>>5241483The Archmage looks to the charging guards, hurling threats, insults, demands to surrender. He looks past them, to the men taking aim upon him. He takes a deep breath, and lays the halfling down upon the ground.
The guards advancing upon the Archmage begin to slow, perhaps taking this for the old man submitting to their demands… But your ecognize otherwise. You hear his humming, his murmured arcane syllables, and you almost cry out to warn them before eyou stop yourself. He still ahsn’t seen you—better to remain hidden.
>16You are doubly certain this was the right choice when you see the old man, with a single gesture, driving freezing winds like a scourge across the cobblestones. The melee-inclined men of the City Guard are immediately swept up as by a hurricane’s gale, screaming in fury, panic, and general disarray. They are slammed into a nearby building with such force that several rocket through the structure’s exterior wall and into the rooms within, while others are broken upon the roof and beams, scattered like leaves in a breeze.
>18The crossbow quarrels fly, but with another gentle, simple motion and a single shouted word of power, the Archmage sets them ablaze with a heat so intense that they explode into ash and slag in mid-air. He shields himself with yet another gesture, an invisible barrier protecting him from the shrapnel.
“I’m sorry, lads,” you hear him whisper, with a sigh…
>20...And then the barrier and the wave of heat expand outwards, towards the wide-eyed crossbowmen. They barely even get the chance to react—to turn and run, to reload, to cry out—before the oncoming wave of heat and fire swallows them up. It’s not quite dragonfire, but damned if the flames of a mages don’t produce a reasonable facsimile of the same death you’ve seen your Dragonborn ally visit upon your people’s foes in the past.
