Out of the Flames

Oda dashed across the bridge to the mansion steps. The great double doors of the house were thrown wide, one hanging precariously from twisted hinges. She turned to see Ides following her, and Guy being backed into a side-street skirmish on the far side of the bridge.

Ides looked grim. “He said to keep on, he’ll be fine.”

Inside, corpses littered the floor, and the tiles ran slick with blood. Oda glanced over them. Each one had a Zandeer logo- patches, jewelry, one with a tattoo. She eyed one of the rings. It gleamed dimly in the sputtering lanterns and distant firelight. It looked expensive, and clearly the dead man no longer needed it…

Ides looked around, then jerked his head towards the grand staircase at the far wall. Oda cocked an ear. She heard it too: the sound of fighting on the floor above.

Booking it up the stairs, they skidded to a halt at the top. Across the large main space of the second story they saw Vev, bare-handed brawling with three pirates. His movements were exhausted and jerky, but he roared with unbridled rage. Bodies trailed away from the fight, leaving puddles of blood and bone, reaching to the head of the staircase where the two had appeared.

Oda snuck forward, then paused. The body at her feet struggled around short, shallow breaths. Her rapier brought that to a quick end. She sheathed the blade, drew her shortbow, aimed, and hissed. The wall to her right gave away to a large alcove of the open room, Vev stood just beyond that wall and there was no clear shot at his enemies. She didn’t want to risk being seen, at least not yet. As she crouched down behind the body, one of the pirates went flying into a far wall, crashing hard to the ground. Vev was not ready to give up.

A whoosh flew over her head and in the same moment a flickering iron crown appeared on the head of one of the pirates that swung at Vev. In an instant the man turned on his companion, who yelled as he now fended off two foes.

The pirate who had been thrown back shook off his stupor and ran to engage Ides, who charged toward him through the carnage of corpses.

There was little in the way of hiding places, and there were still no clear shots at Vev’s assailants, so Oda sized up the man attacking Ides. There was an open doorway behind him, and it afforded a much better line of sight to Vev’s fight. If she could take him out, her dash to the door would most likely go unnoticed. She popped up and her shortbow twanged.

It went high. The doorway plan distracted her just enough to whiff the shot. The man jerked his head in her direction right before Ides sent him flying across the room once again. He landed on his back, arm bent at an odd angle.

That was all the invitation Oda needed. She drew and the arrow went clean through his armpit and into his neck, leaving him to drown in his own blood.

She scurried to the corner and peeked around just as Vev snapped the neck of the man with the cursed crown. Ides reared back and kicked the last man through the shattered window-wall that faced out onto the bridge. A squelch sounded faintly below on the cobblestones.

Vev fell to his knees, his face in his hands. Oda crept closer. He was muttering something, and there were sounds suspiciously like sobs.

“They took her. They took my Dolip.”

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Rue and Blank retraced their steps back toward the docks. The fights seemed to be petering out in the commons and the focus was now mainly in putting out the fires that raged across them.

The bridge to the mansion appeared at their feet though the smoke and weak pre-dawn light. It was concerningly quiet, and few lights were to be seen across the moat or in the surrounding buildings. The shadows and thick smoke slunk low over the bridge as they crossed, and twice Rue stopped, staring off to the side trying to determine if it was indeed a cloud of smoke or a figure skulking away.

They were almost to the steps of the mansion when a body flew out the shattered second story window and landed at their feet with a crunch.

“Hi guys!” Oda’s voice floated down. “We got the bad guys up here but they took Dolip!”

They both whirled, peering through the darkness.

Blank gasped and grabbed her arm. Rue followed to where she pointed. Across the bridge, one of the shadows had straightened into a cloaked man, walking quickly and carrying something that looked like a child--

“Dolip,” they cried together and ran back over the cobblestones.

The bridge ended and opened to the commons, and as they crossed the divide, two rays of icy cold blasted them from the left, throwing them off balance. An arrow grazed Rue’s leg as she reeled from the painful frost crawling up her arm.

“Ambush!” she yelled to Blank, who already had a spell twining across her fingers. She squinted into the haze and could just make out silhouettes on two nearby rooftops. “To the left and up!”

A small figure emerged from the shadows of the city. A bare chested gnome with a Zandeer tattoo swung a massive greataxe at the two of them with a wild yell.

Rue threw herself in front of Blank and drew her sword. At the last second she cast a protection spell on herself. Soft silver magic traced over her skin. The screaming gnome swung his greataxe and missed, deflected by the spell like it was steel. The backswing made contact, however, and the intensity caught her off guard. It felt like the white hot pain that she'd been hit by back on the port days before. She swung back but the height difference was laughable and she slashed a good six inches above the gnome's head.

He attacked again, the axe cutting through the spell shield like butter. She grimaced and retreated a few steps. Grabbing one of her extra hands, which she’d promptly named Port and Starboard, she threw it at the gnome. It landed on his arm and, on her command, clamped around his wrist so tight his fingers went purple. He roared and stumbled back, struggling to peel it off.

She took the split second chance and slashed at him, opening a slash of red along his side.

He flung the offending hand away and it skittered back to her.

Attacks hit her from both sides. The spiked end of the axe rammed into her knee, only narrowly missing shattering it completely, and a ray of frost slammed into her back, crawling painfully up her spine . In a fit of desperation, she thrust her hands out, fingers wide, and a blast of fire consumed the gnome. Finally, the little monster was looking hurt, but he still refused to die.

Time blurred into a choppy back and forth, parry, attack, anticipate. Finally, she hit deep. The gnome dropped his axe as blood spurted from his mouth. Pissed and exhausted, she reached down, grabbed him by the throat, and hauled him up to eye level. Lightning sparked over her fingers as she scowled at him. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

She dropped his smoking body to the ground and stepped back, scanning the rooftops for anyone left. Ides and Oda had joined the scuffle, an assassin lay in the road with an arrow through his heart and Ides stood over a mangled heap of limbs and mage’s robes. Blank was some yards away, keeping an eye on the empty rooftops.

Bending down, she reached for the greataxe at her feet. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said primly to the gnome’s body. It was a beautiful piece of work, a heavy blade on one side that narrowed to a wicked-looking spike on the other. Despite its previous wielder it had a full length handle, and when she swung it experimentally, it sliced through the air as smooth and light as sunbeams on water.

“Don’t mind if I do indeed.”

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Blank lunged around Rue and the gnome, and rushed towards the mage with Dolip under his arm. But he was too far ahead, and even as she raced through the small square, he disappeared into the winding streets of Tralco.

She paused and shook the remaining painful cold from her fingers. There was no way she’d be able to find him on her own. An arrow whistled dangerously close to her head and Pina, clinging to her shoulder, hissed.

“You ready to try something?” Blank murmured, scratching her chin. The dragon chirred.

Cupping her familiar’s head, she focused the magic into the palm of her hand. Pina leapt into the air and hurtled like a shooting star over the heads of two pirates on the rooftops. They ducked, expecting an attack. When none came, they took aim at Blank once again. She watched, tense, willing the spell to work.

As they drew back their bows, Blank grinned. A hulking dragonborn rose to its feet behind them. They wheeled to face the newcomer a heartbeat too late. Pina made quick work of the pirates and Blank shifted her focus on the mage on the second rooftop.

Spells volleyed between them, Blank dodging, casting, and trying to keep her magic from surging unpredictably. For every moment she kept it at bay, the pressure in her bones mounted. If she kept on much longer surely she would explode.

Pina the dragonborn leapt easily from the rooftop over, slashing into the mage as two others scattered, jumping with magical aid.

One reared back and sent a spell hurtling at Rue, knocking her directly into a hit from the gnome. Blank prepared an answering one, but the mage stepped back and melted into invisibility. Instead, she flung it at the second enemy, who evaded and slipped into the shadows.

Oda, having escaped the maze of the mansion, appeared and quickly dispatching the assassin in the shadows. It took a shadow to know a shadow, apparently. Ides was there a moment later, and with some magical influence, shot out his hand and caught thin air, gripping tightly. The mage’s invisibility dropped as Ides impassively snapped his neck.

Magic rumbled through her like an earthquake. She stumbled as, instead of exploding, it dropped heavily from her limbs and spiderwebbed into the ground, flaring brightly and disappearing among the gaps in the cobblestones. Tense heartbeats passed as she waited for whatever fresh horror would appear.

Rue jogged up to her, wielding a yellow-veined, bloodstained axe. “Where’s Dolip?”

She motioned distractedly to the maze of streets. “He disappeared with her.”

Vev charged past them, rushing headlong into the town. The party shared a passing look and ran after him. Blank forced herself after them. The wild magic could wait.

Pina shrank back down to her proper form, a turquoise, lynx-eared dragon the size of a street dog. She took to the air above their heads and matched their urgent pace.

The town was in ashes. The fires were mostly contained throughout the east commons they ran through, but the carnage was inescapable. Thick pillars of smoke still unchecked rose from the slums farther north. Blank tried to block it out. She couldn’t help everyone, she just couldn’t.

A woman appeared from the doorway of a smouldering husk of a building. She ran towards them, grabbed Blank’s arm and wailed, “They took him! They took my son!” Blank couldn’t pry her arm away from the woman’s vice-like grip, heart breaking at the sight of her imploring, tear-stained expression. “Everyone here has had someone taken, help us please.” The woman fell to her knees, weeping.

“East gate!” Ides yelled to her as the group kept on up the street.

Blank did what she could to extricate herself from the clutching hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” She whispered, a tear trembling in the corner of her eye. Running after the party, she swiped at her watery eyes. She couldn’t pretend it was the smoke that made them stream.

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Thanks for reading! I so appreciate everyone who keeps up with this story. It's so special to me that I get to share it with you <3

Just joining the party? start with Part One

ICYMI: Part 17

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