CONFRONT Samara and her henchmen. +2 Bravery, -1 consequence: 1,4 +1 = 6, FAILURE. Lose a friend (Felice)

"Alright then! That settles it!" you say, stamping your foot. "Who will duel who first?"

"Ohhh. Yes. A magical duel." Samara says with a cool smirk, slowly walking forward and playfully flicking her wand in her hand. "As the challenged, I believe that it is my prerogative to choose the circumstances of the duel?"

She drops her wand to her side, spins around, and points a finger at you dramatically. "I choose you as my first opponent, Franziska Weber. The manner shall be right now, at however many paces we are from each other. My weapon shall be my wand and every spell I know-"

"And MINE shall be MY wand and every spell I know!" you shout back excitably.

Samara pauses and turns to her boyfriend to share a brief smirk. "You didn't let me finish. To repeat myself... my weapon shall be my wand and every spell I know..." she pauses for dramatic effect, and then gestures behind her, over her shoulder. "Oh, and all these guys."

"GET THEM!" Patrique roars at the top of his lungs at the crowd of menacing men in suits crowding the warehouse behind them.

"AHHHHHHHHH" Milly screams girlishly at the top of her lungs and immediately starts sweeping her wand back and forth in a panic before anyone else can even move a muscle. A stream of hot, steaming brown liquid fires from the tip of her wand with the force of a firehose. Patrique raises his own wand, and the air in front of him and Samara glows. Milly's attack(?) deflects off it, splattering away, but it completely douses the thugs behind her, causing them to flinch away. Those who have it touch their bare flesh shout in pain, and several slip and fall off their feet.

Your nostrils flare. It smells salty, and savory. Kinzie notices it too - "Is that... gravy?" The peculiarity of Milly's choice makes you hesitate.

Unfortunately, that hesitation costs Milly. Samara steps out from behind Patrique's magic shield and manages a disarming spell with a flick of her hand. Milly's wand is knocked out of her fingers with a shower of sparks, and Samara follows it with a tongue of flame that lashes out across the warehouse room, striking Milly in the chest. It isn't any hotter than a candle flame, but it's enough to set Milly's skirt and blouse on fire, making her cry out and drop to the floor.

Mr. Vinny's fellow gangsters hesitate, standing their ground and backing up. This is likely the first they've seen of real magic. The rival mundanes who Samara and Partique recruited came expecting this, on the other hand, and they don't hesitate to charge forwards brandishing their weapons.

One of them pulls out a handle-shaped metal object from his jacket and points it towards you. You raise your wand to block, reflexively... only to realize that'll do no good against something that isn't a spell. Aegidius's staff lashes out and the metal object is yanked across the room and into Aegidius's hand.

When Aegidius points it at them, the first few men in the charging mob skid to a halt fearfully and take a step back. But even though they have faltered, Aegidius doesn't use it against them. Rather, as he holds it, it shifts and changes into... a bottle of beer. He raises it to his lips and takes a long sip as all eyes are on him for a moment, then throws it to the ground where it shatters with a crash. "The next of you men who takes a step towards my sister will sorely regret it."

Your own eyes lock on Samara, while Patrique has moved back behind the thugs. Another fiery lash strikes out across the room at you - but you block it by conjuring up a swan made of ice, like might serve as a banquet centerpiece. Patrique brings down a flurry of giant icy hailstones on Vinny's hesitant guards. Alas, it seems that command of the classical elements is more impressive to mundanes than defensive efforts or a spout of gravy; you hear a door open and see several of the thugs making a run for it. Vinny, to his credit, shouts at them to get back and defend their 'turf', but only a handful heed his words.

Samara smirks at you. She's a much more experienced witch than you are, and knows that she can hit you from beyond your range to do anything about it. You have to keep your guard up and get closer to her. "Felice! Felice! Help me!" you shout as you bat aside a shower of hurtling stones.

"Oh... ah... I... I cannot find my wand! I misplaced it!" Felice says in a shrill, hysterical voice. You grit your teeth.

Emboldened by Samara's power, over a dozen vicious looking men start charging towards you and Aegidius. You've fought a few magical duels, but what do you do against a big man coming towards you with a knife? The moment you drop your guard, Samara will strike you. Your hand freezes. Memory of all the magical dueling techniques you loved to study starts fleeing from your mind...

...but then, before the men can leap upon you, Aegidius steps in front of you, his star-spangled robe fluttering as he deflects a cutting icy wind from Patrique. With a dramatic spinning flourish, he lays about with his staff - thrusting, swinging, and sweeping from side to side.

He isn't just quick, but supernaturally so. Without even uttering a word of incantation, he'd cast a spell of swiftness upon himself. Magic coruscates over his staff as he moves among the charging thugs like an eagle among crows. He strikes each man only once, no more and no less.

Your brother has already run through the lot of them, ending up behind them before they can even react, in the span of just a few heartbeats. Aegidius raps his staff against the floor with the finality of a judge's gavel. The towering bearded wizard doesn't even deign to look back over his shoulder at the near twenty armed men he just rushed through.

"If you wish to receive any kind of mercy for this travesty of honor, Miss Grover," he says sternly, "you must first ask."

A moment ago you were afraid you were about to be clubbed to death. But now you bristle at him stealing your thunder again. Your short legs carry you up next to him at an awkward trot, wand pointed at her. "Th-that's right! WE demand that you yield, Samara!"

"Grrrr!" A particularly large, shaven-headed man wielding a length of pipe, one of the only men in the room as big as Aegidius himself, begins stomping towards him from behind. The brute raises his weapon in his hand as if to strike but Aegidius doesn't even glance at him. "Bloody bastard! You're not done with... with... Hrrghh... ahgghhh..." Even as he grimaces in rage, the bruiser's face begns writhing and contorting unnaturally.

"What the hell is... buh... buhhh... BACKAWWWW!" The man's bald head sprouts white feathers and his scowling face lengthens and sharpens into a beak, his voice becoming an alarmed chicken's squawk. His empty clothes fall to the ground, leaving a rooster flapping its wings in a panic. Screams of terror from the rest of his gang follow soon after as the thuggish mundanes see their bodies warping in front of their very eyes. One after another, their bodies twist and deform into the shape of common animals.

You frown slightly as the grunting of pigs, the baa-ing of sheep, and the yapping of small dogs, among others, fills the warehouse. One gangster got turned into a parrot, as he flaps wildly around he squawks out "Motherfucker, motherfucker!"

Although seemingly random at first, after a moment it's clear that Aegidius chose animals large enough to not be accidentally squashed underfoot, but without any particularly dangerous natural weapons. Perfectly planned and executed as always, before you even got to show off your skills. Why does he have to be so damn good at magic and everything else?

You channel your disdain into a renewed assault on Samara, now that you're close enough. Of course, she keeps blocking your own disarm attempts. But you are forcing her to back away. From the enraged look on her face it's clear this isn't how she intended things to go. Aegidius is walking menacingly closer to her.

As you look at him, you notice a small white bird flapping near him. Realizing that you lost sight of Patrique, who is an ani-mage, you finally throw out the tiny shrunken sword that you keep in a handkerchief, which allowed you to win your first duel at Boarbristle. In a single practiced spell you return it to normal size, and send it hurtling towards the bird hovering over Aegidius's head.

Seeing a sword flying towards him, Patrique immediately shifts back to his human form, and deflects the sword with a sweep of his wand - but that leaves him about ten feet in the air. He tumbles to the floor and lands painfully hard on his bottom. Aegidius wastes no time in spinning around and bringing his staff down painfully on Patrique's wrist. The pale upperclassman cries out in pain as bones crack, his wand falling limply from his fingers.

"Ahhh, I'll help, I'll help...!" Felice is saying, running over. And then, suddenly, you hear a grunt of surprise and pain from Aegidius, for the first time in the battle! He reflexively reaches behind himself, as if trying to scratch his back. As you watch you see he is struggling with a tangle of rapidly-growing bramble vines with large, jagged thorns growing over him, wrapping around his arms and legs and pinning his staff to his chest.

Your eyes wide with shock, you see that Felice, tears running down her cheeks, has her wand out - still glowing from the spell she'd cast. Even a skilled journeyman wizard like Aegidius couldn't defend against a skilled first year's attack, delivered from behind with complete surprise.

Yelling at her would be pointless. So, you simply slash your wand at the air while staring at her, your eyes blazing with killing intent. Turn your back on a House Draconis, and this is what you get, you now see. Each motion of your wand conjures up a hissing snake, which falls on Felice from above. Whether or not she understands the implied insult, she is certainly terrified enough, and starts flailing her arms hysterically, toppling backwards and dropping her wand in fright. Did you summon venomous snakes, or harmless ones? In the heat of the moment, even you aren't quite sure. But the writhing serpents force her to scuttle away, leaving her wand where it fell.

'Five Keys Vinny', Aegidius's mundane partner, took advantage of the distraction to close the distance and lunge at Samara, brass knuckles gleaming on his fist. He gives her a solid hit in the shoulder and knocks her down. But one cheap shot is all a mundane is ever going to manage against a magic user - Samara brings her wand down in a vicious slashing motion, and a man's intense shriek of pain echoes in the confined space. Vinny stares in horror at the bloody stump where his fist was a moment ago, and, seeing it laying on the floor, sinks to his knees and picks it up with his remaining hand, staring at it in shock.

It seems you and Samara are the last two standing. Except...

"KINZIE! What are you doing you idiot? HELP ME! This insane woman is trying to murder me!" you shrilly cry at her while keeping your arm outstretched towards Samara.

And Samara is walking closer to you. She knows that if she can defeat you quickly, before Aegidius frees himself, victory will be hers!

Options:

• Engage in a magic duel with Samara and hope you can defeat her despite the large gap in skill

• Appeal to Kinzie on an emotional level to help you

-Use the COMMAND spell on Kinzie in a bit of karmic irony, considering she wanted you to help her force herself on someone with it

• Run out into the street, betting Samara won't be willing to use spells on you in front of dozens of onlookers who don't know about magic, more than Patrique could possibly erase the memories of