A Will to Leave

CHAPTER SEVEN

The storey was a construction left halfway unfinished. The knights were everywhere, there were arms, loads and loads of arms stacked on the edges. But there were only a few bridges with few tracks and fewer trams on them. Some trams were open, not completely loaded, with arms sticking out. Beyond all this, huge mechanical noises played from the sky.

"Did you get any?" The voice echoed from the communicator.

"I'm looking at one," I replied. "He's isolated near a tram."

"Don't haste, once he's completely in, take the shot."

The knight walked beside the track, a dozen steps away from the tram. When he was exactly three steps away from a clear view, he turned and strode in a different direction.

"He's away," I shifted the focus to another knight, but he wasn't alone, so another and another. I spotted a knight behind a pile of metal scraps, standing still, perfectly fitting in the frame. I immediately took the shot. It looked like it was going straight to the head but just scratched his helmet. I pulled the trigger again when his head turned to me with a hand holding the bleed. It went through his eye split widening it. The heavy slam on the ground was overlapped by the noises above.

"One out," I announced. I relaxed a bit and took my eyes off after more than an hour of searching.

"Congrats," the voice echoed. "You did well."

"I hate it."

"Ahhh, just like every layman," he said. "No one does it because they like it, they do it because they have to."

I sighed and got back to work, putting my fingers a little far from the trigger. My holding wasn't as steady as before, the point swung around a knight like a feather in the wind. I pulled the trigger when he came slightly into the frame, it was a clear cut between his neck, and his underburnt head rolled on the ground along with the helmet.

I took my eyes off and checked the element in the arm when the announcement burst.

"Attention brotherhood. We suspect mysterious activities arising in Condor," the voice came from all around. "We request you to stay guard."

The voice faded without any details about the flood in storage or gas out in the inventory.

"Who was that?"

"Must be the knight commander," Edwin replied. "He's responsible for this operation."

I realised the knights were not as stupid as to get sniped by an amateur. They just weren't expecting it, in a place where the most powerful hand was of a half-elf. They started making hand signals and formed around.

I quickly perused the surroundings through the lens in search of someone alone. Unfortunately, the knights were well formed, they maintained an equal distance from one another, and expanded like a spilt element. I pulled the trigger twice at a knight who was close to the dead one. I continued to repeat it.

There was a clack from the Eagle that I completely missed, but Edwin's sharp ears somehow picked it up. "Change the cylinder," he said. It might last a fire but he strictly ordered not to risk it.

My eyes started to burn to look through the dirty lens, taking chances; I had to hand-load three more elements constantly. When I pick the fourth one, the bag was almost empty with two cylinders left,

I heard a voice from a distance. I immediately shifted my focus to the knight who spotted a dead one. I wasn't fast enough, he had already called out before I could act. The knights spotted me, opposite the direction he was lying. A rain of fire exploded around me, as I jumped behind and hit a run. The elevation I lay started to slide, I leapt to a wooden tower built for hoisting bricks when it fell behind me. I kept racing forward, a tide of fire tried to catch up.

I made another leap and smashed the ground. The tower fell sideways and crushed some of the knights. I swapped out the half-empty cylinder with the last one. I rested my back behind a long unfinished pillar and glanced at the commotion. The knights smashed everything looking for me, and a near-blast icicle formed beside me on the pillar and made me jump.

I climbed to the nearby bridge followed by a series of icicles. I slid behind a tram and made three hits without much aiming. One of them hit the icicles and pulled down the whole pillar on the knights. Dust covered the land. I ran through the bridge and took a few shots as the dust cleared.

One of the few knights on foot espied me and raised his arm. I pulled the trigger once, twice and thrice but he bested me, the bridge rose as it plunged beneath on the other end. A group of knights formed, I threw the Eagle against them and jumped out to the pile of arms. Arms without triggers, arms without barrels, arms without stock. My ears screamed with the noise above, my thigh bled again, I extracted the half-empty Eagle and sprayed blindly at the knights who would have killed me if I didn't act. The knights caught in bright blue flame, brawling, icicles exploded from their arms, some melted and poured with the flame.

I sat there unable to move, trying to figure out what had happened. The dust and smoke slowly cleared. Far away there was a movement, behind all the fallen pillars above the bridge. I pulled an element from the knight's bag on the way. It was a short creature. I loaded the arm. It stopped and glanced towards me. A gnome. I passed the pillars and reached a half-stripped dead knight. The gnome wasn't there, he just vanished with the dust.