And she could do magic too!? 

"I tend to improvise, but I'll try to match that." I said. I saw Emmaline was out of breath, and I opened my hands and gestured. "May I?" 

She nodded with a grin, despite her weariness. I picked her up and laid her over my shoulder, and then started to run. I couldn't match a raptor, but I made good time across the open ground. My feet clapped on the flagstones as we passed by canals and darkwood trees and pillars framing some cosmic city-way. The sun was still in the sky, but I knew it would set within the hour. Even if we made it in time to...whatever was happening, we couldn't leave the city tonight other than by some eldritch means. 

The opening in the ziggurat was an intricate knot of all right angles and geometric shapes I couldn't begin to comprehend, and once inside we could either go left or right. I went left on a whim and entered a small hallway that seemed triangular in shape, confining to my sensibilities but somehow we fit. Light filtered in from small holes above, but I couldn't see their origin. It was likely some sort of light bounced off mirrors that helped illuminate the enclosed halls. Or perhaps it was simply magic. 

Either way, we passed through one corridor into the next, before I ran across a walkway of stone above a streaming torrent of water that rushed beneath us. Emmaline later told me she saw some vast, serpent-like shape of darkness just under the moving man-made river, but I hadn't bothered to look down too closely. My eyes were too focused on a man-serpent who stood at the doorway that blocked our path. It's look made my skin crawl, and I shuddered as I barreled towards it. It's body was a well proportioned man decked in a skirt of cloth like the ancient Xerubians, but its neck swelled into the shape of a viperish cobra, widening behind its head. It hissed at us and dropped the ornage halberd it carried, instead reaching behind a cleft in the wall and pulling something I couldn't see. 

"Beren, run!" Emmaline cried, and I glanced behind us to see the segments at the back of the walkway crumbling into the river, its foundations breaking from weights beneath us. 

"Oh fuck! Fuck!" I breathed, heart pumping. I held onto Emmaline tighter, my corded muscles pressing into her soft flesh as my entire body went taut from summoning the last reserves of my strength. I saw the serpent man reach for its halberd again and level it to skewer us, hissing in delight at our predicament. Every footfall I expected to feel nothing but air, and as I heard the last 'pop' of the segment just behind me falling, I sprang like the raptor had the other day. Emmaline screamed, but instead of launching myself at the doorway, I aimed to the left. I knew I wouldn't have made it, and so I leaped to one of the alcoves in the stone beneath it, a few paces above the rushing waves. I fancied I could see a confused look on the serpent man, but of course one couldn't really tell. 

I grabbed onto the rounded frames like an ape, thinking on what to do next. But I heard murmuring behind my head, and a zap! Ozone filled the air, my eyes catching the serpent man, still crackling with electricity, falling into the rushing waters below, dead before it sank beneath the river. We both caught our breath for a second, panting as I looked at the walls and found what imperfections I needed to grab to pull us up to the door. 

"Hey Emmaline?" I said as I started to climb. She clung to to me. 

"Yes?" 

"That was the sexiest thing you could have done. We'll talk about it later though." I told her as we ascended slowly, and the next minute I pulled us both up onto the next corridor, collapsing from the weight of both of us tumbling in.  We were almost there.