Byzantine

[Inkfinger]

Cael was hesitant to even go out of the church after their last close call. If they people they were trying to protect and help were going to turn on them...

He was starting to think more of Gjovik and home nowadays, but Ludvik had outright forbid him to go home; there was another group handling it. The papers with requests were starting to build up in a pile on the floor next to the portal, so he finally, after five days, worked up the courage to touch the wall again.

The first few missions they had had that had been successes had included all four of them, so now, at what Cael rather suspected would be their last such mission, all four were going again. Lovstok had been the latest letter, two nights ago...

So Lovstok it was.

Maybe he'd get lucky and whichever one of them was the traitor would stab him in the back. It was that thought that made him retrieve his dusty naginata from the floor of the balcony and strap it on beneath his pack.

Kamen seemed to sense what was going on then.

"We're quitting then, sir?" He asked in a small voice when Cael stepped into the portal room. Cael nodded, rubbing his eyes, feeling his face burn where his gray fingers touched.

"Yeah," he said, in an equally small voice as Damyan and F'bael both came into the room. They each carried their gear, and they were both pointedly ignoring one another. "It's not...we've got to quit before we..." He looked at both of them with the same expression: mingled fear and defiance. "We're causing more harm than good."

F'bael met his eyes with a solemn nod. Damyan just looked at the floor. Cael felt a brief pang of worry, but tried to shrug it off with a smile. "Once this is done...you just say the village, I'll open it. You can go home, or you can stay together, but me...I'm not coming back."

It felt better to say the words out-loud. Cael squared his shoulders, and brushed his fingertips across the portal. It sputtered and hissed to life - and Cael climbed through.

There were four other groups standing in the tiny chapel's stained glass portal room -Fennick's, and three that Cael didn't recognize - when they climbed out. Cael drew to a sudden stop, blinking in bewilderment, his brief brush with confidence gone at this unexpected greeting.

"Um. Hello?"

"What do you mean, 'hello'?" Fennick countered, holding up a handful of papers that looked an awful lot like the papers Kamen had brought him - the ones he had folded and shoved in the very bottom of his pack. Cael licked his lips, moving to help Damyan with the cart, listening to Fennick speaking. "Didn't you...call..." He saw Cael's look, and trailed off. "...no?"

"I...would suggest moving fast and keeping an eye out," was all Cael trusted himself to say. "Everywhere."

The suggestion didn't seem to entirely mollify the others, but they fell in line behind him nonetheless. He led them out, reluctantly, already working through stories for why they were here, why they had so many people...how many people they had, exactly.

The mental fabrications seemed to be going pretty well as they made their raggedy way down the narrow streets. He steeled himself when they turned the corner onto the street with the drop-off point and he saw the line of soldiers still several blocks away.

"Alright," he took one more step forward. "Let me do the talking, and we'll be..." He heard an odd, thunderously loud explosion and felt a shower of marble splinters burst off the wall next to him. "...okay." There was a second explosion and several shouts, and when Cael turned it was to see F'bael collapse to his knees, blood pouring freely from a wound in his temple. A third, and Fennick was beside him, half of his face gone.

Cael took a step back.

"Oh hellgates, they’ve got guns." And they don't want us alive, "Fall back, fall back, get going!”

Cael’s desperate shrieked orders seemed to knock some sense into the resistance members left. Cael rubbed his temple as he moved, wishing that he was something – anything! – more effective than an ink mage. He limped around the corner, heading for the church as fast as he could manage without drawing further unwanted attention.

This section of the city was sheer chaos, madness maddened and let loose. Cael rounded a corner, his feet skidding out from under him. He caught himself on the wrong hand, almost crumpling into a ball at the needles and knives of pain that shot through his palm and up to his elbow. His wordless howl was drowned in Damyan's roar and the sharp crack of a gun.

"Cael!"

Cael braced himself against the wall, expecting to feel the sharp, biting impact of the bullet. What he felt, instead, was like being run into by an oxcart. He hit the ground for the second time in a minute, feeling hot blood trickling over his back, and the pressure of a body crushing down on him.

He sat up, desperately shoving the weight off and struggling to flip Damyan over onto his back. The big man had a gaping hole in his back, something far beyond anything Cael could even begin to think about. The wyrmfolf reached out a hand, fingers dripping with vividly blue blood. Cael reached out to grab it, trying to ignore the gaping exit wound in the man’s chest, but Damyan knocked his hand away, reaching over Cael’s fingers to press down on the talisman.

There came a horrible burning pain that seemed to sear through his skin and bones, and the talisman disintegrated the same way Ulric’s summoning stones had. The powder, this time, seemed to sink into his flesh, blackening it in its wake. He bit back a shriek of startled pain –

And, just like that, the pain had vanished, leaving only the streaks on his skin to indicate that the talisman had ever been there. The talisman itself was gone.

So was Damyan. The big man had a smile on his face, as if he was laughing at some private joke, but the shine in his eyes was already going dull...and the sniper had had time to reload. The wall next to Cael's head exploded, showering him with wood chips this time. Cael let go of Damyan's arm and made like a hunted jackrabbit, all the way back to Kamen and the other resistance members who had made it to the portal.

It was a pitifully small number.

Kamen's eyes went to his hand with a look of open concern. Cael managed a small, pained smile, reaching out to touch the portal. It flared up just as it always had before, and there wasn't a single squirming feeling.

He didn't miss it as they bolted through.