Chapter 20 - Part 14

Orphan threw his second dagger through a large window of painted glass. The crashing noise that it produced made a suitable distraction, and the group of rakshasas wearing armor and carrying swords almost as long as Orphan turned and ran towards the sounds. Orphan took off at a run, letting the tiger-headed things see him.

A shimmering wall of force appeared in front of the warforged, covering the whole street. Orphan jumped high, clearing the wall by inches.

A skeletal thing with a barbed tail jumped from a high window, landing in front of Orphan. It lashed out with its tail, and Orphan somersaulted over it. The thing tried to cast some sort of spell, but Orphan was already gone, bolting into a ruined building.

The warforged realized that he had made a mistake when he heard growling. There was little or no light in the long hallway he was running down, but there were several things in there with him that didn’t need light, and he had lost his sunrod to a toad thing with a flaming whip.

Orphan doubled back, turning on his heels, and tore down the hallway. The bone thing was there, and it was surprised to see him. Orphan drew his sai and charged. Seeing the weapon, the creature assumed a fighting stance.

Orphan rolled between the fiend’s legs, stabbing it in its tail with his sai as he jumped back into the street. The fiend howled in pain and tried to counterattack, but the warforged was already gone.

A whooshing sound was Orphan’s only warning. He flipped up in the air and the fireball shot under him. When it hit, the entire facade of the building caught fire, but Orphan rolled clear without being singed.

The bone thing roared with pain as the fireball explosion took down a crossbeam, dumping stone onto its hide. Orphan bolted down the street again, sharply turning a corner to find a rakshasa in wizard’s robes waiting for him, flanked by two lesser members of his kind firing black longbows.