Damien had seen the posters, had heard the town criers. The drow Audmathus -- the individual the man had been seeking for far too long -- was set up to die. To. Die. To think, that one of his reputation could simply be...'killed'. It was a blow to Damien's idea of the individual, but not so much not to know what he had to do.
Well, not so much what he had to do, but want he wanted. The drow would go free -- Damien wouldn't let some petty guards slay quite possibly the only worthy opponent to be found in Myrkentown. Sure, there are plenty of would-be opponents everywhere, especially around that Broken Dagger...everybody hiding or displaying blades, pretending they have mastery over some chump skill or another. But that's just what those people were; chumps.
But, Damien had to be honest with himself. This 'Audmathus' could very well be just a chump himself. It wouldn't take much to best the best of Myrkentown.
Everything was told to him by those posters. The place, the time. Only a minimum of scouting was needed before he figured it to be all too easy. And thus, he waited.
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So the time came, finally. The guards weren't hard to bypass; others had already beat him to the rooftops, which had caused the guards to sweep them clean. That wasn't too much to handle; all Damien did was wait until they were done before scaling straight up the face of the building, window ledge by window ledge.
On the top, there was one left over. The shadow demon stood, facing away from Damien, towards the obvious direction that much of the crowd were locked onto as well. Audmathus, being wheeled in to lose his head. And that captain be damned, he didn't make his speeches long enough.
It healed the drow's reputation a little when Damien spotted the mischief already beginning, and the shadow demon provided no attempt to stop the man's plan, having already leapt clear off the roof, probably to battle the drow. The guillotine blade was already dropping, the crossbow was already charged, and the rest was all reflexive luck.
...which proved perfectly on target, as the large, magically conjured shard of simple rock blasted and destroyed the entire guillotine stand with its sheer momentum.
Audmathus was freed, people were screaming, swords were being hurled, guards were in a flurry...the chaos had begun.
Damien rotated the crystal on the crossbow -- such a wonderful find, it was. Cost him half a fortune, but it was well worth it. The logistics were simple -- the crystal had four positions, powering different effects. Elemental in styles, ranging from fire to water to earth to lightning. Fire had to definitely be Damien's favorite -- the water and earth settings could shoot out anything from just a plain cold blast of water to a deadly shard of ice, whereas the earth setting did everything from dirt to obsidian. When he wanted results, sometimes chancing on dirt wasn't smart.
The setting went to fire, and the string was drawn back -- it charged the weapon more than anything else, intensifying and multiplying the power of the projectile. Embers began to form, swirling in formation, ahead of the weapon, joining together to form a central goblet of liquid fire, which upon completion launched at the drow and his newfound friends.
Damien didn't have time enough to figure out a new aim; the bolt slammed through his calf before he even noticed the shooter, and he fell backwards in surprise.
...back over the highest vertex of the roof, where he could lay momentarily without fear of extra bolts. Damien pinned his leg down with the other, and ripped the bolt the rest of the way through his calf, figuring the guiding 'wings' would hurt less than the spiked head of the bolt.
The wound bled profusely, but Damien paid no attention to it. He was surprised, a little, by how much the pain seemed distant to him. Almost happening to someone else...ignorable, for the time being. But the fact that his leg refused to support his weight was not.
So Damien crawled back over that vertex with the crossbow newly charged on the earth setting, and fired upon the crowd once more. To his fears' credit, a large mound of dirt rained onto the crowd, not even compact enough to serve as a decent bludgeon. The string was pulled back again, but nothing else would fly from the crossbow.
It was out of energy, already, it seemed. One could only assume such charged shots would drain it faster than the normal, lower powered ones, but Damien hadn't expected it to lose all its power that fast. Oh well. It was then he noticed the black webs eating away at his vision, and the pain became all the more distant.
It wasn't the first time Damien had experienced this, and something at the back of his mind cried out with sudden realization of what happened last time.