Chapter 102: Water

Fresh presses herself against the window, swiping it away, not sure what ability she presses on as she simply tries to remove it as fast as she can from the world.

“WITCH!” yells a voice from the crowd and the entire wall of shields that held steadfast against the wave of fists smashing against them, the wall of shields that didn’t budge an inch for the many vampires howling in the darkness, now shifts, as several of them lower the large pieces of metal to take a look. The anqas behind them, attached to the carriages start stamping into the stones, the priests next to them barely able to keep the animals under control as they go wild. The lanterns attached to the carriages swing madly through the night, the chains that they hang from rattling like the clattering of a fistful of jangling coins.

Any screams that were still present before have now fallen silent, together with the final death of the last vampire a moment ago. Murmurs run through the crowd of a hundred fearful eyes that stare her way.

“We need to go,” says Jubilee quickly. “Now!” they hiss towards her, pulling on the hem of her robe.

“A witch!”

“KILL THE WITCH!”

“DEMON!”

The light of the night shifts as something adds to the glow of the looming moon that smiles down on them all with a crooked grin. A sudden burst of bright light breaks through the crowd and Fresh stares in fearful shock, as a massive silhouette jumps in front of her. The fireball explodes against the man from the sect’s back, wrapping around him and sending a scorching flame flying off to the sides as it smashes against his armor.

“Are you okay?!” asks Fresh as she looks in shock at the heavy breathing giant who took the full brunt of the spell meant for her. His metal armor turns scorching hot in an instant, she feels it radiating towards her. He simply exhales again, as the blistering heat begins to singe him with an audible hiss. She can smell a sour burning from where she stands. It almost sounds like a liquid coming to boil.

“KILL HER!” yells another voice from the crowd. The line of guardsmen don’t move yet however. Only a few take a couple tentative steps forward, but then stay back where they stand, as they notice that none of their neighbors are brave enough to go forward with them.

The crowd shifts in a furious rage that has no outlet, Fresh watches as a hundred faces, all filled with a sudden malice, glare her way. Familiar faces, familiar eyes look her way. People she has made things for, whose clothes she’s repaired, who she shared her potions and drinks with, sometimes for free on those rare occasions when Jubilee was looking away, sliding them over the counter with a wink. All of them glare at her with disgusted, indignant eyes that shine with clear malicious intent.

A man, an exorcist from the church, stands atop the center cart and he stares over the anarchy, his long, thin scarf billowing in the night. His hand lifts up and those around him fall silent and soon the others, noticing the quiet, do so as well. The people move apart, separating themselves from a small entity in the center of their mass who they have already deemed as unclean.

“Evil has befallen our city!” preaches the head exorcist. “Kill the witch and everyone she has BEFOULED with her malignancy!” He points to the side, towards the opening in their midst. Towards the outcast who stands there, having already been understood to be different, perhaps her prior spell-casting having been witnessed by the many. The crowd shifts, moving in a circle around a single priestess standing in the midst of it all. “BEFOULED!”

“BASIL!” cries Fresh, running past the giant from the sect towards the opening in the crowd. A heavy hand yanks her back and her feet slip off of the ground, her body lurches back and away from the raging mass of people as the fabric of her own robe chokes her from the sudden, forceful tug. A voice yells in her ear, but she can’t discern if it’s Jubilee’s or the man’s or even the trickling words of the fountain, all she sees is the white silhouette standing behind the lowered shieldwall, she sees Basil vanish into the midst of the tightening circle. As the crowd closes in back around her, barring any sight of her, all that Fresh sees of her friend are the splatters of dark red blood that fly through the air, propelled by hacking metal.

Fresh screams, reaching back for her the priestess as the giant from the sect throws her over his shoulder, as she somehow moves further and further away despite her legs kicking to move back towards Basil. It feels as if she were swimming, but the heavy current of the black-water is flowing in the opposite direction and she is powerless to fight it. “KILL THE WITCH!” yells a clear voice that echoes through the night. The shield wall charges forward, emboldened now, rushing straight towards them, moving now as a unified front as the frenzied crowd behind them pushes their way back to the plaza that they had just run from moments before.

More screams than she has ever heard before fill the night, all coming together to mix in with her own into a harrowing sound that howls through the darkness like the anguishing lamentation of a banshee.

They barrel through the wreckage of the store, a wall of jagged glass bursting up behind them as a familiar voice rings out. “This way, out the window!” yells Jubilee as they run up the ruined stairs. The entire store is destroyed, the floors are coated in broken glass and colorful liquids from the potions together with fragments of bone that float on the surface of the puddles. The wall of glass shatters behind them as the horde barges in after them only seconds behind.

A second later, Fresh feels herself in free-fall, as the man from the sect launches them both out of the broken upstairs-corridor window. Just before they fly out, Fresh spares one last glance down the long upstairs hallway that she had walked down nearly every day for these past few happy weeks. The corridor that she had walked down for the last time. It is entirely destroyed. Jubilee’s room, her room, the kitchen, even the door that she never got to look inside of. All of them are torn and ripped apart, as destroyed as the downstairs area and in an instant, as she reaches for them as well, they all leave her grasp, slipping out and away from her fingers as the three of them fall down into the backstreet.

She feels herself floating. It's just a dream, right? This is all just another bad dream. Another nightmare that the fountain wants her to see, right? She’ll wake up any moment now. Right?

They land, her gut pressing deeper into the metal shoulder of the man’s armor, screams hollering out of the house behind them as they run. The raging calls ring out through the dark night, filling it with their horrific presence. The many voices echo out beneath the light of the horrible moon, all of the screams give the house behind them the impression that it is haunted. As if it was filled with wailing ghosts who howl in a shared agony.

The upper wall that they just sprang out of explodes, an eruption of fire blasting through, tearing it entirely off of the building. Wood and ash rain down behind them as they run, as the exterior facade of the house begins to collapse and peel off entirely, like skin flaking off of an embalmed corpse. It comes loose and falls, as if it had been there for entirely too long to begin with.

They round the bend, running down the dark alley in a direction that she has never gone down before, as the destroyed house leaves her sight for what might be the final time.

“Let me go! LET ME GO!” howls Fresh, her fists smashing against the man’s armor.

“No,” is all that he says, as he runs after Jubilee who leads the way.

“Over here!” calls her friend and they turn towards the left, bending into a side alley. Voices ring out behind them as the mob pursues them.

“They went around the back!”

“Cut them off!”

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Bells ring aloud in the night which can find no quiet. Fresh flails and kicks, but the man from the sect refuses to let her go, no matter how often she smashes a fist against the back of his head or a knee against his chest. He just grabs tighter and the two of them keep running. They come to a sudden stop, stopping at a closed door. Jubilee smashes their fist against it. A small slit near the top slides open, a pair of eyes staring out of the darkness. “Password?” asks the gruff voice.

“Fuck you! Open the door!” barks Jubilee. The slit window slides back shut and a second later, the door opens and they run inside.

“You seem to be in a bit of a pickle,” says the cloaked man coyly, closing the door behind them. “Prophecies, eh? Nothing but trouble.”

“We’re using tunnel eight,” says Jubilee, rushing past him.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” says the man from the thieves’ guild. “They know about number eight. They found it three days ago.”

“Fuck! You useless fucks!” snaps Jubilee at the man who stays entirely indifferent.

“Take number six and head left,” says the man. “Seal it behind you.”

“How much?” asks Jubilee. The voices outside grow louder and louder as the crowd rushes into the alley that they were just in, swarming in from both sides of the street.

“We’ll come to collect in the future. When you’re ready,” says the man. “After all, we have to protect our investments,” he smiles at Fresh, as the giant carrying her runs after Jubilee who is already on the move. The man from the thieves’ guild waves back, speaking to her and her alone in a playful voice as they leave. “The pact is sealed,” he says in a tone that almost implies it was a joke of some kind.

The door behind him shakes with a violent rattle as something heavy smashes against it. Fresh only sees the first chunks of splintering wood fly past him just before they drop down a hole and she finds herself swallowed by a cold, damp darkness. The flying debris and particulate darken the air around him in that instant and make it oddly visible; the small, red bite-mark on his uncovered calves. As if a snake had bitten him and the area had begun scarring over.

The man from the thieves’ guild leaves her sight in a cloud of dust and flying debris as they plummet downward.

Fresh isn’t sure for how long they run down the long underground tunnel. It’s well lit. Dozens of their lanterns, of her lanterns, hang here on the walls and fill the entire space with a pale, blue light.

The girl hangs there, numb and limp, over the shoulder of the man from the sect. “It’s all gone,” she mutters to herself, looking around at the underground tunnel. “It’s all gone,” she repeats, her eyes wandering from side to side. As they run, she catches a glimpse of herself, a warped reflection in the matte glass of one of her own lanterns in the fraction of a second, just as they run past it.

The girl in the reflection, her gestalt warped and wrong as if she had no eyes, simply stares back towards her as they run. Black-water runs down her face. She doesn’t say anything. But her mouth moves, her body contorting and pressing itself in and out, as the mirror image lifts a finger to point at her. As the girl in the mirror laughs and laughs and laughs, now that she is finally in on the joke as well.

Now that she’s finally realized what the fountain has found so funny this entire time. It’s her. She’s the joke. She’s just been playing make-believe this entire time and now, the fun is over.

Razmatazz

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