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Blades and crossbow bolts bouncing off Letalus' cloak, he sidestepped as Tomlin's attack found its mark, the bolt sticking out from the closest bandit's chest. He gripped his hand tightly on the hilt of the cursed sword, dug his heel into the forest floor and spun, the blade cutting cleanly through any flesh it connected with. Though not immediately felled, the bandits that had thought to close in on him retreated, trailing blood and spouting curses.

Letalus turned back to Tomlin, glancing at the point in the shadows were the ranged attacks seemed to come from. "Can you do any more magic?" he asked calmly, lifting his sword to deflect another bolt. He was loathe to rely on it, but a ranged spell would do quicker damage...

...and every instinct in him was screaming to return to Merro.

Alasdair's gaze turned towards an area past the trees for a moment and then turned his focus to his master to speak.

"Sir, I think the distraction has been eliminated." A soft confident smirk crossed his face, knowing that the bandits never stood the chance of disabling this crowd fully.

Pinned awkwardly to the ground by she knew not what, the young noblewoman frantically readied one of the very few spells in her repertoire that could be considered at all offensive in nature. It was a simple candle-lighting snippet of magic, but considering how much improved her healing spells had been when bolstered with a good deal of werewolf life force, there was a possibility of a fair-sized fireball being created with leftover werewolf and supplemental bandit.

The impeding burden upon her skirt-edge suddenly shifted, allowing her to scramble all the way to her feet, and then Merro was brought one notch down from her rising panic as her attention was caught by her female companions. Her eyes fell upon Leana and she realized that the girl - seemingly much recovered from her injury thanks to Merro's spellwork - had been the retarding weight, and then her gaze shifted downward to the furry fury by the redhead's thigh.

Thinking quickly although perhaps not quite clearly, Merro shot a glance from screeching ferret to shadowy figures and it occurred to her that the initial conclusion she'd jumped to had been a bit off. The menacing trio was not after Merro. They were after Nova.

As quickly as the idea sprouted, she found herself wondering what might be so extraordinarily impressive and awesome about a talking weasel that three such malevolent beings would trouble themselves with tracking it down.

Unfortunately, Nova gave a demonstration.

Already off-balance in more than one way, the sudden shock - both physical and mental - of the ferret's transformation buckled Merro's knees and brought her to the ground. She gaped at the tall female all in cream and black fur with glossy hair to match. Nova - if that truly was her - was not facing directly toward the girls but Merro caught enough of her profile to be struck by the glittering garnet eyes, and such was the woman's expression that it would not have been too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that the color was purely a reflection of her mood.

A shivery rush overtook her as another bandit fell to the cursed blade, and Merro was put to mind of Letalus, whom she'd forgotten about entirely in the recent succession of surprises. The situation that she was almost literally smack in the middle of was going from bad to worse to horrifying, and without putting the thought into so many words she suddenly wanted nothing more than to run to Letalus and seek shelter in his arms as she'd already done so - inadvertently or not - many times in the past couple of days.

Merro looked up again fearfully as a spell of some sorts began to be woven in the sky above and as she generally did, decided upon flight.

It did not seem altogether likely that she would simply be allowed to pick up her skirts and scamper away, and it was better odds that whatever spell the strangely disfigured man was casting was not going to be beneficial to Merro. Basing her decision on little more than that Nova had been a charming little thing and the man overhead made her want to scream, the inept but overpowered self-taught mage scrambled to her feet once more and called fire into her right hand.

Letalus was quick for his size, but not that quick. On their own, the weapons and dangerous objects in the air would have glanced off him as harmlessly as any other weapon, but imbued with magic as they were, even something as simple as levitating them and hurling them about, they could cause significantly more damage. As soon as he realized Tomlin's plan, he ducked as quickly as he could, but not before a pike-head slashed his shoulder. He hissed in pain as he knelt, wincing at the still unfamiliar sensation.

It was over in seconds. Hand clutched over his cloaked shoulder, Letalus stood slowly, quickly scanning the brush for any sign of life. Finding none, he glanced down at Tomlin and nodded in appreciation before turning away quickly. He knelt again under the pretense of gathering something off the nearest bandit body, his back to the other man, but he was more concerned with drenching his hand in blood and patting it over his own bloodless wound under his cloak. The thief...mage...whatever he was was far too clever for Letalus' tastes.

"We need to return to the women," he said, standing to face him again. He paused, glancing at the bodies littering the forest floor and met Tomlin's eyes again. "You're becoming useful in battle." With that, he turned and moved quickly towards the way he had come, feeling as if the cursed blade were pulling him towards Merro.

Tomlin was slow to bring himself back to standing position. Blood was still soaking his top from the shoulder wound he received.

"Sure.. be there shortly.." he said slowly, groping in the bag for the hemitite he had used earlier.

Using the power of his will, he faded into translucence. The power of the cape kept him hidden while he healed himself using the stones power.

Should... keep these... for last.... resort, he thought to himself, wiping sweat off his brow. Too much use would be his end, as it took him at least a minute to recover his energy.

The stones will take a toll, you see, in exchange for their magickry, the voice of the shopkeeper's lecture danced in his head.

Good thing I've got Stamina in spades... he mused, sure that at least most initiate mages using this glove would only have been able to cast a spell or two before being wiped of energy.

Azazeal's spell flooded the nearby area, a radius of about 20 feet filled with a slightly dulling light. All magical items were dampened or rendered useless when the dullness touched it. Luckily for him, Tiff's scrolls were rune based and worked on a different wavelength, as well as Alasdair's pisonic abilities. Being so different in nature, they were not affected by this particular spell of his, as he intended.

Azazeal was boasting to himself obviously as a grin cracked across his face, pulling his hands down. He knew Nova's speed and agility, and magical cloak for that matter, would be lessened now and capture should be easier.

"What a challenge...", he thought to himself. Chasing down the hybrid had been much more difficult when he underestimated her. At least her "siblings" were not this much trouble, being chronogenically frozen and all.

Doing her untaught best to keep the candle-lighting spell under control and within its usual limits until it was fully cast, Merro kept her hands loosely cupped and caught up to her breast, attempting to look like nothing more than a horror-stricken and harmless maiden frozen in a prayerful attitude and doing a surprisingly good job at it, all things considered. Two tiny flames were suddenly born and danced merrily within the shelter of her sweaty palms, ready to burn anything they touched save for the mage who'd called them into existence.

She caught Nova's whispered suggestion and wholeheartedly agreed, although she couldn't spare any mental resources to frame any sort of reply save a faint nod. Still staring fearfully upwards and trying desperately to make out what the furtive movements and light she was seeing might mean, Merro did not give Leana a glance either, and upon one of the figures suddenly dropping down to within a frightening proximity, she decided all on her own that the time to 'get out of the radius of those runes' was exactly now.

Although the runes had begun giving off a strange light that seemed to bring a twilight shade rather than any additional illumination, Merro felt no change within herself and assumed that the spell-weaving was not yet complete. With her sword yet out of range of the dampening effect, the young woman remained as capable and powerful as before the runes were cast. She reversed her mental struggles and instead of holding back the surfeit of energy, Merro pulled in as much of it as she could immediately command into the tiny flames she was tending.

Such was the sheer amount of the stored up life force and her panic-fed will that it was if her arms suddenly burst into flames. Twirling, twisting tongues of fire engulfed her hands, roared their way up her arms and set her hair to dancing in the heat and wind they generated. It had been her intent already to attempt to hurl the enhanced fireballs, one at each most threatening-seeming of the cloaked trio, but startlement at her excessive success gave yet more haste to her actions, and she flung out her arms immediately. With an inarticulate cry she sent one ball of fire straight ahead to the cloaked figure on the ground and the other shrieking through air toward the feet of the one who controlled the runes Nova had been so anxious about.

As soon as the flames left her, Merro staggered, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over her. She had, perhaps, overdone it a bit.