Clearly, there was just one way to the heart of this storm. I homed in on the airborne ringleader of this mysterious force of warriors. He was an aging man - gray in skin, hair, and clothing. When I first confronted him he congratulated me on my entrance. Was he himself a showman? True he stood at a podium on a hovering storm riding disk, but he appearance was otherwise drab. No, this was a failed showman at best. I judged that his flying disk was some sort of steam powered craft, smaller and more maneuverable than any I had seen before. More likely this man's spectacular approach was the result of lunacy, which he evidently shared with his dark troops.

I closed to explain to him that his forces were outnumbered and would surely be crushed not only by my own forces, but also by reinforcements that were close at hand in several direction, but the gray man, whose named I later learned to be Korvan, chose instead to assault me with his shortblade.

His first all-out assault succeeded only in slicing his knife shallowly along my leg. I stepped into a comfortable defensive pose, readying the old saber afore me, and balancing myself with the bottle of wine aback. The battle was as dull as my weapon. Korvan was poor at best with his blade and never threatened to cause me any further harm until he did something I had half expected; he conjured up some sort of magical force blast and directed it at me. The wave of force was no trouble. After all I my feet were not anchored on anything. I was able to simply ride out the blast.

So Korvan was a sorcerer. What a stroke of luck! Had I not searching all week for even the merest clue of spellweavers? I'd disable him here. My forces would defeat his army within the day if they were foolish enough not to disband. Then I would have some answers.

I floated below his disk where he could no longer see me. I chose my coins and blanketed Korvan's mind with my powers. (Out of sight is out of mind) There was A Total and Unexplained Disappearance of my person. I felt that if Korvan could not sense me he would have all sort of difficulty casting further spells upon me. This fooled him for a moment, but he soon caught on to my location using means unknown to me. This time he used his wave of force to pull me to him. So be it! I added my own spell's momentum to his and sped towards him, slamming into him much sooner than he expected. He was knocked from his feet. His disk wobbled out-of-control. Korvan tried desperately to regain his footing, but I foiled him with carefully placed blows to his knees and wrists. Eventually he was teetering on the edge of the disk. A swift kick to the forehead rolled Korvan's eyes up into his head and sent him plummeting.

That's when I noticed his army was not below him.

I departed to check on Aurthur.