…..:::::|. Third Gate Hamlet .|:::::…..
Halycind peeked over onto the ridge where the thing lie and watched as this Jemedh slowly advanced on this creature. He was supremely elegant in his movements and the Aagenite made no motion to flee. He extended a hand to it and it stretched its neck long to reach in for him to scratch under its chin. She scoffed. If he could've just walked up to it and pet it, why did he need her to have been there?
Suddenly he flashed her an unmistakable signal to strike it. She hopped-to and scrambled trying to shove big bolts into the large bowstave of the belly-bow. Around the moment when she was starting to curse her hasty purchase she had successfully set up the huge thing and launched a broom sized arrow into the creature’s neck. Shaw stepped backward from its writhing agony and shot palms to the sky above them. He was calling in some sort of a storm.
The creature squealed and flamed in enraged pain. The Aagenite attempted to claw at him but was blown backward by some reflexive force from his body. Halycind ran up on it to slit its hide but the creature was considerably more agile than she had given it credit and found herself slapped to the side by the raking of a giant claw.
She'd had enough of animals slapping her and shoved another bolt into the belly-bow. She shot the beast directly in the eye and it roared in open screams that sounded strangely like that of a woman. Its iridescent wings unfolded to lift it to freedom. Halycind thought quickly to ground it as she launched herself toward a nearby rock and with great toil heaved a stone onto to the screaming rising creature.
It landed squarely on the right paw where gouts of blood gushed from the crushing of its claws. A woman's wails erupted from its gut again and Halycind grew a very sick feeling this was not what she thought it was. Shaw's storm was drawing in closer and violet lighting struck branches near the beast. Halycind looked to him and he nodded her on.
She hesitated, sorely unsure if she should kill this creature. It didn't feel like the Ghostgale or its lesser Blackgales or even the first Aagenite she'd seen in Ladi Gru Has. This one cried out as if it had already been in despair.
He furrowed his brow and glared his intent.
Just as a great purple bolt shot down to end the beast Halycind leapt onto its back and took the strike right through her left palm and the Split-Wolf insignia on her own back. Shaw dropped his arms immediately. Purple sparks and jolts danced across all the silver on Halycind’s armour as both she and the partially shielded creature slumped to the ground.
…..:::::|. Havvenchael Sixth .|:::::…..
Kodlaa was taking too long and Siin could see even Elsa and Ruu were starting yo become unnerved mixed in with the Solstice Crowds. They wanted her to get the candle before she was seen doing so. Kodlaa made to drag Ruu away when she tapped him on the arm and feigned a flying fall onto the crate with the red mark.
Just as Siin was about to call for more distractions, he saw Kodlaa fall to her face on the crates beside the merchant's stall. What was she doing? He became severely alarmed.
For the farce to seem unintentional she had brought down two other crates and had screamed a painful cry. Ruu had helped her up out of the straw and goods, dusted her off and let her bow her embarrassment away from the merchant as he and his competitors and the guards all wondered of her injury. Ruu crowded the merchant with helping hands and open pleas of apology and with an obvious artifice, offered him two purses for the replacement of his goods.
The woman from Dorari didn't know much of negotiation but she did know how to filch and had made off smoothly with her take. In his panic Siin had not caught Kodlaa's pilfer of the coveted blue baby candle and switch to its dummy laid there in the hay and crate bits. He only saw her crash up the place, bow her apologies then run as she rounded the corner once out of all their sight.
When the compliant merchant shooed away Ruu's help, he caught the true eye of the Kaehnnah he and Kodlaa had been talking to the whole time. Ruu jolted in recognition of this man’s now prismed irises as the merchant’s competitors gathered to lend their aid.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Tsemetso grinned to one side. “Better get after her.” He urged, enjoying a good stretch in the confusion. “I’ve got to go pick a fight with a Leviathan.”
Ruu backed away in deep question and took to following the girl. He didn't have time to try and figure out why Tsemetso was involved in this or why he was going to go disturb Ruu’s own brother-in-split, but Ruu was solidly stricken with worry. He had been used to knowing his enemy. Perhaps this was that time of ignorance and learning, the girls had spoken of.
Siin saw how Ruu let Kodlaa flee and Elsa only folded into the crowds more to head off the mancer's chase should he recognize his own failure. Siin was suddenly and wholly impressed. He almost didn't think the girl would pull it off. But her escape was not long. Something in the mancer made him shoot looks to the lavender merchant and he grimaced a strong brow as he marched around the corner to see the girl just slowing her run to blend in.
The alomancer pulled from his pockets a palm full of red salt and lit it to a blazing curl. He hurled it at the girl threw the crowds in the parade singeing cloth and hair as it travelled. In that new teleportation, Siin had raised his hands to catch the barreling fireball into a frozen halt above the crowds. People scattered like insects from fire, nearly trampling each other underfoot.
Veygornne turned the ring on his wrist. A spark of black on the rune and the ball of fire fizzled to nothing. The mancer screamed and took to a flashing run.
Before Siin could be caught, he took off after the two running in the scattering crowds. Kodlaa was very fast and somewhere back had lost her headscarves and as she stuffed the blue candle into the pocket of her tunics, she took to top speed. If the mancer was close to her or not it made her no nevermind, she bolted down the roads as if she were the chaser and not the chasee. Elsa matched her run through the walkways and porticoes of the city's courts but she had to teleport to keep up. They eyed one another and nodded their plan in agreement.
Siin chased the pursuer of his comrade as they ran up wooden staircases to the balconies. He had not realized Kodlaa was so fast. But she was wolvkin so her speed should have been expected. She broke no gait neither did she look back to check her distance as they ran the extremely uneven upper-walks. Siin wondered if she was in-fact herding the mancer for he saw no sight of Ruu or Elsa. He had almost caught up running the balconies and teleporting to better points, opening door after balcony-connecting door with his mage craft to keep speed. But he saw Kodlaa hop down to a fountain into the square nearest the city gates and tried to keep a viciously close follow of her.
The mancer flashed in short bolts behind the colourful girl shattering statues and stalls, in the bad aim of his teleportation, to get to the one who had absconded his fetch. With the openness the southern city square afforded him, Siin saw his chance and leapt down to the streets below. He ranked up with Veyorlin speaking into the violet Grui passing him. The Jemedh was instructing Elsa on where they were to make Wiylin's apprehension. Siin quickly corrected him and pointed to the wirerigs strewn about the bulwarks and mast of the city’s seventh sector square. The crowds were considerably less there today. Kodlaa was smart to herd him there. Veyorlin pursed his face then nodded as Siin called to Kodlaa to take to the ropes.
…..:::::|. Havvenchael Seventh .|:::::…..
The moment she leapt to crawl up a rope, fleeing from the screaming casting mancer, Siin clasped his hands and ripped them apart to simulate some motion he wanted the ropes to perform. The tightly wound hemp ropes burst apart and sent Kodlaa springing into the air. As he had hoped the mancer followed in his own angry flash of red streaks and caught the girl in a grasp about the throat onto other taut ropes high above. Siin called to Elsa to corner him. Elsa who had just seen the mancer bolt, shot in a flash, herself, to the crisscrossing ropes to peel the mancer from Kodlaa.
Choking and struggling, Kodlaa snatched out her daggers, from some unseen place in her tunics, and dug them deep into the mancer's sides. She stumbled on the web of ropes in his release of her and Siin flashed upward to catch her before she fell. She smiled at him, ruefully grateful, full of relief as he set her on the nearby balconies. She was eased that Havvenchael's homes and establishments had all been built with linked porches like these.
Siin turned to stare at the alomancer held in Jemedh arms. Purplish salts swirl up from the mancer’s surcoat and Siin seeing them spark up blew them with a gust of wind so forceful they scattered across the city in fine dusts. The mancer squealed and tried to cast something else fiery but was quickly and completely squelched by a confident closing of Siin’s frozen-over fist gripping the air.
“W-what is your centry?” Elsa stuttered in growing amazement of the young warmage.
Siin hesitated to answer the Jemedh, then stared at her holding the struggling mancer. “Omni.” He uttered in a low rumbling voice.
She looked as if she wanted to utter something but the woman clearly didn’t know what to make of this Quarrymaster in front of her.
The approaching Ruu on the ground turning the ring at his wrist halted yet another cast the mancer was attempting to drum up and Siin shook his head slow. The aBn whispered to him, with a triple-voiced charm, and Wiylin settled his struggling on the tight ropes.