Pathway

Chang Chang's orb of light flashed in a place of darkness-some sort of large chamber. It seemed, liberally endowed with rough heaps and pillars of blackened stone. In this second flash, they both saw the unmistakable sphere of eye-stalks writhing in pain or rage, quivering in the air low over some sort of beast. .. probably a beastfolk. The guardian. They were shocked to find the guardian in such a place. 

Ju Feng walked slowly, the fingertips of one hand just touching the boards in front of them, and looked again at the guardian. The problem was, Skullport was all too apt to be crawling with this sort of thing: the kind of strife Mirt and Durnan would get caught up in ... but had they chosen this particular strife, or found amusement elsewhere? Then their eyes fell on what she'd been searching for- a little ahead of her, along the narrow alley that ran from beneath them to the ruins where the guardian was standing. The heavenstone. Perched on round holder.

This was their fight, then. Ju Feng frowned. He quickly checked his robe, plucked something from under it, and gave it to Chang Chang. The Dragonhide talisman. It would go a long way in protecting her from the power of the guardian. Whose aura alone could hurl blasts while carrying that little bauble. 

Chang Chang collected the talisman and watched Ju Feng charged the guardian. She put a medicinal pill in her mouth and buckled up her belt again, bit her lip in thought, turned smoothly, and ran a little way along the edge of the stone wall. There, someone bolder than most had strung a line of washing from the high, hanging way to a balcony.

Though the cord was old and soft where glowmold had been washed away many times, it held one hurrying, catlike woman in leathers long enough for her to reach the wall. Chang Chang got one boot on the boulder and kicked hard, the mighty stone squealed in protest as she leapt away into darkness, fingers straining for the lantern line she sought. 

Her eyes were on the battle ahead. The guardian seemed to be trying to impale Ju Feng, who was ducking and rolling among stubby fingers of stone wall. As Chang Chang's feet found the boards of the stone walk, slid in something unpleasant, and shot her right across it into empty air beyond, she saw the guardian's clawed hands.

Blocks of stone crumbled, and Ju Feng dived away, a dagger flashing in his hand. Chang Chang was getting close now, and beyond them all-as she brought her feet together to crash down through the rotting roof of a bone-cart Chang Chang could see a few warily watching creatures behind the guardian. They were greatly wounded. A dark spider and a dreadwolf. Then Chang Chang's feet plunged through silk that was gray with age, and into brittle bones beyond. She shut her eyes against flying shards as she sank into a crouch, letting her legs take the force of her landing. 

"Grrrenarrr!" The guardian's roar of rage echoed off the buildings around, and Chang Chang  dodged sharply as she joined Ju Feng. She brought her glaive up and back behind her without looking or slowing. A heavy iron-like claw rang off its tip and rattled along a a stone boulder beside her. Up ahead, the guardian shook the air in a roaring frenzy that far outmatched the snarls of the ore behind her. Rays lashed out in all directions from its writhing, coiling eyestalks. 

Ju Feng stabbed down met some sort of shield and faded away, and one that lashed out toward Chang Chang had a similar fate. The others were causing spectacular explosions, bursts of flame and lightning-and in one spot, the stone was melting like syrup and slumping down upon itself in a slow flood. Auric light flashed and curled around the eye tyrant as it poured forth dark energy in a display that had the spider and wolf scrambling for cover. The last of the ruin's blackened walls toppled, with slow majesty, down atop the struggling spider and wolf. Dust rose slowly, the heaving underfoot subsided. 

Then, beams of deadly radiance flashed from the eyes of the guardian. Something unseen in the air blocked the rays, which struck with such savage force that the very emptiness darkened. Ju Feng and Chang Chang staggered to keep his footing, thrust back under the weight of the energy that clawed and tore at them. The guardian screamed in fresh rage. Was every puling human protected against all its powers? 

The guardian lashed out repeatedly with energy blasts and thrusting eye beams. The ground shook anew, and Chang Chang disappeared down a sliding mound of rubble as stones broke free from buildings all around and plunged to the streets. As Ju Feng crouched low and scrambled forward, stones broke off a large boulder to his left and crashed on the ground, splitting paving stones. 

A stone shard whirled out of nowhere and laid his cheek open with the ease of a slicing razor. Ju Feng hissed at the close call and put a hand up to shield his face, spreading his fingers to see Chang Chang struggling along like someone battling his way into the face of a gale-force wind. Blackness sparked and roiled around him as his shields slowly melted away - soon they would surely fail, and he would be blasted to a rain of blood. .. and she would lose him, forever. 

There was only one way he could go about this, and it might mean his life. Thrown away vainly, too, if he fouled up the lone chance she'd get. Ju Feng swallowed, tossed his head to draw breath and blow errant hairs from his eyes, and slapped the hilt of his sword so that the rune carved there would be smeared with the gore still leaking from his torn fingers. He felt its familiar ridges, slick and sticky with her blood, and nodded in satisfaction. Turning himself carefully to face the raging guardian, he firmly closed his hands together and performed the first stage of the infernal beast.

It was a terrible decision. He wasn't a fire elemental. The repercussion would be too much to bear. The sword shuddered in his hands and then bucked, and he clung to it grimly as the sword's power was unleashed. It blazed away into nothingness as the sword dragged him up into the air and flung him on the ground. He held on to it as the sword shot forward. Eerie silence fell. 

He was somehow brimming with energy that was slowly burning his veins. Springing up into the air on a one-way vault that would end in a bone-shattering encounter with the cavern wall or a sickening plunge to the ground if he judged wrongly. The guardian hadn't noticed him, it was still lashing at the fallen boulders with futile gazes and hurled blasts as Ju Feng rose out of the flashing and trembling air, passing up and over the monster-now! 

The sword's power winked out reluctantly in obedience to his will, and Ju Feng found himself falling, sword first. Straight down at the curving, segmented body of the eye tyrant he plunged, headed for just behind the squirming forest of its eyestalks. Ju Feng spread his legs and braced himself for the landing-he'd have only a bare breath to strike before it flung him away. 

With solid thumps, Ju Feng's boots struck the beholder's body, and the blade in his hands flashed once and back again before he'd even caught his balance. Almost cut through, an eyestalk flopped and thrashed beside him, spattering him with stinging yellow-green gore as another eye turned his way. His boots found purchase on the curving body plates, and Ju Feng lunged desperately, putting his sword tip through the questing eye and shaking violently to drag the steel free before another orb could bathe her in its deadly gaze. 

Three of the eyestalks were turning, like slow serpents, and the guardian was rolling over to fling her off. Ju Feng kicked out at one eye, as his balance went, and flailed with his blade at another. He fell hard on the bony plates of the monster's body, arm wrapped around an eyestalk. He clung to it with one hand and drove the quillons of his blade into the questing orb that came curling at him. Milky fluid burst forth, drenching him. Spitting out the reeking slime, Ju Feng grimly slashed at another eye. Then he was falling, the guardian's bony bulk no longer under him. 

Stones rushed up to meet him, and Ju Feng tucked himself around his sword, trying to roll. There was no time, and with numbing force, he crashed into what was left of a wall, and then reeled back helplessly. He fell heavily on the floor as his whole body shook unctrollably. His soul appeared to be on fire. His meridians were at the point of combustion. Mists swirled in front of his eyes, and a new wetness on his chin told where he'd bitten through his lip.