A Party of Heroes

  "Fall back to the Dreadfort!" Marci screamed in the head the lead Pit Fiend in charge of the distraction attack, one Ms. Mulligan, if she was remembering correctly. "Adventurers on Gryphons incoming!"

  Marci was no longer calm. Marci was panicking. Yes, she had a small army of around forty demons, plus whatever skeletons Saoirse could raise. Yes, she had a Dreadfort which was already going into lockdown mode, and under the surprisingly competent command of Jonda many of the Kobolds left aboard were already moving to man what cannons they'd managed to repair. Yes, she had access to more mana than she'd ever dreamed possible, and with the help of the Shard was a better Spellcaster than she'd ever been before.

  But gryphons were not only incredibly fast fliers, but also unbelievably expensive creatures, and if a party of adventurers had them, it meant that they were some of the most dangerous people in the Southnds. The kind of group that walked into the ir of a Lich and emerged with a shattered phyctery, chests full of gold, and a couple of scratches.

  Marci took another look through Jonda's eyes, who could see better than her from her vantage point. The heroes were now close enough that she could make out some features.

  In the lead, astride a massive grey gryphon (a huge half-eagle, half-lion creature), was a tall, broad shouldered half-elven man with long, ptinum blonde hair, inch thick pte armour, a massive shield on his back, and a huge two-handed sword which he held lightly in one hand.

  Marci swore again. She knew exactly who this was, this was Bernard van Verstappen, the hero of Vesthafen, who legend had it had single handedly sin a dragon, the bastard son of a human king and a wealthy elvish merchant who had risen from obscurity—that part of the story had always confused her a little—and overcome great odds to become one of the most famous adventurers in the Southnds.

  Which meant that the others were, from front to back: Amelia Whittaker, a dwarven princess who also had a tragic but very narratively pleasing backstory of being cast out for refusing to be betrothed to an old man, and who wielded holy magic; Paloma del Oro, a gnomish wizard who had been finishing up her mastery around the time that Marci had been starting her studies; and Herbert Hausmann, a human who fought with a bow and magic (although he, like Anke, wasn't a proper wizard, and instead made bargains with spirits and fey and the like), and also a famous bard.

  "Saoirse, start raising undead!" shouted Marci as she shot into the air. "Protect the kobolds while they work! Raffety, hold this room!"

  They'd been caught at the worst possible time. Most of the kobolds were currently in the catacombs, excavating bones; the bulk of her demonic forces had been sent to create a distraction to draw out and pin down the town's guards to avoid a bloody fight in the temple, and, if she was honest, it had never occurred to her that a bunch of heroes might just show up on gryphon back.

  On one hand, if the four adventurers were as good as they were rumoured, she was in potentially hot water. A solid, four-person, powerful team fighting in close quarters could potentially overwhelm what defences she had left and fight their way to the centre of the Shardfort.

  On the other hand, it was madness for them to have thought they could take on a Shardkeeper. Had Marci just recruited en masse, there was no way they could have gotten even near that Shardfort without being cut from the sky.

  She reached the battlements, where the particurly bloodthirsty demons she'd kept back as a reserve, thirteen in total, were forming up eagerly: malevolent eyes glinting in the sun, and wickedly sharp weapons trembling with anticipation. Jonda was also there, although she looked considerably more nervous.

  Marci gnced back at the heroes with her own eyes. They were moving fast, and straight towards the battlements, clearly intending to punch through rather than scout around for an easier entrance on one of the other four sides of the vaguely pyramid-like Dreadfort. That was good, because although kobolds were rushing to close the doors on the other sides, which she had stupidly not closed before, she didn't have any defences on those approaches bar traps and portcullises.

  There was a boom from her left as one of the cannon's fired, unching a cast iron ball that ignited as it flew straight at the oncoming heroes and then detonated into grapeshot. Marci felt a flex of magic, and a moment ter it exploded against a shield, momentarily obscuring the onrushing gryphons in a cloud of smoke and fire.

  They punched through it a split second ter, totally unharmed. Marci even thought she saw Bernard, the half-elf, ugh as they continued to close.

  Marci summoned up her own magic and went for a rank four spell that didn't have the range of the 'Alonso's Fantastic Longbow' she'd used back in the gcier, but was significantly more destructive: 'Donna's War Thunder.' Basically, a bolt of lightning, but one that had some fiddly mathematics involved to get it to fly straight, so it came out more like a beam than a traditional lightning-bolt, and had more range.

  Normally, Marci took her time casting it, but this time, while she didn't dispense entirely with a few of the runic circuits, she only manifested the st four necessary for the spell, and visualised the rest, leaning into the crity the Shard gave her to cut the casting time on it down from somewhere above twenty seconds down to four.

  Lightning erupted, fnked by another shot from a cannon, crashing into the heroes' shield and sending cracks radiating outward. Paloma, their wizard, quickly repaired the damage, but that was OK. The point was to wear her reserves down.

  Marci summoned up more power, and fired another bst sending more cracks shooting out from the point of impact as the heroes closed even further. Cracks of musket fire from the demons around her rang out as the gryphons closed to within range, and at her mental command the kobolds on the cannons retreated. Although they'd done a pretty good job with the cannons, they weren't fighters, and she didn't want anyone who had no choice but to serve her getting hurt. She'd send them all through the portal back to Pandemonium first.

  There was time for one more spell, a fireball, which was answered in kind—well, sort of in kind, from their spiritbinder, and as Marci's cherry red fmes smashed into the heroes' shield, a green and white, feywilde attuned ball of fmes courtesy of whatever archfey Herbert Hausmann had a deal with, rocked down and smashed into her own hasty shield that protected the front of her defensive line.

  And then the heroes were on them.

  The half elf bellowed with ughter as the lead gryphon nded and he unched himself from the saddle, crashing straight through her shield with a falling swipe of his stupidly rge sword and cleaving a wrath demon who had tried to block with her shield clean in half. Marci grimaced. She knew they were demons, and thus bad guys, but they were her bad guys, she felt responsible.

  That, and they were all that stood between her Shard, and thus her life, and the heroes come to smite and vanquish evil.

  "Ha ha!" roared Bernard van Verstappen, hefting his immense sword and striking a pose, pointing straight at her, as musket bullets pinged off his enchanted armour and the rest of his party nded all around him, their gryphons snarling and braying at the surrounding demons. "This is your end, foul Shardkeeper! For I am Barnard van Verstappen, greatest hero in all the-"

  With a roar a pit fiend threw itself at him, cutting off his monologue, and beginning the battle in earnest. Spellfire raced towards her line as it reformed itself, and she began erecting shields and defences to try and protect her demonic soldiers.

  But it was OK. Because Marci had a pn. A good pn even. Tie the heroes up with her smaller force for long enough for the twenty-five demons she'd sent off as a diversion, and were only around a third of the ways back to the Dreadfort, to return and pincer the heroes.

  She would focus entirely on defence, since she had the reserves to cast shields for days, meaning that what would usually be a losing strategy for a spellcaster, totally defensive magic, became a winning one. Likewise, she ordered the three demon spellcasters to focus on protecting the front line. None of the spellcasters she had in her reserve were proper wizards like Saoirse, but instead an eclectic mix of self-taught, rune-users, and what she would describe as 'hacks' who used wild, unscientific 'wild magic' that was about as safe as it sounded.

  The foot-soldiers she told to fight defensively, to fall back and give ground rather than risk leaving themselves open. To buy time for reinforcements.

  It was a good pn. A great pn, even. A real winner, if Marci did say so herself.

  A pity that it didn't work.

  Part of it was probably that the demons she had held in reserve were the most blood-crazed of all of them; part of it was that two of the spellcasters couldn't even really cast shields properly; and part of it was that the heroes were just too damn fast.

  Her pn evaporated on impact, and the battlements became a wild, frenzied melee: demons roared war cries and hurled themselves at the heroes; the spellcasters she'd told to conjure shields managed a few paltry defences before giving up and starting to hurl frost and fire and lightning and shadow around, and all that screaming at them in their heads did was confuse them and hamper their ability to fight.

  Marci swore, trying to cover her stupid and disobedient soldiers as they were cut and bsted and stabbed by the heroes who were working together.

  A pit fiend stepped up to Bernard, and after a brief csh toppled into four discrete pieces; the 'wild magic' using demon had a very brief duel with Herbert Hausmann, and then blew herself up; the 'demon hedge wizard,' a male imp with slicked back hair, spent about thirty seconds trying and failing to hit the whirlwind that was Bernard; and Amelia Whittaker cast some kind of glowing pulse of golden light that sent several of the more cowardly demons running.

  "Fall back!" screamed Marci, both with her own voice and mentally. "Reform the line at the entrance!"

  But no one was listening to her, other than Jonda and a single incubus with a musket who looked terrified, and it suddenly struck Marci seemed to be very young.

  And then the heroes were advancing, and Marci was flying backwards, just ahead of Jonda and the incubus, who were throwing crescents of hellfire and taking occasional potshots, but were basically leaving it up to Marci to try and slow the heroes down.

  She cast 'Suds' on the floor, only for the soapy bubbles to be transfigured into sand by Paloma; she animated a skull-festooned chandelier to fall down on Bernard, only for him to bash the entire thing aside with his shield; she tried overloading fireballs to create a burning mass of fme to stop them, but Amelia just did some kind of divine magic thing that meant they walked through it unharmed; she even tried reasoning with them.

  "This isn't what it looks like!" she shouted as one of the portcullis' rammed down between them, buying her a few moments as Paloma and Amelia and Herbert began to batter it with spells. "I didn't mean to become a Shardkeeper."

  "Your lies will avail you naught!" ughed Bernard. "We shall cut your head from your shoulders, foul Shardkeeper. Huzzah!"

  "Huzzah!" said the others.

  "Paloma, we went to the same university!" said Marci, trying and failing to stop them de-ward the portcullis. "This was an accident!"

  "Oh, I know who you are, traitor," spat the gnome as the warding on the metal sparked and fizzled. "That Princess washout."

  "Save your breath, m'dy," said Jonda with surprising venom in her voice. "Their kind wouldn't care, even if it were true. Smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous hypocrites! You hear me, you hypocrites! You say that demons are the evil ones, but at least they're honest! Liars! Liars!"

  The elf swiped her sword and released an angry crescent of hellfire, which didn't even make it through the warded portcullis.

  Huh. Marci had no idea where that had come from. Assuming she survived this attack, she was going to need to talk to the strange, demon-loving elf, because she had initially dismissed her as just mad, but it seemed like there was something else going on, some deep-seated trauma that, as her minder, Marci felt at least a little responsible for trying to help with.

  Well, in addition to the clear madness; Jonda had tongued the floor.

  The portcullis began to buckle and break as the powerful magic protecting it failed, and Marci and the others fell back to the second of four protections. In her mind, she could see that the diversion demons had nded on the battlements and were just about to re-enter the Dreadfort.

  Below, Saoirse was raising skeletons, which were being loaded onto the crane and about to be brought up; and Rafferty and the other demons were holding the door against a group of armed monks who were attempting, very badly, to retake the temple. At least that seemed to be under control, although it was good that she had kept Rafferty and the others there, although not good fighters, the monks all had a little divine magic, which would have let them overrun the kobolds who were ripping the bones of the dead from the crypt with startling efficiency and great enthusiasm.

  Then the heroes broke through the portcullis, and she was on the defensive again, falling back down the corridor as the heroes pounded after her, almost all the way back to the second portcullis. Then she stopped, turned around, and unched the rgest and most mana inefficient bst of ice she had ever cast, a hideously mangled "Winfrey's Elegant Blizzard' that was neither elegant, not particurly blizzard-like, and would doubtlessly have appalled the human archwizard who had crafted the spell some four centuries earlier.

  The sudden reversal from defensive to offensive magic, and the fact that a massive wall of ice crashed into their barriers and shattered into tiny dust, caught the heroes somewhat off-guard, and for the first time they shouted in arm as the rger force of demons bore down on them from behind, howling war-cries as the heroes rapidly shifted their formation, pcing their 'squishy' members, their wizard and spiritbinder, in the centre, while positioning their heavily armoured dwarven princess-cleric at the back to deal with Marci, Jonda who had rushed forward with her sword and begun trading blows, and the incubus with the musket who despite not being a very good shot (in rge part down to his shaking hands), was still able to apply pressure.

  Fnked on either side, cracks started to finally show in the heroes' armour, and Marci was able to focus almost entirely on Paloma. The two descended into a vicious mage duel. Paloma was in some ways better than her old mentor, Professor van Valkenberg, and in some ways worse. She was, like Marci, clearly experienced in 'scrappy' fighting, the kind of thing that you picked up being an adventurer and having to use magic outside of formalised mage-duelling. On the other hand, she wasn't nearly as refined in her technique as van Valkenberg, and although she could cast fourth level spells without any kind of clutch, putting her a little ahead of where Marci was even with the Shard backing her up in technique, she had far lesser reserves than the centuries old elven archmage, and began to struggle with Marci's brutal repertoire of simpler but more powerful spells.

  Cracks began to form in the gnome's defences, and swear beaded on her forehead as she called for Herbert to help her. The spiritbinder bard, however, was tied up trying to keep a battered and bruised Bernard standing—the half-elf making a valiant, but clearly increasingly difficult, effort to hold four hulking pit fiends with shields and spears and coordination at bay.

  Then Paloma slipped, and a nce of starlight cut through her barrier and struck her in the shoulder, making her scream in pain and sending her roughly to the ground.

  Marci followed up immediately with a Silence, then a binding spell followed by a spell to put her out of commission, and when Herbert tried to dispel it, she forced him to fight her and, while he was certainly better than the shocking mess that was Anke, he wasn't nearly as good at Paloma, and in short order he too fell.

  Without the backup of the other spellcasters, Amelie the dwarven cleric, who had been battering Jonda, fell to Marci's magic next, and then it was just Bernard.

  "Surrender!" shouted Marci. "And I will spare your life!"

  "You shall never take me alive!" screamed Bernard, turning away from the demons and making one st mad rush for Marci. But while his armour was heavily enchanted, without spellcaster support she knocked him down and then bound him in conjured chains.

  "Fiend, fiend!" he screamed, thrashing not entirely ineffectually at the bindings, making them flex and groan. Marci reinforced them. "You shall never capture me, Bernard van Verstappen!"

  "What? That- but I have," said Marci, hurriedly holding up a hand to stop a particurly eager pit fiend from caving his head in.

  "You shall never take me alive!" he screamed again.

  "I have taken you alive, as it happens!" said Marci. "That is something I have done, and is happening right now."

  "Coward! Coward!" he screamed. "You shall rue the day you spared me, Shardkeeper!"

  Marci opened her mouth, and then closed it, instead, shook her head and focused on the retively complex, third-ranked spell 'Sleep.' His armour resisted the enchantment, at least a little, and he fought to keep his eyes open.

  "This isn't…" he said as his eyelids fluttered. "The st you've seen… of… Bernard- Bernard van…"

  He slumped off into unconsciousness, and began to snore. Marci exhaled and rubbed her face. That had been… close. She needed to work on her defences, clearly, and couldn't just assume that random heroes wouldn't just show up riding terrifyingly fast gryphons.

  But first, she had wounded demons she needed to see to, a crypt to finish pilging, and then a town to run away from.

  "Take them to the dungeons, with the others," she said. "Keep them under guard, and get them out of all that enchanted gear. I'll be down ter to reinforce the warding."