Risen Chapter 31: Smoke

The canid Risen, gathered in a cluster in their assault against the two mercenaries, scattered like dust before the Stonewolf. The massive beast pushed through them like a storm through the seas, breaking them apart with a sound akin to a deafening crack of thunder. Even from where I was, I could see its opponents bone ripple and flex, bending unnaturally until they finally cracked.

Rather than waiting to see more, I rushed in - though, with the Stonewolf protecting Hector and Robert, not towards the group of attacking Risen. Instead, I moved towards their masters. Just as with any Risen, that was the weak point.

Unlike the Stonewolf or Katrina, I didn’t have any easy means of shattering the bones of the animated dead, pushing them to the point of uselessness. While I had the option of using [Woundshift] to transfer a large number of injuries onto a chosen Risen, it was not a method that I wanted to rely on. There were just too many potential problems that could occur; not to mention, I might find that I need [Woundshift] later on.

It seemed that Will had a similar idea. The recovered man ran beside me, moving with a surety that belied his previous state. There weren't many men who could so easily recover from an injury of that degree - physically healed, or not. It took a certain strength of will, a certain iron fortitude to press back into danger immediately afterwards.

I wasn’t surprised to find that Will was such a man.

As we ran, the mercenary reached out to the side, brushing his fingers against the swarm of Risen that flew alongside us. A light flared from his shoulder, sign of a conduit being activated.

A moment later, his arm was replaced with a set of hefty pincers, constructed of a thick black carapace. He had [Transfiguration], I realized, just as Jack did. Yet, unlike the rather boisterous mercenary, the soft-spoken member of the duo had chosen a far more aggressive path for his transformation.

The two of us burst through the final veil between us and Katrina, pushing past the haze of black and entering the eye of the storm. Katrina had somehow managed to push the gathered enemies through the doorway of a nearby shop; through the windows, I could catch a small picture of the entranceway directly inside. The mercenary stood above a downed gray man, blood running freely from wounds in his side and shoulder. She took a little step, bringing her bonehammer down against the side of the man’s knee at an angle, crushing it against the street below with a brutal efficiency.

Despite the protection given by the gray dust, I heard a clear snap as his knee gave way, unable to withstand the strike from such a formidable angle. The man screamed.

I fought against a brief moment of pity and sympathy, before remembering myself. Had I not arrived when I did, Will might already be dead. Meanwhile, the gray man, crippled or not, was still alive. Not to mention, crippling strikes were far less permanent with the ability to heal others so common; in my time, it had been a rare few who were given the Gift to heal. More often than not, their time was too precious for all but the most serious of cases - or, as was regrettably the case far more often, the richest of cases.

With that in mind, I stowed my compassion.

I brought myself back to the fight.

Even with the crippled man down, there were still five more of the gray dust-affected criminals. The only uniformity among them was the unnatural tint of their skin; some wore rags, while others were clad in far nicer clothing. One of them brandished a butcher’s knife, while another held a hammer, and three more held nothing at all.
The gray men, oddly enough, seemed less aggressive than I would have expected. Given their temporary increase in strength, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they simply rushed Katrina, attempting to take her down through a combination of simple strength and strength in numbers. They didn’t. They were holding back for some reason.

The man with the hammer pulled back even further, disappearing through an open doorway. The sound of cracking bone quickly followed. Yet, with Katrina so heavily outnumbered, I didn’t have time to rush past and investigate.

I caught the scent of smoke again, stronger this time, wafting through the doorway that led to the street outside.

Will moved towards the nearest of the gray men - fortunately, one of the ones without a weapon, making me breathe a sigh of relief. He brandished his heavy pincer, clacking it menacingly and rushing forward. At the same time, a wave of flying Risen flew into the man’s face, forcing him to flinch. The pincer wrapped itself around the criminal’s wrist and squeezed.

For a moment, I thought that it would break, shattered by the force that was being applied to it.

Yet, instead, the man grabbed the base of Will’s pincer-like appendage and pulled himself closer. With his other hand, he loosed a heavy blow. Will folded under the strike, bending forward as it pressed into his abdomen. From the sound of his grunt, he likely would have lost hold of his last meal, had it not already been splattered across the street in the process of his recent disembowelment.

The gray-tinged man raised his arm, preparing to bring his elbow down on the mercenary’s bared back. A second wave of Risen smashed against him like a black tide, forcing him to sputter and hack as they found openings in his mouth and nostrils. I looked back towards the street for a moment, spotting a stationary dragonfly hovering in the still-open doorway. I gave it a thumbs up, congratulating the youth that rested behind its eyes, and stepped into the fray myself.

Hoping that Will and Roy together would be enough to take down the one that he had challenged, I instead directed my efforts towards assisting Katrina. The woman was a juggernaut of white bone, able to ignore blows that would have broken any other target, shifting the injuries away to her Bloodbonded Risen.

Still, she wasn’t unstoppable entirely. Each blow rocked her back, forcing her boots to skid across the bone below - until, finally, one of the men that surrounded her gave up on strikes entirely.

Instead, he simply threw her.

The indomitable woman soared through the air, her limbs flailing in a manner that I would have described as comical, were it not so potentially deadly - not for her, but for any errant passerby.

She smashed into the wall with an echoing crack of fracturing bone. A moment later, she pulled herself to her feet, brushing a scattering of bonedust off of her clothes. The wall behind her had shattered slightly under the impact, forming a spiderweb of light fissures that ran up its face.

I was sure that Katrina’s spine had suffered a similar injury, not that she let it show.

As she pressed back into the fray, I joined her, giving the mercenary a sharp nod of encouragement - not that I thought she needed it, but you never knew. Just as we began to press forward together, something changed.

Shouts echoed out from the street, garbled and broken by the distance and the din, mixed with deafening cracks and thuds - and moments later, a sharp whistle.

The sounds of the buzzing swarm outside ceased.

I turned around, startled by the change, only to see a welcome sight: a contingent of the Spectral Guard, a pile of shattered Risen, and a now-safe pair of mercenaries.

At the sight of the Spectral Guard, one of the gray men cocked his head to the side, before glancing around at the others and providing some sort of signal. They were quick to react to the silent command, gathering together and pushing into the backroom of the shop - and yet, they still hadn’t taken anything. Not yet, at least. Not that I had seen.

It didn’t make any sense.

Despite being addicts and criminals, the Gray Woman’s people had been a constant thorn in the side of the Spectral Guard, absconding with their stolen goods again and again - disappearing without a trace each time. After having seen the Gray Woman and her partner, I understood how that might be possible.

They might have been strong and powerful with the gray dust, but why act this way? Why not move quickly, get away before they were cornered? It was what they had always done. It was what I had assumed they would always do.

So what had changed?

One of their number, at least, was clearly unhappy with the development.

“Wait, you damn bastards, don’t fucking leave me here for the Guard!” His words became increasingly panicked when they didn’t give him a second glance, pleading to us this time. “You have to help me, you can’t let them arrest me. I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t have a choice. She made me, I couldn’t say no. I can’t ever say no anymore. And if the Guard arrests me, I’m as good as dead. Please.” When we didn’t reply, it only got worse, devolving into a litany of piteous pleading. “Please please please please please please -”
A few members of the Guard walked in, giving Katrina and Will a set of familiar nods. They knew each other then - at least professionally. I wasn’t surprised in the least.

“Are they still here?”

As I wanted to keep my interactions with the Guard as close to a minimum as possible, I waited for one of the others to speak.

“In the back,” Will replied.

I let the guardsmen take the lead - or rather, their Risen. It was an understandable plan, putting those that could not die up front. Likely even procedure, given the potential in cutting down on deadly ambushes.

Yet, as we stepped into the backroom, we found an unwelcome sight. Acrid smoke clouded the room, a bundle of wood and fabric burning in a corner as a fire began to grow. A hole had been smashed into the wall of the building, leading into the next shop. And from there, another one. And another.

And in each of those buildings, flames had bloomed to life.

We swept through the buildings in a frenzy, putting out the fires before they could spread further. We never caught sight of the fleeing criminals. I suspected they were long gone.

By the time we finished, my lungs had been clogged with smoke and soot. The others hacked, coughed, and sputtered, far more affected by it than I.

And still, I wondered.

What had been the point? What had changed?

Finally, as I exited the final building and looked to the sky, I found my answer.

It was in the form of smoke. It was in the form of chaos. They filled the sky around me in every direction. The Low Market was in flames. The High Market had been, too. Even the Temple District had not gone unscathed; smoke billowed from my south, just as it did in every other direction.

Even the High Market was blackened and burned, more fires than I had realized being set in the shops all around it. The streets swarmed with Guardsmen, more than I realized had existed. The other infernos had presumably garnered similar responses.

Yet, it was the eyes of my crow-self, left behind at the Spectral Guard HQ to oversee Gil, that truly confirmed my suspicions.

The Barracks District was on fire, too - and walking through the flames, straight into Barracks HQ, was the Gray Woman.

The men who had come to the High Market had never cared about getting away with any valuables. I realized that they had only been part of a city-wide distraction, pulling the Spectral Guard away.

The Gray Woman had gone for the Stone.