…..:::::|. The Ladi: North Ward .|:::::…..

On the other end of the city center Percival cried to the Agents near him to remove the townsfolk from the square. As they scattered to perform the task, the flying creature screeched out a horrible cry and he shot looks to where he last saw the Marvynn duplicate he'd been chasing. His back was bleeding and Percival flashed bright white teeth at his downed prey.

The fire red irises of the flying animal burst a flame. In its mouth grew a great glowing yellow light as the Mad Mage spread arms wide under its hovering belly. Marvynn's skin turned a bright gold and his hands lit with a burning flame.

Marvynn’s craft had indeed grown, for he never wielded flame before.

From his thigh, Percival pulled away a rod, jerked it to extend its length then javelin tossed it to where the mage and flying igniting Aagenite were.

From inside an inn a woman called to warn the patrons, “Get down!” Some scattered to the center of the hall. Others flocked to the windows to surely see their city be engulfed in flames.

But what would have been the biggest bonfire ever started on the side of Has Mountain had been mightily halted by a city-covering swooping dome of glass projected from both staff and the outstretched green-blue glowing palm of one Exemplariat Percival Hollichek.

The flames from Marvynn's hands, mouth and his flying creature skipped and rolled and flicked across the top of the glass shield like the torches of a smith. Percival held effortlessly strong against the brunt of the blow.

Gruhavians, huddled inside their homes and establishments, peeked from windows to view what most of them had only heard wives' tales about. Users of Power weaving spells before their eyes. They watched, as even in the steel of his stance against the mage, Percival turned over his right palm all alit with green-blue hazes and drew up yet another cast from his spell arsenal.

Marvynn also switched a stance to craft another weave to end his pursuer's magecraft. Two balls of blackness burst from the streets and kissed upon the shield Percival held. Fourth Agent Critza quelled them by raising from the gardens, with hand motions of his own, two twisting branches that met the black caustic splashes trying to eat at Percival's glass.

Percival raised his right arm higher and with it raised two walls of glass from the shield. As Marvynn commanded the beast to move his flaming mouth in over the city, Percival guided the shimmering mirror-walls toward the front of the beast and clasped his hand into a fist. The hovering walls, reflecting the Aagenite and the fire and all the turmoil in the streets below, turned and whizzed passed one another causing the great flying fiery feline to refract from existence in skinny light beams. Percival never let his eyes off of Marvynn. The onlookers never let their eyes off of the Exemplariat.

The Mad Mage jerked at the neck, unnaturally. One of his duplicates had been felled and Percival felt a shift in Marvynn's talent. He'd momentarily lost something. Percival took one bold step forward and when Marvynn made no move to fold himself into the materials around him, he knew his ability to transport had been severed.

The fair-haired hunter let down both arms as dancing slivers of mirrored glass shot up on the flank of the Mad Mage. Marvynn cowered, feeling his freedom quickly fleeing. Tears burst from his eyes as Percival walked with a stoned intent toward the transmuter who ran.

“I told you not to run, Marvynn...would you also like to be displaced, like your pet?”

The Mad Mage huddled away from the mirrored slivers closing in around him rambling old words to himself. “Yyoal, Yyoal, Yyoal Gaen a Nce, Kaehnnah.”

While walking, Percival's body twitched and the city-dome broke into glistening shards as he cornered the mage. The shards drew in as a cloud around the Mad Mage. “How dare you invoke them.” Percival raged at him; disgusted.

“Faetzaht Red Special! I can see why you hide all that under cloaks! You are flippin' magnificent!” A messier mess of braids cried at full lung call when she walked upon the specimen that was her Exemplariat. He was indeed majestic in his Agency armours and intimidating stance. However, both Percival and company flashed her scrutinizing eyes to calm her attractions. Percival was the first to notice the mass being dragged behind her, though.

“You caught him?”

“You doubted?” Kodlaa's sass burst from her lips and Percival chuckled. There was one unmelted knife embedded in the duplicate's vertebrae at the base of his skull.

From up the east road behind him clamored a rattling glass sound. Weroance I'eladh, Weroance Halycind and aBn Ynggr strolled in with another duplicate running around in phantasmal walls.

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“Oh, now would you look at this!”

"Your aBn has quite the mind." I'eladh praised, flicking a hand toward the tortured duplicate running around in hazes of shifting vista.

“Oh, that's how we caught him the first time.” One of the fox-women blurted.

“You caught him with—“ Percival turned his amazement to the one cowering mage behind slivers and shards of glass, “Marvynn you let them catch you with Reubien's Walls of Insanity? Ugh, now I know your nuts.”

Reubien's Walls was a weave cast by children as a prank mostly. Just about any competent mage could see the weave approaching a kilometer away but coming from those with higher skill levels, it could render sane men completely insane. To the already insane it could be torturous.

“I'm not nuts.” A collected Marvynn spread a slow grin. “I'm Maaaad.” Near enough, now, to his duplicates, Marvynn's two other bodies sucked themselves, across the grounds where the hunters stood, and slurped back into his own body still cornered by Percival's glass shards. He stood happy and slapped silvery glowing hands to the trees behind him. The cracking of stone and rock spread threw the trunks of the trees and roots and grass and cobble as he made to burst a great petrification onto the city.

All the veins in Percival's body shown through his Agency armours. The Grui around him all lit to an odd black glow as he turned his wrist's ring to another rune flashing black. Marvynn's spell sputtered, fizzled, and cracked to a halt and the shards in cloud around him swirled murderously about the malicious mage. Agents and warriors and semeguard on the streets watched as his cries of fret were brutally squelched by Percival's blinding, spinning, cutting edges of glass across all his body. By the end of Percival's anger, the Mad Mage lay in taters; blood rivering out on the petrified dirt, walks and tree roots.

Everything was silent for a solid minute. Only the apprehensive foxen-women made any attempt to speak.

“M-Mark quarry dead?” One of the foxen uttered, near trembling with a slim smooth device in her palm. A slender featherless quill twitched between her fingers.

“No, I'll revive him...once he's contained.” Percival stepped toward Marvynn's body.

Those watching from windows furrowed in question and wonder and fear. All the pursuers collected themselves around the scene in hushed murmer. Percival turned the ring on his wrist to another rune and flicked a small black cube toward the torn up mage. Slivers splattered with his blood formed up in a box around the cube and the mess of mage on the thicket’s now stony edge.

The Exemplariat stood next to his lifeless body and stared with a peculiar regret. As the glass containment finished forming itself he placed his left palm inside one of its walls. His hand glowed a soft white as he revived the mess of Mad Mage inside the glass box. Before the mage could take his first breath, Percival snatched out his arm and sealed up the glass.

Marvynn clamored to life and kicked and squealed and cursed from his see-through confinement. Percival turned the ring on his wrist again and sealing runes burned into the sides of the containment.

The box floated up to Percival's side and he turned to face all his hunters.

“Please...tell me...I'm going to get one of those.” Siin started, gawking at the ring on Percival's left wrist.

“If you complete the 'Venge.”

“What that wasn't it?” Siin and a couple of the others flinched in disbelief.

"You just complim--"

"The boy's so smart."

"He's not smart, he's brilliant." Halycind praised in breathy amazement.

“Percival, It was a mage...running...with a beast.” Siin argued, sharp eyebrows showing his near exhausted annoyance.

“No. Marvynn's my quarry.” His words carried a sharp slice to them as if to dare anyone to offer contest to his words in finality.

Halycind, advancing with her hip length waves all in disarray, stared at Marvynn as he twitched and frissoned unnaturally within the box.

“Why's he like that? What was that bit about a can?”

“Huh, oh, Kaehnnah. Scerci Kaehn.” Both Percival and Veygornne sighed. “A useless brotherhood of individuals you will soon have the displeasure of knowing.” Percival rubbed out some of his soreness and the greenish glow died down from all his veins. “Old Mad Mage Marvynn here tossed his straw in with that lot and pulled up the short end.” He dipped his head down to him. “You'll burn Marvynn. Understand this.”

His heated disdain seemed on the extreme side of quarry condemnation but none of them were going to speak a word against what looked to be something too cruel a behaviour for paragons and princes.

Marvynn spat at him. Coloured globs of his spittle slid down in brown trails like muck down a latrine wall. He was invariably cursing Percival but he couldn't be heard.

The streets were all a woody, flowery, and cobbly mess. Gruhavians lie fainted, some cowering, some injured. Percival stared at them.

“Paragons.” He announced. It wasn't so much a call to arms as it was a call to duty. Without turning an eye, Percival knew his command had been met with the swiftest regard. The few Agents and groups of warriors that befriended them scattered to aid Gruhavians that had been either injured by the weight of crowds or frozen in fear from the fight or licked by flame or harmed by wood shrapnel or were cowered under windshields broken.

The Margrave openly offered them gratitude. His city was damaged but not what it could have been; what he'd seen of some mage stricken cities elsewhere.