Chapter 20 - Part 16

Orphan snapped the longbow in half as he dropped down from the third-story window. The spellcasting rakshasa was still hot on his trail, although he had left the two lesser rakshasa archers behind, one with a sprained knee. A grayish beam of light went over the warforged’s shoulder as he fell, and where it hit, some rubble was turned to dust.

Orphan saw another grate, and he stepped on it, assuming a fighting stance. The rakshasa came floating down from the rooftop that he had been flying over, rainging bolts of electrical energy. The warforged dodged, but barely, and the smell of ozone rose from his back. The grate beneath him took a hit, but remained solid. The warforged took a hunk of rock that had been blasted from the street, and hurled it at the rakshasa.

The rakshasa sneered and waved his furred hand. A mere motion summoned magial force, knocking the rock aside, and then the rakshasa raised both hands, chanting.

Orphan sprinted as the spell was cast, running across the street. A fog came into being where he had been standing, an acrid thing with a terrible burning stench that licked at his heels and back, making the composite materials of his body sizzle. Orphan suppressed the urge to cry out in pain, forcing himself to keep running. He leaped up in the air and grabbed the rakshasa, easily pinning the thing’s legs and dragging it downwards.

“You dare?” it growled, slashing at him with its claws. One made a deep scratch in Orphan’s face, narrowly missing his eyes.

“No, I succeed,” Orphan told him, climbing the rakshasa’s body and pinning his arms. The rakshasa began to rise, still mentally controlling his flying magic.

“You can’t hurt me with your arms,” the tiger-thing laughed. “You can’t. My kind have been able to shrug off blows from the mightiest of dragons. You think you can choke me like some coliseum wrestler?”

“I killed one of your number and dumped him in a pit of lava,” Orphan said. “I killed him with the sai on my belt.”

“You boast emptily before you die,” the rakshasa snarled, lifting up higher while floating across the street, heading for a building with a red spire. He was now hovering above the acidic cloud.

“Tunnels that wind all over,” Orphan said. “A ghost of a coutal guarding a rod holding the essence of one of your greatest ones, a rod that can only be destroyed by adamantine. Over a hundred dretches.”

“You work for Gaijiros, that is how you got in here!” the rakshasa snarled. “Your pain will be legend!”

“Only if you find me,” Orphan said, dropping down into the fog made of acid. It burned him as he passed through it, but he had judged correctly. He landed on the grate, and his weight knocked it free of its mooring, and into the sewers.

The warforged was running even before the grate slammed into the dust.