On the Hills of Eden

“Hands in the air!”

The three of them spun their heads around in confusion, their blood nearly freezing over as the shadow-covered familiar face met their eyes.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The Duke shot back, standing up in defiance.

“Silence!” Avar replied, drawing a handful of darts from within his cloak. He held each several inch-long blade in between his fingers, forming a metallic claw lit ominously by the now blood-red evening light.

“Name yourself!” the Duke demanded.

“Avar, 4th Officer of the Pariah, Ship of the Honourable Captain Fetacci!”

Thosmodeus made a slight motion, signalling for the party members to duck below their chairs as he stepped out from beyond his desk.

“Stand down, Officer.”

“Hand the three of them over, now,” Avar said, shifting slightly as he waved the fistful of darts at Thosmodeus. “They’re under the custody of Lord Gravitas.”

The Duke had no response, instead staring blankly at the Officer, eyebrows gradually growing more and more furrowed as he did so.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard what-”

“Guards!”

A single dart flew from Avar’s fist, missing the Duke’s neck by a few hair’s lengths. It instead sailed on by, sinking into the wooden frame of the windows behind him.

“Hand them over.”

The Duke flicked his finger slightly, in the general direction of the windows.

Pallas, hidden completely from the Officer by her plush chair, looked over to Soleiman and Qingxi. She could just barely see their faces, but she knew well enough that at least one of them was frightened down to the marrow.

“For what reason?”

Pallas nodded to Qingxi.

“Wh-” he seemed almost shocked. “You- I-”

Qingxi nodded back.

“-they’re allies-”

Soleiman did too.

“-of the Resistance!”

Pallas squared both of her feet against the Duke’s desk, kicking against it with all her might and flipping her seat onto its back.

There was a splatter of blood, the whirs of several blades flying across the room and the sound of a window shattering.

The Duke pressed himself up against the wall to his left, avoiding the blades as Avar bellowed in frustration, digging away in vain at the rapidly-hardening glob of blood splashed across his face.

“Move!” Pallas said as she scurried to where her and Soleiman’s bags had been left.

Qingxi grabbed Soleiman’s hand as she leapt from the broken window, the much cooler evening air roaring past them as they fell from the 3rd floor.

“Stop them! Poco!”

Pallas grabbed her bag, holding it behind her as Poco appeared from beyond the doorway and sent blade after blade singing through the air straight into the rucksack’s contents. She rolled through the window, landing on the roof of the 2nd story and smashing some of its clay-tiles in the process.

She recovered quickly, the blood surging through her legs as she regained her bearings and strained her eyes to adjust to the rapidly darkening twilight. She fixed her rucksack onto back, pulling Soleiman and Qingxi to their feet as Poco came sliding down the marble pillars towards them.

“Plan?” Soleiman gasped, stumbling as Pallas dragged him along.

“Cross the Concourse,” Pallas said. “The boat’s there, North!”

Qingxi nodded.

The three of them scrambled across the roof of the second story, keeping low as they heard Poco slam into where they were just moments ago.

They spun the corner, slipping on each other as their roof’s slant turned their momentum against them. Qingxi pushed them back up with a blast of wind, and the three of them ran as the light of the brightly-lit Concourse peered over the roof’s horizon.

“Jump over!” Pallas said, signalling to the left as they heard Poco’s footsteps chase after them.

“Three, two, one- go!”

She took the lead, turning left and mustering all she could into leaping off of the town hall’s second story.

Soleiman let out an ‘eep’ as Qingxi pulled him along, and the three of them soared through the air over Porthopolis’ several metre wide main streets.

Rolling as she landed on the hard stone roof of the building across the street, she heard Qingxi and Soleiman cry out behind her.

Poco had whiffed his two darts, the distance between him and the party too great to land a hit on their silhouettes shrouded in the dark. But her fellows had missed the jump, having slammed into the ledge of the building instead.

“Poco!” Avar’s voice boomed from behind the town hall, his figure emerging from the shadows as he himself rounded the corner and joined in on the chase.

“Shit!” Pallas hoisted the two of them up, both winded from the impact. “Come on! We gotta go!”

As Qingxi and Soleiman made their way forward, Qingxi having to prop Soleiman up as they did so, Pallas held up the rear- scanning the messy, uneven Porthopolitan skyline as she did so.

And before them stood a Solean spire, the centrepiece of what usually were Solean churches or high-ranking gathering places.

“Qingxi! Go straight to the port! I’ll catch up later!”

“What about you?” she managed.

“Another route!” she replied, pointing up.

As they got to the Solean spire, Pallas watched as Qingxi and Soleiman crossed past its roof, disappearing beyond the city’s skyline.

She paused for a moment before herself taking the jump, clamouring onto the spire’s ornamental carvings and grabbing onto its ledges, pulling herself from ledge to ledge. As she heard the two rapidly close in on her position, she shuffled her way around the spire, putting it in between her and them.

“Come back here!” Avar bellowed.

Pallas felt as the entire spire shook slightly, her grip failing slightly as her eyes began to fill with heat and her heart began to pound as it approached a near feverish crescendo.

She saw as Poco shot past her, continuing on in pursuit of the other two. Nevertheless, she continued ascending the spire, hearing as Avar scrambled up the marble tower below her.

Before long, he appeared below her, the tower no longer protecting her from his blades.

From his cloak flew several knives, each sinking into her rucksack as she twisted her body in avoidance, having to heave her legs up to her chest whilst gripping onto the spire with the very tips of her blood-coated fingers.

The light of the spire’s stained-glass ornament soon came into view, tinting the white marble a much more sinister red as she came face to face with the glass tapestry.

She pulled herself up and made the movement to smash her helm through the window, though she felt a force pull her back down.

Shooting a glance back, she saw as Avar gestured his hand, calling on his magic to peel her from the building.

“Come here!”

Pallas let her rucksack fall from her shoulders, the mass of her camping equipment sinking through the air and smashing Avar in the face as she held on tight.

“Ngah!” he cried out, voice muffled and fading away as he fell from the tower.

Pallas paused for the moment, one hand firmly stuck to the ledge with her blood as she looked around, the sound of Avar’s body smashing into the roof below and of camping equipment spilling across clay tiles ringing out from below her.

Below, Qingxi and Soleiman rushed forward, jumping from roof to roof, each jump getting increasingly tenuous as the pain of the failed landings slowly caught up to them.

“Where’d Pallas go?”

“Up!”

“What?”

A blade came soaring from the darkness behind them, slashing against Soleiman’s left cheek-guard. They looked back, and sure enough, Poco’s grimey figure leapt from roof to roof in hot pursuit of them.

“He’s on us!”

Qingxi exhaled in irritation as they came to the end of the block, another large street between them and the block opposite the town hall.

“Then we fight!”

Qingxi threw herself into a fighting stance, raising her fists before her as she moved ahead of Soleiman.

Poco shot out from the other side of the slanted roof, leaping high into the air as he raised his foot well above the rest of his body.

“Come!”

He slammed down onto the roof, Qingxi shifting out of the way just in time to see his foot splitting several tiles open as Soleiman scurried off to the very edge of the roof.

She shot her fists at Poco, torrents of wind following them and blasting his eyes even as he weaved past each of them. She landed her third shot, square on the nose, sending him reeling back.

But he surged right back into the fray, forcing himself forward with his magic and catching Qingxi off guard with his recovery. He split her guard open, forcing an opening as he pulverised her faceguard with a left hook.

He went again, landing a second hit against her chin, the ceramic of her faceguard shattering entirely even as his fingers erupted with blood.

Qingxi shifted back far enough to dodge the third, though Poco closed the distance yet again, once again pressing the advantage as he drew a knife from within his cloak and surged forth for the killing blow.

But Soleiman latched onto his back, wrapping his arms around him in a full-Nelson and inhibiting his movement, the two of them struggling against each other in the flurry of the moment.

Poco felt the bones in his face fracture as Qingxi pommelled him in the face, sending him limply falling out of Soleiman’s hold as he collapsed onto the roof, just barely managing to hold onto the tiles to stop himself from sliding off.

Qingxi punted him in the head, sending him off the roof as they prepared to make the jump.

“Why don’t you use your sword?” Soleiman asked, gasping for air.

“I fight better without it,” she replied.

“You two!” Pallas called out.

She landed beside the both of them, sliding slightly before stopping.

“We gotta go, quick!”

Qingxi gave her an uneasy look, now transparent through the cracked ceramic facade.

“I’ll carry him.”

Thunk! Th-thunk! Cried out the tiles as they landed.

“Alright, let’s go!”

The three of them resumed their escape, bolting across the courthouse’s roof. Qingxi turned back to see Avar and Poco back in pursuit, the two seemingly even more eager to hunt them down- battered and beaten down as they were.

“How is he still alive?” Soleiman yelled out in exasperation.

Qingxi turned back to the sight before her, her eyes skimming across the almshouse as the port a few hundred metres downhill finally came into view.

…The almshouse?

“Rumi!”

“Huh?”

“We need to get Rumi!”

“Qingxi- wh- how?”

“The Duke isn’t going to help her!”

Pallas felt the sting of guilt strike deep within her. She glanced back, shaking her head.

“She… I…” Pallas found her breath stuck in her throat, the indecision gripping her sending a look of pain sprawling across her face.

“How’re we getting her to the boat?” Soleiman asked.

“Same as with you!”

Pallas watched on as Qingxi peeled off from the group, turning right and landing on the almshouse roof.

Soleiman shrugged as Pallas turned to him, the latter groaning in resignation as she picked him up and made the jump for the both of them. As they landed, Qingxi hung from the roof’s eaves, swinging herself forward with a gust of wind and smashing through the window, with Pallas and Soleiman quick to follow.

In the almshouse now, they felt as its soothing atmosphere coddled them, rather quickly fading away as the patients screamed in terror and as the grunts of their pursuers came into earshot.

“She’s in the other row, bed number…”

“17!”

The party scurried past bed after bed, hearing as their pursuers landed on the building’s roof, the patients within almost petrified by the sudden turn of events- some scrambling under their beds in terror. As they slipped out of the row via one of its doorways, they heard the sound of glass shattering behind them, another set of screams following closely in tow.

They crossed the empty hallway between the two rows, slipping back into the other row of beds. They scanned bed after bed after bed, their eyes finally landing on Rumi’s silhouette as seen through the wispy lace-curtain she had drawn around her.

They dodged in between beds, vaulting over some as their pursuers found their way into the same room, now with a straight shot all the way down to their target.

“Rumi!” Qingxi called out.

Stunned, her silhouette perked up, pushing aside the curtain as she greeted the three of them with a wide-eyed look of astounded gratitude.

“You came back!”

“Rrah!”

Qingxi turned to call forth a gust that sent the soaring knife into the ground, its blade clanging against the wooden planks of the almshouse.

Soleiman rushed forth, picking Rumi from her bed and helping her up as Pallas smashed the window by her bed.

“Wh-what’s going on?” she asked fearfully, eyes darting between the three armoured figures.

“We’re leaving! Come on, we gotta go!”

Pallas stood by as Qingxi took Rumi, helping her onto the roof before herself clamouring up. As Soleiman made his way onto the window, Pallas felt as several darts burrowed themselves in her plates, some cutting into her flesh.

“Stop there! Or he dies!”

The two of them turned to see as Avar held an old man by the neck, blade poised to pierce the arteries within his neck. But Poco continued to rush forward, abandoning any sense of order as they saw the sheer uninhibited bloodlusted rage that he had given into.

Pallas pushed Soleiman out the window, sending him forward before heaving him up and helping him climb onto the roof as they heard a man’s gurgled screams in the backdrop of the chaos. But as Pallas herself made the jump, she felt as Poco latched onto her foot, soon accompanied by the sensation of steel tearing into the muscles of her calf.

“Come here!”

Face singed with the pain of the blade piercing her muscle, she booted Poco, digging the solid leather of her heel against the broken bones of his face, again and again. Each strike loosening his face up further. Eventually, he relented and retreated in pain, allowing her to squirm out of the almshouse and onto the roof.

Pallas grunted as she sat herself down, though it was not long before the others heaved her to her feet.

“Shit, he got me.”

They saw as a hand latched onto the roof’s eave, and another.

“You go first!” Qingxi said, ushering Pallas ahead as she limp-ran with the support of Soleiman and Rumi. She stomped on the fingers, bashing their bones and ligaments, chasing the hands as they shuffled across the eave. And just as the second pair of hands appeared, the first gave way- followed up with the sound of a body crumpling against the stone streets.

Qingxi turned back round, catching up with the others as they stood apprehensively before the roof’s edge. Before them, the surrounding buildings were all significantly shorter, partly because of the downhill slope and partly because they were not a part of the heart of the city centre.

“Down there!” Soleiman said, pointing out a cart just large enough to fit the four of them.

“A carriage?”

“Trust him!” Pallas said as she began the climb down, spilling blood from her hands and providing a sticky surface for the others to descend using. “Qingxi, cover me!”

As the three of them prepared for the descent, Qingxi stood tall behind them, facing down Poco as he made his approach- his posture broken and his face smashed beyond the point of recognition.

In that very moment, as the rest of her fellows began to make their way down the side of the almshouse, she felt as the northbound wind blew across the rooftop arena. Its currents flapping the sailor’s cloak about, urging him on.

And in turn, she began approaching him too.