The Mimic in Monsterland

Fennel rushed through the broken fence the girl pointed to. He wasn’t sure what was going on or who those people were. Or why that old drunk ratted him out. He did however understand he needed to get the hell out of there. Some Gloom gang or something. He climbed out of the fence; his shirt ripping down the sleeve after getting caught on a loose nail. He turned back to check on the girl. She passed through it much quicker than he had, and with no damage to her clothes. She flew past him, grabbing on the freshly ripped shirt.

“This way.” She told him while running.

He ran and she released his shirt once he matched her pace. They ran down the long dark alleyway. There weren't any lamps back here, of course. The occasional window had a candle on but nothing near enough to light the way. Fennel strained his eyes while he ran, making sure not to trip on any trash lying about and keep track of the cloaked girl.

A huge crash resounded behind them. They must have broken through the wooden fence. The girl in the cloak cursed but didn’t slow down. They were coming up on a fork, right or left were the only choices. She turned left and he followed. It led to an alley much the same as the previous one.

“Oi! There’s two of em. They're going left!” The shouting voice sounded much like the thin elf from before. A scout no doubt. But why is he working here? Scouts are worth their weight in coin in the raid legions. It's not even that dangerous of a job. Why is he out here?

The girl made a sharp right turn, almost instantaneously at that. He skidded on the rough broken road of the alley to make the turn. He looked up and saw that the girl was already twenty paces ahead of him. Her legs gave off a light green aura.

Fennel sprinted harder to catch up, which was quite difficult for a dwarf. He damned his short, stubby limbs. But even though she was much faster, Fennel no longer worried about losing her in the dark corners. The green aura around her legs made it easy to track her movements.

The girl continued making incredibly tight turns as they ran. Zigging and zagging through the backstreets. The shouting coming from behind lessened only a little. Fennel could not help but be impressed at the scout’s abilities. He must have honed in on Fennel’s Aura. He was sure it wasn’t the girl’s. She shut her Aura off completely when they were hiding. An equally remarkable feat.

Fennel had absolutely no training in stealth. He didn’t need it nor did he want it. His job was to fight on the front lines, pulling as much attention to himself as possible. He was failing if enemies turned away from him. And failure meant death for those around him.

After one more sharp left turn, the path led to a dead end. There was nothing but walls around them. A few windows but no doors. Crap. Did she get lost? Are we going to climb into a window? Before he could ask the cloaked girl anything, the glow around her legs changed from green to blue and she squatted down. She leaped high into the air, her direction heading for the wall on the left. She landed on the wall and kicked off of it, landing on the right wall before doing it again. After two more wall kicks she landed on the rooftop of one of the buildings.

The girl’s cloak disappeared over the roof. Fennel’s heart dropped upon seeing her leave. Did she just leave me here? Why even have me follow in the first place? Just to trap me with them in an alley. He felt anger burn in his chest but shoved it back down. His body turned back to the entrance of the dead end. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon. But there wasn’t a single thing around apart from trash and broken pieces of wood.

One piece was about half as long as his personal training sword back at the squad hall. He picked it up and swung it a few times. It was terrible, but better than his fists. He was confident in his bare knuckles when faced with a single foe. But multiple opponents were a challenge. He needed some type of reach to keep them back. So a small half-sword made of gutter trash will have to do.

Footsteps pounded, their sounds getting ever closer. The shouting was almost intelligible again. His heart pumped, and blood roared in his ears. He clamped down on the wood, even harder than before and harder than he meant to. The wood crumbled under the pressure of his fist. “Shit.” He growled to himself, throwing away the shattered pieces in his hands. He brought his fists up.

“Hey! Climb!”

He twisted back around, searching for the voice. He finally looked up and saw the familiar cloak on the roof. The girl threw something down off the roof. It was a rope. Without another thought, he jumped up and grabbed it.

He pulled his body up the rope one hand at a time, ascending the rope as fast as he could. Looking up, he could see the girl had wrapped the rope around her waist, her legs glowing red now.

Something whistled by his ear, before clunking into the wall in front of him. It was an arrow. It splinted upon hitting the wall. But he didn’t quit climbing. Two more whizzed by his body by the time he got two thirds of the way there. He was going to make it.

Until one more arrow landed on his right shoulder, pain coursed through his arm and down into his hand. He felt his grip slipping with that hand. He clamped down with his other hand to keep from falling.

“Hah nailed him.” A voice from below proclaiming his triumph.

“Don't quit shooting numbnuts! He’s still up there.” Another voice said, reprimanding the previous one.

“Come on!” The girl strained to speak through gritted teeth.

Fennel fought through the pain and grabbed up higher on the rope, pulling his body up, but no longer with the earlier speed. Another arrow flew by.

He looked up and saw he was only a foot or so away from the top. But his shoulder continued to scream at him, the pain only worsening. He looked down at the group. There were only two people down there. That’s all he could tell in the darkness at least.

Fennel felt the rope shift and his body rose up. He turned back to the cloaked girl and saw the red shine on her legs brighten, shifting into an even more brilliant shade of crimson. She began backing up the roof, pulling him up.

He heard her grunts and from where he was. Once he was within arm's reach of the roof, he grabbed the edge with his good hand and arm, scrambling up. He rolled onto his back, only making it halfway. The arrow lodged in his shoulder hit the roof which forced a yelp out of his mouth. “Aghh, damn that stings.” He said.

The girl sat on the roof, her whole body and chest heaving. I hope her stamina is good, that was a lot of ability activations from the looks of it. As he was about to ask, she rose from her spot. “We n..eed” She gulped in some air. “We need to move.”

He nodded. “First, rip this thing out.”Fennel sat up and showed her the injured shoulder. She walked behind him. “You sure, that's keeping the blood from flowing too much.”

“Yep, I’ve got high Con, it’ll close up and heal once it's owwww!” She grabbed the arrow and pulled it out before he could finish talking. He grabbed the injured shoulder and rose from his spot. Another arrow flew up from the alley below, missing them completely. Fennel heard a voice. “Up on the roof boss, two of em, like I said.”

“Move.” The girl said, rushing away from the edge of the roof.

The two ran along the rooftops for a while. Fennel was thankful these rooftops were so close together unlike the residential district ones. Especially the upper section. Each household was a hundred or so feet away from the next. And dwarfs don’t do jumping. Not well at least.

The buildings in this section of the Gloom were all about the same, two-story apartments and the like.

The voices and people chasing after them died down after a few minutes of running on the rooftops. The scout’s tracking must have turned off by now. The girl stopped sprinting and slowed down, delighting Fennel’s poor aching feet. Dwarfs really aren’t built for such long distance sprints.

She stopped them on a rooftop overlooking a bigger street. This street had a few lamp posts illuminating it. She stared off at a building taller than the rest, panting the whole time. This building happened to be three stories high. It probably had better days too. Parts of the wall on the second and third floors were missing.

Behind the building were some of the roots that divided the city into its sections. Fennel wasn’t certain which section of the city lay beyond it after all the running through the maze-like alleyways. He could see the moon though and where it was sitting told him the other side of it was most likely the western block of the Residential District. Which is still a ways from his home but anything is better than here.

Fennel walked up to the girl leaning up against a structure on the rooftop. He was going to say something. He looked at her face. Her mostly hidden expression seemed to soften when she looked at it, yet twisting sometimes as if she remembered something painful. Fennel took the silence as a chance to speak. “Thanks for not leaving me in that alley. I was a bit scared when you jumped up there. And wildly impressed as well.”

The girl breathed in sharply. It was almost as if she was surprised by his voice. She shook her head. “Didn’t do it for you. You're a meal ticket, simple as that. Your boss is paying me to get you out of here. So that’s what I will do. Now come on, no time for chit chat.”

“Wait, we can let your stamina recharge...” She had already jumped down onto a balcony while he spoke. He sighed and followed after her. They got back down to street level. The girl walked down the street, wary of the light from the lamps.

Fennel’s shoulder still hurt, but had closed up and stopped bleeding. He was thankful there was no ability or spell cast on the arrow. He would have had a lot more problems if they had. That archer wasn’t trained either. Any archer in the Fourth would have turned me into a pincushion easily. He just got a lucky shot. He rubbed his shoulder and twisted it around, making sure nothing else was damaged.

“Still bleeding?” She asked.

“Nope, like I said, I’m pretty tough.” He nervously chuckled.

She said nothing else and led him across the street and between some more buildings. Great. More alleys.

However, he was glad to not have to sprint down these ones. Fennel gazed at the great dividing roots of the Capitol Building. They were getting closer and closer as they moved. She must have some secret exit out of the Gloom around here.

The girl stopped in front of a building. The front door of the building was boarded up along with all of the windows surrounding it. A chill ran down his spine, this place creeped him out for some inexplicable reason. Like all he wanted to do was run away from the building as fast as he could.

But the girl trudged onward, knocking on the door. She turned back to the scared-stiff Fennel. “Come on.” She beckoned him. “Get over here.”

Fennel gulped. The uneasy feeling grew exponentially as he inched his way up to the small porch and the door. What is happening, why am I terrified? It’s just a broken down house. But no matter how much rationale he put into his head, he couldn’t shake the sensation. It just crawled along his body and mind. He shuddered.

He looked over at the girl, barely catching the smirk on her face before she banged on the door again.

“Hey! Flenn. Open the damned door already. It’s…” She paused and looked back at Fennel, then sighed.

“It’s Ingrid. Open up." She banged on the door once more. For good measure. "You owe me, Flenn.”

Fennel heard a creaking sound come from behind the door, his anxiety growing as the sound got closer. It didn’t sound like footsteps, there was no rhythmic thumping but rather something was slithering across the wooden floor.

Fennel was sure his heart stopped when the creature on the other side of the door did as well. And only started back up when the first knock from the inside shocked it back awake. The boards fell to the ground and the door swung open.