Instantly pandemonium swept through the standing room only crowd as the firing of the now recognizable Silver Hawk weapon threw the assembled Mardish nobility into a frenzy. A frenzy that became a full on panic as the Mardish emperor and those nobles sitting in his personal box began screaming in shrill, panic-filled voices for the guards. Apparently the Silver Hawks were well-known to the Mardish nobility, and definitely feared, if this reaction was any indication. Then Tev was pushing his dark musings aside to quickly scan the scene, looking to leverage the chaos into something of benefit.
And in doing so, he spotted the only standing Drax staring uncomprehendingly into the crowd, its reptilian senses momentarily overcome by the searing power and magic of the Silver Hawk weapon. Tev's eyes narrowed, his mind spinning up to full speed as he sensed an opportunity was presenting itself.
It began with where the Drax was standing. It had lurched in surprise when the Silver Hawk had cut down the last So'os with that energy blast before stumbling to its currently position. Which, from where Tev was anxiously standing, put it fairly close to one of the walls. In fact, it was close enough that, if he used the Drax as a ramp, a running jump stood a good chance of going over the protective spikes and landing him amongst the benches in the stands.
Gathering himself even as the Silver Hawk began firing his weapon in earnest, both to halt the advance of the guards that had arrived in response to the Mardish emperor's squawking. And to hold back the surging crowd that seethed all around him in their mad dash to reach the exits. Then he was exploding forward with every iota of his strength and speed.
A quick dash across the hot sand covered the intervening distance. Then Tev was leaping onto the Drax's bent leg and up onto its back. So enthralled still was the beast that it didn't even react to the human's feet landing on its back. Grinning tightly in anticipation of success, Tev continued upward, sprinting up the broad back and onto the head where, without even the slightest hesitation, he flung himself off the tip of the heavy snout and into the thick, spicy air.
For a moment he seemed to hang in space, the unfolding vista of the chaos in the stands unfolding directly in front of him in slow motion. Then he was clear of the jutting spikes on top of the wall and crashing into the lowest row of benches. Hitting hard enough to see stars, Tev grimly ignored the various bruises and cuts he had just garnered with his rough landing and pushing himself to his feet to throw another quick look around. Time to see if he could escape this mess. And swiftly found a wave of disappointment sweeping through him at what he saw.
To get to the exits, he basically had to do the same thing as the Silver Hawk now did: cut through both the panicked crowd and the advancing soldiers, which were making their way as carefully as they could towards the tall Solavar without injuring any Mardish noble passing them by. And while his sword was a serviceable weapon, it wouldn't be enough to clear a space fast enough to avoid getting skewered by those soldiers.
A glance into the pit revealed Kora still frantically trying to stem the blood oozing from Joran's wounds. Seeing that, the human's mind was made. If he was going to escape, they all were going to escape! As he thought that, he found his eyes tracking back to the Silver Hawk and his exotic weapon. And for the second time in the space of a few moments, he sensed a second opportunity presenting itself.
Again Tev set himself. Then, using his size and power, he was bulling his way with brute force through the fleeing elves, using the sound and flash of the Silver Hawk's weapon as a beacon. Angling himself to avoid a head-on confrontation with that slashing beam that was cutting both noble and soldier down with equal ease, Tev instead slid in from the side, pushing aside Mardish bodies with almost contemptible ease.
Then he was beside the tall elf, the Silver Hawk's costume and disguise now in complete disarray. Bright blue eyes darted his way before widening in shocked surprise. Then he was wresting the weapon from the elf's stunned hand.
"Need to borrow this, pointy," the human hissed before twisting sharply to point the weapon at the gaming pit's far wall. Triggered by a simple stud set into the textured metal grip, he then hammered several of the weapon's powerful blasts into the seasoned wood, the force of impact and the magic's action enough to shatter the wall and open a great gape.
Nodding in satisfaction, Tev tossed the weapon back to the stunned Solavar, who was now as enthralled as the Drax in the pit was. But the elf wasn't overcome by the use of magic, but by the waves of elemental power emanating from the determined human instead.
"Thanks," Tev curtly rasped. "But I think you'll be needing this more than I!" he dryly noted before throwing himself back into the crowd. A heart beat later the Mardish soldiers, taking advantage of the pause in weapon fire, slipped through the final crush to brandish their weapons as they attacked with a fierce war cry.
Rolling free of the surging mass of stampeding bodies, Tev flipped off the protective spikes to drop lightly onto the sand-covered ground of the pit. Then, darting past a bemused Drax, he went to where Kora was working on a barely conscious Joran.
"Tev!" Kora gasped, her hands covered in her friend's blood. "What have you done?"
"Got us a way out of here," was the human's curt answer as he knelt to slip an arm around the struggling Kensarthi's body.
"Time to go, my friend," he murmured softly to the injured elf. Bracing Joran's weight against his own body, he then half carried, half helped the Kensarthi staggered towards the great hole that Tev had managed to cut into the pit's wall, heading for freedom.
Kora stared after them for a long moment, disbelief on her face. Then she was scrambling to Lax and Feral'Sath, shaking the two unconscious elves into some semblance of awareness before pulling them to their feet and pushing them in front of her towards the ragged hole in the wall.
Spilling out of the massive rent in the thick wall, Tev grinned in satisfaction to find that they had managed to reach one of the many hallways running through the complex. A hallway that was empty of soldiers or slave keepers.
Unfortunately it didn't stay that way. With a shriek of dismay, Valus came sprinting around the corner. From the direction he had appeared, it was difficult to tell whether he was running to the pits in an attempt to do something as royal pit master. Or running away from them to escape the debacle the match had become. Yet there was no mistaking the unhappiness in Valus' expression. The foppish elf's face was a mask of misery as he muttered under his breath:
"They're going to blame me for this, I know it. Hung by my own entrails from the front gates of the citadel! Urk!" He came to a sudden halt as Feral'Sath stepped forward to block his way, the much smaller Mardish slamming into the blocky Dolomin's body.
Instantly Feral'Sath's strong hands took hold of Valus' fine clothing and the Mardish' head jerked up, eyes wide with fear.
"What, . . what are you doing?" he stammered in a high pitched voice filled with sudden fear and trepidation, not even trying to pull free of the Dolomin's hold.
"Leaving, Valus," Tev answered, not even sparing the foppish Mardish a glance as he looked back down the path Valus had approached with. Good; the way was clear. That meant the pit master didn't have his guards in tow and they wouldn't have to deal with them at some point. He then finally favored the twitching Valus with a hard look.
"And you're our ticket out of here!"
The foppish lord shrieked thinly. Then he was being bodily dragged by Feral'Sath as the pit team began to move in the direction Tev indicated with a motion of his head.
Before they could go more than a half dozen steps, however, the snarl of the Drax echoed through the hallway, jerking all their attentions back to it. Looking over his shoulder, Tev saw the big reptilian lean into the ragged space he had created with the Silver Hawk weapon and favor them with a slit-pupilled glare, a grimace of anger on its scaled visage.
"Where are you going, little ones?" it demanded in its hiss-filled voice, shouldering aside dangling bits of debris to attempt squeezing its massive, yet incredibly flexible body through the gap.
"You cannot leave yet. I have not finished killing you!"
"Maybe not, lizard. But we're done with you," Kora tautly snarled before turning and gesturing that Tev keep going. Nodding, the big human did just that, moving as quickly as the wounded elf by his side allowed, the rest of the team following in a tight knot. With each step they took, one of them threw a worried look over their shoulder as the Drax continued to attempt to force its way into the hallway despite the hole obviously too small even for its flexibly body.
As the Drax began to scream in frustration, Tev and the rest of Kora's team reached a turn to the right. Without hesitation they took it at a full run, hoping to continue their sprint out of the pit area. Only to skid to a shocked halt as the very walls all around them began to uneasily shift.
"What is this newest madness??" Lax growled, frustration clear on his face and in his voice as he leaned close to one of the walls to see what was going on. A blink of motion and he was down, knocked out by a fist that abruptly formed out of the stone itself to lash out and catch the lean Ajanti elf flush on the jaw.
The team stumbled back in shock. But before they could do anything else, Feral'Sath also fell victim to the strangly shifting wall as several arms sprouted like magical fungi to take hold of him, pry Valus from his grasp then knock him unconscious with well-placed blows. Flung back down towards the corner by the arms that freed him, Valus slowly sank to his knees instead of fleeing, quivering in fear.
Ignoring the fear-stricken Mardish, Tev grimly lowered Joran to the floor and drew his sword. He would get them out of this, if he had to cut through every single one of those stone arms! He then faced a wall that had become a seething mass of arms and grasping hands.
"Is that all you got?" he tautly hissed, teeth clenched in a rictus of determination even as Kora slipped forward. The Ajanti woman barely managed to avoid the grasping limbs to move to Joran's side, carefully cradling the downed Kensarth's head in her arm as he weakly moaned and shifted in discomfort.
Tev glanced at them then was gathering himself to hurtle down the hallway. Before he could move, however, the limbs suddenly began pairing up as whole bodies began pulling themselves free of the wall's shifting morass. The stone bodies, eyes glowing with eldritch light as the hallway filled with the buzz of elemental magics, quickly resolved into dark cloaked Mardish, their swarthy features grim. More magic saw swords and daggers appear out of thin air to fill their gloved hands.
The closest speared Tev with a hard look. Then he was speaking, his voice low and hoarse with residual magic.
"Flee you may from the game pits of the emperor, but none escape the grasp of the Crimson Shadow!" Then the Mardish newcomers were hurling themselves forward, moving faster than any mortal had a right to, forcing Tev onto the defensive.
Outmatched even with his heightened strength and speed, Tev fell back. As he did he desperately wove a web of steel around his body with his pit blade in an attempt to keep the licking tongues of deadly silver the Mardish wielded from touching him. Just in time: even as the web was completed, thin, razor-edged blades whistled through the air to clang with metallic showers of sparks on Tev's sturdy weapon.
Sturdy, but no match for weapons forged from powerful magic. After taking several hard blows in his effort to keep the Mardish swords and daggers at bay, Tev's beleaguered pit sword shattered, sending pieces flying in every direction.
Staggered by the abrupt change in tension, Tev fell back, letting the ragged stump and hilt of his shattered sword fall to the floor. His face, hardened with resolution, instantly became a mask of fatalism, anger and shock. 'Here the quest for the Sword of Blood end!' He thought darkly as the Crimson Shadow elves advance like slivers of darkness darting across a moonlit glade.
Cold and painful, bitterness began filling his heart. To have come so close, only to taste defeat at the very hands of the creatures that enslaved him and nearly killed him at Troska. It was almost too much to bear. 'You were wrong, Oracle of the S'ia,' he cried into the silence of his mind as the Crimson Shadow grew close. 'I am not the one fated to find the Sword of Blood after all!' And he grimly hung his head to wait for the killing blow to land.
Instead of feeling the razor's edge of a magical sword falling across the back of his neck, however, he finds his eyes blinking as the flash of a discharging Silver Hawk weapon lit the dim hallway with bright, actinic discharge.
"What, . . ." he began as the Drax' howl abruptly ceased and the Mardish began to thickly and fluently curse as they staggered back, their magic suddenly diverted into keep themselves alive.
Tracking back along the streaking slashes of light to the Silver Hawk himself, Tev shook his head in disbelief. 'That bastard actually managed to escape that death trap!' He silently shouted as, battered and bloodied, the lean Solavar stepped into view, his gleaming weapon in one bloodied hand.
Keeping his weapon trained on the Crimson Shadow Mardish, the Solavar kept them pinned down as he continued peppering their shields with slashing blasts from his weapon, his bruised and bloodied face a mask of determination. Freed of his disguise, the medallion of his order now swung freely around his neck.
"The Crimson Shadow? Ha!" he barked, bitterness and anger missing with contempt in his voice as he fired several shots at the Mardish who had spoken before turning to push the others back with more well-placed blasts.
"My men and I managed to escape you more than a few times, Hestefan."
The lead Mardish abruptly smiled, a cold and chilling wolfish leer even as Tev felt his strange elemental magic work to keep the Solavar's weapon at bay.
"Ah, Luathain! I had wondered where you had scampered off to after Mar Koraban. I must admit you and your silver plated tin hats did seem to have a knack of avoiding our carefully laid traps with uncanny ease." He paused to make a show of looking around the taller elf as if he was enjoying a stroll in a manicured noble's garden instead of fending off a magical attack.
"Speaking of your men, I don't espy your little rotund sidekick. What was his name again? Estranos? You two seem closer than a man and his wife. I'm surprised to see you here without him. Did you misplace him somewhere?"
Luathain barked a humorless laugh.
"Hardly, you Mardish dog." A thin smile appeared on the Solavar's lips. "He's elsewhere, laying the foundations of the Emerald Empire's doom, of course. Where any good Silver Hawk would be," the Solavar went on to say, his confidence obviously growing despite his battered condition. His weapon, powerful and unrelenting, was keeping the Crimson Shadow Mardish neatly pinned in place, unable to shapeshift or flee as they were forced to use all of their magic to protect themselves. Magic that was slowly being worn away by the action of his weapon.
Focused on each other, the two deadly enemies had so far ignored Tev and his stricken comrades. Which was just fine by the human. As the two elves fired barbs back and forth at each other along with Luathain's blasts, Tev was busy. Busy gathering his own considerable will.
'All I need is a weapon,' he grimly thought as he glanced first at the overbearing Solavar then at the oily, condescending Mardish who seemed to have more than a passing familiarity with each other. 'One that can withstand the enhanced weapons of these Crimson Shadows and provide some protection against that thing the Solavar was carrying. A weapon like, . . .'
And then he had it. The S'ia sword! If the feeling of magical power he had felt when he first found it was any indication, it would be perfect for the task. Then he sighed in frustration. Only one problem: it was still somewhere lost in a Mardish jungle, forgotten under the tree where Tev had gotten himself captured by that patrol seemingly forever ago.
As he pondered on it, however, something stirred at the back of his mind. Tev quickly switched the focus of his attention to that sensation as he was nearly overcome with the feeling that it was vital to his continued survival. And he found that sensation similar to the one he had felt when he became aware of something powerful, like the Oracle of the S'ia itself.
Concentrating on that sensation as the Solavar Luathain and the Mardish Hestefan began shouting at each other, the other members of the Crimson Shadow edging ever closer, Tev desperately worked to bring it into focus.
And in doing so, suddenly felt cold steel beneath his hands. Grunting in surprise, Tev looked down only to find not a sword but cold, dark stone there. Yet the sensation still hovered around his hands, like a waiting wyvern, hovering as it waits for its prey to tire and come out of its hiding place.
Closing his eyes against the impending battle that would soon engulf the Silver Hawk and the Crimson Shadow members, Tev threw the whole of his will at the sensation. And he was instantly rewarded by a strange rush through his body. Almost as if his blood suddenly sped up in its travel through his veins and arteries.
Gasping, the Solavar spun around to face him, and in doing so, brought his gleaming weapon directly to bear on Tev's crouching body.
"Burn me, but he's summoning the Sword of Blood!" the lean elf screamed, his face a mask of astonishment.