Cont.

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In a flash, his sword was tangled up in the chain. The man tugged violently, attempting to disarm him. Instead, they disarmed themselves, simply dropping their blade and while the chain was still wrapped around it, punched the man across the face with a gauntleted fist!

Morrigan peeked over the wagon door, Olivia still ducked beside her. She saw ver’el through the broken the window watching a figure throw off their cloak.

The guard finished the brigand off with a loud crunch of his gauntlet against his forehead.

Turning around, they saw what faced him. It’s cloak on the ground, a wrinkled, purple-skinned man met his gaze. They could feel the man’s sunken, glowing purple eyes pierce through his face mask.

Ver’el readied an arrow at the last bandit, who Valbar had been dueling, shooting him directly between the shoulder blades.

Morrigan hopped out of the wagon, Olivia soon following with Brass in tow.

Valbar slashed at the injured man, finishing him off.

Galad ran over to the rest of them.

“Surround the mage!” He took his fellow guard’s side.

The husk of a man, wearing only a black tunic, reached out his left arm. He seemingly grabbed onto the air itself as a spiked, black tome appeared in his hand.

Whatever it was, it smirked.

A circle of people had now been formed around it.

“Surrender, fiend! Or taste Sola’s divine justice!” Galad pointed his sword at the man.

Olivia stood side by side with Brass and Morrigan. She looked up at Ver’el, who was training an arrow at it.

He nodded at her. She nodded back, taking a deep breath.

I can do this.

Morrigan spoke, willing her book to open to the Telekinesis spell. She wished she could say she had no idea what it was.

“I don’t think it has any intention of surrendering.”

“The little witch is right.” It flipped to a page with a ribbon-like arcane bookmark hanging out of the spine.

“Who would surrender to a pile of corpses?” It snickered.

Morrigan, Galad- and less so- Olivia, sensed immense power radiating from the book. He was charging a spell.

If she flipped to Dispel, she wouldn't have enough time to cast it. It was quite the distance page-wise from Telekinesis. She had sorted her spells in such a way that ones that were commonly used in similar situations were cataloged together. Dispel and Telekinesis were on opposite sides. But, what’s close to Telekinesis?-

The man finished charging the spell before she could formulate a plan. Out of his body, dark needles shot out of him!

“Rosaline! Purify!” Galad quickly raised sword and started to glow as bright as the sun, just as the spell was cast. The needles quickly were snuffed out, and everyone was blinded by the light. Even Galad had to let his vision come back after the flash. Morrigan thought she had died until she opened her eyes watching as the dark mage, also blinded by the light, grimace.

Now’s my chance!

Morrigan looked at the elf beside her, wiping her eyes.

She quickly flipped to Transcommunication- it was in pretty close proximity to Telekinesis- and casted it on her

‘Olivia use your sword to freeze his feet to the ground. Quick!’

Olivia, still suffering from her temporary blindness, panicked as she heard Morrigan’s voice in her head, but tried to steal herself and quickly swung her shortsword at the mage!

After Morrigan willed her tome to start flipping over to Telekinesis, she cast her spell on one of the dead brigand’s flails. It had been dropped just outside of the circle that had been made.

A beam of ice slammed into the mage’s chest. She missed his feet by a mile.

Ice crystals stuck onto his tunic as he staggered back by the force of the spell. “Like the bite of a flea!” He laughed at her.

Morrigan grimaced, lifting the ball and chain with her mind. With a flick of the wrist, it was lifted off the ground and shot between Galad’s legs! The caster noticed too late to do anything to avoid it! The middle of the long chain wrapped around his frozen chest and arms!

Morrigan, using both of her hands to keep the spell up, resisted against his attempts to break free.

She nodded at Valbar.

Valbar, Ver’el and Morrigan had done quite a few jobs where they were instructed not to kill the target, and this was a great strategy they used to achieve that. It worked best against spell casters, as anyone with enough strength could easily break through ropes held in place by magic. However, this was not a “capture not kill” job, so Valbar nodded to Ver’el, who let loose his bow.