The group scrambles to leave with Roxie, Donovan and the person in armour being the only ones pausing to ensure everyone leaves.
They stay long enough to watch as the minotaur’s grey flesh knits together, the ruined remains of its neck quickly reforming as the lodged weapon and bolt fall out of its body, all while not a single drop of blood has fallen from it.
They follow the rest of the group through the hallways, passing Ilia who’s holding up Johnsons gemstone. As they pass her, dust spits out of the edges of the ceiling and the whole of it drops to seal the hallway. With the path to them sealed, the group stops to search around with Roxie closing her eyes and pushing out her sight whilst Ilia reaches down to her shadow, picking up the soul which had been half submerged within it.
She holds it up and waits for it to stop pulsing and flashing; it has gone form a small mass of rings to a fist sized ringed tube of rings “You ok there?”
“I’m fi—” Donovan stops his response when he notices she’s not talking to him.
She glares at him for a moment before carrying on “I need you to calm down and tell me how to get out of here”
The soul’s flashing stops but it continues to quickly expand and shrink.
“I will take care of you; I will help you—” She pauses and looks up to Roxie who’s watching her through the corner of her eye “And if we survive this, we’ll get to explore the realms”
Roxie smirks and states “I’ll make sure of it”
The soul then reverts back to pulsing and flashing as Ilia flinches and holds her collar.
Roxie frowns and looks at her properly “What’s going on?”
She flinches again “Oh, just became privy to its internal screaming. It really doesn’t like you”
Roxie sighs and states “We can sort that out after we get out”
Ilia puts her hand up whilst wincing “Just stop talking!” It slowly begins to calm before flashing as if its speaking to which Ilia nods along “Right, this way”
She begins leading people through the hallways as the sound of the minotaurs roaming gets louder and quieter as they navigate the collapsed halls, eventually coming to a wall where a large section of the it is taken by a deflated section of bright red flesh, she tears it open to reveal a vertical tunnel of bronze that goes up.
“This is one of the places that it got its air” She looks up and taps on Johnsons gem, then several handholds blast out of the wall which they start climbing up.
They quickly make way, leaving the flesh covered walls and back to normal bronze but are forced to stop because of the long climb.
“Fuck, first the cables, now this—” Jack two stops complaining enough to lean back and ask Roxie “You gonna have us swim next?”
She smirks as she continues to climb up, stopping and leaning across to peek through a grating to one of the floors “Not you, but definitely Ilia. You sound like you're going to die”
She shaking flips her off “How the fuck are you lot alright with this!”
She points out “You're the one that offered this”
“And I regret it now, ok!” She admits as she clings closer to the wall.
Then Brandon quietly asks from below “Can we please just get this over with” His hands bright green as he pours every bit of chi he has into them.
Roxie picks Ilia off the wall and drops her on Brandon’s back before leaving the handholds and holding herself up “Carry on, I want to be at the bottom”
The group carries on up whilst Roxie continues watching through the grate, listening for the footsteps she heard.
Eventually, after a few more stops, they come up to a grating which is mostly covered. Ilia holds Johnsons gem up to the grating and the earth shifts before she pushes it open and Brandon crawls through, leading everyone out.
They emerge out of the side of a hill, the displaced dirt strewn about the base of it and onto a field. Brandon immediately collapses on the ground, which is followed by Ilia rolling off his back onto the ground besides him.
“Alright you, flip over and get that armour off so I can check your ribs” Jack two lightly kicks Brandon until he complies.
Jack also falls onto the ground, with Donovan checking on him as the person in armour and Roxie finally emerge. She leans over to check down the shaft but seems satisfied and instead joins the armoured person in scanning their surroundings, finding only fields and rolling hills.
Roxie approaches them once they’re out of earshot and asks, “What are you doing here?”
“No, who are you? What are you?” They give a light and tinny laugh in a slightly male voice.
She frowns and for a long moment before responding “Alright, do you have a name? Proper one?”
“I’ve taken Frank as my name. Frank Lee” They lean towards Roxie.
Who raises a hand to try and smother a snort “Really?”
“Hey, some of us can have a sense of humour” They straighten and quietly chuckles to themselves before sighing “You’ve got a little bit of my friend in you, I wanted to know what happened to him”
“You referring to—” She holds her chin and tilts her head “Well’knowledge? Or was it Golden’page?”
“Golden’page. He’s good?” Frank turns to look at her properly.
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She rubs her head and smiles slightly “He’s in our library and the last attempt to get him out resulted in a door being welded to its frame”
He freezes, then slowly raises a hand before dropping it “Huh. Guess I didn’t know him that well”
“So how come you’re here in Blackroom!—” She jerks her head back to the shaft “Instead of with the Alieon?”
“Is that what you’re calling us. Them, I guess?—” They look up in silence for a second before continuing “Well, me and my partner was dealing with some invasive species when the call to leave came, he thought something was up and ignored it. Then deflected my questions about why we’ve been marching for years, until, slowly, he wore down my indoctrination until I’m, me. We come back round to leave the realm and find a city there” He shrugs, invisible seams in his armour allowing the motion “Decided to stay and, make a life”
Roxie lightly pats their shoulder and smiles “Well that’s good”
“I tell you what, learning Febnel was a pain in the ass” They both chuckle as he states this, before snapping around as someone shouts at them.
“Hey! What the fuck are you twats looking at, the city’s on fire!” Jack two screams from on top of the hill, pointing a finger out to the several pillars of smoke clouding the horizon.
The pair rush to his side to see the city that, whilst not engulfed in flames, is definitely the source of smoke, then to Donovan who's already running towards the city
“Fuck sake!” She runs after and catches him, wrenching him to a stop.
He tries to pull his hand free from Roxie “The fuck, we need to help them”
“You are not the only person that can help them, besides telling Till what we know is more important right now than some fires” She gestures to the city whilst letting him go.
“Some fires?—” He steps up to her whilst pointing to the city “Someone could be dying as we speak”
“And somebody else is going to save them” She bares her teeth and gets into face, forcing him back “Once we get to Tills’, you can galivant all you want”
“Fine” He breaks away into a jog, not waiting to see if anyone is following him.
After catching up, they trek across the hills before winding their way through the city, stopping to ask questions of the people that are fleeing that reveal little other than that the Traditionalists did it and that they should head east.
“Why is the east secure?” Roxie asks this out loud as she looks across the horizon, noticing that a specific part of the eastern side is absent of fires.
“We should—” Donovan’s suggestion is cut short by Roxie.
She affirms “No, we check on Till”
“But that’s where everyone else is going” He stops, forcing everyone else to do the same.
Roxie sighs and rubs her forehead before responding “And not necessarily Till. They’re after her, right? Why would they attack the city and not her?”
“She would be the first person to be evacuated exactly because of that, she can’t fight” He starts gesturing in the rough direction that they were going.
Brandon interrupts them “Roxie!”
“Yeah?” She clenches her jaw as she turns to him.
“I need to go—” He shakes his head and apologises “I need to check on my family”
She addresses Jack two and Frank “You know how to get to Tills’ from here?”
Jack frowns whilst looking around and taking note of various landmarks “Yeah, about” Whilst Frank just nods.
“Other Jack, Donovan, go with Brandon” She grabs him by the shoulder and lightly shakes him “But once your family is accounted for, you are going to find out what the fuck is going on at the east. Actually—” She pauses and thinks before calling out “Ilia, go with them”
She jumps a little then asks “Huh? but?”
Roxie lets go of Brandon to address her “It’s going to be a large crowd; your Hex will be invaluable in rooting out anyone who’s in on this”
“Right, but—” She stops what she’s saying and relents “Right”
“Jack, you good to continue fighting?” She gives him a soft look and waits for his response.
He sets his jaw and nods.
Before Roxie can ask, Jack two holds up a hand “Don’t worry about me, I can put my weight in”
She nods and steps aside for him to lead. They split, Brandon’s group heading east whilst Roxie’s continues south, rushing through districts until they come to the main road that leads to the branch out. The group freezes and watches as a group of about two dozen heavily armoured people step away from the gate on the branch towards them. The group slowly back off and prepare to bolt away, both due to the number of individuals that are approaching, but also because their size betray them as anything other than one of the traditional races; whilst a third of them are of the regular height of normal Titanoid, they are much wider and generally larger than normal whilst the most of the rest are much bigger, standing well above even Roxie and easily near the beginning of the second floor of the surrounding buildings with one or two straight horns pierced through their helmets, somewhat disguised at decoration, then there are a few of them that have the same stature of the smaller ones but are animalistically hunched over with slight muzzles and tails that are mostly concealed by cloaks and being in the back of the group.
The larger ones wield two handed weapons with their armour flaring out from their arms to provide shielding whilst the small ones all wield shields and a single-hand weapon, through a few are carrying crossbows and shield that are modified to be used in tandem. Their proficiency with them becomes clear as, at Roxie’s mark, they start firing. Roxie bats them away with an empowered wing whilst Jack does the same with a back hand, leaving Frank who just lets them deflect off his armour. He then begins returning fire, his crossbow punching into the shield of one of the smaller ones and sending them back. Roxie picks a moment whilst the volleys have stopped and throws out her manna, latching onto the road bricks and ripping two clusters of them free whilst flinging them into the group, forcing them to duck behind their shields. With that the three bolt, leaving the force behind as they continue working their way thought the alleys and across roads, making distance between them.
They quickly come into the clearing where Tills cottage is set, to find that the entire road around it has collapsed up to the a few feet out from the surrounding buildings and is filled with rapidly flowing muddy water whilst a small wall has been erected around the cottages island. The remains of several attempted bridges can be seen around the moat; some being mana constructions of shifted earth and stone and a few are ladders that were dropped across with the signs of a few attempted launches are dotted around them. Several barricades have been erected up to the edge of the remaining road, again from either magic or are pre-constructed, though a few have also collapsed, all of which is littered with corpses, each wearing a dark black article of clothing over something colourful and their only wound being a small blown out hole in either their chests or heads. The cottage itself is not untouched, with a wall collapsed and a few hatches opened across its roof, the garden littered with craters and more corpses though they seem to have died of even worse wounds as several have large iron balls caving in their chests or have bled out from torn off limbs.
The entire area is silent and dead, with the only sound being the rushing water and the only smell being of burning and blood. Roxie and Frank’s first steps forwards snaps Jack out of his staring to follow behind. As they approach, one of the few remaining bushes shakes and the covered head of one of Tills’ aides emerges. They quickly duck back in before a bridge raises from the moat which lowers after Roxie and company crosses.
The aide emerges from the bush, revealing that his upper arm is limp and bandaged, to approach the group and just stand in front of them, silently holding their arm as they look between everyone.
Until Jack approaches and takes their arm “Let me redo this, I got some proper stuff for it”
The nod, but jerks their head to the cottage “let’s do this inside”
They all move into the cottage, climbing up the destroyed path and avoiding the corpses on the way. Once they file into the mostly intact living room and the aide sits on the sofa so Jack can start on his arm, he asks “Hope you’ve been enjoying your stay in Blackroom”
Brandon’s group rush through the rapidly emptying streets, going against the flow of people, eventually moving into a district with a mostly consistent style of wood and clay houses. Brandon barges into a brightly coloured home and starts calling out names, receiving no answer.
As he continues to search the house the others stay on watch outside as a naked man approaches, his entire body covered in thick pates of callous and framed in bone.