Calliope continued to dance, moving through partners as they came, keeping one eye on the door to the wine cellar and the other on the stairs up which Neil had moved. She hoped she hadn’t just sent him to a second death. The magical tool she had created was a potent one but Therman was renowned for his traps both magical and mundane. Could she really hope that she could triumph over him? That was the reason she had planned to kill him and steal the book from his heirs after all. Well they were committed now, all she could do was wait for Neil to return or an alarm to sound.

 

“May I have this dance my dear?” a deep basso voice enquired. Calliope turned to find herself staring at a portly man in quite the most remarkable outfit she had seen, even among a company so distinguished by garish extravagance. It was made of a checker board pattern of rich burgundy and cloth of gold. The gold was stitched with red silk thread and the red with gold in perfect counterpoint. Complex scenes of some mythological motif were woven through in waves that shimmered and seemed to move as the eye tried to follow them. Each seam was picked out with a ruby the size of a child’s tooth held in an intricate setting of woven gold and silver. A dark green half cloak was thrown over the man’s shoulders and his balding pate was set off by a head dress made up of a score of peacock feathers wrapped in gold filigree. Bejeweled rings dripped from his fingers and a great gold chain depending an onyx pendant hung around his neck. It was Magister Therman himself. Unable to think of anything to say, Calliope held out her hand with courtly propriety. The band struck up a lively roundel and they began to dance. Despite his weight and the elaborate costume, Therman was a remarkable dancer, moving with unexpected grace. Calliope whirled through the steps of the dance, the music growing faster and faster. One by one the less adventurous dancers stepped aside until only Calliope and Therman remained on the floor. The Magister moved impossibly fast, whirling and lifting the sorceress in time to the music before finally catching her around the waist and lowering her in the crescendo, back arched and hair hanging down towards the floor. The onlookers erupted in cheers and applause and Therman slowly lifted Calliope and bowed to the crowd before turning to her.

“You dance very well my dear. It is almost a shame I will have to kill you Calliope Black,” he said conversationally. Whether by some orators trick or some subtle magic, his word carried and the applause died by degrees until the only sounds were the grunts of passion from the bowers where the revelers were too drunk or too lost in their pleasure to notice. Calliope straightened.

 

“The,” she said, brushing a curl of hair out of her face. Therman arched an eyebrow in indulgent interest.

“Hmm?”

“Calliope ‘the’ Black,” she explained, taking a step back from the magus. Therman nodded.

“Has a better sound for the epitaph I suppose,” he agreed, “now do you intend to come quietly or shall I impose on you for a second dance?” As he spoke Therman shifted sideways, taking up a duelist’s stance. Quiet murmuring filled the room and armed footmen began to appear in the doorways. A woman in one of the bowers cried out in ecstasy. Calliope sighed and seemed to deflate, then flung up her arms. The brass wristlets exploded into their individual strands, shards of razor sharp metal flying towards the Magister. Therman didn’t even flinch. He flicked his left hand and scattered the blades away with a clatter while at the same time he lifted his right. Fire flashed from his outstretched fingers, meeting a counter spell from Calliope that deflected it into the floor in a spray of sparks.

 

“Oh bravo miss Black,” Therman mocked, then clapped both hands together. Calliope gasped as the stone floor seemed to liquefy beneath her. She leaped upwards, catching a branch of a tree as the stone flowed into hands that grasped for her with long ugly nails. Snarling a word, she hurled lightning at Therman who ignored her as completely as ever, his own counterspell stopping her working dead an arm’s length from his head. Screaming in frustration, Calliope raised both hands and crossed them with a savage twisting motion. The metal filigree in the elaborate gown tightened, ripping seams and tearing fabric. The priceless rubies fell to the floor like drops of crimson fire that sparkled and clinked. The feathers writhed as if alive and began to wrap around Therman’s neck, digging into the pudgy flesh. A flicker of annoyance crossed the Magister’s face, the first emotion other than smug superiority he had shown since the uneven duel had begun.

 

“You are becoming a bother Miss Black, do you have any idea how much this garment is worth?” he inquired, then flicked his wrist again. An unseen force hit the sorceress in the chest, driving the air from her lungs and sending her sprawling across the floor. The crowd retreated like the water before her and Therman saunted after her with lazy self assurance.

“I think we are about done here,” he declared as he stood over her. Calliope began to laugh, a high weird sound that set the teeth on edge. Therman kicked her in the head with his pointed boot, the tongue of it hanging loose from where her previous spell had ripped out the eyelets. Calliope continued to laugh, chocking slightly from the blow.

“Very well, what is so amusing witch?” Therman asked. Calliope pushed herself up onto all fours and then slowly lifted her head to face the Magister. Blood dripped from her split lip and made a long streak across the floor.

 

“Thou shalt invoke not blood or vitae, lest ye die,” she intoned, quoting the first line of the prohibition against blood magic. Therman’s superior grin just had time to take on a shocked look before Calliope shouted a word. Every paver that had been speckled with her blood exploded upwards in a shower of dust and flying chips of masonry. People began to scream as sharp shards of stone cut into them like bitter hail. Therman stepped back, done toying with his prey now, and lifted his own arms to finish the bussiness. Calliope shrieked an invocation and lightning crashed down from the faux sky above. Therman deflected the energy and the overspill struck two guests dead in smoking piles of salt. Several refreshment tables exploded, scattering burning fragments of table cloth into the air like enchanted confetti. Therman began his own chant, drawing back his hand as he conjured a spear of sepulchral blackness. With a shout he hurled it at Calliope’s heart, but even as he moved, one of the trees tore itself free of the ground and staggered into the path of the bolt. Grave dust and leaves exploded in a cloud and Calliope dove aside, rolling into the stunned crowd.

“Take her!” Therman screamed at his guards, his face contorted with rage and hatred. One of his apprentices stepped forward, weaving his hands and mumbling his own spell. Calliope snapped her fingers and a hundred champagne glasses shattered and flew into the air like sand on a drum head, then she slashed with her arm and the mass of razored glass came down like a whip, dropping the luckless apprentice in a shower of blood, gristle, and flayed bone. It was pandemonium now. People were screaming and trying to flee, others were trying to fight. Lightning struck from three different sources, in some cases striking those trying to help Therman. Guards rushed in towards Calliope, one nearly reached her before another of the now animate trees caught him by an arm and a leg and tore him in two, flinging the gory halves into the crowd before a ball of fire from Therman blasted it into flaming woodchips. Another apprentice conjured a rope of inky darkness, but just as he tried to snare the sorceress the trio of undead sex slaves burst from the bower behind him. All three were naked and one of them was slicked with blood from mouth to breasts, the binding that had been placed on her shattered by the titanic forces being unleashed. They pounced on the apprentice, ripping his neck open with their teeth and gouging at his stomach with their fingers. Crossbow bolts flashed past Calliope, one so close it plucked at the hem off her dress. She screamed a word of power and two knights and a damsel, who a moment ago had been a tiled fresco on the wall ripped there way free in showers of plaster dust. The knight cleaved the head of one of the crossbow men in two, and the damsel grabbed the other and hurled him at the wall which suddenly sported a fresco of a screaming crossbowman frozen in an aspect of terror. An armsman ran at Calliope with a billhook but a tree branch as thick as a mans leg swept down and caught the soldier across the chest, cracking ribs and launching him across the room into one of the columns, the snapping of his spine audible even over the incredible cacophony of destruction. Hoarfrost coated everything and weird ball lightning hovered and snapped from place to place. Dismal phantasms swept through the sky between the two wizards, locked in mental combat. The whole place stank of eviscerated bodies, burning blood, and the odd spicy scent of untrammeled magic. Men and women died as they trampled each other running for the doors, as the two mages hurled energy at each other. The glittering whip of shattered glass cracked over Therman’s head but he fended off the strike while he prepared his next spell, screaming in an infernal tongue.  A great roar sounded as a being of pure flame stepped up out of a glyph Therman had marked on the floor. It strode towards Calliope, the bodies it trod on flashing into steam and flame. Two of the animated trees grabbed for it, only to recoil as they two burned. Calliope stopped running and lifted both hands, screaming at the top of her lungs. The pavers she had ripped free flew into the air, coiling and whirling into the form of a great misshapen dragon of animate stone. It flapped its wings, showering the devastated ballroom with mortar dust before lunging for the fire elemental, great marble teeth grasping for its neck.

 

Calliope was sweating now. Literally sweating blood as she worked her spells. It covered her in a tacky film that mingled with the dust, she tasted it in the back of her throat as she screamed her arcana at her foe. Therman was worse for wear too. A great and mighty Magister he might be, but he hadn’t been prepared for the level of destruction that had been unleashed in his own home. The costume he wore was ragged and the peacock feathers were smoking where spell fire had singed them. Sweat rolled down his bald pate and blood ran from a pressure cut in his scalp where he had been caught by a piece of flying tree. He glared hatefully at her, casually obliterating one of the mosaics knights with a thunderous detonation which flung shards of brightly colored tile in all directions. His acolytes, wide eyed and terrified were trying to drag him away to safety. Hatred and balked pride turned his face a livid purple and he stretched out a hand. A vast bird of inky shadow flowed from his palm and streaked towards Calliope. She laughed at him, the same weird high pitched laugh she had uttered when the duel began a subjective lifetime before, then raised both her palms and ripped the stars from the faux sky. Destruction rained down across the ballroom. incandescent stars, balls of planar fire the size of watermelons fell indiscriminately. One struck the shadowy bird, breaking its back and driving it to the ruined floor. Other fell among the fleeing crowd, reducing great lords and noble ladies to blazing gobbets of flesh. Everything burned, smoked, or exploded, the floor itself shattered and fissured under the assault, even the great columns cracked, raining hundreds of pounds of dust and masonry down in an obscuring cloud. Burning leaves and flower petals fell like snow, covering corpses with rhymes of ash. Calliope staggered out of the ball room and up the first flight of stairs, just as Therman’s apprentices managed to hustle their master out of the side door of what was now a shattered charnel house. One of Therman’s guards was on his knees, gibbering madly from a phantasm that had been conjured. Calliope cut his throat with one of her knives and half staggered half crawled past his cooling corpse, watching with morbid fascination as blood ran down the steps in a series of crimson cataracts. She managed two step and then fell to her knees, vomiting blood across the front of her ruined dress. Her vision swam through blown pupils and blood dripped from her nose, eyes and fingernails.

 

“Though… shalt… invoke…” she mumbled and then fell forward onto her face, swimming in darkness.