Vex, at least, seemed to have been ready for something of the sorts. As a ranger, an agility-based class, he was well equipped to dodge an unexpected attack. Ducking down and letting the impromptu weapon sear past where his skull had a second ago been, Vex tensed, then followed up. He crashed into Quil’s stomach in a tackle, throwing the two of them into the floor.

Quil hit hard, the goblin woman slamming into stone hard enough to crack it. Aylin’s eyes widened at the brutality of the response, but Quil only seemed dazed. High-level adventurers, Aylin had to remind herself. Even their casuals attacks could break stone.

Vex rolled over and stood, leaving a stunned goblin woman beneath him. “Quil,” he said. “Good to see you. Bit rude to treat your rescuer that way, but whatever.”

Quil groaned in response.

“Get up,” Vex said. “Any idea how long till back-up’s on the way?”

“Yuv’s team is still in the city,” Zef replied, sparing an amused look for his winded teammate. “So pretty quick.” He shook his head. “Seriously, how are you here, Vex? And what’s the plan? We’re not trying to cut our way out of the city, are we? Since it doesn’t seem like subtlety is the plan.”

“You won’t believe me till you see it, so there’s not much point in repeating myself,” Vex said. “We’ve got a dragon helping us. Anyway, let’s worry about getting everyone out.” He tugged Quil up by the hand, and the dizzied woman finally seemed to be orienting herself. Vex got to work cutting away her bindings, as he had with Zef.

“Vex,” she finally said. “How are you—it doesn’t matter. How many are here?”

“It’s me, Banr, and Rukni.”

Aylin wasn’t surprised she and Granite weren’t included in the list. They were mostly spectators to this event.

“That’s it?”

“Not enough for you?”

“Where’s Banr?”

“Collecting the others, if I had to guess.” With comical timing, an enormous clang echoed through the hallway. It sounded like someone crashing through a metal gate. “He’s probably more efficient than me,” Vex added dryly. “Bet he’s found them already.”

“And who are these two?” Quil asked, eying Aylin and Granite.

“Don’t worry about it,” Vex said, apparently truly not wanting to repeat himself about having a dragon patron. “They’re allies.”

Quil accepted that. She locked eyes to Zef. “We’ll need to find Drun.”

Zef hesitated, but nodded.

“Drun?” Vex asked.

“An orc,” Quil said. “He was helping us in the dungeon. Long story.”

“Ah,” Vex said. “I was wondering when that would come into play.”

“Sorry?”

“Gritzn mentioned an orc.”

“Gritzn’s here?”

“She’s with the dragon.”

“What dragon?” Zef asked, exasperated.

Quil’s bindings broke, and Vex didn’t waste a moment before he was out into the prison hallways. The rest of the team followed after him.

Down the dark, dingy underground hallway, Banr, Rukni, and three others were gathered—a thick metal door was mangled, which they’d forced their way through, the source of the noise from earlier. One of the newcomers was an orc. It seemed Quil’s other teammates had already given the message to the other half of the rescue party, and they’d collected him.

The orc was far and away taller than anyone besides Granite, somewhere around six and a half feet, at a guess. He didn’t look like what Aylin would have expected, though, being slimmer than what came to mind when she thought ‘orc’. He was still wiry and with thick muscles—certainly larger than even Banr’s comparatively small frame—but Aylin had always imagined orc warriors to be giant slabs of meat, walking brick walls of muscle. Though maybe he wasn’t a warrior, and instead some kind of healer or mage?

She didn’t know much about this mysterious new character. Even Vex and the others were bewildered at how an orc had somehow joined Quil’s team. While orc territory wasn’t a staggering distance from the Red Plains, even sharing a northern border, they weren’t close to the Bonecrackers, either, and the two lands were split by a dangerous desert.

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Nobody wasted time making introductions. They were still on a time limit. Though there would be questions about the orc later, for now, Vex just nodded at Banr when he saw them. “We’ve got everyone?”

“Seems so.”

“The fun part, then,” Vex said. “Get ready for a fight.”

Aylin signaled to Sable that they were ascending through the prison and back to the surface. Her mistress, in turn, relayed that forces had gathered outside the prison’s exits, and that they were definitely in for a scuffle. They had made quick work of breaking out their prisoners, but Bragghaven had organized a response just as quickly.

More than the mundane gathering of guards surrounding the prison, though, there was even worse news.

“There’s a party of classed ready for us,” Aylin said. “Lady Sable has identified them. Probably the ones you were talking about. And fifty or so unclassed soldiers joining them.”

“What’s the plan?” Banr asked, unperturbed. They were up in the lobby now, hesitating before leaving out into open air.

Aylin relayed the question and waited for Sable’s response.

[I’ll handle it,] she finally replied. [Be ready to grab on.]

The party posted up against various windows and peeked through. They would exit when Lady Sable ‘handled it’, whatever that meant. Aylin would admit to some interest how she planned to. She hadn’t actually seen much of her mistress’s capabilities. While she’d been present for her and the Wither Witch’s practice sessions, Aylin hadn’t seen Sable really try to do anything, especially not ‘handle’ a full team of classed adventurers, and a contingent of regular soldiers.

She had a somewhat good view of the incoming spectacle through the prison’s window. Aylin wasn’t worried about retaliation: the crowd of soldiers were already scattering, which Aylin was fairly certain meant Sable’s descent had begun. While the soldiers had maybe been willing to stand against the invading classed, a dragon had broken their morale instantly.

The group of enemy classed were made of sterner stuff, though, and didn’t flee like the regular soldiers. The adventurers weren’t fully geared up as they would normally be, thanks to the rush to get to the prison, but were rather in a motley collection of whatever they’d been wearing or could throw on in time. Still, all they really needed were their classes and weapons, which the group of five goblin warriors held at the ready as Sable approached.

The ranger of the group was already pelting arrows upward into the air. Another held a staff at the ready, a large arcane inscription taking shape. The tank of the group had his shield raised, and a protective aura radiated from him, forming a dome around his party. Each of the team’s classed were bracing for Sable’s arrival, and Aylin watched, fascinated, for the result. Lady Sable against a team of Bragghaven’s elite classed. Would they stand a chance? How one-sided would this be?

“What are we waiting for?” Zef asked, who, at a guess, still didn’t fully believe in the ‘dragon backup’ part, and couldn’t see Sable through the restrictive view-port of the prison window. “What’s going on?”

Aylin didn’t see Sable arrive, but she saw the streak of white-blue ice as it flew toward the group, heralding the arrival of her first spell. Aylin had been the relay between Sable and the Wither Witch, so she knew the impromptu names of her spells. [Frostfire Grasp], she called this one, a spell intended to lock down enemy opponents. A root, a standard spell in most mage kits.

Except the scale of the ability was like nothing Aylin had seen before. Slamming into the bulwark energy shield the tank had created for his team, the spell activated, and the party of five simply disappeared. Three rings of gigantic walls of ice erupted all around them, frostfire swallowing their party whole, unhindered by the flimsy defenses of the strongest classed the city could muster.

The strength of the ability, the sheer density and size of the burning ice crystals that appeared, boggled even Aylin’s mind. It spread out through a good portion of the space outside the prison, entombing the opposition in its entirety.

The rest of the group inside the prison were equally stunned. Though, battle-hardened veterans, they didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the spell. With the enemy party swallowed by Lady Sable’s [Frostfire Grasp], it was time they left. They rushed out, scanning the sky for their exit vehicle.

She could hear—and even feel shock waves, to an extent—thrashing coming from inside the frostfire prison, with ice splintering in gigantic cracks as the imprisoned enemies struggled to break free with either physical might or retaliatory spells. Though they’d been made to look like children, they were still high level classed, and putting up a good fight in breaking out.

Aylin didn’t envy their circumstances. Those frostfire crystals were excruciating to be around—and Aylin hadn’t even ever directly touched them. Level fifteen classed or not, being suffocated in a twenty-foot-tall cage of the burning-hot material had to be excruciating.

Aylin wasn’t sure if they’d live, though she thought they would. Cracking ice suggested they hadn’t died instantly by the attack, but if they did make it out, they weren’t going to love their recovery period. Burns were pretty awful, much less ones of the potency an empowered dragon mage could produce.

There was some trepidation in the various members of the escape party when it came to being held by Lady Sable’s claws, but fortunately, lacking better options and with the encouragement of their allies, they allowed themselves to be scooped up.

With a party of eleven in hand, Lady Sable took off, leaving a gigantic prison of frostfire beneath her, smoldering and setting the nearby surroundings on fire. They met no resistance; the instant, dominant first spell Lady Sable had opened with had crushed any thoughts of the lesser soldiers to fight back. They’d seen their best adventuring squad nearly erased in a moment. Plus, the escape happened faster than they could account for: Aylin’s team had been ready to flee with perfect telepathic coordination.

A bit dizzy at the sequence of events, Aylin watched the city of Bragghaven shrink beneath them.

A single spell to incapacitate a full high-level party. Mind-boggling. The Red Plains stood even less of a chance against her mistress than she’d expected. This campaign was going to be a slaughter.