“Gotcha, boy.”

Ditus broke into a run, effortlessly gliding up the stairs. Alius yelped and almost fell over himself running at the wall, but slammed into it, gripped the stone, and leaped from there onto the door handle. Still hanging in the air, Alius slammed the handle down, whipped the door open, and spun in, yanking the door shut from the other side.

Alius immediately tried to block the door, but it was flat on the inside with nothing to leverage. Also, it pushed out.

Looking up, Alius sighed and shook his head. “He put the people talking on the street, and put the street in the building.”

I hate that I’m already becoming numb to this.

Alius shook his head and ducked behind a fruit wagon. The interior of the place followed roughly the same design as the earlier temple had. A massive open area, littered with fruit stands, wagons, and people hawking various shinies.

Alius nabbed a fruit from the stand, but tossed it back. It was positively littered with dots of green and black, while the fruit itself took on a sickly purple. Basically, the fruit had cancer. Bleh.

Alius was snapped out of his lamenting by a series of raps on the door.

The voice that came through the door was muffled and distorted, but at the same time, very, very scarily clear.

“Oh Alius~”

Alius shivered and quickly stuffed a fruit into his pants pocket before running off. Even as he ran, Alius reminded himself of what he was looking for, a shiny, four-sided rock. With Ditus so close, anything that could narrow down the location where he could get one was crucial.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alius spotted a faint shine. Skidding to a stop, he backtracked to the stall. It appeared to be made with simple wood, covered with a sage canopy with white tassels, dusty, but well-maintained. It was manned by a thin, pale-skinned, blonde with very messy hair, who smiled kindly at Alius as he approached.

“Hey there, little guy. Anything I can get you?”

Alius coughed, slightly offended at the “little”, but quickly recalled his very quickly approaching deadline. “I’m looking for a, um, rock?”

The woman leaned over the counter and spread her hands. “Well, you’re going to have to be a little more specific. I have many rocks.”

Indeed, the counter was crammed with rocks of various greys, browns, and greens, all of which Alius gave a once-over before shaking his head.

“Nope! None of these. I’m looking for a rock with four sides.”

The woman tapped her finger on the wood. “Okay…and what’s so special about this rock?”

“Well, I think it’s blue! Or maybe green. I forgot.”

“Oh. Sounds like you need to go visit Charles. He’s in that corner,” she pointed to the other end of the temple-like structure, “and he likes colorful rocks.”

Alius was about to thank her before he heard an ominous creaking from behind. Instead, he blurted a quick bye and swung around the stall, jumping to the next one and tunneling under the covered table. Alius stayed huddled there as footsteps reverberated throughout the building, echoing above the voices that grew dimmer as the clicking of footsteps grew.

Alius crawled to the other side of the table very carefully and lifted the cloth in preparation for a mad dash to the corner which Charles would be in. As it would seem, he wasn’t careful enough, because the tablecloth brushed a precariously-placed pot and knocked it over with a crisp shattering noise. The resulting crash faded into the tinkling from the remnants of the ceramic shards. The footsteps drew closer, and Alius flexed his legs in preparation to bolt.

Although he did grab a few of the conveniently spilled metal stars out of the debris from the earlier pot. Alius did have to give up the rest of the very nice pile of sharp-and-shiny things, because his pockets were starting to fill up, and he didn’t want them to interfere with his stride. They were also thankfully tough, so the stars wouldn’t prick him. It would also(hopefully) prevent his dagger from cutting him. If that happened, getting caught by Ditus would be the least of his problems.

Speaking of Ditus, Alius could hear his footsteps getting ever closer to the stall he was hiding under. Alius started to slide the stars into his palm, stacking the thin plates of metal one on top of each other. When he couldn’t stack anymore, he held the pile behind his back and clasped a cluster of the pointy objects with his other hand. Then, Alius shuffled over to the side of the table he had entered from, and waited.

“Hello? Alius?”

The voice that drifted under the sheets was unmistakably the voice of Ditus, edged with a playful tone. Alius nervously shuffled his shoulders, waiting for Ditus.

All Ditus had to do was touch him once, and it would be over.

As Alius watched, a gloved finger slipped under the tablecloth and dragged it up, revealing Ditus in a squat, grinning at Alius.

“Boo.”

Alius whipped his hands forward, leaving the stars to tumble towards the still-smiling face of Ditus, who didn’t react at all.

Alius was just about to jump out and make a run for it when he saw the edges of Ditus’s cloak flare out. From there, Alius was barely able to see a silver line tracing the edge of the two daggers before they exploded into a mess of flickering silver arcs trailing golden sparks.

Alius watched, awe-struck as every single star crumbled into misshapen triangles, not a single shard managing to even touch Ditus’s robes.

Ditus held up a dagger, blowing imaginary smoke away while smiling at Alius.

“Lesson one, showing off done right benefits everyone. Maybe I’ll teach you after this.”

Ditus reached a gentle hand towards Alius, chuckling when the boy held up his hands in surrender.

And then Alius jammed his fingers into the cracks between the wooden boards and yanked the whole stall down onto Ditus.