A chain of explosion shook the tower when Kohryn landed at the bottom. Flames and smoke curling into the room she'd just run through.
The mimic's eyes found her and he was throwing himself back, scurrying as far away from her as his chains would take him. "Please, please, please noooo." He whined his face cresting as he spoke in a wail. "I'm sorry. Pleeease." He begged.
She wasted no time marching towards him. He curled into himself, tried to hide from her as she leered. He let out an inhumane screech when she snatched him up, her fingers twisting into fabric and skin that folded and stretched a little too readily.
"Look at me." Kohryn demanded cracks of energy rippling around her.
It was not soothsaid, yet the mimic found his head twitching up to view her.
Blood leaked from her face, little rivulets and streams trailing from her eyes and nose. He could see red soaking into the shoulders of her shirt from her ears. The blackened sclera she'd possessed when they fought on the mountain, now just peaked out from the rims of her eyelids. Great yellow rings beheld him, commanding and filled with a wild anger.
"You will lead me out of this prison or I will kill you."
The mimic trembled, whipping his head about as a little whine escaping his lips.
She leaned closer, the blackness in her eyes pulsing. Her hollow voice was even more frightening as it dropped to a whisper. "There are two options for you, mimic. Maybe we both live, or you can die right now."
Another explosion shook above, little bits of dust and debris sprinkling on them. Guards screamed in incoherent commands. A pained howl sounded above the rest, matching the pitch of the alarm.
His head lolled around in a confirmation and he yammered, "I-I know a way out. I know a way. Please. I know."
He cried out as she destroyed the heavy and sapping shackles. Jerked away from her when his perception momentarily blurred with their removal. Then he felt her once more. The energy from the mountain; denser, refined, and churning around her in a torrid. She reigned above him, he on his knees, basking beneath the glowing rings and ribbons of power present for those with the eyes to see them. He had but a single moment to stare, slack jawed, before her clawed hand was gripping his arm and they were flying through the air.
Kohryn came up shorter on the tower wall with the weight of him in her grasp. She caught the stone and the mimic pulled them the rest of the way over, his good arm extending with audible cracks.
"Coming out!" She yelled, hoping another blast didn't engulf the room while she was standing in it.
The hallway was ash and cinders and smoldering brick seared black. Bodies piled on the floor and a few guards clamored on the end of a hallway still engulfed in flames.
The singing man held himself against the wall, a mass a black sap floating around him in amorphous blobs. He was a mess, a body only clad in trousers was rudely slashed and pried open. He was wrapped in stained and dirty bandages that held in the poisons. He possessed a strange grey skin, misted with sweat and fever, that even Kohryn could tell was pallid in its color. It was made worse by hair nearly electric white. Long ears decorated in rings, some ripped from his lobes, drooped with exhaustion. Soot speckled him.
Yet despite his apparent fatigue and ill state, his eyes were blown wide. They were the largest eyes on any being she'd ever seen, starry and black, white rings oscillating rapidly from the center. He looked intoxicated as he saw her.
"Are you okay?" She asked him, dragging the mimic along who she still had yet to release.
His gaze shuttered in a skeptic wave over the man in her grasp, then he nodded, breath coming out in fast pants.
"Alright." She grabbed the bag she'd tossed at his feet earlier then turned to the mimic. "Remember what I said, mimic. If I feel like you're doing anything suspicious you die." She squeezed his arm then released him.
His arms curled around himself, the one regrowing short and almost child-like. "I-I understand."
Kohryn quickly secured the bag, tightened the strap across her chest so it hugged her tightly. It'd been a poor move on the part of the illusionist to allow the now dead men into the cell today. In his defense, he probably thought she was heavily sedated and deep in a mirage. It would not have been the first time she and the illusionist had gone to a grassland. But it had been the first time the grassland had been Nowhere specifically, with its haunting red sky and strange happenings and inhabitants.
She strode over to the singing man, once more taking his weight on her shoulder and wrapping an arm around him. The thrum of energy that flowed between them amplified at the contact. They hobbled forward, the guards screaming in the distance. "Lead the way, mimic."
He looked left then right, head ticking as his expression morphed between anxiety and contemplation. He quickly tapped his fingers together, mumbling to himself, then gave a twitching nod. "This way."
He led them through hallways and rooms and the singing man alit the way they came in flames that burned from the saps that trailed him. He'd flick out an arm and the black resin would multiply, spattering and sticking to the walls and floor. Then little sparks and crackles would glimmer across its top before exploding in a sweltering ball of flames.
When the mimic finally led them up stairs they were outrun by a column of smoke. The first fight they were shoving their faces into the crook of their arms, the singing man's buried into Kohryn's neck as he clung to her. The second flight and their eyes were watering, sputter hacks joining sirens, screams, and the whooshing sound of fire and thick smoke quickly traveling through the prison.
Up one more flight and the stone was burning beneath her feet. A static filled the air and the smoke around them began to rapidly heat up.
"We need to get out of here now!" Panic sung in the undercurrent of his song, pulling at the connection between her and the man. The command added to the chaotic hum.
Escape. Escape! ESCAPE!
Her breaths were unyielding as she took in smoke and soot and expelled ashy coughs.
"Now!"
NOW! NOW! ESCAPE!
Her fist hit the nearest wall and the world around them exploded.
.
Smoke caught fire, an instantaneous ignition that sent out a blast at every angle. It met the shock wave of Kohryn's energy and the flames were batted away as the wall rippled like liquid then violently shattered. The explosion sent them flying through the hole she'd made.
Her arms wrapped around Delta, the mimic curled into her side, fist full of her ratty shirt, as they hit the ground. Stone rained down, chunks and pebbles punching into them while flame and smoke set free into the sky. It waved up the building with sinister fingers plunging themselves through windows and scratching their way to the roof.
The sirens continued to blare around them and were now joined by hundreds of screams. Some deep, some ragged and breathless, others airy and light, all sounding out together.
Singed, nearly burnt to a crisp, coughing and bleeding from the impact, the persistent woman lifted them, grabbing hold of the mimic by his scruff like a pup and setting him up right.
Delta felt even heavier on his feet now, sagging most of his weight into her, and yet her vyra continued to channel through him. A heavy continuous stream. He could feel more resin already welling beneath his skin, begging to be set free.
"Whats happening?" She looked out over a courtyard they'd landed in.
All around them captives and prisoners had heads turned to the sky with mouths wide open. Screams tunneled through their throats in horrible cohesion. On a wall overlooking the yard, a couple guards had fallen to the same action. Others fidgeted or withered and the more unfazed cranked their heads left and right, frightened with their staffs held out in front of them. The massive explosion was secondary to the occurrence at hand and they were frozen, unsure of what to do.
It was a horror to be beheld. A mass psychosis unlike anything Delta had ever seen. The heat of the raging fires did nothing to warm the chill it incited and his flesh crawled when the mimic answered her.
"You."
"Me?" It hardly sounded like a question from how her voice cracked and gargled around the ash and smoke she'd inhaled.
A head snapped towards them. A man with a braided goatee and scars crisscrossing his arms, a prisoner of war. His mouth stretched out in an unnatural 'o' as he continued to scream and his eyes rolled in his head. Then they suddenly locked on Kohryn.
The scream cut from his breath yet his mouth remained open. Another head followed, then another like a wave of attention that turned toward them. For the briefest moment the last scream in the yard cut short and only the alarm rang through the day.
A wind carried the first of fallen leaves across the ground, cool and crisp. The fire behind them billowed with its gentle touches. Kohryns fingers twitched and he could hear her swallow. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple, glimmering in the high noon sun.
"Eeeee-" The scar strewn man whispered through lips that did not move. "Eeeeessscape. Essscape. Escape."
"Eeee- Escape. Escape. Eeeee. Escape." Began to tumble from every mouth.
Kohryn dug her fingers harder into his side and he winced. She didn't notice as they continued their chant.
"Escape, escape, escape, escape." One guard on the wall was the first to move, a chanter who turned to his brother, raising a fist and bringing it down.
Chaos erupted. The wave surged forward, toward the wall, stampeding as their screams started back up peppered with howls of 'escape'. Around them doors burst open, Eenoans and prisoners alike spilled from the building. Windows began to break and bodies flung themselves out. The fire spread and so did the madness as those who fled entered the yard.
Guards and prisoners turned on each other alike. Fists struck out, energy ripped from staffs, and plumes of fire continued to shoot from the building. The raging hoard surged to the wall, those nearest already tore at brick with bloody fingernails, leaving trails of red scratches across its stolen surface. Yowling Eenoan priests stationed on its ridge dove over its side.
Kohryn took a step and then another, taking them forward with the mimic skittishly circling them. The men in the yard split, continuing to fight, yet in uniformity they moved away from her.
The wall did not stand a chance as the crowd enveloped them and they moved in a protected bubble to its towering edge, The prisoners had already begun to break through its layers and it came down with an easy kick.
Freedom called on its other side and prisoners spilled through, sprinting into the woods, howls still tunneling from their mouths. "Escape, escape, escape," echoed through thin trees bejeweled in their early autumn garb. Delta, Kohryn, and the mimic stumbled past the wall, leaves kicking up and crunching beneath their feet.
Behind them Illowen burned and its inhabitants continued in their frenzied riot.