“Four Horsemen? But two of us are women!” Mya yelled as Petor’s hearing went from distant and snapped into crystal-clear.
The light was blinding.
“And who put a sun in my skull?” Mya groaned.
The light dimmed into runes along the four walls that angled into a square roof way above. The place was massive. Their pedestals were nearly next to one another, while the walls were a hundred meters away.
The runes ran down each of the walls, spread through the floor, and centered on the pedestals each of them stood on.
Mya was rubbing her head and blinking into the fresh gloom.
She and Desari were unchanged, other than the togas they wore.
He looked down. Not what I died in, that’s for sure. He turned to his right. “Valter, you have a face.”
Petor had been the tallest in his village, but Valter was built like a low-lying hill, twice as wide, made of packed muscle and a head taller. He had short salt-and-pepper hair that gave him a sense of gravitas instead of aging him. His eyes burned like magma, slowly fading into brown.
“Of course I have a—” Valter grabbed his head. “I have a face,” he said in quiet wonder.
“Right.” Desari raised her eyebrow.
Petor could see the thoughts forming before she disregarded it and looked around at the inscriptions scrawled up the walls.
“Some kind of teleportation formation? Lots of focusing going on here. Then drawing in power from somewhere, a lot of power.” She sunk into mutterings and her own thoughts, holding her chin.
Petor stepped off his pedestal, coughing from the dust that came from the toga. He nearly fell, his strength disorientating him.
Petor turned his gaze inward. His core reformed—a steady, simple, white sphere at the heart of his small web of mana channels. No golden Celestial power tearing him apart from the inside.
He circulated his mana through the channels and into his body, his strength flaring through him. It didn’t diminish. No wounds.
The others moved oddly and slowly, unused to their bodies. A glint caught his eye and pulled on his neck.
He grabbed his medallion underneath the toga.
“Got my storage device back.” He said to the others.
They began patting themselves down.
Thank you for the gift, Kalix, you fucking bastard. Looting was a soldier’s livelihood.
He checked inside, his armor, abused from his fight and the final arrow, his gear, as well as all of Kalix and the other paladin’s gear.
Valter was studying his upheld hand. His head snapped to the ceiling, the sudden movement pulling Petor’s attention. “The mountain’s shaking.” He nodded to himself and ran for the only door in the room between him and Desari.
“Well, this day is going great!” Mya grumbled and started after Valter.
Petor felt it then: a subtle shaking through solid stone.
“Are you trying to eat the backside of your toga, or you just holding onto it between your ass cheeks like it owes you a month’s worth of dock dues?” The redhead cackled, turning her head. “You coming, Petor?”
“Gods.” Petor cursed, chasing them.
“I was going to get a nice quiet beer down at the Swinging Lass and Lad, then those fuckers had to shoot on my ship. Now I gotta deal with some devil trader, and end up in some pyramid temple. What a fucking day, huh? Good view, though.”
“Door!” Valter’s words were a frustrated snort.
“The light is going out.” Petor noted the runes down the hall were dying.
“Move.” Desari flicked out her hand, conjuring a small flame and using it to look over the door.
“So you can control fire?” Mya asked.
“Yes.” Desari focused on the door. Her finger traced over sections as she spoke in tongues and languages that passed over Petor’s head. The tone of someone looking for, searching for, and learning something.
“Here.” She stood back into a stance, grounding herself as if a monk, and slammed a palm into a collection of runes.
The runes flared, stuttered, and died.
“No you don’t.” Her voice deepened into power. The runes flared to life, spreading across the door, through the runes, cracking them.
“Umm, Desari?” Petor’s voice rose.
“Break.”
The door shattered and blew outward into another hallway. He could hear distant shouts as the remains of the door settled on the ground.
Ah, fuck. Petor winced as Valter ran into the room on the other side.
“Nice work, lass.” Mya patted Desari on the back and ran after Valter, with Petor right behind.
He glanced back, Desari followed as a section of the pyramid crashed into the ground, breaking it and disappearing below.
“Great, pedestal room with a big ass hole underneath,” Petor muttered as he checked his storage. He pulled on his vest, still roughed up from his last fight. His armbands and helmet followed.
Desari threw a robe around herself and pulled on a wrap that covered all but her eyes.
Mya threw out boots, stepping into them somehow, and pulled on a vest covered in tube-like weapons, followed with a falchion and her wide-brimmed hat.
Valter’s feet thudded on the ground, in a toga that was about three sizes too small for him. He led them through the corridors and halls without pause.
The shakes and shudders were getting worse, dust falling from the seams in the ceiling.
He charged down a hall that ended in a wall.
“Valter.” Petor’s voice rose in warning.
“It’s a false wall—there’s air coming through it.”
Petor felt the wisp of air swirling down the corridor.
Time seemed to slow, Valter’s breastplate wrapped around him, the rest of his armor appearing down his arms and legs. Runes and lines lit up as they connected and locked into place. Pieces of a single deadly puzzle.
Mya drew a falchion and moved behind him.
No time for the shield.
Petor drew his spear from his storage medallion as he circulated his mana through his channels and into his body. Time dilated, his senses sharpening, everything heightened to new levels.
“Get ready.” Valter slammed his shoulder into and through the wall.
“Room,” Valter said in a rising tone that could have also yelled “Enemy!”
Mya followed with Petor right behind.
A dozen men wearing identical armor, were caught the group by surprise, ducking and turning to face the new opening and horsemen charging right into the middle of them.
They stood in a bisecting corridor, twice the width of the one out of the pedestal room stretching at least twenty meters in either direction. Torches illuminated simpler murals running down their length.
Valter’s blade shimmered with a molten edge as he cut it through one man’s helmet, reversed his grip and then drove it through the helmet of his fellow, he turned, tearing it free.
Essence slammed into Petor, staining his white core with flecks of red.
His core’s growth, entering a new stage spread through his channels, too small to contain the power. Like burning roots they expanded and spread through his body changing him as his strength and speed took another step up.
Mya yelled hacking through one man’s neck, sweeping the leg of another her blade ending them. Valter moved with deadly efficiency, Mya practically danced through them.
Only this morning, Petor had died; by midday he had made a deal with a devil, and now he was reborn. All had passed quickly as if in a dream. Things he barely had control over.
He might not be good at dying, and wasn’t intending to update that skill, nor was he good with contracts or dealing. But fighting… He was good at fighting.
Petor landed, two short jabs brought recovering fighters low.
Their mana slammed into his channels recovering what he’d expended.
The third got his blade out.
Petor grinned smacking a blade away and drove the spearhead through the attacker’s throat, turning and tearing it out.
Spinning his spear, he cracked another man’s knee. A jerk and the spear came back; a thrust and it went through the man’s eye. Mana refilled him, essence empowered him.
It wasn’t just from those he was killing, but those they were all killing. Petor’s mana kept him fresh and alert as he adapted to the increased strength and reaction speed.
He’d trained himself to sip at his mana, flaring it in the most necessary moves. Now he had an abundance. He eagerly and lazily enhanced all his actions. Need it to keep up with these bastards. They were strong, but they were reliant on their strength over their technique.
Mya, Desari and Valter’s skills were honed well past what Petor expected. “God its nice to deal with professionals.”
His core filled halfway with Red, no longer just flecks but a solid growing color bordered by white. Like roots, or veins, his channels spread again. Petor let out a yell, relishing in it as he kicked a man’s knee, breaking it. He jabbed at the opening between helmet and shoulder pauldron.
The mountain’s movements were getting more violent, dust fell from seams in the ceiling.
“Demons!” One yelled.
Petor rushed forward using the panic and fear to his advantage. The other horsemen added their own attacks. The defenders didn’t stand a chance.
Petor whirled around, blood painted his armor, his spear, the walls and floor.
Desari flicked her sword, sheathing it and withdrawing a purple book. “Can’t even form a proper spell weave.”
White flames burned Mya’s sword clean as she slid it back into its scabbard. “That feels better.” She drew two of the tube looking weapons.
Petor opened his mouth to speak as the edges of his white core turned red. Like water across dead ground his channels expanded a third time, much stronger than the first two. They’d extended through his chest, down his arms and now with the third expansion they expanded, reaching the edge of his skin and running through his hands.
They said the entire time that we were filled with Yasseen’s essence. Petor scoffed. A whole new world was opening in front of him. Have to ask the others later. Magic, something that only her paladins could use was within his grasp.
“More coming,” Valter pulled him from his thoughts and discoveries.
Mya and Desari stayed back, Petor and Valter advancing down the corridor in the direction of the noise and the flow of air.
Four men charged him, small shields at the ready.
“Petor, move right,” Desari ordered.
He moved to the side at Desari’s call. She held the book open in her hands, her eyes purple as mana passing through her hand, and into the book.
Lightning appeared ahead of her, arcing between him and Valter to spread out and hit the four shield bearers.
It slapped them backwards. Essence flowing into Petor as he spat to the side at the smell of burnt hair and seared human.
A man turned the corner.
Mya’s weapon went off in a cloud of smoke, nearly as loud as the lightning if Petor wasn’t half-deaf.
“The faster we get out of here, the better. Less time for them to get organized,” Desari said.
“And there’s the fact that everything behind us is falling apart.” Mya stored the two weapons she’d fired and replaced them with ones on her back. She started in the direction Valter pointed.
“True.” Desari followed her.
Valter took the lead once again, Mya behind him, with Petor and Desari trailing.
They advanced into a corridor littered with broken stone, opening into a room with a grand altar of carved silver in the middle. Big enough for even Valter to lie on.
Fighters in the room turned to face them. Their armor was different, and they held their weapons in their hands. Several bodies wearing armor similar to the ones they’d already fought lay around the room.
“Ah, just what I need,” Mya said.
Her eyes turned milky white with a blue flame as cold as glacier water. Her fingers withered like a corpse’s. She flicked two fingers; pale-blue flames shot out, boring holes through two of the attackers’ necks.
She clicked her ring-covered fingers, and the bodies rose and fell as if under one heartbeat. A moan reaching from beyond the pale veil carved a shiver up the base of Petor’s spine, to the back of his head. Hearing it made him feel like a sharpened skeletal hand was scraping against his vertebrae, spreading goose bumps along its path.
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Excitement, not fear, filled him as that tense energy ran through him.
He let out a yell. He was alive!
Valter crashed into the fighters. Runes of molten iron ran through his armor like the fires of the underworld, flaring as a shield appeared in his off hand. “Ahh!” He threw back three grown men with a yell, his sword killing one before they could escape his reach.
To do or die.
Petor’s blood sung in his veins. Bringing his spear to the ready, he lowered himself, power coiled in his muscles and a treacherous smile plastered across his face as he surged forward.
A fighter wielding a runed hammer connected with Valter’s shield. The resulting shock wave pushed Valter back several paces.
The dead rose, white fire in their eyes.
“Too slow, old man!” Petor laughed, passing the burning monstrosity. His spearpoint thrust out at the man with the hammer before he had time to wind up another attack, forcing him to shift his bulk to avoid his spearpoint.
Another fighter slashed down with a halberd. Petor fell backward, his spear cutting back out. The halberd owner’s eyes widened as Petor’s spear cut through his leg.
Essence spread through his Red core, adding flecks of Orange, like embers floating on the sunset’s last breath. His mana capacity surged as his mana channels spread downwards through his stomach.
That initial heady rush of killing those above his own core level abated now that he was at the same core strength as them.
It’s about how you use that power, not just how much you have! a sergeant’s voice snapped in the back of his mind, a lifetime and a half ago.
Petor turned in his fall and hit the ground, cracking the tiles before he threw himself to standing. Each muscle filled with power, his mana a roiling storm in his mana channels, torn from those who lay on the floors, drawn in by his core.
His breathing came easier, the power in his body coursing through him in a constant circulating stream.
The hammer-user was flanked by two sword-users as the halberd fighter staggered back, his leg pumping blood. With each pump, Petor felt mana drain from the fighter and into him, refilling his reserves.
Leech. Such words, once spoken as a curse, now came with more questions.
Valter chuckled, a dark and low thing, standing beside him. No matter what else, he was a skilled fighter, the likes of which Petor’d rarely seen.
“Kill the faithless!” the man with the hammer yelled.
The twenty or so fighters surged toward the group.
Valter’s blade work was a bloody masterpiece as he deflected blades, turning attacks into openings. He used his armor and shield in tandem, turning blows without flinching as he got among them, a wolf among sheep. He bashed one off his feet with just his shield, driving it rim-first into another’s face; his sword followed through their neck seconds later.
His eyes were alert and focused in a terrifying way. Panic was left well behind; each movement chained with the next, reading the fight and the others in the room.
Petor recognized the skill, the deadly focus. He redoubled his attacks. Each new wound to his enemy drew mana from them, healing his wounds speeding up his perception and strength.
He deflected two attacks, sensing a third attack from his blind side.
He didn’t have time to turn all the way. Darts of wind cut around him, piercing through the openings in the third attacker’s armor.
They coughed and dropped, confused. He drove his spear into their neck and glanced back. Desari’s book glowing in her hands as stone darts floated around her, hitting several fighters in openings between their armor.
His mana fed his muscles, wiping away fatigue and giving him strength beyond the realm of a mortal.
He turned so fast it raised the dust around him.
His would-be attackers were fighting off their reanimated comrades who were trying to climb them, their weight pulling them off-balance.
Lowering his spear, he swept the feet of two, dropping them to the ground. The undead used teeth and hands to get to their flesh.
A bolt glanced across his chest armor, throwing him back. He stabbed the base of his spear into the ground, staying upright; the bolt stuck into a wall. His head snapped in the direction it had come from, and his hand dropped to his sling.
He stabbed one of the attackers on the ground, pulling their last mana into his muscles. Their essence added to his core as he forced mana into his body. The wind pulled at his face as he accelerated toward the crossbow woman reloading behind two allies.
The roof shuddered and dropped on top of her and her allies. Blood and viscera sprayed between the openings of the perfectly square stone. Petor skidded to a halt and glanced at Desari, her eyes, hands and book glowing.
He nodded to her in thanks, settling the mana in his muscles, drawing it deeper.
More fighters rushed in from the corridor facing the altar. Footsteps rang on stairs.
He smacked an arrow away with his spear.
The archer’s eyes grew wide as he backed up, others rushing past him.
A sound like thunder cracked a half dozen times, blasting holes through the heads and chests of a half dozen fighters and filling the space with a burnt, acrid smell.
Mya snapped a smoking canister out of her weapon.
Desari flipped to a page in her book and slapped her hand down. A lance of air tore through three fighters. She wiped her hands across the page front; the air turned to a scythe that took down the remainder.
Valter tore through two others, panting.
Fire weaved across the altar room, sinking into archers’ helmets, to their screams. They clawed at their helmets, burning their hands to throw them off—the lucky ones.
Melee fighters charged the open ground ahead of the altar.
Petor drew level with Valter, putting a hand on his armor and pushing mana into him, he had plenty, more than he could make use of.
The mana sunk into the armor instead of Valter, but his breathing came easier as his head snapped over to Petor.
“Thank you.” He said.
Petor nodded, pushing it from his mind. Has to be other tricks I don’t know about on other worlds.
Valter grunted, Petor released him and hefted his spear. It felt so light.
They stepped forward together, jogging to pick up speed without losing control as they came around the altar.
Petor took in all of the fighters as they moved into range, the new fighters sprinting flat out, looking past them, thinking them the lesser threat.
Petor smacked an enemy spear away from Valter. Valter’s glowing blade cut through another’s breastplate. He turned under Petor’s spear and stabbed the would-be attacker Petor fended off.
Petor moved around Valter like a dance partner, slicing through a woman’s arm and taking off her head on the back stroke before she had time to scream.
Each movement was done with the minimal consumption of mana, trained into him from battlefields long since turned fallow.
His movements suddenly turned faster or slower, stronger or weaker. Disrupting his attackers, it only took one slip. His spear was a second hand as he had to reinforce it to withstand the other’s strength.
Dead fell behind him with wounds through openings in their armor, or through it where an opening wasn’t available.
The tang of warm iron blood clawed at the back of his throat—the foul smells of death, gritty weapon oil.
Mya relied on her pistols Desari had drawn her bow again.
Petor stabbed through the opening Valter made, into the side of an armored fighter.
Orange flecksfilled about a third of his core now.
Desari’s spells slipped through the slightest gaps around Valter. He never flinched; he never paused. Mya’s undead wounded their attackers, bringing them to the ground.
A section of wall detonated, spraying the room in rocks.
“Karenthal, I call upon thy blessing!” a woman in armored robes called out.
Orange light wrapped around a dozen fighters, their speed climbing as they ran into the melee. Their blades met the fighters attacking Petor’s group.
The fuck is going on? Not one to let the surprise of the battlefield turning in his favor halt him, Petor’s spear took the life of one distracted by the new arrivals.
“Unspoken Ithram, power my strike!” the man with the hammer cried out. Runes blazed like the sun as his eyes and body glowed blue.
Valter grunted, his runes flaring, shouldering the hammer. A rune-empowered shock wave threw two fighters away. Valter staggered as the hammer-user lost his weapon. A look of alarm filled the man’s eyes.
Petor pivoted and drove his spear forward. Essence crashed into his core the building flecks of orange congealing and spreading through half of his red core. The advancement ran through his mana channels, strengthening them, spreading them down through his thighs.
His breath was sharper; the fatigue washed away. He felt lighter and that everything was moving just a bit slower around him.
My mana moves so much easier. It was denser, but instead of feeling thick, it had loosened up some, responding to his call faster and easier.
The woman who blessed the new arrivals raised an arbalest, leveled at Desari, tearing him out of his thoughts.
Petor’s mana surged through him as he shifted his grip on the spear and threw. “Desari, front right!”
His spear shattered the woman’s barrier, she started to turn as she fired her arbalest. Her eyes widening, time returned to normal as the spear caved in her armor and threw her backwards.
Petor grunted at the resulting wave of essence and mana. The spear nailing her to the wall.
He glanced back. Desari poured something on her side. She’d been hit but was already getting back on her feet.
Mya’s weapons cracked, drawing his attention back to the fight.
Six shots—six bodies, holes punched through their armor, their blood sprayed across the floor.
“Here.” Valter tossed Petor a spear made of metal. He felt a path through it. Petor directed his mana through his channels, through his hand and into the weapon. It passed through lines and runes, converted and directed.
Molten edges ran up the sides of the spearhead, the air shimmering in heat around them.
Valter stepped back into the fight, his weapon a blur as he stepped through those that thought to fight him.
Mya muttered spells, dead rising from the ground to the alarm of the fighters.
Less than ten remained.
Desari was wounded, possibly badly. They needed to finish this quickly and check on her.
Petor ramped up cycling mana through his body, through his channels into the spear and stepped forward. Stone crunched form his first step as he bounded forward into the melee. The wind pulled at his face.
His spear lashed out. Each cut mana flowed to him, each movement he spent it. He was weaker than them, slower. He’d been fighting things stronger and faster than him his entire life.
He didn’t try to overpower them. He weaved through their attacks, telegraphed before they even carried them out. These men had some training, but it was long ago and half forgotten—instinct drove them.
Petor jabbed forward; his prey’s shield turned his spear as they stepped forward with supernatural speed, swinging a mace for his head.
He dropped, sweeping the man’s legs with his spear. His eyes widened as Petor kicked him in the chest. He slammed into three of his fellows. Dead rose around them, blades stabbing between the armor plate.
Petor hissed out as essence and mana colored his core and filled his channels. Moving all the while as another charged him from the side. He parried the attack turned it, stepping to the side. The superheated edge of the spear flared as he poured more mana through the resonating channel and dragged it across the front of the man’s gut, unable to stop his momentum as the air filled with the smell of burnt meat and a scream.
Petor leeched mana from the man, turning the spear he drove it through the man’s back, ending his suffering and adding his essence to his own.
Valter stabbed another brought low by an undead’s attack to the leg. Hurling his blade into a caster, the blade sunk into her chest. She screamed as power rippled through her body; her eyes turned between colors before that power ripped free of her body, killing her and four others around her.
An arrow of white slammed through the helm of another.
The dead groaned, as the last screams of the living succumbed to their blades.
Valter’s armor showed fresh scars upon it. His shoulders heaved with breaths as he grabbed the sword he’d thrown. He picked up other weapons and stored them away. Petor held up his hand in question. Valter moved to him. Petor discharged all the extra mana spread in his channels instead of stored within his core.
Petor turned back to the others. Desari was holding her shoulder and Mya was reloading her weapons as they walked up to him and Valter. An undead reached up with a coin purse; it disappeared into one of Mya’s several rings.
“How are you?” Petor asked Desari.
“Hit me in the shoulder. This body is weak,” Desari spat, her eyes flicking to the groups on the floor.
“Let me.” Petor reached out.
Desari flinched and glared at him.
“Oath, remember?”
She grimaced and turned her shoulder forward. “These are three different groups…has to be gods or goddesses to get blessings,” she muttered as Petor checked the wound.
There was a connection there, a resonance. He could instinctively tell what was happening within the wound. How he would fix it. He pulled his mana from his core, it weaved through his channels, changing with each twist and turn. He didn’t have time to figure out what was happening as his mana pulsed and drained from within him. Bones knitted together, muscle and tendon strands tightened, split ones interlacing once more as the wound sealed back together from bone to skin.
“Healer, useful,” Desari said.
Petor nodded, feeling like a wrung out towel with all his mana pulled out.
“Most are Reds. The woman with the arbalest and the dude with the spear were halfway between mixed and solid Oranges,” Valter said, he’d moved off efficiently looting the nearest dead and strongest
“Need to get a move on. Whatever this is, it’s not going to be clean,” Desari said.
“Never is with gods,” Mya said, her dagger removing pouches and gear.
Petor removed his hands. “It’s not fully healed. Bones are back in place and well on their way to getting fixed.”
Desari moved her arm around, testing and judging, someone used to pain, figuring out their new limits. “Good.” She nodded once.
Petor retrieved his spear, pulling off coin purses and jewelry from the fallen. Coin was always useful and the dead needed it no more. And I’m broke as hell. “Valter.”
The man turned; Petor made to toss him his borrowed spear.
“Keep it. You use it well.”
Petor lowered it. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
He checked his core. The Red was steadily being consumed by Orange.
The entire room shook. Several explosions rang out. The ceiling cracked and rained dust and stone.
Mya coughed. “Well, fuck me sideways with a rusty dirk.”
“Time we were leaving,” Desari said.
Valter nodded, taking back the lead as the walls shuddered again, dust and rock falling between the cracks in stone.
Petor jogged after Valter, tightening his grip on his spear.
“Well, fuck a donkey with a hot poker, move those buns!” Mya yelled from behind.
He snorted out a half-laugh.
Petor pressed forward, grunting, his legs burning pitch, his head a banging drum. A section of roof started falling, to block him in. He squeezed power out into his spear and drove it into the stone, wincing for his spear.
He altered the block, turning it out of his path and pushing on.
Desari grabbed his toga as he started to lag. “Not today, Petor, not today.”
“Got all the souls I need…don’t need to collect yours, boyo!” Mya slapped him on the back as the corridor opened up into a tomb, filled with more of the armored dead. Priests and nuns in robes bearing a different symbol from the armored horde lay among the tombs, crypts broken by the fighting.
Valter took the stairs two at a time. The cracking turned into a rumbling as sections of the crypt collapsed. Rock dust rolled out of the opening in the sheer wall they’d come from, creating a cloud that swept through the crypt over Petor and his group and up the stairs.
Petor held up a hand, unable to see anything as he stumbled up the stairs.
The building was half broken; walls had collapsed in sections. They were in the back of the building.
“This way.” Desari moved to a doorway and hallway beyond.
Footsteps of armored fighters filled the room they left.
“There.” Desari scrambled up a hill of stone covered in dust. The light turned the dust to a hazy cloud, the skeleton of a wall on either side.
Something landed in the distance, breaking timber and tumbling stone.
Petor climbed over the rubble of the once-wall, hearing rock shift as Valter and Mya slid-stepped down the other side. Looking back, it was a cathedral…or was.
“Get moving!” Desari hissed.
Sections teetered and then started to shudder and collapse in another gout of dust.
He could make out that they were in a rough square with a building on the left, where most of the sounds of fighting were taking place, and another ornate building to the right. A steady mist cleared the dust.
“The city is on fire,” Mya said.
Petor blinked away the dust and focused on the city spreading down the mountain. Thick smoke rose over the city; the stone buildings close to the cathedral gave way to the dilapidated slums below. Stone cut through the smoke and over the wall, landing in the slums, fire pots cracking against buildings.
“It’s under siege,” Valter said.
“Store your gear and keep running,” Desari hissed.
Valter’s armor and gear disappeared, leaving him in a toga.
Petor did the same with his gear.
Desari took the lead, looping to the ornate building.
People were fleeing, some covered in dust, others bleeding. They flowed with them, exiting the dust and entering the city proper.
Where in the hell are we?
Petor looked around for something familiar as Desari tugged on his shirt, dragging him and the others into an alleyway.
“Time to get running, not gawping,” Desari said.
They stole through the streets, passing dazed people covered in dust and blood, and dived into the maze of alleys filled with the waste and detritus of the city.
Desari held up her hand as a group of guards rushed past the alley toward the cathedral. She checked the road with the reflection off her dagger. “Let’s go.” She stole across the street.
The city was a series of slums that led to a few stone buildings with markings similar to the cathedral they’d escaped.
Desari slipped into the alleyway, Petor and the others following her. The stench of unchanged straw led them to a stable.
“This should be good enough.” Desari glanced at the surrounding windows. One of the buildings had lost its roof and part of the wall, the stone projectile still lodged inside.
The smell and the number of flies and rats in the area told Petor that at least some of the residents hadn’t been lucky enough to avoid the stone.
“What are we doing?” Petor asked as they slipped into the stable.
“Clean off the dust and change into something that’s not a toga,” she hissed back, moving to one of the stalls.
“Want company?” Mya teased.
Desari merely pointed to another stall, not breaking her stride.
“You know those back buttons are a real pain in the butt.” Mya pouted and slouched off to her own stall.
Petor stared at his rings. He could see inside of them: potions; herbs; books; containers filled with water, seeds, and food; sleeping gear and other useful items. He drew out fresh clothes.
“Do you have any extra?” Valter asked.
“I don’t think I have anything that would fit you too well.” Petor drew out the largest shirt, pants, and undergarments he had.
“Thanks.” The big man said.
Petor moved to use the water from a trough. Maybe not. He stripping out of the toga, and took out a canteen pouring it on the clean inside he used it to give himself a quick wash before he pulled on a spare set of clothes and his light ranger armor, complete with green scarf.
I don’t know this city, or these gods. Where the hell are we, Limos?
He was going to have to learn on the run. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Well, first time back from the dead out from under a cathedral. His thoughts paused with his shirt halfway over his head. Am I undead?
He pulled his shirt down and pressed his fingers to his neck. Holding it there, he felt his pulse, strong and fast.
“DEFILERS!”
The voice rang through the mountains and down the slopes. Petor glanced through the hayloft window above, spotting a gray and white horse cutting through the black smoke and fire-stained city.
“Going right for the cathedral.” Valter took two gulps of water and passed it back to Petor. He swirled the water around in his mouth, spitting out the gritty dust.
“The fuck was that dickhead?” Petor asked, drinking from the canteen properly.
“A champion of the gods.” Desari’s lips twisted into a sour expression as she came out of the stall she’d used.
Petor stilled, his heart leaping and his stomach swirling with nausea. He stoppered the canteen and put it away.
“Fucking blowhards,” Mya grumbled, wearing her sailor’s garb, complete with hat, sword, and exploding weapons. “Time to make like a tree and fuck off.”
“Agreed,” Desari said.
“You know, trees don’t move,” Petor muttered as he pulled on his shirt.
“Maybe the ones you know.”
Petor opened his mouth and closed it. Sure, moving trees…yup, totally reasonable.
“So, what’s the plan?” Mya asked.
“Get out of the city, meet up with Limos, and get our mounts,” Desari said.
“The city is under siege,” Petor said.
“Good…they have other things to worry about,” Desari said.