The archers on the balconies launched their red and black-fletched arrows and bolts, while the guardsmen, many with the red and black hilt, drew their swords and charged the lone man. Another group of soldiers ran into the room from the hall at the prince’s signal.

The man didn’t take the attack placidly. He stepped forward towards the prince and then suddenly disappeared, then reappeared behind men charging in from the hallway. They kept going forward, oblivious to the fact that he was behind them now. The arrows clacked harmlessly against the floor and pillars that were now vacant.

A gnarled black staff suddenly appeared in the mage’s hands. He gripped it in both hands and raised it while he barked a word, and then swept it through the air with the head pointing to the balconies in turn. A hurricane of fire and air swept through the balconies burning the archers and throwing them over the rails to the hard floor below.

He let go of the staff with the hand nearest the head and whipped it around to point at the biggest concentration of guards and a bolt of lightning flashed out and forked dozens of times to hit most of them. Each guard hit crumpled to the ground in a twitching heap, far out of the fight if not outright dead.

One of the few guards left standing, which happened to be a guard carrying a red and black hilted sword, charged at the mage with the blade in swinging ahead of him. The mage gracefully and cleanly parried the sword with his staff, then twisted the staff and somehow disarmed the guard. The sword was sent flying straight up in the air. The head of the staff then flashed across the temple of the stunned guard, who fell bonelessly to the ground. The mage deftly plucked the sword out of the air as it fell and lifted it to eye level to examine it.

One of the other guards moved to engage the mage, but the mage merely glanced at him with an irritated look and said, “Don’t.” The man froze, before looking towards the prince. The three remaining Red Shield guards and the commanders of the prince’s forces stood at the bottom of the dais, along with a half-dozen castle guards that were the entire remainder of the nearly fifty men that had started the ambush. All of them looked wildly, and even Bree could tell that they were near blind panic. The prince himself was white with a stunned look on his face that scared his daughter to her very soul. She had never seen him look anything less than completely confident and in control, and she had never seen fear cross his face before today.

Beside her, Erek had drawn his ever present sword and stepped forward to stand between her and the threat, but even without being able to see his face she could sense the grimness of the gesture. Erek was well-trained, but someone that could put down dozens of well-trained men in mere moments was beyond his ability to stop, and that was obvious even to her.

The men and women around her, all with blue blood flowing through their veins, were caught in stunned silence. Some of the women were sobbing in terror, and no few of the men were on the verge of it as well. Even the brashest of the young men were keeping their hands away from the hilts of their swords. Many younger children were huddled against the false safety of their mothers. The threats that mages would come after misbehaving children were suddenly taking on new meaning to children that were suddenly wondering how bad their behavior had been.

After the glance to stop the guard, the mage had calmly returned his attention to the inspection of the acquired blade in his hands. No one, including the prince, seemed to be willing to break the silence that had fallen. Only the moans of the injured and the soft sobbing from the audience around her could be heard, but the tension was so thick that she thought a pin dropping on the stone floor might have set off an earthquake.

“This is a well-crafted blade,” the mage finally said. “I’ve seen very few of it’s like, and every time I had to make one it left a bad taste in my mouth.” He looked up at the prince and suddenly his voice and expression that belied the calm he’d shown to this point. He continued, “I never thought I’d see one of these used against me. I’m confident that this blade was made by Eloran, and I can only imagine how angered he would be to see one of his blades being used to attack an archmage and member of the Council.”

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He suddenly whipped the blade up and behind his shoulder and whipped it forward in a throw. Though he looked to be older, his strength had shown in his ability to overwhelm and disarm a well-trained guardsman in moments, but that was nothing compared to seeing a full sword launched twenty feet and penetrate the stone of the dais under the throne more than three-fourths of the way to the hilt. The prince, who had been standing in front of the throne, flinched back at the weapon and stumbled back into his seat in as ungraceful a movement as Bee had ever seen him make.

She looked back to see the mage had focused his suddenly intimidating gaze on the men in front of the dais. “Drop your weapons now while I still allow you to,” he said through gritted teeth. The clang of swords hitting the stone filled the hall as the cowed men backed away. None were left to resist. The mage seemed to dismiss them all as his gaze swung back to Prince Alain, who seemed to get paler at the attention.

The prince looked to the nearest golem, and suddenly looked reassured. He gave a thin smile towards the wizard, and commanded, “Golems, bring me that man’s head.”

For the first time in years, the golems moved. They encircled the prince, and turned their blades toward him. Suddenly faced with the betrayal of his ultimate weapons, the prince slouched back in the throne as far away from the blades as he could manage.

“What is this?” he asked in a strangled voice.

The mage stepped forward towards the throne as he spoke. “The golems, and the thrones, are artifacts of the Archmagus Council. The princes are given command of them, but ultimately the wizards of the council control them. To attempt to use them against a council member is not only treason, but abject stupidity.

He continued, “To ambush and attack an archwizard is an affront to everything you should be standing for. Abram was a friend, and to see his descendents descend into such treachery likely has him spinning in his grave. I’m of a mind to execute your entire line for this, and if it weren’t for my friendship with your ancestor I wouldn’t be hesitating. What do you have to say for yourself.”

The prince squirmed in his throne, something that Bree would never imagined describing him doing before this day. His discomfort was obvious to her, and probably to everyone else in the hall. Finally, he closed his eyes and took a carefully apportioned breath.“I can only try to protect my people,” he said, his voice tight and with a slight quiver that most probably wouldn’t notice. “If you wish to claim my soul so be it, but please spare my heirs.”

From the expression on his face, the answer seemed to surprise the mage. He recovered so quickly that Bree wasn’t sure whether she had imagined it, but the mage stood and considered the ruler as carefully as he had the blade that was now embedded several feet into the stone below the throne. The man finally turned to look at the audience watching the exchange.

Bree had never felt so exposed as she did when people shuffled to move away from her and her siblings. Erek still held his sword out, the only one in the great hall doing so, but he held it limply in front of him. All her siblings were left in voids in the crowd, as if to highlight the family members he’d threatened to wipe out.

She felt a shiver down her spine as his eyes wandered through the crowd and past her, then abruptly shifted back to her. He watched her like a child watching a bug. She tried to maintain her outward calm, but had no idea whether she did in the face of the absolute gibbering terror she felt. Even as she looked back, his eyes went vacant as if he was looking through her to her very soul. This level of attention from a mage, a monster so terrible that they were used to by mothers to scare behavior into their children, left her terrified at an absolutely fundamental level like nothing she’d ever felt before.

“Her,” the mage suddenly said. Her heart stopped and her breath caught. She knew and her soul quailed.

“What?” her father, the prince and ruler of everything he saw until today, asked, confused.

“Give her to me, and I will allow your family to live and remain in place. You will also swear allegiance to the council, again, of course.”

“Who?” he asked, still confused. She wasn’t. She knew.

He pointed the staff at her so there was no confusion. If felt like the blade of a sword plunging towards her chest. “The girl,” the mage said. The mage were banes of all the righteous of the world and all that stood guard with them, bringers of evil and destruction and elves and demons, betrayers of princes and princedoms, and all of humankind. Liars, and thieves, murderers and blasphemers.

Sacrificers of the innocent.