He moves forward into the center of the room, meeting the other fighter halfway, and slashes sharply at his throat. The man leaps back easily, a mocking smirk on his lips, and offers his own testing thrust. They settle in to battle for real, after that, lightning-quick darts and retreats, waiting for one or the other to make a fatal slip.

It comes in the form of the other guard in the room, who makes to tackle Kirin from behind. Unfortunately for both of them, Kirin is not the only person on his side present.

“Behind you!”

All three of them startle--Kirin, at least, had thought Nathan mercifully unconscious--but Kirin is the fastest to recover, used to living on his toes. He leaps forward, catching the guard’s reflexive thrust with his own knife, twisting outward against the wrist and disarming him entirely. His momentum carries him, and his opponent falls with Kirin’s blade in his throat. The last guard decides, for once, that discretion is the better part of valor, and makes for the door.

Where Lyria clobbers him in the head with her last brick of explosives. For such a tiny person, she hits hard.

Kirin is already moving to release Nathan, from where his bound wrists are suspended from a hook in the ceiling. He catches his lieutenant’s weight as the boy nearly collapses, his legs unwilling to hold him after so many hours. Carefully, Kirin unbinds his hands and slings his arm over his own shoulder.

“Come on. We’ve got the others already, and Lyria’s about done rigging this whole place to blow.”

Nathan lifts his head at that, shaking his dark hair out of his eyes, and gives Kirin a faint smile.

See, Nathan’s not fragile, not really--fragile would imply that he can’t take care of himself, that he’s easily hurt, and that’s not it at all. But Nathan sometimes isn’t necessarily present. His body is there, but his mind wanders, distracted. They’re all used to it, by now. None of them have had the best experiences in life, and Nathan has the sharpest senses of any of them. It’s no wonder that he checks out of reality sometimes, when he’s too overwhelmed.

Kirin has never been grateful for this before, but he thinks it might have sheltered Nathan from the worst of the interrogation just now, and that’s definitely something he’s not going to begrudge.

Lyria gives them a worried look, but Kirin waves her off, back to her task.

They rejoin the others at the door and wait, although Nathan gets some worried attention from the other former prisoners. Corin, especially, tucks himself up against Nathan’s other side and takes some of his weight.

Finally, Lyria all but skips out the door, glee lighting her eyes as she unrolls a long fuse behind her.

“Let’s go! We need to be very, very clear when I set this off.”

After that it’s a silent, mad rush back through the tunnels towards the kitchen, Lyria trailing fuse all the way, before finally she deems them far enough away. They slip out the door, she lights the fuse, and then they run. If half the mountain really is going to come down on them, they don’t want to be near enough to be buried in the rubble, even if the explosion is going to miss them. Lexon is jogging backwards, laughter bubbling from his throat, and Lyria herself looks almost high on the rush from it.

It starts as a low rumble, growing to a crescendo, and they’re all witness to how the side of the Keep simply--vanishes.