There was no time to deal with the grief that squeezed at her heart at the sight of her dead father. Yet another person had broken in and this one was intent on trying to stab her. Strelitzia got up, scrambling away from them before they could recover. What in the Gods' names was going on? Had the man downstairs sent her expecting a blade to pierce her heart?
She wouldn't let anyone take advantage of her so easily even if she wasn't a fighter. Bile rose in her throat and she audibly gagged, grabbing the dagger protruding from her father's chest, yanking it free. He's dead. He's dead. He didn't feel it. Strelitzia tried to convince herself. Somehow she remembered how to brandish the weapon, holding it steady in case they charged her again. With her back to the window she decided to take a stand.
"It's a shame someone has a mark above that little head of yours. I don't like messing beautiful things up, but of course with things like these, they want a severed head as proof. If you'd just stay still I can make it quick." The person tugged the blade free and swirled the dagger in the air, flipping them between the spaces of their fingers until it stopped near the middle and index finger. They came forward, readying to stab her right through the chest with one quick jab. Someone swirled them around and lifted them up by the throat.
The assassin kicked and went to swing down at the Ogosian man, breaking their blade against the toned back of his forearm. With one quick shift of his hand, their head hung at the wrong angle. He threw them across the room effortless. Outside the window behind her were more caped figures, their cloaks billowing in the darkness as red lights shone behind them.
"I'm Baeron," He said, glimpsing over at her dead father on the bed. He frowned and looked at her once more. "I tried to prevent that. We don't leave, then you'll end up just like him. Let's go, go out the window and climb to the roof. I'll hold some off." Just when he said that, the front door burst open and the sound of people running up the stairs arose. The wind howled through the room, the stench of death heavy. "I have to save your mother so don't object."
Strelitzia nodded her understanding to the man. There was no reason for him to lie or try to protect her. A strange turn from breaking in himself but it was either listen to him and run, or get caught between dozens of people who wanted her head. The glass panes were so cold that she left foggy handprints while pushing the window open.
Strong winds pushed against her causing the hem of her nightgown to billow. Strelitzia gathered her skirts in one dusted hand, stepping up onto the window sill. The drop below looked dizzying made worse by the figures awaiting her death; stoic reapers counting down the minutes until her death. After a shuddering breath she tore her gaze away, focusing on her path to the roof. It was haphazard at best with the steep gabled structures. Creeping ivy covered the walls that were slick from the storm that raged the night before. The bricks were slick beneath her gasp threatening to send her tumbling. For once she cursed the massive estate that was their home.
Her bare feet struggled to make purchase with the small gaps between the bricks but somehow she managed. Every move upward brought a burning sensation to her muscles that strained to hold up her own weight but bit by bit, inch by inch Strelitzia finally managed to pull herself up onto the roof tiles. Her green eyes wide with horror while people stormed into her home for the last ten years. Her father was dead. Her mother was unconscious and she had to put her faith in a burly Ogosian who could have been leading her astray for all she knew.
The Ogsian man hadn't taken long before he could be seen climbing from the same window she scaled up, her mother slung over his shoulder. Flaming arrows made of dark magick zipped past him, missing by inches every time. Finally, he reached the shingles roof in a matter of seconds. He moved faster than she had as though he'd done things like this many times before.
The air was cold and chilling them down to the bone. By the time he turned around, the sky was lit up by a hail of arrows coming their way. Baeron chanted and did hand signals in the air, thrusting his hand out. An hardened barrier of air that shimmer silver occasionally in the moonlight surrounded them. The thud, thud, thudding of them embedding themselves in whatever he conjured up. Smoke rose from the mansion. Glass shattered and the earth trembled beneath them. "Hold on tight.""
Strelitzia grabbed onto the bulky man by his waist, clinging on for dear life. She glanced over at her unconscious mother. Honestly it was probably for the best that the woman couldn't see the chaos that raged around them and the people who had come for their heads. "What are you going to do?" She clung tighter when the ceiling began to shift and creak.
Baeron didn't answer her question, he pushed forward against whatever force he'd created and sent them flying over the edge. For a moment they were falling, but then that bubble snapped upwards and left them floating up towards the clouds. Arrows still zipped past, and rain slapped against the barrier he managed to keep held in place throughout the entire ordeal. "Are you alright?" He asked, glancing over at her. He lowered, folding his legs with her mother still slung over his shoulders. It was almost like there was something hard beneath them to allow them to sit while soaring through the sky.
"I'm fine." She was shaken but she'd escaped the worst of it. They were soaring through the sky with some big burly Ogosian man who appeared out of nowhere and claimed to be saving them. It was too late to question things now though. Whatever his plans or whims for Strelitzia and her mother, they were bound to them now. They had no magick of their own. Had she been a little braver, she might have released her hold on him but she didn't trust the bubble around them to hold. Or what if just came for her mother and let her fall?
"To a safe house where there isn't someone trying to murder you." Baeron closed his eyes and kept his arms folded across his barrel chest. "You must be strong to be holding yourself together, or you just weren't extremely close to your father."
The coat was pulled tighter around herself and eyes blurring from the chill in the air that made their breath puff into little clouds of their own. "Of course. Who sent you and why are you helping us? Or at least tell me who those people were and why they wanted our heads? What have we done to provoke such anger?"
He waved a hand through the air and small embers drifted away from the flame as he opened his eyes and unfolded his legs to push himself into a stand. His breath hung in the air, white clouds which drifted out the invisible bubble they were inside. "I sent ma'self." Barron shrugged those too toned arms that were now on full display. He had topped his head back, watching the stars twinkle between the blanket of darkness above them. "And I found out 'bout the attack because I was snoopin'. Technically, I shouldn't be here." He pulled his shirt away from his neckline and there an iron collar dangled and gleamed in the moonlight.
Iron collars were often used to mark mages, more specifically the ones owned or in service. Strelitzia only knew because her father subcontracted sun mages to tend to the gardens. A dry lump formed in her throat and it constricted painfully. "Tell me more than that." She said more demanding. She'd just lost her father, her home had been destroyed, and her mother unconscious through it all. Strelitzia needed some sense of direction to ground herself. The foundation of her life had just been yanked from beneath her feet. Occasionally below them there were flickers of lights from passing buildings where families were probably huddled together for warmth, indulging one another in tales of their day or preparing for bed.
"That's all I know. I decided to save you because I didn't want you to end up like ma family. So dun go snappin' at me. We've all lost something. And the people that lost something shouldn' be turnin against one another but toward each other. Ma wife's out there. Pregnant and alone. They tore her from ma arms."
Baeron sighed and pressed a hand to his stomach. When he removed it, it was slick with blood. "And there's no pain greater than loosin a child and the mother. I didn't want her to go through that pain." He jerked his chin toward Charlotte.
Strelitzia let his words sink in. This man had come to save them of his own volition because he'd felt moved by his own struggle. She got up and pulled the coat from her shoulders, placing it over her unconscious mother. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. Have you searched for her?" The girl asked while tucking in the edges. Gently she pushed Charlotte's blonde curls away from her face. The bleeding had stopped a while ago leaving the woman looking more pale and frail than she ever did while awake. It was strange to see her so still.
"You were the first place I went when I escaped. I'm not in the shape to go find her wound like this. Barely holdin' this bubble up. Once we're in ma hideout in those mountains we can patch yer mother up and maself." Baeron tipped his head at the mountains in the distance, shadowed and eerie looking.
Her gaze followed his motion to the snowy peaks appearing further in the distance. Any other time she would have been excited to see a new place, one that she could have only read about or heard over the radio on the rare story broadcasts that came irregularly. "Thank you. I wish I could offer more help than my thanks. I'm afraid I've never been magick inclined."
Baeron winced and fell forward, the invisible bubble that was holding them vanished, leaving them plummeting downward. The air battered all of them, currents hitting them from left and right. Around and around the sky circled them as they spun and the ground and backdrop of the snow capped mountains rushed up toward them.