Blackwell’s confidence was unshaken — he still held all the cards in this hand, and he knew it. Gell could do nothing but stand beneath him and watch sullenly.
“You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your little friend, now would you, Puritan?” the mage oozed. “Perhaps it would be best if you’d set down that cleaver of yours and surrender. After all, it’s you I’m really after. This wretch… is insignificant.” He sent another jolt up the metal arm, and Thierry writhed in agony.
Gell scowled at him. “Seems I ain’t quite as dumb as you figure.”
“Oh? Aren’t you, though? Aren’t you just?” Blackwell’s cackle echoed through the broken chamber yet again.
“I know just fine that you don’t plan on keepin’ any bargains. I give you what you want, you’re gonna kill him anyhow. Ain’t that so? Not to mention you know he’s the only thing keepin’ me from cuttin’ you right in half. So I reckon I’ll pass on your offer, if it’s all the same to you.”
Blackwell’s eyes narrowed, the orange haze in his right socket taking on a deeper, more menacing hue. “Oh, but, you see, it is not all the same to me. Not the same at all.”
Gell made no reply, and the two stood, staring at each other, neither daring to make the first move. Moments crawled by, Puritan and wizard locked in an impasse, and Thierry dangling from the eldritch claw, struggling mightily for breath.
Gell, of course, was stalling, because he held a wild card, and said wild card was slowly inching her way around behind Blackwell. Scarlet hadn’t wasted any time upon their arrival, and had used the distraction created by Gell’s assault to hide herself from view with the Art and attempt to gain position. Gell wasn’t quite sure where she was, and he didn’t dare search for her for fear of giving her away, but he knew her well enough to know what she’d be up to.
“Tell you what, Blackwell,” he said with his cheeriest bumpkin smile, trying to hold the mage’s attention a bit longer, “I got a deal to offer you myself. How’s about you set the nice gentleman down and then you piss off out of here and I don’t hack off the arm you still got.”
Blackwell bristled a bit at the impetuousness, and then came back with a somewhat less verbal retort. His left hand extended out, glistened with arcane power, and launched a crackle of lightning directly toward the Puritan. Gell was easily equal to this simple challenge, though, and swiftly Deflected the incoming blasts harmlessly off into the already-demolished chamber. Blackwell repeated the process, firing bolt after bolt that Gell nonchalantly repelled, neither of them getting anywhere.
Scarlet, however, clearly was getting somewhere — she’d drawn right up behind the wizard, blade clenched in her hand and dripping with the red haze of the Slayer. She moved into striking range and raised her arm.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Blackwell muttered, annoyed, as he spun halfway around and fired his next electrical volley in her direction, forcing her to retreat. “I’m not so easily fooled as that!”
He was now standing between them, Gell lower on the stair and Scarlet higher, and was turned sideways, watching both of them, able to attack in either direction as need may be. Unfortunately for him, however, this meant he was now turned away from and not paying much attention to Thierry, who, noticing the lapse, had brought his own hands up. They began to glow with a quiet white light as he held them to either side of Blackwell’s claw. Blackwell failed to observe this, and Gell was immediately aware of why — Thierry was being very subtle, drawing the minimum possible amount of energy, such that he was barely disturbing the flow at all, and not really enough to be noticed over the magical tempest that raged around them. As long as they could keep Blackwell from actually looking in his direction —
Gell stormed up the stair toward him, sweeping Saturnine in exaggerated arcs, trying to make a giant spectacle of himself. Scarlet, realising what was going on, joined in the mayhem herself, and together they mounted a singularly strange assault: a defensive gambit designed to look like a full-out attack. Blackwell’s scowl deepened as he worked furiously to repel both attackers, and his spell usage became clumsy.
Just then, there was a barely-audible low humming sound emanated from Thierry’s position, and the magical glow bathing Blackwell’s artifact arm suddenly vanished. The suddenly non-functional arm was dragged downward by the weight of the old mage it was previously strangling, and, as a consequence, tipped Blackwell over as well. The two of them sprawled onto the staircase, and Scarlet, not missing a beat, leapt on top of Blackwell, striking her Slayer knife homeward.
“Down, bitch!” Blackwell hissed, blasting at her with a sudden burst of magical force. Scarlet was too close to avoid it, and was sent tumbling down the stair. Gell took advantage of the distraction she provided, and grabbed Blackwell by the left leg. Heaving mightily, he swung the helpless mage around in a great arc and released him up into the swirling vortex. Blackwell was sucked, screaming, out into the void beyond the sanctuary. He did not leave without a parting shot, however, and flung a huge bolt of lightning downward at the Puritan in return. Gell was in an awkward posture and did not have his sword ready, so the only thing he could do was brace for the impact as the bolt tore into his left shoulder.
Gell cried out in pain as the massive charge pierced even his hardened resistance, and he fell down to one knee, clasping his blasted arm. Thierry and Scarlet ran up in concern.
“Gell,” Scarlet asked, “are you alright? Is it serious?”
“Arm’s still there, if that’s what you’re askin’,” the Puritan grimaced. “Hurts somethin’ ferocious. We gotta get out of here ‘fore Blackwell comes back.”
“Back? You think he survived that?”
“I know he did, darlin’. Soon’s he gets himself straightened out like, he’ll be sailin’ back down through that hole, and I ain’t in no condition to fight him.”
“I concur,” Thierry replied, adjusting his spectacles. “Stay close — this won’t take long.” With a flourish of his hand, he created an impressive sequence of shimmering lights suspended in the air above them, accompanied by what sounded for all the world like a string quartet playing a very loud concerto.
“What’s this now?” Gell hollared over the noise of the band.
“Glamer,” Thierry yelled back. “It’s to make the thread harder to find.”
“The what?”
“The thread. Hold on — here we go!”
And with that, the three found themselves enveloped in a milky, white bubble. Gell had just enough time to wonder what it was all about, and then they vanished.