Reyn tried to sneak backwards, away from the trap, but the sorcerer’s hand was on his shoulder forcing him still. He knew at any moment he would be falling through space. Then he heard the screaming.

Behind him, the sorcerer cursed, and Reyn felt the sorcerer’s hand leave him. In a rush, Reyn slipped the noose from his neck. He was about to rip the bag off when he started falling—the trap door had been pulled.

With his stomach in his throat and unable to see anything, he hurtled through the air and fell awkwardly to the ground. He didn’t have time to brace. His legs buckled as his arms and head hit hard on the gravel. “Ow,” he said. Dazed, he clawed off the black sack.

* * *

Seff saw the sorcerer move the boy to the second noose, so he cast a spell to sever it. But it didn’t fall. Nothing. Seff cursed, realizing that the sorcerer must have shielded the second noose.

He had not wanted to use his wand spells so early, but now he felt forced to do so.

The wands could not help him store more than five spells each. Before he had arrived to the plaza, he had all but cast the ten spells between the two wands that he now carried, omitting the final rune.

Thus, leaving the spells in an incomplete state, he kept them at the back of his mind, ready at a moment’s notice. It had taken years and years of private tutoring to master even holding a single or two spells at the back of his mind, trapped in a wand or staff. Now, the wands held each spell in any of the many spaces delineated by notches upon their exteriors. It helped hold them and separate them. With no notches, the spells often melded or combined in erratic and dangerous ways. No one would ever store spells into an unnotched stick or pole.

Seff chose not to use a staff in cities. Stealth was exceptionally valuable. Although a staff was capable of holding more spells due to its length and thickness, they certainly could not be hidden.

Seff said the last rune of a fireball spell and cast it at the large man scrambling for the release pin. As the fireball rushed above the crowd, some screamed. The fireball caught the man before he managed to yank the pin. The crowd screamed and turned away from the gallows.

The sorcerer started running for the pin. Seff could barely turn in time. He cast and hit the sorcerer, even while the crowd pushed against him. But his lightning bolt, with a warm glow, dissipated from the man without harming him. Seff cast again, yet the sorcerer continued on. Something hit him from behind, so Seff cursed loudly and sent a fireball straight into the crowd had thrown something at him.

Three were set aflame. Screams rose around him. The crowd, with growing panic, pushed away from him with tremendous force, soon leaving a deserted space around him in the crowded plaza. Seff saw the sorcerer pull the pin.

He cast his last lightning bolt and finally broke through with a crack of smoke. The sorcerer went down. From the corner of his eye, Seff saw the other jailer running, still aflame, but he ignored his plight as well as the panicked people around him. He cast the three wild lightning spells he had saved.

Lightning came screaming down onto the plaza’s crowd with utter and pure randomness. The crowd screamed even louder in terror, a cacophony of chaos. Thousands stampeded.

Seff was not worried about the random lightning, as he had shielded himself. The large man had run down the stairs on fire, and Seff felt obliged to end his suffering by casting a lightning bolt, downing him. Seff looked over to the constable station and cast two fireballs to it.

He nearly cast his additional fire spells on the second noose, when he realized the boy was not hanging from it. Instead, the boy stood below the gallows, looking around.

Seff ran to the boy.

* * *

The crowd screamed in terror as they pushed back from the gallows. Reyn could only see their backs as everyone turned away from him and pushed. Lightning struck down onto the plaza, presumably hitting people. There was no conceivable way that it would not hit anyone. As evidenced by an occasional heart-rending scream, the lightning bolts were hitting people.

He didn’t know what to do, so Reyn crouched down onto the gravel, afraid to move. He would have loved to run, but seeing the carnage and mad crush of the crowd, he was afraid. He stayed still until he felt a hand on him.

Reyn reeled away from the touch, afraid that he was about to be summarily executed. There, staring at him, was a boy shorter and stouter than he with a wand in each hand and a sword at his waist. He looked familiar.

“Quick, you need to run,” the boy said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Reyn said. “It’s mayhem out there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the boy said. “You need to follow the crowd out of the plaza or they will kill you. I was the one who rescued you. I’m the one who killed the two executioners and scared away the guards. Take the southeast road out—that one,” Seff pointed. “Keep going straight until you hit an even bigger road. Make a left and exit the city as fast as you can. After that, make your way home by back roads and the woods. Run!”

“Why did you rescue me?” Reyn asked as Seff grabbed his hand and pulled him to a standing position.

“Doesn’t matter. Run. Now. Run. Run!” Seff screamed at Reyn and pushed him.

Reyn ran as Seff had told him. He joined the crowd making its way out of the plaza. Occasionally he’d see people stepping on or over limp bodies. He could not tell if the lightning or the crowd had killed them, but he always made the extra effort not to step on them. Maybe they were just unconscious.

Seeing a constable peeking out of a doorway, he ducked his head and looked the other way.

The crowd was still packed when the street merged with the larger one.

He was bumped several different times as he tried to make his way over, and then suddenly he was thrown onto the ground. A man stepped on his ankle as another crushed his outstretched fingers.

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Reyn screamed out, but was jostled even harder. He grabbed a man’s loose trousers with one hand and tried to stand up only to be kicked in the ribs and thrown fully onto the ground again. A woman stepped on his back and kept going. Another trampled his leg. Reyn reflexively pulled his limbs in and grabbed out. He caught hold of a man’s jacket, and even though he tore it in half, it was enough to pick himself up and wedge between the crowd to get a foothold and stand.

Eventually, Reyn pushed and squeezed his way past the still panicked crowd to the other street. He followed it down as it twisted and curved. It widened until he saw the city gate.

The gate was busy. People were anxious to leave the inner city. However, the line to the exit seemed packed and still. Reyn looked ahead, seeing a merchant who had gotten off his wagon to talk to the gate officer.

For a moment, Reyn was afraid his prison clothes would give him away, but he was relieved to find his own clothes from the previous day upon him. They had rushed to hang him so fast that they hadn’t even changed his clothes.

The officer was shaking his head and talking until the man shrugged. The officer held out his hand and with the other, signaled him to move forward. The officer’s hand could then be seen going into his pocket, and the next person in line moved up. A bribe had been paid.

Reyn exited the line. He had no money. The gates were as good as closed, and he was trapped.

* * *

Seff watched Reyn begin his run from the gallows and into the crowd. Reyn disappeared within seconds. Seff looked back to see if anyone was coming for him. No one was. Above him, the gallows were on fire, and all around him, lightning still arced and boomed down onto the plaza stones. And people.

Seff concealed his wands in his jacket and ran to the sun-lit iron door.

It did not open. Reluctantly, Seff made his way around the building, working towards the front doors. As he ran, he cast spells into his empty wands. Under his jacket, he kept a hand on a wand at all times. He knew he looked awkward and suspicious, but better awkward than stuck with no spells. Surely few were looking at him with the station and gallows on fire.

Arriving at the front doors, he slowed and entered. To the few constables inside he screamed, “The station’s on fire. They need help outside.”

One looked up from his desk and said, “We know, that’s why there aren’t more of us in here. It’ll be fine.”

Seff could smell the smoke but not see it in the room yet. He had set fire to the back of the station, not the front.

He left quickly and stood away from the doors. He filled his wands back up with spells. It took him a few minutes, but he returned with the additional spells at the ready. He felt his mind grow tired as he cast the spells, but he knew he needed the boy’s dossier. Without it, he didn’t even know where to find the kid he just saved.

He walked in, a wand in each hand, and fired lightning upon the nearest constable. Now aware of the danger, the other constables stood up and ran. Seff cast several more bolts, and although he missed a few times, he downed them all. Seff quickly addressed the only suspects in the room, “Run, you fools. I’m setting fire to this door.”

They quickly ran out. Seff cast two fireballs onto the doors. He then turned and proceeded to look for the boy’s papers. He knew they would need a judgment order of death along with the story at the fountain. It could not be too hard to find. It was only a day old.

He flipped hurriedly through the papers on each desk before swiping them onto the floor.

Seff heard the click of a door. He looked up to see two more constables walking through.

Not even stopping for a second to think about his options, Seff cast lightning bolts onto both of them. The thunder of the two spells brought the wild lightning spells outside to the forefront of his attention again. The sound of them hitting the stones outside, made him smile. The spell was never used, but damned if he hadn’t learned it. His adopted father, Lygan, had always said that weird spells are sometimes the best. And Lygan was rarely wrong. However, the stress of maintaining those spells loomed in his mind. The lightning spells outside required maintenance in concentration.

His thoughts grew sluggish. Though he tried to cast additional spells into his wands, he found that he had to attempt the spells three or four times for one to stick. Everything contributed to his strained mental state.

He continued on, desk after desk, until he arrived at the last one and searched it, only to find nothing. He cursed. He turned around and manually—not using a stored wand spell—cast a fire string. It was a thin tendril of fire, and he laid it across the centerline of the desks, setting both them and their papers on fire. He then turned around and walked over the two constables. He looked back only briefly to see if they were breathing. They weren’t. He began to open the door to the back offices, but thought better of it.

He shut the door and turned back into the fiery main room. Smoke was now building up with fire raging along the entire front half. Knowing there was at least one back exit, the iron door, getting trapped did not worry him.

Looking at the different constables, he found the one closest to his size, as almost all of them were heavyset. He quickly stripped off the constable’s pants and shirt and put them on. He kept his wands close to him during this, and when he finished changing into the too-big constable clothes, he thought about what to do with his wands. The uniform had no deep pockets. He saw all the papers that he had strewn about and got an idea.

He transferred his money to the new pants’ pockets.

Fire crawled along the walls, inching towards him. He gathered as much paperwork into his arms as he could find nearby, placed the wands underneath, and entered the back offices.

Here, the smoke was much worse. Through the haze, he could see that many desks and hallways were empty, but not all. Those present paid no attention to Seff, so he decided to question them.

One particular person looked particularly distracted. He was busily selecting certain papers from a cabinet and filing them hastily in a large dossier case.

“Excuse me. We need to get the information on the boy that was getting hanged. We need to send out men immediately. Where is it?”

The man glanced up at Seff, “They’d either be in the back records or with Puugi. Check with someone in Records. Second door on the right.”

Seff thanked him and walked over to the records room. Of the six desks there, only one was occupied. A woman in her mid-forties with brown eyes, red hair and nice rings on her fingers sat there.

Seff approached her.

“Excuse me. I need to see the records for the boy who just got away from his hanging.”

“Oh,” she looked up at Seff. “I don’t have them. They’re with Puugi.”

“Where is Puugi?”

“Don’t worry. He’ll be down shortly to put out the fires.”

“No, where is he? I need to see him.”

“He’s upstairs, but you can’t disturb him. He’ll be—”

Seff cut her off, “This is important. Where are the stairs?”

She stood up, “They’re behind me, but you can’t disturb him. He won’t like—”

Seff cut her off again, “I don’t care what he likes. I’ll be back.”

Seff walked past her and up the stairs. He could hear her in the background calling for someone. He could care less for what a man named Puugi would think. What a terrible name too. Puugi. He wondered how it was spelled.

On the second floor, doors branched off of a central hallway. One by one, he tried the doors, but they were all locked. After he tried the last of them, a guard came up the stairs.

He launched a fireball in the man’s direction, but the man quickly ducked back down the stairwell. The fireball landed with a pleasant-sounding whoosh and set the stairs aflame.

He looked around more carefully and spotted an opening without a door. The entrance was indented in the wall, and he had missed it the first time. He went in.

The heated bath, finished in white soapstone, was heavy with floral perfumes and oils. It was divided into three distinct sections: an outside patio where Seff glimpsed the distant crowds still trying to exit the plaza; a room with two raised pools with separate tiled stairs leading up to each; lastly, a corridor led to additional rooms beyond.

One bath, larger than the second, steamed. There was a small amount of smoke here, yet because of the balcony, much of it drifted out.

Seff stepped further into the room. Counters, shelves and tables decorated it. Some were made of marble, whereas many were different types of wood.

“Puugi?” Seff yelled.

No one answered. Seff had just decided to check the other passageways for Puugi when a dark-skinned man with long white hair appeared from the corridor beyond and spoke. He was tall.

“Yes? Were you looking for me?” Puugi asked, wearing linen dress robes and holding a staff notched fifteen times.