The weakness hit me after I finished with Afterburner, and I felt Jessie's hand on my shoulder almost instantly. Randall had continued into the fray, but our team's healer had stopped to check on us first. Callie was fine, if winded now that she'd had a chance to slow down. I was exhausted, though Mountain Stance was keeping me up. Jessie's life energy boost certainly helped, and I was able to keep my feet while I watched the others go at it.

The red ice had mostly shattered rather than melting properly, a shower of red smoking shards plummeting toward us, but Mel had erected a shield to stop them, and despite being sturdy enough that the inner portions of the ice pillar hadn't melted, the ice wasn't fire proof. Abel was raining down phantom punches at them from above, and the remaining seven had grouped up for defense, surprisingly in tune with each other.

The leader, a small, pale looking guy with dark circles around his eyes, seemed to be on defense. He had a hungry expression on his face as he inhaled, creating a dark vortex that literally ripped a chunk off one of Abel's fist manifestations. My teacher cursed as he pulled back, shaking his hand and flexing his fingers, clearly trying to get it to move properly. "Shit." He cursed quietly. "That hurt."

I kept my defensive stance up as I walked forward. Mountain Stance required ground contact to function, and it usually worked better from a standstill, but I was familiar enough with altering skills that as long as I walked slow and took it one at a time I COULD move. It had the added benefit of being really intimidating, and as I thumped forward I called for everyone to stop.

"Let's talk." I said loudly enough for the enemy to hear. "We're from the Starchaser Pavilion. We got you, this fight is pointless. Your local escorts were the only peak F-rankers you had, and we took them out, while ours are still very much active. Beginning F-rank to peak F-rank isn't a fight anyone could manage with these numbers. MAYBE if there was one of them you could take them down in a group, but with these odds? It's not happening."

The leader raised an eyebrow. "I assume you have some idea how this should go? Or are you just laying out our loss because you're a braggy asshole?"

I grinned at him. I liked this guy. "We want you to switch sides. You're one of the dungeon groups like we are, which means the kingdom you're working for is a temporary employer at best. We took out their representatives and now you're free agents. You work with us and we're willing to cut you in for part of our Dew haul. We have ways of making sure you don't switch sides again, of course, but nothing painful or problematic long term."

I'd had the idea to offer them wishes and use their service as a cost. With them under a geas to temporarily work for us we wouldn't need to worry about backstabbing, and we would have someone to man the fortress when we had to head out to search the core. I didn't want to be cooped up here all the time when there were wizard's towers to explore and other teams to meet. Plus when we WERE back in the fortress they could do patrols to look for flowers so we had no down time.

The guy looked pensive. "Maybe. I'd need to hear about these 'ways'. You're right that we don't have any real loyalty to our current hosts. The prince of the kingdom who picked us up is an asshole, and spends most of his time flirting with Tiffany." He pointed at a tall, slim girl with olive skin and purple hair, her eyes slitted like a cat. She gave an embarrassed cough and waved at us and I chuckled a bit. She clearly preferred to let her team leader handle the talking.

Turning back to the more vocal member of the team, I nodded. "We'll need to restrain you. Nothing personal, but we don't know any of you. Before we do though, I can bring out the restrained locals and the three members of your crew to show you that we haven't hurt them and can be trusted with members of your team at our mercy."

He didn't look happy, but I think he knew that even if he said no we'd just kick their asses and restrain them anyway. I gestured for Valk to go and get the others, and smiled when he glanced at Nat for approval. My cousin smirked at me but gave him the go ahead and he went to retrieve the unconscious bodies. He brought back seven of them, dumping them in front of me, and I froze. "Where's the last one?"

Valk raised a brow at me. "These were the only ones." I looked over the faces, realizing one of the locals had somehow slipped his restraints and escaped. I cursed, looking to the leader of the other team. "Ok, two questions, who is missing and what's your name? I can't keep referring to you as 'team leader' in my head."

He chuckled at that. "I'm Samuel. Samuel Stark." He looked over the bodies and winced. "Shit. Mazrik is gone. He was our scout, nominally, but more realistically he's a spy for prince Bertrand. I imagine he went to go tell the prince about us losing the fortress. Guess side switching is our only option. I'd wake up my boys there if I were you, because you'll need us to defend this place. We're going to be ass deep in Kargath soldiers in less than an hour."

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Cursing, I focused my Eye of Revelation on him, looking for any signs of deception. I found none. Luckily, we had options. I called Nat over, explaining the plan to her. She grinned. "Geasa are a traditional way of making deals with shaky allies. Your old man is famous for that. I approve. I haven't used up my wishes for today, I usually keep them in reserve, so I can bind six of them, and either you or I can do the other four tomorrow."

"Alright." I said firmly. "Get the leader and five of the others that are still functional. The one with the red ice powers and Tiffany, since we know they're relevant, then pick three more."

She chuckled, nodding and heading off. I also glanced over to Callie, gesturing after her. Ostensibly it was to give her support, but letting my cousin make the contracts wasn't exactly risk free. Callie knew some tricks from working with me on the subject, and she'd make sure Nat didn't slip any extra instructions in while she was at it. Trust but verify and all that.

With that done, I looked for Abel, finding my mentor nearby talking to Anna-Marie. I strode over in time to hear him asking her about defenses, and I decided to jump in. "Hey." I said as I reached them. "We think Kargath might hit us soon. This is a fortress, and it's literally designed to stop an army. Can you tell us anything about the defensive capabilities of this place? Any standard they might use?"

She shook her head. "I'm not even remotely up to date on this kind of thing." She looked at the five peak F-rank guards. "Do any of you know how these places are laid out? This is close enough that it might have been a Ladrigan fortress when it was built."

The closest, a small, severe woman with dark skin and tightly braided hair, shook her head. "No, your majesty. This would have been before our times. Perhaps if we had a map."

I saw the princess realize it the same time I did, and reached into my ring to pull out the map, passing it over. The guard looked over it. "I can work with this. I'll start setting up our defenses."

"Oh." I said in realization. "Here." I passed her the bone wall. "This is the only defensive artifact that will be overtly useful here I think. If you find any uses for the others let me know, Anna-Marie has a list of what we bought. Thank you for your help..." I trailed off, unaware of her name.

She smiled. "Amaya, sir. Captain of lady Salara's house guard. She sent me to keep an eye on her little girl, so thank you for making that easier." She looked around at the fortress. "Oh, and sir?" I cocked my head so she'd know I was listening. "This wasn't a bad plan, but in the future, remember to leave room for improvisation. Abilities and Skills make any plan a tentative failure. It's a common first time mistake." I guessed she'd seen the guilt already starting to gnaw at my gut for screwing this up.

I nodded as she hurried off. I felt a slap on my back and jumped. Abel was smiling at me. "She's right kid. I can see the hamster wheel in your brain turning, but don't second guess yourself. This was solid, you can't account for bullshit powers. Like yours, actually. That damned escape skill of yours would have made this whole thing pointless. Nobody is perfect."

It only took a minute for the purple electricity of my cousins wishes to settle and for everyone to gather up. "Alright." I said as they all assembled, including the now healed and only slightly grumpy three captives we'd set loose. "Callie, I need you on overwatch. Hit the shadows and figure out where they're coming at us from and how many. Jessie, I want Randall at the gate. They'll try to breach through there most likely. It's easier to pop open than the walls."

She nodded. "I can have him pin it shut, but I don't think it'll be an issue. There's a giant ass bone wall in front of it now." I looked over and sure enough Amaya had used the bone wall to cover the front gate, covering out major weak point. "Mel." I said, moving on. "Can you do a flame shield that covers this whole place?" I had an idea to help with that if she could, and I exhaled in relief as she nodded.

"I can." She said slowly. "It won't be particularly sturdy or dangerous, but I can whip up something thin."

"Perfect." I grinned. "I'll work with you on that. Abel, you're on Callie. Make sure nobody takes her out while she's giving us intel. Once they arrive escort her to where Mel and I are working. Valk, you're on Jessie with Perit, Benny, Celine, and Nat. Help her defend the front, but more importantly make sure our healer isn't taken out. Benny, Celine, make sure you don't get bogged down, we might need you to move."

With a plan in place we all scattered. I was...I was terrified. My last plan had just gone terribly wrong, and now I was throwing them to the wolves, so to speak. Jessie had the wolves with Randall, actually, but still. I followed Mel to the center of the fortress, climbing up on the roof as she looked around. "Well." She said impatiently. "I assume you have a plan?"

I grinned, putting a hand on her shoulder, triggering, Consecration of Flames, Touch of Tears, Mercy Kill,a triple stacked density shift, and with a massive wrench at the skills via my soul, Stone Limb and Mountain stance. "Do it." I grunted. And she erected the shield. Which was touching the ground.

I nearly blacked out from the pain as I forced the two skills to work in a way they were never intended to, but managed to hold on. As my head cleared I saw a massive dome of green acidic magma form over us, reinforced with as much defensive power as I could reasonably handle. Mel looked around with a long whistle. "Ok. That's actually kind of impressive. That's probably going to help." My only response was a low keening whine. My head was killing me.