"Hurry!" Lenna ordered Alexander, Edward, and Shamesh. All four of them had started sprinting towards Isaac and the ambush.

"Understood." Shamesh replied instantly. "Do not resist." Magic surged out of Shamesh as he cast Flight on himself, and Levitation on Lenna and Edward, and then grabbed both of them by their offered hands. Alexander cast Flight on himself and then both wizards launched forwards as fast as their Flight spells could carry them. "Double it." He instructed Alexander.

"Quicken." Alexander chanted and cast it on Shamesh before he did so on himself as well. He would not be able to maintain it once they arrived at the combat zone but it would help them get there in the shortest amount of time.

Shamesh shot off like an arrow with Lenna and Edward dragging behind him. Edward looked downright horrified at the means of travel but Lenna was too focused on the violence that was to come. Alexander was only a breath behind them. Lenna and Edward were yanked around as Shamesh flew at a speed comparable to a cruising falcon. The tunnels with their width of ten to twenty feet gave little room for error at that speed but Flight was the spell that Shamesh had the most confidence in having mastered. Flight was how wizards moved. The Tow means of travel was the best means of travel for Isaac and Lenna over long distances and they had done it on multiple occasions. No one wanted to walk a hundred miles, but Isaac and Lenna could hang off of Shamesh's arm for three hours if it meant they didn't have a five hour run.

Shamesh burst into the cavern and witnessed the ambush point for the first time. There were eight paths leading away from the small cavern. The cavern itself was smaller than the arena in Safeharbor and could have easily doubled as an obstacle course. It loosely resembled a square that thought it was a circle. There were tons of rock debris from broken stalagmites and stalactites as well as chunks of stone that had fallen from the ceiling and then been pushed to the side out of the way. There was a small pool that collected water from the walls and floor which explained the signs of animals frequenting the cavern. With two of the paths taken up by the road, the other six looked like they had been made by multiple different kinds of burrowing creatures and magic.

Down one tunnel, there were three extremely high leveled combatants who instantly turned to face the quartet as soon as they entered. Down a second tunnel, Shamesh's master was lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Down the other four were more corpses. Isaac had been busy. Arrayed in front of the quartet, using the rubble as cover, there were eleven assassins, eight knights, and a mage. None of them were as high of a level as the three in the first tunnel that Shamesh had noticed. The rest were still over level thirteen, meaning they were at least the same level as Alexander, but the highest among them was level eighteen. Edward was also level eighteen.

Shamesh spun in the air and then, using his built up momentum, threw Edward at a pair of archers who immediately tried to fire upon them. He then threw Lenna at a trio who were still taking aim. Edward's pair were a combined level thirty four and Lenna's trio were a combined level of forty five. Hers were lower leveled on average but Shamesh figured that the fact that there were three of them would help equalize the difficulty of both melee combatants first targets.

Alexander flew up next to Shamesh as Edward was still flailing and Lenna was orienting on her targets. Shamesh had just come to an abrupt stop from his twirl and quickly put up a Reality Shield which intercepted an incoming branch of disintegration. Alexander stopped powering the two Quicken spells as he switched from a mobility to damage focus. "Be" Alexander started from right next to him.

"Command:" Shamesh started as the hostile mage's eyes went wide and he flicked out a bolt of fire at Alexander.

Alexander twisted out of the way as he finished his spell: "Undone."

Shamesh's voice trialed only a fraction of a second behind as he said: "Negation."

A Reality Shield tried to interpose itself between the drow wizard and Alexander's Disintegrate but Shamesh's Negation broke it apart before it could even form. The branch of total annihilation went entirely unopposed until it was blocked by an automatically activated Reality Shield right outside of the mage's robes. The Reality Shield and everything within two feet of the point of impact vanished in an instant as Lenna and Edward crashed into the respective target areas. Shamesh cast two more Reality Shields to block incoming arrows that were aimed at Alexander and swatted away an arrow that was aimed at himself with the back of his hand. The drow wizard dropped to the ground in two pieces.

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—

It was at that time that Isaac made himself known once again. He appeared behind an assassin and drove Truth straight through the assassin's back and out of his chest while he was distracted at everything else that was going on. He then chose his next target, another lone archer, and moved. The most dangerous parts of assassins were their silent steps, heavy use of poisons, and uncanny intuition. Their class enhanced skill could still be a problem, if not pressured sufficiently, so Isaac was only going to go on the offensive as if he were trying to kill Jallen V'Nova. Anything less and they would start to take too long to kill. That was why his stats were around double what they normally would be and his Truth was sharp enough to cut through even heavily enchanted armor non-adamantine armor.

—

Edward twisted and brought all of his momentum and weight down on the first archer with his sword that was larger than the archer was. The second archer pulled out a pair of daggers and launched at him but Edward caught both blades in one circular swing that ended in a diagonally upward slice in the assassin's side. The assassin's armor held up well and he was only tossed to the side, in part because Edward's strike lacked any real power after the circular motion, but also because of how heavily it was enchanted.

He launched after the assassin, who met his attack with a twin block. Edward's attack was a faint however, and he slipped under the assassin's arm and jammed the end of his massive curved sword into the assassin's armpit. His follow-up attack went towards the assassin's face but the trajectory changed at the last moment and it instead cut the assassin's hand off at the wrist. Edward's swings came in faster than the assassin could attack with his own daggers but with the force of a lumberjack's ax. Two more strikes was all it took to finish off the assassin and allow him to deal with the two soldiers that had been running towards him.

—

Lenna ignited like a demonic torch in the darkness as her black and orange flames bloomed to life. She started her chant to summon her Armor of Ire as her full weight and sword hit one of the assassins like a guillotine. Her sword caught the man's shoulder and neck at the same time. Unfortunately for him, she had more momentum than he had mass. Lenna's sword did not cut through the leather pauldron but it did force it downwards. This meant that man's neck was left behind, directly in the path of the rest of Lenna's blade, as he was thrown to the ground.

She hit the ground hard but on her feet as the full might of her aura slammed down on the other two archers. She spun and brought her sword up with her aura, mana, and physical strength. The blade shone brightly in the darkness until it was entirely encompassed by the archer's body. Her sword went through half of the man's armor after it cut his right arm clean off. Enough momentum was still transferred into her target that his body was thrown out into the road. She turned and grabbed the final archer by the face as she finished the chant for her Armor of Ire.

Hardened shadows formed over her armor as the embers of her wrath flickered under it and her aura's flames. Her lenses were tinted just enough that all the assassin in her grasp could see was his own reflection in her eyes before she drove her sword into his neck and removed his head from his shoulders. She knew that the fight would not have been nearly so easy if her aura wasn't so good at causing those weaker than her to freeze up in terror. Two assassins in the mid teens were more than enough to keep her occupied for a little while, if they were able to work together, but her aura had shut that down along with a large part of their cognitive function.

—

Isaac pounced on the next assassin but was surprised when smokebomb went off in his face. Isaac wasn't about to deal with a trained assassin in the middle of a cloud of smoke that he could not see through, so he just chose a different target and went after them. His new target did the same thing and he swore in irritation. They were learning. Smoke was something that he had no counter for and it quickly started to fill up the small cavern. Isaac then noticed the lead ranger starting to run away again and he was forced to give chace. The lead assassin and paladin were both back to the edge of the cavern again which meant that everything was about to get a lot more interesting, especially considering the growing clouds of smoke.

Isaac really would have preferred to stay in the cavern to help his wife, retainer, and friends finish the fight, but the ranger had fought him for far too long to be allowed to live. Isaac and Lenna had enough recurring villains without him willingly allowing one to leave. It wasn't because the ranger had managed to hold him off with nothing but a fancy knife and hatchet despite everything that he had tried, no, it was purely to keep from having to fight him again at a later date.

—

Shamesh and Alexander sent dozens of Stars of Doom after every assassin that they could see. Three, not counting the five slain or the leader, were shrouded in smoke so those were safe from the bombardment. The lead assassin pulled out a rapier and stabbed each of the incoming stars of doom with the unenchanted blade. Each one detonated and shortened his sword by an inch at a time until it was the size of a dagger but he didn't even flinch as he continued to sprint straight for them. He had overtaken the paladin almost as soon as they had entered the cavern as the man in heavy armor was forced to move at less than full speed through all of the rubble and growing smoke.

"I'll protect you from unseen threats, keep him busy." Shamesh instructed Alexander as he was forced to throw up two more Reality Shields to halt incoming arrows. If even one of those arrows hit Alexander, there was a high chance that their poisonous payload would kill him within minutes. The current battlefield was not one that a mid teens wizard would want to be in, Alexander was different though, he was starting to enjoy the rush and he trusted Shamesh absolutely. The trick that they had done with the enemy wizard was just the confirmation that Alexander needed. He and Shamesh worked incredibly well together and the fact that Shamesh had entrusted their offence to him only confirmed that Shamesh felt the same way. At that moment, Alexander's lower level meant nothing. They were not a master mage and a grandmaster mage, they were not a teacher and a student, they were just a pair of wizards who had a problem that needed to be removed.

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