Vol.6, Ch.3, P.13
Content with the new commotion made, I quitted the frantic crossfire. It was time at last to seek after the sword of soot. Yet with foes filling into these parts, it was perilous to remain. Bearing westwards, I thus sneaked into another chamber clear away from the battle. There at its window, I searched outside; and finding the window directly below to be ajar, I climbed out, hung against the wall, and dropped down. And as the lower window’s sill came rushing up, I caught it hard. Descent haphazardly stopped, I hoisted myself up to steal a look inside. No one home here either. I clambered in at once.
Now on the third storey, I sidled up to the chamber door and dared a peep out into the passages. And as I soon discovered, it wasn’t only this room that was fallow of foes. Between the flames down at the first, and the firefight up at the fourth, there was chaos aplenty to keep these conspirators occupied.
But staying cautious all the same, I exited and stole southwards to the hallways that overlooked the green garth where ran the outside stairs, and there peered out from a window at hand. A haze of smoke had filled and now hung grey over the garth. But even from behind this pall, it was plain to see that the fourth floor was absolutely bustling—bustling, albeit not confusedly so. No, there was surely some method to the madness of these men as they wended and wound every which way up there. And so did I break into another chamber nearby, that I might study in safety the movements of these enemies. The vantage, though clouded and occluded, provided a convenient summary of all four floors.
“…Interesting.”
At length, I perceived three general flows of movement. Foremost was that many of the enemy men were making north-eastwards to reinforce the confused fray above. The next numerous of them were scurrying about in a scatter, doubtless to broaden their dragnets. Indeed, even amidst all the tumult, they’d judged that to seek and snuff me out at the soonest was yet a top priority. The last of these foesome flows, however, were rushing conspicuously away from the firefight and towards the north-west.
These particular Quiremen, without question, were scrambling to bulwark whatever place it was that held the soot-steel. I’d guessed prior that it might be around those parts up there, but this all but confirmed it.
Right then. The north-west. That was whence the next reckoning awaited… and now was perhaps the only time to tackle it. The flames below wouldn’t die down for a while yet, but I fancied the same couldn’t be said about that farce of a firefight above. Most certainly would the men there come to crowd around the soot-steel once they’d seen through my deception. Nay, I must needs get to it before things ever came to that.
Bolting out of the chamber, I forsook the interior stairs and rushed around to the doorway leading out into the garth. There, I speeded up the outside steps and burst into the fourth floor at the top. This was it. With the foes here flying to and fro, stealth was now all but futile—
“There ’e is! It’s him, it’s him!”
—making me a fugitive straightway found.
But when those first alerts were cried out, already was I dashing madly through the corridors leading north-west. Yet ever as I did, the dragnets closed, and my way was soon beset with sword- and mace-bearing Salvators. Ahead, however, far behind the numbers coming to cut and cudgel me, were some men scrambling into a doorway. Their haste was obvious: they were about to report my appearance to their superiors therein—meaning that very room was surely whence the soot-steel sat.
Sparked afire by this thought, I drave my feet to a flying frenzy, and charged ever more desperately on. Salvators met me in assault. Sword blades swung for my neck; I swivelled and passed them under. Mace-heads swept for my legs; I leapt and passed them over. I ran and I ran and I ran, whipping myself forth after every dip, pivot, and dodge.
I ought be piled upon by now, or at the very least surrounded the instant I’d set foot on this floor. Thankfully, that was not so, for the enemy’s numbers were altogether dispersed and disarrayed, and security thereby thinned. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. More were coming to greet me, and more still, I guessed, would welcome me yet yonder in that room.
“Rraaah!!” roared the gauntlet as I ran it. And when a sword came cleaving down—“Hup!”—I wheeled about it, giving my body as wide a berth to baulk the blade; for as odyl bolstered it, even a graze could send this ungraced to his grave. All told, my luck wouldn’t last for ever. But take back the dragon-black, and it might well could—that is, if the thing itself were there in that room at all.
Nay, it was there. It had to be. Trusting my instincts, I at last came upon the door, crashed it down with a kick, and threw myself across the threshold. Inside stood many a man, each amidst arming themselves, but all greeting me now with eyes angered and aghast. And evidently amongst them, also, were no few field captains to be found. My guess-from-the-gut was right: this really was their command post… and as I next discovered, whither the bound and bundled board had been brought. There it was, leaning against a wall unattended, wound still in rope and canvas, but all the same most certainly containing the sword of soot.
No time to waste. Like wild lightning, I lurched for the thing. And like hunting hounds unleashed, the men themselves burst into action. But as though driven by a guarantee of victory should I merely land a hand upon the black hilt, I proved the slightly swifter of us, arriving first at board and blade.
The men missed me by a hair. And whilst they vainly veered about and stumbled in their haste, I drew from my pocket the shard of sharp glass, and began madly gashing away at the ropes. But then—
“Gāstċēn!!”
—there screamed an incantation. Of course it did; I was scarce the only desperate man in this room, after all. And in that same desperation, I ceased to slash at the ropes, grabbed the board, and hove it between myself and the assailant sorcerer in the corner, believing that the blade of black, though covered, might somehow fend the blinding fireball as it now came careering hither. But it was not to be. For whether it was ill-aimed or incompletely cast, the sphere of flame flew astray to strike not the bundled blade, but the very board itself.
A miss of a spell. To any other, this would’ve been a stroke of luck. But to an ungraced, it was perhaps just as grim as taking it head-on.
“Grrahh!!” I wailed, as the fireball exploded afore my face, and waves of odyl crashed and scorched against my body. And though it was the board that’d taken the hit, disintegrating into many splinters and tatters, such was the force of the fires that I was blown aback like a ragdoll, and sent crashing not into, but through the wooden wall behind me. And what awaited beyond was naught but air and sky. Verily: the Gāstċēn spell, blowing open a hole in this room, had sent me flying out of the building itself.
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