moving vs four Lords

The door opposite me suddenly darkened.
The Red King and no fewer than four of his Lords stood there, gold masks shining, throwing back weird reflections from the dazzling array of flickering lights and fires in the darkness outside.
His face twisted with rage, and his will and the wills of the Lords behind him fell upon me like blows from individual sledgehammers. I staggered, planted my mentor's staff firmly on the stone floor, and barely kept myself from being driven to the ground.
"Now," the Red King said, his voice strangled with fury. "Put that little bitch on the altar."
One of the Lords stepped forward and bent down to seize the child by her hair. Maggie screamed.
"No!" I shouted.
The Red King went to the altar and kicked the corpse of the dead woman from it. "Mortal," he spat. "Still so certain that his will matters. But you are nothing. A wisp. A shadow. Here and then gone. Forgotten. It is fated. It is the way of the universe." He jerked the ritual knife from the hands of the warrior and glared at me, his true nature writhing and twisting beneath his skin. The Lord dragged the shackled, screaming child to the altar, and the Red King's black eyes gleamed.
"This is your only role, mortal," he said, "your only grace, the only thing you are truly meant to do." He stared at Maggie and bared his teeth, all long fangs, slaver running out of his mouth and down over his chin. "Die."

Changes Chapter 47, Page 505-506


The Red King raised the knife over my daughter, and she let out a quavering little scream, a helpless, hopeless wail of terror and despair - and as hard as I fought with the new strength given me by Queen Mab, with the protection granted by my godmother's armor, I could not do a damned thing about it.
I didn't have to.
White light erupted over the altar from no visible source, and the Red King let out a scream. The shackles of his will vanished, even as his right hand, the one holding the stone knife, leapt off of his arm and went spinning through the air. It fell to the stone floor, still clutched hard around the leather-wrapped hilt of the knife, and the obsidian blade shattered like a dropped dish.
I let out a shout as I felt the Red King's will slip off of me. The others still held me in place, but I suddenly knew that I could move, knew that I could fight. As the Red King reeled back screaming, I lifted a hand, snarled, "Fuego!" and sent a wash of fire to my right, engulfing the jaguar warrior who still stood a couple of feet inside the doorway. He tried to flee, and only wound up screaming and falling down the deadly steep steps of the pyramid while the soulfire lacing my spell found his flesh and set it aflame.
I whirled back to the Lords facing me from the far side of the altar. I couldn't have risked throwing destructive energy at them with my daughter lying on the altar between us, and I'd had no choice but to take out the immediate threat of the warrior so that I could focus on the Lords and the Red King - otherwise it would have been relatively simple for him to come over and cut my throat while I was engaged by the vampire elite.
But two could play at that game - and my physical backup was a hell of a lot better than theirs.
I drew in my own will and lifted my borrowed staff - and as I did four more beings in golden masks entered the temple.
Where did all these yo-yos come from?
"Hold the wizard!" snarled the Red King, and the pressure of hostile minds upon me abruptly doubled. My left arm shook and the staff I held in it slowly sank down. My right arm just ran out of gas, as if the muscles in it had become totally exhausted, and the tip of the sword clinked as it hit the stone floor.

Changes Chapter 48, Page 507