Call upon your reinforcements.

The first of two figures is an elderly man with a bald, shiny head--shimmering even with the minimal light of the cloudy morning sky. His eyebrows are bushy, and his pale grey beard reaches past his waist. The robe he wears is illustrious and gold, trimmed with beautiful black accents, and from within it he withdraws a beautiful, solid silver wand grasping a turquoise crystal tip by carved claws. With his other hand, he slowly strokes his beard as he assesses the chaos unfolding before him. It's Lord Drev Barkis--master enchanter and a chairman of the Circle of the Unicorn.

Beside him is another familiar face. Honk honk! "The lovely and funny Candy Cane makes her appearance~!" she announces aloud after squeezing her big red nose. She's noticeably shorter than the elderly man beside her, but her figure is hard to discern behind such a poofy, frilly, colourful dress, which matches her blue and red striped jester's cap. As always, her blonde hair is tied into pigtails beneath it. Around her neck is a frilly white ruff, and up her legs are rainbow stockings. She smiles ear-to-ear across her white painted face. Two dark blue triangles are drawn beneath her eyes--one of which is green while the other is purple. The brown, gold-tipped staff she holds is about as tall as she is, and at the end is a big blue flower. Candy is of course also a chairman of the Circle, and she's a master illusionist. As she's shown before, even the body you see right now could very well not be real.

"... The Circle. But why?" comes Lord Vraelion's deep, reverberating voice, though now with confusion. "Have you betrayed Tivera?"

Candy spins around, bends over, and spanks her own butt. "Betray? Yeah right! I'm loyal to one person and one person only. Candy Cane, Mistress of Illusions! So come bite my ass if that makes you angry."

"Now Ms. Cane. He's truly a dangerous foe. You don't want to upset him too much," Lord Barkis says.

Her eyes peer up at the him. "Huh? Of course I do."

A snarl slowly grows into a devastating roar as the dragon becomes more enraged by the second. He turns his attention away from you momentarily, and slams his claws down against the grown. Not only does the earth beneath him shatter, but the shockwave continues forwards. "Cone of Sundering!" It sounds like a serious of explosions going off. Everything in front of him shatters to piece. The ground sinks, and chunks of soil and stone fly in every direction. Both Drev and Candy disappear in the cloud of debris, and the shockwave doesn't stop until it collides with the far wall. It begins to crack. From that spell alone, he nearly blew a hole straight through the tall, dark stone walls of Castle Phoenix.

"Pbtbtbtbt!" Candy puts her thumbs in her ears and wiggles her fingers as she reappears on the opposite side, much closer to Lord Vraelion than he expected.

Lord Barkis grumbles. "It defeats the purpose of a sneak attack if you make a noise, Ms. Cane." But he shakes off the frustration enough to throw the head of his staff forwards and cast a spell of his own. "Confusion Wave!"

You can barely see the magic, but there's definitely a fast-moving, rippling wave of magic heading straight for Lord Vraelion's head. As it wafts over him, he stumbles backwards. He swings his mighty tail, forcing some of your allies away, as he peers around with a dizzied expression. It doesn't appear that he can tell where anybody is, or what's going on. By the name of the spell, you can imagine what's happened. Lord Barkis is a very powerful enchanter, and was even able to successfully dominate the mind of a mighty gold dragon.

All he can do is lift off the ground. His wings cause powerful winds that nearly knock everybody off their feet. He then flies straight up, and you watch as he tosses about in every direction in a futile attempt to regain his bearings.

Meanwhile, the head of the demon summoners is having troubles of his own. With Delphi's magical bands around his throat, he can barely focus on the concentration of his spell. The mana which flows between Dajy and her own within his grasp trembles. Then with a **** gasp, the spell snaps like a broken string as the horn clatters to the ground at his feet. The mage thinks fast. He knows that if Dajy can recover, he's already dead. Quicky, he pivots on his heel and throws both hands upwards towards the pixie above. With vitriol in his voice, he growls out the magic words, "Shadow Orb!" as a crackling, dark magic manifests around his gnarled fingernails.

Just as the the ball of darkness hurls towards Delphi, she severs the grappling bands of magic, liberating her enemy, though allowing her to narrowly dodge the attack. It detonates behind her, causing her to tumble out of control in the air, though she was thankfully spared the damage it would have caused if she were hit directly.

As he turns back to face Mistress Dajy once more, he does so, but not in a way he had hoped. He reaches down to pick up the horn, though is met with a heel down against it. His eyes peer back up with fear in his eyes as the high succubus' threatening visage peers down at him with crimson eyes. He shrinks in her shadow.

"Only one man has managed to control me with magic before now," she says quietly, though her words sting like the bite of a snake. "He's dead now."

He tries to speak with a timid, "You--"

However, he chokes on her hand grasping his throat. With her other, she shows the sharpness of her nails.

You turn away right before the sound of his scream.

"Drev! Candy!" you call out quickly after. The two of them turn in tandem. "Can you help Malakae fight her cousins, and make sure nothing else is hiding nearby? I'm gonna check on the others. We have a threat on the roof still. But I'll be able to check in on the Throne Room at the same time."

You nearly jump at the feeling of Candy's hand suddenly shooting down into your pocket. You peer forwards, blinking at the second Candy that's still standing by Drev. She looks to you blankly before shrugging. Then your eyes turn to the one adjacent to you, who simply smiles as her hand remains inside.

"What'cha got in here to let you do that, huh?" she asks.

"Do you mind?"

"I kinda wanna dig around a bit more to see if I find anything." Her fingers wiggle about. "Ooh, I think there's something in here~!"

You pull away and begin hustling into the village. "Sorry. Play later. Work now."

The original Candy walks up to her, and they look to one another. One sighs and shakes her head. "That's so rude, running away from a girl like that."

Lord Barkis steps over and nudges the tip of his wand against the back of one's head. The illusion vanishes.

The real Candy grins up at him before giving her nose a single honk.