Scream of Stone

72

10 Kythorn, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith

Despite the presence of the black firedrakes, fighting his way out of the senate chamber had been the easy part.

Obviously ordered not to injure any of the senators, who ran through the chamber like flocks of panicked birds, the black firedrakes didn’t spit their streams of deadly acid at himuntil he finally burst into the outer chamber.

Pristoleph had been burned in spots and it hurt, but he pressed on. The wemics he’d had lying in wait, surrounding the Chamber of Law and Civility, engaged the black firedrakes, cutting open a path out of the building.

Expecting trouble, perhaps, the city watch had cordoned off the streets for a few blocks around the senate seat. The streets were clear of innocent bystanders when the black firedrakes met the wemics and blood filled the middens.

Spells flared as Marek Rymiit’s wizards took to the streets. Wemics were burned or frozen where they stood, “some just disappeared in flashes of green and yellow light, or puffs of vile-smelling smoke.

Pristoleph burned his share of Red Wizards and black firedrakes as he made his way out of the cordoned area. The wemics pulled him along in a ring of fierce, barbaric warriors. Their weapons spilled blood and batted back spears. Acid burned them, only to be cooled by a splash of an enemy’s blood.

The watchmen at the edges of the safe area stepped aside when they passed, not even looking Pristoleph or any of the wemics in the eye. They didn’t seem to know or care who would be the victor that day, who would end up with the city-state in his grasp, so they had apparently decided not to anger either side. Most of them simply went home or holed up in a tavern or festhall. Many of them stayed at their posts, watching with a mix of horror and fascination. None of them fought.

The sun had already set by the time Pristoleph made his way out of the Chamber of Law and Civility, and though the black firedrakes made full use of the dark streets of the Second Quarter, in the Third Quarter, where the tradesmen lit their streets with lamps, Pristoleph started burning them.

The black firedrakes abandoned their human guises to swoop in at Pristoleph from the rooftops. The genasi turned his attention to the street lamps, shattering the glass with sudden bursts of heat and sending thin columns of white-hot flame lancing into the sky. The fire cut through one of the firedrake’s wings like a hot knife through butter, and the creature spiraled to a spine-shattering stop in front of a cabinetmaker’s workshop.

The wemics were as afraid of the fire as the drakes, and were further confused by the tradesmen and their customers scurrying through the nighttime streets, all wondering what manner of inhuman war had suddenly fallen upon them. Rain pelted the ground, making burned firedrakes sizzle on the streets. In the far distance, well to the northwest, lightning flickered on the horizon, and even over the din of the running battle, Pristoleph could hear the distant rumble of faraway thunder.

Pristoleph stopped, his back against the wall of a tannery, and scanned the confusion for Second Chief Gahrzig. He spotted the wemic, his arm cleared of fur, an angry acid burn still sending tendrils of pungent smoke into the air. The mercenary impaled a twitching black firedrake to the gravel street. The polearm he used to kill the firedrake was one Pristoleph had purchased from the Thayan himself. The sight made Pristoleph smile.

“Gahrzig!” he called, shouting over the dying scream of another black firedrake, and the agonized bellow of another burned wemic. “Second Chiefto me!”

The wemic yanked his weapon free of the quivering firedrake, which fell still when the blade came out of it with a gout of blood and a trail of slippery yellow-gray guts. The wemic, its claws kicking up gravel, dodged a falling firedrake as he made his way to the ransar’s side. Behind him, the fallen drake was ripped apart by two of Gahrzig’s tribemates, who swallowed the pieces they’d torn out with their vicious fangs.

“Make your stand here,” Pristoleph said. “I will find you again at Pristal Towers.”

“We will go together,” the wemic argued. “The plan was to-“

“No, my friend,” Pristoleph interrupted. “No. It has to be this way. Protect my house.”

“Where will you go?” the wemic asked.

Pristoleph smiled and shook his head, and the wemic returned his smile, his fangs glistening in the wild firelight. A black firedrake screamed as it was torn to shreds behind him.

Gahrzig turned back to the fight just in time to avoid a spray of acid from the roof aboveand the spray was answered by a volley of arrows that burned with a magical blue-green light, fired from a wemic on the other side of the street.

Pristoleph disappeared into the shadows of an alley that would take him away from Pristal Towers. He had more than one route in mind, and though it had been some time since he’d lived on the streets, he still knew Innarlith. He made his way as fast as he could to the Fourth Quarter, back to the streets from whence he came.