Edward wasn't sure if it was a good idea to go on the offensive or not. He was decently concerned about the state that Shamesh was in and from the brief bit of the battle that he had seen, and the state of both wizards, it was clear that Alexander would not be able to protect himself from the assassin for even a moment. The sickle that had fallen on the ground now had its blade pointing straight downwards as it melted through the ground. There was also the fact that Edward had no idea how many other tricks the assassin had up his sleeve. It should have been clear to the assassin that he was not going to party wipe them, especially considering the fact that Isaac and Lenna were still violently clashing off to the side.

It was during this moment of hesitation that the lead assassin, and only remaining living one, made his next daring move: He vanished. There was a brief contact of his broken arm against one of the golden plates on his belt as his good arm dropped his other sickle entirely. It was unlikely that the disintegration magic would cooperate with any illusion, like invisibility, so it made sense for the assassin to discard it. With Shamesh temporarily out of the picture, he did not need a weapon specialised in cutting through Reality Bubbles. It would still hurt his lethality a bit, but any other extremely sharpened weapon would still be enough to dice Alexander and Edward, at least as far as the assassin was aware.

"Be see-" Was all Alexander could get out of his chant before Edward launched himself at the young wizard as fast as he could possibly move. His sword came down in chop and abruptly shifted into a horizontal swing that cleaved through as many possible attack vectors as possible. Alexander was momentarily stunned as Edward's massive sword attempted to murder the air in front of him but it all made sense when he heard a boot hit the ground hard to his left. Alexander threw up a Reality Shield just in time to stop a stab from a man that he couldn't see. "-n all" He continued his spell as his skin started to crawl. He was nearly out of mana and the assassin was still more than capable of fighting all three of them at once. The scariest part was that he could only have at most two levels on Edward and was technically the same level as Shamsha who Shamesh was made from. One assassin was fighting a twentieth level and fourteenth level wizard along with an eighteen level warrior and no one knew who was winning. It had looked as though the party of three were but then the assassin had vanished and tipped the scales back into neutral territory.

Edward grabbed the young court mage and threw him with all of his might in the direction of Shamesh. "Shamesh!" Edward called out to get his attention while he felt an attack coming in from just in front of himself and to his left. Edward dodged backwards and swung out in that direction. "Bubble!" He finished and launched a trio of charging slashes in the direction that the assassin's most recent attack had come from.

While flying through the air, Alexander didn't dare stop his chant: " who believe" A pulse of his own magic went through him, which kept him from crashing to the ground as he landed next to Shamesh, it was a silent and very quickly cast spell that was made specifically to prevent one from falling to their death. He touched down next to Shamesh. " themselves" Shamesh's hands slowly went up and formed a cage as his Reality Bubble spell started to be cast. Edward took off in a run towards the pair of wizards, just as an empty healing potion dropped to the ground between Edward and his companions. " hidden." Alexander finished before Edward could make it more than halfway to them. His eyes started to glow a soft blue just as a knife came down from above.

Alexander didn't have enough time to move. He was going to be stabbed through the forehead by a drow assassin who now wielded a pair of stiletto knives that were practically made of platinum, their enchantments were so dense. Or at least he would have been, but Alexander was a Court Mage. A Reality Shield automatically appeared just in time to stop the first one and a second one appeared to stop the next follow-up while the first one was still holding the first dagger at bay at bay. Alexander had extremely minute control over his defensive array that was woven into his clothes. No one knew exactly how, it was his secret, but he could affect when Reality Shields would appear and how big of a threat was needed in order to trigger them. There was one thing that was known about, after the story had been told, and that was that Alexander only had seven total uses of the automatic Reality Shields. It was the trade off for having so much control over them.

Shamesh's Reality Bubble formed and the assassin was forced to retreat by Edward's arrival and a powerful cross cut. "You, humans, what are your names?" The drow assassin demanded as Alexander's tornado died out. He had run out of mana that he was willing to spend on it. There was still the risk that there were more assassins out there, only Isaac knew if all of them had been slain, but he was basically empty.

"Alexander." The Court Mage replied with as much confidence as he could muster. It was generally a bad idea to give out one's name to a foe who literally made a living hunting people, but Alexander had decided to just to stall for time. Isaac and Lenna would finish up their battle sooner or later and as soon as they did, they, combined with Edward, would be able to snuff out the assassin before he became a problem for 'Later Alexander'.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Edward Sasston." The Blade Master introduced himself and straightened. He had been in a somewhat low, more ready, stance but had taken the moment of conversation to breathe. There had to be a reason why the assassin was bothering to talk at that specific time but he had the same idea that Alexander did. "And what is yours?"

"Lashven Lu'Lac." The assassin said with a flourish that could be heard but not seen by anyone save for Alexander who was watching him courtesy of his True Seeing Eyes. Edward had taken notice of where Alexander was looking and turned to face that way while still maintaining the ability to see Alexander. "It appears that this has been a failure." He went on and walked towards the dead auxiliary assassin who was still burning. "But I will keep your names in mind for the future."

"What has been a failure? And why bother asking our names or introducing yourself?" Alexander questioned. He and Edward realized too late why Lashven was headed towards one of his slain men. "Arrow!" Alexander shouted just as Edward sprang into motion.

Lashven yanked the quiver off of his fallen comrade and scooped up his bow off of the ground. He dove out of the way of Edward who was once more swinging blindly far too close to him with that ridiculously long sword.

"Right!" Alexander shouted and Edward abruptly changed directions. Lashven barely dodged three more sword swings that could have killed him back to back before he dropped a smoke bomb at his feet and dove towards Alexander and Shamesh. Alexander lost sight of Lashven but Edward was able to follow the open area where there wasn't any smoke. The issue was that it was hard to see with how dense the smoke was and how it made his eyes sting. It was a poison smoke that was made more for obstruction than for poisoning someone to death.

Edward chased after Lashven but couldn't reach the assassin before he drew and fired a disintegration arrow through the Reality Bubble that Shamesh had summoned. The thing was, there was no way to stop the arrows without being able to see them. Alexander couldn't use lesser telekinesis on them to alter their flight path unless they were in his line of sight for at least two seconds and they passed through every kind of barrier. All he could do was yank Shamesh with him to the ground and prey that Lashven missed, which his first arrow did.

Edward's desperation was mounting as the drow assassin, Lashven, drew his second arrow to fire blindly into the Reality Bubble. Neither of them could see into it properly with the smoke being kicked up all around them, but they both knew that Alexander and Shamesh weren't dead yet. Right as Lashven released his second arrow, it was cleaved out of the air as Isaac appeared in the middle of the dense fog, absolutely radiating killing intent. Isaac appeared on the other side of Lashven and launched into a lethal stab. "Stop." He tried to hold the assassin in place with the shadows all around them.

Lashven was momentarily surprised as he was forced to knock Isaac's sword to the side with the bow, losing it in the process, and Isaac's sword still cleaved the assassin's newly healed arm off just below the shoulder. His other hand tapped another one of his golden disks and a wave of disrupting magic blasted outwards from him in all directions. His invisibility was shattered and Isaac's shadows shunted out of the way and broken up. Isaac suddenly felt like a first level rouge and his sword burst apart. Edward's armor suddenly became entirely visible and Shamesh's bubble popped.

Lashven rolled under Edward's next strike, as Isaac needed a moment to recover, and tapped one of his golden disks frantically while his blood gushed out of his missing arm. Then, as magic seemed to return to the local area, a few things happened. The first was Isaac returning to normal, he spun around and teleported to be in front of the assassin while he started boosting himself back up to where he had been and reformed his sword. As Isaac did that, Edward's armor vanished and was replaced by the illusion again as he continued to chase after that assassin. Meanwhile, Lashven's golden disc flared and shattered from the massive power draw. Both Edward and Isaac's swords passed straight through where the assassin had been. He was gone in a flash of instant teleportation. He couldn't have gone far, in fact Isaac was pretty sure that he had teleported about two miles in the north westerly direction, but they had no way of knowing which path would take them to him. He had escaped.

"Damn it." Edward panted and dropped to one knee to catch his breath. As he did so, he reached into the bag on his hip and pulled out a handful of antitoxin potions. The potions were only minorly effective, best at curing food poisoning if anyone was being honest, but they would help fight the poison smoke bomb enough that a few healing potions or one cleric would be able to keep them all from slowly dying of poison.

"Shit." Isaac swore. "One got away, and it was probably the strongest one too."

"Check Alexander and Shamesh." Edward told him and handed him a pair of antitoxins.

Isaac quickly took them with a nod and teleported over to the Court Mage and his physical shadow. "Boys." Isaac greeted them and handed Alexander one of the potions.

"Thank you." Alexander said and coughed from breathing in the painful smoke.

Isaac threw enough death flames directly into Shamesh to turn Alexander to dust and then slammed his own antitoxin. It smelled like oranges and fish and tasted like someone dumped half of a spice drawer into the mixing bowl but somehow got it all to diffuse into the water. It was hard not to gag and Isaac couldn't keep from involuntarily cringing at the taste. It turned his stomach just from how potent the flavor was. Alexander's reaction wasn't much different and both young men were left coughing just as much from the potion as from the poisonous smoke. One thing was for certain though, the poison that they were breathing in felt like it was being beaten back by the potion, even if it was not completely removed.

"We need to get out of here." Edward said as he arrived at the same time as Lenna.

"Agreed." Lenna replied.

"Shamesh, how are you feeling?" Isaac asked his retainer.

"No worse for wear." He confirmed and got to his feet entirely under his own power.

"Regroup at the caravan." Edward told them all and handed Alexander a healing potion. With Lenna as their only 'healer' their post battle recovery was not going to be pleasant, Lashven had made sure of that.

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