How Not to Poach a Unicorn

Four

Nothing. They saw nothing. Where his head should be, where his mask had been mounted, there was nothing. All they saw was the back of his glimmering hood.

The Lord made the most of that moment of shock. He threw off his cloak and stripped away his gloves leaving himself completely invisible. All four combatants took another step back. Their opponent had vanished. They thought he might have escaped, but they were dreadfully wrong.

Simultaneously Cariolta and Prag felt a tight grip around their necks and they began to choke. They swung their weapons wildly as they were lifted off their feet but there was no target within reach.

Kish charged the empty space where she imagined her invisible opponent must be standing. Her twin blades swung and twirled in a graceful tornado of steel but found no mark. She must have been close, though. She saw her comrades fall, coughing to the ground as Cailo's concentration was shaken.

It was a momentary victory at best. As she passed the spot where she thought the Lord should have been, she felt a force grab her sopping wet hair and pull her violently to the ground.

Kazé reacted. Following the scent of his prey, he dashed forward. He felt his leading paw make contact with something and he spread his jaws wide to bite down. The attack never fell. Instead, a clenched fist of pure force rammed into his open mouth and carried him across the room, knocking over a number of potted plants on the way. He crashed through one of the tall mahogany posts of an elegant bed-frame and was pinned against the far wall, gagging on the force-hand holding him there.

Cariolta, having recovered, took her turn. She took an offensive stance and began to thrust and jab at the air with practiced and precise strikes. The spearhead danced and flashed about in the air, advancing steadily towards the centre of the room.

She must have come close, because the magical hand holding Kish's hair broke loose and shot towards the Princess. A few strands of hair that had been torn out in the struggle betrayed the movement of the hand and Cariolta managed to get the haft of her spear between the hand and her throat, saving herself from further choking. She was still locked in a losing struggle for her spear, however.

Prag's calculating mind was racing. His initial plan was to hit and run; grab the girls and escape. The instant Cailo revealed himself, though, that plan had shattered. If they escaped with still Cailo alive, they would have to deal with an invisible wizard hunting them through the wilderness and that was a losing battle. He could pick them off, one by one, at his leisure. If they were going to survive, they would have to kill him now.

He carefully weighed their assets. He could tell from the way that Cariolta held her spear that she had some formal training with it. The sort of training that gets drilled into soldiers and works best when there's a hundred others with the same. The Princess wasn't ideal but her long reach would be an annoyance to the wizard. Kish's movements were wild, but at the same time purposeful. As her twin blades spun and whirled about her she somehow kept each of them in a position to defend and attack yet never in a predictable place from which to do either. He noted her as a very dangerous temporary ally and moved on. Kazé was strong, ferocious and unlikely to stop fighting until well after he had died. The naked boy couldn't exactly be counted on as an asset; he was barely even paying attention to what was going on. Prag's greatest hope for him was that he wouldn't be a liability.

He squinted and considered their opponent. He was alone, but invisible. That shouldn't be possible. Prag knew enough about magic that there was no such thing as true invisibility. Also, he couldn't see an animal about that Cailo might be using as a familiar, so he couldn't cut off the wizard's source of power by attacking that. There was some kind of trick going on here, not that it would help to know what it was since he could see neither the opponent nor his power source. He just hoped that the good Lord was actually in the room and they weren't just fighting a bunch of magical force. The invisibility might be used to their advantage, however. The Lord would be unwilling to pick up a weapon or chant another spell as it would betray his location. Those two disembodied hands were all they'd have to deal with for now. Also, if they kept him on the defensive, he would be unwilling to conjure enough force from his disembodied hands to kill any of them. There was hope, as long as they got lucky before they got exhausted.