Ruby Ruins

stomach. Air burst from her lungs. She staggered and fell to her knees, struggling to breathe. To see. Spittle spilled over her chin as she gasped, pain radiating up through her abdomen.
“That’ll teach you your place, wench,” snarled an angry voice.
*
Ōbhin threw himself to the floor in a clatter of rattling mail.
His resonance blade punched through the floor like it was made of the thinnest Demochian silk. A quarrel buzzed over his head and smashed through the cheap window at the hallway’s end. The bubbled glass shattered, glittering shards spilling across the floor.
Ōbhin pressed himself up to his feet and whirled around to see Creg darting into a door on the left side of the hallway. There was only one other door on that side near Ōbhin. He darted for it and kicked it open. Cheap, dry wood burst in splinters. He rushed through the wreckage into a long room running the length of the hallway. Creg was at the other end by a bed. Several crossbows, cocked and loaded, lay on it. He had another one in hand, aimed at the door he’d expected Ōbhin to come through.
Creg pivoted and leveled the weapon at Ōbhin. Tension squeezed about the Qothian’s throat. Twenty cubits between the two. Ten strides at a running pace. He’d never make it before the trigger pulled. However, a chest of drawers stood along the wall on the edge of a throw rug only three cubits away; the only cover between Ōbhin and Creg.
Ōbhin growled, “How many of those do you have stashed through the house?”
“Enough,” Creg said. He sniffled, snot bubbling around his right nostril. “Heard you were lookin’ for me.”
“I'm wondering why you’re resonating with the Rangers’ filthy Tone now.”
A sneer crossed the scrawny man’s face. “The Rangers welcome a man with skill. The Boss thought to dump his piss-filled chamber pot on me ‘cause of Ust.”
Ōbhin darted for the chest of drawers.
TWANG!
He slammed into the side of the chest of drawers. The crossbow struck the wall behind Ōbhin. Creg cursed as the Qothian burst out from behind his cover to cross the rest of the room at a sprint. The scrawny man lunged for the bed and his waiting crossbows.
Ōbhin’s right foot stepped on the small throw rug.
Nothing lay beneath it.
The rug rustled as Ōbhin’s weight plunged through it into a small hole. His left boot still stood on a solid floor, but his right slammed down and broke through the lath-and plaster ceiling of the first floor. He dropped to his knee, jagged wood scraping against his leather boot.
Creg grinned and picked up his next crossbow.
*
Avena swung blind before her, a hard and brutal attack that held nothing back. She screamed through the pain radiating up her stomach. It turned into a choking cough, soot thick in her mouth. A curse burst before her then her weapon crashed hard into a solid body.
Her attacker landed screaming on the floor. She blinked and wiped at her eyes with her left sleeve. She gained her feet, panting. Sooty tears spilled down her cheeks. Raw, red veins ran through the stained whites of her eyes. She gazed across the blurry sitting room and adjoining kitchen.
Thugs and street ruffians lay in bound, groaning piles. The one who’d blinded her groaned at her feet. He looked to have been the last one still able to fight. She panted and groaned, leaning on the butt of her weapon, struggling to regain her breath.
A booted foot burst through the ceiling.
Avena gaped at it. Ōbhin’s boot. She recognized the brown hue and the worn creases. She heard him grunt, his leg swinging as he struggled to yank it free. A spike of fear for the swordsman shot through her, a terror she hadn’t felt in many years.
Flashes of that horrible waiting outside Dualayn’s lab filled her, helpless to do anything as she worried if the first man she’d loved would live or die. Deeper memories from the day Evane died dredged up that awful emptiness from her soul’s depths. Both galvanized her into action.
She’d vowed to never stand by helpless again. She’d let Evane drown. She’d hadn’t known how to assist Dualayn in curing Chames. She wasn’t a helpless girl any longer. She was a woman of twenty winters.
She rushed for the stairs.
*
Creg aimed up the crossbow with a large grin on his face. He moved in an almost lazy fashion as Ōbhin struggled to rip his leg free. The top of his boot was caught on a broken slat. Desperation pounded through Ōbhin’s veins as Creg grinned, a line of yellowish snot running to his crusty upper lip.
“Always did think you were better than me,” he said. “Now, let’s tal—”
Ōbhin had only one attack left. He threw his resonance blade.
The humming sword tumbled through the air. Fear flashed across Creg’s face, painted by the spinning emerald. The bandit swung his crossbow to bat the blade aside. The sword sliced through the left arm of the crossbow. The force of the cocked string snapped the severed part back, slamming it into Creg’s shoulder. The swinging stock of the weapon crashed into the side of the sword.
Resonance blades cut only with their edge.
The blow sent the blade spinning to Ōbhin’s right. It buried into the wall beside the door Creg had waited by. The tulwar sunk to the crossguard, the projections of steel stopping the blade from spearing through the wall.
“Black-cursed bastard,” snarled Creg as the blow from the ruined crossbow sent him stumbling onto the bed. His left arm hung twisted, pain burning across his face.
Ōbhin heaved with both hands planted on the floor and snapped the piece of wood caught on his boot. He jerked his leg free of the hole. Chainmail rattled as he rushed for his blade embedded in