They came out of the fire. Three mages dressed in black desert robes marked with golden runes that blazed as they held their hand aloft, keeping the hungry flames at bay. A half dozen men clustered around them, sheltering in the flickering magical shields that stood between them and immolation. Other figures, merely dark silhouettes against the flames, too far to be protected by the hasty wards, fell to the floor as the fire burned away their flesh and cracked their bones. Calliope lifted both her hands, but before she could speak the armsmen clustered around their masters saw the two foreigners and lifted their carven teak crossbows. Neil dived sideways as a trio of crossbow bolts scythed through the air, clicking off the tile covered column behind them. Calliope let out a cry of pain and stumbled back in a flash of red falling back into the pool with a splash.

“Calliope!” Neil shouted, but there was no time to do anything other than take cover. Clear of the flames the mages let their shields fall and began to chant. Bolts of energy flew through the large arabesque doorway, blasting fragments of mosaic from the walls, as the thief scrambled back looking for cover and a weapon. With a war cry the armsmen threw aside their crossbows and rushed through the door, pulling evil looking scimitars from their belt. The water in the pool began to boil furiously as though a volcano were erupting beneath its formerly calm waters. The frothing water rose in a column bearing Calliope in the center of a column of roiling water, both arms held wide. A red stain twisted and coiled around her left arm where the first missile had struck, blood slowly diffusing like a drop of paint on a pool. Another crossbow bolt flashed, but the quarrel struck the water and slowed before it could reach the witch, sinking away and out of sight. Calliope’s lips moved but the word was lost in the sound of the churning torrent that bore her upwards. A column of living water lashed upwards like a great tentacle and then smashed down, swatting one of the armsmen into a wall so hard that the crack of his spine breaking was audible even over the near deafening surge of the now animated pool. 

“Get the book!” Calliope’s voice boomed as two beams of golden light lanced from the enemy mages into the watery barrier that encased her naked body. Great gouts of steam blew out from the points of impact without any visible effect on the sorceress within. A second great column of water sprouted from the pool, now less than half its original depth and they lashed out in tandem. One of the mages lifted a shield of shimmering light and the water cracked and boiled away as it struck, the second wasn’t so lucky, taking the force of the blow smashing him from his feet and back into the fiery conflagration beyond. His robes burst into brilliant copper green flames as the fire took him. With incredible strength of will the wizard managed to stagger to the doorway, falling across the threshold with a blackened charred hand reaching towards the water that had killed him.

“It is in the fire!” Neil shouted as he snatched up a scimitar from one of the fallen armsmen, the weapon twisted into a snake in his hands and turned to strike. The thief swung it like a whip, cracking one of the survivors across the face before letting go. The sword clattered to the ground, a simple weapon again. Clearly the Seven Princes took no chances of their weapons being turned against them. Blashphemous chants from the two surviving wizards sent twin lances of force hammering into Calliope. The water around her exploded into droplets at the first and the second sent her sailing out of the pool to crash into one of the mosaic covered walls in a spray of brightly coloured tile. Staggering to her feet she shouted a spell, fallen pieces of ceramic knitting themselves into a rainbow hued shield that deflected the next two lances of force up into the glass roof, blowing it apart in a rain of fragments.  The surviving armsmen, well trained in fighting wizards, rushed forward to menace her, but with a flick of Calliope’s wrist the falling glass became a whirlwind, whistling down in a storm around her attackers. All three of the survivors came apart in a spray of blood and winking white bone. Blasts of arcane fire stabbed through the red mist, setting it a flame in a low order explosion which shook the diaphragm of everyone in the room. Calliope caught both blasts on her mosaic shield, though the second one shattered it to sand. 

Sensing victory, both enemy mages were stalking forward, one of them twisting his hand in a calling gesture that gathered shadows into something humanoid. Snarling in defiance Calliope made a ripping gesture, and the surviving mosaic shattered, as the glass depictions of a pair of tritons pulled themselves free and launched themselves at the two enemy wizards. One was blasted into colored ceramic shards as the shadow thing cleaved it in two with a sword made of inky darkness, the second one buried its trident into the belly of its target, lifting the screaming wizard overhead and tossing him into the pool on streamers of his own entrails. The shadow demon flowed forward cutting down with its blade and driving the triton back. With liquid speed it knocked the trident aside and bisected the mosaic construct in two with a single mighty blow before turning its dark fathomless eyes on Calliope. On the verge of succumbing to spell burn, Calliope readied her next spell, but before she could speak the shadow thing exploded into motes of twinkling darkness and then dissipated like wisps of smoke on the wind. The mage took a staggering step forward, bright arterial blood jetting from his severed neck. He clapped both his hands on the great wound and then fell to the floor. Neil stood behind him, naked having lost his towel, with a bloody shard of ceramic in his hand. He tossed the fragment onto the dead mage and stood backlit by the flames.

“Great,” he managed, surveying the ruin of the once beautiful bath house, “now we will never get our deposit back.”