The mages were not overwhelming in number, but the force of their attacks more than made up for that. Nichol was to discover this rather quickly as he was ordered to charge up a hill and into an indescribable flurry of fire, electricity, and wind. Something fell onto him— a fellow Lycian soldier, probably with a singed-off face. He braced himself for a moment before letting the fallen comrade go and rushing forward: there was a belligerent mystic a few meters up, just as he had figured. But in this environment, a few meters was a surprisingly daunting distance. Thankful that his weapon had a long reach, Nichol lunged—
... only to be immersed in complete light and noise for a fraction of a second before ending up tumbling down the hill, each pebble seeming to stab him like a sword on the way down. Miraculously, Nichol's lance followed as he grabbed onto it, dragging himself behind a shrubbery so he could register what had just happened.
It had been almost a direct hit from one of those thunderbolts, and even if the holy water had still been working its magic, no amount of it could dull the feeling of thousands of volts entering and evacuating themselves from the body.
Nichol noticed several other Lycian soldiers knocked off their feet as well, including an armored knight who'd seemed to have sustained an intense burst of fire, given the charring and warping of the metal on the man's shield.
The shrub that Nichol had chosen as cover suddenly combusted, being downwind from the mystics' destructive spells. Nichol cursed (or at least as much as his semi-paralyzed shock would let him) and shoved himself away, struggling to pick himself up and regroup with whatever comrades remained... but to his horror, more and more of them seemed to disappear as a shadowy plume of fog followed the barely-audible sound of a young woman yelling an incantation further up the hill. Dark magic, too? Nichol thought to himself as he was finally gaining back feeling but was now losing any reliable sort of field of vision. He should've expected that the outlawed magic-users would travel together.
Whatever the case, the suppression of these irregulars was not going to be as straightforward as Nichol had naïvely expected. Nichol spied another mage running toward the armor knight, and he held up his weapon to trip the enemy mystic, the tome slipping out of the mage's hands and into the hotly-charged air.
... only to be immersed in complete light and noise for a fraction of a second before ending up tumbling down the hill, each pebble seeming to stab him like a sword on the way down. Miraculously, Nichol's lance followed as he grabbed onto it, dragging himself behind a shrubbery so he could register what had just happened.
It had been almost a direct hit from one of those thunderbolts, and even if the holy water had still been working its magic, no amount of it could dull the feeling of thousands of volts entering and evacuating themselves from the body.
Nichol noticed several other Lycian soldiers knocked off their feet as well, including an armored knight who'd seemed to have sustained an intense burst of fire, given the charring and warping of the metal on the man's shield.
The shrub that Nichol had chosen as cover suddenly combusted, being downwind from the mystics' destructive spells. Nichol cursed (or at least as much as his semi-paralyzed shock would let him) and shoved himself away, struggling to pick himself up and regroup with whatever comrades remained... but to his horror, more and more of them seemed to disappear as a shadowy plume of fog followed the barely-audible sound of a young woman yelling an incantation further up the hill. Dark magic, too? Nichol thought to himself as he was finally gaining back feeling but was now losing any reliable sort of field of vision. He should've expected that the outlawed magic-users would travel together.
Whatever the case, the suppression of these irregulars was not going to be as straightforward as Nichol had naïvely expected. Nichol spied another mage running toward the armor knight, and he held up his weapon to trip the enemy mystic, the tome slipping out of the mage's hands and into the hotly-charged air.