Dead gods damn it.

She can't do that again. Neither can Xrn keep casting indefinitely, but she's not even tapped her secondary reserves yet. [The Bindings of Belavierr], that seemed to work best and the ones from last time aren't even all snapped yet, despite whatever the hell her eye did—

"Found you."

What?

Xrn hasn't, actually, appeared in person through this whole time. But even for one who allegedly rivals the Archmages of Wistram, it cannot be possible to rapid-fire spells as presumably-Xrn has been doing, from a remote location.

Gazi can see through walls.

Her main eye turns somewhere up and to their right, and a beam of golden light lances straight through the ceiling.

shit

[Teleport Dodge]. But that breaks her concentration, and—

The bindings shatter. Good.

She drives a foot through the statue of Klbkch, shattering him into a thousand pieces. Disappointing, but lucky for her. A slight bit more spell resistance and she might have lost more than blood and a bit of skin.

No. Not now—

"...Klbkchhezeim?"

Xrn. Explain this.

Don't get distracted now.

[Teleport Dodge].

Not now, she tells the Free Queen.

She has to suppress the impulse to return fire, because Gazi has a hostage.

[Greater Aerial Shield]. [Spectral Analysis]. [Teleport Dodge]. Calibrate. [Extinction Field]. Does that block the eye beams?

Yes, but while Xrn is playing detective, Gazi is going to toss Blai through the portal, which is now open to a size large enough to traverse. Also, she's going to steal the Antinium Slayer's swords; they're clearly at least artifact-grade.

He's going to do his best to not be tossed but he is pretty outclassed.

He's gone? Fucking [Hellfire Pillar], you contemptible thing.

Gazi dives through the portal as her [Dangersense] goes off, Klbkch's swords clutched in hand. The black-red flames pour through after her, but she cuts the [Gateway] as she passes—

And it closes, leaving her and Blai elsewhere.

It's an arid shrubland in which they've landed. The vegatation is patchy, the dirt dry, and off in the distance, the terrain turns into sandy desert. There's no road in sight. No water, either, not that a cleric would have problems with that. There are shapes on the horizon that might be settlements, or maybe rocks, or simply mirages in the sand.

It's hot. The sun is risen low in the sky, where it wasn't quite twilight yet back in Liscor.

Gazi is dusting herself off and using a potion on the grisly cut on her jaw.

Okay. Well. He doesn't know what she wants with him but, pessimistically, he should have no non-orisons in pocket and be prepared to get tortured. Which depending on how long she keeps at it is really going to make it hard to have fun at least once a month.

He casts Air Step just to get rid of it but also starts tromping off in the most promising direction. This isn't going to work but he doesn't think he can just straightforwardly cooperate with a kidnapper? And he dumps a Create Water on his head.

Gazi looks around and takes a deep breath of the dry air. Ah, it's good to be back. She looks curiously at Blai and his lackluster attempt at, presumably, escape? She lopes up to him, but doesn't try to make him stop.

"Do you have any idea where you're going?" she wonders. "I do apologize for the rough introduction." She doesn't sound sorry at all. "But I didn't expect you to come if I didn't force the issue, so I deemed it unnecessary to waste our time."

See, the Law puzzle here is: be the shape of person such that kidnapping you is actually an incredibly enormous waste of time. Tromp tromp tromp.

Oh well. [Charm].

"It would be so much easier if we could come to terms with the situation."

Blai is not going to flunk his Law puzzle even for his very best and very only friend in the whole wide world. Especially not when he knows Charm spells exist but really the puzzle would be the same even if he didn't know Charms were a thing.

...It's working, she can tell it's working.

Huh.

Most people are much more reasonable about being kidnapped, really. Orthenon is going to nag her about giving him more work again.

"Winter's coming in two hours," she calls.

Cool. Maybe he'll freeze to death. Axis is supposed to be lovely at all times of year.