Summoning Ocellus

“I don’t like saying this,” Keeper said, “but we need to kill the wizard. It’ll end the war with us being heroes of the winning side. There’s no other way to clear our names.”

“We could also capture him and hand him over alive?” Ocellus suggested.

“It’s hard to keep wizards captured,” Keeper replied.

Ocellus shook her head. “Our cocoons are strongly anti-magic. They even held Princess Celestia herself! We just need to search him for knives.” “Apparently,” she added under her breath.

“He killed you with one spell,” Tixi said, trepidation coming over the link, along with just a shred of hope. “It wasn’t even a big spell. I could cast it.”

“Yeah, that’s an issue,” Ocellus said. “But we’re rich. Is there anything we could buy that might level the playing field?”

“If the whole party was here, that could do it,” Keeper said. “One scroll of Scry to find our friends, two scrolls of Teleport to go there and back, Tixi could probably manage it and we *are* rich and can afford backup scrolls in case she flubs one.”

“Assuming they’re all in one place,” Tixi said. “They’re going to be in the middle of the army so we would need to grab them and go.”

“I wish Ijj was here,” Ocellus said. The poor kobold had been captured while the changelings gooped up the corridor. “He’s one of our sneak attack specialists.”

“Two scrying scrolls then,” Keeper said. “He’s probably unguarded if we really did draw them all in.”

“I’ve got a few other ideas,” Tixi said. “Let’s shop!”

===

Scrying on Ijj revealed that he’d freed himself and was waiting for them in the Inn. “We probably should have checked there first,” Keeper admitted, as the expensive scroll crumbled to ash, its magic expended.

They decided to wait for nightfall before scrying on the rest of their party. “We always get together for food, if we can manage it. It’s the mostly likely time to find them all together.”

Sure enough, the scrying sensor showed them all together, eating dinner… in a mess hall full of changelings, the center of one of their camps.

“Oh boy,” Keeper said. “Still, this can work, as long as they trust you. If they don’t, teleport out anyway.”

“Got it,” Tixi said. She pulled out two scrolls of teleport, and read one of them, and vanished – along with Ocellus, dragged along because she was a familiar.

William stood up and drew his sword. “Scry and die? Really?” he asked.

“Scry and live,” Tixi corrected.

“Come with us if you want me to live,” Ocellus clarified. “We’re off to see the Wizard. We have *plans* for him.”

“I trust you,” Danielle said. As the changelings around them started to realize what was happening, they joined hands (or in Flicker’s case, paws) and vanished, back to the City.

===

“The outer gate has been breached,” intoned a magic mouth, waking the Wizard from his sleep.

“What?” he asked.

“The outer gate has been breached,” the mouth repeated, the pre-programmed response the only thing it could say.

“How?”

“The outer gate has been breached.”

The Wizard had had a long day of experimenting, and hadn’t had time to refresh his magic, but he still had enough tricks to handle any invader. Not that he’d need to – the outer gate had the weakest defenses of any part of his tower, even if the useless wastrels outside had never managed to get past it before.

He went to the balcony and looked out on the riot going on in his poor, trampled garden. He sighed. Cleaning up would be so much work for his apprentices.

===

“Stop breaking things!” Marcus shouted at the crowd. “I’m the one who’s going to have to clean this up!”

“Then you might as well join us, and have some fun!” one of the rioters shouted back. “Because this place is getting *trashed*!”

He didn’t even notice the adventurers running past, heading for the tower door.

===

“The tower door has been breached,” said another magic mouth.

Okay. This was getting serious. He checked the wards and locks on his bedroom door, and triggered the extras that were only to be used in case of emergencies. He didn’t have the spells left to discipline the entire riot of failed would-be apprentices, which meant they’d get the run of the tower, except for the important rooms like the library which would have closed and locked themselves by now.

===

“No, I’m not letting you into the nursery!” Anastasia shouted, making sure the door was securely locked, and adding her own Arcane Lock just in case. “My research subject is in there! Go find somewhere else to debauch yourselves.” She turned as the party tried to rush past her, her gaze focusing on Tixi and Ocellus. “You! You’re the one who stole my baseline kobolds!”

“They deserved better!” Tixi protested.

“How am I supposed to do a proper study with only one kobold?”

“I don’t know… maybe you could ask the tribe to send someone else?” Ocellus suggested. “They seem happy to be at the Wizard’s beck and call.”

Lucien slowly walked down the stairs. “Someone just ran past me, covered in antimagic,” he said, waving at the party and the riots. “I think this is a distraction.”

“Um…” Ocellus said. “Are you distracted?”

“Distracted enough. After all, if Rellenore dies, his apprentices inherit his tower.”

“We’re taking him alive,” Danielle said. “But I don’t imagine you’ll be getting him back.”

Anastasia and Lucien looked at each other, then Anastasia shrugged. “His lectures sucked anyway.”

===

“The tower door has been breached.”

“The outer gate has been breached.”

Stupid magic mouths.

To his horror, he heard scratching at his door, and the lock clicked and unlocked itself. That shouldn’t have been possible – not without setting off dozens of very noisy, very explosive spells.

The door opened, revealing nothing behind it. He blasted the nothing with a lightning bolt anyway, to no effect except to show a twenty foot gap in the lightning, which resumed on the other side.

“Antimagic Shell,” he whispered. “Assassins!” he shouted to his apprentices, but if the assassins were here they were probably already dead in a futile attempt to defend him.

Then she was on him – a suncat of all things, being ridden by a kobold. He screamed as she pinned him to the bed, then stopped screaming as she tore out his throat with her teeth.

The kobold on her back stared at the Wizard’s corpse. “Weren’t we supposed to take him alive?” Ijj asked.

“I’m supposed to do a lot of things,” Flicker growled. “Let’s take his head to the changelings, and end this.”

===

They ended up taking his entire body – raised from the dead, at what would have been an exorbitant cost if they hadn’t provided their own diamond, then safely searched for pointy tools and cocooned. After the spell was finished, they quickly fled the city – murder was a crime, after all – and turned themselves in to the changeling vanguard, which was only a few miles from besieging the city. Ocellus personally dropped the wizard’s cocooon at Pharynx’s hooves.

“Am I forgiven?” she asked.

Pharynx looked at the wizard, then at the city. “I was really looking forwards to the siege,” he said. “You robbed me of that.”

“This is the one who killed me. He wasn’t working for anyone else. We can all go home.”

“I suppose,” Pharynx said. “I’ll leave Thorax to decide your fate. He’ll probably make you go to therapy to get in touch with your feelings or something stupid like that.”

“I think I’ll live,” Ocellus said.