Ticking along, ticking along.
Am I getting too old for this shit? Jimmy thought to himself as he and his people climbed the back wall. God, I hope not. But it was a good question. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, probably not even next year – but even elves get on in years, and Jimmy wasn’t exactly in the safest business. There’d be a day when he’d have to tell off somebody else to pull crazy-ass stunts like this.
But today it has to be me, Jimmy thought as he reached the parapet and sensed the unmistakable sensation of a spell being permanently maintained. Like he thought, the Dominion mages had warded the top of the walls. Also like he thought, those mages had then promptly stopped worrying about the walls; they hadn’t even put a slave-soldier up there to guard it.
And like Jimmy had hoped but not dared rely on, the ward spell had been hastily made and applied. Better yet, the idiots hadn’t even shielded the ward itself from arcane analysis. Jimmy grinned as he quickly muttered an information spell simple enough for him to use, but complex enough to be worth casting. Regular Dominion troops wouldn’t have made that mistake, but these were stay-behinds. That meant fanatical, but probably not real bright – or at least supremely arrogant, which was the same thing.
Getting past the ward wasn’t hard, once Jimmy could see the pattern. Getting his people would be harder, and they were rushed for time, so he settled for short-circuiting the ward in a way that would keep it from sounding the alarm for, say, five minutes or so. Which would be enough time for his group to get over the side, he thought. He hoped. Either way, it was happening so it was time to start moving.