NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: The Adventures of the Creeping Bam (BOOK 4: The Hunt)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: DRAMRATH

Kesla Shoon makes a much more ballsy leap over the balustrade of the staircase I'm chasing her down than I honestly would have given her credit for, although once I see her do it I wonder if I might have sold her short after all. The daughter of Edhril Shoon making a blind leap to uneven ground below that I doubt she can see much at all from a height of at least ten feet should be much less of a surprise to me than it actually proves to be. In the end I stop for a moment just to marvel at it, watching her land and drop into a somewhat clumsy roll she nonetheless comes up out of without any visible injury, immediately drawing her sword as she does it. Prompting more of the audience who are actually growing aware of what's unfolding near to them to leave their seats and try to clear some room.

Less than I would have expected, though. Almost as if some of them actually think this is part of the play. I mean, sure, it would be a very strange move for any playwright to pull, especially when the scene that's unfolding on stage right now seems to be dramatic and not action based ... but you never know. Art is a subjective thing, after all ...

Down below I see the one who was with her, a very beautiful half-orc woman in a particularly striking and extremely expensive-looking red dress draw the longsword hanging at her hip and strike a defensive pose as she prepares for the closest of the advancing guards to arrive. It's such an incongruous image I'm almost tempted to just stand here and watch, the dress and hair and her clear noble bearing so much at odds with the fact she's wearing a substantial sword at all, never mind that she's squaring up so efficiently. She clearly knows what she's doing as she readies for the coming attack, and it's only now that I recognise her, the one that ran Kuth so ragged back on the Heath the other night –

Something erupts from the wall at the back of the chamber, just beside the stage on our near side, and the entire room seems to jump as it happens, everything rocking with genuinely cataclysmic violence. Especially the stairs underneath me, which immediately throws me off balance, and as I stumble and my feet start to slip out from under me I only have one choice to prevent myself from taking a tumble down the remainder of the steps. I grab tight hold of the balustrade with both hands and hurl myself over the side. Even though I'm a good nine feet higher than Shoon was.

As I drop I barely have enough time before the landing to take in what's going on directly beneath me, specifically Kesla Shoon cutting her way through four of Hontiresk's signature impressively large security guards. The closest audience members, who were already starting to scramble in earnest as soon as the wall exploded, start to scatter with even greater urgency now, clearly twigging now that what's unfolding near them now definitely isn't part of the performance. The whole place is starting to move now, the audience at large making their way towards the exits as fast as they can, and I suspect it's mere moments before panic truly sets in and people start to die in a stampede.

Then I land and throw myself into a forward roll entirely on reflex, turning and starting to draw my sword as soon as I've found my feet again. Even now I'm momentarily taken aback as I witness Shoon decapitate one of the remaining guards while the only other one not bleeding in a crumpled heap stumbles into the nearest seat with his arms tight around his stomach. Trying to hold his guts in, no doubt. She gives her sword a quick whip off to the side in an action that immediately sends me back to training sessions with my blade-master in Tabaphic when I was young, something he was particularly strict about drilling into me. Take any opportunity you can to keep your blade clean, even in the middle of a fight. Like now, using momentum to clear the excess blood from the steel. Then she turns as the headless body starts to crumple and, despite the relative gloom, her eyes fix on me.