Part One: Flight

The palace guards  in the Grand Foyer were struck dumb momentarily as the wail of the alarm climbed in pitch; but only until an entire platoon of the King's best crested the stairs, the click-click of a half-dozen or so rifles loading before being trained on what appeared to be a lone guard heading for the entrance.

"Halt!" An elegantly dressed man in the best armor called.  He stood on the terrace with his soldiers arrayed behind him, and clearly he was smugly confident about himself and his soldiers. "In the name of the King of Zarstrom, you are under arrest!"

The lone guard stopped in his tracks as the other palace guards drew their weapons and surrounded him loosely on all sides, two guards standing between him and the  now closed door. The commander smirked. "Put down what you're holding, raise your hands in the air and get on your knees." With no other alternative, the guard placed what he was carrying-a long package wrapped in a white cloth-on the floor in front of him and dropped to his knees with his hands raised, eyes facing the floor in front of him. "You two," the commander pointed to the two guards by the entryway. "Take him into custody."

"Sir!" The guards rang in unison and approached the kneeling prisoner. As they closed in, spears trained on the captured figure, the pair of guards realized that he was muttering something... something very quietly; a steady, not quite intelligible spew of what seemed like nonsense. The two guards looked at each other.

"'Ere now, wot's that 'es sayin'?" one said cautiously.

"Most likely just saying his prayers or something, what's it matter?" The other guard shook his head.

"Don't sounds like no prayers I've ever 'eard before." The guard tapped the kneeling prisoner in the side of the helmet with his spear. "Wot're you on about?"

"Today, Soldiers!" The commander shouted in frustration. The kneeling figure chuckled as the air around him began to gather.

"I can see why they keep you out front..." The captive spoke in a rich, confident voice. The two guards moved to either side of him and took the prisoner by his arms, neither of them noticing the air beginning to stir around them, like a great breath being drawn in. "And as for what I was muttering before," he said, then leaned in close to the guard who had inquired, "roughly translated," he whispered, "Plan 'B'." An instantaneous and massive blast of Willed Wind burst from around the prisoner simultaneously blasting the palace doors clean off their hinges, launching his captors away from him and over to the far walls of the room.  Then he propelled himself and the package through the open door, narrowly missing a salvo of bullets that ruined the floor where he had been.

The former prisoner landed awkwardly on the outside stairs and rolled to his feet, breaking into a dead sprint across the courtyard towards the gate to the city itself. An angry voice barked orders through the door behind him, and a loud siren broke the chilly morning air, filling the entire city.

"A general alert," the man said to himself. "Great..."

A great series of six great metallic clunks signaled the lock down of the city, the last great clunk coming from the portcullis slamming shut between him and freedom. As he ran, he heard the armored footsteps of many soldiers in hot pursuit and in front of him, an entire company of riflemen were forming ranks. The man doubled his pace and continued his flight towards the rifle troops, a constant stirring of wind rushing around him.

"Ready!" The riflemen's sergeant shouted, prompting a  grim symphony of a hundred-odd click-clicks. The man unbuckled the breastplate of his armor and tossed it, revealing a fine white robe with silver buttons and tapered sleeves before continuing hard toward the readying riflemen, the stirring wind building.

"Aim!" the rifle company took their ready position, carefully training their weapons on the madman rushing toward them. Armored tassets hit the ground as the man ran, revealing the bottom half of a white robe flowing in the intensifying stir of wind. The sergeant stared in disbelief at the lunatic who was shedding his armor and running straight into the kill zone of some of the greatest riflemen in the Zarstromian Royal Army. It wasn't until the man's helmet came off, revealing a long tumble of cotton-white hair, pointed ears, silver eyes and the most arrogant smile imaginable. The sergeant gaped in shock. It was all coming together now.

"I-its him! It's Silvestri Wind-Witcher!" The riflemen's aim flinched in response to the name as Silvestri palmed a small handful of  shiny silver orbs and brought his arms to one side of his body. The wind trembled in anticipation. The commander snapped back to his senses and began to speak. But just before the killing order escaped his lips, Silvestri swept his arms in a horizontal arc and threw the silver orbs towards the rifle company, creating a blinding flash of light accompanied by the sound of an intense wind burst. In a panic, the riflemen opened fire. A salvo of bullets blasted and impacted with a clankety-clank, accompanied by the shouts of the armored guards who had been pursuing the Wind-Witcher. As the sergeant's eyes readjusted, he did not see what he expected to; instead of the bullet-riddled corpse of the most notorious thief in recent history, he was met with twenty or so armored men laying on the ground, stunned and groaning with large bullet shaped dents in their armor. The sergeant looked about frantically, trying to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing ne'er-do-well. The sound of something dropping onto the cobblestones behind him made the sergeant do an about-face in an instant. On the other side of the portcullis stood the mocking form of Silvestri, who looked back on the Riflemen sergeant and smirked.

"Another time then, monarchic lackey!" he called.

The Wind-Witcher turned on his heel and continued his flight from the law and the frustrated sergeant shouting pleasant obscenities at his men while they scrambled to open the portcullis. Silvestri sprinted hard through the damp morning air down the wide main parade avenue, which ran at a gentle slope the entire length of the city from the palace to the city gate at the bottom. He knew escape through that specific method would be impossible, even for him. Five sturdy, locked and very well-manned portcullises stood between him and the old highway. The Wind-Witcher's mind raced as he ran through alternative plans, but his train of thought was derailed by the retort of a rifle shot and the drone of a bullet passing far too close for comfort. A pair of shining white knives flew from his belt in reaction and floated in position over Silvestri's shoulders.

Another company of riflemen  had set up a phalanx across the main street in front of the next portcullis and continued to rain bullets at the running fugitive. Silvestri zigged and zagged dodging gunshots as best he could while the two knives moved defensively and deflected the more accurate shots. The Wind-Witcher fumbled at a pouch on his belt and pulled out a small cube set with his grinning facade on each of its sides and lobbed it forward, narrowly dodging another well-grouped salvo. The cube belched forth a column of smoke that rose lazily into the air as Silvestri sprinted and dove into its thick embrace. Almost instantly, six  identical figures of the white haired man burst from the smoke pillar and scattered in different directions. Two Silvestris ran back towards the palace, two took off in opposite directions down the first immediate side streets, and two ran straight forward at the riflemen with knives bared and a vicious look in their eyes.

The City of Zarstrom was built on a large tear-shaped hill with two naturally formed spires at the top. The spires would eventually become the foundation for the two trademark towers of the Zarstromian Royal Palace, which dominated the top of the large hill. The rest of the city was built around the palace and the main parade street, which ran down the gentlest slope. Several streets branched off the main parade and circled the hill back to the same spot on the street, like rings on a tree. Due to the city's reliance on airships, large metallic struts were built off of the ringed streets along the steeper side of the small mountain to serve as docks for airships of all makes and sizes. The struts, which resembled arch-supported bridges leading to nowhere, were built on all levels of the city, with the largest and most well-maintained off the top tiers, and the smaller ones built off the lower tiers.

The confused shouts of the riflemen on the main parade faded into the background as Silvestri dodged through a confused throng of onlookers and the odd guard who didn't notice him until he was already gone. He ran along one of the higher circuit streets past fine houses built into the hillside, towards the city's largest airship struts. The Wind-Witcher approached cautiously as he neared the first long, metallic sky dock. Several large military and commercial craft were berthed, most of them with a greeting party of about six armed guards standing near the gangplanks. Silvestri sneered. This was proving to be more difficult than even he had imagined. But there was nothing more exciting than a worthy challenge, especially one as seemingly impossible as slipping out of the grasp of one of the greatest armies in the world.  He looked down at the next stratum of struts, and noticed much the same activity; lots of guards, big conspicuous ships. Beyond that, however, was a dense layer of morning fog obscuring the lower half of the city several hundred meters below. A plan formed in his agile mind.

Silvestri rekindled the swirling winds about him with a quick susurric chant and sped toward the nearest support column of the strut he was standing on. Several surprised shouts came from the guards of the nearest two ships as they drew their weapons and ran to stop the fugitive. Silvestri sprinted to get to the support column before the guards got between it and him. He urged the surrounding wind to carry his feet and it obliged. The guards slowed their charge as they watched the fugitive race towards them with superhuman speed and leap off the great metal structure. They continued to watch as the fugitive maneuvered himself alongside the support column, controlled his descent and began to run down the vertical structure.

The next strut grew ever closer as Silvestri sprinted down the upright column that supported  one of the main struts above. Guards shouted and pointed as they witnessed the white figure defying gravity in his flight from justice. The Wind-Witcher planted his feet and slid for a few meters along the smooth metal as he planned his next daring feat. He leaped off the column and  quickly scrambled across the sky dock as the guards raced to intercept. Silvestri quickly jumped to the next support column before the guards could even get close and he continued his vertical flight. The sound of a suppressed shot and the zing of metal on metal caught his attention, but not nearly as much as the tight cable that had been shot across the column, hitting Silvestri right across the stomach and sending him tumbling out of both breath and control. He gasped a lungful of air into himself and Willed a powerful blast of wind as three more cables shot past him, grappling onto the column with vicious-looking metal hooks. Silvestri grabbed onto one of the metal beams of the column and furiously searched for the source of the cables. Three figures shot toward Silvestri as the cables retracted and the hooks disengaged. The Wind-Witcher vaulted upwards and clung to a higher beam as three sleekly armored figures bearing odd rifle-spears perched where he had been a moment earlier.

"Three," Silvestri said flatly, "Three Dragoons. I steal from the Royal treasury and they only send three of you? I'm insulted!"

"More are coming." A female voice said from under a seamless looking helm that looked like a falcon's face and beak. "So, you're the 'legendary' thief, Silvestri Swann, the 'Wind-Witcher'... I must say, I'm not impressed."

"Oh darling," Silvestri cooed. "You've only just met me! I'm far more impressive by the third date. Although," he shot the woman a sidelong smile, "I'm most certainly going to make an exception for you this time around. You see, after I shake you and your two, uh, cronies there," He gestured absently at the two others, " you'll have no choice but to be impressed while I escape and you three float to the ground on those cute little wing glyphs of yours..." The woman clenched her fists.

"That's enough Swann! Surrender now or face the might of Zarstrom's finest!" The woman leaned back and hung by her knees perpendicular to the support column and drew two odd-looking short swords and pointed them at Silvestri, who smiled heatedly at the woman's muscle control.

"Hmm, a pity we don't have more time..." The swirling winds gained in pace  as Silvestri's daggers spun dangerously about him. "Oh well, shall we dance?"

The dragoons lit off the support column in unison, the blades of the woman's short swords shot  from their bases and swung wide at Silvestri as the other two men swung off in opposite directions. Silvestri danced up the column and out of the way of the flailing blades as his own knives moved defensively, bouncing back the woman's tethered swords. The dragoon kept pace with the agile thief, using her flail-blades as grapples in between rapidly spinning assaults. Silvestri sneered as his blades continued to deflect the onslaught. He leapt further up the support, the wind shimmering about him, and waited for the opening he was looking for. The dragoon fired her flail-blade at the support and Silvestri simultaneously flew a knife at the grapple blade, knocking it away from its target. The woman faltered and fired the second grapple blade, but a second flown knife met it just short of its target. Silvestri smiled, and with a grand swoop of his arm, he Willed a blast of wind at the falling dragoon, sending her flying off away from the city. The woman scrambled for her ziplance, her last hope against a long, slow fall. She shouldered the long spear and aimed at the support some distance below the Wind-Witcher. The shot rung through the air as the spearhead arched towards its target, trailing the dragoon's lifeline behind it. Silvestri ran down the vertical structure towards the grapple's destination and somersaulted off the column, launching a knife at the grapple-spear and knocking it off course with a lazy backhanded motion. The grapple retracted and the dragoon began her long defeated descent.  

A sudden rush of movement from both sides of the Wind-Witcher caused  him leap upwards and latch back onto the column as the two subordinate dragoons pendulum-swung from the strut above and launched themselves outward towards their wayward commander. The dragoon nearest to the column turned and fired his ziplance and grappled to the structure, continuing to let the slack out as he flew outward from the city. The second dragoon fired his ziplance to his partner, who latched it to the butt of his own grapple forming a chain connecting the squad to the support column. The commander aimed her ziplance for her rescue team and fired. Silvestri smiled.

"Impressive," he said in amusement.

Silvestri raced to the first dragoon's anchor on the support column as the commander rappelled to her subordinate. Silvestri grabbed hold of the cable and pulled some slack, which caught the attention of the squad as they reeled together. Just as the last dragoon was about to pull everyone back into the fray, Silvestri loosed the grapple and mustered all of his Will into one concentrated burst of wind. The three dragoons tumbled violently out towards the sea of fog that enveloped the countryside  and away from the city as Silvestri waved and smiled.

"Call me!" he shouted as a flare shot into the sky from the tumble of slowly falling dragoons. He turned on his heel and dashed down the support structure, disappearing into the blanket of fog covering the lower half of the city of Zarstrom just as a pair of recovery ships descended in response to the distress flare.