Linton opened his eyes when he felt a stirring at the edge of his extended awareness. He had been lying in bed for some hours but hadn’t slept a wink.

There were six distinct signatures scaling the side of the building. With the nim they were expelling, it was highly likely that they were all mages.

Yoren, they’re here, Linton thought.

Understood, came Yoren’s return thought. What would you like me to do?

Wake the girl up. Tell her not to get out of bed until it’s over. Once they’re inside, I want you to seal the tower. I’ll deal with the rest.

Right away. Do you think it will be manageable?

It’s worse than I thought. There’s six of them.

Six?

Yeah.

Who…?

I don’t know, Yoren. But I’m about to find out.

There was a brief pause. Okay, Shay has been made aware of the situation. Maybe you should fetch your coat?

No. Linton didn’t move a hair from his reclined position. I was already acting under the assumption that they had a sensory type, but with this large a group, it’s almost a certainty. Can’t afford to do anything to tip them off until they’re inside.

You think they can get through my shielding?

Anything’s possible. Better to plan for the worst than to end up with my pants down.

Six of them… Shall I call for assistance from someone?

Linton thought about it for a moment. No. Actually, yes. Call Ferry. Don’t have him come down here, just tell him to be ready for me.

No one else?

No one else. I don’t need the queen to know I’m back yet.

Not even your sister?

That stone-dumb bitch can’t keep a secret to save her life. Now do as I say. Call Ferry.

Yes, master. Even though they were communicating telepathically, Jacob could sense the hesitation through her thoughts.

As the infiltrators reached further up the building’s outside, Linton was able to sense their auras more clearly. They were mostly expressing raw nim, but he caught a trace of blue from one of them. That would be the sensory type, then. A psychomancer, like him.

Good thing I didn’t place any traps around the place, then. Might have scared them off.

He wanted them off-guard. He wanted them to thinking they could kill him easily in his sleep. He wanted them confident that he suspected nothing. He wanted them to walk right into their graves. Much less work that way. He had already gotten tired of having these flies buzzing around his head, trying to figure him out. The last thing he wanted was for them to go back to circling from a safe distance.

Still, six of them. Assuming they weren’t complete amateurs, it was going to get sweaty.

It wasn’t long before they were inside, entering through the circular north window in the common area and dropping to the floor. They snuck slowly through the apartment, taking their time. They probably thought they were being stealthy. It was clear they were making their way straight for his bedroom, which meant they knew the layout. Well-prepared.

There was a great cacophony of rattling and banging as Yoren engaged the lockdown protocol, closing the cage around the mice. The intruders stopped their advance instantly. Their auras flared in Linton’s mind’s eye.

The lockdown protocol also included disabling all the lights in the building, which would do nothing to hamper Linton’s vision but would hopefully inconvenience them at least somewhat.

With a sigh, he tossed his covers aside and swung his legs over the side of the bed, already fully dressed. While the intruders were still reeling with confusion, he stood and took the slender pistol—Turnbolt—from the nightstand, tucking it into an underarm holster. He also fetched his coat—the Duskmantle—which lay draped over the edge of the bed, and shrugged into it.

He immediately felt his aura signature dampen, like a flame with a blanket tossed over it. Of course, it was possible that the sensory type could see through it. He couldn’t rely on its effects until that one was dead, and he had confirmed the specs of the others.

Take no chances.

Linton unlocked the bedroom door with a mental command and began channeling nim; yellow, blue, and raw in a tight weave.

“Preserve this humble one,” he muttered, repeating a series of four hand signs while he spoke. “Turn away the biting arrows and stinging thorns of the wicked ones. Upon this cliff, let their waves crash and be spent. Let their wills be broken. Let their hearts be confounded. Bravi Skolda Agari Svido.”

A tight ward fell into place around him, a billowing wreath of luminous power. A pricey one, but he suspected he would need every bit of utility he could squeeze out of it. The layer of illusion magic he’d added would hopefully throw off his enemies’ aim a bit. To them, it would look like his form was always shifting, flickering from one place to another, and the Duskmantle’s ability of hiding his aura meant that they would have an even harder time tracking him. He could be in trouble, however, if their sensory type was a competent communicator.

1504/2211 vits of nim remaining, master, Yoren said. Would you like me to keep a running tally?

Stolen story; please report.

Yes, please.

As you wish.

Linton approached the door to open it, but retreated to the side when he felt a sudden surge of red anima. An exploding gout of flame tore through the door, and a man charged through the fire and smoke, kicking away splintered wood with each step. He was not the one who had cast the spell—this one had an aura heavy with green anima. A vivimancer.

He was already casting spells on himself—using hand signs, but they were too quick to read. He was good. Luckily, Linton didn’t need to know to guess their purpose. He was most likely strengthening his body.

The others outside were keeping their distance. They were relying on their musclehead friend to flush him out. Even though it would separate them, it was probably their best choice. Crowding together in a small room would do them no good. He sensed both red and blue flaring out there, suggesting that the sensory type was working with a geomancer to snipe him through the wall.

Clever, clever. They’re not bad at all.

This might be harder than I thought.

The vivimancer came at him fast, crossing the darkened bedroom in three long strides. Linton didn’t bother with him yet. He still had over a second to dodge. In one smooth motion, he pulled Turnbolt and fired two shots into the wall towards where he felt blue nim. The aura stuttered and diminished, suggesting that he’d hit his mark at least once.

The vivimancer was on top of him now. Linton’s ward absorbed the first punch admirably, warping and then popping back into shape. He drycast Drida before the second connected, tethering himself to the opposite wall and throwing himself over the bed. He let his hand brush the vivimancer’s shoulder on the way, injecting the brute’s aura with blue, and further suppressed his own with a signed cast of Agari.

Let’s see how you deal with that.

1430/2211 vits, master.

The vivimancer’s misplaced fist crashed into the nightstand, smashing it to pieces and sending the bedside lamp flying. He spun towards Linton with a growl. Grabbing the top end of the heavy bed, he hurled it at Linton like it was nothing, sending it tumbling end-over-end and spilling the bedding everywhere.

Linton just ducked under it and let the thing crash into the wall behind him.

The vivimancer came close and went for a front kick when there was a bright flare of red nim outside. A broad spear of flaming energy tore and struck their ally right in the back, drawing a roar of pain and causing him to fall to one knee. The deception had worked.

Linton stood and shot him twice in the back of the head, pushing his brains out the front and causing him to slump forward. Vivimancers were troublesome to deal with due to their regenerative abilities, but a headshot was still a headshot. Linton walked over the corpse and let his second Agari veil fall away, leaving just the one attached to his ward.

One down.

I suppose it wouldn’t be sporting of me to stay cooped up in here. Let’s see what the others have in store for me.

He unloaded a few more shots into the wall, not caring too much if he caught anyone with it, then ejected the empty magazine and reached into his coat for one of four spares, sliding it into the gun with a click.

A quick check over the remaining signatures confirmed that no one was expressing anything but raw nim. Clever. They weren’t revealing their hand. That meant there were still three unknowns. Meanwhile, they had undoubtedly read up on his talents and methods, which were readily available to the right people due to his high-profile feats.

But he still had one trick that no one knew about.

Linton started channeling raw, only a trickle, into a drycast. It was a big spell, and not a simple rune either, meaning that raw nim would be highly inefficient. But he didn’t want to tip his hand, either, and he hadn’t even learned how to properly channel purple yet. But it didn’t matter. He’d just let it cook in the back for a while.

Simultaneously, while stepping out of the bedroom, he signed Klya with a burst of yellow, forming a glowing blade of soul energy in his off-hand. The five mages scattered about the living room scrambled to oppose him the moment he stepped out. The psychomancer clutched at his side and was struggling to bring up a ward for himself, channeling raw into a Skolda hardlight shield.

However, due to his injury and his concentration being taken elsewhere, Linton felt a softening in the man’s mental defenses from the constant prodding he was doing at all of them. Ironically, his protection was the lowest out of all of them, despite being a mind mage.

Bad luck, kid.

Linton feinted at throwing the Klya dagger, causing the psychomancer to pour even more effort into his ward, but Linton redirected and hurled it at the woman to the right of the psychomancer instead. She leapt out of the way in time, but that was all right. Linton withdrew the dagger in a rebounding arc, which struck her in the back of the neck and threw her forward on her face.

Simultaneously, he drycasted Vaka at the psychomancer, easily pushing through his defenses like squeezing down on a block of putty. Then, Linton said: “Kill yourself.”

The man was struck by the command and leapt up to comply. After a dazed look around, he settled on the kitchen and ran towards it. One of his friends moved to intercept, but Linton fired Turnbolt at him twice, both catching a ward but stopping the man in his tracks in the process. Linton channeled yellow and did the one-handed sign of Klya, but instead of forming it in his hand he imbued it into the chambered bullet of his pistol. He fired the magic-infused round, and it tore straight through the opposing shielding, scattering it in a rain of glassy hardlight. The owner burst in a brilliant corona, sliced up by a host of radiating cleavers of light. His various pieces sloughed to the floor in a wet pile.

Four to go.

1109/2211 vits, master.

The geomancer had been cooking up something heavy while Linton was otherwise occupied. His signs had Baku and Yala, meaning it was going to be something rather explosive. Linton amassed a heap of yellow nim, as though to reinforce his ward, but had no real intention of that at all. Instead, the moment the geomancer went to fire off his creation, Linton flash converted everything into raw, instead.

“Forovri Svido Skolda,” he growled, signing at the same time to strengthen and focus the spell, and threw his arms up in front of him, creating a thin, shimmering sheet before his palms.

A dizzyingly bright pillar cut across the room, creating staggered, multiplying explosions along its surface like a fireworks show. Linton’s counterspell buckled when struck and only barely held up. But it did, containing the blinding light within it and absorbing it into a condensed ball of crackling energy as the rest of the pillar died away.

But the aim of the counter was not to kill the original spell. It was modified to reflect, instead.

The geomancer realized too late, his eyes going wide as he began to scramble away. The others didn’t seem to pick up on the danger. One channeled yellow into a Klya arrow that bounced harmlessly off of Linton’s ward, and another spliced red and green into some nasty concoction that ended up fizzling in his hands.

Linton released the rebounded spell and sent it out in a cone of crackling explosives that blanketed a whole third of the common area. There were screams audible over the din, and pieces of charred human visible through the light. It lasted for a second, then it was over, and it all went quiet, wood and flesh and pieces of furniture raining down.

642/2211 vits.

Visibility was poor through all the smoke and debris and lingering fire, but Linton spotted at least one more dead one.

Three to go.

Then he spotted the psychomancer in the kitchen, busy carving his own throat out with a knife.

Nevermind. Two to go.

Then there was a flash of bursting nim, and a mage came leaping at him through the smoke. Linton prepped a Drida to drag himself away, but in his rush the spell fizzled into a useless spray of dissipating energy. The mage collided with him, and with a glint of metal something punctured his ward. The point of a long knife drove through into his stomach, and he was pushed back against the wall. His concentration broke, and his ward collapsed around him without him pulling it together again.

It was the woman he’d spiked in the neck. She was channeling green nim, healing herself.

Well, that’s less good.

Gritting his teeth at the first onset of bitter pain blooming through his stomach, Linton cast Skolda with a hand sign and blasted the woman away, knocking the back of his head into the wall with the recoil. He sank down on one knee with a groan, blood welling up through his shirt and trickling down his left leg.

Fuck.