--- Dov ---
When Dov saw the assassin charging at her, she was very concerned.
Not because she was being attacked by an assassin, of course. Atrog had drilled them all on the weirdest situations over and over again until they were all exhausted, and responding correctly had become second nature. It was an awesome training regime in her opinion, even if Galanys kept complaining and calling Atrog a slave driver.
No, what made her concerned was the strange ivory token the assassin was holding in his off-hand. Some inner voice was screaming at her that this was important, but she had no memory of why. So she decided to trigger an emergency spell in her brain to revert the genetic modifications she made. This would take a few seconds to work.
In the meantime, her body was already moving. Scenario Sixteen meant that positioning was crucial. She vaulted the bench and made for the corner of the room. While running, she took a look at their assailants and was unsurprised that almost all of them were aiming for her. That was a good thing, she supposed, since the plan would put her the farthest away from the center of the fight.
Just as she was about to reach the corner, she heard Galanys think "*Ready.*" through her telepathic relay. The others were using her telepathy to talk to each other as well, but luckily they were now practiced enough at using it that they could do this without distracting her. Everyone would only hear the messages intended for them. But Galanys had broadcast her message to everyone on the team, because the timing would be crucial.
She had just reached the corner of the room. Galanys had detached her earring and was about to throw it on the ground. Due to Balron's early warning, most of the attackers had barely even gotten their weapons out yet, but the bailiff was coming directly for her and had already crossed half the room. She got into a stance suitable for fighting an armed assailant unarmed. But luckily that was unnecessary, as Atrog crashed into the bailiff from the side.
Atrog cast Fist.
That was to say, he channeled divine energies directly into his arm, without using a weapon as a safe conduit for the destructive energies. He would definitely be feeling that in the morning. Unlike the bailiff, who would never feel anything ever again. Atrog's divinely enhanced fist crashed into the assassin's midsection and launched him clean across the room, where he turned into a splatter of gore against the wall. Clearly these attackers had not spent nearly enough time practicing their defenses and survivability.
The immediate danger was now gone, and everything was ready. Dov heard a bang as the capsule Galanys threw impacted the ground, and an enormous amount of smoke came out. It was a thick smog that covered all vision, and she knew from experience that it had an incredibly irritating and disgusting smell. She was not looking forward to the experience when the smoke would reach her in a few seconds. On the other hand, it would be so much worse for everyone else. After all, she had used her biomancy to ensure that she and the rest of team Nundru would be resistant to the worst effects of the poison.
Luckily the smoke was only irritating and not actually dangerous. An important concern that Atrog had raised when he pointed out that they might have to fight with civilians around at some point. So now the smoke was a little bit less effective than it could otherwise have been, but did not cause any permanent damage.
Time for part two. Dov closed her eyes and concentrated. She activated a change to her eyes that she had experimented on ever since the Realms Below. A short while ago, she finally mastered it. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the outlines of everyone in the room as a silhouette in the smoke. Her draconic heat vision was working.
"*Now.*" She told her team telepathically, to give them a moment to prepare. Then she pushed the images she saw into her telepathic bond, and shared her heat vision with her team.
She stood at the edge of the room, and had everyone in her view. The entire courtroom was now completely obscured by smoke. The assassins were blinded and choking on poison, while her team shared her enhanced senses through their link and was largely resistant to the smoke.
"Holy shit!" She heard one of the assassins shout in shock.
"Focus!" yelled another. "Charlie, check the corner! Delta, clear the smoke!"
The assassins were talking to each other without any magical assistance. That meant she should use part three of the plan. The embarrassing part. It was just so stupid.
But then again, a wise man once said, if it is stupid but it works, then it isn't stupid.
So Dov started screaming at the top of her voice.
The top of her very loud, very genetically modified voice, which sounded like wet chalk being dragged against a blackboard and had enough sheer volume to drown out every other sound in the room. She noticed several civilians move to cover their ears even as they were still wheezing from the smoke. Poor guys, but at least loss of hearing was easy for a biomancer to fix.
Her internal clock told her that it had taken them about six seconds since Balron gave his warning, and now the enemy couldn't breath, couldn't see, and couldn't hear. It made battlefield coordination somewhat challenging for them.
Six seconds didn't sound like a lot, but combat was hectic, and she had really hoped that they would be faster after all their training. Oh well, at least this was an excellent opportunity to test her abilities in field conditions. Luckily her memory was perfect now, thanks to Galanys, so she would be able to review the whole situation at her leisure later, and figure out why they had been slower than she had hoped.
She was somewhat surprised to see that the horrible mess they had just conjured did not in fact stop the assassins in their tracks. Most of them were still moving. One had tripped over a civilian and hit his head, and another was choking on the poison, but the remaining eight of them were still up, and most of them were running in her direction.
It was strange to see such a large number of unexpectedly competent assassins. Clearly they knew about team Nundru's capabilities and hadn't wanted to take any chances. Fortunately, Balron had insisted that they discuss and practice their poison cloud technique in a private and shielded area, for information security. Otherwise the assassins would likely have known about it, and would have prepared accordingly. That was good thinking, and Dov was glad to have found such a competent mentor.
What they had done here wasn't a novel idea, really. The Orukian military had used a similar tactic during the Great War. They had used magic goggles to give their soldiers heat vision, and mass produced various types of grenades. It was just one of dozens of reasons that this small country had held out for so long against the immense numerical superiority of Azad's army of slaves.
Unfortunately, these items had broken down after a few decades, and the secret of how to produce new ones was lost during the Cataclysm. But then Galanys had pointed out that Dov would be able to do a similar thing with her heat vision, and she knew how to concoct some basic alchemical grenades. A short brainstorming session later, and they had all been happy to add another technique to their repertoire.
"*Tell the civilians to stay down!*" Atrog told her.
Since the civilians were presumably not being targeted, they could really just hunker down and wait. That would be the safest course of action for them. But Dov knew as well as Atrog did that one shouldn't rely on people's common sense when they were in a fight or flight situation for the first time in their life. The disgusting smoke and the ear-splitting sound certainly would not help either.
She broadcast a simple message to everyone in the room: "*Stay down and you will be safe!*"
With that taken care of, she surveyed the battlefield. Keeping everything clearly in her vision was crucial for the others to fight. Being able to see yourself only from a third-person perspective was immensely disorienting. She knew that from experience with her own somewhat exotic training in martial arts.
If she had been allowed to keep her weapons or spellcasting focus, she would be able to contribute more directly. But as depressing as it might be, she knew that she would have the greatest impact in this fight if she stayed exactly where she was and helped to coordinate the others.
She was careful not to move her eyes too much, as that would make it more difficult for them to interpret what they were seeing through her. Instead, she mentally went through everything she saw and sent short non-verbal thought pings to her allies. Sending a mental impression at the speed of thought was much more effective than a vague shout of "Look out, behind you!" could ever be.
Balron had placed himself in the middle of the path and sent out a telekinetic shockwave. The assassins tried to attack him at first, even before the smoke had gone up, but the first time one of them lost his hand to an invisible spell, they had backed away. They were moving around him now, careful to keep their distance, while he tried his best to disrupt their movements. The assassins weren't aiming for the whole team, then. They were probably only here for her. Unfortunately, Balron was not practiced at using his sword, since it was really just a spellcasting focus to him, and the telekinesis he favored was not easy to aim without being able to see properly.
In her opinion, not knowing how to fight with a weapon was a glaring oversight for the wizard who prided himself on being prepared for anything. She had told him as much during their spars in an effort to help him improve, but the others had all agreed with his counter argument: It was better to be a master of one than a jack of all trades. Telekinesis was versatile enough that it could cover almost any situation, and learning to fight with a sword would cost valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere. His strategy was to have one single ability he had practiced to perfection, and a huge number of highly specific answers to everything else.
It went against her philosophy to hear that. She wanted to get better at everything, and always aimed for a varied education. But she had to admit, they did have a point. Maybe she should try mastering one skill after the other, and not all of them at once. Maybe then she would be able to keep up with them in their spars.
She watched as Balron launched another chair well past an assassin's head. The last three projectiles had been just as poorly aimed. With a few more weeks of practice, he would probably be doing much better, but for now it just looked comical how he kept flinging items that would miss their targets by an entire meter, like a complete novice.
She was pretty sure this was a great argument that they were not in a story, no matter what Rania and Lilian said. No story would have the heroes acting this incompetently.
Unless they were comic relief, of course.
Gods, she hoped they weren't comic relief.
Come to think of it, that was not unlikely. For herself, at least. Right now her contribution to the fight was literally "stand in the corner, scream loudly, and watch while everyone else fights."
That really did not sound very heroic.
Banishing such distractions from her thoughts, she noticed that one of the assassins had stopped, and was now making hand gestures as if casting a spell. She couldn't tell what he was doing exactly, but it was probably important. Maybe that was 'Delta', the mage who the assassins' leaders so helpfully informed them was supposed to clear the smoke. She pinged Balron, and told him to shift his focus to the mage. Seconds later, the assassin's casting was interrupted by a steady stream of random furniture flying in his direction.
Meanwhile, Atrog had picked up a chair and was using it as an improvised weapon. It wasn't very effective, and his lack of armor meant that he had to fight much more defensively than usual, but the difference in strength between him and the assassins was significant. The Law of Adversity was no joke, and killing a basilisk and an Elder Mind Warper were impressive feats. Even though he did not have a weapon, a single strike from him was often enough to knock his enemy out of the fight, even if the assassins were wearing armor under their civilian disguises. Atrog was doing just fine on his own.
Rania was having much greater trouble. Three of the assassins were attacking her at the same time, and unlike Atrog she couldn't just use a chair as a weapon. She relied on precision instead of brute strength, after all. She was jumping and running around to evade the attacks, and Dov sensed growing panic coming from the elf who usually lived for adventure and was excited by combat.
With their senses impaired, the assassins were unable to hit Rania through all her dodging. Dov felt a grudging respect for them. Despite being almost entirely blind, they were still mostly disciplined and they were doing an excellent job trying to murder her and her friends. They attacked Rania whenever she struck, and avoided hitting each other in the chaos. But Dov had a much better tactical overview of the situation, and she told Rania how to position herself in order to confuse them. On the second try it worked, and one of the assassins mistook another for Rania, and stabbed him before he realized his mistake.
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Dov was glad to see that Galanys was mostly being left alone. She wasn't the target of the assassins, and as a wizard without her spellcasting she was clearly the weakest threat.
Due to the Law of Adversity, she was probably physically stronger than most of the assassins. Dov was slightly stronger than her physically, due to her Biomancy and because her own empowerment by the Law of Adversity was not insignificant either, after she had spent several weeks hunting monsters for food while lost in the Realms Below. But skill also accounted for a lot, and both Dov and the assassins were much more effective in close combat fighting than Galanys. She had no idea how to fight unarmed, or with a weapon for that matter.
At least she was better able to coordinate through Dov's telepathy than the others. Where Balron kept missing his attacks by a lot, Galanys had no trouble finding and hitting her opponents, it just wasn't very effective.
It was no surprise to Dov that Galanys was so much better at using her telepathy than the others. The two of them got in a lot of extra practice every night, after all.
Dov telepathically pinged Galanys to highlight the location of a dagger one of the assassins had dropped while fighting Atrog. Its grip was still slightly warm through body heat, so Dov could just barely see it. Galanys took the cue, picked up the dagger, and handed it over to Rania.
Rania grabbed the dagger, gave an overly loud telepathic "*Thank you!*" and immediately started going to town on the assassins that had been hounding her.
That was when Atrog gave Signal Seven. It meant, 'try to avoid killing the enemy, but only if that doesn't cause too much risk to yourself.'
It made sense. It would be important to capture at least one of the assassins alive to find out what was going on.
After hearing that, Rania started aiming her daggers at hurtful places instead of lethal ones.
Dov was sure she heard a man cry out in pain, although intellectually she knew that it was impossible for an unenhanced humanoid to match the volume of her unrelenting, ear splitting scream.
She was currently female, but Davlash were shapeshifters and she knew from personal experience as a man that what she just witnessed must have been extremely painful. She just barely managed to remind herself not to close her eyes in sympathetic agony, since the others were watching through them.
"*Finally I can start doing things instead of dodging!*" Rania thought excitedly at them all.
"*Watch the chatter.*" Atrog responded. "*Focus, and don't distract each other.*"
Telepathy was a great deal faster than speech, but there was a limit to it, and wasting time on idle chatter could get people killed.
"*Why not though?*" Rania asked. "*We are the heroes, and Lilian said that talking is a free action for heroes. And I'm pretty sure that applies to telepathic speech, too.*"
"*That makes no sense. It doesn't work that way.*" Atrog responded.
"*It totally does work that way!*" Rania argued back. "*Look. We have already thought a whole bunch of things at each other and the Bad Guys have barely moved in that time.*"
Dov only sensed a feeling of great confusion from Atrog in response to that.
She decided not to think about it for the time being.
That was when her memories finally came back. She had wanted to know what was so concerning about the ivory token that some of the assassins were carrying. After the emergency re-configuration of her brain structure, she could remember it now: It was a ritual component commonly used in a spell favored by assassins.
The spell was technically a funerary rite. It was just cast in a way that was much, much faster than normal. The resulting spell hastened the soul of a freshly slain victim to the afterlife immediately, so that resurrection became impossible. Without such a spell, assassinating rich people like herself was a gamble, as there was a good chance that they could be revived in time.
This was much better than the alternative. Some assassins instead used weapons that absorbed or even outright destroyed the souls of the victim. Fortunately such weapons had fallen out of favor over time. The liches of Ossor took a very dim view of people who captured or destroyed souls, and assassinating a political rival was generally not worth making an enemy of an entire country full of undead master wizards.
Dov was quite annoyed. Knowing about this spellcasting component had been in no way worth the damage to her brain. It would only be relevant if she died after all, and she wasn't planning to let that happen in the first place. It would take days to repair the damage, and she was not looking forward to the migraine that would probably hit her in a couple of minutes. Fortunately, the assassination attempt should be over by then. A small, traitorous part of her brain told her that it wouldn't be so bad if she died here, since then at least she could avoid the coming headache, but she told it to shut up.
One of the assassins finally managed to circle around Atrog, and tried to attack her. He must have had some means to sense her even through the smoke, though she couldn't tell how.
Fortunately, a Davlash was never truly unarmed or unarmored if they went to the effort to make some suitable adaptations to their bodies. With her obsession with getting stronger, Dov had naturally done so.
When the assassin struck with his dagger, Dov simply grabbed the blade with her left hand.
The blade went straight through, piercing the palm of her hand.
Just as planned. She ignored the pain, and simply closed her fist around the weapon. Her hand was now impaled, but the attacker's weapon was trapped in her grip and he wouldn't be able to pull it out in time. He probably had more knives somewhere on his body, but he didn't have them out yet, and she wasn't going to give him the opportunity to draw them.
First, her fingernails extended. Not by much, but enough to pierce the unprotected skin of the would-be assassin. When extended like this, they acted as stingers, and she began pumping toxins into his body.
The development of natural and magical poisons and defenses against them was somewhat lopsided. Vherdes the Hedonist, her own grandfather and the original biomancer, freely published spell formulas to defend against poisons, but not the formulas for the poisons themselves. As a result, using toxins and poisons in war was not very effective, and it also risked angering the man. Seeing as he was an Old Power, doing so would be almost as suicidally stupid as angering Ossor. Xilly followed in her father's footsteps, and only gave the Davlash access to rather basic poisons, at least compared to what she could probably conjure up if she put her mind to it.
Because of this, the poison Dov injected would be painful, but not lethal if the assassin had taken the basic precautions she would expect from somebody in his profession. Her toxins were really more suited for dealing with wild animals and other non-humanoid creatures, such as the Mind Warpers she encountered in the Realms Below. Those had no defenses against her poisons to speak of, and often died to a single swipe of her claws back when she was in her draconic form.
Before the man had a chance to recover from the shock, she used her right hand to punch him repeatedly, hitting a different pressure point with every strike. As someone for whom changing her anatomy was a daily occurrence, it was vital for her to know all about the weaknesses of various organic species.
After half a dozen punches, the man simply collapsed. Unfortunately, her last strike had been too strong, and as she heard something crack, she knew she had killed the man rather than just knocking him out. It was not like she felt any pity for the people trying to murder her, but keeping someone alive for questioning would have been nice.
Morgan would have been much better at this, she knew. She didn't have Dov's telepathy, nor common sense or manners for that matter, but her sister's biomancy and martial skills were superior to her own. Another argument in favor of specialization, as much as it irked her to admit it.
As the man collapsed, she grabbed the knife he was holding and pulled it out of her hand. It was quite painful, but she could deal with the pain rather easily. Her biology helped, but that was not the main reason. Deadening your own nerves was a double-edged sword because it could make you take unnecessary risks. Pain existed for a reason, and turning it off was dangerous. She would not do so unless there was absolutely no other choice.
It was actually her faith in Brytius that allowed her to suffer through the pain without becoming distracted by it. Gods tended to give blessings related to their domain, and the god of self-improvement enabled his followers to keep going with their exercises and studies far beyond the point where a normal person would have given up. That this also helped in combat was an unintended but welcome side effect.
Suddenly she was hit by a gust of wind. While she was distracted dealing with her assailant, she had been unable to keep her heat vision focused on the fight. Without her aid, Balron's aim had been completely off, and the enemy mage managed to get his spell off. Fortunately all this did was clear the smoke.
The mage was standing directly opposite her. He made to cast a spell at her, with murder in his eyes.
And then he stopped in confusion as the spell fizzled out.
Balron was standing to the side, lazily waving his hand. The professor turned adventurer had disrupted the spell while it was building up, countering it.
The assassin tried again. Dov could feel the enormous amount of power the man put into his spell as the air itself began to electrify.
And then the spell fizzled out again.
The two wizards kept at it, and Dov stopped paying them any attention. It was clear how that confrontation was going to end.
Meanwhile, the remaining assassins used the change in circumstances to regroup.
They finally had their vision back. They were still unable to talk to each other, but they communicated by hand sign. Just like team Nundru had done before Dov joined them.
The assassins' apparent leader locked eyes with her. He was flanked by one of his subordinates, bleeding profusely but somehow still standing. They must have a healer with them as well. That made it much more difficult to disable them without killing them.
Atrog positioned himself to defend her. He grabbed a discarded dagger off the ground to replace the chair he was using as a makeshift weapon.
Then both of the assassins opposite him suddenly darted to the side and attacked Rania instead.
It was a feint! Atrog would be too slow to intervene!
But why were they going after Rania as well?
Dov sent a wordless warning to Rania, Balron and Galanys through their telepathic bond.
Rania immediately jumped backwards, away from the enemy she was already engaged with, and just barely managed to dodge their attacks.
"*Run!*" Atrog told Rania. Rania listened, and ran away.
Their assailants seemed to realize that they messed up. Four of them were left. The leader and two of his henchmen were grouped together. She was on one side of them, protected by Atrog. Rania was on their other side, but she was keeping her distance and was too fast for them to catch. The last assassin, their mage, was losing his battle of attrition against Balron, who kept countering his spells.
Rania picked up a second dagger as she ran, and threw it at the assassins' leader.
He parried it with his own blade. Dov felt surprise and annoyance from Rania, who did not want to throw her last remaining dagger as well.
That was when she noticed that something had gone very wrong: The enemy mage had made his way over to the judge and was now holding his dagger to the old man's throat. He shouted something at them. It was impossible to hear the words over the din of her continued scream, but she knew how to read lips and translated for the others: "Stand down or the judge gets it!" He had said.
Balron was surrounded by a cloud of debris, held aloft by his telekinesis. Dov knew from their sparring that he could kill his enemy with ease at this point, but his attacks were not precise enough to avoid killing the judge as well.
Dov looked to Atrog for guidance. As the leader, it was his decision how to proceed.
Technically, they could just let the judge die and hope that they would be able to revive him in time. It would be very expensive, and success was not guaranteed, but sometimes it was important to establish that blackmailing you did not work. Otherwise people would keep doing it in the future. Admittedly, this was much more true for herself than for normal people. Princesses could develop an international reputation for that sort of thing, and could safely assume that future assassins would know about it. But adventurers usually didn't have a reputation that strong anyway, and so letting a civilian die would just be callous and pointless.
She could see the indecision written on the paladin's face. Dropping their weapons was of course out of the question, since then the assassins would just kill them anyway. But if they let the assassins escape, they might never find out who sent them. As far as Dov could tell, all of the defeated assassins were dead. They hadn’t managed to capture anyone, yet.
Fortunately, Atrog was spared from having to make a decision when the judge suddenly took a step to the side, moved his arms just so, and toppled his assailant over in what she recognized as a perfectly executed martial arts move. Then the old man punched the assassin in the solar plexus while he lay on the ground. The mage stopped moving.
The head assassin readied a knife to throw, and saw that Balron was now shielding her. He glanced briefly at Rania, but she was on the other side of the room and there was no way he was going to hit her.
So he threw the knife at the mage instead.
The knife took his own subordinate in the throat, killing him instantly.
The man was trying to cut his losses, and killed his own subordinate to silence him.
Then the remaining three assassins turned and bolted out of the room.
Balron launched his telekinetic debris field after them. Unfortunately it was very difficult to deal non-lethal damage with that kind of attack, and so one more of the three assassins fell dead. His burial would definitely not be open-casket.
Rania rushed after them, picking up another dagger on the way.
"*Rania, no!*" Atrog told her. "*They are trying to kill you!*"
"*Don't worry, I got this!*" Came the reply. The elf sounded excited more than anything else as she left the room to pursue.
Soon she left the range of Dov's telepathic bond, and there was no way any of them would keep up with her.
The fight was over. Dov stopped screaming. It would probably be a few minutes until their hearing returned.
Atrog looked between them, then said. "*Balron, get the guards and explain the situation. Help Rania.*"
Balron rushed out of the room to do so. If it was anyone else then Atrog should probably have added to remember not to let his guard down. This could be another feint by the assassins to split them up, after all. But this was Balron. The man would probably take it as an insult that they even considered it possible for him to let his guard down.
"*Galanys, Dov, help me check for wounded. Keep an eye on the door in case they return.*" Atrog said. Galanys immediately went to work on that.
"*Dov, you are wounded yourself.*" He added, pointing at her hand.
"*It's only a flesh wound.*" She replied.
"*You are made out of flesh.*" He responded, sarcasm bleeding through the telepathic link.
"*It's not so bad. The bleeding is mostly internal. That's where the blood is supposed to be.*" She joked. "*But seriously, I'm fine. Davlash are hard to kill.*"
"*If you say so.*"
To the surprise of all of them, the judge soon hobbled out of his bench. The old man looked unconcerned and just helped them to tend to the wounded. He moved with clearly well-practiced motions as he fed the wounded emergency healing potions from a nearby first-aid kit.
"Ah, my hearing is finally back." He said. "And it looks like nobody here died except for those ruffians. That's amazing. Well done."
Dov raised a single eyebrow at the old man, who seemed completely nonplussed, even as every other civilian in the room was crying, screaming, puking, or a combination of all three.
"What?" The judge replied. "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took a cursed arrow to the knee. It has never worked properly since then, and can't be healed. So I decided to study law with a focus on adventuring. This job has much better working hours and retirement benefits."