When the last of the prisoners had vanished into his ring, he began making his way back up the passage at a job. They would run out of oxygen quickly, so there was only one thing he could do next. Oliver ran back into the labs, passing two of the anonymous Moderates and Sindra before he found his target, Graves, who was reading a stack of papers incredibly quickly, using a spellform of some kind to levitate it in front of her and flip from page to page so fast that he had no idea how she was even absorbing it all.

"Graves, I need you to get into the ring, fire up the oxygen spell again," he said as he jogged up behind her, sweat dripping down into his eyes.

"What? Why? What are you doing?" she said, without looking away from the pages.

"I put the prisoners in the ring!" he said.

She glanced over, eyes wide. "You did what? The plan—"

Oliver cut her off. "They're going to die if you don't get in there and give them oxygen."

"So take them out," she said.

"I can't."

"Can't, or won't?"

She stared at him for a moment in disbelief, and he stared back unflinchingly into her eyes. There was nothing he was going to do other than have her get in the ring and provide them oxygen, no other option.

And she must have realized it, because with a sigh she said, "Fine. But any papers, research materials, memory stones or crystals you see, they go into the ring too, okay?"

Her role in the plot had ended in the labs and she would have gotten into the ring shortly anyway; it was only curiosity that had kept her out here.

He leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you," he whispered, even as she vanished into the ring. He reached out, touched the stack of papers as they began to fall to the ground and sent them into the ring after her.

Then he went to find Gideon, who was several paces away talking intently with their guide.

"Gideon, did you find the scientist?"

"Yes," said Gideon, "He was here alone doing research, just as Pembroke said he'd be."

"Pembroke?" Gideon wondered out loud. Then he looked at their guide, really looked at him. Was that an Earth name? Their guide looked back at him, confused.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Just… odd name," said Oliver.

"We're nearly ready to extract," Gideon said. "The next step is to get to the courtyard. We should be able to avoid the rest of the patrols if we take the side passage."

Oliver nodded, then turned to survey the room. Around them, the Moderates busied themselves in their work, collecting what they could and destroying what they could not of delicate research instruments, spell sigils, foreign looking markings on floors and ceilings, a series of enchanted doors.

—

They emerged into the open courtyard to realize that in the time they'd spent within the stone, windowless building dawn had come; the paving stones in the large wide open courtyard were glittering white, flecked with reflective dots of stone as Gideon, Sindra, Tiro, Oliver, Galen, Tallahassee and their guide stepped out.

They had a quick glance around in the shadow of the wall. The coast seemed clear. They looked to the guide, who nodded to them.

"I'll see you on the other side, my friends," he said. Gideon took off his ring and handed it to the guide.

The guide slipped it on and raised his hand, touched Tiro on the shoulder. Tiro summarily disappeared.

"Aha!" a voice suddenly boomed out from above them. "That's how you did it!"

It was like the voice of God descending from above, deep, rich, commanding and supremely confident. Oliver's gaze snapped to the skies. Where before they had seen nothing he now saw that a man wearing flowing robes of all white and blazing with dense white mana was hovering there as if he were Superman, casually flying in the air with no special effects visible at all.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"I was wondering how you'd slipped past the wards without triggering them. I'd only just empowered them again, you see."

The man's voice echoed throughout the courtyard as he descended closer, raising his hand.

They all paused, nobody quite sure how to respond. Behind him Oliver was conscious of Tallahassee moving away.

He descended closer, raised his hand. A beam of pure white shot forth from his forefinger deceptively slowly.

Out of pure reflex Oliver stepped away from the deadly looking beam, followed its path. It looked like a laser might, if imagined by a toddler who didn't really understand how they worked.

In a matter of heartbeats the ray casually bisected their guide — Pembroke — who fell to the ground in pieces, eyes wide with the shock but frozen and already locking in place.

"Always thought that rat was up to something," remarked the man casually. "Can't have you running off now, can I?"

Oliver fired off the three bullets he'd drawn into his hand at the same time, accelerating them to killing velocity with barely a conscious thought. They flew through the air towards the man faster than he could see, and though he was certain he'd targeted correctly they did nothing to him.

It was as if they'd passed right through him.

The main raised an eyebrow at the spell, but didn't react otherwise.

Beside him Gideon plied his own working of mana, the specialized ward-passing spell. He completed it, sent the converted nerve gas wafting towards the man with a push of mana. The man didn't react.

"Flashbang!" cried Oliver, in warning to his friends. They'd prepared for this scenario, and even as they wheeled away he triggered the next spell in his emergency list.

He physically felt the shockwave of the pulse as an incredibly bright pulse of white light accompanied by a loud sound went off at the same time. They'd packed enough energy to permanently blind any human who looked at it, which was why they'd all covered their eyes with their arms rather than merely squeezing them shut.

It was the best he could do. He wheeled around and sprinted back for the door. If the man was incapacitated, even for a moment, it would give them a chance to reposition.

Yet even as he reached the door, just behind Sindra, stumbling in the daze – the pulse had disrupted his inner ear — he felt a sudden and immense heat in his back, and his legs immediately gave out beneath him.

He tried to get up, found his arms working but his lower half completely unresponsive, insensate.

Truck. Explosion. Flipping, end over end. Oliver, pinned beneath a door that had somehow come open. Gunny, senseless beside him and hands already curling into the fencing position.

He looked down and saw that his shirt was already caked with blood. He used his arms to flip himself over and push himself up.

When he turned, Gideon was standing to the side, straightening from the upper torso of their guide, slipping on his ring.

"Alloman!" Gideon called out, and Oliver, even in the state of shock he could feel himself slipping into, was impressed by the steadiness of his voice.

Oliver triggered his life-saving backup measure, Second Wind. He felt the moment the spell went to work as he regained sensation in his spine almost immediately, then regretted it as the wave of searing pain washed over him, accompanied by the very worst pins and needles of his entire life.

"That is what they call me. Why are you here?"

"Catch!" cried Gideon, then tossed him a patty of thermite already blazing with white hot fire, summoned from his ring. The patty of thermite went up in an arc, propelled by a lighter version of the anti-gravity spell, and looped up to Alloman. This time it was moving slow enough that Oliver saw it slow in mid-air, then stop.

The archmage regarded it with a canted head.

"Fascinating," he said, then reached out and grabbed it with a bare hand. He held it, tilted it as he continued to hover there as if he could care less about the mana expense. And perhaps he could. Oliver watched in disbelief as he held the burning thermite patty in his bare hand, regardless of the heat.

Then he dropped it, turned his gaze back to their party.

"I shall ask again: who are you?" he called down imperiously.

Oliver heard a voice as if it were just in his ear, a whisper thin and reedy. Tallahassee's voice. It was his supersonic voice transmission spell. "Keep him talking," she said. "Keep him distracted."

He looked around with a quick glance, didn't see her, but knew that the rest of the party would have had heard her as well.

"Did you really think you could get away with it?" called back Oliver in response, seizing the initiative.

"Get away with what?" the man called back in amused tones.

"The Phoenix spell! We know what you've been doing here," Oliver called back. He shifted slightly. He'd have to be precise for this.

"I'll be generous," said the man, drifting down a little, "since you're the only entertainment I've had in the last six months. If you tell me everything you know, I'll kill you quickly."

"Seriously? I've been threatened with more original threats by my six year old brother," shouted Oliver back in return. Keep him distracted.

"That wasn't a threat," said the archmage with a sneer. "This is a threat."

Then he spoke an incantation, a word that Oliver didn't recognize, one that didn't translate into English well, and pointed to Sindra.

Oliver watched with horror as Sindra just… melted. Instantly. She collapsed to the ground without a hint of heat, as if she'd always been made of sand and just now had a wave lap over her. It had been so fast; he'd barely seen the lance of mana that had leapt out from the mage's hand or the web it had spun around her. Much faster than Oliver could manage. It took his breath away.

His gaze whipped back to archmage, who'd descended still closer, was looking from face to face of their little party.

Oliver went to sit up, found that the wound in his stomach hadn't fully healed; for the first time, the Second Wind spell wasn't enough to completely recover him. He checked his mana briefly, saw that it had maxed out at just over two hundred and seventy mana-days total.

"I'll ask it again. Who are you?"