When Wheels Fly Off
Seventeenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
The Coils, Beneath City of Brass
The first sign that they were getting close to their quarry was when the stone changed, not to say that it changed in any natural way, smooth rock to blocks and mortar. It flowed into eddies like frozen water, the colors of which Bronn did not know stone could be, though he was quite sure there was some mage in the Dragon's wizard school who would take great pleasure in describing what each bit was and probably scrape half of it off to make magic with. Then shapes began to appear half-carved-half-protruding from the rock, beasts and men alike, there a foot, here a beak... a hand raised as though to ward off some blow, a face caught in a silent scream. The sellsword cursed under his breath, it was easy to let your eyes slide off 'em after a while, too easy.
"You looking at this?" He asked Sarell, knowing her eyes could tell a real monster from stone no matter how well it was carved... or however else it might have been made.
"Yes," she replied, the word a short as a dagger in the kidney. She must have taken being the only one hurt in the last fight badly.
As they turned a corner the room opened to a giant hall held up by rough pillars eight times a man's height, lit up by the bluebell flames of brass braziers. Bronn had just enough time to glimpse two figures on the far side of the room and something that may have been a gate embedded into the rock before a bloody lion-bat-snake-tailed-
thing pounced on him.
Clang! Fleasticker struck its side.
Of course it was made of bloody brass! Wasn't everything in this damn city and under it?!
"Sarell, there's a mage behind this thing, don't let him prepare!" Maelor shouted even as a bolt of darkness struck the brass-bollocked thing in the head.
"I can't hold this thing alone!" Bronn shouted back even as claws raked at his side,
through the sliver breastplate.
"You don't want to give a mage time to..." The words were cut short as the monster's chain-like tail lashed at the boy. Distantly Bronn heard the sound of cracking bone. Time was when hearing that in a fight meant the bastard who suffered it was dead or soon to be so, now it was a matter of heartbeats to fix, if only they'd get it!
Nine times Bronn's blade struck the beast, fire boiled over it and and shadows tangled its limbs, but by the time it broke another was in its place with clanking tread and jagged claws. This one died quicker, though not quick enough. Bronn felt like a fencepost after the cat had been at it, cuts running along the side of his head, his left hand twisted at the wrist, forcing him to fight one handed, and a seething pain in his leg he did not have the time to look down at until the fight was over.
That would definitely kill me from wound-rot if not bleeding, some distant part of him noted as he called on all the powers of his belt before rushing forward on the half-healed leg.
Sarell was fighting a creature of stone, fire and gleaming brass. The flash of four floating swords warding him while he swung at her with the heavy curved swords the fire spirits were so fond of, though wielding them so fast you would think they were a boy's toy sword, but the wounds they dealt were deadly serious. Devil's blood rained from a dozen wounds.
"How the fuck am I supposed to fight that?" Bronn asked, the pain of his wounds making him all the more angry he couldn't fight the one who had made the bloody toys that had cut him up.
As the girl made some signs in the air Bronn couldn't see the meaning of Maelor wove a net of shadows between his fingers and threw it at the thing. The guarding swords melted away like a smoke and the net held him tight. Seeing this Sarell launched herself back, bow already in hand in place of her dropped sword, arrows flying, but then there was a flash of balefire and the enemy was gone.
Maelor cursed, though Bronn could not understand the hissing tongue he surely knew the tone. "Translocation magic. He can't have gone far just with that but this place is a maze. We'll never catch him if he just keeps running," he added.
"Good thing we aren't wearing our own faces and we're proof against fortunetellers then," Bronn pointed out as he looked around the room filled with brass knobs and wheels, maps and strange instruments,
good looting, and... they had even found old Silas, even if he wasn't in the best shape.
He had been nailed to a post, arms above his head, his magic eye was missing and both has horns had been broken. The girl started to run at him until Sarell stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "There is an invisible block of stone hovering in place above your master, held in place by preconditions I could not begin to guess at."
OOC: The spell at the end is Stone Trap. Erinyes True Seeing is rather unfair in cases like this. Ironically enough it was not being de-buffed but humble Net of Shadows that made the efreeti mage run. 
