They crept down the dark corridor that led away from the hidden grotto and took care to walk as silently as possible. The muffled noise of sobs broke the silence occasionally, but aside from that, there was no indication of anyone else in the odd cellar. They passed three doors that only led to storehouses stacked with food and goods before they reached the fourth and final door.

The sound had to be coming from there, so Jasper paused briefly to ready a spell before swinging it open. This room was no simple warehouse. Smaller than the rest, a solid half of the room was occupied by a large wooden table that stretched from one side of the chamber to the other. Only one side of the table had chairs, facing the rest of the room like a panel of judges.

The floor had been carved out of the bedrock and polished until it shone, while the walls were ornately decorated with richly colored frescoes that depicted women in various stages of undress on the backs of tsussîm. It's like a bunch of medieval pin-up girls.

Yet, the main focal point of the room for Jasper was the simple stone bench that sat in front of the table on which a badly beaten man was curled up in a fetal position. Both of his wrists were a dark purple and swollen up like a grapefruit while the back of his head glistened moistly in the warm light of the chamber’s braziers.

He wasn’t the only one in the room. Jasper had almost missed the second occupant, who sat at the corner of the table, dressed in a voluminous black robe with a silver mask and an absurdly tall hat. But a flicker of motion caught his eye, and he turned to see the man raise his hand.

It wasn’t a friendly wave. Time seemed to move in slow motion as the first tongues of flame spread from the man’s hand, rapidly increasing in size and strength. Spinning around, Jasper tackled Ihra and Erin to the floor as the fire expanded to fill the entire room.

He did his best to cover the two up as the fire washed over him. To him, the flames were harmless, but neither of the others were immune to their fury. A gauntleted hand landed on his back and yanked him upwards, tearing him away from his friends while the fires still raged.

Squirming in his opponent’s grasp, Jasper landed an elbow in the silver mask, accompanied by a satisfying crunch. The unknown mage released him with a garbled cry and the flames cut out as it clawed at its face.

Encouraged by the mage’s apparent weakness to physical attacks, Jasper didn’t waste time trying to prepare a spell. Instead, he promptly spun toward his assailant with a wild haymaker he hoped would send them reeling.

But the mage cast another spell faster than he’d deemed possible. His blow failed to connect as a massive fireball, far more powerful than the small ones his Shooting Stars could summon, hit him at point-blank range. The spell's fire may not have hurt him, but he had no immunity to the force of the explosion.

A concussive wave tossed him into the wall with enough force to crack his ribs. The brilliant frescoes crumbled into plaster showers as he bounced off them and plummeted toward the floor, but he somehow managed to land on itself.

A second fireball was already roaring toward him as Jasper fired off a spell of his own. Seraph Burst.

He rocketed forward, the dark metallic feathers wrapping protectively around him as he hit the fireball head-on. The spells clashed, but though the force of the explosion was enough to rock him, it was not enough to knock his trajectory off course. He smashed into the masked mage a moment later, his wings spinning in a tight corkscrew as the two crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

The razor-sharp feathers shredded the side of the black gown, revealing a flash of unexpectedly pale skin below and an equally unexpected set of curves. Jasper didn’t have time to appreciate them. He tried to cast another spell, reaching for Scourge of Despair, as Seraph Burst twisted him in one final spin, but the mage was again faster. A solid orb of fire suddenly sprang into place around her, flinging him aside like a rag doll.

He tried to catch himself, but his leg twisted beneath him and he sprawled across the ground.

A ball of fire bloomed on her other hand as the mage took a half step forward, and he managed to catapult himself to his feet, once again reaching for a spell. The two struck at the same time - a fireball launching toward him as Jasper cast Purge.

He tried to dodge the fireball, but it clipped his arm anyway, sending him spinning back against the wall. He absorbed the force of the blow with a pained grunt but kept his eyes trained on his opponent. He didn’t know who exactly was attacking him - maybe one of those “lords of Wēdīnīnu” that were supposedly behind the sabotage of the camps - but he figured anyone running around in a black cloak and mask was probably a bad guy. Either that or their tailor hates them.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Another fireball was already growing on the tips of her fingers but the mage abandoned it promptly to clutch her throat. He’d been a little worried she’d out level him too much for the spell to truly work, so his worries were assuaged - for a moment.

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Then her hand began to glow with a golden aura. He took a step forward, releasing Scourge of Despair as she drew her hand away from her throat and flung a black blur toward him.

His scourge was only a few inches away when it crumbled into nothingness as the spell - his own spell - hit him.

Jasper had only ever seen the results of Purge - either a complete immunity, a mild throat ache, or a devastating and gruesome death - but he’d never given much thought to how the spell judged its victims.

Time slowed to a crawl as the spell rebounded on him. The mage took a step forward, but she moved like she was swimming through molasses, a single step so slow that it seemed to stretch for minutes. And all the while the spell worked on him.

If the world around him seemed slow, his deeds flashed through his mind like a video on fast forward. Good, bad, indifferent - a jumble of unrelated actions and thoughts stretching back well into his childhood as the spell judged him.

He was paralyzed as the mage finished her step and raised her hands high above her head. White hot flames exploded from her palms, spiraling in a mini-cyclone that coalesced into a gleaming great sword. She took another step forward and her arms began to descend, swinging the sword straight toward his skull.

Jasper could feel the beginning of an ache around his throat, but it didn’t matter. Even if he failed the spell’s judgment, her sword would surely take his head before the spell could kill him.

With everything moving in slow motion, he didn’t notice when the first fragments of plaster began to separate from the ceiling and drift down like snowflakes. Then more filled the air, like a raging blizzard, as the wooden beams above the mage burst through the frescoed ceiling, destroying all in their path. The shower of plaster didn't hurt the mage, but the marble floor tiles in the room above were another matter.

The mage’s spell fizzled as a pile of rocks landed on her head, driving her to the ground. The wooden beams followed behind, contorting unnaturally as the newly minted mage tried to wrap them around their assailant. She fell quicker than he could control the wood, and the beams landed on top of her. Despite that, the mage began to slowly rise, sending plaster, wood, and rock spilling off of her as she planted her knee.

That was the moment the spell finally realized him. There was a moment of disorientation as Purge finished its judgment, leaving him with nothing worse than a scratchy throat, and the world returned to full speed, but Jasper hadn’t been dragged through dozens of battles in the last year without learning to control himself. A new spell began to pool on his fingers the instant he was free, but he needn’t have bothered.

As the cloaked mage struggled to free herself from the rubble, two arrows buried themselves in her hands and she collapsed with a pained cry.

“Don’t kill her,” Ihra warned Erin as the inexperienced mage once again tried to constrict the wooden beams around her body. The cloaked mage struggled valiantly to rise, but a third arrow put an end to her defiance. The mage couldn't resist the timber constricted around her body, binding her arms and legs together and completely encasing her hands.

Dropping his spell, Jasper cast a weary nod to his friends. “Thanks for the assist.”

Ihra nodded grimly. “You did most of it. If you hadn’t covered us, I don’t know if we would have made it.” She wasn’t exaggerating. Despite covering them as best as he could, her left arm was already a mass of red, broken blisters and in some places, outright charred flesh, and Erin’s right side was a perfect twin to hers.

He quickly cast Circle of Forgiveness on both of them and tossed them healing potions, before turning to examine their prisoner. She squirmed ineffectively as he knelt beside her, but her bonds held fast and with her hands fully enclosed, she was unable to cast a spell. And that’s why I taught myself a backup plan.

He hesitated as he reached for the mask, and glanced back at his friends. “Well, Shaggy, Daphne, are you ready to see who’s behind this mask?”

Ihra could only wrinkle her brow in confusion, but Erin’s snort gave him the validation he’d been missing for the last year, and he tugged on the mask.

The great reveal did not go as smoothly as he had hoped. It turned out the mask was sewn into the ridiculously tall black hat, which in turn was there to hide the mage’s horns. It took the efforts of all three of them to finally tear the mask and hat off the mage and reveal the woman beneath.

There was no chorus of surprised recognition from the gang. The woman who glared back at them was someone he’d never seen before. With pale skin, chestnut hair, and a pair of gently curved black horns that matched her eyes, it was obvious she was a Moon-kissed. That was a surprise - he’d expected a Southerner - but it wasn’t much of a clue to her identity. “Well, who the hell are you?” he demanded brusquely.

The woman refused to respond. Crap. There were ways, of course, of dragging a response out of someone, but Jasper was no torturer.

“La-Lady Selbārah?”

He’d forgotten about the injured man. The stone bench he’d been curled up on had been smashed in the quick but destructive battle, and the man had been tossed into the long wooden table, which had splintered beneath his weights. As he pulled himself free of the wreckage, a second surprise awaited them.

“Nas̆ru?”

Jasper’s hand snapped up, a spell rapidly pooling on the tips of his fingers, and the man dropped to his knees, raising both hands above his hand.

“I’m not your enemy,” he cried. “They made me work for them.”

Jasper hesitated, Scourge of Despair on the edge of his fingers. “The Lords of Wēdīnīnu?”

The captured mage scowled as the Djinn frantically bobbed his head. “I had no choice - they would have killed me and my family.”

Releasing the scourge, Jasper cast a different spell. “Say that again,” he commanded, casting Scales of Justice.

The weight of truth rang clear as Nas̆ru repeated himself, and Jasper loosed the spell with a sigh. “Looks like we need to have a conversation.”