Hit and Run (Part 2)

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Just a few hours later, we were flying at top speed over the Grand Mountains.
Once the retainer had started talking, she just wouldn't stop. It was like Varay had pulled out a plug and all the information inside her came pouring out. As the mouthpiece of the Vritra in Dicathen, she had it all: how local governance was being structured and maintained, who was in charge where, what their individual roles would be in Agrona's overall design...
Honestly, she talked so long that I got bored and sort of zoned out, but that's what Lances Aya and Varay were for.
It hadn't taken long to plan our first strike. Varay was insistent on using what we'd learned immediately. Word of our attack would spread like dragon's fire through both the Alacryan forces and Dicathen's civilians, and we were going to capitalize on that.
Our first target was in Xyrus: Ensel Speight, the mage who had been put in charge of Xyrus Academy. Of all the people she'd told us about, this dungworm was the grossest. He was in charge of educating the young mages, by which of course I mean brainwashing them into supporting the Alacryans. But it went a lot further than that.
Ensel Speight had pioneered a system by which young Dicathian mages would be rigorously tested to better understand our magic, and at the same time used against anyone who didn't fall in line. They were making little kids practice their casting on living targets.
The thought of it made me sick, but there was some small consolation in knowing that we were going to wipe Ensel Speight off the face of the world.

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We flew in silence, our bodies wrapped in mana against the bitterly cold air at such a high altitude. It wasn't until the lights of Xyrus City appeared in the distance that Varay slowed to a halt.
"Mana signatures should be suppressed on approach," she said, despite our already having discussed everything before leaving. "We'll circle around and come in from just above the academy. Aya, you'll pierce the mana barrier. Remember, straight to the director's tower. We—"
"By rock and root, we've gone through this already," I muttered, drawing a glare from Varay.

 "We get out clean, otherwise our next objective becomes that much more difficult." Aya nodded, her dark hair gleaming in the starlight. I grunted my acknowledgement. Sometimes Mica thinks Varay forgets we were all generals once upon a time...
Without any more unnecessary talking, we flew high up over the city and aligned ourselves to the academy. It was still possible we could be detected by our constant use of mana, or even seen if we were unlucky, so we moved fast.
Once the academy was directly below us, we turned in formation and dove toward the dome protecting Xyrus. Aya was in the lead position, and as she reached the dome, her arm lit up with a beam of pure mana. Using her arm like a knife, she slashed through the transparent barrier and darted through.
The protective shroud began to heal itself instantly, the ancient mages' powerful spell knitting back together like a healing wound. Varay flitted through second, and I followed, the edges of the hole already close enough that they sizzled against the mana shrouding my body.

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The secondary barrier that enclosed just the academy wasn't active, which we'd expected, and the way to the director's tower was clear. Varay and I followed just behind Aya as she flew like an arrow toward the tower balcony.
When the elven Lance hit the closed balcony door going full speed, it caved like paper mache, exploding inward and showering the director's room with dust and debris. The place was a mess. I landed in the center of the room, my mace held loosely in one hand, but there was no one to swing it at.
A desk that had rested in front of the balcony door had been flung across the room and smashed through the lower half of the door to the stairs. Chunks of stone and wood covered the floor, and a fine white dust was settling down over everything.
"Damn, maybe he's not here?" I looked at Varay for confirmation, but sensed building mana at the same time she did.
A shield of ice appeared in front of us an instant before a beam of blue fire shot out from under a piece of the rubble. The fire spread across the shield, devouring it, but Varay's spell absorbed all of the heat, and after a second both fire and ice faded away.
Aya leapt to the spell's source and hurled a large piece of the wall across the room. Under it sprawled a very thin man in black and red robes. He was balding with thin, greasy hair that hung from the sides of his head. His piercing gray eyes were watery with the pain of a clearly broken leg, but somehow he still seemed to look down his nose at us.

 "The famed Lances, I presume," he ground out through clenched teeth. "Once the finest generals of Dicathen's army, now fallen to the role of lowly assassins." He spit out a mouthful of blood. "Pathetic, really."

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"You talk a lot for a corpse," I said, bringing my mace up and looking to Varay. "Let Mica shut him up forever, please?"
Ensel Speight snorted and coughed up another mouthful of blood. "I would love to have given you three to the Testers. By the Vritra, the things we could have learned..."
Shouts from outside and in the stairwell below us announced that it was time to leave. Varay nodded, and I stepped forward to deliver the killing blow.
The cruel man howled as he released another ray of blue flame at my face. I brought up my mace to deflect it, but the spell never reached me. Instead, Varay shot forward and caught the fire. For a moment, it looked like a solid line connected the two, then the fire in Varay's hand began to harden into a darker, colder shade, freezing solid. The frozen fire spread, her ice racing back long the length of the beam. Ensel Speight's face was twisted in concentration, but at the last moment his eyes went wide and I felt him try to cut off the spell, but it was too late.
The ice grew over his hand, up his arm, and in an instant had covered his entire body, freezing him solid. Varay released her end of the frozen fire and the line broke and shattered on the ground.
Resting my mace on my shoulder, I gave Varay a pleading look. "Now can Mica do it?" Varay only rolled her eyes a little bit before nodding.
When my mace struck the Alacryan a second later, he shattered like an ice sculpture, pieces of him flying across the room.
Someone hammered on the door to the stairwell. "Sir! Sir? Are you all right, sir?"

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"Let's go," Aya said, carefully stepping over a large piece of Ensel Speight's...I thought it might be a piece of an arm, but it was hard to tell.
As we flew out of the gaping hole in the side of the tower, more shouts came from below and a series of spells lit up the dark courtyard. Aya conjured a sheet of buffeting wind right below us, sending the red, blue, and green bolts of magic wildly off course as we shot straight up into the sky.
"Ooh, it's like fireworks!" I shouted to the others, watching the barrage of spells impact against the inside of Xyrus's protective bubble.

 Like before, Aya sheered through it and we burst out into the cold night air. We immediately dived, skimming the barrier until we were below the level of the floating island, then turned southward toward Blackbend City.
"Easy as catching rock grubs!" I grinned over at Aya, but she was wearing her serious face. "Oh, come on. That was great!"
Varay responded from my other side. "It was successful, yes, but it was only one man. We have more to do tonight."
 

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