Will

Will took down one more commando who was off on his own, traveling rooftop to rooftop. He sniped her out of the air with a knife to the neck that had her gurgling on his own fluids until he came over to deliver a killing sword stroke. She'd been scouting, maybe, or ferrying messages back to the keep. Didn't much matter at this point.

There being no such thing as Detect [Brothel], and with Will not particularly knowledgeable about the distribution of such establishments across the entertainment district, he did not bother going too far out of his way to find ones the commandos might have missed. He saw a few that had already been searched, and some that were little more than burnt-out husks. Hopefully the supposed child hadn't been in one of the latter ones.

Will had no idea how to begin extrapolating the significance of something like that. A child on the Frontier. What he did know was that an anomaly on that scale, if true, had to be important. And if the Omens wanted their hands on that anomaly, it was worth taking it from them on that merit alone.

Brimstone's explosions got closer as Will traveled further north until he could actually see burning debris tossed around over the tops of houses. Being that close to the madman gave him nervous chills.

The blasts came at fairly regular intervals, a few every minute; until, all at once, they just stopped. Will wasn't sure what that meant. He was reluctant to get any closer, but eventually crept along until he felt something at the very edge of his extended Detect range. Not Brimstone himself—having taken Incognito, he was immune to being picked up by such effects—but several others. Another troop of commandos; six of them, this time. No. Five, and somebody else.

Somebody small.

It was impossible to get much detail with such a faint reading, but he thought the sixth person might be a child, or at least someone with a correspondingly pint-sized build. He got a little closer. That made him more confident. It did seem like a kid. Nine or ten years. Something like that.

Shit.

She was right in the middle of that loose cluster of soldiers. Even worse, the reading was coming from the exact location, near as he could tell, where Brimstone had been blundering about not a minute earlier.

Will couldn't bring himself to believe that was a coincidence. As always, it seemed the good lord had decided to shit in everyone's dinner. And unless his sudden silence was on account of the commandos already having put him down—which seemed unlikely—Will was staring down the barrel of a not-so-wonderful time.

"All right," Will said with a slow sigh, rolling some life back into his shoulders. "Won't get any easier standing around."

Sneaking up on the commandos was not difficult. Their focus was not on him. They were arrayed about the three and four-story roofs of the buildings surrounding a large brothel that was well along the process of flaming out. Three men and two women had their guns trained on the place and were laying down focused fire.

Will recognized the place vaguely as he drew nearer. The Red House.

Of course it had to be Mongrel's favorite brothel. There was something mildly hilarious about that.

Almost the entire facade of the four-story building had been blown off, and the building sagged in on itself, each floor tilting at a slightly different angle. The woodwork smoldered and gave the occasional shudder, walls groaning with the increasing effort to bear their own weight.

The girl was on the top floor, in plain view through the ragged absence that had been the street-facing wall, which had evidently been blasted clear with great violence. The girl had pressed herself up against the north-facing wall, standing between two smoking beds, arms flung around herself. She was terrified. A handful of women's corpses, most of them badly burned, littered the place.

Brimstone, too, was on the fourth floor. Cloaked in his semblance, he looked exactly as Lady-Consort Dawn had described. A red demon that breathed fire and smoke, clad in an almost insectile carapace of interlocking plates, with a full-face helmet that bore a twisted, open-mouthed, hateful visage and eyes like hot coals.

Slowly, Brimstone was approaching the little girl, left smoldering footprints in his wake. His arms were extended, beckoning.

"Come here, little one," he said, his voice coming out a broken rasp but with an uncharacteristic tenderness underlying it. "Don't be afraid."

Will hopped roofs, got just yards from the nearest commando without anyone noticing. They were firing on the lord, maybe more to draw his attention than to try and actually kill the bastard. Most of the bullets missed, Brimstone deftly dodging by adjusting his posture tiny fractions this way or that. The few bullets that did find their mark either glanced off or made sparking ricochets that threw off small chips of dull armor plating. It was unclear what material the battle suit was made of, but it had to be extremely durable to resist direct fire from those long guns.

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Whatever the commandos were trying to accomplish, they weren't doing a good job. Brimstone ignored them completely, barely breaking up his stride as he walked through their hail of whizzing gunfire. All his attention was occupied by the kid. That couldn't be good for their plan. No one wanted to risk their hide badly enough to go in there with him, though.

"What's the matter?" Brimstone said, and took another step. The floor in a ten-foot circle around him smoked and blackened with the incredible heat that rose off his armor in shimmering waves. "Don't you recognize me? Come with me, little one. Let's go home."

The man had thoroughly cooked his cerebellum. He didn't seem at all cognizant of his own lethal aura of destruction—the fact that he would burn the little girl to a crisp if he got anywhere near her.

She edged further back against the wall until her heels hit against it, clean streaks on her soot-black face where her tears had been falling. The black circle was edging disconcertingly close to her toe tips. One of the beds went on fire.

There wasn't really any time to come up with a plan. Will took a few steps to the left, lopped the head off one commando, then sheathed his sword. He sent a throwing knife into the exposed neck of his nearest friend across the way. Missed the artery by a fraction. Just a flesh wound, but he'd used one of the curare-laced ones. The poison would bring the man down before long.

With a running start, Will kicked off the edge of the roof and aimed a max-range Dash at the brothel's fourth story. He shot across the road in a shallow arc, wind tearing at his clothes. Touched down at speed, skidded across the floor, broken planks scattering around his feet. He jumped over one bed, snatched the little critter up in his arms, and danced between the flames that were engulfing the next mattress.

Brimstone just stood there staring with his arms out like an idiot.

"See you later," Will said with a wink.

Dash not yet off skill lag, he Repelled himself through a far window, shielding the girl with his shoulder. Glass crashed. Shards glittered. The tiny thing in his arms shook like a baby bird.

Flying.

Falling.

Will tumbled, smoke and fire and dead buildings rushing past. He landed awkwardly on his feet, knees creaking with the impact, and took a few tottering steps to even out before building up to an awkward run, heading down the nearest nondescript side street without any set destination in mind.

"I've got you," he told the little girl, voice coming out too hoarse and breathless to have any hope of sounding reassuring. "Don't worry anymore. I'll keep you safe."

He was dogged by a howl of anguish that echoed out over the city and sent shivers down his neck. "NOOOOO!!!" came that shrill cry, followed closely by a huge roar of fire and a great shattering of wood. Ahead, the houses were bathed in the bright orange light of Brimstone's insensate fury. The little girl flinched at the noise, balling her fists around handfuls of Will's shirt.

Will was loath to stick around and get a helping of that.

Now I know your tricks, you bald bastard. Let's see you chase this rabbit down.

He turned a corner, sprinting, one arm wrapped around the girl's back and the other supporting her head. "Do something for me?" he panted. "Shut your eyes. Take a deep breath, then hold it. Do that until I say stop."

She did as she was bid—he felt her inhale sharply against his chest. Good. At least there was one person who didn't insist on making his life as difficult as possible.

Brimstone came down on his right like a crashing comet, light and shadow sliding across the path with his fiery approach. He touched down on the other side of some buildings, out of sight. Destruction followed. Wind screamed through the alleyways. All along his right, architecture folded like toothpick houses, scattered wide. Will staggered sideways with the shockwave, clipped his shoulder badly against a wall, felt his newly mended collarbone crunch. He kept going, stumbling, turned his back against flying debris to keep it from hitting the girl.

When the blast settled, there were no longer any buildings between him and Brimstone. The lord came marching through broken rubble, eyes shining balefully, a flametongue lashing out of his helmet's disfigured mouth.

Will went left, shot straight into a burning building. Dashed over warped floorboards, black smoke all around. Vaulted through a shattered window, out into the next street over. He continued, eked out a crazy zigzag westward path, going wherever the fire was thickest. He maneuvered carefully rather than quickly, using only Dash for movement and forgoing Repel to save his last smidge of AP.

Brimstone came after, tearing apart everything in his path. He raved and howled incoherently, calling Will a traitor, a liar, a thief, a murderer, a spy, a devil, and just about every other epithet under the son. He wanted his little girl back something terrible.

The commandos were tailing him too. Will didn't have the same embarrassing deficiency as his lessers—he could sense them approaching from behind. He was pretty sure he'd taken out their sensory type with his opening moves—they were just following Brimstone, letting him play the bloodhound.

But Brimstone's remote spirit, however far he could fling it, was not all-seeing. Its perception could not pierce anything that normal eyes could not. Will's improvised smokescreens worked. Soon enough, Brimstone lost track, veered off in the wrong direction, continuing west as Will went south. He soon realized his error, and did not take it well. Will could hear him screaming in the distance, taking his anger out on an already ruined city.

The commandos receded with him. Will indulged himself a laugh that quickly devolved into a terrible coughing fit. He staggered up against the shell of a burnt-out building, slid down on his butt, and took a second to catch his breath while holding the girl tight. He told her to do the same, and she panted gratefully for air.

Good job, me. No one else was going to pat him on the back—might as well do it himself.

He wondered, just for a moment, if he might have been too hard on her.

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