One of the guards was running at Quet, unspooling the cable between their crablike claws like a garrotte. Quet made sure that both feet were planted on a single flagstone, then yelped a frantic “Let’s go!” right when the guard’s cable was closing in on her neck.
The instant the thought of the Ley Line entered her mind, the flagstone with her on top shot past the guard and towards the glowing strip. The guard grabbed at her as she went past, but missed and fell to the ground.
The flagstone came to a stop right next to the Ley Line and sank back into the road. The guard was already back on their six feet and barrelling towards Quet, who was desperately fishing through her bag while thinking of something to use. Ooh, that would work.
Right before the guard’s claws wrapped around her, Quet pulled a single glyph out, held it out at arm’s length, shut her eyes and squeezed. A flash of green light burst from the stone, drowning the whole street in radiance and, for a brief moment, eclipsing even the glow of the Pillar.
The guard screamed and stumbled back, covering their eyes with their claws and squirming on the ground. Even with her eyes closed and prepared for the light, Quet still felt like a flashbang had gone off in her face. Her senses were so overloaded from the light and pain that she didn’t even notice the glyph crumble to dust in her fist, overloaded from the focused surge of magical energy that the Ley Line had shoved into it. Quet didn’t even have time to think, she was just immediately on her feet. She didn’t know where she was going, or what she was running towards, or if she had any reason to do so, but she was… 90% sure that she was going away from the guard that she had blinded. And even if this was a bad idea, that flash had completely fried her brain. She couldn’t think enough to stop if she wanted to.
Omet was further from the light when it went off, and their back was to it when it happened, so the worst they got was some slight pain in the eyes. The guard in front of them wasn’t so lucky. They covered their eyestalks with one of their dozens of tentacles which sprouted from where arms typically were. An opportunity!
Omet split themself into two and went on either side of the guard, landing two right hooks on the front and back of their head and sending them to the ground. Omet grinned as they recombined. They weren’t the best pugilist in their family, but they certainly had more practice than most, since they didn’t really bother with actual weapons. Turned out, that practice had paid off.
They heard Mark scrabbling into the building that had had a corner blasted off, followed closely by Salazar. That was probably something that they could be helping with.
Mark clambered up the pulverized wall and into the building’s interior, throwing a chunk of brick at Salazar on his way up. The building appeared to be some kind of apartment complex. Numbered doors, long hallway, the works. But odds were, those doors were all locked. Mark’s only real escape route was the stairwell off to the side. That, or doubling back and facing the guy who could shoot explosive knives out of his own body. Not much of a choice.
Mark ran for the stairs. From the sound and speed of the footsteps behind him, it was clear that Salazar was closing in. That wouldn’t do. Mark grabbed his gun from his waistband, thought about the form of a sawn-off double barrel, turned and leveled the firearm at his pursuer.
Salazar was just fast enough to dodge the buckshot, coming out with nothing worse than a slightly shredded coat. Mark prepared to take a second shot, sure to hit now that all of the momentum had been taken out of his target. Salazar noticed Mark aiming for another shot. If he aimed for the human himself, he could still fire before the quill went off. Instead, he shot Mark’s gun out of his hand.
Mark reflexively pulled his hand to his chest when his weapon was yanked from his grip. The gun clattered to a stop halfway up the flight of stairs, reverting back to its default rolling pin-esque shape. The quill, meanwhile, sailed all the way into the far wall, detonating and bringing down that part of the building as well.
Now that his quarry was disarmed, Salazar tightened his fist and pushed out a row of quills on his wrist, which extended past his knuckles to form a makeshift razor-sharp duster. Mark reached for the knife he had stashed in his boot, but stopped when Omet tackled Salazar from behind.
While the Primus and Ka-Sala grappled on the ground, Mark rushed up the stairs to retrieve his gun. However, Salazar managed to overpower Omet in a matter of seconds and raked his extended quills across their face, leaving eight thin gash marks on their cheeks. With Omet down, Salazar leapt to his feet and continued chasing Mark down.
Mark picked his gun up from the floor and turned to point it at Salazar, but saw that the guard was already just a couple of feet away and quickly closing that gap. Instead of trying to maintain some sort of offense, Mark instead grabbed the stairwell’s railing and yanked himself around the corner, continuing his ascent. This was the last section of stairs before the door to the roof.
Horan landed on the roof of the building and immediately collapsed. He was only just able to clear his head and get to his feet when he heard Mark coming up the stairs. Mark ran out of the doorway, vaguely gesturing behind him with the wide end of his unformed gun. “On my six, Horan!”
Horan leaned into the doorway and spotted Salazar charging up the stairs. He raised his hand to send a gust of wind the Ka-Sala’s way, but Salazar noticed the wind-up and fired a quill straight at Horan’s chest.
Before the quill could hit him, Horan redirected the wind so that instead of sending Salazar tumbling down the stairs, it just shoved the quill to the side and made it embed itself in the doorway next to Horan’s head. Horan grinned and pointed at Salazar. “Hah!”
He remembered what the quills did. He dove out of the doorway a split second before the quill went off, showering the left side of his face in dust and rubble. Thankfully, there wasn’t an eye on that side of his face for said rubble to get into, so he counted his blessings as he stumbled away from the blasted-open doorway.
Salazar stepped onto the roof. The flat platform was separated from a thirty-foot drop by a spiked railing which surrounded the edge of the roof. In the middle, four dirt-filled troughs formed a rough square formation, inside which grew several ‘plants’, though between the slightly animate faces and the malformed limbs, the connection to the conventional idea of a plant was tenuous at best.
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Mark caught Horan as he fell away from the cloud of dust that shrouded Salazar’s entrance, turning him in place so that both of them were facing the surprisingly dangerous guard. “Okay. You go high, I stay low. Plan?”
Horan grunted and tried to steady himself. “I’ll try.”
Salazar’s hand came to the spool of cable attached to his belt, which glowed ever-so-faintly at his touch. “Nowhere to run, either of you. Best just give up now, before I hurt y’all for real.”
“I’m pretty sure Waia’s dead, dude. And Omet’s pretty close to that point as well. I’d say you crossed that line about a minute ago.” Horan kicked off the ground and took off again. While still approaching the apex of his flight, he made the quick hand motions that normally resulted in a sword materializing in his hand. All that came out was a small, twisted hunk of bronze with a vaguely sharp edge on one side. “Oh, right.”
Then his powers gave out.
Salazar dodged Horan’s collapsing body and prepared for another shootout with Mark. No, he’d gotten lucky the first couple of times; and regardless of positioning, if Salazar could hit Mark, Mark could shoot him before he went down for good. A more oblique tactic would be needed if Salazar wanted to come out of this alive.
While Mark’s gun was still unfolding into a shape that could actually kill someone, Salazar fired a quill into the concrete next to him and ducked under one of the troughs. Mark dove to the side to avoid the blast and subsequent shrapnel, then got to his feet to be greeted with a complete absence of Salazar. The Ka-Sala was hiding. Mark growled and reformed his gun into a pump-action shotgun. If this guy was gonna threaten the lives of him and his friends and then feel like he could play games with Mark, he had another thing coming.
-
Keeping a mental image of where the damaged building was in relation to Quet was becoming a struggle. She’d probably lost the guard that she’d blinded, if they had even managed to get up after that. Now, she’d run far enough that she had come across a second Ley Line.
Quet gritted her teeth. Omet and the others were still there, hunted by more guards. She wouldn’t have access to her magic there, but she had more than enough over here. And that would have to do.
Quet pulled out two stones and lay them on opposite ends of the flagstone underneath her, right next to the strip of magical energy. While Quet was setting up the rudimentary matrix, she noticed that a few of the monsters who were once again encroaching on the area were staring at her while she squatted down on the flagstone. She gave them a quick nod. “‘Sup?”
She pressed down on both glyphs at once.
-
Mark prowled through the troughs, looking through the fronds of the extremely unnerving ‘plants’ for any sign of Salazar. Horan was just barely stirring from the heap he had formed from himself on the other side of the roof.
Mark turned a corner and put his back to the railing overlooking the street, pointing his shotgun at the last part of the troughs he hadn’t yet checked. Still no Salazar. Was he moving from cover to cover? Were the two of them just moving in one big loop?
While Mark was surveying the roof for anything he may have missed, Salazar pulled himself up from the rim of the roof he had been dangling from, vaulted over the railing and sucker-punched Mark in the back of the head. Mark grunted in pain, fell head-first over the trough in front of him and sprawled on the ground, his gun clattering off to the side.
Salazar leapt on top of the trough and wound up for a second hit, this time with knuckle-quills extended and ready for blood. Right when he dropped down for the final blow, Mark drew his knife from his boot and slashed Salazar across the arm.
While Salazar fell to the side and clutched the lengthwise gash running from elbow to wrist, Mark rolled away and got to his feet. His vision swam, his ears were ringing and his mouth tasted of iron, but he wasn’t out yet.
Both Mark and Salazar had their miscellaneous sharp implements readied, but neither wished to make the first move. Both had been trained to do otherwise. The moment-long stalemate was broken by a dull roar in the distance, followed by a flash of green light. About a block away, a tiny figure was launched into the air, arcing through the sky in a parabola dead-set on landing directly on the roof. As the figure passed the apex of its ascent, the faint sound of screaming began to form through the ringing in Mark’s ears. Wait… Yeah. Yeah, that was Quet.
Once again, Salazar dove to the side right before Quet and her accompanying flagstone crashed into the roof, their impact mitigated only by a dim, flickering dome covering the bottom of the flagstone. Quet skidded off to the side while the shield protecting the flagstone shattered into nothingness and the flagstone itself split apart and revealed a wet, meaty interior.
Salazar was in the middle of adjusting to the new target when Omet fell through the doorway and got to their feet, forming a rough triangle of them, Mark and Quet with Salazar in the middle.
Salazar groaned. “Seriously? I thought you would’ve gotten the memo the first time round.” The slash marks he had left on Omet’s face were visible, but only as faded scars. “You get up fast. Too fast.”
Mark charged first, knife raised to strike like a scorpion’s claw. While he and Salazar were engaged in a close-quarters brawl, Omet locked eyes with Quet, raised their left fist and extended four fingers. Quet nodded.
Salazar spotted an opening. He knocked Mark’s knife hand to the side, planted a knee in his gut and pushed him to the floor. While Mark was still down for the count, Salazar turned to face the two Primoi that were still standing, only to see four in front of him, two Quets and two Omets. The two Quets grinned and spoke in unison, producing a distracting echo of her voice. “Quadruple trouble, sucker!”
Salazar rubbed one eye and sighed. “Right, yeah. Primoi. Fine, then. You won’t play nice, neither will I.” In a flash, he was upon them. Honestly, he was a little disappointed by how easily they all went down. An elbow in one Quet’s stomach, an uppercut to the other’s face, one Omet’s face slammed into the concrete, and that was that. The second Omet actually had enough time to throw a single punch, but Salazar easily caught their blow, grabbed them by the leg with his other hand and judo-flipped them right onto the other Omet’s stomach.
Omet recombined, curled up on the floor with pain. One Quet rolled into the other, and the two merged into one as well. Salazar looked at the four people on the roof with him and scoffed. “And here I was, thinking that a bunch of Primoi would actually be an issue. Shouldn’t have even called for backup, really, the human was the biggest issue out of the five of you.” He began unspooling the cable on his belt. “Welp, time for the cleanup.”
-
Back on the ground, the pile of rubble began shifting. A single arm poked out and Waia pulled herself from the smashed bricks and splinters. While she was catching her breath, she heard something slam into the roof above. Oh, good. There was still some time left, then.
She slung her backpack from her shoulder onto the ground and opened up the rearmost pouch, revealing dozens of smooth pebbles. With a grin creeping onto her face, she plunged both arms into the bag.