Thar Shaddin

If it was his choice, Joy would have paid a great deal of attention to the shadow boxing tough guy. For one, it was humorous, plus it was a great relief of stress in this none too assured escape attempt. But seeing his chances of getting out of this alive as is, he decided that standing as an idle watcher would not improve the situation any.

Thus, it was back to strategic wall thrusts, finding weak points with much guesswork and very little knowledge of masonry. His work did not seem like it was doing much, although the already weak foundations were being shook up a bit more with each 'shling' of his blade scraping stone.

Unfortunately, it was the woman, the one missing her cat, that made Joy a tad great deal less effective than he had the potential of being. For as he envisioned using the fellow 'playing with paper' as a ram, and the attempt succeeding, he doubled over in quiet gasping chuckle. He barely noticed the paper being folded in the big man's hands.

On the bright side, at least Illilli kept her head, as Joy eventually saw it. While lacking the strength to plow through the wall like the heroes in stories would do, she did apply enough specific force to a place already weakened by time, poor construction, and sword thrusts. Even with his eyes slightly tearing up, he winced as she bounced off the wall though, but at least it was one step closer to being made into an exit.

Joy flashed a sparkling toothed grin at the rough and tumble lass who seemed so bent on ridiculing the strong man. Her humor certainly brightened his spirits. And then, rather nonchalantly, he slammed his elbow into a brick, which slid out of view. It was only one tiny hole in the net they were trapped in, but it was a start.

"Thank you Miss Illilli, well done," his rather lilting voice called. "When our door opening friend here is done with his business, perhaps he can help us finish the job?" With that, a brick was pried out with a dagger rapidly unsheathed. They were unnaturally lucky to have not been caught by now, and being the optimist that he was, he felt that it would stay that way.

Chris gave Dorcas a bitter, mocking smile but she was already ignoring him and he was left to glower at the side of her head. He was still new to the business of being middle-aged, and he joked about it up front while having some personal reservations about just how easy it was to laugh at being over 40. When he was in his human form, he felt old, slow, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he could no longer hide his growing gut. As he folded the paper he wondered quietly to himself just how much longer he would be alive. A real kitsune could live for hundreds of years, factoring of course for their overwhelming tendency to get killed prematurely. But being an exception, and mostly human, he wasn't about to give himself more than another 50.

"A lil' doggy, see?" He said in response to Illilli's question, and held what he'd made with two fingers for her to see. Sure enough the man had managed (somehow) to fabricate a small origami animal that resembled a dog.

He stopped at the wall, dog in hand, and then looked around the room for something to use as a bashing implement. Not surprisingly, there was nothing around that could obviously be used as a weapon. Except, perhaps, the unconscious guard, who he eyed contemplatively. Suddenly Chris' entire demeanor changed again, going from casually amused to impatient and annoyed.

"What?" He blurted out to the air, sounding impatient. And then again: "What? Stop fuckin..."

Ever so briefly, he glanced at the others around him to see how they were reacting. They'd think he was crazy, which was normal. The spirts were telling him to get something from the chest that could open the wall, but he knew there wasn't anything of use in there. They wouldn't shut up and they had a habbit of all talking at once which made him about ready to gnaw their faces off if he could.

"I already looked..."

He growled and walked over to the equipment chest which he'd already gone through to get illilli's knife. Reluctantly he sifted through the crap that was left in there.

"Oh." He said demurely.

From the chest he withdrew a small brown cloth pouch about half the size of his fist. It looked dirty and moldy and not very valuable, and again he tossed it at Joy, saying "stick that in the wall."

"Oh thats very pretty, how's that going to help?" Illilli mentioned softly while the big man held up his paper dog. She was massaging what was going to become a large bruise on her shoulder. She truly was intrigued as to how he had folded the paper, it was just that she finally grasped how important escaping the building was to their survival.

Illilli stared at the hole in the wall that Joy was slaving over as the man with the paper dog talked to thin air. This did not bother Illilli much as she often talked to herself, particularly when she was alone in the woods.

She watched as he went to the chest and withdrew a small brown bag.

"Whats that for?" she asked watching the small bag that could contain just about anything.

Dorcas was increasingly frustrated with her situation of uselessness. She could've given the wall the beating it needed, but for the injuries she'd sustained. She had the bulk and the brawn needed to shoulder the wall much more effectively than the waif Illilli. She had the steel-toed boots to kick it. But she was currently crippled to something just above useless, and she knew it. The others would have it figured out too. She took backward steps away from Chris as he talked to himself and suggested a little bag would do the trick.

"Oh dammit, not a fuckin' toy, just kick the damn stones out. Are you really that stupid?" she hissed at Chris. Greasy sweat shone sickly in the full creases of her face--not the deep wrinkles of an older woman, but the youthful lines of strain as she clenched her jaw.

Outside the building, a sprinkling dusty mortar shook loose onto the dry grass. A thud from within accompanied the little stirring. The shaggy brown cat paused in its pacing and stared at the loosened spot of the wall from several yards away. He approached the spot until he stopped only a few feet away, and he watched.

Joy took a breather from his furious wall attack, leaning against the sturdier stones with a bright red flush to his face. The butterflies in his stomach started pulling off fantastic acrobatic stunts, but had yet to do anything truly incapacitating to the man. He took the time to watch in the direction in which they came, waving his sword in the air as if he could fend off a horde of angry guards with his thoughts alone.

"Yes... the little doggie is cute. Let's hope it can bite the men who put us behind bars in the bum, as we safely flee captivity." Oddly jovial, it would seem as if the man had little doubt they would be out of here soon. He had a mental image of his canine companion, hopefully safely biding his time in the surrounding wilderness, performing said acts. He took the delight he could out of the thought.

The older man seemed to be having one of those weird episodes again, acting unpredictably and talking to no one in particular. Joy humored him - the guy had mysteriously opened two none too simple locks, with little difficulty it seemed. There was something about him, something that made the clearly experienced fellow even more formidable. Choosing to make the best of the situation, it was simply decided that the man was to be trusted implicitly, that there was a reason for that which he did.

And so it was that he was tossed this mysterious sack, and it was with not a moments hesitation before he placed it in the hole. His curiosity did not get the better of him here, as he did not even attempt to get a sneak peak. He simply weighted the bag down with some loose mortar flakes, and stepped back with a shrug. Sword at the ready, standing between the rest of the building and his recently acquired compatriots, he shrugged dramatically.

"Miss, give the fella a break. He got us out of those cages after all." This of course directed to the woman swearing and muttering, her recently bandaged wounds obviously rendering her at less then a hundred percent capacity. "Who knows, maybe we'll even get out of here all in one piece. Well, each of us in one piece. Might be weird fusing all four of us together.."

His musing ended with the swish of his rapier, as he directed his attention to the older man. "Well boss, let me know if there's anything I can do but stand here and look pretty." A smirk at that, as he took an overly snooty pose that was near impossible to take seriously.

Chris smirked as well at the joke about coming out in once piece. For that, and the remark about looking pretty, he gave Joy a manly slap on the shoulder, rough enough so he would have to fight to stay standing.

"I like ye."

His accent was as broken as his mind.


"Alright people, stand back. When this thing blows, ya run out. No lookin' back, don't be slowin down fer nobody. Girly man here n'I'll help ya if somethin' goes wrong."

Presumably the girly man was Joy, and the help was being offered for both Illilli and Dorcas, both of whom looked a little less than fit for running.

He cracked his knuckles the way a pianist might do before a big performance, and wiggled his fingers to warm them up. He then approached the wall with one finger outstretched and pointed directly at the bag, with his other arm held up to shield his face within his still formidable bicep. His face scrunched up, as though he were expecting something loud and painful, and he really wished he had time to find a fuse to work with.

A gout of flame about the size and shape of a hotdog left his finger straight for the bag nested in the wall. It lasted only a second, and left the bag smouldering with a mouldy stench.

Chris peeked over his arm to look at it, and then looked at the others with a nervous grin.

"Heh."

He tried again.

This time the flame was larger and sustained itself for twice as long, enveloping the small bag in fiery orange glow. This time the explosives in the bag got hot enough to go off.

There was a loud bang that was really more of a series of rapid crackling sounds, and a whole lot of smoke, debris, and purple sparks flew away from the wall. Chunks of stone hurtled this way and that, a few of them bouncing off of Chris who was already wisely backing away and curled up for protection like an armadillo behind his arms. A second later there was a hole in the wall about three feet in diameter with smoke and dust getting sucked outside to the fresh air.

Chris looked alright, with only a few bleeding nicks from chips of stone that had caught him and a very blackened and smouldering right hand. It hurt like a bitch but he didn't seem to care.

"Alright move move!" He yelled at them loud enough to cut through the ringing in his ears, waving them toward the hole emphatically.

((*clears his throat* Umm, hello? People? What's up?

Edit: okay illilli is away at dragon con, so it's just us 3 for the next few days. Ming, you're bad. Post or I'll... I'll... Yeah. Lets just get out of this jail cell eh?))

Certainly there was resoning behind the term "catlike reflexes": at the sound of that first finger of flame, the big housecat outside the wall braced and flattened his ears. Almost before the faint noise of the second flame, seconds before the report of the explosives that would momentarily precede the explosion of stones and mortar, the cat leapt up. His body twisted in air acrobatically, and he landed himself on top of a short wooden shed that was placed several feet to the side of the site of the imminent explosion and only a few inches away from the outer wall of the building. As he landed, stones flew out from the very spot he'd watched just moments before. The cat stared wide-eyed at the event, surprised, but hardly startled.

Inside the newly renovated building, Dorcas reflexively tried to shield her far with her hands. She cried out--"Oww!"--as the action of raising her hands up hurt her sensitive rib. When the dust and her addled nerves had cleared a few seconds later, she gaped at the hole. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me . . ." she mumbled. It was no use, her input, and she knew it. She wanted to tell the thick man that it was really not appropriate to shoot fire from his hands, as he appeared to have done a few moments prior, and she wanted to thump Joy on the head for his stupid attitudes.

"You're telling me this is the best way to get out of here . . ." she went on to say, and it was still useless talk on her part. She made her way out first, ducking her head as she pushed on through the jagged hole Chris's explosives had made. She didn't glance back at the others, but blinked angry eyes at the dusty air and stepped forward a bit to allow the others to exit.

The cat gave a mild yowl at his master. Her emergence didn't seem to startle him, either.

"Kitty!" Dorcas shrieked hoarsely. "Wegie-woo, babesy, missed you!" She took a few lumbering, iron-toed steps towards the shed, and the cat leaped into her outstretched arms. She caught him with no wince of pain. "My kitty, he's here!" she called back to the hole in the wall, suddenly more eager to share her personal news, now that here spirits were raised.

It did not help that Joy was already stunned by the heavy, albeit friendly, thwack of the burly savior man. To that gesture, he was knocked back a few feet to collide solidly with the nearest cell's bars. No pain read across his features, and he looked wistful for a moment before coming to attention.

"That's right, girly man will do what he can, and..." began, but the spritely man in his orange coat never got to finish. First amazed by the small display of fire, then the larger one, summoned as if by will by the organizer of this escape. Then, he was sent from one stun to another, as the explosion produced by the fire-fingered friend dislodged a particularly nasty brick that flew into the side of his head.

At impact, Joy slid back perhaps a foot, but he was somewhat warned and had braced himself enough for trouble. And despite the fact that he should have had a concussion, or been dead, the rapier wielder shook his head and lumbered through the hole. Less graceful than he could have been certainly, but no patch of blood spilled from his head as he proceeded.

Ducking through the hole, with a somewhat confused but fiercely elated smile, he made it out. He caught sight of the woman and her cat, and saw a side of her that seemed alien compared to her mannerisms seen so far.

The lingering sight of magic still burned away at his retinas, but he deigned now was not the time to dwell on it. Safety first. "I hope that ball of fuzz there can breathe fire, because if our earlier actions didn't call attention to the guards, this sure did!" His head whipped from side to side, unsure of where to proceed to. "Do we make for the trees, as far away as the may be, or try to hide out in this dismal city?"

Chris was the last to leave the cell block. He waited by the hole for everyone to make it through, waving them on with his big hands and practically shoving them outside to hurry them up. Joy took a piece of brick right to the head and looked no worse for it, and Chris made a mental note not to worry about the guy too much.

After Dorcas and Joy had gone through, and as illilli passed and crawled through the hole, he gave her a very solid slap on the rump for encouragement.

"Hurry yer arse up."

The guards throughout the building heard the explosion, of course, but much to the luck of the escapees, their captain and several of their best and most seasoned men were away on a mission. Instead of meeting the escape with an organized response, much of the headquarters was filled with general chaos.

The men on the upper floor didn't know what was going on, and started running to windows and downstairs to figure it out. The ones on the main floor came running to the cell block, having to single-file through the set of gates that cut off the whole area from the rest of the building. They saw the unconscious mage on the floor, the gaping, smouldering hole in the wall, and the crazy burly man standing beside that hole with something small and white in his hand.

"Stop him!" came a yell from the throng of men filling the place, and they rushed at the man.

Chris stood and waited confidently beside his only escape route. He wasn't scared, nervous, worried, and only a little bit excited by the whole thing. His main advantage was just that. He was calm and working off his instincts, and wasn't about to make any mistakes.

He tossed the small origami animal into the air towards the three men who'd already made it into the cell block. Right before their eyes, and before it had touched the ground, it turned into a full sized wolf the same dingy yellow colour as the paper it was made from. The thing was hairless, apparently made out of paper, but looked real enough to send the men staggering backwards and holding up swords and bracers to protect themselves from the impending attack.

Two of them fell backwards into the third guard who was still standing in the doorway, shoving him back into the rest of the men behind him. The blocked men yelled in frustration and even tried to push foreward so they could get past the door and into the room. "Fuck!" "Move!"

The wolf lunged through the air at the two men in front and one of them swung his sword out to greet the animal as they collided. The blade passed right through the creature like a 20 lb sword swinging through a sheet of paper, and the wolf crumpled into a mess of scraps.

Chris was already outside with the others and holding a brick in one hand.

"Go go go!"

He looked up and could see the heads of at least four guardsmen behind the parapets of ramparts surrounding the headquarters. Archers. Fuck.

"I'm hurrying... I'm hurrying" Illilli gritted through her teeth as she crawled through the hole and stumbled over the fragments of wall scattered about the ground.

Straightening up she noticed Dorcas and her kitty. "Nice Kitty! Can I ask him if its ok to pet him if we survive this?" she grinned as she looked around for somewhere to run.

An arrow whizzed into the ground by her foot and she looked up. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the group of archers on rampart above.

Her skin paled and what little could be seen of her markings whirled in the light. The damnable itching returned again and this time it almost hurt, as if her skin were about to break. She froze as shock began to set in... again.

Dorcas opened her mouth as if to wail, but made hardly a sound. The events unfolding from the broken wall--of beaten flesh and folded paper--passed before her with little observance, so overcome was the overgrown teenaged girl.

The sorrows of the young can be so different from the sorrows of the old: children of three and four cry about skinned knees and broken toys. Perhaps they are troubled by far greater and more terrible impressions of the world, but they allow their tears to be assuaged by healing kisses and mended playthings, for the sake of the grown-ups--the grown ups who are troubled by mortgages and marriages. Having touched on those, the unexaplainable--but most relatable--of sorrows are those of the adolescent. These are frustration, realization, and fear of oneself, pity for oneself.

This girl Dorcas was absorbed in her adolescent emotion. She was very useless in this panic, injured and unmagical. A teenage girl wants so much to be everything impressive, and this one found herself being worse than nothing, a hindrance.

A great drawback of being human is the preoccupation with self-pity. One never finds a cat, for instance, brooding and feeling sorry for its situation. The "wegie-woo" in Dorcas's arms had been attentive, though Dorcas had not, in the wide-eyed, schizophrenic way cat are. He'd taken note of the blows he saw Joy take, the blown-up paper-tiger dog, the roars of the big oaf, the shower of arrows, and the chirp of the waify girl.

When one arrow landed several feet from Dorcas's boots, the cat looked up to where it had come from. Dorcas clearly wasn't thinking; she was stunned, but she thought well enough to release the cat. The shaggy brown creature was shooting towards the woods before he hit the ground. Dorcas followed.

As long as her cat found a way out of this for her to follow, she could run, it appeared. She was still wounded, not quite as smooth in her gait as she could be if she were wearing more sensible boots and if her midsectioned weren't cracked and wrapped, yet she kept up behind the cat. Leave sensibility to those who had no room in their minds for sorrow. Though they ran away from the scene, the cat certainly hadn't forgotten the other three and their pet paper dog.

All Joy managed to capture in his vision was the briefest glimpses of paper, larger than life. He heard, however, the calls of the guards, the surprise and the shock. But it did not last long, and the rapier wielding man was already in the process of charging forward, and fully away from the wall.

This was certainly a new experience for the young man, his grin still somehow plastered across his face, and his eyes still somehow sparkling with more excitement than danger. Foolishly, he hooted, brought his rapier skyward as the first arrows began to fall. He spun around once, his burnt orange coat a merry little target, and laughed as he faced those launching their little death sticks at he and his companions.

"We'll miss you all, just as you now miss us!" he shouted, pausing for an instant to bow, an arrow sailing over his shoulder. What he did, was not entirely crazy, but a diversion to cover the escapes of his fellow escapees. Perhaps he paused just a second too long, however, as one bolt launched at him cut through his coat, sliced into his leather bodysuit, and caused an arc of blood to spray out of his left arm that cut his laughter short.

Running sounded really good right about then, but he was not done yet.

Joy did start forward, with a weird hopping motion made as he plucked his newly returned dagger from its sheath strapped to his leg. He murmured then, still moving in the direction the brick wielder, a few mournful words. "I truly will miss you... serve me well, this last time, will ya?" The dagger he brought to his lips, before blindly launching it in the air behind him. It was no tiny throw, and he did not pause to watch it lacerate the air as it soared higher and higher, spinning as it flew.

In his left hand, he gripped his rapier, blood running down his arm and onto his blade. And with his right, he grabbed onto the arm of Illilli with her shifting colored skin, as she seemed to pause in fright. The briefest cease of arrows falling was his chance to make a serious move, setting his trail figuratively on fire with the rapid movements of his legs. He only hoped that the woman he held on to could keep up the pace, as he hurtled toward the direction of cat, man, and the other woman.

It was not for him to know what became of his dagger, but the guards certainly noticed its flight. A pair of archers, for instance, noticed it careening towards them, moving incredibly well for being thrown blindly. They noticed, and they ducked, moving out of the danger zone. But the weapon met a foe nevertheless, as their bowstrings were cleanly snipped. And the last journey of that blade did not end there. No, in one last spin through the air, it took off the fletching of an entire collection of arrows, a small reprieve for those fleeing.

It was no paper wolf, but luck served in a similar way.

If nothing else, Illilli could certainly run in a decent fashion. She never indulged in the prettily raised and ill fitting footwear that so many other women her age had seemed to prefer. As she saw it, you could not run, climb or even walk normally in such footgear, so why bother except for special occasions like religious ceremony? Even for those ocassions she would not tolerate an ill fitting shoe.

Her soft leather boots were fairly light weight yet had soles thick enough to protect and last a long time. Once startled into motion by Joy Illilli easily kept to his side. She was quite paniced and yet seemed somehow detached from her flight.

Finding a small divot in the ground she stumbled for half a stride yet managed to keep her feet. Her skin went a paler white and seemed to become slightly bumpy though it was not goose bumps that were rising on her skin. Tiny minute scales formed delicately over her skin. Streaks of her hair began to shimmer and change color much like the zebra markings at her wrist.

There was a painfull wrenching sound as a subdued cracking noise heralded lumps forming between her shoulderblades and at the base of her spine.

Her clothing, sturdy traveling leathers pulled tight and constricted about these as she staggered onwards.

Her now brilliantly deep blue eyes registered shock...

"Whats happening? Whats wrong with me?" she shrieked as she gasped.

Something was quite wrong, her body strained against the leather but could not rip it. Her transformation was not completed; her serviceable leather garments were prohibiting her body from finishing what it had started.

Thankfully they had left the archers quite far behind as she tumbled to the ground with a shriek unaware of her surroundings. She writhed and scratched at the leather with her now claw-like fingernails but she could not separate it. It was too hard to reach through the pain of the transformation.

"What has happened!..." she gasped weakly before shrieking again, "I
can't be changing into something else... I was told these were just birthmarks..."

Small well-formed fang teeth could be seen in her mouth as she called out piteously, "Help... someone..." It was becoming hard to breath from the constriction of her shirt. If her wings and tail weren't freed from her clothing there was a danger of her smothering in her own clothing.

Chris' attention went from the archers on the parapet, to his friends on the ground, and then back to the archers as he staggered backwards away from the wall with the hefty chunk of stone in his hand. He didn't want to turn his back on the headquarters, so instead he ran backwards as quickly as he could, holding one hand behind him to feel for anything he might run into. It happened quickly, barely a few seconds.

He saw joy fling the dagger up at the wall and take Illilli away, and he saw that Dorcas was quite capable of running quickly herself. He watched the dagger arc through the air, watched the guards try to duck and cover in the last minute, and heard some yelling after it had presumably hit something, though he couldn't see what from his angle.

Ever the hero, he backed up slowly enough so that he was the last of the four to be within range of the guards. He could see their helmets poking up over the wall, moving around in a hurry. One of them stood taller than the rest as the man raised a bow to take a shot at Chris. He flung the stone at the man's helmet just as the arrow left its bow.

Chris highly doubted that some thug guardsman with a stupid elven bow would be the one to take him down. He'd fought dozens, maybe hundreds of tougher, smarter opponents and he could count on one hand the number of times he'd lost. He had the upper hand here. Skill, luck, experience, and the blessing of the gods were all on his side. When the arrow cut into his thigh and he felt once again the familiar stabbing pain and warm flow of blood from a bad wound, he was more surprised and appalled than anything else. At least the hunk of stone he threw met its mark, clipping the guard's helmet with a hollow 'clunk' sound which knocked the man onto his backside.

At this point Chris turned and started running, or rather hobbling, as fast as he could after the others. In his hurry he grabbed the shaft of the arrow and snapped off the excess wood protruding from his leg, throwing it away angrily.

They were headed East towards the shanty town market and the historic district of Marn. Already well out of view of the headquarters, he caught up to illilli and Joy in the middle of a mostly empty dirt road lined on either side with huts built from scraps. There were some people around, consisting of varying races like humans, ogres and even a goblin or two, who looked as bad as the place smelled. Most of them were busy trying to sell and trade whatever random goods they had, and didn't even notice Illilli's display. The ones who did just watched or pretended not to see.

He hobbled up to Illilli gripping his leg and looking at joy.

"We haveta keep movin'."