The plan was that there was no plan. The Laughing Gales might’ve been brutes, but they were also smart; you don’t keep a grip on a place like Narkato as tightly as they have for as long as they have without being smart. They had eyes on every perch, ears in every wall, and the drawn-out deliberations of planning would’ve reached the enemy far before any such plan could be acted on. Therefor, the only logical course of action was a sudden, surprise raid, a planless plan so insanely brazen that it just might work. Krey, Emilie, and Livia weren’t exactly convinced, but Pippy had cheered her full support at the idea. Besides, what choice did they have?

In the morning, close to midday, they assembled in the centre of town. There was no talking, no coordination, just the unanimous understanding of what they were about to do. Such chaos would be both an asset and a great risk, and whatever the subordinates of the Iltzin Hanran might be doing, Phyrn’s chosen planned on sticking together and surviving the battle, regardless of is outcome for the gangs. However, right after Tecal gave the signal to move out, another faction revealed itself. They, too, had gathered this morning, and too were planning a spontaneous attack… but not on the Laughing Gales or the Iltzin Hanran specifically. This was an attack on the town of Narkato itself.

When men clad in garnet red, bearing sideswords of pallite, began filling the empty space left behind by Tecal’s fighters, Tecal and her conscripted adventurers found themselves surrounded. “What is the meaning of this?!” she bellowed.

“Naught light is cast by the minds of men…” Krey muttered.

Livia gave him a look, not quite hearing what he said. Krey met her eyes, but the two of them soon had their focus back on the full coterie of garnet inquisitors that had come out of nowhere.

The inquisitors didn’t answer Tecal’s question, they just attacked. Tecal dispatched the entire first wave herself just by drawing her sword, swinging it over her head and blowing them away with a burst of wind magic. Livia and Krey were soon set upon, and fought back with Emilie bolstering them from the back with her green magic prayers. A brief look around revealed that Pippy, as soon as the fighting had started, had vanished.

“I hate to say I told you so, Livia,” Krey projected over the sounds of battle. “But I told you so! Hook, line, and sinker!”

Livia had no words. She was currently too occupied with the blades being swung at her, and just like Krey had said, a handful of the inquisitors bore staffs instead of swords, and were performing strange dances. Their movements, their energy, was being focused into their catalysts and cast out as bursts of painful, forceful aura.

“We must kill those red mages!” Krey cried. “They’re a bigger threat than any swordsman!”

“Leave it to me!” Tecal hollered back, leaping into the air and taking wingless flight, kept aloft by magic alone. Magical flight was not a common ability, but Tecal’s progenitors were the masters of the skies, so it came to her more naturally than it did all others. However, she didn’t get far; she was shot down by the red mages, and she fell into the crowd of inquisitors. Injured, surrounded, injured, and now getting trampled? It’ll take more than this to stop me, Tecal thought. She spun on the spot, cleaving all the inquisitors around her in half in the blink of an eye, and she began carving her way back to the others. The other inquisitors didn’t flee at the sight of her savage display; they just pressed her that much harder. They jabbed and cut and bludgeoned her with every step she took, but those steps never faltered… that was, at least, until she was back under Emilie’s emboldening bubble of influence. She allowed herself a moment to breathe, hunched over with one hand on her knee and the other leaning on her enormous sword… and then she noticed a new shadow falling over her.

She looked up to see Gretta, the hierophant, looming over her. “Do not fret, young dragon; I shall not sit idly by while my parish is violated by these vile interlopers.” She stepped past Tecal and took to the side of Livia and Krey, who could only have been happier to see her if they’d been as happy as Emilie. Gretta said nothing, just giving them a smile… and then getting to work. She raised a gigantic leg and stomped her foot down, a quake erupting forward and destabilising the ground beneath the feet of their attackers.

She then moved behind Emilie, and tenderly grasped the smaller hierophant’s shoulders with her mighty hands, joining her in prayer. With the combined power of two hierophants, Tecal found herself back in the fight, and Livia and Krey were finally able to start pushing back against the red tide that threatened to swallow them whole. Even now, though, they were being pushed closer and closer together, driven into a tighter and tighter bunch… losing inch by inch of what little ground they’d started with, and there was no end in sight of the inquisitors.

“HEY!” a familiar voice yelled, and everyone - even the inquisitors - looked up to where it had come from. “I don’t know who you guys are, but STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!” it was Pippy Vieira, Battlecaster Extraordinaire! She leapt down into the fray, her impact with the ground exploding with a deep crimson light. She began swinging her mace, sending shockwaves of torrid scarlet magic this way and that, tearing the horde of inquisitors to ribbons as if they were made of foil. She made quick work of the red mages; they all fired orbs at her, but she blocked them all with Gloom, the buckler absorbing the attacks and taking on a vivid red glow. She then made a throwing motion with that arm, and the energy was sent back at the red mages in the form of a huge disk of red aura, shredding the red mages all at once with their own attacks. Her display was far from over; red magic might have been her core area of study, but it was far from her only trick.

She swung her mace upward, and a creeping trail of fire ran under the feet of several inquisitors, instantly setting them ablaze. She ducked under a horizontal slash and slammed Doom into the ground, compelling the air around the foolish slasher to turn to ice… as well as the moisture inside the poor bastard, shattering his entire body from within. She spun one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on her heel and thrust Doom at another group of targets, lightning arcing from the lamp-shaped, solid gold head of the mace and sending yet another bunch of inquisitors spasming to the ground. She leapt up right as a particularly plucky group of foes rushed her, twirled in the air, and sent a squall of wind bursting downward, sending them careening into their friends like cows in a tornado.

She alternated her more powerful, more focused red magic spells with quicker, simpler black magic, keeping the inquisitors on their toes, keeping her fighting style as unpredictable as it was astonishing to behold. One inquisitor - one of higher rank, judging by his headdress adorned with white feathers - thrust his blade at her. She raised Gloom, and it began glowing… then, right as the tip of the blade impacted, instead of deflecting off it, a rift opened on its circular surface, the sword passing clean through it… and emerging from another rift right behind the inquisitor, causing him to stab himself in the back of his own head.

By the time the teenage terror was done ripping and tearing, what little surviving membership of the coterie remained were driven like children from the nightmare, screaming and wailing as they ran from the violence. Pippy was caked in blood, her entire body heaving with every laboured breath, her arms and legs shaking.

Krey, Livia, Emilie, Gretta, and Tecal were left stunned. They could do nothing but stare at her in silence, and the young girl eventually manged to raise her head and look at them too, giving them a trembling smile. She raised a hand and gave them a thumb’s up. “All in a day’s work… for the Battlecaster Extraordinaire!” then she collapsed, and her friends rushed over to her. Tecal, however, took advantage of the situation. As Narkato’s citizens emerged from the buildings to see if the chaos outside had finally ended, they were greeted with a sight that would later become legend in this town: Tecal Iltzin, the Aevischild, standing bloodied at the centre of a massacre. She raised Quetzalcoatl-Egi into the air with one hand, and addressed the frightened crowd.

“Citizens of Narkato, look upon me with reverence and love, for you have just been saved! For some time now have I worked to earn your respect, your trust, and today I give you my latest, greatest offering! I do this because I know you are strong, and I want that strength at my side. I want that strength to make Berodyl a better realm for all!”

Pippy was brought back into consciousness just in time to see the Aevischild smile for the first time.

“And we can start on that road… by destroying the Laughing Gales! Too long have they held you down and taken what is yours! Join me and my hanran, now, in storming their gates and uprooting the weeds that they are in one fell swoop! Come now, quickly! Arm yourselves! There are plenty of swords to choose from on the ground now.” She pointed her greatsword at Livia and the others. “However, leave their money in their pockets! That shall be payment for our friends here. I could not have won this day if not for them, and for that, they shall be duly rewarded!”

As her smile faded, giving way to her usual statue-like neutrality, her display of generosity was applauded and cheered. The people of Narkato, spurred on now by the legendary feat they had just witnessed, took up the arms that the Garnet Inquisition’s coterie had just left in the wake of their defeat, and alongside Tecal’s subordinates did they charge hundreds strong in the direction the Aevischild pointed them, toward the headquarters of the Laughing Gales. A small few of Iltzin Hanran men remained to gather the loot off the corpses that would be given to Phyrn’s chosen.

Tecal knelt down beside Pippy and spoke to the group. “As promised, your purses will be filled to bursting in thanks for your assistance. Never let it be said that I do not look after my friends, nor that I break my word.”

“You’ve certainly convinced us,” Emilie acknowledged.

Tecal nodded to each of them in turn, and they all nodded back… and then she was off. “I am satisfied that you have fulfilled our agreement; given new circumstances, your assistance will no longer be necessary in dealing with the Laughing Gales. May Phyrn guide your steps.”