Chapter 50: 60. Jump

Rorri

 

Adar poked his head into the room as Bilge gathered the kids.

“There’s smoke coming from the lobby,” he whispered, “and all the exits are blocked from outside.”

Rorri’s stomach plummeted. The cold hands of dread gripped his neck, sapping the moisture from his mouth. He was in Belethlian again, his heart pounding, images of the fire flickering on the room’s pastel walls—

 

sprinting from the burning trees,

stumbling over vines and underbrush—

 

He squeezed his eyes shut. Now is not the time, he chided himself, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Did you s-see anyone else?” he managed to croak.

“No,” Adar said. “But I haven’t checked upstairs, yet. We need to get them as far away from the fire as possible.”

Rorri swallowed and took a deep breath. “The w-washroom at the end of the hall is b-big enough, I think,” he said. “And it has w-water…”

“Let’s go, then,” Adar said with a curt nod.

 

Another soul-rattling shriek rang out above the rest:

“IT’S THE DUÉN!”

 

Rorri’s trembling body froze for a moment of pure stillness, a moment of otherworldly clarity. He glanced up from under his deeply furrowed brow, fire cracking in the blacks of his eyes. Without another word, he ducked his head and sprinted through the half-door, leaving his housemates behind.

“Oi!”

Bilge started after him, then hesitated at the door, checking back towards the kids and Adar.

“Go on,” Adar said calmly. “I’ll take the kids.”

Bilge’s eyes sparkled, heavy and grim. “I promised ‘em we’d play duck-duck-goose, ay?” he said with a sniff. “Make it happen, mate.”

With that, he took off after Rorri, like a father after his wayward son, leaving the silver elf alone to lead the little ones to safety.

 

*******

 

Pillars held up the second floor’s roof, lining the divide between the hall and balcony, with no walls erected to keep out the open air. Smoke was just beginning to slither in from the spiral staircase further down, but with the first floor entrance to the foyer cut off, this was the only way he might glimpse what was happening in the auditorium. This was the only way he might glimpse the Duén.

He reached the box seating and gingerly tested the doorknob to the closest booth – cool and unlocked. He peeked inside. It was empty. Stranger still, there was no indication that the box had ever been occupied – no depression in the seat cushions, no wine glasses, no grape stems or any other remnants of the upper class’s luxuries. Rorri paused, perplexed, but with no time to spare, he slipped in, sidled up to the railing, and peered over the edge.

The spotlight still shined on the leading lady’s lifeless form, her chest painted red with her blood. Others, too, were sprawled limp over chairs, in the walkways, some still writhing, moaning, tails of arrows swaying in the air. Rorri’s chest seized. Shacia’s body could be among them.

His eyes flitted about, searching for her ghost-white skin, her tight pink dress, but she wasn’t there, or at least not in plain sight. He couldn’t see any Duén, either, and most of the patrons had already pushed their way out of the theater. It didn’t make any sense. He was no stranger to death and war, but this was different. These were not soldiers against soldiers, these were cowards against civilians, brutality for brutality’s sake. The Duén were tactical, precise. Why would they torch a theater in the center of the city? It didn’t make sense. How did they even get there? They couldn’t have dug their way in…

He shook out his head. Now was not the time to speculate. Slowly, he crawled out of the booth into the hall.

A shadowy figure appeared between the pillars, silhouetted by the moon.

“Oi! The hell d’ya think yer doin’, mate!” Bilge’s voice bellowed across the open air.

“Shhh!”

Rorri scampered silently to his human friend, tugging him behind one of the columns so that they’d be obscured from anyone inside the hall.

“It’s not just a fire,” he whispered. “They have bows. I saw b-bodies in the auditorium with arrows sticking out of them.”

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Bilge paused, darkness clouding his eyes.

“Did’ja see the attackers?” he asked. Rorri shook his head.

“It doesn’t add up…” he muttered, glancing out over the balcony. The streets were empty – disturbingly empty – not a single carriage or wayward drunk to be seen, unusual even for that part of the city and that time of night. He rubbed his temples, head pulsing with questions he had no time to consider.

“D’ya have a weapon?” Bilge whispered. Rorri shot him an incredulous glare.

“Are you serious? Of course I don’t have a w-weapon!” he hissed. “I came here for a puppet show!”

“Neva know wot’s gonna happen, mate,” Bilge grumbled.

“…I mean, I can’t argue with you now, can I?”

A short distance away, dozens of people beat against the Nellywing Opera House’s grand entryway from inside, their muffled cries leaking out into the still night air. Rorri slinked to the balcony rail, with Bilge cautiously following behind. The entrance was barred shut by a thick metal beam, far too sturdy for the trapped guests to force their way out, no matter how many panicked fists pounded against the doors.

“I think I can make it,” Rorri breathed, leaning over the balustrade where the yellow banner swayed.

“You wot?”

“I have to jump,” Rorri said with fierce determination. “Someone has to—”

“You high, mate?” Bilge snapped. Rorri shut his eyes.

“Someone has to unbar the exit,” he said, “and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait on the Guard to save us. I think I can climb down the banner…”

“But tha’s, like…” Bilge squinted over the edge. “Tha’s like a hundred foot drop, mate—”

“It’s not a hundred feet—”

“Might jus’ as well be!”

Rorri stood firmly at the edge of the balcony, though his arms were beginning to shake.

“We’re running out of time,” he said. “The fire is getting bigger every second, and – if I’m going to d-die anyway – just once, I want to do something good...”

Rorri sniffed, a sudden torrent of tears flooding his eyes, stinging the space behind them. He hadn’t cried for years – decades, even – centuries, for all he knew. He’d forgotten what it felt like. He dropped his head, and the tears fell, dampening his lashes, but he kept his eyes open and level with the ground, so they didn’t touch his cheeks. They just fell, like plump drops of rain at the start of a terrible storm.

“And, t-to be honest with you… I don’t really have anything to lose.”

The two men stood in contemplative silence, each with shining eyes, refusing to look at the other—

 

But the moment was broken

by the unmistakable fwip

of an arrow whizzing just past their heads.

 

“Go!” Bilge shouted as he sprinted for the pillars. Rorri caught a glimpse of something glinting from inside his coat.

FWIP—

Another arrow zipped by. He clambered over the balcony rail and shimmied down until he was out of sight, white-knuckling the bars. The ground suddenly seemed much farther away than he’d calculated before... But there was only one way he could go.

He carefully relaxed his grip in one hand and reached for the yellow banner, his entire body supported by the strength of one skinny arm. He bundled a fistful of thin fabric, inexplicably silky for something designed to do nothing but hang in the air. Rorri had truly never hated the noble class more than he did as the banner caressed his sweaty palms, but with nothing else to hang onto, he bunched up as much as he could, exhaled slowly, uttered a prayer he was half-convinced would be his last, and released his grip on the railing.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT!”

Rorri flailed for another fistful of flag, spinning into its folds, blinded, entangled, and slipping.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT—!”

He hung onto the banner for half of its length, but his fingers cramped from the strain. The cloth slid through them until he was empty-handed, free-falling, hurtling towards the ground. He clawed at the air, grasping for anything to slow his descent, and managed to grip the very tip of the banner, but the fabric ripped away and he hit the ground with an unceremonious CRACK.

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