-"Argh. I think it is YOU who doesn't get it. You see, even though when I make a portal, it looks non-solid-" Ein painfully remembered the green goo on the wall of the Kandarian house "-the object must have momentum to enter it. It has to move. Those crystals seem pretty solid to me... however."
He took a definitive pose.
-"I have just thought up of a plan. How about Alex here blasts the crystals using his beam thing...thingy, and then I open the portal underneath the crystals. The remaining shards falling down should be able to fall into the portal, right into - WAIT. That's not gonna work."
Ein started pacing back and forth, thinking.
-"You see, when I open a portal, it only has two ends - source and destination. When I open a source portal here, to down below those crystals, they will rematerialize back here, at the source... right where I will be."
He stopped pacing. Were these portal storms worth his life? Why would he do this, anyway?
-"Alex, tell me what is at stake here. I can think up of another plan, in fact, I already know what it will be. You see, even though it seems that I use a very specific kind of magic, of the Astral element - I can also do weak telekinesis. Sigil magic is incredibly broad, as is the Astral type magic in general. Anyways, here's what I was thinking of doing."
He drew a jagged circle on the ground.
-"This is the island."
Ein proceeded to scribble two circles - one in the middle of the "island", and another one near the edge.
-"That in the middle are the crystals. The one near the edge is us."
He encircled the spot in the middle, the one he marked as the crystals.
-"Using telekinesis, I can rip out the ground from under the crystals, then guide it into the void. Since that void looks pretty deep, I'm guessing they aren't going to return. Besides, they aren't going to have any place to return to, because they will still be on the ground that they originally were on."
The optimistic feeling that Ein had while explaining all that was now gone. If they sensed a big "BUT" coming, they were right.
-"But. You see, although as I said, sigil arcane is broad in appliance, it is mostly quite weak. I will need someone's life force to boost the sigil enough for my telekinesis to work. It won't kill you, but chances are that you're going to be unconcious for the next little while, and when you wake up, you're going to have a MAJOR headache."
Ein's face turned even more bitter.
-"Or we could stick to the other plan, which will render me insane. Either is fine."
--- --- ---
Division Dva summed up around the town. They took their positions, the scorpion artillery hiding behind hills, trees, and anything else sight-concealing. The troops, however, were still one homogenious (LOL U SAID HOMO) mass. The soldiers were chatting with each other, until the commanding officer, none other than Arlin himself, rose into the air.
-"Atten-SHUN!"
The command turned the crowd into organized columns of battle ready soliders. Arlin was still hovering about in the air.
-"Now, as most of you know, this is a special town. Here our Lord detected some sort of a powerful presence, and hence equipped us approperiately. Some of you are what the colloquial speech calls Adepts - people with great capacity of mental power. You know who you are."
There was a slight waver in the division. Soldiers were looking around at each other.
-"Adepts, you will be responsible for shielding our troops. I want one adept and nine soldiers around every single scorpion. Guard those machines with your lives, for they are the key to our success over stone walls. Without them, we would still be conducting sieges lasting for months. Now MOVE!"
The warriors hurried over to the scorpion machines. There were ten guards around each of the 200 scorpions in total.
Meanwhile, Arlin slowly turned in the direction of the city. He rose his hand.
-"FIRE!!!"
The silent peace was almost undisturbed, other than for Arlin's yell. The scorpions were frighteningly silent with lobbing incredibly heavy cannonballs - mostly because they used a catapult-like device to propel them.
In a few seconds, though, all hell broke loose. The town started crumbling, building after building. Tremendous shockwaves shook the very earth, felt even by the attackers themselves, as the cannonballs slammed into the buildings.
Right about that moment, one of the ten soldiers around each of the machines put up their index fingers to their temples. Each of the 200 encampments was surrounded by a shimmering shield now, capable of taking fair amounts of punishment.
Arlin took out a spyglass, and observed the city. Where are they...
