The smoke was unusually heavy in this next part of the city. The fires still raged. I don't think they're going to stop. What the fuck did Jack *do* exactly?
Egil was soloing it now, but he wasn't worried. The path of trying to accommodate these different organizations was just a string of failures. The story was always the same: chase something big, an asshole shows up, and tears everything down. Politics gets in the way of everything, and he was terrible at them. Time to stop being the victim.
He looked around, and noticed a horse stable. Am I close to the edge of the city? He wasn't exactly sure where he was at the moment. Maybe I could ride out, summon some allies, similar to what Lindir did, to make his crew.
With the fae alarm sounded, the fires, etc. Egil imagined everyone should be pretty distracted.
Between Lindir's impressive show of force, and the feeling Egil had, channeling that energy... it was glorious... but he was always accused after. Granted, this time he fucked up. Still though...
He wondered about the first summoners. They were all effectively mages and druids before the demon wars. They had the cross section of skills that their descendants seemed to relish in shunning. This type of willful, institutionally enforced ignorance was irritating, and right now, feels like an insurmountable challenge to operate in.
Maybe its time to take the chains off. Explore the unexplored. Its not like I'll personally go completely off the rails. Yeah, there will be mistakes along the way. There needs to be a better way, than to always be expected to fight for even basic existence. I need to lay low and marshal my resources.
He tried to fill in what would happen while he was doing this...
He imagined Jack's demons showed up to finish Egil off. Saw the blood stain, but no body. Then Lindir and Anya showed up (hopefully) saw Jack's demons and blood stain. No body. They must have hid it.
Thus starts the schism within the guild. Jack lost his physical pariah, who 'died' too early to be anything other than a 'victim.' Anya and Lindir exploit this, and continue investigating the fires.
Will they actually burn themselves out?
The problem is Jack won't be able to play off Egil's desperation.
Egil has seen this play waaaayyyy too many times. He can't be known to have survived, until at least after another prevailing theory about the fires takes hold.
He walked up to the stable door. Should be easy pickings.
Even then, there's also the issue with the church being hyper pissed at the guild about the angel summoning. Wait... are the fires meant to be a distraction from that?
But why did Jack summon an angel instead of a demon? Yeah, they're more powerful, but completely uncooperative.
At the very least, demons enjoy the thrill of causing change. But... Jack doesn't want change. He's an institutional guy... aggressively so.
Egil swung the door open, and was immediately enveloped in the noxious embrace of a miasma of putrefaction and smoke. He stumbled backwards. The smell seemed to hang in the back of his throat. His diaphragm contracted, escalating into a dry heave, followed by coughing.
He looked at the empty void of the doorway. ...what in the hell was in there? Did they die of smoke inhalation?
The city really was going to shit, fast. He looked around, no lights aside from the moon in every direction. Continuing on foot still, wasnt really a good option.
Ok. Time to do things differently. Lindir, I credit you with this one. No more clockworks as the main force. Time to diversify.
Egil clapped his hands together, closing his eyes. For the next trick... he slowly pulled his pulling his palms apart from each other. This channeling method was meant to be symbolic of a vacuum. With the right intent... this time a black spark erupted: energy siphoned from the entropic layer.
