Shamesh was being pushed to his mental limits. He was still well within his mana expenditure range but trying to keep track of four archers, all with extremely deadly poison tipped and enchanted arrows, as well as Alexander, the lead assassin, and the hostile paladin barreling towards them, was pushing his cognitive limits. He grabbed Alexander by the back of his robe and hauled him out of the way of an incoming arrow while raising two Reality Shields to block the other three. Alexander, for his part, hadn't even flinched.

The Court Mage of the Arbencroft Duchy was not someone to be trifled with and he was intent on drilling that into the lead assassin's head via copious amounts of spellcraft. The lead assassin had intercepted the barrage of Stars of Doom with an unenchanted rapier. The move had been so deliberate and perfectly practiced that it almost looked like the assassin was taunting him. 'Very well.' Alexander had thought to himself and then began casting spells like a conductor queuing in each instrument at a grand orchestra. "Open Gate to Torment and Fury." He began and drew a line directly in the path of the assassin. The spell had barely finished as his next one began: "Reality is truth, reality is law, reality is short,"

Alexander's first spell was made to look like he was trying to ward off the assassin but in reality he just needed something to block the assassin's line of sight. The casting time of Reality Prison was long but it appeared in around a half of a second. That half of a second was a heads up that could not be avoided as long as the target was mana sensitive in the slightest. The assassin had to be, he was an elf, so that wasn't even a question. One half of a second was a lot in this instance but hopefully the Gate of Flames would be enough to hide it until the absolute last perceivable moment. A maximum leveled assassin was bound to be an almost untouchable foe if not handled with extreme cunning.

The assassin burst straight through the Gate of Flames without slowing. "-reality is tall, in truth of law and reality's jaw, I hold thee in reality's maw" Alexander was forced to come up with a different plan of attack. If the assassin was intent on rushing them down, then so was the paladin. There would be no stopping a V'Nova paladin with a Gate of Flames so the spell was more or less useless. That was why he cut off channeling mana into it just as he spoke the final few words of his chant. The flames broke apart and died right as he was forced to choose the location for his Reality Prison. He got a clear line of sight just in time to the area right in front of the hostile paladin and placed his spell there.

A ten foot cube of latticed reality magic blossomed into being all around the paladin. It formed at nearly half of the speed that it should have, just from being within the aura of the paladin, but Alexander had known his target ahead of time. One second was not long enough for the paladin to completely escape no matter what he tried to do. If he tried to stop, he would be stuck on the opposite side of the cage, and thus still be cut off from the combat at hand. If he tried to rush through it, he would still be caught inside. It was clear that he was already running as fast as he could in an attempt to keep up with the assassin but was ultimately failing. He tried to rush through anyway.

The paladin gained just enough speed that he hit the far bars just as they finished forming. His full weight was stopped in an instant by the Reality Prison and he staggered back before ultimately crashing to the ground. Alexander winced. If that had been him, Alexander would probably have broken a bone or been knocked out cold from a concussion, the paladin was only momentarily dazed.

"That might not hold him." Alexander told Shamesh as his finger danced and he sent a barrage of orange streaking embers at the incoming assassin. The assassin continued to use his, now shortened, rapier to intercept all of the incoming attacks. The weapon began to glow red hot and the assassin discarded it as he threw a pair of throwing spikes at Alexander with his offhand. Shamesh's Reality Shield appeared just in the nick of time to intercept them both. "And direct attacks are useless against the assassin." It was at that moment that the assassin leapt into the air.

The lead assassin pushed off of the top of a stalagmite and launched himself further into the air towards the pair of wizards just as four more arrows came flying in from different directions. Shamesh pulled Alexander back and cast a Reality Bubble around them in an attempt to safeguard them from all five incoming attacks. The arrows all punched through the Reality Bubble as the lead assassin buried the blade of a sickle deep into its side. Each of the five weapons were outlined by disintegration magic. The poison arrows, though deadly, were also just there to lull them into a false sense of safety behind their Reality Walls. The assassin hung in the air with a grin in his eyes as four arrows all impacted Shamesh directly in the chest. Each of them passed straight through him and out the other side where they lodged themselves into the inside of the Reality Bubble.

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It was common knowledge, among the upper echelons of powerful society, that liches required an object to house their soul. The object always needed to be made of some kind of material that could house extreme amounts of mana and always needed to be kept close to the lich. The further away from the object their body was, the less control and less stable it would become until it broke apart entirely. This was the only saving grace for all of mortal existence. If a lich did not need to keep their 'phylactery' close at hand, then there was nothing stopping them from being truly immortal and totally unstoppable. Imagine if Shamesh could just reconstitute his body at a safe location that was impossible to track whenever he died. What was to stop him from continually throwing himself at the walls of Contantis until they finally crumbled? Nothing. Not even demigods were so removed from mortality. A demigod was able to operate far from their demi-divine realm, sure, but inside of it they were as vulnerable as they were all powerful. It was a set location that everyone knew about. It was a place that could be sieged.

The most obvious place for the supposed lich's phylactery would be inside of his chest. It was close at hand, protected by the rest of his body, and able to be moved without any additional thought. His natural survival instincts would help keep it safe. They were one of the few parts of mortality that should never be left behind if one wished to properly witness eternity after all. None of the assassins were prepared for Shamesh to not have such an obvious and fatal weakness. The not-a-lich's death flame eyes locked onto the lead assassin's. It was time for a change of plans. 'I'm going to give this everything I've got.' Shamesh telepathically sent Isaac, through their connection, and Alexander, through short range telepathy. 'Don't die.' He added to Alexander as he let the Reality Bubble fall apart.

"Come Come forth, forth, Ember Ember of of a a Dying Dying Star. Star." Shamesh dual chanted as his voice literally duplicated.

His positioning and targeting were perfect. Each fireball was just barely high enough that most of the explosions would be allowed to run free while still being low enough to the ground for all four remaining normal assassins to be caught in their blasts.

The lead assassin used the fading Reality Bubble as a ledge to vault towards Shamesh with a second sickle, also coated in disintegration magic. As he closed in on the skeletal archmage, Shamesh spoke one word. It was a command with few peers and fewer equals: "Die." His voice rang out through mana and the cavern alike. He felt a massive drain on his mana reserves but then something rebuffed him.

The assassin wasn't even fazed as the telltale sound of a life protection item cracking echoed back. His sickle swung out towards Shamesh's head but was caught by a Reality Shield. The sickle had a hard time cutting through the shields and its handle would always get stuck before the blade punched too far through them, so Reality Shields were still a viable defensive option, they just also gave the assassin a new grappling point to continue going after them while airborne. The assassin twisted and flipped over the Reality Shield again while his underlings recovered from getting blown up by Shamesh's fireballs.

Before the assassin could reach Shamesh, or Alexander behind him, Shamesh grabbed them both with telekinesis and yanked them both down towards the ground. The assassin flipped over them like a circus performer and then started falling with perfect grace down towards the cavern floor. Apparently twenty feet was nothing to him or he had some kind of item to reduce or negate any injury from falling.

Shamesh and Alexander were now surrounded by assassins and once again on the ground. Two of the assassins were singed, as they were not able to get out of his Fireballs' blast radiuses in time. The other two auxiliary assassins were dirtied but still in good shape, those were the lucky ones with a better reaction time. The final assassin was their leader, a twentieth level powerhouse who was out for bone chips and blood. It was not looking good for them. They could only hope that Isaac, Lenna, and Edward would finish up before the enemy paladin joined the fray. Speaking of the paladin, he had done something that Alexander had not foreseen, just like he hadn't foreseen the assassin's charge through the Gate of Flames. The paladin had started to dispel the cage. He had already done it once and Alexander knew that it was only a matter of time before one of them worked and finally shattered his Reality Prison. Once that happened, both he and Shamesh would be 'up shit creak without a paddle', and it was starting to smell.

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