Shit, why isn't he teleporting anymore? Looking at the cornered Kaelan Rian couldn't help but mumble under his breath. Was he perhaps out of mana? Those earlier teleportations had to be seriously mana heavy.
Seemed like Kaelan's guess was correct as well. As soon as he had dodged the spear, Kaelan jumped down from the roof back onto the streets, before pulling out a syringe with blue liquid inside from his storage ring and injected into his arm.
The moment he had finished injecting the syringe, he teleported once again, this time appearing in the middle of a crowded street.
The chase fell down from the roofs onto a busy merchant street below. Soldiers crashed into the crowded road, knocking over stands selling spices and cloth. Regular people screamed and ran in all directions as soldiers cut through the mess with their weapons, trying to stay near their jumping target.
Rian threw a spell as well, causing pieces of ice to shoot forward, but he intentionally aimed them down, cutting through a cart of strange fruit instead of Kaelen's back.
Two soldiers, quicker than the rest, almost got hold of Kaelen's cloak. In answer, Kaelen turned, a fire-covered knife appearing in his hand. He cut out in a wide circle. One soldier fell right away, his chest burned open in an awful wound.
"Damn it. He is strong." Rian swore loudly for everyone to hear, his voice full of fake anger, hiding his relief that the chase was still going.
Kaelen was clearly getting tired. That potion from earlier must not have recovered his entire mana as Rian could see how bit by bit teleports were getting smaller, the space between them getting less and less.
And he wasn't the only one who had noticed. The soldiers, feeling his weakness, had their shouts getting louder and louder as they pushed the attack harder.
Seeing the situation Rian couldn't help as a cold ball of fear tightened in his stomach. He couldn't let them catch him. If they did then he would be forced to bolt into the opposite direction, letting go of all pretenses. And he didn't had some space affinity teleportation spells to make it all the way either.
With no other choice, he decided to go even harder on the act, letting loose a bunch of showy but weak spells from his elemental affinity, strong winds that did little more than throw dust and trash into the air, sheets of ice that pointlessly froze stair rails and walls, making more problems for the soldiers than for Kaelen.
Another soldier made a brave jump, but Kaelen, with a last bit of strength, blinked right behind the man and pushed his burning knife deep into the soldier's back, causing the man to fell back without a sound.
Seeing his chance, Kaelen pulled together the last of his power for one final, big teleport. He vanished from the street and showed up past the city's outer watchtowers, beyond the main line. Rian didn't wait. He used a huge burst from his Frostfang Wolf sigil, jumping the last high wall in one single, strong leap. He landed in a cloud of dry dirt outside the city, just a dozen steps behind the stumbling Kaelen. The few living soldiers who got over the wall followed behind as well.
Seeing that Kaelen had gone past the border and was now continuing to run through the forest, towards the dark line of the mountains belonging to Hollowcrown Peaks, the last of the soldiers who had made it across, along with the bald captain, began giving chase again. Rian did the same, quickly crossing into the dense tree line. This time, however, he started to run faster, using the full force of his wind spell to try and get away from the other soldiers.
They soon entered a thick, dark forest, the trees closing in around them. Suddenly, the air cracked with set-off magic. A net of thorny vines, clearly put there before, shot out from the bushes, wrapping around a soldier's legs and pulling him down with a choked yell. At the same time, another soldier set off a hidden spike pit, causing two more soldiers around him to be dropped into it with quick screams.
Booby traps? When did this guy even get the time to set these up?
Seeing the perfect chance, Rian shouted to the last soldiers, "He's taking us into a death trap! I'm going to go around to cut him off!" Before anyone could even understand the order or say no, he turned sharply off the path and into the heavier woods, still yelling about stopping Kaelen, while using the opportunity to get as far as he could from the soldiers.
As he ran alone through the dark trees, he could still hear the far-off, terrible sounds of more traps going off, a burning sound of acid, a loud crack of a falling tree, followed by more and more screams from the soldiers. Yet the further he moved, the more the sounds began to quieten, until a nervous quiet started to fall over the forest.
Did he lose them?
He was just starting to think he was finally free when the space around him suddenly twisted. The world bent and folded in on itself, the colors mixing into a sickening swirl. There was no sound, no feeling of movement, just a confusing jump.
The next moment, the twisting vanished as fast as it had come. He stumbled, finding himself on the top of an unknown tree. And standing a few feet away from him, leaning against a different tree was Kaelan, his chest heaving.