Myrl slowly raised an eyebrow at the envoy as her tendril of destruction reached the barrier of force and willpower he had raised. An incredibly broad bar of incandescent combined destruction charged from the young woman directly at the new king, and battered at the thin, translucent surface of Myrl’s efforts, and then slowly, like too much wine thrown from a wine goblet, thinned, attenuated, and with a sudden popping noise ended.

That young woman is powerful, but she is pushing far harder than she should be... Ashe thought. And her partner… a brother? Parthiqueen traditionally trains sibling pairs to jointly serve diplomatic duties… “A draw for all tastes” is the term I remember Parthiqueen ambassadors using in the past… but this man looks horrified. He’s surprised. He had no idea this was coming… odd…

As he watched, the dusky skinned Parthique woman looked with triumph at the whirling mass of smoke that blocked her view of Myrl. Ashe could see Myrl and his servants unhurt from where he stood, but realized this envoy could not. She didn’t know her spell had been useless.

Where she stood, she was breathing heavily, almost panting, and the amount of rage and hate she had poured out from her hands as her servants had chanted for her to keep rhythm while she cast the heavy spell should have destroyed the young King, the king’s servants, and the stone walls behind him too.

Ashe held up his own protective wall around the scribes and several of the palace guards. He stood, holding out his hands to those guards closest to him to stop them from charging at the embassy from Parthique. It would have been embarrassing for one of them to have charged forward, and broken their nose on the interior curve of his own warding.

Ashe was proud of Myrl’s control. His calm. And he watched his ward as the young man had thrown up a defense for himself, as well as those standing and seated closest to him, servants and guards all safe behind a ward.

Though Ashe would have to admit if asked to be slightly surprised at the kind of protective spell his student had chosen. With the boy’s strength in the Talent, he could have just thrown up a wall of force and willpower. A blunt, thick barrier of protection that would have turned away this attack easily. This however was a defense predicated less upon force of will and the brutal levels of Talent which Myrl possessed, and instead played heavily upon the caster’s ability to hold formulae and the fine calculations of geometric images in one’s mind.

But instead, Myrl had chosen a much thinner shield that was an intricately complex casting; a sliver of steel where most would have reached for an ax. Taking much less in the ways of brute force, this Grace of Protection was an interlocking set of leaves that gained strength from the level of power used against it. THe greater the pressure, the harder the shell.

A pebble thrown against it would have merely bounced away to the floor, whereas a boulder dropped on this kind of barrier would draw all of the energy used against it to thicken the walls and rebound that power back upon the metaphorical boulder, possibly even shattering the stone to dust in the process.

A much more delicate casting, but the levels of concentration made it a much greater labor when the intricacies of the casting were taken into account. Ashe was proud and impressed. Had Myrl been off in constructing the walls of Willpower and energy in the slightest, he would now be scattered cinders, a patina on the glowing stonework, and random wisps of smoke.

The Parthiqueen sorceress stared at the swirling energies of the now visible interlocked walls that surrounded Myrl, his herald, three guards, and a shaking young man holding a bottle of wine he had been about to refresh the King's goblet with.

Her head tilted as she took in the overlapping leaves of magic that now held the outpouring of her own spell hostage. She took a greater breath then, stretching the shining fabric of her orange and purple dress, and let loose a scream of her bundled rage and fury.

She’s going to stamp her little foot next… Ashe thought, but out loud, he yelled to the guards under his protection, and pointed at the head of the line of foreign retainers. “You three, grab the man and the two women chanting! MAke them stop chanting! NOW!”

The witch then reached out with her Talent, and lightning, shatteringly loud sending arcs blazing across all of their eyes in contrastingly vibrant blues, whites, and deep purplish-blacks.

Dropping his spell, to allow the guards to carry out his orders, Ashe himself ran forward to the line of gaudily dressed retainers, tapping each upon the back of the heads as he removed up the line. With a minor expenditure of effort at each tap to their heads, he dropped each on into a deep sleep.

Finally he stood just behind the sorceress as she readied another spell, and Ashe could feel the greasy, wet, slopping-over of power and will as she carelessly threw everything she had left into this new spell.

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She is going to burn herself out. She would rather make herself into an asaloge than lose this contest. He thought.

The lightning would have devastated Myrl where he stood. In the flashing light show, Ashe could see Baison, the Master Page yelling, though Ashe didn’t know if it was in anger or fear. The old man’s face caught in the flickering bright splashes of the arms of lightning as they did their galvanic dance across the room, and up the walls to either side of the mad woman dressed in the finest of silks.

A pulse of light flashed from the wall of overlapping leaves of force that Myrl held before himself and those around him,

Reaching out to repeat the spell that would put the young woman to sleep as he had done to her followers, rather than allow her to turn herself into either a mindless walking thing, bereft of all higher thought, or to just kill herself outright. And probably very messily.

She shrieked again, louder this time, in her native Parthique tongue. It had been ages since Ashe had practiced that language, but he remembered the vernacular well enough, and this was not a nice word. She was gathering more energy to herself as she cursed Myrl to the Nine Hells and Three Devils that she thought awaited him. She was grasping for every spare iota of power now, and Ashe could even feel a harsh, rapid tugging upon his very life force.

Off to his left, he could see one of the guards who he had sent after one of the chanting retainers stop, fall to the ground, and convulse. The slender dark-skinned woman he had been pulling away from the fray fell with him. She had been struggling to break away from his grasp as he moved her towards the back entrance to the hall. Now they both lie on the polished stone floor, shuddering together in a grotesque parody of the enthusiasm of passion.

Ashe didn’t know why this woman was attempting to kill the newly anointed King of Rhiada, but he would rather not just allow her to kill herself in the attempt if he could help it. He wanted answers.

And answers from a living diplomat might fend off a war, he hoped.

Finally within reach of her, Ashe placed his hand on the top of her glossy, rich brown hair and forced his concentration down to a single point.

SLEEP!

With that, the little woman crumpled to the floor of the now wrecked receiving room.

Moving slowly, Ashe turned about in a circle where he stood over the assassin. and surveyed the carnage around him. The ruined art, and decorations in the room can all be replaced. The perspective of the long lived, I suppose. Nothing that couldn’t be remade, repurchased, redone. Only those who breathe cannot be replaced so readily.

When his eyes returned to the king, Myrl looked shocked. His eyes wide. He was staring at the torn apart body of one of his guards. Those eyes slowly made their way about the room, looking at large splashes of blood on the walls, in some places it had been burned onto the stone. Puddles of blood pooled on the floor beneath bodies, both native and foreign.

Her last attack, the use of uncontrolled and undirected lightning had brought devastation. And Myrl still stood, her efforts all for nothing.

The acrid smell of charred remains, and the errant cries and whimpers of those wounded souls in the room that needed tending, were weighing heavily on his ward. King or no, Myrl had never seen this kind of indiscriminate hate and death before. In the past, when he had faced violence, it had always been more contained.

More directed.

This was the nonsensical attack of a maddened dog, foaming at the mouth, and attacking rocks as much as it attacked anything else.

“Master Basion…” He waited. Then, “MASTER BAISON!” He called to the older man, putting an effort of Will into his words and finally startling him out of his own wide eyed gazing emptily about the room. “Please take the King to his chambers. See to his needs. Call the Leech Hall for a doctor to check in on His Majesty, and I will see to this. Ask for Veda, if she is available.”

As Baison and four of the guards gathered the king and bustled him away through the smaller door behind the throne, Ashe directed the remaining guards to gather up the prisoners. Despite what Ashe may have wanted, all of the surviving members of this ambassadorial visit were now prisoners of the Kingdom of Rhiada.

The guardsman who he had witnessed collapse was now standing upright, but looked incredibly shaky on his feet. The beautiful young woman who had collapsed with him stayed on the floor, unmoving. Unbreathing. Irreplaceable.

The young man who had been attempting to refill the king’s goblet when all of this began was unsteadily trying to clean up the wine he had spilled. Ashe went to him, and knelt next to the boy. “Please put that down, Cheswic. I need you to fetch MIstress Verna for me. She should be in the servants quarters down the end of the Green Corridor.”

He spoke softly, but with authority to Cheswic. The boy needed to be set to a short task before his emotions got the better of him and he collapsed.

Cheswic looked up at Ashe, and Ashe smiled at the boy. “My lord…?”

“Off you go. There is a very large mess to clean up, and we need the staff here as soon as possible. Off you go.”

“My lord!”

Maybe the lad just needed the push, or maybe he had heard the darker rumors of “The Black Mage.” Either way, the boy straightened up, and ran from the wreckage of the room in the direction of the Green Corridors in search of Mistress Verna.