Chapter 22
By late afternoon, all was prepared. Ieran, her twelve Mages and Tomoyo were in four cars illegally parked along a road up slope from the target house. "Now everyone refrain from using any Magic and blank yourself as well as you can. Tomoyo?"
"Yes Ieran-sama?"
"Stay here. You should be safe enough, and yet still be able to tell what's happening. Do not probe the house until after we attack." Tomoyo was not pleased with this order but before she could say anything, Ieran continued speaking to the rest of the group. "Now, does everyone understand what they are to do?" When no one spoke she started down the hill towards the back of the target house followed by her team.
As Tomoyo waited the anxiety was driving her crazy. "We will win! We have to. Eriol said it was very likely that we would save Sakura, so there is nothing to worry about." But the confident words did nothing to ease her fear.
Half way down, the slope got steeper and as Ieran was cautioning everyone to step carefully she missed her own footing and fell, sliding several feet into a thorny bush. She was badly scratched but just whispered a few select Chinese cuss words and continued.
The first problem was a security fence around the back yard of the house. Ieran's uncle stepped forward and with a few hand motions a red glow cut a large inverted "U" in the steel mesh. As the cut out part fell to the ground Syaoran remembered he was suppose to be up front with Ieran. But as he tried to cut in front of the man in his way he was pushed into the still glowing wire ends on the edge of the hole. To his credit he winced but did not cry out as several wires burned all the way through his clothes and blistered his skin. On the way to the back door he did manage to get in front and as he had been instructed, he summoned a lightning bolt directed at the door.
As it exploded into splinters everyone could feel the cloaking spell go down and a powerful Magical probe wash over them. A second later Ieran spoke loudly. "There is only one person to fight, everyone stay together!" But before they could take another step they were hit by a massively powerful nonphysical Magic attack. It felt like they were engulfed and smothering in putrid slime while white hot needles stabbed at them from all sides. The combined shield of the group (except Syaoran) was able to keep the burning needles out, but not the feel of the slime. "Everyone stay close and keep your shields locked together!" Ieran yelled. The feel of the attack was so disgusting it made everyone nauseated. Fortunately Syaoran was the only one who had eaten recently and as a prime attacker he was in the front next to Ieran, so when he lost his meal it didn't spray on anyone. And since he didn't have his shield merged with everyone else his distraction didn't do any real harm.
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It seemed like a very long time and Tomoyo was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong when she finally felt a burst of Magic and then a moment later heard a loud crash. She reached towards the house with her Magic and found the barrier was down! She quickly scanned the house, noting the battle on the first floor, and then faintly she felt something familiar. "That's Sakura! I'm sure of it! And I don't care what Ieran said, I have to go to her!" So she called on her dragonfly wings and took off with a roar.
In less than a minute she was hovering outside the upstairs part of the house where she felt Sakura. Checking the layout with her Magic she moved to the end of the room furthest from Sakura, put her shield away and invoked Light Saber. She then used it to cut a window out of it's frame. But when she tried to go in through the hole her wings hit the sides before she could get close enough to stand on the windowsill. "Blast it! I've got to get in there now!" With this thought she fired up Light Saber again and sliced the wall all the way to the next window over across the top and bottom. But the cut piece of wall didn't fall, it stayed right where it was. "I need to get in there NOW!" She screamed in her mind and with burst of unusual fury she used her still lit up Light Saber to slash the wall over and over until it fell in small chunks both inside and outside the room.
Now she was able to fly right in but when she landed on the chunks of wall she twisted her ankle and fell painfully on the jagged pile of debris. "OH RATS! What a stupid way to hurt myself!" As she struggled to her feet she saw Sakura, fully dressed laying on a bed with her eyes closed and with her Magic sense she saw the thick magic spell wrapped around the Cardmistress like a shroud. For a moment she forgot she had just sprained her ankle, took a step and fell again to the floor when her left leg collapsed under her. "I must save Sakura! I don't care how much it hurts!" she yelled at herself in her mind, then got up and hopped on one foot over to the bed.
Meanwhile downstairs, as Ieran led her group down a hall towards where she felt the attacker was, four of her group took out handguns and made sure they were ready. They were Ieran's little surprise for the Mage they were fighting. "Let's see how he handles a nonmagical attack." she thought to herself with a smile.
But as they dueled back and forth with nonphysical Magic, Ieran sensed something unusual about the shield the Mage had. "Are there two people there, or one? It feels like a double shield...but only one person..." Just then Ieran's thoughts were interrupted by a stream of fireballs which were coming through the wall that separated them from their enemy. As the shields deflected the attack, they quickly advanced until they could see who they were fighting. He was a young man in a business suit standing by a staircase. He looked mildly annoyed.
That's when the four attackers opened up with the handguns... The sound of the powerful weapons was deafening but all that firepower was having no effect at all on the young man. "That strange shield! It's a physical shield, and a strong one."
"Stop shooting and concentrate on nonphysical attacks and fireballs! They are the only things that can hurt him through that shield!"
"He is much stronger and better defended than I had assumed was possible. This is going to be a hard fight... But we -will- win." she assured herself firmly. As powerful nonphysical Magic attacks were repeatedly stabbed into the young mans shield and a nearly constant stream of fire balls were exchanged, Ieran was amazed that one person could not only hold off all her attackers but attack them back so powerfully at the same time.
When the group managed to stop all his physical attacks he hit them with his strange nonphysical slime needle attack at the same time as the fireballs. "Now I wish I had waited longer so I could have had more people. My over confidence will kill me yet!" Ieran raged at herself.
When Ieran's group had dueled furiously with the young Mage for a minute or two he suddenly seemed startled by something and stopped his attacks. His glance upwards gave Ieran a hint. Breaking off her own attacking for just long enough to momentarily probe upstairs, she found Tomoyo with Sakura, and just as she did she felt the immense attack power of the man striking at Tomoyo. "NO! You stupid girl!" Ieran screamed at Tomoyo in her mind. "Now you are dead, and for nothing!"