[center][h1]Phoebe Parnallos Palation[/h1][/center]


Insight and a piercing gaze calmly watched his transformation.

The flow of magic energy, the stance and the presence of that man changed. Was he getting serious? Was he, now that he was facing danger  making his proper “switch”? Some people were hardly all that good at properly flipping to their roles. It was the mark of a immature magus or someone with an incomplete preparations if you asked the oracle.

There was a great difference between someone who was magecraft, and someone who wielded magecraft, someone who held power and someone who was a magus.

He played at being a destroyer, at being a sun.


[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksK1dudxDw]But the sun was already shining, wasn't it?
[/url]

As he wove his next stage, his next spell and “changed” himself Phoebe had already been preparing another arrow.

Hunting scourging ribbons carrying the notion of calamity and plague flew forth. They split and danced through the sky, streaks that lit up the clouds in the night and flew in search. It was a worthy follow up to the beam that burned through him earlier, but it was not the end of the onslaught. In the wake of Apollos whispers of vengeance and justice, the Furies followed. 

The second volley was prepared as the eyebeam shot forth.

The walls before Phoebe rose and shifted in response to the attack. Ilion met destroyer, blocking off the shine of magic energy from the bow that continued to bare  its fangs at the charger.

The enemy was wielding no small amount of magic energy, but it could only output so much at a time especially without a longer incantation, magic circles or further mystic codes to amplify the energy. Using channels inferior to Phoebe’s own circuits and lesser than Phoebe’s access to mana, in  a battle of raw power in their spells he wouldn’t be able to compete. The enemy healed well yet they had still spent vitality and were tormented by pain.

The spirits were being used as coin, yet the purse he held had already been pillaged in part. Yes, that opening was perhaps crippling in a battle between great foes.

If the battle was an even field instead of assaulting a fortress, a temple, and if he had not suffered such losses immediately then perhaps it would have been more of a proper battle. But no injury could be shrugged off, and no magecraft came without cost. He might survive a second blast, but how much more could he restore himself? Twice? Thrice? Perhaps even four times, but how much of his coin would be spent? His stores of spirits exhausted?

It was clear that he was the challenger, a struggling underdog even as a new shine of red washed away the dustclouds that came from wall meeting blow. The magic energy had not been stopped, had not diminished and in fact only grew.

The offshoot of the wall half crumbled in the wake of the beam of ether, exposing the archer that was aiming down with a baleful glow. Blood for blood, red for red. As the streaking sunbeams continued to hound the man directed both by their own aiming and also the curse that more and more twisted his fate towards the inevitability of being smote for his transgressions as he approached, they were joined by cursed bolts of dark red. Screaming Erinyes flew forth in retaliation as a second volley, almost like a shotgun  blast aimed at his movement.

If the sunbeams that moved to blast his limbs apart and strike him with sickness were a grasping claw then this was a peerless spear aimed straight to impale and strike him down.