Switching off theremaining three fountains became almost routine. It was stilldangerous, but Rori and his teams now had perfect confidence intheir abilities and their singers, and so did Aquitain. It was onlywhen they had shut off the final fountain and the golden sphere atthe apex of the temple pyramid had retracted into the pyramid thathe realised he had made a mistake. He wasn’t mindlinked to all hisgroup leaders. The four watching gargoyles took to the air andbegan circling over his small army who were blocking the exits fromthe temple, and three things happened almost simultaneously.
Behind the Crin aThunder Lizard appeared and with a terrifying roar charged into theranks of the fighters, stomping and biting as it went. The Crinfighters scattered, then recovered quickly as Xentos regrouped anddirected them to attack the huge lizard.
A large Yith appearedbeside Zephira, and with a toothy grin touched her shoulder.Seconds later both the Yith and Zephira were gone. A Yith wizardjoined the gargoyles flying above, shooting a wand down at thepeople below. Each time he fired the wand people below him screamedin terror and began running, randomly trying to escape from someunseen horror.
To add to thepandemonium a group of six Yith appeared behind Aquitain’sposition. Five were armed with bows and began firing arrows at boththe guards and the Jeti that were nearby.
As Aquitain spun roundto see what was happening behind him, he saw that one Yith had awand that was directed toward him, and he had no doubt about whatwas to come out of it. Immediately he reacted by singing a domeshaped shield around himself, Miranda and the sub-Lieutenant whowas standing nearby.
The fireball flewthrough the air like a malevolent flaming meteor, hit his shieldand exploded in a bright ball of orange flame, setting the grass onfire around the dome and severely burning two of the Barra peopletoo slow to run or dive out of the way. The wand was then turnedtoward the Jeti, who were still closely clumped together in theirsinging formation.
Kami to his credit sanga cylindrical airshield around his people in an effort to block thearrows and any fireballs directed his way. Unfortunately, as thefireball hit his airshield the fire rolled over the top of it,enveloping both Kami and several of his Jeti people. The singingstopped and frightened Jeti people scattered in all directions, butall appeared unharmed. Aquitain knew what this meant. The Jetipeople were immune to fire but the Barra people weren’t. Thatanswered many questions that had been forming in the back of hismind.
Rori, who was nearby,quickly mobilised his remaining fifteen fountain team members intosinging and sang an air shield around them then changed his mindand reformed an invisible air shield around the Yith with the wand.The Yith, enjoying the mayhem he was causing, trained the wand atRori’s group of singers and fired, only to be incinerated as thefireball exploded inside the shield around him. Rori had come ofage. He had realised an air shield could be used for both defenceand offence. He had killed his first wizard in magical battle. Hewould be forever changed.
Aquitain in giant formdropped his shield, and focused on restoring order. He boomed acommand to both the Jeti and the guards in the Alloe file to bringthe Yith under fire, just as Rori decided to create an air shieldaround the Yith archers to stop them from shooting and also tocapture them. This time it didn’t quite work out as well as heexpected. The shield went up and as the Yith quickly realised theywere inside a shield, they taunted the guards with rude hand signsas arrows hit and deflected off the shield, then held hands andteleported away.
Miranda rushed over tothe burned Barra people to see what she could do to help, just asthe flying Yith wizard came overhead and blasted the newman guardswith the fear wand. It was terrible to see grown men throw downtheir weapons and running, screaming their lungs out or lying ontheir backs shaking all over and crying for their mothers.
‘Mandy, turn to aneagle and take out that bloody flying wizard will you, but watchout for the gargoyles, they’re made of stone and are bloodyvicious,’ Aquitain shouted through their mind link, before turninghis attention to Rori.
‘Rori, take yourfighters to Loma and join with him and sing an air shield to blockthat Thunder lizard; and when you get there, send red wizard hereto dispel the fear effects on the guards.’
‘Yes, Spirit Lord,’replied Rori, and off he went.
Aquitain charged acrossto Kami to see if his suspicion was correct. Kami was lying on thecharred ground, black all over with soot but relatively unharmed.He grinned at Aquitain. ‘I am thinking that you are seeing somesurprises, spirit bear,’ said Kami.
‘Yes Kami. I have beenpuzzling over why the little people have different coloured scales.I now know why, and a few things are clearer. We will talklater.’
Red wizard arrived andused three charges of dispel magic to reverse the fear effect onthe Guards, nodded to Aquitain and then dashed off back to hisstation with Loma’s group. Blue wizard had his hands fulldispelling fear from the Belling file, and Gaston decided that itwas time to join the fight. He had finished casting protections onhimself and became invisible. What none saw was that he flew up tojoin Miranda in taking out the flying Yith wizard.
Miranda flew up to thecanopy level and landed on a branch, watching and waiting for asuitable moment to attack the wizard, only to discover that thegargoyles had seen her and two of them had broken off from theirobservation mission to attack her. They came in from two sides andshe only just avoided them by dropping off the branch and onlystarting flying when she was almost on the ground.
The Yith wizard keptcircling around casting terror everywhere, and the group of fiveYith archers returned, shooting a barrage of arrows off at the nowreformed Alloe file of guards. The guards were now fighting mad.They threw down their crossbows, drew their short swords andcharged at the Yith, who teleported away as
