent himself, and gave a quick look over the street. The green names were starting to vastly outnumber the red names. No small wonder because of the Rebellion buff in this area.

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Local Rebellion Advantage: The City is Predominantly Imperial.

+ As the outnumbered faction in the city you will gain an advantage with average spellcasting and skill use.

+Due to a large number of Rebellion agents in close proximity, also gain a small advantage for holding an area!

-You are fighting an important member of the Empire! The person you are marking and contesting with has performed significant contributions to Empress Amelia’s reign and is considered General Class! You are slightly disadvantaged, but the rewards for victory will be doubled!

+The Empress Amelia of Elysium is currently not residing in Blutonsi. While the Imperial seat of power is away, the Rebellion will hold a significant advantage!

+The Empress Amelia of Elysium is currently not resting on her throne in Blutonsi. While the Imperial seat of power is vacant, the Imperial forces will not gain any significant home defense bonuses.

Currention Contribution Level for Tenebrim - 15

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“General Aidan, huh?” Tenebrim smirked and looked at his map. He brought up the display and showed the screen to Roger. Currently Aidan was at X:24.0, Y:23 and moving North. Tenebrim wasn’t entirely certain how Roger’s ability worked but Roger just grunted.

“The Mage Eye marker on your mini-map is enough. Just show that to me. Reporting coordinates is dumb since he’s moving anyway. I can just eyeball it…” True to his words Roger focused on the screen that Tenebrim was showing him. A vacant expression started to cross his face, like he was looking at more than the map all of a sudden. It was kind of creepy. Least his eyeballs didn’t go all white or something crazy, Tenebrim thought. Small favors.

“How long is this going to take?” Tenebrim asked.

“Got him. [Opening Salvo].” Roger raised his staff to the sky without looking away from the map. “[Calculate Future Response]. [Volley].”

Tenebrim looked up and his mouth formed a grim line at what he saw. He idly wondered if the sky being split open above them would be the cause of Aidan’s death. Would he see the wizard in person before Roger managed to kill him?

Tenebrim suddenly scowled. Would he get any of the contribution for killing him if he was just holding a map?