Dzan doesn't know at all what happened to the boy's mother after he got the kid away. He thinks about how he left Sigvor behind while he did all this.
Maybe Sigvor can find a way to fix this… I can only hope.
"Your mom, she's… she's being helped by my best friend, ok? My friend Sigvor is going to save her, alright? I can help him if I figure out a way to beat up these bad guys, alright? So… please…"
The boy seems to calm down after hearing Dzan’s words. Dzan is honestly shocked that he’s being believed so easily, but then again, the kid is only six or seven years old. He grits his teeth.
Dzan knows what it's like to lose a mother. His own mother, the most important person in the world to him, had also died. She had done so much for him and she left him with only pain when she passed away. He wouldn't want this boy to feel what he had felt, but he feared that it was not in his hands anymore, even with all his most wishful thinking.
As soon as he ran for safety with the boy in his arms, her fate was likely already sealed. There is nothing he can do about any of that right now. He waits in the closet, trying to figure out a way out of this mess that he had stumbled into.
The shouting stops. However, he hears slow footsteps now. It sounds to Dzan as if they’re going from door to door to check for whether the two of them might be. It feels like a fool’s errand to him. Then, he remembers what he had already observed about this group of cult members.
Oh shit… they have… they have that mage, the one who could search apartments by just touching the door. Fuck. He's going to know that I'm here!
Dzan had initially thought that they might pass this closet because they probably didn’t have a good way to search all the closed doors. They might just go upstairs then thinking he and the boy were on another floor. Then he could follow them from behind while picking them off one by one.
Dzan's heart rate spikes sharply as his mind tries to rationalize his significantly worse circumstances. The door to the janitor’s closet has a lock on it which Dzan has already used. It's possible that the mage who unlocks doors isn't in the group of people searching for him.
He can’t know for certain, but he still has to think of the worst case if he wants himself and the boy to live. What if this group can both figure out which door they’re behind and also break down the door?
Fuck… I'm such a fucking idiot! Fuck! I-I thought that… Ok, no point dwelling now. If it's all I got, I'm going to have to confront them right here, right now. No matter what, I'm not going to let this kid die.
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First, Dzan calms down. He had already finished checking his belongings for anything of immediate use to him. He doesn't have any more of his smoke bombs. He had used his only one to free Pieroly and her daughter. He really only has his knife.
He checks the janitorial closet for anything of use to him.
There is some soapy smelling cleaning fluid, some kind of acid solution… there is also some sort of… Well, if I mix the acid with the soapy stuff then… no, I'll poison us too.
He considers for a moment mixing the acid with the soap remembering that it would result in some sort of toxic gas. A bad plan, so he moves on to something more worthwhile. The acid spray is the most useful thing he has.
As the footsteps get closer and closer, he draws up a plan of action using the acid solution. There are some empty spray bottles in this closet. While the boy stays quiet, Dzan pours the acid into one of the spray bottles. The bottle itself is made of glass and the spray mechanism is made of both glass and metal.
It looks quite similar to ones that might be found on Earth, though Dzan doesn't know this. He sets the nozzle to spray far rather than in a cloud. With this, he might be able to blind the men after him. All he has to do is aim for their eyes and he doesn’t remember them wearing anything like protective goggles. Though, lucky for him, this closet has goggles that he can use.
His mom had taught him how all of these chemicals worked as well as proper safety procedures. Some of them were actually what she used when she worked in one of the city’s alchemical concerns. He puts on both a pair of goggles, his own pair of gloves as well as a cloth bandana mask.
The acid spray he’s going to be using is very undiluted and his mother had always warned him about the danger of chemical fumes, no matter how tame.
"Ok, kid. I'm going out there in a few seconds." Dzan whispers to Bels. "Stay here until I say it's ok to come out. Be as quiet as you possibly can, ok? Please, I don’t want them to grab you again. I'm going to protect you, kid. Don’t you worry."
The child looks at his new getup with slight confusion. He doesn’t really know what he can do to help at this point. He’s still just a little boy. Dzan’s words put him more at ease however.
Dzan waits right next to the door as the footsteps get closer and closer. He finds a moment to launch himself at his opponents, when they’re searching the room just about two doors down. However, before he can do so, he hears a shout from the stairwell.
"Hey!"
Dzan gasps. He recognizes the voice.
***
Sigvor walks up the stairs. In his right hand is the knife that causes decaying wounds. It is quite a useful weapon. He feels like he can make proper use of it right now.
She sighs in slight exasperation while wearing a thin smile.
"Please, Mrs. Litun. Don't you think it would be safer for you if you just wait in your apartment? You're in a lot of danger right now."
She speaks to the woman walking behind her. The woman had been filled with fear earlier but she’s very much angry right now.
"You can't expect me to just sit and wait for you to bring my son back, can you?" The woman snaps. "I can take care of myself. Even if you weren't going to help me, I'd still do everything I can to protect Bels."