Kael pressed his back against the cold stone wall, listening to the guttural hooting echoing through the alchemist's tower. Beside him, Mira checked her throwing knives for the third time, her dark eyes reflecting the sickly green luminescence seeping from under the laboratory door.
"I don't like this," she whispered. "Torven
was supposed to meet us an hour ago."
"Torven's probably dead," Kael replied, adjusting
the leather bracer that concealed his lockpicks. "Along with everyone else
foolish enough to collect Magister Vohn's bounty."
The bounty had seemed straightforward enough: enter the
alchemist's abandoned tower, retrieve his research journals, collect five
hundred gold crowns. But abandoned was not the word Kael would use now. The
tower was very much occupied.
A crash from below made them both freeze. Heavy footfalls on
stone, then silence.
"They're hunting," Mira breathed.
Kael had seen one of the creatures from the courtyard before
they'd climbed in through the third-floor window. It had been massive, easily
eight feet tall, with shoulders like a bull and arms thick as tree trunks. But
it was the intelligence in its eyes that had chilled him. This was no mindless
beast.
"Vohn was experimenting with transformation
elixirs," Kael said, piecing it together. "The city guard said he'd
been buying apes from the exotic traders. He must have been trying to create
soldiers."
"Well, he succeeded." Mira peered around the
corner toward the laboratory door, which hung askew on broken hinges.
"Question is, can we get past them?"
Through the doorway, Kael could see overturned tables,
shattered glass, and the scattered pages of ruined books. Claw marks gouged the
wooden benches. Whatever had happened here, Vohn had lost control of his
creations.
A shape moved in the shadows of the laboratory. Massive,
deliberate. Then another behind it.
"Two inside," Mira reported. "Both between us
and wherever Vohn kept his journals."
Kael studied the room's layout. A balcony overlooked it from
the floor above, and a heavy chandelier hung from iron chains over the center.
Alchemical apparatus lined the walls, including several large glass vessels
still bubbling with colored liquids.
"I have an idea," he said. "But you're not
going to like it."
"I already don't like it."
"We need a distraction. Something to get them out of
that room."
Mira's hand went to the small pouch at her belt. "I
have two smoke bombs left."
"Perfect. Throw one down the main stairwell. When they
go to investigate, we slip into the laboratory, grab what we can, and get out
through the balcony window."
"And if they don't take the bait?"
"Then we improvise."
Mira gave him a flat look but moved silently toward the
stairwell. Kael watched the laboratory entrance, counting heartbeats. One of
the apes moved past the doorway, knuckles scraping the floor, its enhanced
musculature rippling under patchy fur. It wore the remnants of a leather
harness, probably from Vohn's attempts to control it.
The smoke bomb clattered down the stone steps with a pop and
a hiss. Thick gray smoke billowed upward.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then came a deafening roar
that shook dust from the ceiling. Heavy footsteps thundered toward the
stairs—not two sets, but three. A third ape emerged from the laboratory, this
one bearing a wicked scar across its face and wielding a broken table leg like
a club.
"Go!" Mira hissed.
They sprinted for the laboratory as the apes descended the
stairs in pursuit of the phantom intruder. Kael leaped over an overturned chair
and began searching the debris. Papers everywhere, most torn or stained with
chemicals. Mira rifled through a chest in the corner while keeping watch on the
door.
"Here!" Kael found a leather journal wedged under
a collapsed bookshelf. The symbol on its cover matched Magister Vohn's seal. He
stuffed it into his pack and grabbed two more nearby that looked intact.
A roar, much closer now. The apes had discovered the ruse.
"Time to go!" Mira was already at the balcony
door, forcing it open with her dagger. She swore. "It's locked from the
outside!"
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Kael looked around
desperately. The chandelier. The alchemical vessels. The balcony above.
"Up there!" He pointed to the interior balcony. A
rope used for hoisting equipment still hung from its railing. "We
climb!"
The first ape appeared in the doorway, scarred face twisted
in rage. It spotted them immediately and charged, table leg raised high. Kael
grabbed a glass beaker of violet liquid from the nearest table and hurled it.
The vessel shattered against the creature's chest, and the liquid began to
smoke and hiss. The ape howled, clawing at its burning flesh.
Mira was already climbing, her lithe form scaling a
bookshelf to reach the rope. Kael followed, hauling himself up as the second
ape entered the room. This one was smarter. It grabbed the bookshelf and shook
it violently.
Kael jumped, caught the rope, and scrambled upward as the
bookshelf crashed down. The ape leaped after him with terrifying agility, its
massive hand closing around his ankle.
Mira's knife flashed. The blade sank into the creature's
wrist and it released Kael with a shriek. He pulled himself onto the balcony as
Mira helped drag him over the railing.
The third ape appeared below, pointing up at them. All three
began climbing—using the furniture, the walls, the very architecture of the
tower itself. They moved with horrifying coordination, their enhanced bodies
making them far more capable than natural apes.
"The window!" Mira ran for the balcony's exterior
window. This one opened easily. Cold night air rushed in.
But escape meant a three-story drop to the courtyard below.
Kael looked around frantically. The rope they'd climbed. The chandelier chains.
An idea formed.
"Cut the chandelier!" he shouted, drawing his
sword and hacking at the thick rope secured to the balcony railing. "When
it falls, it'll hit those chemical vessels!"
Mira understood instantly. She sheathed her knife, drew a
small hand axe, and began chopping at the chandelier's chain where it anchored
to the balcony wall. The metal links parted slowly.
The apes reached the balcony level, pulling themselves up
from below. The scarred one, still smoking from the chemical burn, was in the
lead.
The last chain link separated. The chandelier plummeted, its
iron frame crashing directly into the cluster of bubbling alchemical vessels
below. Glass exploded. Liquids mixed. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the laboratory erupted in flame.
The explosion sent all of them sprawling. Kael felt the heat
wash over him as he grabbed Mira and pulled her toward the window. Below, the
apes' roars turned to screams as fire engulfed the chamber.
"The roof!" Mira pointed upward. A wooden beam
extended from the window to the tower's peaked roof. It was narrow, precarious,
but it led to the exterior.
They climbed out onto the beam as smoke poured from the
window behind them. The night wind whipped at their clothes. Behind them, the
entire tower was now burning, flames licking from windows on every floor.
The beam led to the roof's edge, where a decorative spire
stood. And beyond that, the stone wall of the adjacent building, perhaps ten
feet away.
"Please tell me you're thinking what I'm
thinking," Mira said.
"Jump or burn. Easy choice."
They ran along the beam, footsteps sure despite the smoke
and heat. At the edge, they leaped together into the darkness, arms windmilling
for balance. Kael hit the adjacent roof hard, rolling to absorb the impact.
Mira landed beside him with cat-like grace.
They lay there for a moment, breathing hard, watching Vohn's
tower burn against the night sky. From within came one final, agonized roar
before the roof collapsed inward.
"The journals?" Mira asked.
Kael patted his pack. "Three of them. Singed but
readable."
"Five hundred crowns?"
"Split two ways." Kael grinned despite the pain.
"Not bad for a night's work."
"Not bad?" Mira laughed, the sound slightly manic.
"We were nearly killed by enhanced apes in a burning tower!"
"That's what makes it worth five hundred crowns."
Kael pulled himself to his feet, offering her a hand. "Come on. Let's
collect from Magister Vohn before he hears about this and decides to
renegotiate."
They disappeared into the shadows of the city rooftops,
leaving the blazing tower behind them as the watch bells began to ring across
the midnight streets.
In his pack, Vohn's journals remained safe. And in their
margins, scrawled in the alchemist's desperate hand, were the words that would
have warned them all: The formula works too well. They're learning. They're
organizing. Gods help us, they're planning.
But that discovery would have to wait for another night.
