“I’m right here! Where are you?” The voice seemed to come from close to where Ladonna stood.
“Here!” the voice cried. It came from behind Tythonnia. She turned to face it, ever so carefully.
More shuffling was followed by a snarl. It was Sutler who spoke out with a rough whisper. It was hard to pinpoint his voice. “I can hear them breathing! They’re still here! Attack, damn you!”
Tythonnia braced for the chaos about to erupt. Her spell was prepared, the words pacing in her mouth like an eager dog. She could only hope the others realized what was happening and had prepared accordingly.
The first thief suddenly appeared. It was Tythonnia’s attacker, his short sword swinging wildly while his other hand was outstretched, as though blindness gripped him. The second and third rogues appeared as well, the one who had attacked Par-Salian and the one who had attacked Ladonna. They all swung blindly; then they spotted one another, their eyes widening.
Tythonnia didn’t know whether their horrified expressions came because they realized they had broken the constraints of the invisibility spell, or because they were now visible to attack. Sutler had yet to appear, but Tythonnia knew she had to press the advantage before the trio of cutthroats could somehow regroup. She prayed her companions had come to the same conclusion. The words spilled from her mouth.
The rogues hesitated. Tythonnia reappeared, but now there were seven manifestations of her, each of them interspersed through the area, each of them seemingly as real as the other. Six copies mimicked the moves of one, another of her skillful illusions.
As the thief struck at one of the illusions with his short sword, obliterating the image into a mist of glittering powder, Tythonnia began another spell. The other illusions simultaneously mimicked the sway of her arms and twist of her fingers. The cutthroat near Par-Salian struck at the Tythonnia nearest him, shattering that illusion as well. Five Tythonnias left to kill.
And there was still no sign of her companion wizards. They must have been waiting for Sutler to show himself, but he seemed smarter than his ilk. He wasn’t doing anything that would reveal his position.
Tythonnia had to act again; the rogue nearest her had shattered another illusion, bringing her down to four Tythonnias. She was too close to him not to be attacked next. In unison, the four Tythonnias completed a fresh spell; in unison, they called:
Four bolts of light zipped from each of the four Tythonnias, sixteen daggers in total that stitched zigzag paths over and under each other. Only four bolts were real, but the effect was the same as if all sixteen carried menace. They peppered the attacker like arrow fire and sent him lunging to the floor. He uttered a groan but stayed down.
Par-Salian materialized behind his attacker, his spell spoken as barely a whisper. A sphere of fire unfurled between his puppeteer-like fingers and the cobblestone ground. He flung the sphere at his attacker, caressing him with flames. The cutthroat screamed and batted at the sphere to push it away, but his sleeves caught fire. He cried even louder as the blaze engulfed his arms. Then he ran out of the courtyard as if his legs could carry him away from his burning body. His cries echoed through the alleys.
As both Tythonnia and Par-Salian turned to confront the last of their visible attackers, one of the glamours burst into mist, and a sharp pain slammed into Tythonnia. She fell backward to the ground, her scream and agony-twisted face mirrored in her two remaining doppelgangers. Looking at them she realized there was a dagger lodged in her shoulder. The cutthroat nearest Ladonna was pulling another pair of daggers from his belt.
Par-Salian sent the sphere hurtling at the rogue, but as before, the villain proved nimble. He dived out of the way and rolled back up to his knee. His arm flashed forward, and two more daggers were suddenly embedded in Par-Salian’s thigh. The wizard cried out and clutched his leg, as he crumpled to the floor.
Tythonnia tried to ready a spell, to unleash it before the rogue could attack them again, but pain and nausea made it hard to focus. Somehow, between the seconds spent in agony, another two daggers appeared in the attacker’s hands. He prepared to throw them underhand, and neither Par-Salian nor Tythonnia could stop him in time.
Ladonna appeared behind the cutthroat, her hands pressed on either side of his head, her mouth moving. He gasped, first in surprise then at the sudden rush of pain. Ladonna’s fingernails glowed with cold, blue light, and her victim’s face seemed to go white. Tiny, blue veins appeared across his flesh, his skin growing terribly pale and thin. The wounds on Ladonna’s arm and face stopped bleeding and scabbed over. She gained strength as the rogue withered; finally his eyes rolled up into his head, and he dropped away, dead.
Tythonnia fought to concentrate, to ready one last spell. She knew what was coming; Ladonna had made herself vulnerable to save them; Sutler was still invisible. But Tythonnia couldn’t think straight with the dagger still in her shoulder. She needed to remove it.
With a cry of pain, Tythonnia gripped the dagger and pulled it out. She screamed and almost collapsed from the sickening rush that filled her stomach. The spell, she thought, she must prepare it before-
Everything went silent as Ladonna arched out, her black eyes wide in shock and her head thrown back. Sutler appeared behind her, both fists buried deep into her lower back, the blades drinking of her blood. A wild grin cracked his face open, an eagerness for the kill that bordered on frenzy.
Tythonnia saw the solution clearly, the one spell she knew that she was loath to ever use, the one spell in her repertoire of illusions that marked the pinnacle of her understanding of those particular arts. The spell called out to her. If ever a situation existed-a person, even-to inflict that spell upon, that time had arrived, that person was here.
The words came easily, the gestures unbidden, from years of practicing the patterns and motions. If she should die fifty years later, never having practiced magic again in the meantime, the interlocking finger and hand patterns would remain with her.
As her fingers flew and her mouth uttered,
A shadowy cloud, its edges tattered and bleeding wisps of smoke, appeared between Tythonnia and Sutler. He finally saw it, his crazed eyes unable to register it at first. He glanced at Ladonna then snapped back to the shape. His mouth dropped open, and the lunacy evaporated from his face. The shape remained the same as far as Tythonnia could see, but to Sutler, it took on terrifying dimension and weight. The details became clearer, and it turned into that thing in the mirror, the thing that would undo him.
Tythonnia couldn’t see it, but she knew it was something stitched together from the fabric of all Sutler’s fears, a patchwork monster to embody his every greatest terror. Ladonna slid to the ground as Sutler stepped back. He tried to raise his blades, to fend the creature off, but his arms barely budged. The daggers clattered to the cobblestones, and a strangled cry escaped Sutler’s lips.
The shadowy form darted forward; a tendril touched Sutler. He clutched his chest and inhaled a terrible, ragged gasp. He dropped to his knees, his fingers scrabbling over his heart as though seeking to tear it out. The look of horror deepened, and there he died, on his knees, the fear forever etched on his face.
The two other Tythonnias instantly vanished, and both the real one and Par-Salian hobbled over to Ladonna. Her eyes were open and staring up past them to some distant point in the night sky.
“Ladonna, hold on,” Par-Salian said, “please hold on. We’ll find help.”
Her gaze drifted to Sutler, dead and still upright. “Not fair,” Ladonna whispered. “I wanted to be the one who killed him.”
“Don’t you dare die on us,” Tythonnia said. “I haven’t taught you my best illusions.”
Ladonna nodded. “I think … that last one was … nice.”
“Shh, shh,” Par-Salian said. He turned toward the inn and cried, “Help! Help us!”
Nobody appeared and the pool of blood around Ladonna’s body kept growing. Par-Salian fumbled for his chest and pulled out a golden sun medallion that Tythonnia had never seen before. He stared at it then at Ladonna, caught in indecision.
Tythonnia stood and ran for the inn door. It was locked, the windows dark and the shutters on the ground floor closed. She hammered on the door, but nobody answered. She knew what was happening, and it enraged her enough to hammer even harder. They’d angered the Thieves Guild. They were on their own. She caught a glimmer of candlelight inside through the gap between the door and its frame.
