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The hardest thing to deal with when wielding a dueling rapier was a heavy polearm and Marius wasn’t surprised that Harper knew that. His attacks with his halberd were sharp, pointed and professional, though hardly those of a maestro. However what made the mercenary’s attack most difficult to deal with was not his weapon’s superior weight or reach but rather the large mass of fire that wove around him like a shield, always on his most vulnerable side, presenting a baking heat that Marius couldn’t strike through. He needed to be able to walk back to his horse, after all.

Without the searing barrier Marius was confident he could have grabbed onto the haft of Harper’s weapon and brought the situation to grips. His opponent was savvy enough not to give him the chance. The elemental was an option but it was busy with Cassandra’s brother and Marius’ hands were both busy at the moment so he couldn’t grab the tiles he needed to give it new orders. 

Setting the box holding the cornerstone down was out of the question. So was putting his rapier aside. There were enough weapons in the basement to outfit a small mercenary company but with the way things had shaken out he couldn’t actually reach any of them without getting around his own elemental or his dueling opponent. With no opportunity presenting itself, Marius set out to make one of his own.

There was a lot of strange stuff sitting on the shelves along the wall. As Marius fell back before Harper’s onslaught he found small hiccups in the timing of his opponent’s strikes and used them to complicate his life. When the halberd’s tip went a slight bit high the rapier slashed left and knocked a small jar onto the floor. It smashed open and strange green glitter spilled out in a low hanging cloud.

Harper’s attention darted to the cloud for just a second then his huge ball of flame swept down and swallowed up the glittering fog in a shower of sparks. It wasn’t a huge opening but Marius couldn’t be sure he’d get anything better. Before he could waste the moment overthinking it he darted forward, pushing hard against the halberd’s haft with the flat of his blade to open up a path towards his target. He’d been reluctant to kill Harper up til that point but he could only indulge that feeling for so long.

Marius broke from the bind and let his momentum carry him lower, allowing him to strike under Harper’s guard. The point of his weapon shot forward towards Harper’s gut. At the last moment the other man twisted out of the way. The tip of Marius’ rapier scraped Harper’s flank and poked a hole in his suit jacket but did little to incapacitate him. 

As Marius tried to recover from his strike Harper took one hand off his halberd, folded his elbow into a point and smashed it into his nose. Overextended as he was, Marius lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. A scramble ensued. Harper stomped a boot down on the blade of Marius’ rapier before swinging in with his halberd, aiming at the box in the duelist’s left hand. 

Worried that the weapon might damage the wards carved into the sides of the box, Marius dropped it as gently as he could. The box bounced once and came to a rest by a large silvery mirror by the wall. Harper ignored it once it was out if Marius’ hand, choosing to press his offensive instead.

From the vicious series of jabs and chops the firespinner threw down at him, Marius guessed he wasn’t worrying about lethal strikes anymore either. Leaving his rapier under the boot, he kipped into a handspring that got the duelist back to his feet. The acrobatic stunt took Harper by surprise, letting Marius get ahold of the halberd’s haft and use it as a lever to throw Harper sideways into the grinding stone of the bedrock elemental. Rather than try to retrieve his weapon or the cornerstone, Marius pulled his tiles out of his pocket. With a few sharp movements he redirected the elemental’s focus from blocking anyone trying to cross the room to squashing Harper to paste.

The creature’s behavior changed immediately. Given how badly the cold had hurt it when they broke through Harper’s frozen ward, serving as an impediment against intruders was the task the elemental was least suited for. Its triangular shape and the rectangular dimensions of the room made it a poor obstacle. Once freed from that task it became much faster, twisting its plates around towards Harper and repeatedly slamming them to the floor. Harper scrambled between them, narrowly escaping one crashing attack and foiling another by bracing the elemental’s plate from underneath with his polearm.

A third plate shook from a large impact and one corner of it broke off. Cassandra’s brother had grabbed a large bearded axe from a rack and swung it about him with incredible fury. The irony of a living tree swinging an axe brought the touch of a smile to Marius’ lips but it wasn’t something he could ignore. Another shift of the tiles and the elemental’s fourth and final surviving plate swung sideways, sending axe and wielder sliding across the floor after a massive impact with the bedrock.

Marius took his attention off the battle long enough to scoop up his rapier and the cornerstone, cradling both in his left hand while his right held the tiles. In the process he noticed something disturbing. The etching on one side of the warding box had turned a brownish black, creating an odd crease with strange flourishes. He realized they were where the box had been in contact with the silvery frame.

Was it iron? No, that didn’t make sense. It was too bright in tone to be iron, not yellowish enough to be iron gilded with gold. Yet something about it had weakened the wards on the cornerstone’s new prison and that made Marius very nervous. Suddenly he wasn’t sure he could safely get the stone back to Tetzlan without its whispers getting into the mind of some innocent person along the way. Or worse, into his own mind!

Still, there wasn’t much he could do for it at the moment. He would have to take a closer look at the warding box once he was out of hostile territory. With his prize in hand he turned his attention to his elemental once more, planning to have it dig him out through the ground once more. Instead, as he raised the tiles to issue it new orders, a cord of strong, cool wood wrapped around his wrist. Startled, Marius followed the branch back to its owner, who had pulled himself up into a sitting position braced against the wall.

“Impressive, Sir Fairchild,” Marius said. “You and your sister have made this far more difficult than I ever anticipated it being.”

Near the top of the pillar of living bark a knot hole opened and a voice spoke with an unsettling, reedy overtone. “I’ll accept your surrender, if that’s what you’re offering.”

“You impress me, senor, but not that much.” It was difficult to manipulate the tiles as Fairchild dragged Marius ever closer but not impossible. Three of the elemental’s plates folded around him and the fourth slammed down on the yew branch, snapping it clear off halfway between them and just like that Marius was free. Or so it seemed.

Fairchild had also extended a branch from his other arm, the one hidden against the wall, and it snagged up the old, dead chunk of wood hanging just overhead. With shocking alacrity the branch put out buds, twigs and roots. As Fairchild slammed it into the ground his broken branch formed into a new arm and pulled a sulfurite crystal from a pocket, pressing it into the growing tree.

Except it wasn’t really a tree. It was more a mass of roots, digging deep into the ground and spreading in every direction with supernatural speed. It was an excellent guard against Marius’ planned escape. It was possible his elemental could tunnel through the roots if everything went fast enough. It was also possible the roots grabbed and crushed him. Or worse, broke apart the stone forming his elemental’s body and left him buried alive for the few minutes it took him to suffocate.

No, Marius could not risk going down anymore. He would have to go up.

Another set of commands issued by the tiles, another shift by the bedrock plates, and suddenly the four stone triangles were touching along their long edges. They began to spin like gears, tossing one plate up towards the ceiling, which its blunt, heavy corner easily tore through. This done, they shifted again, into a rough stack of stone steps that Marius was already climbing.

With only four of the elemental’s plates to stack up he couldn’t climb all the way up to the basement’s new exit. But it was a simple matter to throw his weapon and cargo up through the hole and jump through after them. A quick set of orders instructed the elemental to meet him outside. Hopefully it could get past the druid’s root wards now that it didn’t have to worry about trying to keep him safe as well.

For a brief second Marius considered doing something to try and bar the basement door. However, that ultimately took him away from the only exit he knew of and he didn’t see the point of that. So he turned towards the front of the Manor and took off in a dead sprint.

It was just as well he did, since he’d only gone a few steps when Harper’s voice came from below, crying, “One! Two! Three!”

From the way he flew up through the hole, Fairchild must have given a handhold for him to spring off of, an impressive feat of improvised teamwork. Harper’s presence filled the hallway with an angry red glow, which rapidly got brighter. Marius kept running, waiting until he felt an uncomfortable heat on the back of his neck to throw himself to one side of the hallway, letting the firespinner’s globe of flame shoot past him. The duelist skidded as he slowed, expecting the orb to double back at him.

Instead, it slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway and scattered fire everywhere. The flames took hold of the walls and started devouring the soft pinewood, rapidly burning backwards towards Marius. Shocked, he took one step back then realized Harper was still behind him. Taking his rapier in his right hand he pivoted, trying to watch the flames to one side as he studied the man on the other.

It was not a happy face that confronted him. There was a deep crimson glint in Harper’s eyes as he brandished a clipped bronze messer in one hand and an iron dagger in the other. “Your stones are very impressive,” Harper sneered as he advanced. “But we’re on my home ground.”

“Are we?” A weak riposte and Marius knew it. “Then I suppose we’ll have to see if you’re everything the stories say you are.”

Sliding his right foot forward, Marius slipped into his stance, moved away from the fire and towards danger…