by ReaperGal » Tue Apr 25, 2006 3:50 pm
He moved quickly from the new hole in the door, easily dodging the flurry of bolts that almost instantly followed his attack. He nodded his head towards the hole, giving the blood pools that followed him the go-ahead. Two swung over, and fired their bolts in tandem. One was quickly impaled in several places, but it stopped whoever was inside. The living blood pool kicked the door, and filled the room with bolts.
Hitting nothing. Giranto also looked inside, and swore loudly. The room was empty except for the two bodies. He looked back at his men, and jerked his thumb to the window.
“Give our men cover.” He snarled, striding out of the room. As he did so, he shoved one who had been slow moving to the window hard into the wall, and walked to the stairway at the end of the hall. He was going to find the target. He needed to make the Master trust him.
Just as he vanished up the stairs, the Shatterbulb group entered the hall, gripping their swords. They moved quickly but carefully, until they heard the sound of crossbows being reloaded. One looked through the destroyed door, but he was too slow to avoid being seen. They pressed against the walls. The girl reached her arm around the door and tossed a knife. She waited until the next flurry of bolts was over, and ran across as they reloaded.
“Hold them here.” She yelled, and ran. She propelled herself up and stopped at the head of the stairs, waiting until a large figure at the end of the hall finished his search of the floor, and walked higher. She waited for a moment, before proceeding silently. A hand suddenly reached out of the first door and pulled her in. It was a group of mages, who had hidden against the wall. The injured Mage was propped up in the corner. She rushed to him, and pulled off a backpack.
“Is he unconscious?” she asked.
“Yes, ever since we found him.” Replied a mage with green eyes.
“Comatose?” Came the second question.
“What’s that mean?” replied the leading mage. She didn’t respond, instead unwrapping the old bandages. The blood began flowing again, but she was unfazed.
“How much blood has he lost?”
“We haven’t exactly been measuring.”
She glared at him, before taking the bloodied bandages off completely. It had ripped out a good portion of his skull, she noticed, but no place that would have collapsed it. She took out a piece of metal and slipped it between the bone, and telescoped it so his skull would be able to handle pressure.
“What are you doing?” asked the second mage.
“I’m about to apply a gel that will coagulate the blood at the wound.” Only silence met her reply. She wrapped his head up with a new bandage, and then pulled out a syringe. Unless he was a transie, the shot would help stimulate blood production.
Below them, a Shatterbulb turned around the door and threw a knife. As he turned, a bolt flew. It missed him, but it nicked the bulb on his hip.
All the remaining windows on the floor shattered as the blaze burned through the cheap walls. The fire raged through the enclosed space, stopping only at burning the concrete.
The chemical fire quickly expended all the air in the small space, filling the air with the thick black smoke of a suffocating low-burning fire. The surviving Mages all swung their crossbows at the sound of the explosion. The concrete floor quickly warmed from the heat of the explosion. The healer looked up from her work.
“Shit…” She said. She got up and looked out the door into the hallway. The smoke billowed up the stairs and she saw the man who had been ahead of her practically fly down the hallway and launch himself into the smoke. She looked into the street. The Blood Pools had been killed quickly in the first attack, when they had thrown their bulbs, but they hadn’t been close enough for the swords to be used effectively. By the time the floor above them had exploded, sending brick and flaming debris into the air, the blood pools had fought them back. They were pressing the counter attack when Giranto burst through the door and blasted several shots into the closest combatants regardless of their allegiance. He raised one hand and waved it towards himself, and the nearest blood pools extricated themselves from the fray and ran to him, following him as he sprinted into the alley. The large Shatterbulb with the hidden face watched them run, and reached down to feel where a bolt had torn through the side of his stomach and out the other side. He knew stomach acid was now flooding the area between his guts and burning away at his organs.
It hurt. But he had experienced worse. He crouched over slightly before standing to his full height again, which was almost seven feet tall. He glanced around him, checking for surviving Shatterbulbs. There were only a few remaining, and they were all hurt. Not seriously, though. He then turned his attention to the door as the healer and the living mages carried the fallen mage, his head hastily re-bandaged, out the door.
Giranto strode through the alley, reveling at what he had found in the abandoned building. He was torn, however, whether or not to tell the Master about it. True, he had failed the mission. However, this could overshadow it completely. But he was the favored hunter. And a single Mage, no matter how far he had penetrated the Ocean, would be of negligible consequence. So he decided. The master didn’t need to know he had found, and caught, a Shadow.
The huge Shatterbulb hoisted the injured mage onto his shoulders. His wound, so grievous a few minutes before, was already beginning to heal.
“We need to run, Geo,” said the healer. Geo, the huge Shatterbulb, nodded in agreement. And they ran.
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This ends the first chapter. I'll post more later.