Shade

The Party Job 5/5 (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 ~) 

Audemus worried at the corner of his lower lip as Shade performed her work, although there was a determined set to his jaw as he steeled himself not to complain. His right arm felt numb, and the pain made everything else feel very hazy, but he recognized the fraying, dark edges of his vision. Wasn’t the first injury he had sustained, and thanks to this runic magic, (hopefully) not the last, but the advent of shock would be very detrimental towards their escape. “Move, move!” He pushed past Shade and ushered the children to hide behind her legs, sticking his left hand into the hedge and grabbing at the thickest root he could find within the tangled mess. 

Pyromancy had never been a favored school of his – flashy, but overly destructive, but he supposed destructive was exactly what they needed right now. An explosive flare took root in his hand, igniting the plant into a supernaturally hot fireball. It engulfed him, but the heat of it was quite nice compared to the cold-clammy tingle permeating through his core. The roots and leaves turned to ash nearly immediately as the flames raced away in both directions. It’d likely continue as long as there was fuel: perhaps the entire place would go do with it. No great loss. He waved, lamely, with his left hand at the expanding gap created in the hedgerow. “Now what?”

She was already herding the children into the smoking gap he’d left in the hedgerow, then shoving him through as well. “Run, I’ll be right behind ya,” she told him, before turning back to the hedge and dropping to her knees. Shade reached and yanked, no finesse, no teasing, she found a thread loose on the leyline and pulled. Around her shadows darkened and twisted, oozing across the ground and up into the smoldering remains of greenery. The low hum of incantation spilled from her lips as the char fell away and revealed old growth, the branches and leaves reappearing as if time was being rewound. She coughed sharply, head bowing, but continued the spell until the hedge looked untouched. She scrambled to her feet, prying her own grip from the leyline and bolting after the group. “There’s a street up here, take a right, then a left at the alley – we’ll follow the alley for several blocks into the Row,” she rasped at Audemus, “Once we get to my place we’ll be safe.” He’d know, once they got there, just how safe. It was warded to the teeth, a place only found if invited to it. And no one chasing them would ever be invited. She wiped the blood away with the back of her uncarved hand.

Each footfall against the cobbled stones of Silvermoon sent sharp spikes of pain through his arm as it was jostled around, so Audemus attempted to cradle his right arm to his body best he could. Her magic had worked well in staunching the blood flow, but he knew the lightheadedness he felt from both their grueling pace and the slow onset of shock to his system limited the time before he would be a disoriented, or potentially unconscious, lump. He fell in step behind her as soon as Shade had caught up, unable to parse the directions lucidly with the quickened drumbeat of his pulse in his ears taking precedence over all else. He felt rather foolish to have suffered such a blow, but then again, it was hardly the first time he’d been in such a state. Then again, did anyone go out with the intent to acquire injuries? Thinking on it briefly, he found that perhaps that wasn’t so easily answered (at least, in regards to his own behavior) than he would have initially thought. Mind wandering and thoughts scattered, he was only dully aware that their gaggle had slowed down to a walk. These surroundings were unfamiliar, but even his sluggish and detached train of thought understood that they must have been in the clear, for now — or for however long, if Shade’s promise of safe haven was true.

She coughed into her elbow again, wheezing faintly. She was shaking, but hid it as best she could while herding the children along. Keeping a wary eye on Audemus, she urged them all along faster than probably necessary, but the sooner they hit her flat the sooner she could send for help and tend to her friend. Shade led them down the winding alley deeper into the neighborhood that made up the Row, until they came to the back of her building. The bottom floor was a training center, and the floors above were flats. She unlocked the back door and led them all up three flights of stairs to the second floor, down a hallway then into her flat. When the door shut behind them she touched a bell beside it, a ripple of magic emanated from it like a silent toll. 

Safe, she smiled at the children and let them pile up together on the bed before finding a chair for Audemus at the kitchen table. Her flat was one large room divided only by what little furniture she had into sections. The bathroom was in another room, but the whole of it was a wide open space. She immediately began to rummage for her triage kit and potions, downing two of them herself before setting everything down on the table beside him. She set down three open potions – one a clear blue, another an opaque near blood red, and the last a fire-orange with a sizzle to it – and a glass of water. “Drink all of that,” she instructed the mage before going to her window and whistling. A tiny critter landed in her hair, making a low chirp as it crawled around her rather messed up coif. She scribbled a note and rolled it up, handing it to the bat. “To the Tavern – find Romarique and Melisande,” she instructed quietly. The bat chirped then wound itself out into the air. She turned back to Audemus, feeling much steadier as the two potions she took coursed through her, and sat down in front of him.

He’d never been one to deny a drink, and he didn’t intend on bucking the trend now. Mechanically, he swallowed each of the potions in turn – blue, red, then orange, just as they had been set in front of him – and drank down the glass of tepid water as well. His stomach churned a bit at the rapid consumption and he made a face. “Tastes like shit.” He added, after a moment, and then turned his gaze quickly to look at the children, who were all huddled together and staring at him with wide-eyed wonder. Probably shouldn’t say shit. “Sorry.” The apology was not acknowledged, but he supposed that was as good as an acceptance. With his left hand, he began working at the long line of buttons on his outer vestment, deft despite the lack of his other hand to aid him. He shrugged out of the bloodied garment and let it pool around his waist, baring his chest and the jagged wound there. He studied it for a long moment before shrugging his good shoulder. “Do you want me to sit here? Lay down?” He could feel the potions working their way through his system, but he knew that nothing short of actual medical intervention would be able to knit the bones of his clavicle back together. He did feel stabilized enough now to crack a flat joke, at the very least. “I think I wear it better than you would, don’t you think? It would make for a poor head accessory.”

“They aren’t supposed to taste good, they’re supposed to work,” she muttered, glancing sidelong at the children herself. “I have no idea what to do with them, but watching this isn’t going to be great,” she said, pulling out tools to remove the arrow shaft and do some basic stitch work to get him at least moderately pieced together so a healer could tend to a living mage rather than a corpse. She pulled out a curved needle and waxed black thread, setting everything up neatly along with a jar of salve and bundles of gauze and bandages. The potions would keep him from going into shock, would keep him from getting ill if he didn’t already have some sort of infection, and the other she was already regretting as she wondered if it’d be better for him to just knock him out. She opened a dusty bottle of whiskey and plunked it on the table beside him along with a slender wood dowl. “Drink, and put that between your teeth if you feel like screaming – it’ll save ‘em from being ground together. And sit still.” She looked at him for a long moment, “Thank you for saving my life,” she murmured, smiling crookedly. “You’ll wish you hadn’t in about a minute, I’m going to remove the timelock.”

He reached for the whiskey and removed the top of the bottle using only his thumb, pressing it his lips for a greedy swallow. Or four. Not so much as a grimace as he set the bottle back down onto the table within arm’s length before dropping his hand into his lap. Audemus gave the dowel a cursory glance and didn’t make a move to grab it. His fingers twitched towards the whiskey once again, but didn’t make it any further than halfway up a thigh. Acknowledging the children, who seemed transfixed, he gave Shade a dry, humorless smile, and spoke very softly. “I doubt this is the worst that they’ve seen.” Licking at the line of nervous sweat that had appeared on his upper lip, he idly fidgeted with the cloth fabric of his breeches. Idle conversation (or at least inane) was a strong suit of his, but he didn’t feel much like talking. It’d buy time for the liquor to work its way through his bloodstream, though. “You should have let the place burn down.”

Her silversage hues grew dim as brightly lit black flooded them, a soft string of words spilling from her lips to unseal the timelock. The magic faded, leaving her eyes normal and a wheeze in her chest. “Aye, I should have, rotten through that place was,” she rasped quietly, immediately pressing gauze to the wound, the blood dripping freely now down his chest. “I had more important things to see to.” She gave him a faint smile before picking up a pair of round nosed pliers. “I’m gonna remove the shaft, then pack the wound – none of this’ll be pleasant,” she warned quietly, focusing on him as she moved and spoke. Moving the gauze, she got a firm grip on the bolt shaft and pulled it out. Bone had splintered the wood a bit, drawing a low hiss from her. He was going to need more surgery than she could provide. “Okay, good. You probably have splinters of wood and bone that need tending to but I can’t do that for you – we will have to wait for help, but I can keep you from bleeding out,” she told him as she set those bloody tools aside and found the jar of salve. The wound gaped, the blood spilling down his chest and abdomen and back, but she paid none of it any mind as she scooped up fingerfuls of salve and pressed it into the wound at the front and the back. She tugged him forward to reach around him, repeating the process to the smaller exit wound. Then went the gauze, rolls of it pressed into then against each wound before being taped down. “How’s your head? Woozy from blood loss or just warm from booze?” she asked, hands firm on him to keep him steady.

He alternated between hissed cursing and colorfully vulgar epithets directed at no one in particular, body gone entirely rigid and tense as she worked. He would’ve liked to splinter the wood of the table with his fist, but figured that would likely be too much movement – instead, he manhandled the bottle of glass whiskey and drank down nearly a fifth of it in one go. A deep frown set into his mouth, and a matching crease formed between his eyebrows as he wrenched his eyes shut and attempted to distract himself from the agony of being tended to with no painkillers save the malt which tasted more of iodine than oak. When he opened them again, it was after the worst of the pain had stopped, indicating her completion. He dropped his eyes to the blood-soaked gauze and sniffed imperiously, once. It reeked of a medicinal liniment but more overpowering was the metallic odors of blood, and he considered her final question. “Yes.” He answered, leaning forward to unstick his blood-slick and sweat-soaked back from the wooden chair. After a small moment of moderate dizziness had passed from the motion, he gave her a flat grin. “Thanks. Are you okay?”