These fiends were just a small part of a much larger litter. With my magical might, we were able to discover the hideout of their king. We are presently on our way to bring justice to his doorstep.
Pulling his sword from Barsh’s stomach, Lyght wiped the blood from the blade on the man’s cloak before kicking him to the ground. Cursing to himself as the echoing sounds of the explosions reverberated down the tunnel, he returned the weapon to its sheath and looked down at Barsh. The bandit leader was bleeding out quickly from the wounds he’d sustained. A mixture of sounds emanated from him in an alternating pattern of spiteful cackling and rough, saturated croaking.
Lyght looked towards the end of the tunnel again, then back to Barsh. The fortress was falling apart, that much was certain. The mountain itself that he was currently within seemed to be holding up just fine though. Making sure Barsh was definitively dead was the primary concern—Lyght had to ensure that before he could worry about his own escape. A brief flash of concern for the others crossed his mind, but he shooed it away quickly, assuring himself that Feros had them taken care of.
I would end it quickly, like with Mundt, but this guy was truly evil… he deserves to go out slowly and painfully.
Stepping over to Barsh’s sputtering form, Lyght crouched down and began to rummage through the man’s pockets and the pouches at his belt. Barsh weakly attempted to reach towards him with his good hand—whether to to stop him or plead with him Lyght wasn’t sure and didn’t care—but Lyght casually swatted it down like a bothersome fly and resumed his foraging.
Once satisfied that he had relieved Barsh of all items, he stood up and stored them in one of his own belt pouches. Two runes of unknown usage, a pair of smoke bombs, and some healing poultice. He made sure to store them in their own pouch so that he didn’t get the runes mixed in with the one rune he had from Geren.
Picking up the scimitar that Barsh had dropped earlier, he looked at the man one last time. He was still breathing, but barely. Wouldn’t be long now until death took him. Lyght began to turn to head down the tunnel, but hesitated.
Better safe than sorry just in case he has any other tricks…
With a shout of frustration, he traced the scimitar with some of his essence and tossed it to where Barsh lay. He began sprinting down the tunnel, the sounds of sizzling lightning echoing around the cavern behind him. There were no screams mixed with the sounds. Barsh, leader of Barsh’s Bandits, was finally dead.
The return trip through the tunnel was much quicker since Lyght was in a full sprint the whole time unlike his initial pursuit of Barsh. Good thing too, as he was just barely able to squeeze through what remained of the opening in the wall, with some rubble blocking three-fourths of it. Any longer and the exit may have been completely sealed. The floor in the room was mostly gone, a graveyard of stone and dirt visible below him. The walls were swaying in a slow motion as they were beginning to buckle and give way to the collapsing floor above. He had to move quickly before he found himself buried.
Reaching into the pouch where he kept Geren’s rune, he held it in his fingers and activated the trace within. He had used Geren’s weapon prediction magic before, but not like this. He wasn’t entirely sure it would work, but given the situation, it was more than worth a shot. Zoning was something he hadn’t done before outside of some practice sessions with Geren, but Lyranna always liked to joke that adrenaline brought out the best abilities in people. With that in mind…
Lyght focused on Geren’s magic, feeling the familiarity of the trace flowing through him as he began to see multiple versions of his limbs before him, giving him guidance on how best to proceed. Ignoring the prediction shadows, Lyght instead charged his circuits with a consistent flow of essence and focused on pushing the trace outward—in a bubble, like Geren could do. It didn’t happen immediately. Afraid for a moment that he had failed, a brief pause of panic struck him as another large chunk of ceiling fell before him. That was when he realized that the ceiling was still intact. The chunk was… just now beginning to fall.
It made sense now. He had done it—he was successfully zoning with Geren’s magic, via the trace. A world of shadowy movement suddenly surrounded him as all the futures of the fortress's crumbling remnants were visible to him. Each piece of stone was a weapon in his mind’s focus, enabling the weapon prediction magic to show him the multitude of possibilities for the scene around him. It was both terrifying and exhilarating to see—to feel—two separate worlds falling apart at different intervals side by side. The one that was currently in progress, and the one that would follow just a few moments afterward.
With a surge of confidence and pride, he took the first step. The piece of the ceiling he had seen fall with the initial prediction earlier had just begun its descent, both creating an opening where it previously separated the second and third floor and providing a launch point to get through said opening. Acting quickly, Lyght jumped forward and planted his feet on the large piece of rubble. As he braced his muscles to jump off of it, another prediction blocked his view of the opening—a large piece of the wall was about to fall and cut him off. Leaping from his launch point, he contorted his body through the opening to squeeze through at just the right spot where the collapsing wall didn’t hit him.
He took a quick survey of the third-floor room he found himself in now while still in the air. The floor would fall apart a short distance to his right. The wall in front of him was already gone, replaced with what looked like pieces of stair from the fourth floor. However, that was just a moment away from crumbling down to the second floor as well. He could see the opportunity that was about to present itself.
Landing on a slanted piece of the floor that wouldn’t hold much longer, Lyght steadied himself and waited just a few heartbeats. There it was! He flung himself towards the stair remnants and landed on top of them as they began to fall and separate themselves from the floor above. Jumping up and grabbing a small ledge, he was able to flip himself up in the air and clear a shower of stone from the fourth floor before it crushed him.
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Looking around for his next move, he could see the path. It was faint, mixed in with all of the other shadows as well as the actual current positions of the stonework, but it was there. With a grin he knew he shouldn’t wear at a moment like this, he began to traverse that path. Leaping forward, his right foot found purchase on a chunk of stone the size of a dinner plate. Without thinking, he continued. He trusted the path he had seen, letting his body move forward on a mixture of instinct and foresight.
The next step was to the left about three feet. No problem. He quickly hopped over to it and followed up with a swift hop forward onto another foothold that was protruding from a much larger piece of rock. Four, five, six… his body and mind were in a rhythm at this point, each step he took naturally flowing into another. He didn’t have to think—just move.
Steps seven, eight, and nine saw him bounce back and forth from two large slabs of collapsing ceiling left-to-right that were falling parallel to one another. Clearing the top of the larger of the two, he had one last step to take. He spun his body so that another, third, slab fell just short of him as it passed. Re-contorting to plant his feet onto that same slab that had just missed him, he gave one last leap of strength straight upward through the last remains of the shower of dust and rock.
The slab cracked as he instinctively let a burst of lightning out around him as he flew upward. The predictions around him disappeared as the essence flowing through him activated his own magic instead of Geren’s trace, but that was alright. He’d made it. Clearing the last of the storm, he rose above the destruction of what lay before him and took in the sights. It was still dark out, but he could make out the figures of his friends down on the ground below thanks to the moonlight.
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Feros watched as the last remains of the building collapsed. No more walls, no more structural integrity. It had all finally given way entirely to ruin as the toll of Barsh’s traced explosions finally finished their objective. The ceiling of Barsh’s throne room at the top of the fort had split into three pieces, which along with some other various rocks and dirt that had broken free from the mountain itself, were all that were still descending to their resting places. Lyght remained nowhere to be seen.
Fangs clenched tightly, he took the first step towards the ruins to begin the arduous task of digging that idiot out. He’d be alive in there somewhere—likely in whatever hiding place he had found Barsh in—but he still needed some way to get out. Before Feros could take a second step, however, a flash of blue illuminated the remains of the throne room’s ceiling that had just finished their descent and caught his attention.. Blue light… that could only mean—
A figure appeared above all of the destruction. Though he couldn’t tell fine details from this distance, Feros knew it was Lyght. Flanked by the moon behind him, Lyght’s figure seemed to hover for a short time at the apex of his ascent out of the ruins, as though waiting for someone to paint a picturesque scene of the moment. Descending from the peak of his jump, Lyght’s figure fell back down and landed on the remains of what was previously Barsh’s fortress. Another flash of light came when he landed, likely a burst of energy to dampen his momentum before impact.
Sliding down one side of the ruins with some jumps here and there as needed, Lyght was on the ground shortly. He strolled over to where Feros stood with his arms crossed in his usual pose.
“Didn’t think I was gonna make it out of there.” He said between pants, catching his breath. “I’ll have to thank the old man when we get back for giving us each one of his runes. I dunno if I’d have been able to otherwise.” Despite his clear exhaustion, he was sporting a grin.
“You sure seem happy for someone who just fought a bandit leader and escaped a crumbling fortress.” Feros quipped.
“Hey, some of us aren’t always moody and brooding, you know.” Lyght retorted back. “Gotta enjoy this stuff every now and then.”
Feros found himself smiling in return. He shrugged. “Good job getting out of there without making me get my claws dirty. Barsh dead then?”
“Yeah. How are they doing?” Lyght asked, nodding towards Troy and Gargarel.
“They’re fine. No severe injuries. They’ll be bruised and sore as all hell though for a couple of days. I’m sure we’ll have to listen to Troy prattle on during the trip back.”
“He’s tougher than you’d think.” Lyght replied. “He really surprised me on this mission. Geren picked a couple of good ones.”
Feros perked up. “Speaking of ‘good’… where is that blasted Goodgoods?” he asked, looking around. His attention had been on Lyght’s escape from the ruins, and he’d lost track of where the small man had gone.
“Goodgoods? Wait, is that Wheatloaf’s second given name?” Lyght asked before going into a brief fit of laughter. “Pretty fitting though. Rolls off the tongue nicely also.”
He gave another light laugh before shaking his head and taking a breath. “Anyway, I figured you had him.”
“I did, then we had to escape the fort. I did see him earlier though…” Feros trailed off and strolled over to where he had seen the Halvan groggily walking earlier. Lyght followed, hands behind his head in a casual pose.
They found Wheatloaf not far from where he had landed on the dead bandit earlier. He was alive, but unconscious. Based on his body’s position face-down in the dirt, the pair surmised that Wheatloaf must have gotten up after his fall and attempted to walk before passing out and falling over.
“He’s alive at least.” Feros growled. “I would have been pissed if he died after I got him out of there.”
“You threw him out of the window, right? I mean, it would have kinda been your fault.” Lyght said with a wry chuckle.
“Whatever. Let’s wait for the other two to wake up and get a move on back to Davied.”
Lyght nodded in agreement. “Yeah. We can stop at Fredsroot for a rest again. We’ll bring Bread Man along with us. He must have been traveling before Barsh’s goons snatched him. He’s got a home somewhere at least.”
Feros let out a rough chuckle at the Bread Man comment. “So, job complete?” he asked.
Lyght let out an unexpectedly long sigh. Then, he looked up and met Feros’s eyes with a look of confidence and pride. “Yeah, job complete.”