He turned as something rattled behind him, already bringing up a massive blast of balefire, but it wasn't until he had leveled it and released control, the beam just starting form, that he realized it was a damn trap. She didn't MAKE noise like that, and certainly not when trying to backstab or blast someone, and what was approaching him was, at its absolute worst, a clone of her, and more likely some being she had altered to look like her, and had poured a tiny fraction of her power into in order to make it feel like her. He already knew what was going to happen, and desperately grabbed at his magic, trying to tear it away from the balefire beam, when V'elen, of all things, paralyzed his ability to respond to outside threats. He had just enough time to wonder what the hell it/he was doing, before everything went dark, just as something stabbed him in the back.