The room beyond the one containing the cell was thankfully empty. Kay slowly walked forward, looking around as he stepped inside. There was a desk directly across from the door he’d just come through, and it looked recently vacated. An open door to the side of the room led to a staircase, and hopefully, Kay’s escape.

Kay was about to head upstairs when he noticed a chest sitting on the far side of the desk. Looking down at his shirtless chest, he decided to check and see if it had his stuff in it. Even if it didn’t, maybe it would have a shirt. There was no lock that he could see, and he didn’t have any way to determine if it was trapped besides just looking at it. He didn’t see anything that looked like a trap to him, and he also realized he was probably wasting time. The muffled rumbling noises were still coming from above. Still, there was nothing stopping someone from coming back and capturing him again. He threw open the chest.

Sadly, his gear wasn’t there, but there was a few pieces of clothing. They were similar enough to his pants that he assumed they were changes of clothes for prisoners, or maybe just initial clothes to put them in. As he grabbed a shirt, a few questions occurred to him. If they had shirts, why didn’t he get one? And why were they keeping clothes in a chest next to what was probably a guard’s desk? It just seemed weird. But he also didn’t have a lot of time, so he dropped the questions and started up the stairs.

Kay was not a naturally stealthy person, ad he had no real experience trying to sneak around. Hiding in the bushes was the total sum of his stealth-based skills, and a building filled with people was not the place to use that particular skill set. So he tried to use his friend Chase’s advice, “Act like you belong there.” Kay made sure his posture was good, then started up the stairs at a brisk walk.

At the top of the stairs was another half-open door he pushed open. There was no one there to see him, so he paused to orient himself. He didn’t know anything about the layout of the building, so he needed to pick a direction basically at random. He went left.

Seconds later, he ran into someone going in the other direction. “What are you doing?” The woman demanded. Before Kay could even think of an answer, she kept talking over him. “Never mind! Take this and make sure it stays safe!” She thrust a small bag into his arms. “Don’t let anyone know you have it until after this blows over! We have to keep it safe!” She turned him around and pushed him in the opposite direction. “The back way out is blocked, so you’ll have to risk getting out through the front. Go, go! And remember, keep that safe!” She gave him another push. “I’m going to see if I can gather up the less important stuff.” She turned around and ran off.

Kay glanced over his shoulder at where she’d disappeared around a corner, then down at the bag, he was holding. What the hell was that?

He started walking in the direction the woman had pushed him. Does panic make people pay that little attention? He glanced down at the bag again. Whatever this is, it’s apparently important, and she just shoved it into the hands of the first person she saw? He stopped for a second, staring at the now-suspicious bag. He decided to hold onto it for now. It wasn’t like whatever the bag was could get him in much more trouble with the Nelamians, and if it was important to them, he wouldn’t want them getting it back.

Another rumbling almost-explosion-like sound shook the walls, and Kay started hurrying a bit more. The noises got louder as he got closer. Apparently, the fight that was going on was near the entrance he needed to leave through. Up ahead of him, he noticed a group of people watching something while they hid behind furniture. He stopped where the hallway opened up into a large room and peeked around the corner.

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Eleniah kept her expression closed and flat, even as she wanted to snarl and curse. Her combat instructor back home had taught her all the reasons why screaming imperatives at her enemies was a bad idea. Still, she really wanted to call the two men she was fighting some choice insults. She sidestepped another bolt of flame thrown at her as she moved closer to the two mages.

The one throwing fire was Carter, the Graceful Success Guildmaster. His yellow-trimmed orange robes were incredibly gaudy in the light of his magical fires, and the expression on his face made him twice as ugly as he threw attack after attack at her. Most of them she dodged with minimal effort, but a few here and there she turned aside with punches and palm strikes.

The more annoying of her two opponents was the Storm Mage. She didn’t know his name, but the Director of the Illuminators was a pain in her ass. She dashed forward, pushing off with enough power to crack the stone under her feet, and tried to hit him with a jab. He threw up a hand, and a shimmering wall appeared between them. Eleniah dug her feet in and flipped backward, avoiding the border of thunder magic right before it exploded at her. She landed and rolled back, a trio of lightning attacks missing her by inches.

She pushed away the urge to snarl again as more fire filled the space, and she moved back again to avoid it. The Illuminators Director would be enough of a challenge as it was, but adding in Carter made it a real fight. She didn’t have any ranged attacks, so she had to get close. But the Storm mage knew that too, and he kept using those annoying barriers to throw her back! The thunder magic didn’t really hurt her, but facing against another tier five, it was enough to toss her around.

She leaped towards Carter, trying to take advantage of an opening in his barrage of flame, but another shimmering wall popped up in front of him. She pivoted on one foot and turned towards the other enemy. The Director pointed one hand at Carter, forming the shield protecting her; the other was pointed at her, another lightning spear forming at the tip of his fingers.

Dual Casting? She pushed off from the ground and managed to throw herself over the attack. Carter blasted fire at her again, which she dodged again, and they were back at the beginning once more, her with her back to the entrance to the building and the two of them staring her down.

She sighed internally and placed the knuckles of both fists against each other. She’d wanted to hold herself back so she wouldn’t destroy too much of the building since she didn’t know where Kay was. At this point, though, she’d have to start pushing a little bit harder if she wanted to win. As long as she didn’t destroy too much, Kay would be okay, right? He was tier three now; he was tough enough.

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Kay watched, his mouth agape, as Eleniah dueled with the Nelamians. Whatever the issue between Kurtis Nel and Carter was in their planning to take over Tumbling Rapids, they were fighting together pretty well. Carter was using fire attacks to try and hurt Eleniah, while Kurtis was making some kind of exploding shields and throwing lightning around, working more to herd her into place than to hurt her directly.

Nothing they were doing seemed to be working, however, because his teacher was awesome. She dashed, spun, flipped, and rolled past every attack they sent her way, looking like a martial-arts actor on wires the entire time. She pushed off from the ground and appeared somewhere else, looking almost as fast as anime characters using instantaneous movement to his slower eyes.

As he watched, Eleniah placed her fists together as she continued to dodge spells. Starting at her knuckles and spreading up her arms, she began to glow the color of worked metal. Her entire body was covered in the glow a second later, and she put her hands up in what looked to Kay like a traditional boxing stance.

“Wait!” Kurtis yelled, “What are you doing? Your student-”

Eleniah ran towards him. She sidestepped a gout of fire coming from Carter and rushed right at the shield Kurtis formed in front of him. Eleniah threw out a left jab, and Kay watched as her fist tore through the shimmering wall. It exploded like thunder around her, but she ignored it as she threw an uppercut at Kurtis’ head.

“Dammit, woman!” He shouted as he waved his hands, and a dark storm cloud formed under his feet, floating him into the air away from Eleniah’s fist. “Don’t you know the position you’re in?” The cloud flew him up to the ceiling as he started raining down lightning bolts at Kay’s teacher while shouting about the stupidity of her decisions.

Carter clenched his fists, and the air around him started to shimmer with heatwaves. A tiny ember formed in front of his chest. “Stupid bitch!”

Eleniah looked back and forth between them, a slight smirk on her face.

“Everyone, get out!” Kurtis shouted as he pointed towards the opposite end of the room that Kay was on. “Move!”

The people watching the battle started to run away in the direction Kurtis had pointed. Kay followed behind, trying his best to blend in with the crowd. The group of people was filtering out a side door when someone tried to grab Kay’s wrist. He actually saw this attack coming and pulled his arm back as he stepped away.

Growling in rage, Coultron followed up with a kick that Kay barely blocked with his arm. He stumbled back from the force of the blow.

Coultron sneered at Kay. “You, you, you fucker! Who the fuck do you think you are!?”

“Me?” Kay tossed the bag behind him and tried his best to pull himself into some kind of fighting form. “I’m actually no one important. But my teacher? She’s pretty damn awesome, seeing as how she’s kicking your bosses’ asses.”

“Ha!” Coultron barked a laugh. “Your bitch teacher isn’t going to last against two tier five Nelamian mages! And I have something special to take care of you!” He pulled a weapon off his belt and showed Kay the head of the hammer. “No weapons and no blood. I’m going to break you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kay shaped the blood he’d been literally hiding up his sleeve into a punch dagger and cut his arm with it. The blood flowing down his arm floated into the air and started turning into sharp points. “I’ve got blood to spare.”

“Fuck you!” Coultron charged forward with the hammer held overhead.

Kay sent a wave of blood needles flying at Coultron, who managed to bash a few of them out of the air. The rest either missed or bounced off of the armor he was wearing.

Kay cursed as he dodged Coultron’s wild swing and started gathering blood together to make bigger projectiles. He’d have less of them, but hopefully, they could hit harder.

Coultron swung and missed again; his inability with the hammer showed a recent improvisation to hurt Kay. Kay lashed out with the blood-formed punch dagger and watched in shock as the weapon disintegrated on contact with his enemy’s armor.

Of course, it did! It’s a level one skill! Kay chided himself.

He dodged another swing of the hammer and started making a massive blob of blood. I need to hit him with some more significant attacks from Blood Manipulation; Shape Blood isn’t going to be helpful now. Kay watched Coultron’s mouth move as he called Kay’s family all kinds of horrible things. Or, he assumed they were horrible things; he didn’t actually get most of the insults.

Or… Kay grimaced, then shook his head. I can’t afford to be squeamish. He wants to kill me! If I get the opportunity, I have to fill his mouth with blood. He can’t hit me if he’s choking.

Kay finally managed to gather enough blood, and he compressed it into a dense block. He sent it flying into Coultron’s chest, making him stumble. While he had the opening, Kay started forcing the blood down Coultron’s throat. Coultron started choking and spluttering as he stumbled back.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” Someone shouted, and Kay turned to face the new threat. He managed to dodge or block the first two hits, but the third and fourth punches the big angry man threw got through his guard and hammered into his diaphragm. Kay doubled over, gasping for breath, and another hit to the head knocked him over. Kay pushed himself off the wall, dizzily trying to stand, but a kick to the chest knocked him down again.

“Are you alright?” The man asked Coultron, who was coughing up blood.

“This-” Cough, cough, “Motherfucker!” Coultron grabbed the hammer and slammed it down into Kay’s arm.

Kay screamed as he heard the sickening sound of his arm breaking.

Coultron screamed back in rage as he brought down the hammerhead onto Kay’s other arm. “I’m going to smash your skull in!”