Vincent's ears popped as the dome of energy around them dissipated, bringing the smell of smoke and blood to the relief force he had brought to Seytan Village.

All around were signs of devastation, buildings ablaze, bloodied streets, vendor stalls overturned and in disarray. Vincent looked around the square, cobbled stone that appeared to have been sheared flat on top. Likely from the young mages attempt at teleportation, she had accidentally taken a bit off the top of the cobbled stone in her effort to evacuate everyone.

Vincent attempted to suck in a breath, but found that though he could feel his lungs were expanding or contracting, he was sucking down barely any air.

Vincent closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, to get used to the reduced lung capacity, when he felt a small figure bump into his side. He looked over, and down, at penny, who had just hip checked him. She offered a potion as black as the night sky, complete with tiny stars in one hand, shaking it for him to take.

“Penny, no, I'll be huff okay, I can only take so many huff in a day. Need huff to wait until I really need it.”

Penny frowned at him, then said something that came through muffled. Vincent tried to get his ears to pop, but it was more of a gradual shift that finally brought her voice into an audible range.

“... No good to us dead, so take the goddamn potion!” Penny said, shoving the two vials into his hands. He recognized the blue one as a standard restorative for overuse of magic, the black one must be Penny's new spatial specific restorative. Vincent grabbed the two potions with the tingling fingers of his right hand and stowed them in his belt pouch, earning him another vicious look from Penny.

Vincent turned his most shit eating grin at Penny before looking away, his eyes scanning the structures around him. The nobles he had brought with him were already spreading out to cover the approaches to the town square. His gaze focused on a relatively untouched building, a pottery shop of some kind, which, most importantly for him, had a flat roof. He focused on it, and pulled.

Out of the corner of his eye, just before he blinked away, Penny's eyes widened as her expression grew even more furious. “Oh no do NOT...” Vincent muttered “Blink” under his breath and he was gone, missing the rest of Penny's sentence.

From up above he could see more of the city, and the devastation was becoming more apparent. They weren't trying to take the city, they were sacking it for supplies. In the distance he could see several enemy soldiers running back out through the gates, laden with loot. The ones he could see weren't in any kind of combat formation, they did not expect any more resistance.

Vincent's fingers tingled with numbness, and his vision swam, whether with backlash or anger he couldn't tell, as his eyes traveled over the corpses of the village's defenders on the wars, flanking the stream of enemy soldiers fleeing with their loot.

Vincent tightened his grip on his bow as his gaze fell on the corpses littering the streets in from the gate, civilians all, splayed out on their front, away from the gate, cut down as they ran. Focusing his will on the space in front of his eyes, he uttered the word “Lens” and watched as his vision zoomed in on the looters

He narrowed his focus to one of the soldiers moving to the gate, waddling under the weight of a chest strapped to his back. Veins of multicolored light crept from the edges of Vincent's vision towards the man, until finally a sickly green tendril reached the man and latched on, drawing taught.

A foul taste covered Vincent's tongue, followed quickly by a corresponding scent that would have made him gag if he had not long since grown used to it.

Vincent's chosen target bent over and gagged, dropping his loot to the ground as he fell on all fours, vomiting out a viscous green gas. Vincent ignored the black creeping in on his vision, between the additional blink spell and the lens spell the backlash was starting to get to him. He fingered the potions in his pouch before deciding against it for now, and drew an arrow from the quiver on his hip.

He knocked the arrow, and looked through the still lensed air in front of him, sighting in on the man who was still gagging on the ground. Once more he focused in, this time on the arrow, a similarly colored vein crossed his vision and wrapped around it, coiling about the shaft like a serpent.

Vincent inhaled deeply, exhaled, then inhaled again, holding his breath while drawing back the bowstring, aligning the shaft with his far off target, who was now being tended to by three of his compatriots, one of whom inhaled the green smog and fell to his knees like the man he was trying to help, gagging and vomiting.

Vincent loosened his grip on the bow, letting the tension of the draw hold it to his hand, and released.

The shaft arced through the air, trailing green tracers of energy, before embedding itself in the back of his chosen target.

The interaction between the green aura around the arrow and the one infecting the man was immediate. The shaft lodged itself into his spine, causing him to arch back and scream, seconds before he detonated.

A grotesque thump could be heard all the way to Vincent's raised position. Green tinged gore covered the avenue in front of the gate, from it rose a green-black miasma. All the enemy soldiers who had been thrown to the ground by the blast began spasming and retching on the ground, as the twinned curses Vincent had thrown interacted with each other violently, each fighting for supremacy, and in so doing tore apart every potential host they infected.

Vincent spat the awful taste from his mouth and looked down to the square, most of the nobles had formed small groups and were beginning to patrol the town, creating an expanding perimeter. He watched as one group, armed with rapier's in one hand and with engraved gauntlet's on the other, engaged a unit of soldiers that outnumbered them five to one. The soldiers to their credit immediately dropped the loot they were carrying and formed up into an acceptable shield wall formation, sword and shield up front, pikes and spears in back, and began attempting to stab at the group of nobles.

This immediately turned badly for them. The lead noble, a thickly built young man with short blonde hair, immediately snapped his rapier around and neatly cut the heads off of the seven spears that were harrying him, while his noble partner to his left made a throwing motion with his offhand, which shattered the shield of two of the men in the shield wall and sent them flying back into the comrades behind them.

“Huh, the Delacroix boys are finally shaping up, it seems” Vincent said to himself. The three brothers and him had a rocky history, but they at least appeared to be up to their duties as nobles, even improving on their father's sword and magic fencing technique.

Vincent's eyes flicked away from the Delacroix brothers, seeing they had the situation well in hand, and scanned for someone he might be able to help. His eyes came across Baron Vardfort, who was actually very close to Vincent's own perch, having apparently charged forward to get to grips to the enemy quickly. He was now surrounded by more than two dozen enemy soldiers, with a mix of sword and spear with shields.

The Baron charged forward into a section of the enemy soldiers, and managed to knock two off their feet, but as he did so the others on his flanks closed in and struck at him. All of the strikes glanced off his armor, but one came very close to the join of plating at the Baron's armpit. The baron, to his credit, immediately jumped back and parried the most dangerous of the spear strikes with the haft of his maul, but it allowed the men he had managed to regain their feet and position surrounding the Baron.

Vincent knocked an arrow, letting another coil of power wrap around it, this one a muddy black and brown. He drew it back, ignoring the tingling feeling in his limbs, and did his best to steady his breathing.

The Baron attempted another assault into the enemy ranks, once again the spearmen attempted to find a chink in his armor, but this time Vincent's arrow found it's mark in the back of one of the chief assailants. As the arrow embedded itself in his back, the muddy energy from the arrow leapt to the man's halberd, then the spear next to it, again and again till more than half of the wooden haft's were covered in it.

In less than a second the metal heads of the weapons snapped off the hafts of the now rotted through wood, the remainder of the weapons quickly turning to mulched wood in their hands. Without the spears stabbing into him from behind, the Baron laid into his chosen targets, quickly dispatching the soldiers in front of him variously by slamming them into, and in one case through, the walls of a nearby building, and the remainder with crushing finishing blows as they fell to the ground. The rest of the soldiers began fleeing from him towards the gate.

The baron looked around himself and saw the arrow sticking up from the spine of Vincent's victim, and looked up and around for the young prince. His eyes finally caught Vincent's form and he waved at him, shouting something unintelligible. Vincent grinned to himself and waved back.

That was when the quarrel took him in the back.

For a moment there was nothing but pain, and then he was tumbling down the side of the building, his shoulder scraped a gutter and sent him spinning into spinning to the ground.

Vincent eyes blinked open, he had blacked out for a moment, he thought, he couldn't remember hitting the ground. He lay on his chest for a few moments, trying to remember how to breathe. When he finally did manage to suck in a breath... he felt like he was still not getting any air. Panicking, he reached for the belt pouch at his side, scrambling for the vials there. He felt shattered shards of one of the vials, but the other was intact. He pulled it out and drank it back, as his vision tunneled and eventually blacked out.

He felt his stomach clench as the potion took effect, and he quickly retched out the blackened concoction onto the ground, and gasped in a lungful of air.

Vincent stayed on his hands and knees gulping down air, waiting for his vision to clear, when he felt a foot on his back push him back flat to the ground, the pain from the wound in his back sent waves of pain through him.

“Looks like we got ourselves a noble boys! The commander is going to be ecstatic, drinks all around!” Vincent heard the man with his foot on his back jeer.

“Hold on LT... Those markings on his armor, I think...” A different voice sounded from off to the side. “What? You memorize these fancy ass noble's clothes Jer? How can you tell em apart, they all just different flavors of peacock.” A different voice joined in. “Maybe he's hoping he can tell apart which ones are worth the effort of capturin' and which we should just knife.” a fourth voice added.

“Guys... I think that's one of the princes!” The second voice, identified as 'Jer' spoke.

Vincent tried to turn his head to get a look at his assailants, but found a boot quickly placed on his head, forcing him to the ground with only the sight of a nearby wall in his view.

“Well then, I think maybe we should bring him straight to the General. We'll probably get way more than a couple drinks for this. Jer! Bind his hands, don't want him pulling any of that magic shit on us.” Vincent felt arms start to twist his hands behind him. He struggled against them but with his position they easily overpowered him, and began to wrap a rope around his hands.

Vincent snarled and tried to squirm his way out, when all of a sudden the wall in front of him exploded towards him, and the massive form of Baron Vardfort burst through, his maul swinging wide and connecting with the man on top of Vincent with a mighty thud.

The instant Vincent felt the weight on his back leave pushed himself up and got his feet under him, or tried, as the excruciating pain in his back stopped him before he could get more than a single knee underneath him.

“That's a mighty big hole in you boy, you gonna make it?” Baron Vardfort said as he moved to stand over Vincent. Vincent looked up and around himself, making out the crushed and broken form of the man who had been standing on him off to the side. The remainder of the group who had been planning to take him captive drew their weapons.

“I should be able to heal it, if I can get a moment... Doesn't look like they're going to give us one though.” Vincent replied, already marshaling his strength and reaching for the healing magic to repair the damage the bolt, still stuck in his back next to his spine, had caused.

Baron Vardfort snorted at this. “Don't worry boy, I'll give you the time you need.” And with that the Baron leapt towards the group, forcing them to move back and away from where Vincent kneeled. At first it looked like the Baron would take them all out all on his own, as he crushed two in his initial charge, the three remaining backing off... right up until another squad of soldiers came around the corner, and immediately moved to engage the Baron, forcing him back until he was once more standing over Vincent.

“Please tell me you are almost finished Prince.” The Baron said, no longer willing to give ground to his assailants, he was parrying the probing blows of the enemy spearmen with the haft of his maul. A swordsman moved in to engage him up close, shield up, to which the Baron immediately brought his Mail down, splintering the shield and crushing the man's leg from thigh to shin. The man's screams caused the rest of the enemy soldiers to back off.

“Not even close.” Vincent replied through gritted teeth, as he felt the bolt working it's way loose of his flesh. Every time one of the barbed flanges hit his spine it sent waves of nausea and pain through him.

“Then I am afraid this may be it, your highness. I will ensure they pay for our blood in kind!” The baron leapt forward and slammed the maul into a spearman's collarbone, crushing his shoulder down into his ribcage, but the man's partner managed to get the tip of his spear up under the Baron's left shoulder, and withdrew it covered in blood.

The Baron backed once again to stand over Vincent, though now panting, and with blood running down his side. Vincent readied himself for what would come next.