"I'm not necessarily worried about him noticing the greater number of buffs, so much as that if there are spies in our camp - It'd require an unusual schedule. Some of the people getting it might remember they got their mind blanks at an unusual hour. Some of them might talk about it later around the campfire."

"Marit went to some lengths to convince me that was a problem."

"It is a problem, though much more among our soldiers than among the people who'd be getting a Mind Blank....not zero among the people who'd be getting a Mind Blank, though. The weapons are easier, they can be blessed without anyone not already in the know being present."

"Assuming we're mostly enhancing regular bows and not someone's heirloom undead-bane longsword"

"Are we trying to hide that I exist?"

"I think so. Have you look like Alfirin or like Khope - eighth circle wizard who could credibly have made ninth, though I'm not sure he'll be delighted about the ruse -"

"There are some things I can do that I think most 9th circle wizards can't."

"An argument for making you look like Alfirin, of whom that is also true. Though really the rule I'm familiar with is that every archmage can do three impossible things."

"Let's just say I've got four or five."

"I'll look forward to it." If he wanted to tell her he would. 

Marian Leigh is a small city on the north banks of the Orpheid, in southern Canterwall, Ustalav. It's barely a day's ride from Gallowspire, or it would be barely a day's ride from Gallowspire were the terrain not profoundly unfriendly. The Hungry Mountains loom on the western horizon; the sun sets very early in the day. There is a fortress overlooking the river, and the city has forbidding walls in good repair. 

The Whispering Tyrant's garrison here is commanded by a minor lich called Casavel, only sixth circle, not much of a threat in himself; they aren't expecting much trouble until the enemy starts Teleporting in, and are hoping they can take the fortress by then. The plan to take the fortress isn’t that complicated: Disjunction, have teams teleport in and flood the place with positive energy and slaughter everyone.

(Normal besieging of a fortress is for people with less magic than both parties to this conflict. They will get close under Mind Blank and Invisibility, Disintegrate some holes in the walls, and then fight.)

They’re putting up elaborate sets of protections, but Tar-Baphon will obviously open with a quickened Disjunction, once he arrives; the main thing they want to do is be dispersed enough he can’t usefully get a large share of the force that way. And of course Elie and Alfirin can counterspell him, though this is harder than it sounds. Tar-Baphon, like any self-respecting archmage with ambitions of divinity, puts up True Invisibility which Invisibility Purge and Glitterdust fail to reveal, unless cast as ninth circle spells, and Mind Blank, and then casts all of his spells from the sky at as much range as possible. They have to detect him casting to counter him. They’ll have people in the sky, of course, who can serve as sentinels of his arrival by how they’ll be instantly paralyzed and fall to the ground if he’s within a hundred feet or so of them, and he won’t be able to get a disjunction indoors unannounced, and if they have enough time they can dome the whole place in Walls of Force and force him to waste that opening Disjunction on those, but they probably won’t have time. 

They know the layout of the fortress, from their scrying, and where there are magical traps that are dangerous enough to be worth dismantling rather than running through and healing afterwards. They know approximately the strength of its defense: it’s not trivial, but it will go down like most things do to massed Chain Lightning. They have some Mass Heal, the single best spell for hand to hand fighting with the undead, but they’re saving it for emergencies. 

The hour of the attack is busy. They’ve gotten the long-lasting spells done in advance of the casters’s sleep - Mind Blank, Moment of Prescience, Greater Magic Weapon, Magic Vestment, Mage Armor, Arazni’s Heroism which when cast by Iomedae lasts twenty-four hours – so in the morning it’s the ones which will last a few hours, and then the ones which will last about forty minutes, and then the ones which will last just a few minutes. Almost everyone around here fights with a Bestow Grace of the Champion and Elie gets a few pitying looks for his not being Lawful Good. Iomedae does the Hastes; she knows Arazni’s version, which makes you a lot faster than the normal version.

And then they go. Teleports into position all over the city, two hundred people all of them up under a Communal Mind Blank that’ll keep them at least for the first hour of the fighting. The fortress wall gets Disintegrated in precisely the right location not to collapse it - they don’t want to collapse it - but to let them in. 

Where the layout is not, in fact, as their spies saw it. Changed around in the last few days, which means this was anticipated, which means -

Sudden darkness, when it was previously broad daylight, dark enough that even those with darkvision can’t see their glowing swords in front of their faces. 

Alfirin tends not to go into big prepared fights relying only on her vision; She cast an extended echolocation before resting, and recommended the same to Élie. It’s not nearly as good as having working eyes, but it’s enough to function at close ranges and shout telepathic warnings to the nearest paladins.

Élie happens to know that’s not how deeper darkness usually works. Is there some ghoul or lich or vampire or suchlike who likes to pull this particular stunt? 

Tar-Baphon. His spells do things that spells aren’t supposed to be able to do, because he’s Tar-Baphon. 

(Iomedae’s Daylight can beat it, but has a much smaller radius. She’ll do the actual fortress where there is currently fighting, but they’ll need a different solution for the surroundings.)

The main beneficiaries of the darkness, though, will be Tar-Baphon’s nightwing friend, Jolanara, who along with her numerous greater shadows will attempt to eat all the wizards’ strength. Wizards don’t usually have much strength so eating it is among the faster ways to end a fight.

Well, it sounds like he should try to dispel all this darkness, then. 

Someone put up a Daylight. It won't help while the darkness is still here but hopefully that'll only be a moment longer.

Tar-Baphon might not know they have two archmages yet; Élie's broken stealth, so Alfirin’s waiting for Tar-Baphon to make his move on Elie before she reveals herself. It would’ve been smarter to do it the other way around but it’s too late for that now.

Daylights go up when Alfirin orders them.

It takes Élie two tries to beat the deeper darkness with a dispel, but the second one shreds the spell. This reveals a battlefield where swarms of Greater Shadows are mobbing those wizards detected so far by Tar-Baphon's forces and spreading out to search for those that aren’t.

Tar-Baphon has attempted to triangulate Élie from his Dispel-casting and Disjoin him. He’s not aiming all that much in the right direction but Disjunction takes out such a large area that he doesn’t have to.

That does seem like the obvious next move, which is why Élie’s going to dimension step out of there as soon as he’s cast the spell. Can he locate the source of the disjunction?

Tar-Baphon is (or recently was; as Élie just demonstrated, archmages have some impressive mobility) over thereabouts above the tower of the now-contested fortress.

Élie, hold your spell and keep your distance -

Disjunction there?

- he might not have caught on yet -

Alfirin's Disjunction catches Tar-Baphon in its radius and half a dozen of his guards; they’re visible for only a moment before someone recasts invisibility on them, but they’re still not Mind Blanked. Tar-Baphon flings one right back at Alfirin.

There are a series of very loud concussive explosions from the fortress down below. 

- They’ve tried to rig it to collapse if we take it. A Greater Dispel just took out a load-bearing wall.

This time she can see him casting it and that's enough to counterspell, catching his disjunction to use later.

Ignore that unless you need a teleport out, got him with disjunction, need you here now

And Élie can see Tar-Baphon – at least he can see a cluster of magical effects which seem very suggestive of Tar-Baphon. If he acts too quickly, he might give himself away – but if he doesn’t, Tar-Baphon could teleport out – he’ll try a Dimension Lock.