12 Ashan 719 | Azrael Blackfire | Location Uncertain
"Ugh..." Azrael groaned as his eyes fluttered open. The floor was cold stone and he was sprawled out on it as if it was the most comfortable mattress he could have asked for. Naturally it wasn't. His head felt like it had been split in three and the faint light in the room was exceedingly painful to register. Whatever Azrael drank... he wouldn't be drinking it again for a while. It took Azrael a few moments to register his surroundings but when he did he found himself alone in a cell with a wooden door. The door had a slot in it that allowed guards to look in and- when guards were not looking- prisoners to look out.
He didn't know how he'd ended up in the cell he was in now but Azrael remembered that he had been in Yaralon. If he was in a cell- for any reason- he needed to get out and get away. Azrael could make out a shape similar to a guard's shoulder through the slot in the door. Good. An audience. Azrael thought to himself before he began to cough. He coughed once, and then twice, and then harder a third time. then he coughed a fourth and a fifth before giving off a feint wheeze.
"Help!" Azrael called out before falling onto his stomach. He swiped a rock off the floor nearest to him and hid it in his hand while the guard from the hall rattled through his keys in search of the one that would let him into Azrael's room. Finally the guard found the key and swung the door wide open. He shuffled slowly to the collapsed Azrael and tapped him with the toe of his boot. "Another one dead..." The guard grumbled.
When the guard bent over to roll Azrael onto his back, the actor struck. Az cracked the rock in his hand against the guard's helm. He felt the metal buckle inwards slightly against the rock and then suddenly the full weight of the guard's body was upon him. "Oh hells." Azrael mumbled as he struggled to roll the guard off him. The guard's scale armor made him heavy but it wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been if the guard was wearing plate armor.
Azrael got to his feet and then dusted off his pants. He was still wearing the clothes he had been in when he was taken- minus any armored sections he had had on. His father's spring loaded dagger was still strapped to Azrael's forearm so he assumed his captors didn't know it was a weapon. The blade was hidden well enough within the gauntlet that it looked like a simple piece of clothing.
Suddenly Azrael heard footsteps echoing in the hallway and he ripped the unconscious guard's sword from it's sheath. The blade sang as he drew it and shined slightly in the little light that reached into this dungeon. Then another guard was upon him- well not quite. Another guard reached Azrael's cell and- seeing his fallen ally- drew his sword.
Azrael held the blade firmly in his hand and locked eyes with the newly arrived guard. Azrael had some skill with a blade but that domain was mostly daggers. Now he held a shortsword in his hand against an opponent who likely had much more training with a shortsword. Then again it was never really Azrael's skill that carried him through battle, it was his cunning.
"We don't have to do this-" Azrael began but the guard wanted no words. He lunged at Azrael with his sword and Azrael- in a less than graceful manner- sidestepped the blade. I say less than graceful because when he sidestepped the blade he also tripped over the body of the first guard. Azrael fell onto his back and if not for his acrobatic skill that is where he'd had remained. Instead he rolled back on to his feet. Even then he only stayed on his feet because his momentum slammed him into the wall. If the wall hadn't been there to keep him up, Azrael would have tripped again.
He decided then and there that it wouldn't be easy to dodge so much in such a small space. The guard- whose only difficulty was tracking Azrael's movements- swiped at Az with his blade again and this time Azrael parried the strike. Azrael wanted to talk his way out of it but he'd seen the effect of his words the first time so Azrael countered with his blade rather than his tongue.
He lunged forward with the shortsword and summarily had it knocked from his grip. The guard then countered by driving his elbow forward into Azrael's chest- knocking the thespian back against the wall. The guard lunged again and Azrael was a moment too slow in his attempt to move out of the way. The blade sliced into Az's bicep and then buried itself in the wall next to him. The guard holding the sword pulled frantically to wrench the blade free but he was not faster than Azrael who thrust his hand forward- open palming the center of the guard's breastplate. As he did, his father's spring loaded dagger ejected and slipped through the metal plate like butter. The guard croaked both literally and figuratively before his body slumped to the ground.
Azrael flicked his wrist slightly again and the blade retracted into the forearm guard it was connected to. The second guard had a dagger on him until Azrael decided to change the dagger's ownership. It would do until he could find his own belongings again. Once he was properly armed, Azrael stepped out of his cell. Before him he saw a hallway with various other cells with occupants he couldn't tell the identity of. "Anyone here?" Azrael called out to the other cells to see who would respond. No one did. Either the people in the cells were too afraid, or too weak to reply. So Azrael went without them. It wasn't so much that he wanted to leave them to their fate as it was that he didn't want to be left to their fate so he would find his own way out.
Azrael found himself sneaking through a poorly lit hallway towards a set of upwardly winding stairs. When he arrived at the base of the stairs he stopped and listened to see if he could hear any other guards walking down or chatting. It was faint at first, but Azrael did detect the sound of another pair of armored boots marching down to the dungeon. Azrael pulled the torch off the nearest mantle and tossed it down the hallway to make the entrance to the stairway darker and then Az pressed himself up against the wall.
The guard marched down the stairs and right passed Azrael to investigate the torch on the floor and when he did, Azrael drove his dagger into the guard's back. Then he stood and wiped it off on the guard's clothing. "What was that? Three guards in five minutes? Pretty good. Pretty-" Azrael winced suddenly as the slice in his arm flared with pain and reminded him he was not infallible. Azrael ripped some fabric off of one of the dead guards and wrapped it around his arm. He wasn't sure what it really did but it made the cut hurt less.
With his injury bandaged and the stairwell quiet, Azrael began ascending the steps. They wound a few times before letting out into what Azrael assumed was the main hall. The building was old and run down to the point that the main hall and the underground dungeon were the only structures left standing. There were a few banners scatter along the hall the depicted a broken sword on them but Azrael didn't give them more than a passing thought as he crouch-walked through the dimly lit room. He could see the dark purple, swirling sky through a few sections where the roof of the keep had been destroyed by a catapult. In the corner of the room, Azrael found a chest with his belongings and repossessed them. Outside Azrael could hear the sound of fighting. Someone was shouting orders to his men.
Azrael followed the voice to the front door of the main hall and pushed it open slightly so that he could see what was going on outside. There were more than a dozen men in plate armor with golden- or at least they seemed golden at the time- swords fighting off a wave of goblins that were emerging from the dark and twisted forest around the keep. Azrael couldn't reconcile what he was seeing with Yaralon and would have been driven mad by it if he didn't see the large, sliver-like fracture shimmering in the middle of the courtyard that the men with gold swords were defending. It was then that Azrael realized where he was. He was in Emea.