My Inner Demons S2 Continued

Crossing The... Tower?

A/N From now on, the tower walls will be called the First Wall, Second Wall, and Third wall.

~With the boys + Ava~
          Ava and the boys slowly made their way to the Third Wall barracks. Every time they heard the approach of guards, they dove for the closest cover they could find, which meant Ava was consistently squished between muscles and hot boys.
          On one particularly close call, a guard actually saw Noi before he could dive out of the way. The knights killed the man without hesitation.
          "You couldn't have just... knocked him out?" Ava said, looking at the guard sadly.
          "Daemos are really hard to keep knocked out. We couldn't have him wake up and tell people where we were." Leif said as he and Asch nonchalantly cleaned blood from their hands.
          Ava felt like she was going to puke, and for the rest of their walk she talked short and clipped.
          Finally, when Ava's feet were throbbing and the promise of blisters was on the horizon, Pierce announced that they were at the Third Wall barracks.
          "Asch led us through the palace, his home, to get to the barracks safely. I was a general, and my legion of soldiers worked in the Third Wall barracks when we weren't fighting. Now I will get us through the barracks safely." Pierce said quietly, his deep voice echoing in the palace walls.
          Shivering in her toga, which she was still wearing, Ava thought back to when Pierce's warm hand touched her back. How could someone so gentle be a general, leading people to their death willingly?
          Keeping quiet despite her squirming insides, Ava silently followed Pierce into the barracks. Rhys had given her his outside jacket to cover her head with, and she had found some horns mounted on the wall that she had stuck on her hair with hair ties. To any person who wasn't going examining too closely, Ava was just a normal Daemos.
          Pierce greeted his former solider comrades and soldiers with an encouraging, proud smile. Ava could see that he was dearly beloved.
          But Ava also saw violence- blood everywhere, soaking into the dirt. Cuts and bruises and stab wounds.
          Bloody weapons.
          Ava felt nauseated when her group finally reached the watchtower, and Noi gave her a sympathetic half-smile.
          But the moment was short-lived, as they heard a commotion somewhere behind them.
          "There they are!" Someone from the pack of guards shouted.
          "Catch them!"
          "Surrender now and you may keep your head."
          Spoiler: they didn't surrender. Instead, they fled up the tower the fastest Ava had ever moved in her life. Everyone grabbed a long, extendable ladder from the storage closet and Asch burned the rest of them, so they couldn't be followed.
          Knocking over whatever they could to block the guards pursuing them, the six escapees desperately sprinted to the window. They got into the small room at the top of the tower, where stained glass filled in the wooden frame. Asch smashed the glass and put the ladder on the edge horizontally, so it was connected to the neighboring window. Pierce had barricaded the door and was using all his strength to keep the guards from breaking in.
          "Leif, you go first and secure the ladder on the other side." Asch said.
          "What?! Why, um, why can't Rhys? Or Pierce? Or you?"
          Asch shook his head, panicked, "Pierce is the only thing preventing the guards from getting in. He can only keep them at bay for a few minutes. I have to hold the ladder, since I'm the second strongest one. And if you fall, you can teleport to the other side."
          "But try to save your magic." Rhys added.
          Leif gulped, "Right... heights."
          A particularly loud grunt came from Pierce as more hands began to bang on the door.
          "Leif, you need to go now!" Ava cried.
          Leif locked eyes with Ava for a moment and nodded. He grabbed the ladder and slowly crawled across it. Ava gulped as one after the other, each Daemos had gone except Asch and Pierce.
Ava knew she had to go, but she was scared. She wasn't special- she couldn't teleport to safety or keep a fleet of guards at bay.
          Reluctantly, she turned to Asch, "I'm so sorry that we had to leave Melodie behind."
          Asch looked at her strangely, "I didn't even know her."
          "I know."
Shakily, Ava grabbed the horizontal ladder and climbed over it, each limb shaking with exertion. Rhys, on the other side, was straining his hand to reach Ava. Just before he could pull her to safety, the guards finally broke past Pierce, making Asch instinctively let go of the ladder. It fell with Ava still on it.
Before Ava could see what was going on, her scream was ripped out of the air and an onslaught of wind ripped at her. Then she collided into a smooth, cool chest and the descent towards her death suddenly stopped.
Leif looked down at Ava and scowled, "You keep saying that you don't like breaking your promises but you keep trying to!"
A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped Ava's mouth and she buried her head in Leif's shoulder. Before she knew it, she had been teleported safely to the Second Wall watchtower.
Ava didn't know when, but Leif had also teleported Asch and Pierce over to the Second Wall watchtower. The former assassin looked ragged, like all the use of his powers had taken a large toll on him.
"Leif, are you okay?" Ava asked.
"Fine." Leif gasped between breaths, "Magic is running out, so it really takes a strain on any of us when we use ours."
"Yeah but... you look horrible." Ava said uncertainly.
"It's been a while since any of us have used our magic that much in such a short time period." Rhys explained, "I'm afraid that we need to get Leif to a doctor. One outside the palace walls, as I imagine we are no longer welcome."
"Well, let's go then! The guards will be here any minute, we have no time to lose!" Ava said frantically.
The boys looked at each other, but it was Leif who finally spoke, "I used too much of my magic. I'm dying. If I can't get to a physician, which I can't, then I'll die within the day."
He said it so matter-of-factly. Ava gasped in horror, "We need to do something. Quick, someone else teleport Leif to a doctor!"
"The only person who can teleport this large of a group that far of a distance is Leif." Asch said, distressed, "We'll have to walk."
"We'll never make it!"
"He's going to die, oh my gosh he's going to die-"
"Seriously, just leave me here-"
"SHUT UP LEIF!"
Leif pursed his lips, "Gah, you guys are all idiots. I'll teleport myself to a doctor."
"You've never been anywhere on Daemos unless it was to kill someone! You won't know where to go, and you can't teleport to a doctor you've never seen." Noi retorted, looking panicked.
          "Okay, well, can any of you use your magic to teleport us?" Ava asked.
          "I can." Pierce said, "My sword is my main weapon. I have used almost none of my magic since we traveled to Earth. I'll teleport us as near as I can to the village of Mersedith."
          "Pierce, are you sure? You could get really weak-" Noi began.
          "I have to. How many times has Leif saved us?" Pierce asked.
          No one said a word as Pierce walked toward Leif, easily picked him up, and with a loud explosion of vibrant blue light the group disappeared, the sound of guards close behind them. They had narrowly escaped.
          They were free, Ava thought, but at what cost? Leif and Pierce would be out of commission for who knows how long and in the time they were hurt Ava knew that she couldn't leave them. It wasn't right.
          She would be staying on Daemos longer then she expected.

Ok very action packed chapter. ALSO FYI I wanted to base Asch and Lady Bish's relationship off of Katherine and Damon from the Vampire Diaries, but without the romantic backround(maybe...). So Asch hates Lady Bish and Lady Bish likes to tease/mock Asch. Also the scene where the group had to climb across the ladder was loosely based on a scene from Allegiant, which is the third book of the Divergent series.

Another note: if the story is hard to read I'm sorry, because I'm typing it on my phone so everything is smaller and it's formatted to fit a phone, not a computer💜 also. For this chapter I really wanted Ava to struggle with the idea that her Daemos friends were murderers. Enjoy!