| ....on and on.....and on.
....
Actually, mage battle's don't last very long. It just seems like it
for the participants as time seems to slow to a crawl as each dodges, dives,
and tries his (or her) d**nedest to make the other guy die! The sheer power
and ferocity of the malign magic will ensure nothing less.
So it was with this battle....
But, admittedly, this was one of the longer battles. Part due to the
fact that neither side wanted to cut totally lose....and risk bringing
the tower down upon themselves. It was also due in part that several of
the spell casters that Prang faced not only were very powerful.....but
in the case of Ti'mma, very agile (and thus hard to hit).
Prang had much magical might at his disposal and decades of magical
skill to call upon. Thus is why he is able to block several of the surprisingly
powerful attack spells thrown his way.
However, Jarlath and gang (those with magical skill) have youth....vigor....and
quiet a well pool of magical might on their side as well. Jarlath, due
to that one night back on his homeworld that had cost him so much, had
burning within him enough power to have made him possibly the most powerful
mage on that version of Terra. Andrea had been blossoming into something
with much potential when maters took a strange twist of fate. She still
had it....and it still is growing. Some even speculated that, if she'd
chosen to....she could have cured her demifox condition (if she hadn't
looked herself into her new body by becoming a Champion....that is). In
other words, Andrea was very powerful. As for Ti'mma.....her magical talent
was almost a compensation (was a compensation) for the powers lost to her
from going from the elfin species she'd been to the elfin species she was
now. Blossoming at an incredibly early age and now at a mere decade was
as powerful as a mage three to four times her age. Very powerful folk arrayed
against Prang.....
Prang, at his utmost to overcome these upstarts, growls and reaches
deep within himself to cast on dangerous.....previously only recently discovered
spell one of his lapdogs had brought him.
His mage quarters already beyond salvage, Prang figured that this spell
would hardly make much more of a mess than it already was.
Afterwards, he could go down and alter or erase memories and let those
who come to be summoned by Mistress Cratchet (for obviously the old biddy
had summoned the Guard by now) wonder what had happened. He would play
the part of the obviously confused and clueless.
That was yet another disguise that served him well in the past.
Hell, it had worked well enough for past incidents like this when other
would be avengers came for him. Alter memories, erase recall, and acting
the senile fool made it appear that the retirement caste was just a place
full of semi- (no, very) dangerous old men.
Taht was why the castle was so far away from everything else. The locals
were wise enough to realize that the "inmates" within could bring forth,
unintentionally, devastation and despair without realizing or meaning.
So a shimmering portal appears, and Prang begins by trying to...and
succeeding in scooping up the one young woman who'd angered him so by daring
to come back after he had Banished her!
That proves to be his first....and last mistake in this battle.
Champoins can not be transformed in the manner that the Transform Door.
Their Matrix is frozen. Preserved by those almost godlike Beings called
Rules and Agents!
Thus, the Door almost seems to blink in surprise.......grumble with
indigestion as it rebounds from a dizzy Annafrid. It can't swallow up the
adventurers. There is the elfin girl, but the path to her is blocked by
the nature of the Champions by her. The nature of the unchangeable repulses
the Door, so it takes the path of least resistence. It must envelope
and transform somebody...and teleport them far away. That's it's nature,
chaotic as it is. One such as it can not resist it's nature, for while
it's almost alive....it's still just a "thing."
Prang screams, and finds himself falling....changing.....body and mind......
Elsewhere and when.....
An Agent who'd been in charge with overseeing the chaotic results of
certain powerful teleportation/transformation spells pauses....and smiles.
The smile broadens as he watches a curious, evil Altantian artifact
from a nearby parallel Terra touchs the disturbance caused by the disrupted
and malfunctionning Transform Door....and is destroyed by unexpected magical
feedback!
It also causes some interesting side effects like other Doors to appear
elsewhere/when....but those are in different (but related) threads.
A dazed orgress comes stumbling down the goat path, and is welcomed
by a band of ogres and ogress.
Catching her sent, the pheremones told a whole lot of stories to the
local ogres, but first and foremost was that she was indeed friendly ogresses.
This time, however, the ogre chief decides this Pra' will be carefully
looked after, just in case there is some repeat occurrence like what happened
with Belda's friend, Fre'.
This proves to be unnecessary, for Pra' truly wants to belong....and
soon is the proud mother of lots and LOTS.....of cubs.
..........
Uh, yeah.
And the Agent smiles....
But meanwhile......
"We better get out of here," Astra says after staring at where the evil
mage HAD been, "I doubt that the local authorities will understand
what we did....or believe our claims!"
"What was that thing Prang threw at me?" Annafrid asks, shaken.
"Something that my magical studies under Dragon Synizn and friends sounds
like from what I've heard of it.....a Transform Door," Andrea whispers,
awed. "That's what I think it was....."
"Ah....okay," Annafrid nods, "Don't like the sound of it, but we'll
talk about it later."
Jarlath, rushing through the spell to take them back home, thinks
of a few ripe curses when he hears heavy pounding on the still barred door
of Prang's room. The Authorities have arrived, and sound none too happy!
Casting the final incantation, the group is whisked away.....somewhere
not quiet over the rainbow....and they land heavily back on Terra Prime.....a
bit off target.
Due to the nature of different rates of time on Annafrid's world and
Terra Prime, they have arrived just a few hours after they left....though
days have past.
And then there is the fact that space/time was still a bit out
of whack due to recent chaotic teleports from a Door.
-
 That accounts
for why they arrive in a heap in the very room where one Spaceman Jones
is looking down at his sedated son.....while in another room one Jenny
Elf is looking down at the elfin eight year old girl that, on another world,had
birthed her!
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