Sune plummeted to his death.
'Slow down!'
Assurance crackled and popped. Not enough to activate.
'Slow! Slow! Slow!'
Sune tried channelling focus in a moment that made it impossible. His clothes whipped through the air, and yet he was naked, exposed. Not to anyone, but to death itself.
Trying to imagine survival, yet all he could envision death.
Fear pounded at his chest, his stomach sank. It struck him, possibly for the first time that entire day.
The sparks compounded. Bursting into a blue shroud of light around his body.
"COME ON!" Sune bellowed aloud.
The waves of energy rippled along him, ripping through the sky. Pulling him away from where he was falling. Tearing velocity from momentum.
Slowing him through pure friction. A claw scraping along the wall of time.
The earth almost upon him. Sune let out one last yell.
THUD!
He landed. A harsh pound on the stone streets of the city.
But fortunately, not a splatter.
"Ugh..." Sune groaned, clutching his side. Far from dead, but further from well.
He moaned and twisted his body from the floor, looking up at the clouds. Eyes darting around aimlessly. Unable to think. He fixed his sight on the window he had jumped from. Now set ablaze. Fire spilling into the air, a signal.
This was the cost to merely shatter one window,
And of course, free each and every slave from the most populated dungeon in the country.
'I'm just getting started. Every window shall burn.'
Sune smiled to himself.
With that thought, he dragged himself up from the stone. His ankle limp, he avoided putting much weight on it. His back seared and stung.
'Everything hurts. I need to get out of here before--'
As Sune finally stood upright, he nearly collapsed once again.
'What...?'
A crowd of onlookers. Dozens.
Circled around him like he were some street performer. Murmurs of confusion under their breaths. Some even echoed with fear. Some spat crude remarks in his direction. Some simply stared in awe.
'Surrounded by humans. Funny. Without this scarf they would have beaten me to death by now.'
But despite the irony, the resentment he wanted to feel because of this, despite the fact that they were only batting an eyelid toward him because they could not see his face--Sune could not fully despise the attention.
Something within him stirred.
Perhaps because he had lived his whole life as a drop in a green ocean, and now he had come across a whole nation of thirsty men and women. The only drop of ocean water they had ever laid eyes upon.
Perhaps him and these humans were perfectly matched in some way.
Sune shook his head. He had no more time to entertain such thoughts.
'Goddamn it. I gotta get out of here.'
"MOVE!" Sune roared. Charging into the crowd.
He barged through with all the force in his body. Not even allowing them to tear a path for him. The rustle of collective annoyance grew louder.
They had almost certainly figured out that Sune and the release of the Gimen slaves were somehow connected. Yet no matter how much they tried, they could not bring themselves to truly hate him either. Sune had known true hatred. He could not see nor hear it within them.
Sune bolted down the streets of Amandla. Swerving through families and merchants. Smashing past crates and market stalls. He paid no mind.
'If what she said was right, they're about to show, right now!'
The war Sune had waged against Amandla was far from over.
He kept moving. Turning his head back ever more often. Trying to confirm his fears.
But he heard it first.
The gasps of civilians. Children pointing to the sky as he raced past them.
The bells. Chiming so far from him, yet still echoing thinly though the air.
Sune turned around once more. His eyes bulged at the sight of them.
'Cohort VI.'
A fleet of army ravens in the sky. Perhaps one-hundred black dots emerging from Amandla Castle, swerving and twisting through the air. Converging and convulsing like a dark spell.
The sight was familiar to Sune. How could it not be?
After all, the reason King Vikram had sent them in the first place was because they specialised in hunting and capturing prisoners. Just as they were sent to capture him now, they had done so to him in the past.
They were the Gimen slave capturers. The ones who robbed him of his brothers. The ones who rode out with Vikram, and assisted as he impaled their mother through the heart.
Sune gritted his teeth.
Enraged curses, the dark memories he kept locked deep within his soul, all bubbled up to his brain. Enveloping it in a thick mist. Sune swatted the mist away.
'Fear or rage. Is that what you would have me choose from? I choose neither...' Sune said to himself, hoping he would truly grow to adopt it as the truth.
His heart still pounded, like a drum of war. His fingers still trembled. Itching to scratch at flesh.
How long could he wear it... this scarf of his?