Strangely, Talus felt an overwhelming sense of exhilaration staring out across the dark marsh. The moonlight shimmered in the scattered water dotting the landscape, silhouetting the reeds and trees in the night. He savoured the moment, and Vorbal grinned at him, allowing him to experience it. A faint shimmer of magic was detectable in his fur, he had something to do with Talus's increased immersion.
Talus shook himself from his reverie, taking hold of the frayed rope, the coarse fibres slick with moss and age. Without hesitation, he yanked on the cord. The bell immediately started to toll, vibration shaking dust, built up over decades, from the rafters. Vorbal sat back on his haunches, enthusiastically clapping his paws together in delight.
The sound drowned out everything else, engulfing Talus in a sensation of being submerged. The fine hairs on his arms bristled and stood on end as the bell continued to swing. Something changed, Talus could detect the subtle change beneath his footing. The bell lurched in its frame, tilting sideways. Within moments, the old bell tower began to sway, becoming increasingly violent.
Soon, chunks of stone started to rain from the unstable building, scaring the children into fleeing. They left from the elevated walkway to begin sloshing through the mud of the marsh. Talus stood unperturbed in the middle of the chaos, calmly surveying the area for an escape route of his own. He glanced up and saw the bell was barely tethered to its mount, threatening to collapse at any moment.
The ladder buckled and shattered into a hundred pieces on the floor below. Talus looked down with a slight frown, a slight bead of sweat upon his brow. Despite his calm outward appearance, his emotions churned beneath the surface.
A final groan echoed through the tower as the final struts snapped clean from the strain, sending the great bell into a wobbling spiral dangling only from its rope caught in the rafters. Its metal form slammed against the side of the tower, ringing out with a deafening clang that vibrated the very marrow of the structure. The onlooking children screamed as they bolted from the base, stumbling over one another in a panicked scramble through the suctioning mud.
"I'm so glad Beky didn't do it!" One of the boys shouted over his shoulder, his voice carrying with relief and terror. Beky herself stood frozen, mouth agape, mud streaked up to her knees. She realised that it would have been her stuck at the top as the tower collapsed.
The tower groaned again, stone joints buckling as the bell's final toll reverberated through Blackroot. Dust poured from the seams of the upper arch. A great crack zipped down the length of the wall, and the structure gave a sickening lurch. Then came the magic.
With a sound like the opening notes of a divine orchestra, a lattice of glowing squares flared into existence beneath the tumbling stones. Horizontal planes of pure white light, almost too many to count in the current situation. The tower's upper stones hit the first illusory square with a soft thrum, releasing a burst of celestial chimes. Each impact gave off uplifting melodies, like the soft patter of rain as an unseen force embraced the falling debris, slowing its fall.
A final crash, slower now. Signaled the bell's descent, where it was caught by three horizontal squares, causing it to sink gently as though it were weightless. Depositing the large bell softly.
Thalora stood below, one hand raised in a commanding gesture. Talus observed a small ring on her pinky that he had not noticed before, a tiny shard spinning above the ring's surface pulsed out light like a miniature replica of a shard tower. Her homespun coat billowed behind her, glowing with the residual hum of Mana. Every floating square pulsed like a heartbeat around him, her magic holding the debris suspended and harmless for the moment.
A way out.
Talus, watching from atop the collapsing tower, his silhouette outlined by the moon, smirked faintly. Emotions warred within him, heady and unnatural. For a moment, he had wanted to stay there. To feel more. Instead, he moved.
A sudden shimmer of intent lit his eyes, his pupils spinning to see into the Mirror Realm. A nearby support beam cracked and spun past him, revealing Vorbal gracefully running its length, wisps of magic dusting his fur. Talus bent his knees and leapt. He landed lightly on a chunk of floating stone held aloft by Thalora's spell. As soon as his boot touched it, chimes rang out again, pure and euphoric, the rock gently bobbing under his weight.
A second later, he was already gone. Springing from debris to debris, moving like a shade of the marsh. One jump, two jumps, landing on floating chunks of the falling tower, each contact triggering a pulse of soft percussion and radiant sound. Thalora turned, eyes narrowing, hearing the subtle shift in the spell's resonance.
With a flick of her hand, she attempted to ensnare him, a translucent square manifesting below him. Talus disrupted it with a careless twist of his wrist, ordering his attendants to fracture the glyph before it could form. The servitors maintained their triangular barricade around him, defying the laws of physics to move through the Mirror Realm. The slashed strands of her magic fizzled out in the air behind him. Vorbal nimbly dodged through the floating wreckage, reuniting with Talus at the bottom.
They landed outside the danger zone with a flourish, boots barely scuffing the ground. He slunk away into the shadows and blended seamlessly into the gathering crowd. By the time the dust settled with the last of the debris and the arcane squares faded into mist, he was casually brushing off his sleeves before stepping next to Thalora. Who was completely oblivious to his arrival.
Near the wreckage, a local woman had cornered three children climbing back up onto the wooden walkway from the mud. Her hands were on her hips, eyes narrowed with volcanic disapproval.
"What in the Shard's mercy were you thinking? You could have killed someone!" The infuriated woman demanded, a strand of hair breaking free from her tight bun.
"It wasn't us. It was him! He rang the bell!" A boy whined and pointed at Talus frantically.
When she looked at where they gestured, all she saw was Talus standing politely beside a robed Magi, looking calm and relatively clean. He even nodded respectfully at her in greeting. The woman blinked, taken aback by his pale features and handsome appearance. She self-consciously tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear and turned back to the children.
"Don't lie to me," she snapped, bosom heaving with fists on hips. "Beky?"
"I-I didn't do it!" Beky squeaked.
"That's enough! Don't fib to my face, girl. I heard your friends dare you to go up the old tower and ring the bell earlier," The woman scolded, grabbing her by the ear and marching her away. "You'll be helping old Master Hellick scrub his ox-pen after supper. See how funny your pranks are this time. You boys will be helping her. Wait until your mothers hear about this!"
Beky wailed in protest, and the boys trailed behind her with slumped shoulders. Talus, now once again the picture of aloof indifference, glanced back at the crumbling tower. The shimmering cubes had faded, their echoing harmonics lingering faintly in the air. Vorbal padded up beside him, fur soft and glittering as if the fat cat had just been thoroughly groomed.
"Shards, I need a drink after that. It's not easy work catching a falling building. I'll see you inside, Talus," Thalora said, her face pale. She swayed gently with fatigue, stumbling to catch herself. She wobbled away in the direction of the tavern, receiving the occasional hand on her shoulder for support. The crowd led her away, singing her praises for preventing the spread of destruction from expanding into the rest of the town.
From beside his feet, Vorbal smirked up at Talus, who looked down at him. Talus didn't smile in response. But he didn't scowl either.