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Tyreon looked around, encouraged by the motivation of the others leaping out of the window. Tyreon followed suit and jumped out of the window back into the war-like streets. Tyreon ducked down staying under cover from the hailing arrows.

*thud* *crack* woosh*

The noise in the streets is so loud Tyreon can barely hear himself think.

"Where to?" Tyreon shouted at the others.

Aidan rolled his eyes. "There's a door, you know."

He sighed and followed suite. "We should stay to the narrow back alleys, we will have more cover, then."

----------

"Stop this madness, my son!" shouts Countess Amriella from atop the high walls of Nyord Sardi. "Look at the madness you bring upon our county!"

"What madness have we not already? Father is a man of inner demons. This is a child's fairy tale compared to what evil things he has done!" He turned to her, nearing on anger, "I have no time for this."

Derroda beckons a guard. "Take this woman to her chambers and seal her in. I fear for her safety and my own."

Immediately, the guard left his post beside the threshold to the great towering wall of Nyord Sardi and addressed the Countess. "Come with me, my Lady."

"Never would I have anticipated such vile behavior from my only son!" he snarled at him. "If I would have known what loathsome evil I would have spawned, that my son would turn on his own mother, I would have never conceded to marry in to this accursed family line!"

"That is enough!" Derroda shouts. "Take her, now. I have no further business with her."

Indignantly, the Countess went with peace until she was lead to the flight of stairs that would lead her back in to the narrow passages of the fortress. "You will rue the day you have betrayed your mother."

And she was gone.


"Hold your fire!" Derroda shouted to the marksmen. "Send forth the Elite!"

At his word, men rushed to the gatehouse below and the massive iron-wrought gate of Nyord Sardi began to grate against its gears.

----------

"There's a door you know."

The voice of the young man that had saved her life brought her back to reality. She suddenly felt embarassed for nearly giving in to her fears. Maybe this wasn't exactly what she had expected, but it certainly was no worse-case scenario. This plan, uncertain as it was, was indeed the best plan they had.

She felt her throat tighten. Anxiety, apprehension, and eagerness all combined together, forcing her into action. She followed Aidan outside into the alleyway in time to hear him speak to the group.

"We should stay to the narrow back alleys, we will have more cover, then."

She nodded, not wanting to speak. She felt out-of-place enough as it was.

Aidan took note of the jagged, glassy frame of the window and took some strips of cloth from the deep crimson silk curtains, wrapping them about his hands as he hauled himself through.

Rolling to the trampled mud ground in the alleyway beyond, he looked up and down the street. It was empty except for Tyreon and Valos, almost ghostly. The sky was dark and choked with plumes of smoke and ashes, streaks of red and orange playing along the fringes of the far houses. The echoes of battle were faded in to an ambient fog of sound, like a dull memory rehearsing its vague details in a dream.

Northward, he saw the high walls of Nyord Sardi rising against the scape of homes. Southward, he could make out nothing but tiny pinpricks of light in the sky, stars a great deal further away and safer than he was at the moment. He thought of his mother, living in cold and muted misery in a hamlet far from their ruined home, taken in by a good family sympathetic with the Movement.

For mother, he thought. She is all I have left. For father and what a death he died. For my sister, where ever she is now.

He looked back in to the shattered frame, in to the subtle darkness of the home he left. It had, at one point, been the home of a noble and, perhaps, a family. Now it was a shell of shadows, broken and humble in the face of a ruthless enemy...

We are the enemy, he thought darkly, who have killed so many... No, it is for them, for my family. It is the right thing to do. It is justice.

It is for a better future for all of us.

He caught site of Farihah, a moment of peaceful beauty misplaced in a world gone mad. Without even giving it a second thought, he cast over his arm. "Here, take my hand. You do not want to cut yourself on all of this."

Strange how much can change from killing a single man.

Mentis was quite suprised that these people, some even Asrai from the looks of it, trusted each other enough to go through with such a plan. He was even more shocked at himself, wondering how he ever managed to trust the plans a human had made, when they had brought him so much misery in the plan.

Despite his doubt, he still clambered through the window and followed the group into the alleyways, making sure to go relatively last as to let people in front catch any arrows for him.

"Come to think of it... what happened to the arrows?" Mentis thought as he looked overhead and listened, the faint whistling of the arrows no longer pervaded the air.

As if in response to his question, he heard an ever so faint metallic grating far off in the distance. Pondering what it could have been and he rushed down the alleyway to catch up with Tyreon, Aritius, and Valos, he eventually decided on the most likely reason why the gate would have been opened. "The gate..... either the rebels have taken the fort, or the count is sending out soldiers to mop up any pockets of resistance left."

Not wanting to say anything in case his guess was terribly wrong, he held his tongue and continued on down the alleyway, hoping the latter of his guesses would never come to pass.

Tyreon crept through the streets with his newly obtained team members, ever so cautious to stay out of the reach of the arrows. Suddenly, a quiet falls upon the streets as the rain of arrows cease. In this brief moment of silence, Tyreon looks around to the bodies mangled, lying on the ground of the blood filled streets.


"HELP!!" a man cries from a room at the end of a hallway. I rush down the hall to see a man in complete agony. I look down his body to see his torso, torn to shreds. His intestines spilling forth from his stomach cavity. His left arm, severed at the elbow hanging on by nothing more than some cartilage. My assistant rolled him over to show me his back. The skin had been completely ripped off.

"They tied him to the back of a horse and he was dragged" My assistant informed me.

All I could do is stare at this poor man, a man who has everything torn from his, assets and body. This is beyond my abilities I thought to myself all I can do is watch as he dies. I walked over to the man who was screaming an ear piercing yell. I placed my hand upon his forehead.

" I am sorry, there is nothing I can do." I stayed in the room enduring his screams as he endured his pain. After an hour of tremendous agony the man finally passed.

Tyreon is bumped by Aritius as he stood there in the streets motionless. As he stood there, the silence was ended by the thundering sound of an army marching. With each second the sound got louder and closer.

"Quick, we must make it to this hidden passage" Tyreon alarmed the others as he quickened his pace.

"How much further is it Mentis?"

Mentis immediately ducked behind an opened door after running down a stretch of the bloodied cobblestones, but quickly remembered the barrage of arrows had stopped moments ago.

"It's not far now, we'll need to make it through nearly half of the church district before reaching the cemetary. It should be outside of one of the old cathedrals, the diety it is devoted to escapes me at the moment... I'm not on good terms with the gods." Mentis said with a slight chuckle, he had never beleived in the gods of Aboron, surely they would have intervened long ago in the state of things if they did exist.

The group continued on down towards the point marked on the map, drawing closer and closer to their destinatio

".... Does anybody else hear metal plate? Either my senses deceive me, or we could have a bit of a situation on our hands."

----------

The iron-wrought gates came to a screeching halt as they clanked at last in to the top of the archway. Though it was night, the entire scene was drenched in blood red ember and golden orange fire, and as the Elite Royal Guard marched through the gateway to meet the battle, the light flickered eerily on their polished armor, harbingers of death and doom to ragtag mobs of hearty peasants.

At least Mother will not have to see this, Derroda comforts himself, trying to assuage the slight pains of conscience that played at the fringes of his mind.

"My Prince, what shall we do?"

The query was almost misplaced in the swell of heady guilt that whipped through him at what he was about.

"My Prince...?"

Derroda raised his hand in silence. "Take your marksmen and ready them for hand-to-hand combat. I will not have the Elite compromised, not matter what madness Father orders me. I trained with many of them, myself. Many of them are... Are my friends."

----------

".... Does anybody else hear metal plate? Either my senses deceive me, or we could have a bit of a situation on our hands."

Mentis' words echo ominously off the walls as the ambient sounds of battle fade in to silence. All that could be herd was that terrible, steady, metallic crunch of armor and weapon in march.

"Mentis, maybe we should take a route further away from the center of the city...?"

"Are we going to just leave without warning any of the others in the city? They could all be killed!" Farihah exclaimed, her bundled-up emotions finally wearing through her relatively thin restraint.

"There that is it, is it not?" Tyreon announced as he pointed to an elaborate tomb. Tyreon grabs the map from Aidan's hands and looks at it.

"This must be it" Tyreon exclaims as he approaches the gigantic tomb door. Tyreon reaches out and grabs the handle of the door. He pulls on it with little success.

"The door seems to be stuck" Tyreon informs the group eager to enter. Tyreon steps back from the door and hold out one of his hands.

"Aferre azretavaru" Tyreon recites as the hinges of the door come loose. Tyreon pulls on the door again as it easily opens up.

"Quick everyone, into the tomb." Tyreon commands as he steps into the dreary, cob-web filled room. Tyreon covers his mouth as he attempts to guard his lungs from whatever dust and mold might infest the room. Tyreon looks around the room. Nothing but broken brick line the walls. In the middle of the room is a giant elaborate coffin. A marble box outlined with gold trim. Tyreon scoured the room again, looking for the stair case leading into the fortress.

"Where's this staricase?" Tyreon asked confused.

"There is nothing here but a coffin and walls."

Mentis scanned the tomb, looking for the staircase, but the tomb wasn't about ti give up any of it's secrets to a band of revolutionaries.

"Who knows how long we'll be looking.." Mentis thought to himself, suddenly doubting if this plan would even get past the first stage. He looked around the crowded tomb once more, his line of sight blocked by his companions, and by the countless cobwebs that littered the old catacomb.

Growing more and more impatient every moment they spent searching, Mentis doubled his pace and looked everywhere that his comrades weren't. The corners, the roof, under floor tiles, and eventually in the sarcophagi. He overturned one of the lids, and saw before him a small passage, wide enough for one person to crawl through.

"Oy, found it." He said, a grin slowly stretching across his face as he clambered into the passage.

*crash*

Tyreon turned his head as he heard the lid of the coffin fall to the floor. Dust flew up from the floor filling the air. As the dust settled back to the ground, a passage was unveiled within the coffin.

"Great find Mentis" Tyreon acknowledged as he looked down the coffin to see the tiny opening leading to the hidden passage way.

"I hope we can all fit through that small hole." Tyreon pointed out.

Tyreon followed Mentis through the passage down into the tunnel that would lead them into the fortress. Not a single bit of light was visible, Tyreon walked forward and bumped into the back of Mentis.

"Sorry" Tyreon apologized, "Fethala cleyivaru" Tyreon shouted out as bright balls of light appeared on the tunnel walls helping illuminate the rebels on their way towards the fortress.

Tyreon inched forward, ever cautious of the idea of finally getting the chance to help end the tyranny his world has been plagued with.

"Come on everybody, I have lit the way" Tyreon told the others as they started to crawl through the small opening of the coffin into the tunnel.

Aidan fell through the opening and in to the semi-darkness, relieved only marginally by the light summons of Tyreon. His young, small body fit easily through the hole.

After several minutes packed together in the suffocating dark and must, a small, ornately-carved archway was before them, it's inner darkness revealing nothing of its mouth.

"We are going to have to squeeze our gear through here, although you may want to hide some of what you do not need behind in this greater hall if you can spare it." He kept his voice low for an unknown and instinctual reason.

Aidan bent down and took up a piece of crumbled stone block. "How deep does it go, I wonder?"

He chucked it in to the abyss. After what seemed a long hour it knocked against something hard and skittered down, presumably, on a dense floor.

"It's... It's a chasm."

Aritius followed the group through the city toward the cemetary. The sounds of grinding metal echoed between the house as the armed soldiers marched through to mop of the remains. The group made haste and ran to the cemetary as Aritius removed the map from his knapsack once more. As other group members made idle chat, Tyreon grabbed the map and led the way through the houses. Seeming only minutes away they arrived upon the tomb detailed on the map. Tyreon tried forcing the tomb's door open with little avail, only to open with ease after one of Tyreon's solid spells.

The group pushed their way into the tomb in search of the staircase, but to also escape from a most brutal death of the soldiers. They searched high and low for a hidden passage way to lead them further through the catacombs. Mentis searched diligently until he opened a sarcophagus revealing a crawlspace leading below. One-by-one they all slipped down into the underground hall leading toward the fortress.

They walked slowly through the very dark hall until Tyreon summoned lights to show the way. The hall was still very dim and Aritius couldn't see his own hands infront of him. Loosing sight of the members ahead of him he rushed forward to catch up with them.

"Hey, wait up," Aritius yells into the darkness.

The other members suddenly appeared at Aritius face, stopped. Aritius bumped into Tyreon, hard, knocking him into the reason they stopped.

"NOO!" Aritius yells extending his hand outward only for it to be swallowed into the darkness of the abyss that Tyreon had fallen into. What have I done?! I'm sorry, brother, Aritius thought staring into the abyss in awe.

"Hey, wait up," Tyreon heard as he stood on the edge of the abysmal hole.

Suddenly, Tyreon felt a strong force pushing him forward and consequently, down the deep chasm. Tyreon turned as he fell into the hole and saw Aidan, reaching out his hand, desperately trying to save Tyreon from his certain death as he fell deeper and deeper into the darkness.

"NOO!" The voice of Aritius faded as Tyreon continued his plunge down into the empty void, uncertain of what awaited.

"Fethala cleyivaru" Tyreon shouted again. A small dim ball of light manifested itself near Tyreon giving him the smallest amount of vision. He fell, constantly hitting the walls of the hole slamming his shoulder against one wall and his thigh striking a protrusion on the other side. Falling out of control, Tyreon looked down and saw the floor that finally emerged.

Just as Tyreon was about to slam into the ground, he aimed his hands downward and shouted "Aferre azretavaru". A strong force left his hands and shot towards the earth, turning the hard ground beneath him into a more suitable sand texture. The force of this destruction also helped decrease the speed of Tyreon's fall.

*THUD*

Tyreon's body landed roughly into the sand created below him. Tyreon, on the ground and hurt from the impact, stayed on the floor. His back, shoulder and thigh all injured from the fall. Exhausted by the spell that saved his life, Tyreon had no choice but to acknowledge the pain of his injuries without being able to heal them.

Tyreon slowly stood up and looked around, faint glows from torches scarcely lit up the room. Tyreon found men shackled to the walls, men hanging from their feet, all barely alive.

Tyreon looked back up the chasm and shouted as loudly as he could, "I think this is the prison that lay on the bottom floor of the fortress."

Excited by their progress, Tyreon sat down on the floor awaiting the others to come down in a more reasonable fashion than he. He sat their in pain, no strength left to do anything else. He waited there, patiently, for the others while he took the time to try and regain some strength.

Tyreon looked up as he heard three men coming down into the prison. It was two guards and a prisoner. Too tired to fight the men, Tyreon scurried across the floor and perched himself against the wall, trying to disguise himself as another prisoner. Battered from his fall, Tyreon had no problem blending in with the other prisoners.

The two guards hung the man from the ceiling by his wrists. The prisoners chest and legs were bleeding as the blood poured out and dripped onto the floor beneath him.

"Such cruelty" Tyreon thought to himself as he laid there helpless.

----------

Jerryal Thune ambled along down the longest distance of the Nyord Sardi wall on orders of his lieutenant.

"Security, security," the Lieutenant of the Guard had said, "That is what we do. It is why we are guards. What manner of guard leaves open such critical areas in moments of siege?"

And so Jerryal bobbed down the length of the wall to its farthest reach, where it was passing the bulk of the populace of the nobility district and began to merge with the Blackcomb Mountains that surrounded Nyord Sardi.

The dark and the cold of the onsetting autumn were chilling him through his thick armor. His polearm bounced along with him. "Out 'ere in the mi'le o' no where- who would bother wi' it?"

Screams and battle cries, smoke and fire all melted back in to a faint memory as he meandered from the gates. Thin, striated clouds passed quickly over the waxing gibbous moon. He could just hear the bone-chilling cry of wild dogs in the far distance. He quickened his pace.

"More o' them, ya say? Down this way?" he hears suddenly around the corner of a short shambles of a brick house.

"Oh yeah, I 'eard 'em just a bit ago. Goin' to the cemetery, they was."

Jerryal nearly bumped in to them as two other guards came round the corner. "Oh, apologies," he mumbled to them.

"Ah, good, ano'er good man. Here, come with us. 'ere may be somethin' troublesome this way. Ardor says he saw-"

"HEARD!" the other interjected, a squat, beady-eyed man.

"-heard some rebels makin' their way to the cemetery."

Jerryal nodded. It gave him something to focus on and companionship in a city gone mad.

* * *

"It's open! I knew it! I knew it! I told ya I knew it, di'n't I, Ardor?"

The un-introduced guard nudged Ardor as he said it. Ardor was obviously not pleased. Regardless, they had arrived at the cemetery.

"But how they do it what wi'out the key? The royal mausoleum... Is nothin' sacred to these rebels?"

Ardor rolled his eyes and heaved up his pike, "I' doesn' matter what they did. All that matters is that we gotta go get 'em."

The other guard was at a loss for words and followed suit.

----------

"I think this is the prison that lay on the bottom floor of the fortress." Tyreon shouted from the bottom of the chasm, Mentis was amazed that his brains did not litter the ground beneath them: it was quite a fall.

Mentis suddenly spotted a torch light the ground, as two guardsmen emerged from one of the hallways. It was difficult to see from the staggering height, but he could clearly make out another prisoner being chained to the wall.

"I don't know what you want, I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!!"

His stood fixed in place, eye twitching as he witnessed the man being lashed to the cold, stone wall.

"How could she... how.."

Without thinking, Mentis vaulted off the walkway, springboarding off his rage made manifest by years of imprisonment. "Fethala azretavaru!!" He bellowed, still plummeting towards the stone floor.

His arm jerked sideways as one end of his chain shot outwards to grip the ancient rock of the cliff. The other end followed suit, gripping it several feet below. After slowing his fall, he vaulted off the cliff once more, and into the first guardsmen just in time to meet his gaze with his boot.

The man was sent sprawling, the impact of his heel spraying blood across the chains and manacles of the prison. The second guard began to yell a warning, Mentis quickly responded by whipping his chain around the man's neck, yelling the same incantation as before to send waves of force through the chain. It jerked to the left, sending the guard's torso and below towards the already stunned guard, and dropping his head to the ground. Mentis rushed over to the pinned guard, taking grim pleasure in strangling the life out of him.

Both jailors dead, Mentis offered a hand to his exhausted comrade, and shouted upwards to the rest of the party.

"I doubt either of us will be able to climb up. Assuming Tyreon can still move, we'll meet you further down the passageway."

"With the raucus you're both making I would be amazed if we weren't dealing with a good twenty guards within the quarter hour..."

Aidan looked about for some way down. "Some magic would help," he noted, "if I knew any."

"With the raucus you're both making I would be amazed if we weren't dealing with a good twenty guards within the quarter hour..." Tyreon heard as he grabbed Mentis's hand and slowly raised himself onto his feet.

Tyreon made his way to the bottom of the pit where he had fallen and shouted upwards "Don't worry, I am sure most of the guards are outside still. Fighting the other revolutionaries."

Mentis took Tyreon's hand and raised him to his feet, knees buckling slightly as the rush of adrenaline left his bloodstream.

He still had energy left to continue the fight, but worried that he may not have energy enough to confront the count. Who knows what powers he wields... surely the ruler of Aboron has a couple tricks saved up for this kind of occasion He thought to himself.

Turning his gaze towards the prisoner, Mentis rammed his chain against the restraints, breaking them with a resounding crack as the remainder of the energy infused within them dissapated into the manacles. The prisoner didn't say a word, merely meeting his gaze with a nod.

"Wait here for an hour, by then the area should be cleared." Mentis said to the man, resolving to murder anybody standing in the way of his freedom, he knew how it was to be confined to these dungeons.

Looking upwards, Mentis scoffed at Aidan's remarks, As if they would suspect an attack from the prison, let alone a prison accessed through a coffin.

Turning his gaze back towards the darkened hallways, Mentis wondered how they would meet up with the rest of the group.

Won't be needing this... Mentis thought as he stripped the guardsmen of their clothing, leaving their bloodied corpses naked in the corner of the chasm.

"You don't have anything against wearing the clothes of a dead man, do you?" Mentis asked Tyreon as he thrust a set of clothing towards him.