Shade

The Party Job 4/5 (Part three of A & S's adventure series)

(The Party Job is divided into five parts, this will include violence and mentions of child slavery and human trafficking. This is cooperative writing between myself and Audemus. Just a reminder that no information found in this story can be used by any other player other than those involved in each scene. Thank you and enjoy ~) 

Shade nodded and hopped out the window, climbing down the trellis as roughly as she could to make handholds for the children to follow. When she hit the ground, she scanned the area and pulled a small vial of iridescent blue dust from her cinch. She spilled it over her palm and snorted it quick and easy before discarding the vial and turning to look up at the children. Mana flooded her with the softest of glows, reinforcing her work and keeping her steady. She really needed to talk to Sera about his liquid, her nose always tingled unpleasantly after inhaling mana dust. 

She helped the first child down and watched as she scrambled for the hedgerow, then looked up as the second fumbled their way down the trellis. She helped them down when they got tangled. One ear perked, the other dipping as she looked away from the child to the corner of the house where it sounded like someone was about to turn and find them. She ushered the second, then the third child across to the hedgerow. Her blades appeared in her hands, the glint at her wrists glowing momentarily before she positioned herself between the children and the guards skidding around the corner. She let invisibility wrap around the fourth child as they darted across the grass to the others before letting it fade. Her blades twirled as she slid into a defensive stance. “Careful, we have company,” she shouted up to him.

The last child had been dogged in her refusal to let go of his wrist but had finally relented and made her way to cluster, slightly guarded under the relative obscurity of a patch of brambly overgrowth. He spotted the guards at the same time he heard Shade’s warning, launching himself off of the balcony with a small spring and warding himself lightly to brace for the blow. Graceful for how hurried it was: he easily rolled with the landing, his shoulder flaking frost only the slightest bit with the impact into the earth. Four guards, two with wicked looking hooked lances decorated with red and gold bannery, a third longswordsman, lingering towards the back, barking orders, and a fourth crossbowman already bent down with his foot in the claw to notch the bolt. His fingers glowed with frost and he summoned a blinding flurry of sleet, directed at the lancers rushing towards Shade, slowing their charge and obscuring the vision of the archer. He grit his teeth, using the small moment of reprieve to coalesce another large bolt in his hand — this one interwoven with crackling arcane energy — directed at the first attacker who emerged from the localized storm.

It found its home directly in the center mass of the lancer on the left, blowing through the metal breastplate as if it were cloth. He sagged to his knees, propped up at an angle by the magical stalactite, groaning as gravity aided in impaling him further. The second guard was undeterred — not as green as the ones posted at the gate, apparently — and closed the gap to the mage quickly, swinging low at his gut with a surprisingly quick slash. The blunt pressure of it knocked the wind from Audemus’s lungs, but his frost ward held in place, shimmering iridescent as the blade skidded harmlessly off. The attacker redoubled his efforts, bringing up the blunt end of the halberd in a spin to sweep Audemus at the ankles. Annoying, but he hit the ground moving, crawling forward, fingers fumbling for the poniard held in his boot. The attack had thrown the guard slightly off balance, a touch of a stumble — he drove his dagger directly into the instep, pinning the foot to the soft soil beneath and not bothering to hide his smile at the pained yell it drew. A series of small frostbolts, one lancing the leg critically. He’d bleed out, but there wasn’t time for that: Audemus wrenched the dagger from the bleeding foot and scrambled to his feet to knock off the stunned guard’s helmet, ripping away the metal coif before he sunk the dagger directly into his neck.

Using the cover of the storm he summoned, she darted past the two lancers. Her blades came up just in time to block a downswing aimed for her shoulder. Shade darted to the left, away from the archer, and forced the swordsman to shift with her. He came at her expertly, with reach and skill on his side. She darted below one swing, only to roll up onto her knees to catch another and shove it away from her. It was a dance she was familiar with, a back and forth that would lead to one of them in the mud churned beneath their feet. She rolled forward, leaving a copy of herself standing as a distraction so she could slide between his legs and drive both long knives up under his ribs from behind. The black blades gleamed and sizzled as blood dripped down their points peeking from his breastplate. She lifted a foot and shoved him off her blades, flicking the blood from them as her tongue touched the slice his sword tip had left behind from the corner of her mouth trailing toward her ear. It was shallow, but bleeding heavily. Shade spun, panting as her illusion faded at a bolt shot through it. Right, archer. She kept an eye on the mage and his fight, inwardly impressed with his ability. The second of split focus made her something of an open target as she positioned herself between the archer and the children, and he loosed a bolt directly at her.

The felled guard sank on top of him and Audemus grunted with the weight, rolling away from the dying elf and slipping the dagger back into his boot. He could hear the scrape of metal against metal and flicked his attention to the slump of the swordsman, before he caught the blur of motion in the corner of his eye. He acted before he thought, no time to even yell a warning – the steel-tipped bolt was aimed right at Shade’s head – and lept up, displacing himself in the space between her and the crossbowman. The three-bladed, broad tip bolt depleted the last of his warding, protective magic blunting the jagged edges only the slightest bit, but stopping none of the force behind it. 

Given their height difference, it fortunately sailed clear of his own head, but quite unfortunately, tore right through the muscle of his upper right pectoral. Pain blossomed in the wound, but a distinctively numb tingle worked its way down his arm. He grunted out a nonsensical curse, half-Thalassian, half-hiss, and dropped his eyes to the thick wooden shaft that he could see impaled within his own flesh. He staggered, nearly sank to one knee but managed to retain his bearing enough to sweep at the blood-drenched wound in his shoulder. The slightest touch sent a stabbing pang that seemed to radiate up the bones in his neck, and he attempted to flex his sagging arm with little luck.

Her eyes widened, her entire body jerking back as Audemus threw himself between her and the archer. She touched her face, looking at the warmth she felt. Blood. Shadows erupted from her, black eyes snapping up to the archer with a vicious snarl. The tendrils snaked along the ground before she was moving, leaping for the guard suddenly unsettled by the darkening of the area. Darkness oozed up from the ground to wrap around his legs, crawling up his body to his arms and shoulders. His movement was arrested before he could get another bolt and notch it back. She wasted no time, sinking her black daggers home in the archer’s chest, twisting them and watching the blood gurgle up the man’s throat and leak from the corners of his mouth. She yanked the blades free with a cold, flat expression, her foot square in his chest to push him over. The blades vanished as she spun and darted back to Audemus.

“You are a heroic idiot,” she murmured thickly, falling to her knees in front of him, “Thank you. Hold still – this is going to hurt.” Without waiting for his permission she snapped both the barbed and the fletched ends off. Her black gaze glowed eerily as she laid her hands on his shoulder, a low inaudible murmur spilling from her lips as purple-edged black runes appeared over the entry and exit points of the wound, a searing time lock to keep him from bleeding to death or allowing the fractured bones to do any nerve damage. “Okay, we need to go – now. I can’t hold that for long,” she panted, turning her head as she coughed into her elbow. She ignored the blood-spattered in the wake of the fit and got to her feet. “Come on, we need to get.. through the hedge somehow.” She beckoned the children out of their hiding places, still a feral look to her as she continued to scan the area around them.