Cari muttered “excuse me” as she shouldered her way past the gentleman in front of her. The crowd was thicker in the Palace Square than she’d expected. She had no idea why so many people had come out to watch the execution of her three friends. That they would have come to enjoy such a spectacle sickened her.
She craned her neck to see if she could spot any of her other friends scattered around the rest of the crowd. Helen should be somewhere off to her left and Rodrigo and Francesca should be directly opposite her on the other side the hangman’s scaffolding.
Cari continued to press her way forward, trying to get as close to the front of the crowd as she could. She needed to be in a position from which she could move to assist the others once the rescue began. The people around her were boisterous and the closer she got to the front row, the more the men and women in front of her didn’t want to give up their place close to the gallows.
On more than one occasion, Cari stared someone down as she rested her hand on her sword’s hilt until they backed away. She wondered what the crowd would be like once the fighting began. Would they move against her and her friends or would some of them assist in getting the Dragoons away safely?
Cari reached a place where she was only four or five people deep in the crowd and realized it was going to be difficult to get any closer at this point. She didn’t want to draw undue attention to herself from the guards. Harley told her the guards had more of the hand drawn likenesses of her both in and outside the square. Cari had to be careful to avoid being recognized. The presence of the flyers here told her someone expected her to try something.
When she glanced to her left, Cari spotted Helen. She had managed to make it to the front of the crowd and stood in front of the line of imperial soldiers at the edge of the scaffolding. The guards used their muskets to press the crowd back, holding them horizontally to create a sort of barrier to hold off the surging crowd.
Helen caught her looking that way and nodded. Cari smiled and turned her attention to see if she could spot Rodrigo and Francesca. She picked out Rodrigo in position in the crowd on the opposite side of the gallows from where she stood. He, too, stood at the front of the crowd. She couldn’t see Francesca, but she was sure if Rodrigo was there, the woman was close by.
There was a bit of a commotion off to her right and she tried to pick out what was causing it. She realized what it must be as the crowd near her started shouting and pointing that way. It was the guards escorting the three prisoners towards the gallows. Her guess was confirmed as the ring of soldiers parted and her friends were pushed into the clear space created by the guard team around the gallows.
They’d been mistreated during their capture and imprisonment. All of them showed recent bruises, cuts, and crusty blood on their faces and clothes. Their white linen shirts were wet with fresh blood in the back, indicating they’d been whipped as well.
Liam was followed by Thad the Orc. Chance, the Elf, was the last one brought into the center of the square. There were eight guards escorting them. Two took position at the bottom of the steps while the other six escorted the prisoners up the stairs to the top of the scaffolding, five feet above the crowd around them.
Once on the platform, each was marched to stand beneath the nooses dangling from the gallows above them. They were each pushed forward to stand on the trap doors in the floor of the scaffold. A bell rang, silencing the rowdy crowd and a loud voice rang out. Cari realized it had been magically amplified to make sure everyone could hear the announcement. She turned to the balcony jutting out from the palace wall where the Duke of Charon and several of his senior officers stood.
“People of the Empire of Fantasma, you see before you the final efforts of a conspiracy to overthrow the rightful leaders of this empire. The once vaunted Dragoons have become disgraced by the actions of these three men and their co-conspirators. Their treason is punishable by only one thing, death.”
The crowd had a mixed reaction, which Cari found interesting. There were some cheers, but there were also some boos. Most of the people, however, were silent as if they were unsure how to react. Cari wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She hoped it fell in her favor.
The Duke continued his speech, calling out to the guards on the scaffolding. “Place the nooses on the condemned and prepare to carry out your duty.”
The prisoners were held by two guards each while the hangman drew the nooses tight around their necks. They all three had their hands tied behind their backs and their ankles were now bound together as well. None of them struggled against what was coming.
Cari glanced at Helen and Rodrigo one more time. She prepared herself to push forward to the edge of the crowd. This was the moment of action.
As she reached for her dagger, she felt something sharp press against the small of her back.
A familiar voice whispered in her ear. “Cari, my dear, you should put that dagger away. I’m afraid there’s not going to be a daring rescue to save anyone this time around.”
Cari started to turn around but Major Novachik pressed the point of his blade harder against Cari’s spine until she felt a trickle of blood running down her back and she froze.
“That’s better. Now I think its best we stand here and watch the festivities before we take you to see His Grace. He’s very eager to see you again.”
Cari’s head darted to the left and then tried to look across the scaffolding to find Rodrigo. Behind her, Novachik chuckled.
“We have your friends well in hand. I told you, there will be no rescue. You were all spotted as soon as you arrived in the square.”
Cari’s heart sank as she saw what he said was true. Two men stood behind Helen. Judging from the blank stare on her face, someone held a blade against her back as well. Rodrigo was flanked by two men and Cari saw the point of a blade from one of them pressed against his ribs. There might have been another one or two behind him. She couldn’t be sure. Francesca was probably captured as well.
Cari searched her mind for some thought or idea that could get them out of this. She wasn’t worried about herself. She’d escaped the Duke’s prison before and she would do so again. She was worried about what was about to happen to the Dragoons.
No matter how many different things she considered, there was no option that presented any chance of success. Even if she were to begin to fight back against Novachik and he didn’t manage to skewer her with his blade, fighting him would not get anyone near the scaffolding to rescue the Dragoons in time. The Duke would undoubtedly continue with the execution regardless of what she did. She couldn’t save them on her own anyway.
Cari called up her stats menu scanning down the list of attributes and her various skills, trying to find some other combination of moves or other option open to her.
Her eyes scanned up and down then stopped on her luck stat for some reason. She rarely considered luck to be of much benefit in real life. Her father always said he considered luck to be something a person made for herself. Here in Fantasma, however, it appeared to help in some limited ways, but she’d never really used it before as a stand-alone skill or attribute.
She couldn’t think of anything else, though, so she concentrated on her luck score hoping against all hope there would be some kind of response. To her surprise, she heard a strange rumbling sound in her ears. Cari couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It sounded like something mechanical was spinning in the back of her mind.
Cari didn’t know what it was since she’d never tried pressing her luck like this in the past. Nothing was happening, though, just the strange rumbling sound in her head. She was about to give up as the Duke called out from the balcony once again with his magically enhanced voice. “Guards, carry out your duty.”
As soon as the Duke said the words, the whirring, spinning sound in Cari’s mind stopped and there was a chime as if a tiny bell had rung. At the same instant, the hangman stepped forward to grasp the lever that would open the trap doors beneath the Dragoons.
Then it happened.
Cari would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it all occur right in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, a flashing blur drew her attention.
A spinning knife flew through the air, striking the hangman directly in the center of his chest.
It was followed by three more throwing knives, spinning through the air. Each struck the thick rope dangling from the top of the gallows above the condemned men.
At the same instant the three throwing knives sunk into the gallows and sliced through the ropes above the condemned, the dead hangman slumped forward over the lever he held, triggering the mechanism and causing the condemned to fall.
Cari stood frozen in place, her mouth gaping as each of the Dragoons dropped safely to the ground below. The whole sequence of events could only be described as unbelievable.
She tried to pick out where the thrown knives came from and spotted a figure wearing a hooded cloak spinning his way through the troop of guards lined up at the base of the stairs.
His movements were precise and exact. They were fluid, decisive, and lacked any extraneous effort or movement at all. Each action was timed to cause the most damage possible before moving on to the next guard.
The cloak fluttered open in front as he spun around, and Cari saw what looked like gleaming, translucent armor, almost as if it was made of blue glass.
He turned at one point and shot blue-white darts the same color as the armor straight out of his fingertips into the throat of the guard in front of him. He then raised his booted foot and kicked the dying guard into one of the other guards who was about to strike back at the mysterious attacker with a sword.
The mystery man’s hands disappeared inside the cloak and reemerged with a dagger in each hand.
A strange thought occurred as she stared at the events unfolding before her, triggering a memory. Those daggers looked familiar to Cari.
She didn’t know why and tried to place where she’d seen them before but was distracted by a new commotion to her left as the crowd surged away from a small explosion.
The blast wasn’t large and wouldn’t have caused much damage. It sounded more like a small firecracker going off. But it served its purpose and the crowd backed away from the startling noise opening a space in front of the ring of guards on the opposite side of the gallows.
Another hooded figure stood there, smaller than the man fighting at the gallows. Cari realized after a few seconds that the newcomer was a woman.
She couldn’t make out the woman’s face from within the shadows of the hooded cloak she wore. The newcomer raised an oddly shaped crossbow, holding it at hip height, and pulled the trigger.
A crossbow bolt flew out, slamming into one of the guards who started to raise his musket to fire at the hooded man on the gallows. The guard pitched over, a bolt embedded between his shoulder blades.
Then Cari saw another crossbow bolt, and another, and another, until five more crossbow bolts had flown out from the strange weapon without reloading, each striking one of the guards at the base of the scaffolding in the chest, throwing them all backward to the ground to stare with lifeless eyes at the sky.
More guards from around the perimeter surged in the woman’s direction and she dropped the crossbow to dangle by a shoulder strap while reaching to pull something from her belt. She flung the small object forward and it separated into five smaller objects in midair.
The smaller items spread out as each of them flew through the air to land on the ground in front of the charging guards. The guards ignored the tiny objects and ran directly over them. As soon as they did a fine mesh net sprayed upward, tangling feet and hands, capturing four of the guards. As they tripped and fell to the ground, sparks flew from the shiny mesh netting. The captured guards’ bodies jerked and spasmed as they were electrocuted by the charge stored in the tiny devices on the ground.
Who was this woman?
For that matter who was this man on the gallows? They fought with such intensity, with such efficiency in each of their motions, almost as if they fought as one person, coordinated in some way despite the distance between them.
The woman charged forward pulling two round objects from her belt and threw one to the left of the scaffolding in the direction where Rodrigo and Francesca were being held. She threw the other ball in Cari’s direction so that it landed in the open space where the guards were trying to decide whether to turn left or right. They had foes in opposite directions.
The two golf-ball sized objects landed and there was an explosion in each place followed by billowing streams of smoke. The initial explosions, though small, felled a few of the guards. The rest became confused and disoriented as the smoke continued to spread upward and outward until it filled the air on both sides of the scaffolding with a thick gray cloud.
Cari could no longer see the other side of the scaffolding and could barely make out the hooded man or woman fighting forward towards the prisoners crouched beneath the platform.
The hooded figures raced forward, dealing death to the remainder of the guards who stumbled coughing and blinded from the thick smoke around the gallows. The two ran beneath the scaffolding, disappearing into the thick smoke.
A few seconds later, the duo raced out of the smoke to the left with the three Dragoons right behind them. Chance laughed with total abandon in a manner she had never heard from the reserved elf before.
As the five escaping figures ran through the smoke heading back towards the edge of the square, the hoods on the two lead figures fell back from their heads revealing their faces.
Cari gawked at them in amazement as they disappeared into the crowd with the three Dragoons.
“Mom? Dad?”
Quest completed — rescue the Dragoons
20,000 experience awarded