Can I borrow you for a moment?

  Marci's shield shattered, and the force of the blow sent her streaking back through the air, blood trailing from dozens of wounds as she arced through the sky back towards where the Dreadfort y at the edge of the snowy, circur gcial cirque that was wedged between three peaks.

  Four wizards, including her old mentor, Professor van Valkenberg, that was what she was facing. Alone, she'd managed to put the archwizard on the back foot by absolutely abusing the ocean of mana that the Dreadfort provided her, but against three more wizards, even if they seemed less skilled than herself, she had immediately found herself struggling to just defend herself.

  She hit the snow again, hard, and rolled, kicking up powder in a great white cloud streaked with red. Her vision flickered, and she tasted warm, coppery blood spill across her tongue. In the distance, she sensed a barrage of magic being drawn together. A barrage that would end her life for a second time. And this time, she doubted that she would emerge from the Shard three days hence because there wouldn't be a Shard. It would be shattered, the Dreadfort destroyed, and… and, well, that wasn't really a bad thing, it was monstrous and horrible and the world would be better off without the vampiric flying castle. So, perhaps she could take some soce in the fact that, even if it meant her death, the Southnds would be free of the terrible citadel. Except…

  Of.

  Of, the man she in her heart of hearts loved deeply, was going to be executed for a crime he hadn't committed, for 'colborating with demons.' Executed because of her. She was the one who had been wanted by the enforcers, she was the one who had given him that report she'd taken from Jonda.

  No. She couldn't die. Not until she had made this right. Not until she had saved him, and Tissa, and Gillian, and… well, if Anke was there she supposed she'd save her too.

  With an effort of will and a recklessness bordering on suicidal she cast a fourth level spell, Earthshape, forgoing manifested sigils and matrices and relying entirely on visualisation within her mind. Without the Shard reguting the mana, she would definitely have blown herself up. Even as it was, quite a bit of magical power overflowed from the circuits and seared at her body. But she was already in an enormous amount of pain, and barely registered it as she brought an arm up and with a crackle and rumble of earth, she wrenched up a huge chunk of rock from beneath the cirque between herself and the advancing army.

  The bck and grey stone smashed through the ice and snow, absorbing the barrage of attacks even as it sent her tumbling down a newly raised slope of snow and ice, powder raining down around her and half burying her in fluffy white crystals and chunks of sharp frozen water.

  Marci tried to push herself up again, but her weak, burned, bleeding arms only managed to lift her a few inches before she colpsed back into the snow. She growled and grit her teeth. OK, so her body was broken? So what? She wasn't just her body anymore. Her soul was entangled with the Dreadfort, and through it she could feel connections to each and every one of those who had bound themselves to the Shard: the unbreakable bonds with the Kobolds and Jonda, and the lesser, more opaque, but still potent ones with the demons.

  She'd seen through the Kobold's eyes, so couldn't she…

  Jonda gasped as Marci focused on their connection, pouring herself into the link, further and further and further until she could see the vivid snowfield ahead of the elf woman, smell the tang of brimstone and ash from the demon's spells, hear the elf's heavy breathing, and feel the the cold of her sword's handle through her gloves.

  Sorry about this, said Marci, raising the elf's hand and flexing the woman's rger digits. I need to borrow you.

  Do not apologise Mistress! replied the clearly insane elf as she became a passenger in her own body. My body is yours to use as you see fit! However you desire!

  Marci frowned with Jonda's brows. That was… a disturbing response to being puppeted. One she wasn't keen to try and unpack. Especially, not right now.

  "Rafferty, Finnley, come with me," said Jonda, or, rather, Marci said through her mouth as she assumed total control of the elf's body. "Saoirse, Maeve, cover us—we must retrieve my body."

  The demon's all looked towards Jonda with surprise, perhaps not expecting orders to come from her, or… actually, that had been Marci's voice through her mouth. How did that work. Then they saw Jonda's now burning eyes, and immediately gulped and nodded.

  It was strange being freakishly tall and wingless, and Jonda was also significantly more athletic than Marci. Her vision was also different, not quite as sharp at long distances, but significantly more vivid in colour. But while the elf couldn't fly, she was still fast when she ran.

  Power flowed through Jonda as Marci drew on magic from the Shard. It wasn't quite the same as casting in her own body, it felt a bit… clunkier, not quite as smooth, but it wasn't impossible, and the Snowwalk charm, a retively complex and not particurly long sting third rank spell took without issue, letting her and her two demon bodyguards pelt across the top of the snow without sinking in.

  They reached where she could feel her body less than a minute ter, and Finnley pulled her bleeding, burnt, and terrible looking form out of the snow. He fumbled at a pouch, and produced a phial of red liquid that Marci recognised as a healing potion.

  Marci focused back on her aching and screaming body enough to gulp it down, and had just returned to Jonda's form when an arrow went whizzing past the elf's ear.

  A moment ter there was a cng as more bullets pinged off Rafferty's massive shield.

  Marci responded with another Disorientation hex, and they began to race back towards the Dreadfort, even as behind her the rock wall began to shake and rumble as the wizards on the other side pelted it with explosive spells, making small pieces of rock crashed down around them.

  'How long on flight?' asked Marci, addressing her question to Likes Hammers.

  "We is going as fast as we cans!" replied the kobold.

  'How long!?'

  She felt Likes Hammers think for a moment. "Halfs an hour."

  "Fuck!" said Marci through Jonda's mouth.

  "Mistress?" said Rafferty.

  "Half an hour on flight," said Marci as they reached the Dreadfort again. She turned, narrowing her eyes to see the st of her Earthern barrier shatter and fall, and the soldiers advancing past it. Without a view from the air, it was difficult to see just how many there were. But it had looked to be somewhere near a hundred all up.

  They were fanning out, moving closer and closer, and behind the line was the quartet of mages, led by her old professor. Soon a barrage of long-range magic began to smash into Saoirse and Maeve's barriers. Sweat beaded on the back on Jonda's neck as Marci tried to think of a way to tie them up long enough. She could cast another barrage of destructive magic, but even with Saoirse and Maeve acting as support that would buy her, at most, minutes.

  Raw power had been enough to overcome the gap between herself and her old teacher, but not supported by another three competent wizards. She had two of her own spellcasters — although the imp wasn't a wizard — backing her up, but that wasn't enough to even the pying field, to get her out of the corner of the board she was trapped in.

  Jonda's eyebrow quirked as her gaze drifted upward. When you were losing, sometimes the best thing to do was flip the board. Power by itself wasn't enough, but what about power and cunning?

  "Saoirse, Maeve, I need you to reinforce this shield, everything you can, against physical as well as magical forces," said Marci as she began to thread magic together into a rarely used piece of battle-magic called Alonso's Fantastic Longbow. It had, presumably, been created by a wizard called Alonso a very long time ago, and was generally regarded as not particurly fantastic; in fact, it was usually taught as an example of a 'overdesigned failure.'

  This was because it was a rank five spell that used around double the mana of a fireball to achieve the same destructive output, and although it had a very high theoretical maximum range, it also bled energy over distance something shocking, meaning that its use-cases were virtually nil. There were better spells for short, medium, and long distances if you wanted to blow something up, most of which were not rank five spells which did not require bancing twenty five different matrices to achieve the same or better result.

  But if you wanted to shoot something at extreme range? Something over a kilometre away? Then you needed Alonso's Fantastic Longbow. Of course, most spellcasters would be lucky to down a bird at that range, even if they could hit it, but Marci wasn't intending to hit such a small target, and had a colossal amount of power behind her. Although, as her mind ran through the sums, this would probably burn through most of the Shard's reserves.

  So she very much hoped it would work.

  Runic matricies swirled around Jonda's possessed body as Marci focused on her target: not the advancing wizards lobbing an ever greater barrage of spells at Saoirse and Maeve's shield, but behind them. Wielding magic felt a little clunky in the elf's body, something it was clearly not used to, but part of Marci was amazed by how easy she was finding casting a rank five spell all by herself. Without magic chaotically writhing in her grip, it felt less like trying to keep twenty five ptes on sticks spinning, and more like setting up twenty five tripods on slightly uneven ground.

  The magic built, and the blue matricies shifted red as Marci ramped up the total magic, arcing and crackling and filling the air around her with the tang of ozone as a torrent of energy poured into the spell. The matricies shifted again, this time turning vivid indigo, and Marci felt her grip on the spell beginning to slip. Just a little more…

  The matricies turned white and began to degrade. Marci released the spell.

  A beam of raw mana as rge as the entrance-way erupted from in front of Marci, shooting out over the snow, great swirls of mana enough to conjure dozens of fireball being lost along the way as the inefficient spell bled energy. But it didn't matter, because the immense quantity of power still had more than enough strength to pulverise its target: about half-way up the side of the cirque, a huge rocky ridge that dominated the north western overlook of the gcier's source, some three and a half kilometres from the entrance to the Shardfort.

  The pilr of magic rammed into the rock hard enough to shake the earth; cracks radiated from the point of impact, billowing huge plumes of dust, ice, and rock as boulders the size of houses were flung outwards like pebbles. The ridgeline buckled and broke and began to colpse in on itself, sending out a wave of rock and snow and ice: an avanche.

  "Maeve! Shield! Shield!" shouted Saoirse as Marci put Jonda's hands on her knees and gasped from the physical strain of the spell.

  Out across the snow she saw the group of mages conjuring a powerful barrier, and the soldiers rushing to get behind it as the immense white wall, stretching from one side of the cirque to the other rumbled towards them. She hoped they'd all make it…

  Marci reached up and, using what little remained of the Shard's pool of power, lent her strength to the barrier the two demons were weaving over the fortress's entrace-way.

  The well of power ran dry as her spell finished, and although power continued to pool as the Shard's insatiable thirst drank from the nd, if this didn't work then she had nothing else up her sleeve.

  The wall of snow hit the bottom of the basin and sent a tremor that knocked Maeve off her feet, spewing fluffy white crystals so high into the air that they blocked out the sun. The rumble grew louder and louder as the wall of white roared across the cirque. The huddle of mages and soldiers vanished, and a few moments ter the wall hit the fortress.

  Marci had no idea what the Shardfort was made of, but it must have been tough to weather the crushing force of a half-colpsed mountain. The shield that we had erected shuddered and screamed as the sunlight vanished, and in pces cracked and chipped, but it held, failing only when the st of the rumbles were dying away and a great wall of churned snow and ice was blocking the entranceway entirely.

  She hoped that her mentor and the other wizards had survived, but if their shield had held, the Professor's probably had too. It would take them ages to dig themselves out, a lot longer than the half an hour that Likes Hammers had given her until the Shardfort could take to the skies again.

  Which meant that she was, for the moment, safe.