A rolling wave of shadow the likes of which only a priestess could have generated. Skandra had seen its like many times - and he hadn't planned on seeing one of the Drow using magic in this way. The woman was probably the key to everything. Yet she'd try to stay out of sight, and escape if she thought the men were doing a poor enough job of it. These Drow hadn't been expecting Skandra to come here, and to fight against them in this way. Well enough. Skandra liked to be the surprise. Yet the darkness was coming now. Where light had been shadow would rule. It could not fling itself against Aeotha's shield. And yet, it drank in the alchemy of Skandra's potion easily enough. There was only one source of light, now, and it was Aeotha - far enough away to be a firefly on the horizon, at night. Skandra couldn't see a gods-damned thing any longer.
Neither could anyone else. Except the fucking High Priestess, whom he'd probably saved from a knife in the back at the hands of a Drow.
His thanks was a broken bloody nose.
There was one smaller trick he'd prepared in a case such as this one. When you had experience killing mages, you knew it was about more than simply waiting until their fireball didn't strike you and then laughing while your hands were on your hips. The good ones prepared for that eventuality. They always behaved as though their last spell was completely ineffective. Skandra didn't think that was the case here. There were any number of Drow getting their bearings in that shadow. He needed to strike back, and to find the priestess who was hurling this darkness against the square. The Immortal let go of the schiavona - he'd recover it soon enough - and let the body fall away. That free hand drove into his pocket. This vial was strangely shaped. A square, with a rounded mouth that jutted out and filled in with a cork stopper. The liquid inside was dark green. The sort of green that nature hurled at humid jungles and burning belts of misery down south.
Before the end of the world.
A pair of teeth closed on the stopper. Skandra spat the stopper on the ground, and then hurled the vial into the air. Instead of soaring in a straight and even arc - which the throw should have achieved, since his athletic prowess was the stuff of legend - it whipped the side almost instantly. A howl of wind as the vial seemed to break through the air with alarming speed. His eyes were darting from place to place. It would work. He would have one chance. Perhaps a pair of them. The potion did precisely what it was meant to do. A warding concoction, designed to trace the spell against which it was used back to the origin of the magic. The Drow did not use alchemy - that he knew of - so they very well expected that such a thing was impossible.
Skandra saw it, at last. When it struck the source of the magic that vial was meant to send out a blinding green pulse. That was your cue to strike. Not just in darkness, but on the field of battle - one mage could turn the tide, especially if that mage's training was powerful. Skandra was looking for the green pulse as it started. And he found himself staring right at it when it happened. A green line, hovering in mid-air, barely visible - it stretched between himself and his target. That was when he depressed the trigger once again.
A blast of force and air, once more. The square was in utter chaos as the darkness subsided. Blue light lashed out wild, a wave shoaling against the immovable tide of darkness. Yet it was moving. A robed woman was hurled into the air. She was consumed by the blue light which emerged. Fruit dissolved as its stand was flung. Skandra could only watch - partly amazed, and partly horrified - as panicked citizens continued to stream out of the square with injured elves clinging to them. More soldiers were pouring in, of course, but how many of them were true?
No telling.
"Keep going!" someone shouted, in Drow. "Hurry!"
Now the arrows were flying fast and furious. The darkness was gone, the Drow were adjusting to this new attacker by swarming Aeotha - one of them was even working a crossbow in Fiaethe's direction - and Skandra was beginning to exhaust that surprise which had been his element.