The Venatori bodies were already starting to collect in the streets, including one or two that had unceremoniously smacked against the ground at the end of their two-story fall, left in bloody heaps after Zee and Khari were through with them. Rom kept near the doorway at first, working with shield and handheld crossbow as best he could, and covering Asala's back. He was the only one with an actual shield in the group, though Leon's six and a half feet of heavy armor were good for it, too. Chryseis wasn't much for protection, choosing instead to sling powerful spells down the street, often with lingering effects of ice or fire that made forward progress difficult for the Venatori.
The arrows from one side of the street had stopped altogether, and the ones coming from the other had targets in two directions to deal with now. Zee had both good sight lines and good cover to work with using the rooftop's railing. There was a long and mostly unstable wooden plank connecting the rooftops on either side. Rom didn't have to wonder whether or not Khari was going to use that to get across and into the buildings on the other side.
Leon shored up the left side street for the moment, while Chryseis delayed advancing Venatori from the right. Rom shot down those that advanced up the way they'd come from, preferring to remain at Asala's back when he could, but descending the steps into the street when necessary. Ithilian and Amalia had been forced from the doorway by now, as there were more Venatori inside.
"Any luck, Asala?" Powerful blood magic wasn't her specialty, but she'd need to figure something out sooner or later.
"Uh, not yet," she replied, the yellow field still glowing in front of her. It did, however, look agitated, which meant whatever she was doing was having some sort of an effect. Suddenly, it popped and sizzled, causing her to recoil her hand back from the force and trying to shake some sort of pain out of it. The field on the other hand, remained strong "Not that," she spoke to herself, a twitch to the corner of her mouth. She gave her hand one more shake and then leaned forward, working on the spell once more.
Still on the left, Leon was serving as a one-man road block, something at which his size no doubt helped him succeed. That said... he wasn't moving at nearly his usual alacrity, nor were his blows landing either as hard or as precisely as Rom was accustomed to seeing them. The street was wide enough for more than a few of the cultists to confront him at once, and in the time that took him to down the first few, several more had swarmed into their places, the melee combatants backed up by mages.
The commander swept one woman's feet out from underneath her, stepping onto her throat with his left boot and raising an arm to deflect an incoming sword. It skidded off his gauntlet, but he missed the follow-up grab, too slow to seize hold of the swordsman before he skittered away on lighter feet. In the time it took him to recover from the miss, one of the mages in the rear had shot a fireball, clearly overzealous at what seemed an opportunity to get a good hit in on someone they'd no doubt heard much about already.
As though it had been timed, a body fell from the roof above, the limp corpse taking the fireball dead-on, leaving only cinders to lick towards Leon. When it hit the ground with a thud, it was still burning, the dead Venatori's clothes smoldering and forcing the others to take a step back. Khari had, perhaps intentionally, created an obstacle to help defend one of Leon's sides, at least for a moment. Indeed, she leaned down for just a moment, offering up a facetious grin.
“How's that for tactics? Hop to, Leon, or I'll have you beat in no time." She vanished again, presumably to deal with anyone left on the roof, or maybe the next one over if she could get there—no paths as convenient as the fallen plank were available, unless she dragged it across herself.
For the moment, they were holding them off, and it even seemed like the Venatori were pulling back, being a little more cautious in their attack. Skirmishing, really, trying to poke at the established defense for a weakness. The barrier wasn't showing any of those, unfortunately. If anything it looked angrier, having shifted in color back to an alarming red more indicative of the effect it had on those trying to pass through.
It wasn't long before Rom heard an ominous sound coming from Chryseis's side street, somewhere out of sight due to the wall of ice she'd been constructing and fortifying between the tall buildings. It was a heavy, constant beat, regular intervals like drums vibrating the earth under their feet. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Chryseis preemptively took several paces backwards from her wall, arcane magic ready at her fingertips.
The beats became irregular just as they reached the other side of the ice wall. A low, gravelly grunt preceded an explosion of ice shards in their direction, and through the shattered remains of the wall charged a stone golem, eight feet tall, rotund and broad-shoulders, magic runes carved along the length of its arms and around its collar. Silver-grey eyes glowed in its head, and it wasted no time charging at the nearest member of the group.
Chryseis let loose a mind blast that only served to delay it. A personal shield of arcane magic went up in front of her before the golem struck, punching through it and throwing her back. She tumbled back down the street until her back hit a wall and brought her to a stop. Rom reached her first, grabbing the back of her shirt and helping haul her to her feet. She seemed only just capable of staying upright. He might've been disappointed by that, but for all he knew they'd need her to win this now.
With the golem's charge came renewed attack from the Venatori behind it, preferring to use ranged weapons and magic in order to stay out of the way of its rather large swinging fists.
Leon felled another Venatori with a swift jab, turning back over his shoulder just long enough to assess what the problem was before his eyes flew back to the roof. "Khari! We need you back down here. Zahra, take the right side—arrows won't do much to that!" He didn't say it aloud, but the grimace on his face conveyed well enough that he doubted his bare hands would have much effect either, in his current condition. The conclusion was obvious: the burden of keeping the cultists at bay would fall to his fists and Zee's arrows, leaving the rest of them to protect Asala and deal with the golem itself.
The split in his attention cost him, brief as it was. A Venatori knife found a weak spot in his armor. Leon grunted and doubled over, grabbing the responsible party by the collar of his leathers and slamming his face into a knee. The knife, he left where is was, between two of his ribs in the place where his chestplate joined the armor on his back. It seemed to take him great effort to straighten again and block the next incoming blow, but he managed it, the axe clanging off his crossed arms.
“You got it!" From the sound of Khari's voice, she was on the move again, backtracking across the roofs to move from the left side of the alley where Leon was to the right, where the golem had entered. She came into view shortly after, her sword sheathed across her back, arms and legs pumping furiously as she sprinted across the reddish tiled slope, some of her treads actually pulling the shoddy work free of the roof's underlying surface.
She changed her angle, and then it became obvious just what she was planning to do about her exit from altitude. “Here we go!" With an excited ha! she gathered her legs under her and launched herself. For a moment, she seemed almost about to fly, to be propelled from beneath by some lucky wind and take to the sky for truth, but then gravity caught up with her and her arc came back down, pulling her towards the ground like any other wingless creature, wild hair streaming like a tattered pennant.
But she'd aimed herself well, and both hands gripped the golem's shoulder on the way down. She pulled herself in, a loud, echoing clang signaling the heavy impact of the rest of her body with the construct's stone back. She scrabbled a moment, her feet searching for purchase, but in the end it was by the strength of her arms alone that she began to pull herself upwards.
“Hey!" The shout was breathless, exhilarated and urgent all at once. “Where's the weak point on these things, anyhow?"
"Back of the head!" Chryseis called, still a bit breathless from the hit she took. She looked a bit like she didn't believe what she just saw. Rom, however, wasn't surprised at all, just concerned. "Where the head meets the neck!"
Khari didn't stop to second-guess the advice, drawing the short knife that served as her sidearm once she felt she was secure enough to spare the hand. Setting it between her teeth, she shuffled her way closer to the spot, pausing once when the golem's movement got a little too aggressive, and holding on mostly, it seemed, by sheer strength and willpower. The motion slowed just enough, though, and she jumped the final distance, catching herself so that one arm wrapped as far around its neck from behind as she could make it go. Her other hand took up the dagger, and she plunged it into the spot, perhaps spotting some crack in the stone not visible from any further away.
If she'd been an annoyance before, it was now the construct's obvious first priority to be rid of her, and it thrashed heavily, heaving itself around and nearly crushing a Venatori unlucky enough to have ventured too close. Khari held on for a few seconds, but then a momentous heave sent her flying again, and this time not half so gracefully as before.
She slammed front-first into the wall of Marcus's hideout, throwing her arms out to protect herself on instinct. The dull crack of one of them giving out underneath her was unmistakable, as was the thud when her head hit the siding right after. She fell, landing in a heap on the ground and rolling to her back, clearly fighting to pull in a breath, expression dazed. At least she was conscious.
Rom was in motion before she hit the ground, closing the distance quickly. "Asala!" he called, arriving at Khari's head. "Get Decius out of there, I have an idea." Healing would have to wait for all of them, but he needed to get Khari out of the way first.
"Come on," he said, more quietly, slipping his arms underneath her and pulling her away, trying to be careful while also using the speed necessary to get out of the way of the angry golem. "Chryseis! Give us a moment."
"This had better be good," she growled, moving to engage the golem before it could crush him and Khari. It seemed to ignore most of her spells, at least the damaging effects of them, but Chryseis was more prepared to dodge this time, and didn't immediately take a hit.
By the barrier, Decius held up his hands in a sort of surrender to Asala from where he was crouched against the wall. "I swear I didn't know this was going to happen." She might need to carry him, with the way his feet were chained together. He certainly wasn't going to be making good time away from the door on his own.
One last sizzling pop from the magic field and Asala stepped back. It appeared she attempted one last burst of magic in an effort to break through, but that failed as well as the barrier remained. She instead huffed loudly and shook her head and turned her focus instead toward Decius. "Sorry," she frowned apologetically before she leaned down and gripped him by the legs. She flipped him over her shoulder bodily and then turned away from the door, making her way anywhere else but there. Though not as strong as her size would suggest, it was enough to carry Decius away-- had he been a bigger man, it would perhaps had been a different story.
As they made their escape, Asala summoned a barrier over both herself and Decius, just in time as it turned out as a lightning bolt struck the surface soon after. She huffed again, but the shield held fast and settled soon after.
Rom regrouped with her in the safest area they could find down the street, letting go of Khari there and grabbing Asala's shoulder briefly. "I'm going after it," he said, sheathing his blade and discarding the shield. Wouldn't be useful against the front of the golem anyway. "I need you to make sure it stays on me. Don't let it turn on anyone else. We need to lead it to that barrier, and force it in." He figured either the golem would be destroyed by it, or it would destroy the barrier. Either way it was progress. Unless he died.
There wasn't any time to discuss the plan more, as Chryseis took an untimely arrow to her left side while engaged with the golem, from an archer soon picked off by Zee. The disruption to her focus caused the next swing from the golem to connect, tossing her back into the wall behind her. She hit it hard, and crumpled to the ground at its base. Rom took off, his mark already crackling with energy.
He jumped at the nearest hand, trying to make contact before he let loose the energy he was building up. The blast was enough to knock him on his back the other direction, and enough to remove a pair of fingers from the golem. It turned on Rom and charged, forcing him to dive out of the way. He relocated towards the steps leading up to the barrier, but the golem charged on until it hit a wall, and then turned towards Leon, approaching his backside. It seemed more agitated than it had to begin with, targeting whatever happened to be in front of it.
Fortunately, it was neither quiet nor subtle, and Leon was evidently able to sense its approach, because he strafed to the side, clearly unaware of the plan to keep it from ranging too far with barriers. One of the Venatori seized the opportunity and hurled a bolt of lightning at him, one that struck the knife still embedded in his side. The commander's knees buckled under the force of it, leaving him more or less at the mercy of the other cultists on his side.
It wasn't an advantage they had much opportunity to make use of, though, because Khari ran out from the side of a nearby building, having clearly decided she'd be of most use helping him out. Just in the nick of time, her good shoulder slammed into the closest Venatori, knocking him into two others and throwing off the follow-up spell aimed for Leon.
She stooped to pick up a discarded axe, no doubt unable to wield her sword with a broken arm, and bared her teeth, hacking forward into the nearest wayward limb with the stolen weapon. “Just a little more, Leon. Don't worry about the golem—Rom and Asala are gonna keep it away from us. Let's finish these fuckers."
As she said, one of Asala's barriers sprung to life, blocking off the access to their side of the street. It appeared to be thicker than usual, most likely created in order to better stand up to the golem. The woman herself kept well out of the way, having discarded Decius somewhere along a way. She kept a sight line with the golem just to be able to direct her barriers.
"Hey!" Rom yelled, standing in front of Marcus's barrier, unsure if the golem would respond to verbal cues. He pulled free his crossbow and fired a bolt at it for good measure, the projectile striking the golem in the brow and chipping off a small piece. That seemed to do the trick, and the golem thought twice about punching against the barrier from Asala it had run up against, turning on Rom instead. With a low roar it charged straight for him, pounding heavy steps that shook the street as it clambered up the stairs.
It made a leaping attempt at a smash that almost caught Rom off guard, but he had just enough space to roll out of the way to the side. That left the golem standing directly in front of the angry red barrier. His mark sparking to life, Rom pressed his hand against the construct's back and let loose a blast, taking small chunks out of it and making it stumble halfway forward. Not quite enough. He darted back a step. "Now, Asala!" he called. "Push it in!" No easy task, he was sure, but this seemed like their best chance.
A shield descended over the golem, bowed inward to try and trap it between the two barriers. It then began to constrict, soon brushing up against the back of the golem. Asala herself stepped out from where she was hiding, the magical glow of her barriers reaching up to her elbows. She strode forward, the clear effort of pushing such a solid creature written on her brow, as sweat began to bead and the look of exertion worked into her features. The magical glow on her arms only intensified as she walked, ramping up the strength of the barrier.
In the confined space it wasn't able to get much of a backswing on its punches, enabling the barrier to stay up longer, and within a few seconds it was pressed against the field preventing entry to Marcus's tower. There was a sizzling at first as the outer layer of stone on its back was scorched and burned away, but it soon built into a series of small explosions, the barrier violently fighting to keep the golem out, while Asala's barrier pushed it in. The runes on the surface of the golem's body lit up in a bright red hue, and flames soon covered the construct. It roared, rearing back with a fist that managed to punch and hold through the field, despite deafening cracks and small blasts.
The fist came back and punched Asala's barrier, shattering it, but it became obvious that little remained of the arm once it was done. The rest fell to pieces on the ground in front of it, and the golem staggered forward. Huge chunks had been burned away out of the back of it, too many for it to continue functioning, it seemed. It staggered forward heavily, wobbled, and then collapsed down the stairs in a heap of rubble, forcing Rom to backstep out of the way.
The street fell mostly to silence, the Venatori having given up the attack as well. Rom spared a glance for Khari and Leon, both injured pretty severely, but it seemed they'd managed to clean up their end of things. He looked back to Asala. "Nice work. Have another go at that barrier?" Indeed, it looked weakened, visibly flickering, and some of the doorway around it had been damaged by the golem's efforts to escape. Perhaps it had simply been forced to fend off too much with the golem's inhuman capability for endurance.
Asala exhaled deeply once and rolled her shoulders, wiping the sweat from her brow while she was at it. She took a glance at the wavering barrier and nodded. "Okay. I will try to hurry," she added with a look toward Leon and Khari.
"Thank you." Rom, meanwhile, made his way quickly over to Chryseis, who appeared to be unconscious, sitting slumped against the wall at the side of the street. She always came prepared he knew, and when he crouched at her side he rummaged first through the small bags on her belt, finding a few healing potions. He took them all, four in total, and carried them quickly back to the street on the other side of Marcus's entrance, offering them out to Khari and Leon.
"Drink these," he said, setting them down to empty his hands and let them decide how to split them. "Asala's working on the barrier. We need to be ready for more once we're inside." They had no idea what had happened to Ithilian and Amalia, but knowing the history they had with the magister, it could be even worse than what they'd encountered out here.
Still... there was an opportunity here. Leaving Khari and Leon to the potions and their healing, Rom made his way back over to Chryseis, who still had an arrow lodged in her side. She wasn't in great shape, but it didn't seem like she'd die if she was just left here, either. He returned to her side, crouching again and taking hold of the arrow. What to do with it was what he hesitated on.
She coughed, and stirred, and still he didn't let go of the arrow. Opening her eyes, she didn't seem surprised to find him there, but winced all the same as little motions of the arrowhead caused painful twinges in her abdomen.
"If you're going to do it, best do it now," she advised him. As ever, his intentions were plain as day to her, and likely had been from the time they met. "Before your friends come over here." He locked eyes with her, finding them almost uncaring, disinterested.
"I need you to be gone," he said quietly, unsure of why the words left him. Why he felt the need.
"If it needs to be done, why are you hesitating?" She coughed, her lips slightly painted with blood. "Why am I still alive? I've played my part. I have nothing left to offer you." Still he hesitated, and her lip curled into a snarl. "Do it. Or are you still a slave?"
“Gone's not dead." A metallic scrape accompanied the flat pronouncement; Khari's sword dragged slightly against the road until she planted it point down in the dirt, leaning heavily on it. The same hand gripped an empty potion bottle between her last two fingers. The other arm still hung at her side in a way that suggested serious injury, but her eyes were clear when they found Rom's. “And dead's not the same as gone. This isn't about her, or what she deserves. It's about you. What you deserve. The only one who can make you a slave anymore is you." She exhaled, the breath shaky, and her grip tightened on the handle of the sword. Her face was as easy to read as it had ever been: past the pain she was in, Khari was quite at ease.
She believed what she said. And more than that, she had faith in him. Trust. Enough of it that she didn't feel the need to say any more than she already had. Instead, she simply regarded him with open expectation, her head tilted slightly to the side, loose curls stuck to her neck with sweat and frizzing up from her crown, a half-formed smile curling her mouth.
"All of you talk about things too much, you know that?" Chryseis winced again, trying not to move while Rom still had the hand on the arrow in her. "If you're not going to do it, then could you please—gah!"
He pulled the arrow out of her, tossing it aside and backing away a step. She hissed out a breath in pain, pressing her hand to the wound, opening her potions pouch with the other and finding it empty. "Wonderful. Rob me, and then spare me."
Not a moment later, a loud pop punctuated Chryseis's sentence. It sounded as if it came from the barrier barring their way, and a look in that direction would reveal Asala scampering back away from the door--the popping perhaps startling her more than anyone else. After she'd scurried some distance from the now open door, a shield rose up in front of her to shield her from some blow back that fortunately never came. After a moment or two of nothing, she finally felt comfortable to let the shield fall, before tossing glances to all of her friends around her.
She took one last deep breath before a gentle pinkish light wrapped around her hands and she began to make her way toward Leon.
The removal of the barrier was enough to immediately draw Rom's attention away from Chryseis, and his blade and shield were soon in his hands again. "Anyone who still can, we need to get there."
There was no way of telling what had happened inside the tower.
The arrows from one side of the street had stopped altogether, and the ones coming from the other had targets in two directions to deal with now. Zee had both good sight lines and good cover to work with using the rooftop's railing. There was a long and mostly unstable wooden plank connecting the rooftops on either side. Rom didn't have to wonder whether or not Khari was going to use that to get across and into the buildings on the other side.
Leon shored up the left side street for the moment, while Chryseis delayed advancing Venatori from the right. Rom shot down those that advanced up the way they'd come from, preferring to remain at Asala's back when he could, but descending the steps into the street when necessary. Ithilian and Amalia had been forced from the doorway by now, as there were more Venatori inside.
"Any luck, Asala?" Powerful blood magic wasn't her specialty, but she'd need to figure something out sooner or later.
"Uh, not yet," she replied, the yellow field still glowing in front of her. It did, however, look agitated, which meant whatever she was doing was having some sort of an effect. Suddenly, it popped and sizzled, causing her to recoil her hand back from the force and trying to shake some sort of pain out of it. The field on the other hand, remained strong "Not that," she spoke to herself, a twitch to the corner of her mouth. She gave her hand one more shake and then leaned forward, working on the spell once more.
Still on the left, Leon was serving as a one-man road block, something at which his size no doubt helped him succeed. That said... he wasn't moving at nearly his usual alacrity, nor were his blows landing either as hard or as precisely as Rom was accustomed to seeing them. The street was wide enough for more than a few of the cultists to confront him at once, and in the time that took him to down the first few, several more had swarmed into their places, the melee combatants backed up by mages.
The commander swept one woman's feet out from underneath her, stepping onto her throat with his left boot and raising an arm to deflect an incoming sword. It skidded off his gauntlet, but he missed the follow-up grab, too slow to seize hold of the swordsman before he skittered away on lighter feet. In the time it took him to recover from the miss, one of the mages in the rear had shot a fireball, clearly overzealous at what seemed an opportunity to get a good hit in on someone they'd no doubt heard much about already.
As though it had been timed, a body fell from the roof above, the limp corpse taking the fireball dead-on, leaving only cinders to lick towards Leon. When it hit the ground with a thud, it was still burning, the dead Venatori's clothes smoldering and forcing the others to take a step back. Khari had, perhaps intentionally, created an obstacle to help defend one of Leon's sides, at least for a moment. Indeed, she leaned down for just a moment, offering up a facetious grin.
“How's that for tactics? Hop to, Leon, or I'll have you beat in no time." She vanished again, presumably to deal with anyone left on the roof, or maybe the next one over if she could get there—no paths as convenient as the fallen plank were available, unless she dragged it across herself.
For the moment, they were holding them off, and it even seemed like the Venatori were pulling back, being a little more cautious in their attack. Skirmishing, really, trying to poke at the established defense for a weakness. The barrier wasn't showing any of those, unfortunately. If anything it looked angrier, having shifted in color back to an alarming red more indicative of the effect it had on those trying to pass through.
It wasn't long before Rom heard an ominous sound coming from Chryseis's side street, somewhere out of sight due to the wall of ice she'd been constructing and fortifying between the tall buildings. It was a heavy, constant beat, regular intervals like drums vibrating the earth under their feet. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Chryseis preemptively took several paces backwards from her wall, arcane magic ready at her fingertips.
The beats became irregular just as they reached the other side of the ice wall. A low, gravelly grunt preceded an explosion of ice shards in their direction, and through the shattered remains of the wall charged a stone golem, eight feet tall, rotund and broad-shoulders, magic runes carved along the length of its arms and around its collar. Silver-grey eyes glowed in its head, and it wasted no time charging at the nearest member of the group.
Chryseis let loose a mind blast that only served to delay it. A personal shield of arcane magic went up in front of her before the golem struck, punching through it and throwing her back. She tumbled back down the street until her back hit a wall and brought her to a stop. Rom reached her first, grabbing the back of her shirt and helping haul her to her feet. She seemed only just capable of staying upright. He might've been disappointed by that, but for all he knew they'd need her to win this now.
With the golem's charge came renewed attack from the Venatori behind it, preferring to use ranged weapons and magic in order to stay out of the way of its rather large swinging fists.
Leon felled another Venatori with a swift jab, turning back over his shoulder just long enough to assess what the problem was before his eyes flew back to the roof. "Khari! We need you back down here. Zahra, take the right side—arrows won't do much to that!" He didn't say it aloud, but the grimace on his face conveyed well enough that he doubted his bare hands would have much effect either, in his current condition. The conclusion was obvious: the burden of keeping the cultists at bay would fall to his fists and Zee's arrows, leaving the rest of them to protect Asala and deal with the golem itself.
The split in his attention cost him, brief as it was. A Venatori knife found a weak spot in his armor. Leon grunted and doubled over, grabbing the responsible party by the collar of his leathers and slamming his face into a knee. The knife, he left where is was, between two of his ribs in the place where his chestplate joined the armor on his back. It seemed to take him great effort to straighten again and block the next incoming blow, but he managed it, the axe clanging off his crossed arms.
“You got it!" From the sound of Khari's voice, she was on the move again, backtracking across the roofs to move from the left side of the alley where Leon was to the right, where the golem had entered. She came into view shortly after, her sword sheathed across her back, arms and legs pumping furiously as she sprinted across the reddish tiled slope, some of her treads actually pulling the shoddy work free of the roof's underlying surface.
She changed her angle, and then it became obvious just what she was planning to do about her exit from altitude. “Here we go!" With an excited ha! she gathered her legs under her and launched herself. For a moment, she seemed almost about to fly, to be propelled from beneath by some lucky wind and take to the sky for truth, but then gravity caught up with her and her arc came back down, pulling her towards the ground like any other wingless creature, wild hair streaming like a tattered pennant.
But she'd aimed herself well, and both hands gripped the golem's shoulder on the way down. She pulled herself in, a loud, echoing clang signaling the heavy impact of the rest of her body with the construct's stone back. She scrabbled a moment, her feet searching for purchase, but in the end it was by the strength of her arms alone that she began to pull herself upwards.
“Hey!" The shout was breathless, exhilarated and urgent all at once. “Where's the weak point on these things, anyhow?"
"Back of the head!" Chryseis called, still a bit breathless from the hit she took. She looked a bit like she didn't believe what she just saw. Rom, however, wasn't surprised at all, just concerned. "Where the head meets the neck!"
Khari didn't stop to second-guess the advice, drawing the short knife that served as her sidearm once she felt she was secure enough to spare the hand. Setting it between her teeth, she shuffled her way closer to the spot, pausing once when the golem's movement got a little too aggressive, and holding on mostly, it seemed, by sheer strength and willpower. The motion slowed just enough, though, and she jumped the final distance, catching herself so that one arm wrapped as far around its neck from behind as she could make it go. Her other hand took up the dagger, and she plunged it into the spot, perhaps spotting some crack in the stone not visible from any further away.
If she'd been an annoyance before, it was now the construct's obvious first priority to be rid of her, and it thrashed heavily, heaving itself around and nearly crushing a Venatori unlucky enough to have ventured too close. Khari held on for a few seconds, but then a momentous heave sent her flying again, and this time not half so gracefully as before.
She slammed front-first into the wall of Marcus's hideout, throwing her arms out to protect herself on instinct. The dull crack of one of them giving out underneath her was unmistakable, as was the thud when her head hit the siding right after. She fell, landing in a heap on the ground and rolling to her back, clearly fighting to pull in a breath, expression dazed. At least she was conscious.
Rom was in motion before she hit the ground, closing the distance quickly. "Asala!" he called, arriving at Khari's head. "Get Decius out of there, I have an idea." Healing would have to wait for all of them, but he needed to get Khari out of the way first.
"Come on," he said, more quietly, slipping his arms underneath her and pulling her away, trying to be careful while also using the speed necessary to get out of the way of the angry golem. "Chryseis! Give us a moment."
"This had better be good," she growled, moving to engage the golem before it could crush him and Khari. It seemed to ignore most of her spells, at least the damaging effects of them, but Chryseis was more prepared to dodge this time, and didn't immediately take a hit.
By the barrier, Decius held up his hands in a sort of surrender to Asala from where he was crouched against the wall. "I swear I didn't know this was going to happen." She might need to carry him, with the way his feet were chained together. He certainly wasn't going to be making good time away from the door on his own.
One last sizzling pop from the magic field and Asala stepped back. It appeared she attempted one last burst of magic in an effort to break through, but that failed as well as the barrier remained. She instead huffed loudly and shook her head and turned her focus instead toward Decius. "Sorry," she frowned apologetically before she leaned down and gripped him by the legs. She flipped him over her shoulder bodily and then turned away from the door, making her way anywhere else but there. Though not as strong as her size would suggest, it was enough to carry Decius away-- had he been a bigger man, it would perhaps had been a different story.
As they made their escape, Asala summoned a barrier over both herself and Decius, just in time as it turned out as a lightning bolt struck the surface soon after. She huffed again, but the shield held fast and settled soon after.
Rom regrouped with her in the safest area they could find down the street, letting go of Khari there and grabbing Asala's shoulder briefly. "I'm going after it," he said, sheathing his blade and discarding the shield. Wouldn't be useful against the front of the golem anyway. "I need you to make sure it stays on me. Don't let it turn on anyone else. We need to lead it to that barrier, and force it in." He figured either the golem would be destroyed by it, or it would destroy the barrier. Either way it was progress. Unless he died.
There wasn't any time to discuss the plan more, as Chryseis took an untimely arrow to her left side while engaged with the golem, from an archer soon picked off by Zee. The disruption to her focus caused the next swing from the golem to connect, tossing her back into the wall behind her. She hit it hard, and crumpled to the ground at its base. Rom took off, his mark already crackling with energy.
He jumped at the nearest hand, trying to make contact before he let loose the energy he was building up. The blast was enough to knock him on his back the other direction, and enough to remove a pair of fingers from the golem. It turned on Rom and charged, forcing him to dive out of the way. He relocated towards the steps leading up to the barrier, but the golem charged on until it hit a wall, and then turned towards Leon, approaching his backside. It seemed more agitated than it had to begin with, targeting whatever happened to be in front of it.
Fortunately, it was neither quiet nor subtle, and Leon was evidently able to sense its approach, because he strafed to the side, clearly unaware of the plan to keep it from ranging too far with barriers. One of the Venatori seized the opportunity and hurled a bolt of lightning at him, one that struck the knife still embedded in his side. The commander's knees buckled under the force of it, leaving him more or less at the mercy of the other cultists on his side.
It wasn't an advantage they had much opportunity to make use of, though, because Khari ran out from the side of a nearby building, having clearly decided she'd be of most use helping him out. Just in the nick of time, her good shoulder slammed into the closest Venatori, knocking him into two others and throwing off the follow-up spell aimed for Leon.
She stooped to pick up a discarded axe, no doubt unable to wield her sword with a broken arm, and bared her teeth, hacking forward into the nearest wayward limb with the stolen weapon. “Just a little more, Leon. Don't worry about the golem—Rom and Asala are gonna keep it away from us. Let's finish these fuckers."
As she said, one of Asala's barriers sprung to life, blocking off the access to their side of the street. It appeared to be thicker than usual, most likely created in order to better stand up to the golem. The woman herself kept well out of the way, having discarded Decius somewhere along a way. She kept a sight line with the golem just to be able to direct her barriers.
"Hey!" Rom yelled, standing in front of Marcus's barrier, unsure if the golem would respond to verbal cues. He pulled free his crossbow and fired a bolt at it for good measure, the projectile striking the golem in the brow and chipping off a small piece. That seemed to do the trick, and the golem thought twice about punching against the barrier from Asala it had run up against, turning on Rom instead. With a low roar it charged straight for him, pounding heavy steps that shook the street as it clambered up the stairs.
It made a leaping attempt at a smash that almost caught Rom off guard, but he had just enough space to roll out of the way to the side. That left the golem standing directly in front of the angry red barrier. His mark sparking to life, Rom pressed his hand against the construct's back and let loose a blast, taking small chunks out of it and making it stumble halfway forward. Not quite enough. He darted back a step. "Now, Asala!" he called. "Push it in!" No easy task, he was sure, but this seemed like their best chance.
A shield descended over the golem, bowed inward to try and trap it between the two barriers. It then began to constrict, soon brushing up against the back of the golem. Asala herself stepped out from where she was hiding, the magical glow of her barriers reaching up to her elbows. She strode forward, the clear effort of pushing such a solid creature written on her brow, as sweat began to bead and the look of exertion worked into her features. The magical glow on her arms only intensified as she walked, ramping up the strength of the barrier.
In the confined space it wasn't able to get much of a backswing on its punches, enabling the barrier to stay up longer, and within a few seconds it was pressed against the field preventing entry to Marcus's tower. There was a sizzling at first as the outer layer of stone on its back was scorched and burned away, but it soon built into a series of small explosions, the barrier violently fighting to keep the golem out, while Asala's barrier pushed it in. The runes on the surface of the golem's body lit up in a bright red hue, and flames soon covered the construct. It roared, rearing back with a fist that managed to punch and hold through the field, despite deafening cracks and small blasts.
The fist came back and punched Asala's barrier, shattering it, but it became obvious that little remained of the arm once it was done. The rest fell to pieces on the ground in front of it, and the golem staggered forward. Huge chunks had been burned away out of the back of it, too many for it to continue functioning, it seemed. It staggered forward heavily, wobbled, and then collapsed down the stairs in a heap of rubble, forcing Rom to backstep out of the way.
The street fell mostly to silence, the Venatori having given up the attack as well. Rom spared a glance for Khari and Leon, both injured pretty severely, but it seemed they'd managed to clean up their end of things. He looked back to Asala. "Nice work. Have another go at that barrier?" Indeed, it looked weakened, visibly flickering, and some of the doorway around it had been damaged by the golem's efforts to escape. Perhaps it had simply been forced to fend off too much with the golem's inhuman capability for endurance.
Asala exhaled deeply once and rolled her shoulders, wiping the sweat from her brow while she was at it. She took a glance at the wavering barrier and nodded. "Okay. I will try to hurry," she added with a look toward Leon and Khari.
"Thank you." Rom, meanwhile, made his way quickly over to Chryseis, who appeared to be unconscious, sitting slumped against the wall at the side of the street. She always came prepared he knew, and when he crouched at her side he rummaged first through the small bags on her belt, finding a few healing potions. He took them all, four in total, and carried them quickly back to the street on the other side of Marcus's entrance, offering them out to Khari and Leon.
"Drink these," he said, setting them down to empty his hands and let them decide how to split them. "Asala's working on the barrier. We need to be ready for more once we're inside." They had no idea what had happened to Ithilian and Amalia, but knowing the history they had with the magister, it could be even worse than what they'd encountered out here.
Still... there was an opportunity here. Leaving Khari and Leon to the potions and their healing, Rom made his way back over to Chryseis, who still had an arrow lodged in her side. She wasn't in great shape, but it didn't seem like she'd die if she was just left here, either. He returned to her side, crouching again and taking hold of the arrow. What to do with it was what he hesitated on.
She coughed, and stirred, and still he didn't let go of the arrow. Opening her eyes, she didn't seem surprised to find him there, but winced all the same as little motions of the arrowhead caused painful twinges in her abdomen.
"If you're going to do it, best do it now," she advised him. As ever, his intentions were plain as day to her, and likely had been from the time they met. "Before your friends come over here." He locked eyes with her, finding them almost uncaring, disinterested.
"I need you to be gone," he said quietly, unsure of why the words left him. Why he felt the need.
"If it needs to be done, why are you hesitating?" She coughed, her lips slightly painted with blood. "Why am I still alive? I've played my part. I have nothing left to offer you." Still he hesitated, and her lip curled into a snarl. "Do it. Or are you still a slave?"
“Gone's not dead." A metallic scrape accompanied the flat pronouncement; Khari's sword dragged slightly against the road until she planted it point down in the dirt, leaning heavily on it. The same hand gripped an empty potion bottle between her last two fingers. The other arm still hung at her side in a way that suggested serious injury, but her eyes were clear when they found Rom's. “And dead's not the same as gone. This isn't about her, or what she deserves. It's about you. What you deserve. The only one who can make you a slave anymore is you." She exhaled, the breath shaky, and her grip tightened on the handle of the sword. Her face was as easy to read as it had ever been: past the pain she was in, Khari was quite at ease.
She believed what she said. And more than that, she had faith in him. Trust. Enough of it that she didn't feel the need to say any more than she already had. Instead, she simply regarded him with open expectation, her head tilted slightly to the side, loose curls stuck to her neck with sweat and frizzing up from her crown, a half-formed smile curling her mouth.
"All of you talk about things too much, you know that?" Chryseis winced again, trying not to move while Rom still had the hand on the arrow in her. "If you're not going to do it, then could you please—gah!"
He pulled the arrow out of her, tossing it aside and backing away a step. She hissed out a breath in pain, pressing her hand to the wound, opening her potions pouch with the other and finding it empty. "Wonderful. Rob me, and then spare me."
Not a moment later, a loud pop punctuated Chryseis's sentence. It sounded as if it came from the barrier barring their way, and a look in that direction would reveal Asala scampering back away from the door--the popping perhaps startling her more than anyone else. After she'd scurried some distance from the now open door, a shield rose up in front of her to shield her from some blow back that fortunately never came. After a moment or two of nothing, she finally felt comfortable to let the shield fall, before tossing glances to all of her friends around her.
She took one last deep breath before a gentle pinkish light wrapped around her hands and she began to make her way toward Leon.
The removal of the barrier was enough to immediately draw Rom's attention away from Chryseis, and his blade and shield were soon in his hands again. "Anyone who still can, we need to get there."
There was no way of telling what had happened inside the tower.