Chapter 31-The Escape(1)

Chapter 31: 31-The Escape(1)

"It wasn’t a duelist’s weapon anymore; it was just a jagged bar of hot metal.

"Val," Sol said, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the frozen mud. "We can’t hide in this city anymore. If they’re drowning three sectors just to flush us out, there’s no hole deep enough."

"The West Wall," Valera said immediately, her back pressing against his as the four retainers closed to within fifteen feet. "The waste-chutes at the edge of Sector One dump straight off the canyon cliff into the river below the city. Nobody guards the cliff-drop because the drop is two hundred feet into the Wastes."

"Two hundred feet?" Sol asked as the first Mid-Stage thrust a pike at his ribs.

"Would you rather stay here and get dissected on Cassian’s table?!"

"Fair point," Sol grunted.

He didn’t try to use the Energy Thrust with a broken sword tip. As the two Mid-Stage pikes came in from the left and right, Sol swung the warped silver blade with both hands like a lumberjack swinging an axe.

CRACK.

The sheer heat and brute Mid-Stage weight of his swing sheared the head off the left pike, and the follow-through slammed the warped flat of his blade straight into the side of the second guard’s helmet.

The silver blade finally gave up.

With a loud, ringing PING, Sol’s sword shattered into three glowing orange pieces halfway down the fuller, leaving him holding twelve inches of broken steel and a rag-wrapped hilt.

"His blade broke!" the Late-Stage sergeant roared, stepping between his men and driving a heavy, two-handed silver greatsword straight at Sol’s collarbone. "Take him!"

"I never liked swords anyway," Sol growled.

Instead of backing away from the greatsword, Sol stepped forward with his right foot, tilting his chin so the sergeant’s blade sliced through the meat of his left trap, right over the old scar from the sewer fight and jammed five inches of his broken, white-hot sword stub straight through the eye-slit of the sergeant’s plumed helmet.

The sergeant went rigid, his greatsword dropping from his fingers as his brain boiled inside his skull.

Beside Sol, Valera ducked under the last Mid-Stage retainer’s swing, swept his ankles out from under him with the shaft of her Night-iron spear, and drove her gauntleted left hand flat against his throat on the ground.

Snap.

A collar of solid blue ice formed through the man’s neck. Valera didn’t smash him like she had Kael, she just stood up, yanked the Mid-Stage crystal out of his dissolving chest as the sky claimed him, and shoved the glowing shard straight into Sol’s bloody left hand while he was pulling his broken stub out of the sergeant’s face.

"Eat and walk!" Valera ordered, already grabbing the Late-Stage sergeant’s crystal from the mist and cracking it in her own fist to feed her core. "Every whistle in the sector just went off! We have two miles to the cliff!"

They didn’t sneak through the alleys. There was no point when twenty squads of retainers were sweeping the rooftops with tracking lanterns and flushing the streets with pikes.

They ran straight through the middle of the Sector Two slaughter-yards, the exact district where Sol had spent six years of his life chopping up beasts on iron tables.

And as they ran, they ate.

Every time a three-man Vane patrol tried to block an intersection, Sol and Valera hit them like a runaway cart.

They didn’t stop to duel. Valera would slide in first, using her Night-iron spear to flash-freeze the guards’ boots to the mud or lock their shields together with thick rime, and Sol would barrel through the center, using the twelve-inch stub of his broken sword like a punch-dagger to crack open their breastplates and rip the crystals out of the rising silver dust before the bodies even finished vanishing.

By the time they kicked down the wooden doors of the Main Abattoir near the western canyon wall, Sol had swallowed six Mid-Stage crystals and two Late-Stage shards on the dead run.

His stomach felt like he had swallowed an anvil set on fire.

Inside the massive, cavernous brick slaughterhouse, the air was thick with the smell of old blood and sawdust. The workers had fled hours ago when the purge horns started, leaving half-butchered Blighted carcasses hanging from rusted ceiling hooks on heavy iron chains.

Sol stumbled against one of the long iron skinning tables in the center of the room, dropping the useless, melted hilt of his broken sword onto the metal. He braced both hands on the table, his head hanging between his shoulders as black smoke curled lazily out of his nostrils.

[MULTIPLE LUNAR CORES ASSIMILATED.]

[TAINT INCINERATED.]

[STATUS: Level 1 (Flesh and Bone) - Mid-Stage (98% Progression).]

"One more," Sol wheezed, his ribs visibly pulsing under his torn coat as the furnace in his chest fought to compress the massive surge of raw street-fuel. "I’m right at the wall, Val. My veins feel like they’re full of broken glass. If I don’t break through into Late-Stage in the next two minutes, this energy’s going to blow my kidneys out."

Valera slammed the heavy double doors of the abattoir shut behind them and wedged her Night-iron spear through the iron handles to buy them thirty seconds. She spun around, her pale face streaked with soot and sweat.

"Here!" She reached into her belt pouch and pulled out the last half of Lyra Vane’s massive Peak-Stage crystal, the piece they hadn’t finished in the sewer before the flood started and threw it across the skinning table to him.

"Take the rest of Lyra’s core! My body can’t take any more right now anyway, I’m already at eighty-two percent Late-Stage!"

Sol caught the jagged, glowing chunk of Peak crystal.

Outside the barred wooden doors of the slaughterhouse, the heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of dozens of armored boots echoed down the alleyway, followed by the booming voice of a captain."

"They’re in the Abattoir! Surround the building! Do not go inside until the Lord arrives!"

Sol looked down at the glowing crystal in his fist, then looked across the blood-stained iron table at Valera.