Radeon plummeted through the open sky, clouds tearing past him. He wrapped the cloak around him.
"Disappear," he murmured.
He was turned into a fading cocoon that turned him into a vanishing blot against the night.
High above, the six sword masters squinted after him, their eyes infused with qi as they tried to follow.
But the bolts still came in droves, forcing them to focus on protecting the sailboard.
In their minds, Radeon was already gone. Turning back for a corpse would only waste what he had bought them.
The scraps of intelligence they had put together would have to serve as his mourning rites.
They would at least make sure a drunk bard in some low tavern sang his name for a month.
That was the price they chose to pay instead of reaching for him now.
Radeon did not begrudge them. It was a selfish choice, but it was the way of the world.
He forced his limbs wide, arms spread and legs splayed, making himself drag.
The fall leveled out. The scream of wind sank into a steady roar.
Once his body stopped tumbling, he reached for the pale bag at his side.
His fingers closed on what he needed. Hover stone. Wind stone.
He gathered a tight knot of power in his belly, then drove it down into his wrists.
With measured care, he flooded qi into his hands and held it there, refusing to let it spill.
He needed enough energy to kick the stones awake.
Radeon looked down. The ground was growing teeth. Still. He waited.
His hands turned bluish from the qi strain, veins standing out like cords, but he did not release.
He held the charge until the last safe moment, counting distance by instinct.
A hundred and a half meters above the earth, he tucked his arms tight against his chest.
Then released the stored energy from both palms at once.
Air exploded right at his breastbone. The blast punched him up hard enough to halt his plummet in midflight.
Pain cracked through his ribs. Radeon tasted iron. There was no time, he released his energy on the hover stone.
Radeon felt the second stone catch, dragging at the air, bleeding speed away.
Three seconds. That was all the hover stone gave him. He angled his body.
The crowns of maple trees rushed up, red and green, a living net.
The power in the stones guttered out, and the canopy swallowed him whole.
Branches whipped his face and shoulders. He tore through dozens of trees, leaves bursting around him.
Radeon crashed into the undergrowth in a spray of bark and broken leaves, the forest floor receiving him like a clenched fist.
'I. Need. To. Get. Up. Co. Come. On.'
The men who had pursued the sailboard were already on the prowl.
They needed merit, and the man who had fallen from the sky clearly had what they wanted.
Shouts rose. Boots pounded through brush and root toward the place where he had gone down.
Radeon heard the commotion from every direction. He looked down at himself and counted the damage.
Hands fractured. Ribs broken. His pelvis sat wrong. One leg that barely held weight.
He gritted his teeth, planted his palms in the wet leaf rot, and drove force through the dislocated bone.
A sharp click answered him. Radeon bit his lip hard to smother the sound that tried to climb out of his throat.
The cloak let cultists pass him one after the other. Radeon lay half buried in leaf rot, and they hurried by, all eyes tilted up toward the canopy.
They smelled the blood. Fresh. Close. It made them eager. It made them stupid.
They fanned through the maples, listening for breath, for broken branches, for the wet sound of pain.
They all knew he could not have gone far.
Radeon waited until their boots had moved past. He staggered toward a strip of ground he guessed the cultists would be sparce.
He dragged himself deeper until it became unbearable, then leaned against a maple trunk.
His chest heaved like a bellows. Every inhale scraped his ribs.
Radeon shoved a hand into his cloak for the pill bottle. Blood slicked his fingers.
He found the bottle and knew at once something was wrong. It had shattered in the fall.
When Radeon tore it free, shards bit into his palm. His hand shook, but he did not stop.
He scooped the mix of powder and broken glass into his mouth as his consciousness began to slip.
His tongue hunted through the mess, worrying at the hard slivers.
He spat out the shards and gulped the rest down.
The last of the medicine he had made burned its way down his throat.
'This trip better be worth it.'
After half an incense of rough, shallow rest, Radeon forced himself upright.
He made himself known. Radeon let his presence leak out, turned off his camouflage.
A new scent brushed their senses, near dried out yet familiar.
They broke through the trees and stopped short.
Shock flashed across their faces, then training smoothed it away.
They saw Giovanni, gaunt as if water had been kept from his lips for days.
The frame that had once carried muscle now showed bone.
His borrowed clothes hung in torn strips, baring too much skin.
He kept only a jet-black cloak across his back and a blood-stained bamboo shaft in his hands.
He cradled the bamboo as if it hid something priceless, a secret only he was loyal enough, or mad enough, to carry.
"Master. You'll bring me to him, now!" Giovanni's eyes went feral, like a cornered beast.
"Any of you take one more step and I'll bring you all down to hell with me," he yelled.
Then he yanked a talisman from his robe.
A parting gift from a swordsman, pressed into his palm back when they spoke of last stands and honorable deaths.
Red light crawled across the paper in slow veins. When Radeon fed it qi, the talisman answered. It ignited.
Heat surged up his arms. His skin sizzled. The stink of his own burning flesh curled into the cold forest air.
Radeon did not flinch. He lifted the glowing strip and let the light paint his face. A grin showed through it.
Even the gilded core cultists among them felt the hair rise on his arms.
Radeon waved the talisman like a madman. Not a warning. A promise.
He showed them a man ready to take everyone with him on a single whim, and to smile while he did it.