The feeling of movement that engulfed me was overwhelming, but brief. I struck the ground with a force I found distasteful, but by no means instilling in me fear or revulsion. My field of vision was pressed close enough to the ground that I could see the rivulet cracks my fall had left in the stones beneath me before I stood. It took me a moment to regain my balance, unsure as I was of my feet.
I glanced in one direction, and then another, only to find my choices chartered to two; as the high barriers around me seemed to promise nothing more from the confines I had just escaped. Finding no distinction between my choices, I advanced down one of courses offered me, the grace of my gait increasing with my every tread.
--------------------------------------------End of scene--------------------------------------------------
The Guildkeeper took one look at the broken leather straps on the wall before rounding on the sole occupant of the flat. “What in the hells were you doing summoning in the poor quarter?”
“I did not mean to summon, Lord Gaheris, I was merely...experimenting.” The respondent was draped in a ratty grey robe, which he gripped tightly in his terrified hands.
Gaheris stalked toward the table where the other man stood, pinioned between two city guardsmen. “This room reeks of summoning incense, sulphur and,” Gaheris paused, taking a furious snort of the rooms contents, “Lode-steel? What were you doing smelting Lode-steel?” Amidst the fury and domineering manner, a note of curiosity infiltrated his angular features. His neatly trimmed eyebrows drew closer together in consternation, as he sought the answer independently the question he had asked the vagrant.
The dirty little man, Simeon by name, edged toward the worktable that stood between Gaheris and himself; only to be jerked back by the restraining arms of the guards at his side. With a two fingered wave of dismissal, Gaheris gave the vagrant leave to approach his materials.
“By instilling Lode-steel with the right compilation of summoning herbs and binding components I...”
Gaheris interrupted him, outrage coursing through his very frame. “Binding components?” His tone was incredulous, but his eyebrows were knit now in a remembered fury, rather than curiousity. “You sought to bind in a region of the city completely devoid of any safeguards? You fool!” Belatedly, he seemed to collect himself, turning to stare at the man in expectation of an explanation.
“The Lode-steel; tell me why you used Lodesteel in a binding.”
“Not just Lodesteel milord, I made an alloy of Lode-steel and an imported metal from the south, it really has quite remarkable traits.”
Gaheris waved aside the elaboration as meaningless; the same two fingered wave he had given the guards earlier. “But why?” he shouted, “Why create an alloy of a weak metal, one that has few practical uses? One of which the only possible uses is to create a reservoir of power?”
“Milord I thought, by creating a physical receptacle from Lode-steel, I might be able to imbue it with an incorporeal spirit, harness it...”
Gaheris cut him off with a snarl, all traces of curiosity vanished from his features. He grabbed Simeon by his matted blonde hair and snarled at him, nose to nose, “what did you bind?”
Simeon tried to turn his gaze from Gaheris’s; tried to hide his face in either shame or terror, or perhaps a mixture of the two. “A reaver, Lord. But I thought, given a physical form, one that I could harness I...”
Gaheris lifted the shorted man from the ground by his hair, before backhanding him to the floor. “Stronger, wiser, and cannier men than you have tried to bind Reavers, Simeon. Your plan was original, but shows no merit beyond chaos and destruction.” He spat on the cowering vagrant.
Gaheris turned to one of the guardsmen, both of whom were standing at attention, “wake the entire garrison of the slums, we have a monster to capture.”
As the first guardsman ran off to do his lord’s bidding, Gaheris turned to the second, though he pointed on the crumpled grey heap at his feet, “take this criminal to the street, he may have information that will aid our hunt.”
The second guardsmen hefted Simeon bodily over one shoulder; a task no doubt made easier by the latter’s small stature and emaciated appearance.
Alone, Gaheris followed his minion’s departure with his gaze, turning away only when they had descended the apartment’s steps to the alley below. Reaching for his flank, he traced the thin wooden case at his belt with gloved fingers. Sliding the rod from its holster in a graceful movement, he aimed it at the worktable, assessing his target. His eyebrows again met at the top of his aristocratic visage, only to settle placidly in place a moment later. As if in response to this, a thin stream of intense light shot from the end of the rod, causing the table to catch alight.
The books and scrolls lying open on the table fed the flames even more quickly that its wooden frame, though nothing rivalled the impetus granted to the consuming tongues of light by the oil lamp hurled onto them by Gaheris. Within moments the entire room was alight, leaving only the one blank stone wall and the leather manacles that seemed to hang empty as if in accusation, untouched.
