Leaf
Chapter Ten
There was thunder as the floor shook, lighting as something bright flashed and then doused the hallway in darkness, and ... something else, something Lift couldn't name that passed through her. It was like a Highstorm contained in an instant that was there and then was gone.
When Lift opened her eyes, the prison floor was as dark as a cave, and even the constant humming in the walls had gone silent. The distinct wrongness about it all gave her goosebumps. She took a deep breath, and even that seemed loud.
She knew she could see if she wanted to. She could light up the whole room like a starvin' champion of righteousness, but she didn't want to invite some crazy skeeve with a sword to chop her head off. She was a thief, and at times like this she trusted her thieving instincts most of all.
She crept silently, following along the wall. She couldn't see Wyndle, but she could hear and feel him when she stepped on his leaves. "Remember where Skullface is?" she whispered.
"Yes, Mistress. Over here."
She followed the sound of his voice as he led her through the labyrinth. Every now and then she had to pause to slick a door open. She saw some light off in the distance, but it didn't look like it came from the lightbulbs they used here or the spheres they used back home. It was orange and flickering like it was coming from a torch, but it was too steady for a torch. A hearth, maybe. Or a furnace.
Lift avoided it. She knew who she was here to steal, and this wasn't the sort of place to wander around. She turned a corner and plunged into pitch blackness once more.
"Right here," Wyndle said. "Cut through where I am right now, and you'll be in his cell."
She nodded and summoned him into her hand. Not a sword for cutting people, just a sword for cutting walls. Walls were alright.
The steel gave way easy as she sliced into it with Wyndle. It was like cutting a great big cake, one with strawberries and frosting and cream filling and ... focus. She tried to angle the slab of metal toward her so she could catch it and set it down gently, but it was a chunk of steel as tall as she was and as heavy as a chull. It rang like a dinner bell when she dropped it.
"Who's there?" Brian demanded before the echoes even died down.
Lift lit herself up, just a little, just enough for him to see by. It wasn't smart; Oni Lee was still around and she might need to save her awesomeness for later, but people never felt as scared when they could see. That's why Knights Radiant were always glowing. Brian looked back at her from the darkness he created. He relaxed when he saw her, but just a little.
"Leaf?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
People always asked her that question, no matter how obvious the answer was.
"Well," she said, "I asked myself, 'What's the dumbest thing I could do today?' And here I am."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "You came down to visit me in prison because you were bored?"
"No, I ..." She had flaked out of the bank robbery because she was bored. She hadn't expected it to be so hard to make up for that. "I'm here 'cause you're here, and you don't wanna be, so let's get."
He nodded and stepped out through the hole she had made. "What happened to the lights? Power shortage? But this place would have emergency power. EMP?"
"Pee later, we gotta go."
"No, I mean—"
A crash rang out in the distance, followed by the groan of metal. A mad din of noises echoed through the hallways that made Leaf want to cover her ears.
"What was that?" he whispered.
"Trouble, prob'ly," she replied. "Oni Lee is down here too, lookin' for Lung. Like I said, this ain't me bein' smart. Knowitall and the others already clevered outta here, so let's be real quiet, huh?"
With her light dimmed, she took his hand and began following the wall back to where she had come from. As they crept along she became aware of a low rumbling and scraping that seemed to be getting louder. She placed her hand on the wall and felt it rattle beneath her fingers. The rhythm went SLAM scra-a-ape, SLAM scra-a-ape, like something heavy being dragged.
"Do you feel that?" she whispered.
"Yeah. Be ready for anything."
They moved faster now. Soon there was just one last door between them and the hallway to the elevator ... one last door with a red glow peaking between the cracks. Brian grabbed Lift's shoulder and pulled her back.
A single massive claw burst through the door, revealing fire, fire so bright Lift could barely make out the form within it. The heat alone seared her face like an oven, and then another shot forward, swiping at them as they scrambled backwards. The head came out last, wreathed in flame and with burning eyes. The split mouth opened up, glowing like a volcano, and roared.
Lung crawled forward with his two elongated arms, cutting into the steel flooring and making it burn gold. His neck was nearly as long as his arms, stretched out like an eel, and the rest of his body was so big that even if his legs had grown back, he wouldn't have been able to stand straight. He pulled himself through the doorway, and he had grown so big that he barely fit.
Brian threw a cloud of darkness at him, enough to smother the light, if not the heat. He took Lift by the hand and ran.
"I guess the elevator's out," he said. "Stairs it is."
WWW
Shadow Stalker found a group of ABB gang members standing outside the PRT building. There was a truck crashed in the middle of the lobby. Strange. There were only supposed to be the Undersiders.
She ignored them and phased through a window. Inside, she saw the PRT's finest doing what they did best: screwing up and taking up space. Some of them were even stuck with their own foam while the rest were gathered around someone by the elevator.
It turned out to be little Vista, covered in blood. On anyone else that would have looked badass, but it made her look like she had tried to eat a plate of spaghetti as messily as possible. "In twenty words or less, what's the situation?"
Vista pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked at her. "Don't know. Got knocked out."
Shadow Stalker grit her teeth. "Typical."
"Hey! There were four of them and one of me! I'd like to see you do better!"
"You knew that going in. If you couldn't handle it, you should have stayed downstairs. Can anyone who was awake tell me what's going on?"
"I can," one of the PRT troopers volunteered. "We were attacked by the Undersiders gang, and we were holding the ground as best we could. Vista here was able to reinforce us until—"
Shadow Stalker cut him off. "Skip to the present." What was this, story hour? Though ... she might want to hear that story later. Vista wasn't just covered in blood; she was lying in a pool of it. Shadow Stalker knew how much blood someone could live without, and there had to be a corpse nearby. What had happened? Did one of Hellhound's dogs want a snack? But the trail of blood drops went to the elevator where a mutant dog couldn't fit.
"Oni Lee of the ABB and Leaf of the Undersiders went downstairs, we assume to free their imprisoned members. The rest of the Undersiders already left."
Vista looked up. "Oni Lee was here? What did I miss?"
"It's for the best," Shadow Stalker said. "You wouldn't have lasted five seconds against him anyway."
A few of the troopers' postures grew tense, as though they were offended that she'd say something like that to the team mascot, but Shadow Stalker ignored them. Oni Lee. He wasn't too much trouble by himself, not to her. He couldn't cut through her shadow state so she just needed to stay away from his grenades. Of course, she couldn't take him down with anything less than a lucky shot, so that was a stalemate waiting to happen. But if he was working with Grue, that could be trouble, and if you threw Lung into the mix ...
Wait. "They're working together, then?"
One of the troopers shook his head. "No. We can confirm that they are not."
Oh. Oh. That could work. If Oni Lee was as stab-happy as people said, then she could get the job done with tranquilizers. She wouldn't even be breaking the rules.
"I'm heading down there," she said. "Do whatever you want, just don't get in my way."
WWW
Brian didn't need to look over his shoulder to know that Lung was close. He didn't need to see the monster clawing his way through the halls on those elongated arms, or hear him cursing in a mouth that could no longer form words. He could feel him. The man was a forest fire, and he would roast them alive before he got close enough to touch them.
He looked back anyway.
It didn't take much for the memory to sear into Brian's mind. Lung's movements were uncanny, crawling with the desperate ineptitude of a cripple but as indomitable as a force of nature. There was little in his form that was still human with his metallic scales, warped proportions, and burning eyes, and his head had shifted into something that was almost catlike. And that neck. He was like ... like a flaming, spring-headed Jack-in-the-box, straight out of the Stephen King version of hell.
And Lung was faster than him.
Not faster than Leaf, though, who was sliding on her knees, slapping at the floor like she was paddling with her hands. It bothered him that he was the one slowing her down. It bothered him more that she had rescued him at all. After losing everything that he had been working toward since he became a villain, escaping now seemed almost trite.
But he'd face it all when he got out of here, and put together what pieces of his life he had left.
Lung was effectively blind and deaf now. Brian maintained a cloud of darkness behind him as he ran, and Lung was forced to move through it, finding his way forward by touch alone. Lung emanated a mechanical grinding noise that Brian took to be a growl of frustration. Then the flames around him burned brighter, and Brian had only a moment to panic before what happened next.
"Take cover!" he shouted.
Brian grabbed Leaf and hurled them both around a corner into an intersecting hallway. A massive gout of flame filled the space they had just been. He felt burned on the back of his neck and down his back, and he felt like his prison uniform had nearly caught fire.
The two of them held their breath as Lung continued to charge blindly past, his bulky body sliding across the floor, trailing two stumps where the legs had once been. The only light in the room came from Leaf, glowing as her own minor burns healed. In a moment he was gone, but still heading toward the stairwell they needed for their escape.
And once Lung got there, once he emerged from the edges of Brian's darkness, he'd know that the two of them were still back here. Would Lung continue on to safety, or would he come back and finish them off?
He hoped Lung would just leave, and maybe clear a path through the heroes on his way out, but he wouldn't bet his life on it.
"Leaf," Brian whispered. He didn't need to whisper with Lung on the other side of his darkness, but he felt better keeping things quiet. "You might have to use your sword to get us out of this."
Leaf peered into the darkness, even though she couldn't see through it like he could. "He still ain't got no legs. Whadda you want me to do, chop his arms off too?"
"If you can." Or his head. He could do it, and more easily than she could. If he borrowed her sword, he could blind Lung, cut him down, and then they'd have nothing to worry about ... besides a teleporting suicide bomber, an unknown number of heroes, and the PRT ready to pin a murder charge on him.
"Can't do that," she said. "How would he poop? He'd need someone else to wipe him. I can't condemn some poor scowler to a life of wiping Lung, can I?"
"What? You can't be serious here."
"'Sides, Wyndle don't like chopping up people unless he has to."
This is no time for your bleeding heart! he wanted to say. But if it weren't for her bleeding heart, he'd have been found dead in an alley weeks ago, stabbed by Shadow Stalker. Could he really press her on this now, just because it benefited him?
Well, yes, because the situation was completely different and Leaf was being an idiot. But before Brian could argue the point, a man wearing a demon mask appeared in front of him.
Right. Oni Lee.
Brian punched the man on reflex and barely sidestepped his sword. Oni Lee stumbled backward a few steps, but another one appeared behind Leaf, ready to take off her head. Brian's heart skipped a beat, but Leaf ducked just in time, turned to face her attacker, and formed a silver rod in her hand.
Not wanting to give Oni Lee the chance to teleport away, Brian flooded the space around them with his power. He charged through the defenses of the older clone, avoiding his sword, and punched him so hard the clone popped into a cloud of white dust. Behind him, Leaf yelped as she suddenly went blind and deaf, and waved her rod around trying to find something worth hitting. Oni Lee was doing the same thing, swinging his sword through the air, but Leaf's rod was longer. When she found something human shaped, she swung again and again until she brought Oni Lee down.
He didn't pop, Brian realized. This was the real Oni Lee, trapped in his darkness. Brian was about to tackle him and do whatever it took to keep him down when Oni Lee pulled out a detonator and pressed the button.
Boom.
A massive explosion went off, knocking Brian off his feet. He wasn't dead. His ears rang and his head spun, but he was not dead. He wiped dust and bits of concrete from his eyes and looked around. Lift was in decent shape, if a bit dazed, but Oni Lee was nowhere to be found. Crap. The blast must have blown away his darkness, and any second now the man was going to appear right behind him and chop his head off.
Instead, Lung came back. With an inhuman roar Lung emerged from the last wisps of darkness, somehow even bigger than before. Brian grabbed Leaf and began running again. He darted though the smallest doors and narrowest hallways whenever he could, hoping more to slow down Lung's pursuit than finding the most direct route out.
He stumbled across the wreckage of a recent explosion. It looked like where Oni Lee had planted his most recent bomb. Water was leaking through, and it smelled like a sewer. He hurried through, trying not to slip, and finally made it to the stairwell.
Almost there. He filled the bottom floor with his power as they charged up the stairs. Even if the heroes recaptured them, at least they wouldn't be killed by Lung and Oni Lee. Even if they weren't yet free, they were almost safe.
Then a crossbow bolt blurred past him and struck Leaf in the chest. His younger teammate cried out in surprise. He looked up and couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or cry.
"You?" Brian demanded. "Now?"
Two levels up and on the other side of the stairwell, Shadow Stalker looked down at them, reloading her crossbow. A crash from below reminded him that Lung was still after them. Crazy psycho above us, enraged dragon monster below us. What a day.
He threw a cloud of darkness at Shadow Stalker to blind her and ran. Leaf plucked the bolt from her chest and began scrambling up the handrail beside him like a squirrel on a branch. She was swaying a little and still glowing; the bolt had been a tranquilizer, he realized, and her powers were still fighting it. As they ascended Shadow Stalker began firing more shots blindly, and eventually she'd get a lucky hit in.
He caught up to her and ran through her as they passed. There was a trace of resistance there, like she was made of cobwebs instead of mist. His power made her more solid than she usually was, and if he had the time he could have pummeled her incorporeal form until she was too worn out to fight. That was how it had gone down the first time they had met. This time, though, he was in a hurry.
Shadow Stalker went solid right afterward and spun around to fire a bolt that would've caught him for sure if Leaf hadn't formed a silver shield to block it. Not even knowing whether she'd hit him or not, Shadow Stalker phased through the stairs to the floor below to get out of his darkness and jumped back up again somewhere else.
A moment later the landing she'd been standing on disappeared as a clawed arm smashed right through it. Lung ascended the stairwell, crawling up one side of it like a ladder. Entire staircase bent and groaned under his weight as he pulled himself up, tearing out pieces of the wall as he ascended.
Brian pumped more of his power at Lung to prevent him from aiming any fireballs, but this gave Shadow Stalker enough of an opening to clear his darkness and land just ahead of him. He couldn't blind her now, not without affecting Leaf as well, and in these circumstances that could easily be fatal to his teammate.
"Imagine my surprise when they told me you were still alive," Shadow Stalker snarled. "Ruined my whole week, Grue. I think I'll let Lung have a go at you this time. See if you come back from that."
She raised her crossbow but Brian wasn't about to make it easy for her. He ducked as she pulled the trigger, leaving a silhouette of his darkness in his place to mask his movements. Closing the distance, he swung his fist at her in a move that should have caught her right under the chin. Instead she phased through the attack, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed him against the railing, trying to wrestle him over and into a fiery death. There was a glint of silver and she abruptly released him as Leaf took a swing at her with a shiny rod.
"Get outta here!" Leaf shouted at him. "If you stick around you'll be dinner for the big guy! That's what she wants!"
It was true, Brian realized. Shadow Stalker didn't even need to beat him herself; all she had to do was slow them down long enough for Lung could catch them. They didn't have time to fight.
"What about you?" Brian demanded. Abandoning her was not an option, not after everything she had done for him.
"I'll be right behind you! Just go!"
Brian clenched his fists. As much as he hated to admit it, he was the one slowing them down. If Leaf took the time to hold back Shadow Stalker, she'd have a better chance of getting out of here if she didn't have to wait for him. Besides, the girl could shrug off a tranquilizer more quickly than he could. Running felt cowardly, but it made sense. He turned to leave.
"You better be!" he shouted over his shoulder.
He resumed running up the stairs as quickly as he could. He expected Shadow Stalker to float up through the floor in front of him to harry him some more, but she stayed down with Leaf. He heard a screech of frustration from Shadow Stalker, followed by the sounds of combat from both of them, and finally the hot crackling of fire from Lung. When he glanced down, all he could see was the rising column of smoke, stinging his eyes and filling his lungs. Smoke killed more people than fire did, and if he didn't get to the exit soon he'd pass out. He pushed himself, coughing and wheezing further upward and deeper into the smoke until he burst through the doors to the lobby.
There was a PRT trooper right outside waiting for him.
The trooper pointed his containment foam sprayer at him on reflex, and it should have ended right there while Brian was still trying to clear the smoke from his lungs. But the man ... hesitated. Maybe the smoke obscured Brian more than he thought and the trooper didn't want to risk foaming Shadow Stalker, though the prison uniform should have been a dead give away.
Brian didn't question his luck; he shrouded the man in darkness, knocked him down, and ran toward the exit without looking back.
WWW
If you knew what someone was having for dinner, you knew what to steal from them. Brian, for example, liked respect. He ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and if he didn't get his daily serving, he got grouchy. Shadow Stalker, as far as Lift could tell, ate the souls of the damned, and she looked real grumpy when Brian ran away.
"You really think that you can stop me?" she said, looking up at Lift from a lower step. No, she was facing Lift, but she was looking up at Brian.
"Nope," she said, holding her shardrod in her hand. "I'm pretty sure you're just gonna walk right through me."
Lift considered a plan, or at least the start of one. Would that even work? Wyndle said in her head. I have no idea! I'm a gardener, not a scholar! I barely understand the rules of our world, let alone this one.
Shadow Stalker waited until Brian was exactly one level above them then jumped, turning all wispy as she floated upward. Lift jumped and swung, and although Shadow Stalker could phase through steel, she couldn't phase through Wyndle. The shardrod hit her so hard she still went through the stairs below instead of the ones above.
Then Lung started an earthquake, shaking the walls below. The stairs beneath her gave way, sending her tumbling down onto the same level as Shadow Stalker, and everything went black.
It took her a moment to realize that she had landed in a patch of Brian's darkness. She crawled out—and found Shadow Stalker pointing a crossbow at her.
"I put a bolt through your head the night I met you, and you're still here," she said. "You've got bullet holes in your shirt, but you're still kicking. I'm guessing that shooting you again won't make much of a difference."
Lift got to her feet and forced herself not to pant. "Nope," she said. It was a bluff, and a costly one at that. She could hold her breath until she got hungry, looking completely relaxed the whole time, but she didn't have much left before she was out. Her awesomeness never lasted as long as she expected it to, and a couple of candy bars could only get her so far.
Shadow Stalker holsted her crossbow and cracked her knuckles. "Fine by me. I like punching people more than shooting them anyway."
Well, if she wanted to punch her, Lift was going to keep her as far away as possible. She swung at her, and when Shadow Stalker caught the rod she dismissed it, resummoned it, and jabbed her in the stomach.
"What's with the stick?" she said with a grunt. " I have entire departments of suits breathing down my neck every hour of the day to get me to play nice. What's your excuse?"
She shrugged. "More fun this way. 'Sides, my imaginary friend don't like hurtin' people."
Shadow Stalker paused. "I'm going to enjoy killing you so much. Maybe even more than Grue."
"Might wanna get in line then. I'm everyone's fav—"
Mistress, look out!
Lift leapt forward right over Shadow Stalker's head just before a fiery claw smashed their section of the stairs completely. Shadow Stalker wasn't so lucky. The stairs closed on her legs like metal jaws and she screamed for a split second before turning into a shadow. The claws sank into the wall as Lung pulled himself up from below.
Shadow Stalker was crouching on what was left of the stairs, not getting up. Lift wasn't sure if she could, and she didn't have enough awesomeness left to heal her. That left only one option. She summoned a shardrod, a longer one, and offered it to her.
"Grab on!" she shouted. "I'll flip you up, like a pancake!" Brian was probably gone by now, and Shadow Stalker didn't seem fit to chase anyone.
Shadow Stalker didn't respond, and her expression was unreadable. There wasn't even an expression to be read. Lift could make out the bones beneath her skin, and her eyes almost seemed to glow like a cat's, but the rest of the face was a dark blur. Maybe she was too hurt for Lift's plan to work, or maybe she just really hated pancakes.
Alright, that left only one dumber option. She grabbed the railing for balance and slid down, passing by Lung's big ugly face. His face wasn't any easier to read than Shadow Stalker's, not having any human parts left, but she liked to think he was surprised to see her wave at him.
Always keep 'em surprised. Gives you time to get away. That's why the dumb ideas were sometimes the best ones.
And sometimes they were just bad. Lung swung a claw after her and ripped a large section of stairs out of the wall. Storms, he ripped a large section of the wall out of the wall. He dropped a few levels, then plunged one arm into the wall to arrest his fall. He then swiped at her with his free claw again and again while Lift ducked and dove and slid under each attack.
Lung couldn't hit her. She was too small, two fast, and too lucky, but the stairwell itself had taken more than it could handle. The whole thing began to collapse on itself, raining down metal planks and bars. But this was nothing. She got worse storms than this every week back home, and if you ran between the drops you never even got wet. Practically in freefall, Lift slid down falling chunks of stairs, flinging herself from one to the other on her way to the bottom.
There was a rhythm to this, a music to each motion that guided her. Everything around her had its own course to follow, to fall, to bounce, to crash, to fall again. Only Lift could see the song being sung around her, and when there was music, there was the dance.
Moments before she hit the bottom Lift turned Wyndle into a long pole, like the one they'd used to break Lisa out, and jammed it into the floor at an angle. Lift slid down the rest of the way at an angle as the pole fell against the wall, then slid even further on her back. The floor was covered in filthy water, but she didn't splash. The water couldn't slow her down any more than the air could. Lung landed moments after she had gotten out of the way, hitting the ground like a meteorite. He lunged after her as the stairwell caved in behind him. There would be no getting out that way anymore.
"Oh dear," Wyndle said. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. All that and we're back where we started!"
"Yup," she agreed. "His obsession with me ain't healthy for neither of us. If he just focused on leavin', he might be free by now. Who knew that he'd be the type to hold a grudge?"
She slid forward on her knees again through the now familiar prison floor. Lung had gotten huge to the point where he couldn't fit through anything easily, so she was faster than him for the moment. Which would be great if she knew where she was going. Even if she could lead Lung away and double around back, the stairs were wrecked and ruined. She could try to cut through so many walls the building collapsed on him, but then it would collapse on her too. Hiding was an option. A death trap, but an option.
Or she could get out the way she got in, through the elevator. Duh.
She ran forward through the darkness, following Wyndle. Being slick didn't use up as much awesomeness as healing people, but she was so low and she didn't want to be caught without. When she was out of awesomeness she was out, but when she was tired she could push herself a little bit more. And it was only a little bit more, only a little bit further as Lung smashed through walls behind her and boiled the water he crawled through. Just a little bit further.
And then she made it. She felt the perfectly smooth hole in the elevator door that she had cut through and climbed inside. She didn't know how to make it work or even if it would still work after everything had happened, and she didn't have time to try. Wyndle grew into handholds that she could use to climb up through the top hole, and then far above her, far, far above her at the end of the shaft, she saw a light.
Almost there.
Wyndle grew back and forth along the wall, and Lift climbed upward toward the light.
"Hey, Wyndle," she said, climbing him like a ladder.
"Yes, Mistress?"
"You ever hear the story about Wild Torik and the Well of Lies?"
"I can't say I have. Is this relevant?"
"Could be," she said, pulling herself upward. It seemed a lot further up than it had been going down. "So Torik gets stuck in this well, and finds a voidbringer down there."
The well was a prison in the version she had heard years ago. The village didn't have a real one, so they dropped people down the hole until they could deal with them.
"And the voidbringer wants to eat his soul 'cause he's hungry, but Torik tricks him. Tells him that he's a voidbringer too, and a bigger and fiercer one than he is."
Voidbringers were always disguising themselves as people in stories, but Lift had met real voidbringers. All you needed was a voidspren, and a voidbringer could look the same as a Knight Radiant.
"And Torik knows all the right words, so the voidbringer believes him and thinks that he's this big voidbringer prince."
Yelig-nar, oh shapeless scourge, forgive me for I knew thee not. The form you wear, a skinned disguise, for ruin better wrought.
"But when he stops looking, Torik tries to run, and the voidbringer realizes that he's been lying the whole time."
Would Blightwind flee from his servant so? I think not, son of man. I believed your lies, oh false Unmade, until the moment that you ran.
The sound of ripping metal echoed through the shaft. Lung again.
"Then the voidbringer eats him."
"Ah," Wyndle said. "So it is relevant."
Lift didn't need to look down to tell that Lung was setting into the shaft. He'd have to squeeze in tight to fit, but his arms were so much longer than hers it wouldn't take him long to catch up. Maybe she should have fought in the beginning instead of running. She told herself that it was because it was the thieving way to do things, but she was a Knight Radiant too. The first ideal was life before death, but no one ever listened to that one. The Bondsmith used to be a warlord, and the Assassin in White was a Skybreaker now.
But instead she had run, trying to be quick and clever, not wanting to kill anyone until she had no other choice. And here she was, tired and hungry, still climbing out of the well with a voidbringer after her.
She felt the scorching air rising from him blowing straight up, and she could hear the clang and grinding rip as his claws dug into the walls. Just a little bit further for him, and she still had half the way to go.
But when she looked up toward the light, she saw someone looking back at her. Someone small and in green, someone Lift had seen just once before.
Vista.
WWW
She wasn't going to make it. She had been fast before when Vista had fought her, but Leaf's enhanced speed seemed to have run out, while Lung was still ramping up.
Below her, Lung glowed like hot coals and sticking her head into the elevator shaft felt like opening an oven. For as long as he had been in the city, he had been an A class threat content to rule a few city blocks and the Protectorate had left him alone because he could not be stopped.
At least, they couldn't stop him. But as ridiculous as it sounded, she could. He was practically trapped already, and the walls of the building were saturated with her power. He could tear through half an inch of steel, but if she stretched that out to a foot? To a hundred feet? Then if she shrank the elevator shaft down to nothing, she could hold Lung back for hours.
The only problem was Leaf. If she trapped Lung, she'd have to trap Leaf in there with him. People repelled her power, and the further up Leaf got, the more Vista's power pulled away. It took her a moment to refill the space Leaf left behind, but before she could exert any control over it, Lung caught up, rising like a slowly erupting volcano. Vista could control the entire building except the space between those two villains. Lung was so close behind that anything she did to help Leaf would all but guarantee his escape, and anything she did to stop Lung would doom her.
She could stop Lung ... but stopping him would come with a price.
"If you couldn't handle it," Shadow Stalker had said, "you should have stayed downstairs."
Shadow Stalker wouldn't hesitate. She never did when it came to hurting people, especially when she could get away with it. But following her example was usually the thing not to do. Gallant, on the other hand, would try to save as many people as possible.
How many people was that? Saving everyone was beyond her limits, but she could save all but one of them. All but Leaf.
It's not like you're important or anything, she thought. Just another villain in a city already overflowing with your kind. Her memory was a bit hazy, but Vista remembered Tattletale talking about knocking her out if she didn't cooperate and then waking up sometime later with PRT troopers fussing over her. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots. Before that Leaf had struck her as childish beyond even what her age would justify, and she seemed to treat everything like a game.
But it wasn't. Life had consequences, and any wrong choice could lead to people getting killed. Over a dozen people had died just this night because of Bakuda, and those were just the ones that had been counted. How many more would there be if Lung got out?
Vista couldn't let that happen, not for the sake of one villain.
Leaf looked up at her as she kept on climbing, and damn it all, Vista made eye contact. Leaf didn't look afraid. She didn't even look hopeful. Just expectant, as though she assumed that Vista would do something.
And she did. She squeezed the elevator shaft shut, trapped Leaf with a hellish fire monster, and left her to die. It was the right thing to do.
It wasn't brave, it wasn't kind, it wasn't something she was proud of, but it was right. The Undersiders had broken into the PRT building, taking advantage of the chaos as surely as the ABB had. Maybe they hadn't killed anyone yet, but that didn't make them good people, and Vista wouldn't—couldn't—risk the lives of countless innocents for the chance to save one criminal.
Besides, she thought, if our positions were reversed, you'd do the same to me.
She stretched out the distance between them as far as she could, far more than was necessary to keep Lung contained, too far to hear her scream.
This was the right thing to do. She knew it, and if she told herself so for long enough, she might even come to believe it.
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Lift stared upward at the opening that had closed. But ... why? I was good, wasn't I? I helped you!
I helped you.
But Vista was gone, leaving Lift in the pit where the only light was from the beast below.
She looked down at him. He had slowed now that she had nowhere left to go, either to savor the moment or because he was cautious. Some folks got fierce when cornered, and he knew what her shardblade could do to him.
She could kill him. She could kill him. And he knew it, knew that she could have killed him at any time during the chase, or weeks ago on the first night they fought.
Her eyes watered from the smoke that couldn't get out, and there wasn't much air left, forcing her to use her awesomeness so she wouldn't need to breathe. When it ran out, she'd have a load of other problems.
She needed to end this fast.
"Ain't no way out no more, Lung!" she called down below, a cloud of light escaping from her lips. "And it's a bum deal ya got, 'cause now you're trapped in here with me!"
She let go of Wyndle and summoned him into her hand, not as a sword but as a shield. Thieves didn't leave bodies, and she was a thief to the end.
Journey before the Destination.
A massive, shelled arm rose up to smash her into the wall, but she slicked herself and the pressure only squeezed her down faster. Her hair caught on fire and her skin burned, but she was almost there.
All destinations were crem, but if her destination was tonight or in a hundred nights, then there was one thing on her journey that she had always wanted to do.
Lung's head shot up to bite her in half. Her shield dissolved into mist then reformed as a sword, which she stabbed into the wall to break her fall. Lung recoiled, and she dropped the rest of the way—to kick him in the face.
Brian had spent so long trying to teach her how to do that. It'd have been a shame if she never did it for real. And this time—the first time, and maybe the last time—she got him right on the nose.
She poured her awesomeness through that nose and into the body attached to it, making Lung slick from top to bottom. His claws slipped out of the wall and nothing he tried to grab onto would hold. Not even the air slowed him down as he fell straight into the depths of the pit.
Lift would have appreciated his descent a bit more, if she wasn't falling with him. She felt the burning heat for a moment as she fell through fire, but soon she felt nothing at all.
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Leaf had told him that she was right behind him, and Brian had told himself that he wasn't going to abandon her.
They had both been wrong.
Brian watched the PRT building from a nearby alleyway, shrouded and unseen, waiting for Leaf to finally make it out, and waiting had always been his own personal hell. He'd happily push a boulder up a hill time after time after time rather than wait for someone else to make his life better.
He thought about rushing back in and fighting hero and villain alike until he got to her, but he couldn't. If he had escaped on his own he could do what he liked, but Leaf had risked everything to get him out of there. He couldn't throw everything away on a fool's errand, not after that.
But he couldn't leave either, not as long as there was a chance that she would make it out.
She didn't, but Lung didn't either, which cursed him to hope that she still would.
Then the heroes arrived, more than he could fight on his own, more than he could fight with his whole team, and with nothing left to hold him there, he walked back toward the loft.
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It wasn't long before the Protectorate arrived. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dauntless, Assault, and Battery, were some of the heaviest hitters on the team, and together they could give Lung a run for his money on his own turf.
Still, it was too much for Vista to hope for to be allowed to take part in the last part of the fight. It was too much to hope for Armsmaster to say anything besides, "Good job," and "Stand down."
But the adults were here, and it was past Vista's bed time.
She wouldn't be able to get to the Wards HQ for a while now which meant that she couldn't spend the night here and the only clothes she could change into would be oversized.
Before she could get anywhere, she ran into Director Piggot, flanked by two PRT officers.
"Vista," she said. "You look like you've been through hell."
Vista looked down at her costume. Most of the top part was bloodstained, and red streaks of dried blood were smeared across her breastplate. "It's not mine," she said. "I woke up like this."
The Director narrowed her eyes at her for a moment. "I see. Well, in any case, good job. You prevented Lung from escaping, and did far more than we could reasonably expect from you."
Vista blinked. Was this undiluted praise from Piggot? That never happened, not to her, not to anyone, not in all the years she had been a hero. And of course it happened now when no one on her team was around to see it.
But before Vista could say anything, Piggot continued. "Now report to Master-Stranger isolation."
Her jaw dropped. "W-what?"
"You lost consciousness in the presence of a known Master, did you not?"
"I ..." Regent. "Yes, technically. But I haven't been Mastered. I know this week's password and everything. It's ... hold on, it's Martin Delta one-one-five."
"Then this should be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Now go."
The two PRT troopers escorted her to a holding cell where she would spend the next few hours or even days under constant surveillance while being questioned and examined. Vista knew that it was a precaution, but she couldn't help feeling like she was being punished.
But I didn't do anything wrong.
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Wyndle knew how spren died. His kind couldn't die through violence or time like humans could. He could only die if Lift broke her oaths, and she had kept hers to the end.
Only ... it wasn't the end. The Nahel Bond was still intact, and so his anchor to the Physical Realm was still alive. By some miracle she had retained enough Investiture to survive her fall. Lung had been left hopelessly buried beneath her as she lay unconscious atop the rubble, insensate and undisturbed. At least, until Oni Lee had appeared.
"Mistress! Mistress, wake up! Please wake up!"
Slosh ... slosh ... slosh.
"Oh Mistress. It's a miracle he hasn't taken your head off, but I don't think he means to help you. Where do these sewers lead? What am I to do?"
Slosh ... slosh ... slosh.
He couldn't significantly affect the Physical Realm on his own, and as he followed Lift being carried unconscious by an enemy, there was nothing he could do but scream.
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A/N Alright! This chapter has gone through more changes than I can count. And not just minor tweaks, but complete rewrites. Heck, the prison arc has gone through more changes than I can count. In some versions the whole team got captured, everyone but Lift got captured, everyone got out but Lift and Vista got captured by the ABB, etc., etc. A huge thank you to Exiled Immortal for helping me unmess this mess, and he honestly ended up writing so many massive chunks of this chapter that sometimes it felt more like I was editing his story than the reverse.
I'd also like to thank my Patrons, Exiled Immortal, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, and Apofatix for their support. Finally, thank you to everyone who has left a comment or a review letting me know what you think.