Her instinct was to wriggle against the chains currently binding her to the wall and attempt to escape, but her sense of duty prevented her from doing so, prevented her from acting out or even attempting to make a case for herself. She was far too proud of her heritage to protest, far too dignified to express to the elders that she considered her punishment to be too severe. She would not accept that the failure of the attack was so much her fault; she had been told that it would be routine, and all of her training and education had led her to believe that she and her kind were the most powerful beings on earth, that nothing could stop them, /nothing./ As such, she hadn't expected the transgenics to be so adept at defending themselves, and although she knew that her cockiness had probably been her group's downfall, she still assigned most of the blame for the disaster at JamPony to her teachers. After all, they were the ones who had sown the seeds of over-confidence.
Nonetheless, she did not struggle and would not offer so much as a whimper of disapproval when her time came. If this was to be her fate, then so be it. For love of the Conclave, love of the entire Familiar race, she would accept her slated execution, perhaps even welcome it. The elders were wise and had climbed the ranks for a reason, and who was she to go against them, even when she believed that they might be going overboard? Such beliefs were probably just a byproduct of her instinctive will to survive, anyway. The Coming was fast approaching, the virus was almost ready and she understood the precautions being taken and the reasons behind the new and more strict approach to protocol. Even if she didn't, her life was the cult, and she felt it her responsibility to give it up for them by any means they deemed necessary.
Presently, two High Priestesses of the Conclave entered the room where Thula was being held, dressed in the robes of ritual and brandishing curved knives and ornate, silver cups. One of them carried a single snake, and with it held high above her head, she approached the former leader of the Phalanx and began chanting a deep, mournful melody. It was recognizable as the customary blessing for the dead, commonly used at Familiar burial ceremonies, with a few lines modified to speak specifically to the practice of execution. Behind her, the other Priestess dipped the blades of the knives ceremoniously into the cups, bowing her head and reciting a few words before laying them nearby on a burgundy cloth. Thula gulped, realizing at once the method with which she would be executed, and frightened by the prospect that, for the first and last time in her life, she would have to experience pain. She vaguely recalled the sensation from when she was a child, before she had completed the rite of passage and officially entered the ranks of the Familiars, but it was so terribly long ago... She knew only that it was horribly unpleasant, and could not fathom how to go about dealing with it, how to handle such an intensely distasteful feeling. The only thing that comforted her was the knowledge that she would not have to suffer it for long.
The snake was taken away, folded neatly into a black, velvet sack, and each Priestess took a knife before slowly making her way to the convicted, their graceful movements and impossibly long garments causing them to appear to be gliding across the polished stone bricks of the floor rather than walking. One positioned herself behind the other, and the one currently facing Thula raised her blade above her head, calling out a final prayer before pushing the weapon deep into the girl's stomach. At first, nothing substantial was felt; there was only the familiar pressure and the knowledge that she had been wounded. As the fast-acting poison seeped through her body, however, an ache that she had never known consumed her, acidly shooting through her veins and forcing a series of mangled cries past her lips. It was more terrible then she ever could have imagined, and what distressed her most of all was that, having never experienced a sensation of this sort before, she had no way to describe it to herself. She thought that it was as if her very senses had turned against her, as if the chemicals in her body had turned sour and curdled like spoiled milk, as if everything that ever was meant nothing because right now things were so horribly wrong, worse than worst.
As she cried and twitched under the ministrations of her new painful consciousness, the first Priestess moved silently out of the way and made room for the second, who followed suit by lifting her knife above her head and calling out a word or two. When she had done with that, she rested the tip of the blade against Thula's chest, directly in line with the girl's heart.
"For our children's children, and our mothers before us," the Priestess recited. "Fenos'tol, Thula."
"F...fenos'tol," Thula replied meekly. With that, the knife was shoved through her heart, and with a final cry, she fell limp against her binds and drifted off into eternity.
*******
Thula's voice wafted through the corridors of the building, serving as concrete evidence of the pain faced by those who were executed. While a few of the elders seated in front of him cracked a smile at the sound, Ames White only grimaced, now fearing his sentencing even more. He had been found grossly incompetent, as so many others were being found nowadays, and the Committee of Elders had expressed to him that the Conclave was tired of his mishandling of the transgenic operation and intended to prevent him from ever working on that particular project again. He knew that they were considering sentencing him to death; they had become incredibly strict in recent months and were making very good examples of those whom they determined to be less than worthy. He had tried to remain optimistic throughout the trial, hoping against hope that he would simply be knocked down a few levels and relegated to the completion of routine missions, but Thula's cries put him precariously on edge and made vanish all thoughts of coming out of this with his life intact.
Orin, the head elder, cleared his throat forcefully, held his head high in a posture of arrogance and peered down at White over the bridge of his nose. "We have given you more than enough chances, Ames. Time and time again, we have overlooked your mistakes and allowed you to continue operating. However, we only have so much patience. You failed to prevent the capture of your son and then failed to return him; you failed to keep your brother locked up and in his rightful place; you failed to exterminate X5-452 and her compatriots, on more than one occasion. How many times did you think we'd allow you to botch your duties before we grew tired of your careless mistakes, Ames? Did you think that you were getting a free ride, that this was some sort of dodge or hustle?"
"No, sir," White replied, his mind reeling. It was true that he had had his share of mishaps, but the elders didn't seem to understand his predicament. He had been given very limited resources, and 452 was more cunning and powerful than the Conclave seemed to realize. It also did not bode well for his authorities that their precious Phalanx had failed just as miserably as he. So horrendous was their failure, in fact, that the entire group had been disbanded, some of its members, like Thula, sentenced to execution, others knocked back into the civilian ranks. A new army was being raised from the ashes, but his bitterness, combined with that which he had seen in the past few weeks, led White to believe that such would be no more capable than its predecessor. The Conclave simply didn't /get it/, and it was pathetic as far as he was concerned. But, apprehensive as he was about winding up like Thula, he knew that he had no choice but to play their game.
"I have always fully understood my responsibilities, and I have tried my best to take care of them. My respect for the Conclave and for all Familiars is of the utmost, you must know," muttered White, his voice convincingly sincere. "But 452 has proven herself to be more of a problem than it was at first thought she would be. If I were given a little more leeway, a little more help..."
Orin chuckled. "Don't take me for a fool, Ames. We've given you more leeway than you've shown you can handle, and you've done depressingly little with it." He glanced down at the mahogany table in front of him, then looked from his left to his right, signaling to the other elders that he had made his decision. White gulped, twitching as a bead of nerve-induced sweat slipped down his forehead and off the end of his nose. He stifled his desire to wipe the back of his hand across his brow, more interested in appearing the picture of Familiar propriety than in catering to his want for personal comfort.
"As head elder of the Washington chapter of the honorable Conclave, I hereby motion to sentence Ames White to execution for his crimes against the Familiar order. His consistent mishandling of the operation to which he was assigned and his incompetence in dealing with the transgenic threat have quite likely put our kind in danger, especially with the Coming so close to its inception. We will not tolerate such disrespect, intended or otherwise - not in these important times." Orin wrapped his fingers around the handle of his gavel and held it, poised and ready, over the block that resided just to the left of the small microphone into which he'd been speaking. "If there be any dissent among the rest of the Committee, please explain your position on the matter at this time."
After a few moments of intolerable silence, the gavel fell to the block and the world fell into a surreal facsimile of itself, spinning and tumbling and rendering White pale and nauseous. He barely felt the strong hands closing around his upper arms, pulling him from where he stood, angry and dumbfounded and more frightened than he thought he had ever been in his life. It wasn't death that he feared so much as the method with which he would be killed, a method that he knew would be painful, partly, of course, from the screams of the recently deceased and partly from his knowledge that it was considered the ultimate punishment to force a Familiar to feel the awful sensation that had been trained and bred out of him. It was a feeling to which he was quite content to be immune and there was nothing quite so disheartening as the thought that such immunity would be stripped away.
The halls through which he was led seemed darker and more foreboding than they ever had. In better days, he had actually found them comforting, a reminder of what he was and how delightfully solid and ancient was his heritage. Now, the walls seemed to be bearing down on him, closing in, inexplicably shouting threats and insults, and the intoxicating adrenaline currently flooding his senses only made his imaginings more intense, more like wild hallucinations, more like demons manifest. How had he possibly managed to get himself into this mess? How could this be happening to him, after all his years of hard work, all his years of loyalty? He had sacrificed friends for them, killed his wife for them, gone on a wild goose chase and tracked a girl who just wouldn't be caught for them. And what was his reward? Death, pain, a world gone topsy-turvy.
A new but familiar emotion now bubbled through him, asserting itself over his overbearing fear. A part of him knew that he shouldn't be, that even now he should respect the decisions of those above him, but he was angry, desperately angry, to a point beyond the realm of rational thought. It was not he who had let them down, no. It was they who had let /him/ down, they who had turned against /him/. His mistakes were far from being any form of betrayal, from even bordering on it. This sentence, however, borne of overreaction and an obvious detachment from the reality of the situation - /this/ was betrayal, of the worst sort.
He found himself gazing longingly at the windows of the building, set high against the backdrop of stone and portrait. He could see the sky, blue and inviting, dotted by a cloud or two, and the tops of a few of the area's surrounding trees. It was then that he decided that he didn't have to stand for this, that if they were going to treat him as the treasonous criminal that he wasn't, he might as well turn the tables and show him just how much of a traitor he could be.
In an instant, he was rolling his arms back against the grips of his two escorts, catching them completely off guard and freeing himself within seconds. A well-placed kick struck the side of the head of one of the men, causing him to fly back against the wall, the sickening crack that coincided with his landing serving as tell-tale evidence that he would be out of commission for the time-being. The other man managed to kick Ames in the back of the knees, sending him forward onto his palms. Another kick would have struck him in the back of the head, but he was fast enough to roll over and intercept the move, curling his fingers around the man's ankle and pushing him backwards. The escort quickly recovered and leapt toward his would-be captive, but White managed to bring up a knee and snugly fit it into the indentation at the bottom of his attacker's ribcage, forcing the man past him and head-first into the wall when he extended his leg.
White leapt to his feet then, instinctively falling into attack posture, still wary of his opponent. However, the blood streaming from both the man's head and nose and pooling beside his face swiftly led White to the conclusion that he had effectively won this battle. To make sure, he knelt beside his incapacitated escort and checked the man's pulse, smirking when it faded away. This was dually the gift and the curse of being trained in elite circles. Sometimes, you forgot your strength and wound up killing your own kind.
"Hey..." a groggy voice suddenly came from behind. White turned to see his other opponent slowly picking himself up off the ground, shaking his head and rapidly blinking his eyes. "Hey...what the hell do you think you're doing?"
Ames took off running at that, his legs taking him almost subconsciously toward the nearest exit, toward the nearest threshold to freedom. He glanced behind him every few seconds, checking to make sure that his former escort wasn't too close behind him, and during one of these instances he blindly tumbled into a decorative end table, clumsily falling over it and winding up dazed and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. He blinked once or twice to reorient himself, and when his vision cleared he found that he was looking across the hall into what appeared to be a classroom filled with adolescents, curiously staring at him through the door. It wasn't long before the High Priestess who served as their instructor also peered through the entranceway, her brow furrowing contemptibly when she took him in.
"Aren't you supposed to be at trial?" she questioned. A sharp retort formed in his mind and he opened his mouth to spit it out, but at that moment the angry voice of the escort washed over him and he scrambled to his feet, taking off just as his pursuer rounded a corner about twenty yards away and enthusiastically picked up his pace at the sight of the fugitive.
A fresh surge of trepidation coursed through White's veins, pushing him to the brink. The stakes were higher now, the goal far more dangerous to attain, and he knew it. There was no doubt in his mind that the High Priestess who had seen him would alert the elders and the guards to his current efforts to forego punishment. But he was so close, so excruciatingly close that he could taste it, that he could already breathe the air and feel the heat of the sun, so rare in its appearance. Only a few more corridors through which to bound, a few more corners around which to turn, a few more feet over which to run...
He felt his lungs contract as he skid to a halt, the air leaving him as if he had just been slugged in the gut. In his path stood a line of guards who looked quite agitated, brandishing the daggers of ritual. He backed slowly away from them, then turned to run, but was unpleasantly greeted by the sight of the other man from whom he had been running for the past few minutes. He imagined that if it weren't for the strength of his ribcage, his heart would have burst through his chest at this point, completing the job of the executioners for them. Oh, the executioners... Seemed he'd be facing them after all.
A heavy silence permeated the air, tense and deafening, broken only by the sound of the footsteps of the guards and the escort as they moved to make their capture. Bile rose in White's throat, bitter as the taste of defeat, the defeat that, momentarily, he accepted. But then, only nanoseconds before he was surrounded by the menacing arms of his fellow Familiars, a streak of final desperation sent him leaping up the nearest wall, pulling himself effortlessly up onto the sill of one of the windows. He dove through it, shards of glass slicing through his flesh and covering the side of the building with liquid evidence of his injuries; when later he dressed them, he'd be eternally grateful that he had saved himself from having to experience pain.
He hit the ground hands first and tucked himself into a roll, climbing up onto his feet without missing a beat. He was jumping up and over the high walls of the building's perimeter soon after, thanking his gods for being so generous as to grant him this most insane of prayers.
Nonetheless, she did not struggle and would not offer so much as a whimper of disapproval when her time came. If this was to be her fate, then so be it. For love of the Conclave, love of the entire Familiar race, she would accept her slated execution, perhaps even welcome it. The elders were wise and had climbed the ranks for a reason, and who was she to go against them, even when she believed that they might be going overboard? Such beliefs were probably just a byproduct of her instinctive will to survive, anyway. The Coming was fast approaching, the virus was almost ready and she understood the precautions being taken and the reasons behind the new and more strict approach to protocol. Even if she didn't, her life was the cult, and she felt it her responsibility to give it up for them by any means they deemed necessary.
Presently, two High Priestesses of the Conclave entered the room where Thula was being held, dressed in the robes of ritual and brandishing curved knives and ornate, silver cups. One of them carried a single snake, and with it held high above her head, she approached the former leader of the Phalanx and began chanting a deep, mournful melody. It was recognizable as the customary blessing for the dead, commonly used at Familiar burial ceremonies, with a few lines modified to speak specifically to the practice of execution. Behind her, the other Priestess dipped the blades of the knives ceremoniously into the cups, bowing her head and reciting a few words before laying them nearby on a burgundy cloth. Thula gulped, realizing at once the method with which she would be executed, and frightened by the prospect that, for the first and last time in her life, she would have to experience pain. She vaguely recalled the sensation from when she was a child, before she had completed the rite of passage and officially entered the ranks of the Familiars, but it was so terribly long ago... She knew only that it was horribly unpleasant, and could not fathom how to go about dealing with it, how to handle such an intensely distasteful feeling. The only thing that comforted her was the knowledge that she would not have to suffer it for long.
The snake was taken away, folded neatly into a black, velvet sack, and each Priestess took a knife before slowly making her way to the convicted, their graceful movements and impossibly long garments causing them to appear to be gliding across the polished stone bricks of the floor rather than walking. One positioned herself behind the other, and the one currently facing Thula raised her blade above her head, calling out a final prayer before pushing the weapon deep into the girl's stomach. At first, nothing substantial was felt; there was only the familiar pressure and the knowledge that she had been wounded. As the fast-acting poison seeped through her body, however, an ache that she had never known consumed her, acidly shooting through her veins and forcing a series of mangled cries past her lips. It was more terrible then she ever could have imagined, and what distressed her most of all was that, having never experienced a sensation of this sort before, she had no way to describe it to herself. She thought that it was as if her very senses had turned against her, as if the chemicals in her body had turned sour and curdled like spoiled milk, as if everything that ever was meant nothing because right now things were so horribly wrong, worse than worst.
As she cried and twitched under the ministrations of her new painful consciousness, the first Priestess moved silently out of the way and made room for the second, who followed suit by lifting her knife above her head and calling out a word or two. When she had done with that, she rested the tip of the blade against Thula's chest, directly in line with the girl's heart.
"For our children's children, and our mothers before us," the Priestess recited. "Fenos'tol, Thula."
"F...fenos'tol," Thula replied meekly. With that, the knife was shoved through her heart, and with a final cry, she fell limp against her binds and drifted off into eternity.
*******
Thula's voice wafted through the corridors of the building, serving as concrete evidence of the pain faced by those who were executed. While a few of the elders seated in front of him cracked a smile at the sound, Ames White only grimaced, now fearing his sentencing even more. He had been found grossly incompetent, as so many others were being found nowadays, and the Committee of Elders had expressed to him that the Conclave was tired of his mishandling of the transgenic operation and intended to prevent him from ever working on that particular project again. He knew that they were considering sentencing him to death; they had become incredibly strict in recent months and were making very good examples of those whom they determined to be less than worthy. He had tried to remain optimistic throughout the trial, hoping against hope that he would simply be knocked down a few levels and relegated to the completion of routine missions, but Thula's cries put him precariously on edge and made vanish all thoughts of coming out of this with his life intact.
Orin, the head elder, cleared his throat forcefully, held his head high in a posture of arrogance and peered down at White over the bridge of his nose. "We have given you more than enough chances, Ames. Time and time again, we have overlooked your mistakes and allowed you to continue operating. However, we only have so much patience. You failed to prevent the capture of your son and then failed to return him; you failed to keep your brother locked up and in his rightful place; you failed to exterminate X5-452 and her compatriots, on more than one occasion. How many times did you think we'd allow you to botch your duties before we grew tired of your careless mistakes, Ames? Did you think that you were getting a free ride, that this was some sort of dodge or hustle?"
"No, sir," White replied, his mind reeling. It was true that he had had his share of mishaps, but the elders didn't seem to understand his predicament. He had been given very limited resources, and 452 was more cunning and powerful than the Conclave seemed to realize. It also did not bode well for his authorities that their precious Phalanx had failed just as miserably as he. So horrendous was their failure, in fact, that the entire group had been disbanded, some of its members, like Thula, sentenced to execution, others knocked back into the civilian ranks. A new army was being raised from the ashes, but his bitterness, combined with that which he had seen in the past few weeks, led White to believe that such would be no more capable than its predecessor. The Conclave simply didn't /get it/, and it was pathetic as far as he was concerned. But, apprehensive as he was about winding up like Thula, he knew that he had no choice but to play their game.
"I have always fully understood my responsibilities, and I have tried my best to take care of them. My respect for the Conclave and for all Familiars is of the utmost, you must know," muttered White, his voice convincingly sincere. "But 452 has proven herself to be more of a problem than it was at first thought she would be. If I were given a little more leeway, a little more help..."
Orin chuckled. "Don't take me for a fool, Ames. We've given you more leeway than you've shown you can handle, and you've done depressingly little with it." He glanced down at the mahogany table in front of him, then looked from his left to his right, signaling to the other elders that he had made his decision. White gulped, twitching as a bead of nerve-induced sweat slipped down his forehead and off the end of his nose. He stifled his desire to wipe the back of his hand across his brow, more interested in appearing the picture of Familiar propriety than in catering to his want for personal comfort.
"As head elder of the Washington chapter of the honorable Conclave, I hereby motion to sentence Ames White to execution for his crimes against the Familiar order. His consistent mishandling of the operation to which he was assigned and his incompetence in dealing with the transgenic threat have quite likely put our kind in danger, especially with the Coming so close to its inception. We will not tolerate such disrespect, intended or otherwise - not in these important times." Orin wrapped his fingers around the handle of his gavel and held it, poised and ready, over the block that resided just to the left of the small microphone into which he'd been speaking. "If there be any dissent among the rest of the Committee, please explain your position on the matter at this time."
After a few moments of intolerable silence, the gavel fell to the block and the world fell into a surreal facsimile of itself, spinning and tumbling and rendering White pale and nauseous. He barely felt the strong hands closing around his upper arms, pulling him from where he stood, angry and dumbfounded and more frightened than he thought he had ever been in his life. It wasn't death that he feared so much as the method with which he would be killed, a method that he knew would be painful, partly, of course, from the screams of the recently deceased and partly from his knowledge that it was considered the ultimate punishment to force a Familiar to feel the awful sensation that had been trained and bred out of him. It was a feeling to which he was quite content to be immune and there was nothing quite so disheartening as the thought that such immunity would be stripped away.
The halls through which he was led seemed darker and more foreboding than they ever had. In better days, he had actually found them comforting, a reminder of what he was and how delightfully solid and ancient was his heritage. Now, the walls seemed to be bearing down on him, closing in, inexplicably shouting threats and insults, and the intoxicating adrenaline currently flooding his senses only made his imaginings more intense, more like wild hallucinations, more like demons manifest. How had he possibly managed to get himself into this mess? How could this be happening to him, after all his years of hard work, all his years of loyalty? He had sacrificed friends for them, killed his wife for them, gone on a wild goose chase and tracked a girl who just wouldn't be caught for them. And what was his reward? Death, pain, a world gone topsy-turvy.
A new but familiar emotion now bubbled through him, asserting itself over his overbearing fear. A part of him knew that he shouldn't be, that even now he should respect the decisions of those above him, but he was angry, desperately angry, to a point beyond the realm of rational thought. It was not he who had let them down, no. It was they who had let /him/ down, they who had turned against /him/. His mistakes were far from being any form of betrayal, from even bordering on it. This sentence, however, borne of overreaction and an obvious detachment from the reality of the situation - /this/ was betrayal, of the worst sort.
He found himself gazing longingly at the windows of the building, set high against the backdrop of stone and portrait. He could see the sky, blue and inviting, dotted by a cloud or two, and the tops of a few of the area's surrounding trees. It was then that he decided that he didn't have to stand for this, that if they were going to treat him as the treasonous criminal that he wasn't, he might as well turn the tables and show him just how much of a traitor he could be.
In an instant, he was rolling his arms back against the grips of his two escorts, catching them completely off guard and freeing himself within seconds. A well-placed kick struck the side of the head of one of the men, causing him to fly back against the wall, the sickening crack that coincided with his landing serving as tell-tale evidence that he would be out of commission for the time-being. The other man managed to kick Ames in the back of the knees, sending him forward onto his palms. Another kick would have struck him in the back of the head, but he was fast enough to roll over and intercept the move, curling his fingers around the man's ankle and pushing him backwards. The escort quickly recovered and leapt toward his would-be captive, but White managed to bring up a knee and snugly fit it into the indentation at the bottom of his attacker's ribcage, forcing the man past him and head-first into the wall when he extended his leg.
White leapt to his feet then, instinctively falling into attack posture, still wary of his opponent. However, the blood streaming from both the man's head and nose and pooling beside his face swiftly led White to the conclusion that he had effectively won this battle. To make sure, he knelt beside his incapacitated escort and checked the man's pulse, smirking when it faded away. This was dually the gift and the curse of being trained in elite circles. Sometimes, you forgot your strength and wound up killing your own kind.
"Hey..." a groggy voice suddenly came from behind. White turned to see his other opponent slowly picking himself up off the ground, shaking his head and rapidly blinking his eyes. "Hey...what the hell do you think you're doing?"
Ames took off running at that, his legs taking him almost subconsciously toward the nearest exit, toward the nearest threshold to freedom. He glanced behind him every few seconds, checking to make sure that his former escort wasn't too close behind him, and during one of these instances he blindly tumbled into a decorative end table, clumsily falling over it and winding up dazed and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. He blinked once or twice to reorient himself, and when his vision cleared he found that he was looking across the hall into what appeared to be a classroom filled with adolescents, curiously staring at him through the door. It wasn't long before the High Priestess who served as their instructor also peered through the entranceway, her brow furrowing contemptibly when she took him in.
"Aren't you supposed to be at trial?" she questioned. A sharp retort formed in his mind and he opened his mouth to spit it out, but at that moment the angry voice of the escort washed over him and he scrambled to his feet, taking off just as his pursuer rounded a corner about twenty yards away and enthusiastically picked up his pace at the sight of the fugitive.
A fresh surge of trepidation coursed through White's veins, pushing him to the brink. The stakes were higher now, the goal far more dangerous to attain, and he knew it. There was no doubt in his mind that the High Priestess who had seen him would alert the elders and the guards to his current efforts to forego punishment. But he was so close, so excruciatingly close that he could taste it, that he could already breathe the air and feel the heat of the sun, so rare in its appearance. Only a few more corridors through which to bound, a few more corners around which to turn, a few more feet over which to run...
He felt his lungs contract as he skid to a halt, the air leaving him as if he had just been slugged in the gut. In his path stood a line of guards who looked quite agitated, brandishing the daggers of ritual. He backed slowly away from them, then turned to run, but was unpleasantly greeted by the sight of the other man from whom he had been running for the past few minutes. He imagined that if it weren't for the strength of his ribcage, his heart would have burst through his chest at this point, completing the job of the executioners for them. Oh, the executioners... Seemed he'd be facing them after all.
A heavy silence permeated the air, tense and deafening, broken only by the sound of the footsteps of the guards and the escort as they moved to make their capture. Bile rose in White's throat, bitter as the taste of defeat, the defeat that, momentarily, he accepted. But then, only nanoseconds before he was surrounded by the menacing arms of his fellow Familiars, a streak of final desperation sent him leaping up the nearest wall, pulling himself effortlessly up onto the sill of one of the windows. He dove through it, shards of glass slicing through his flesh and covering the side of the building with liquid evidence of his injuries; when later he dressed them, he'd be eternally grateful that he had saved himself from having to experience pain.
He hit the ground hands first and tucked himself into a roll, climbing up onto his feet without missing a beat. He was jumping up and over the high walls of the building's perimeter soon after, thanking his gods for being so generous as to grant him this most insane of prayers.
