Adrianna

You and Cutter carve a path to Adrianna, praying you've made the right choice. Cutter picked up a short sword from a goblin you dispatched moments earlier. The man handled a blade surprisingly well. He wasn't flashy, but he never lost his footing, a common error that tripped up most men in their first battle.

Adrianna had stopped throwing fire and fury. She'd stopped doing anything at all, in fact. She swayed on her horse, with rich contentment upon her face. Lidded eyes, and languid limbs ripe with pleasured exhaustion. An occasional shudder ran through her body.

You dragged her from the horse, but her eyes hardly flickered. You slap her, hard. She actually giggled, and a rich smile painted her face like a Cheshire cat. Dread began to fill your stomach. You'd chosen wrong. You want to scream with frustration and rage, but instead you hand the limp mage off to Cutter and prepare to retreat.

“Wait, m'lord, wait!” Cutter's voice is so new to you, you almost don't hear it over the din of battle. “I think, y-y-yes. She's coming around.”

And, by the blessing of Gods, she was. Adrianna looked weak and fully sated, but her eyes found yours. “Magus.” It was almost a sigh. “I drank to deeply. I tried to- Her eyes closed and shuttered open. “You must collapse the tunnels.”

You look at the packed tunnels. Goblins pouring out with no end in sight. “How?”

“Magic, stupid.” She gives a little smile.

You take one more look around. The chaos of the battle is shifting now into a full on rout. You need to do something now. But Magic? You've hardly used it outside of your studies. And certainly not on this scale. If Adrianna couldn't-

“Magus.” Her eyes clear. But the need in her big blue eyes remains. “Let me help you.”

You kneel. Cutter is still propping Adrianna up, though he begins licking his lips obsessively. Adrianna and you join hands and you open up to your gift.

The power flows between the two of you, and for a moment you are sure you can't control it all, but Adrianna is there, smiling and holding your hand. Silently guiding you. You never move from you quiet place amid the whirling deathstorm in the middle of battle, and yet it feels like you are floating above it all. The sounds shut off and you listen to the mountain. You hear the cracks and creaks of old stone. You see where you could use a hammer to start a rockslide, but Adrianna's gentle smile tells you to keep looking. The voices scream for the hammer. They wail about wasted time and the lives of your men, but Adrianna just smiles. You find a crack, worn down by a stubborn tree that should never have been able to grow. The fracture is small but runs deep into the base of the stone. You want to hammer the crack and the voices cheer, but Adrianna... Instead you reach out to the tree, perhaps if the roots were longer and thicker. Adrianna smiles. You encourage the tree, asking it to grow for you. The roots swell and through the fog of your trance you feel a tremor in the very earth. The sounds grow sharply into focus and you find yourself back in the battle or what is left of it.

Tunnels crack and crumble, dozens of 'small' rock slides surge over the goblins who are pressed between a literal rock and a hard place. With their retreat and their reinforcements cut off, the goblins start to panic, some few escape up narrow goat paths, but most are slaughtered by vengeful humans. The last thing you see before you collapse atop Adrianna is the Von Doom Banner flying high above the field.