In her dream Jocasta lay by the crystal blue waters of the river that flowed through her home town. In those days she hadn’t needed to know it as anything more complicated than ‘the river’ as if it were the only one she would ever encounter. The warm summer breezed wafted the swaying reeds against her nose, tickling her and making her want to sneeze. Then again. Then a third time. Abruptly the river leaped up and poured over her chest! 

Jocasta sat up with a scream and instinctively swatted at her dragon fly enchantment. The damned thing had just dumped a pitcher of water over her. The moment of fuzzy disorientation passed and she heard other screams from outside. She sprang to her feet and threw open the shutters of woven cane just as a toxin began to peel. Outside in the street she saw dark shapes leaping and capering amidst the shadows.

“Larios!” she yelled and a pale green orb the size of a small child blazed into being, bathing the street in light. Dark black creatures, so dark they glistened an unhealthy looking purple in the sorcerous light, turned to glare at her. They were hideous, with distended bloated looking faces and long hinged jaws filled with chisel like teeth. They held rusty kopesh and bows made from some kind of animal bone. Beren tackled her around the waist a moment before three arrows flew through the window to embed themselves in a tapestry.

“What is happening,” she demanded, though it was obviously an attack. Beren snatched up his staff and wrapped a loin cloth around his waist.

“Stay here,” he commanded then turned and strode out into the street. He obviously wasn’t being serious Jocasta reasoned and popped her head up to look. The black… tar fiends, she decided were swarming. Here and there a door opened and the inhabitant of the house was met with a flurry of stabbing swords and moaning arrows.

“Well don’t just hover there,” she told her dragonflies, and the pair of enchanted earrings zoomed away, darting and harassing the enemy. Jocasta wove her hands in an intricate pattern and spoke several more words. A palm tree whirled down, its fronds spinning like blades, decapitating one of the creatures, toppling it in a spurt of dark ichor. There were so many of them, at least a score were visible from her window and clearly many more were abroad. Flames began to sputter from several buildings, catching quickly as palm frond thatch blazed, sending towers of sparks into the sky. Several of the creatures ran to the door below and began to pound on it but Beren had clearly locked it when he went out into the street. Jocasta plucked a scroll from the pouch that lay against the wall and read the words aloud, a sheet of frost flared into existence, freezing the attackers like statues in a film of ice.

The villagers were awake now, they ran forward with scimitars and axes, hacking into the tar fiends. The creatures fought back, not with blood mad frenzy, but with deliberate violence that made Jocasta worry for Beren. There was a shattering crash from the temple at the end of the street as one of the tar fiends burst out of the door, a stone tablet under one arm. He scampered away, up over the palisade and away into the desert night. Discipline seemed to collapse as the creatures began to follow their own individual instinct, unfortunately that seemed to be to kill everything in sight. A sudden surge of magic warned her and Jocasta threw up a shield of pale green light a second before the front of the inn exploded. She tumbled out of the ruined window and into the street, her fall broken by a wagon loaded with dates. She lay amongst the sticky fruit, still naked as she had woken. A half a dozen tar fiends surged towards her. Before she could rize a lantern flew across the street and hit the lead tar fiend in the face. There was a crash of breaking glass and a whumpf of combusting oil as the lantern shattered. The two dragonflies flittered out of the explosion, not even looking back. Jocasta staggered to her feet.

“Imperitieo sar Mardin!” she cried and spun her hands in opposing circles. The dates rose up like a circling tornado and spattered into the eyes and faces of the on rushing monsters. She picked up the spear from the one the dragonflies had brained with the lantern and cast it over hand threw the belly of one of the now candied monsters. The creature who had cast the spell stepped from the shadows and waved a staff topped with several bleached skulls. The dates rained down onto the dusty street as the spell withered and died. The spell caster, a shaman of some kind perhaps, was shorter than his fellows, gnarled with age and covered with scars barely visible on his glossy black skin. He leveled his staff and barked a word in his guttural tongue. A skull wrought of purple fire flew from the tip of his staff towards her. Jocasta squeaked in panic and threw up one of her research spells meant to trap magical essences. The skull clipped it, then careened off into a wagon filled with woven rugs, they burst into sickly smelling smoke and began to burn. Jocasta reversed her palms and cried out a spell, she whipped her hands to the left and there was a sudden crack. A wagon leaped forward and crushed the shaman against an adobe wall with a sickening splat. The tar fiends near her chittered at each other and then charged. Jocasta yelled another spell and the ground beneath their feet became mud four feet deep, they plunged into the much struggling to keep their footing, it smelled pungently of dates. She twisted her hand and the mud became a sticky candy, trapping them hopelessly.

“Beren!” she yelled, ducking another flight of arrows and darting down a side street, “Beren!”