“Today is a night of celebration,” the Count said, ringing his glass to get the attention of the room.

  The dais had an enchantment which projected both the ringing and his voice evenly through the chamber.

  “Each of you here is a dear friend or too important to not invite—or bought the invite from one of the first two,” he paused for the expected laughter, and to Syril’s ear what followed was the false polite laugh of a room of sycophants.

  “He needs a speech writer,” Syril muttered to the group.

  “The great evil that has terrorized our fair city has been vanquished by—”

  The speech was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass as large flying creatures broke through the windows.

  “Imps!” someone shouted, and the room descended into chaos.

  The group reacted at once.

  Linar was first, pulling his cloak out of nothingness to wrap around his body and then disappearing entirely within it to reappear in front of the largest group of wait staff. An imp dove for the black and white clad servants, and Linar threw a knife at it, hitting it in the base of its wing and turning its controlled dive into an unwieldy tumble. It crashed hard into the ground where the waiting servants stomped on it until it stopped moving.

  Syril was next, pulling out his flute. The imps were a problem, but nothing compared to the danger of a group of terrified stampeding people. He ran to the stage, jumping onto it as he began to play his flute, infusing the notes with his magic, calming the crowd and bolstering their courage.

  The Count recognized Syril and fell back to give the bard room.

  “Call the guard!” he shouted to his attendants who were all frozen.

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  The words and music were enough to shake them from their terror and they moved as one to do as commanded. It was then that the first members realized the doors were barred from the outside.

  Ellen began casting a spell, and as she did, a rip in reality opened beside her. Newt in Raven form with a third leg protruding from his chest, flew out of the rift, flying right at the nearest devil where it latched on with its three legs and began pecking far faster than a natural raven ever could.

  Completing her spell with the time her familiar bought her, she clapped her hands together, and when she pulled them apart reality ripped in the wake of them. Three birds flew out, each as black as Newt, but each in a different form. An owl, a falcon, and a vulture all flew up into the air to fight the imps who were raining fire down on the frightened nobles. Each bird had some small discrepancy denoting them as unnatural beings, but in the chaos no one noticed.

  True to his word from before, Bill lifted his leg high and brought it down on a nearby table. The table, with a central pedestal holding it up, collapsed on one end, the other end flying up into the air. When the tabletop struck the ground and the other end stopped rising, the cutlery and plates on it continued their flights, some striking imps and throwing them off their targets, but for every imp hit this way, two nobles received a fork or pork cutlet to the face.

  Bill ripped the pedestal off the bottom of the table and ran into the crowd looking for a low flying imp to kill.

  “God’s help me,” Grom said, as a muttered curse as he decided what to do, but to his shock, he felt the divine power channel through him and fill the surrounding area with a golden fog.

  The fog then coalesced into miniature ethereal winged spirits that filled the air around him. The spectral angels attacked any imp that drew close.

  Grom’s gaped at the little creatures in shock at what he’d done, but his battle instincts took hold of him and he ran into the fray, his spectral army following him. While all the imps slain by his comrades became corpses, those killed by his radiant angels burned rapidly into ash, leaving little behind.

  With imps, angels, and strange birds filling the air, the room was chaos. Grom looked around for a way he could more actively help and in doing so thought he caught sight of a new flying entity on the edge of his vision. It looked like a small green figure with bug like wings, but when he spun around to confront it, he saw that it was only one of his newly summoned angels.

  “I really need to read that book,” he said to himself.

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