Fire and Ice and... (Cassandra)

Cassandra didn't even have time to try and counter whatever spell the Cabalists had used to teleport her. She had been ready and waiting for it... but it happened in the blink of an eye. One moment she was in the street, and then the next she was in a nearby building. The ground crunched noisily beneath her feet as she appeared and fell a few inches back onto solid ground, and then beside her, another person fell as well. Her hand clenched around thin air as she tried to hold onto her main weapon, but the sword was already gone.

She only had her eye, the pistol, and her backup.

Gritting her teeth, she drew the shorter sword and spun on her heel. Her metal blade flashed through the air as she moved and left behind a cool, humid mist in its wake, before she brought it right up to the throat... of her own ally. Cassandra blinked hard, and stared down the barrel of another woman’s pistol as Robyn aimed her own backup weapon right back at her. The two scoffed slowly and then began to lower their arms. Neither one of them looked any different, they were both dressed for combat, but Robyn was also missing her main weapon. The mechanized hammer that Eddie had made for her was gone.

"Do you know how high up we are?" Cassandra asked and immediately turned around to start checking the room. She heard Robyn start to do the same, and when her friend passed one of the nearby windows, she heard her speak up too. The room they had been moved to looked like some kind of personal gym, either reserved for workers or whoever else might have used that level of the building. There were nearly a dozen different benches to sit on located all around the room, but strangely enough there was no workout equipment. There were no machines or weights. It was just benches and mats.

"Fourteenth, if I had to guess," Robyn practically snarled at the nearby window and the people she stared down at. Her spare hand clenched into a fist at her sides, hovering idly for a couple of seconds before she knocked on the glass. "It's not gonna be easy to break through that. They reinforced it or something, a gun won’t work."

"Clear," Cassandra snapped from across the room. She was standing by the entrance by that point, and with a solid kick, she slammed the door shut behind them and then barricaded it with a couple of the nearby benches. It took a lot longer than normal for her ally to answer her, but when she was finally done, Robyn also called out to tell her she had finished checking her side of the room. They both regrouped and then froze in place when they saw the Warden standing still only a few hundred feet away.

The redheaded girl was on the same floor as they were so that they could at least turn to see one another at their equal heights, but she was still in a separate building. Her whole body stood rigid and locked in a solid shield stance as she and another man in a long, charcoal grey coat talked with one another. The other man was slow and methodical as he moved, but Moira didn't attack him, even as he slowly began to strap piece after piece of armor onto his body. She just watched him get ready for battle, all while he muttered and paced back and forth in front of the large pole-arm that had been leaned up against one of the nearby walls.

"We have to get over there," Cassandra muttered and watched as Robyn gestured at the window.

"Do you wanna use your last sword to try and do it?" Robyn asked, and Cassandra thought it over. Eventually, she shook her head. Her enchantments probably could have broken through both windows for each building, but it wouldn't have helped. She would have used up her leftover offensive spells and then would have been left defenseless except for a stupid pistol. The gun might not have even done anything to Moira's enemy.

"You're right," she grunted and turned away from the window. They could have tried searching the building for another way over there, but that could have wasted what little time they had. If they had failed to save the Warden, the Order would have been pissed. It would have hurt their alliance and, in turn, possibly hurt the Flame too if the Order sought to try and dissolve the entire Flame after such a failure. "We can't waste it. Got any other ideas?" Robyn scowled when Cassandra said that. The Breath of the Frozen Flame only saw her expression in the window reflection for a moment, but it was there.

Gunshots fired off in one of the other nearby buildings and both girls turned to look at the source. They didn't see anything, of course; the sound was too high up for that and at an angle for them to even get a proper line of sight. The firearm did at least sound familiar though, powerful at the very least.

"What if we tried using that metal box of theirs? It looked to be magical enough, and I’m pretty sure that they used it to move us in the first place," Robyn cocked an eyebrow at her as she spoke, and Cassandra froze again. She tightened her grip on her sword and swallowed hard suddenly.

The box? How did she know that? The only kind of people Cassandra had ever known to use advanced barrier magic were Fateweavers. They were neutral and almost never got involved with the fighting or affairs of other groups. There were a few exceptions, of course, with things like popular events or when people needed guaranteed safety, but otherwise they stayed out of choosing sides.

Her friend was a fighter, born and bred. She had never had any capacity to use or learn magic, and whenever Cassandra had tried to teach her in the past, she abhorred studying for it. It was always just too needlessly 'complicated and boring' for her. She couldn't have even written a proper rune, much less recognized one. She didn’t even really have any mana, so how-

Cassandra's thoughts were interrupted as the tip of a greasy, silver dagger pierced through the left side of her stomach with its wavy blade. Her breath caught in her throat as the weapon’s sudden stab all but locked her in place, stunned by the shock and feeling of something shredding apart her body, and leaving her with little to no movement save for a small twitch in her arm, but that was more than enough. She used that slightest bit of movement to try and turn her sword to the person stabbing her and scared her enemy enough into backing up enough to release her.

Robyn- No, the person masquerading as her friend Robyn backpedaled away from Cassandra, ripping the blade out of her back as fast she could while Cassandra took a sluggish swing at her. Her arm barely moved, every jerk made the fresh wound in her side feel like it was tearing, and at the most all she managed to do was deflect another stab before this impostor finally skipped back and out of reach.

In a flash, 'Robyn' abandoned the first dagger, letting it fall to clatter on the ground as she drew another from an unseen location. Both girls watched as the first weapon slowly slid to a stop... and then froze in place, locking it and the ground around it in a small chamber of ice. A small, incredulous scoff and a laugh escaped the impostor as she watched it happen, but her voice didn't sound like Robyn's anymore. Robyn's voice was deeper and gruff, at least for a woman, while this voice was almost sweet and sultry. She hummed as she spoke and tested the words on her lips, or Robyn's lips actually, like she was actually in her body for the first time. Her teeth slightly bit and tugged at her lower lip, and she giggled, twisting her lone blade around in her hand. It was an exact copy of the first, and if their tactics were anything to go by, the type of dagger was chosen specifically for fighting Cassandra.

It had to be a part of their plan for her.

"You know, they told me that I had to do that whenever your sword touched one of my knives," she pointed to the frozen knife as she spoke, "but I didn't believe it. Why would I have? It's... It's like watching something from a dream or a movie take place. I'd be half tempted to touch it if not for the fact that I knew it might still hurt me." The impostor walked around Cassandra as she spoke, circling and strafing from side to side like a wolf stalking its prey, searching for a weakness or an opening to attack again. She stepped around her, and her reflection appeared in the mirror again, glinting with the image of a different woman with short, curly black hair and tight, leather-strapped armor.

"Who are you?" Cassandra growled at her as she spoke and limped to try and put her back against one of the nearby corners. This... rogue wouldn't have even hesitated to stab her in the back again. She had to keep her eyes on her. She had to save herself, and would have considered cauterizing her own wound to try and save her from bleeding out if not for the fact that the pain might have paralyzed her long enough for her enemy to strike again.

"You... may call me... Otrov." The woman smirked with Robyn’s face again before her expression hardened after she introduced herself. 'Robyn' glared at her in a way she had never done before, and her gaze flicked over to the window where they had first seen Moira and the other man. The other two people were also circling around each other now, but Cassandra refused to follow her eyes, she kept them on her enemy for as long as she could, even while the other girl sighed and spoke. "How did you know it was me? You were supposed to trust me, or her and attack the window. Whatever spells you had put in that sword would have been neutralized, and you wouldn't have that new little hole in your side now! You could have surrendered… peacefully." Otrov paused as she spoke and slowly began to pace back and forth in front of Cassandra. The latter shook her at the idea of giving up. "Was it the accent? I'm quite good at them, but supposedly 'someone' can always tell the difference. It couldn't have been the illusion, I know I got that right. I studied for that, even down to the last lock of hair and-"

"Robyn doesn't cast magic," Cassandra interrupted her. She had to get this over with; her side was already burning, and her eyelids were getting heavy. She had lost too much blood. "She doesn't know anything about it." Her hands gripped the spare sword a little tighter and watched as Otrov slowly came to a stop. The brunette illusionist scoffed and shook her head, scolding herself under a breath while Cassandra took her stance.

One shot, one swing. Her group hadn't been set up long enough for her to prepare more than just her backup and her main weapon. It wasn't much, but they were certainly strong enough to deal with one attacker. She just had to lock her in place long enough to hit her.

Her breathing slowed and steadied as Otrov continued muttering and chanting in the middle of the room. Her eyebrows furrowed and knit tightly together, as the muscles on one side of her face tensed slightly. Her eye glowed briefly, flashing with its baleful red light and abruptly engulfed the rogue mage before her. Images of previous spells, moments, and other faces flitted through Cassandra's mind. They were people she had never seen before, moments that had never been experienced, but were actually experienced by the previous owners of the eye… of the book, but the spells were there. They were connected to her and the eye... just like the book was, and when she called upon them, Otrov stopped moving.

Every mage and user of magic within her eye's cone of light was paralyzed when the spell was finally cast, which was only one person this time, thankfully. Cassandra probably couldn't have dealt with another. One was almost more than enough for her to deal with already. Her eye wasn't necessarily a weapon, it didn’t deal any damage, but it was useful, and unlike her swords, the spells that the eye had been enchanted with wouldn't burn away after a single use.

Her swords, on the other hand, did light up and they did deal damage. The weapon flared like it had been lit on fire, and the arcane scrawlings on both sides of the blade burned away in a vibrant blue light, firing off like two barrels from a shotgun. In a flash, the fiery light dimmed and changed color, engulfing the sword in a layer of ice and frost. Cassandra's own bones felt like they ran cold as she leapt forward as far as her wound would allow and swung. She knew how it worked, how the spells on both sides of her blade froze her opponent so quickly and so violently that it was like the ice itself burned her victim wherever it touched them.

Hell, those spells were probably how her group got its name. They were some of the strongest abilities she had in the book and proved it when her blade ripped right through the middle of Otrov's body.

The other woman split into two separate pieces with the **** of her swing, each piece slipping away while the wall behind her shattered and exploded outwards! The reinforced windows broke between the building and fell raining down onto the streets below in large, sharp fragments of glass. Otrov didn't scream. She couldn't; even while being cut down, she was too paralyzed to move, even while the image of Robyn’s body wavered and evaporated right in front of Cassandra. It didn’t finish falling. She just disappeared.

The illusion faded... and nothing was left standing in its place. There was no actual body there, or any pieces of it.

"Come now..." A short giggle echoed out from behind the Artificer. "Did you really think I had to wear all of my illusions?"