[B]Kristoph[/B]

Kristoph's thoughts were halted when he heard the familiar sound of arrows flying, and the sickening thunk of them hitting their marks. As he thought, two guards were felled by arrows, and suddenly he could hear someone barking orders on the other side of the gate. It seemed the invasion was starting now, and that meant Kristoph would be given no time to persuade the mercenary leader to accept his aid. This meant he couldn't perform to his full potential, as he doubted many of the mercenaries would follow any orders he would have to give. So instead he was just going to, as was the saying, lead by example.

Ignoring the impending threat of mages burning the gate open, Kristoph instead hastily looked around for anything useful. He spotted a nearby barrel, a quick investigation revealing it to be full of black powder used for making mines. An almost sadistic smirk lit up Kristoph's face as he replaced the barrel's lid, only to tip it over and give a good roll with his boot, sending it tumbling across the ground and resting against the wall... right next to the gate. If those bastards wanted to burn their way in, then they would find that doing so would have rather... explosive consequences. Offering no explanation to anyone who might have been watching him, Kristoph readied his own Fire tome, already making his decision to fight fire with fire. As soon as the gates began to fall, Kristoph thew his fire spell, the ball of flame flying to it's target and colliding with the barrel a mere split second after the gates were down and the first of the bandits had stepped through. [I]Time for a rude awakening, Vinsenian scum![/I]

The first sound of battle was that of a powder keg explosion. The initial blast almost certainly dealing a swift death to the idiots who volunteered to charge through first. But that wasn't the only damage Kristoph's attack had done. The keg was positioned by the wall, and as such a small chunk of it was destroyed in the blast, acting as rather big pieces of shrapnel with only one direction for the blast to direct them: [i]outward toward whoever was standing on the other side of that section of the wall.[/i] In other words, the first half dozen or so bandits who breached the town wall were effectively dead men walking. All from a single fire spell. Not bad for what amounted to the first attack of the battle.

---

[B]Simon[/B]

As he spoke with his new acquaintance, Simon's cheerful expression was immediately melted away by the sound of an explosion from outside, "They must be attacking!" he exclaimed, hurriedly getting out of his chair and making a rush for the door. Once outside, he easily found the source of the explosion. The gate had been felled and a chunk of the wall was blown to bits, but he immediately saw bandit corpses as opposed to the mercenary ones he had feared there would be. This was actually a reassurance for him, for he knew that this could only be work of this father. Of course, that didn't stop the invasion as more bandits simply rushed through in place of their unfortunate comrades. It was time to return to battle, and so Simon threw off his cloak, revealing himself for the handsome myrmidon he was, and clutched the hilt of his iron sword as he slowly, but gracefully unsheathed it.