Edward de Vladren shook his head, replacing his glove.
“Something isn’t right here, we need to be careful. I’m getting a bad feeling about this.” He said, walking past Julia with flare in hand, the corridor curving onward. She followed suit, keeping close to him and looking around occasionally.
They soon approached an archway door, no sign of a door actually having been there in quite some time. Gray steel hinges still held on the sides, but there was no sign of use of them in ages. They stepped through, and were greeted by torches along the walls lighting themselves.
They illuminated a large circle, pillars standing in an inner circle of stone that was led by stairs to the plane they were standing on at the moment. The circle was sunk about three feet, and the stairs were steep and few in numbers. In the midst of the inner circle lay a pedestal, atop it an elaborate gold crate. The sides had been crushed in, and it looked ready to fall apart, but mostly it was still there. Nothing else adorned the room but a simple, torn up banner of the Knights of the Sun on the back wall. Vladren stepped into the circular room and down the stairs quickly.
“Are you sure just taking it off the pedestal will be safe? Who knows what kind of traps there are.” Julia chirped up, but Vladren shooed her off with a wave of his hand over his shoulder as he kept walking. Removing the lid of the coffin of scrolls, inside lay many a collection of scrolls, all white as fresh canvas. He grabbed all of them and quickly pocketed them, and the lights shut as he did, encircling them in darkness.
“See, I told you so, Edward.” Julia’s voice piped up, and if the lights were still on, she would have seen him glare in her direction as he spun on his heels. However, glaring wasn’t number one on his mind as the hot wind they were greeted with returned, and the building growled. The rumble was deafening, as the floor shook and twisted under his feet, the wind blowing him back.
The floor was sinking in on itself, and out of reflex he understood as Vladren leapt forward, grabbing Julia by the hand and sprinting off. The building wasn’t really a building any longer, destroyed in the Sundering. It had been replaced by some Forsaken abomination that took its shape. It was trying to eat them, luring them with magic that any Magi would pick up on. He ran down the corridor, the wind picking up and the groaning turning like a mill of living tissue. The walls were slick and the floors were slicker, as if they were growing more and more soaked. He grabbed the slimy rope he had dropped on, just as the corridor before them sunk in.
As soon as Julia took hold, he clicked the contraption box it had shot from, and it instantly scrambled up, shooting the both of them through the hole at four fold the speed they dropped in. He leapt from the ascending rope as they were back to the tower doors, and they were both out as the doors clamped at them, growling as the entire tower shifted, rocked and rotated. The doors swung open and inward furiously, the windows breaking and shattering as the tower fell in on itself, the two hunters taking off down the forest.
Not long afterwards, the howl of the tower was joined by the howl of the Forsaken. Flying beasts, ground ones, they all circled them, waiting. Roaring through the forest trail next to theirs, a caravan adorned with dozens of lanterns and two city soldiers came bounding out next to them through a cross in the trail, and Vladren smirked as he ran.
Just as planned, of course, they would probably be running out of the place. No good deed came unpunished, and he foresought the caravan to take off at the first sign of trouble down the path they would be coming.
“Jump on!” Vladren shouted through the wind and the howling. He sprung onto the railing, scrambling up. Julia did the same, but with a little more grace than Vladren. Once they were atop it, they looked up. In the breaks in the canopy, a swirling black mass of small, bat-like Forsaken twisted through the sky.
They came into a break in the forest, and Vladren opened his coat buckles, withdrawing a silver crossbow. He climbed ontop of the whole carriage, standing amongst the lanterns and boxes. They had about five minutes in this open field where a small village once stood, the wind whipping his hat off and his coat wide open. He heaved the metal thing upward, as the bats descended. He squeezed the trigger, and a bolt blasted out with a visible steam burst, puncturing a lantern and catching it aflame as it flew. It snapped through a hole in the black mass, and half of it caught fire. However, those on fire knew to fly into the ground until they were extinguished by the dirt, and back into the air.
Grumbling, Edward de Vladren cracked his knuckles and squeezed the trigger again, the bolts flying out in heavy rapidity. They punctured the air, and eventually the mass but was no use. They came down upon the carriage, as Julia was pulling herself up. They swarmed like vicious locust, cutting up his coat and biting at his flesh quickly. Like small razors being slashed upon him, the wounds bled quick. Julia stood in the mess and withdrew an Ankh, a solid gold one.
Gold in this world carried magic much better than silver, and was as such twice as rare. It was something about its structure, which was still being studied, to explain why it hurt Forsaken more than silver. They kept their golden Ankhs for things like this; the silver was just for blowing open doors and dealing with the ghoulish ones, small things. She held it into the air, and spoke the chant loudly, the wind carrying off her voice. However, the chant was a chant and the ankh reacted, bursting into a vehement stretch of light that overtook the mass of demons that were tearing away the boards of the carriage, biting the horses and destroying everything like sand to a building.
This took a good chunk of them to the ground, in small burnt messes, but many more remained. The horses ran strong, their armor protecting their softest spots. The structure was being weakened, and the whole thing would collapse at this rate.
“Onward! FASTER!” Edward shouted at the driver, who whipped the horses in response and charged them to the city. Julia stumbled, and Vladren reached out to catch her, grabbing her by the arm. He grunted as he pulled her back up, and they looked down the road. What felt like hours and hours had only been about thirty minutes, and the lights of the city were still faint.
“We’re not going to make it at this rate!” He spoke to Julia over the wind, grabbing her shoulder with a gloved hand. “We need to jump ship and leave on the horses!”