Elayra startled at Ghent's delayed screech reiterating Drust’s order. She only just managed to resist throwing an irritated punch at his shoulder as they ran. 
	“Little louder!” she growled, unsure and not really caring if Ghent heard her over the hubbub of their pursuers. “Don’t think the clouds heard!”
	She slowed, readying for the turn, when the cry of one of the Cursed grew steadily louder, merging with Ghent’s terrified warning. A warning that followed with him tripping.
	“Ghent!” She slid to a stop, silently cursing his clumsiness. 
	Drust, directly behind Ghent, spat out a wild curse of his own as he danced over Ghent, avoiding tripping over the self-felled teen. Before he could wrench Ghent up or intercept the forgen racing toward them, a Cursed lurched at him from the shadows of another doorway.
	An older teenager, chunks of hair were missing from his head. He screeched in eerie tandem with the hoard bottlenecking at the alley’s entrance—a Forsaken, not a forgen.
	Despite a few missing or otherwise stubbed fingers, he brandished a meat cleaver in one hand and a large fillet knife in the other. Blood already splattered the tools-turned-weapons and the teenager’s infection-pocked face. 
	Growling, Drust twisted easily from the raging Forsaken’s path. It stumbled forward between him and Elayra as the forgen-turned-bowling-ball sprung at Ghent.
	Elayra raised her sword, ready to drive it into the young butcher, when shattering glass drew her attention upward.
	She had just enough time to raise her saber defensively before the forgen that had launched itself from a window landed atop her. She staggered back from its sudden weight, shards of glass scraping against her exposed skin.
	The flat side of her saber dug into the child’s midsection, and she gripped it's throat, keeping it far enough from her so it couldn't do the damage it had lusted for. It snarled at its thwarted surprise attack, showing a mouth of rotting teeth. It’s half-missing nostril tried to flair in its anger, but only crumpled oddly.
	It grabbed at her shoulders to stay on it's prey, jagged nails gouging into her. It tried for her neck, but, with a guttural shout, she threw it from herself, twisting her sword so its edge drew across the forgen’s stomach as it went. It wailed as it tumbled from her.
	Behind her, the butcher boy slashed his fillet knife at her, but Drust gripped the teenager’s wrist and wrenched him away from her. The butcher boy tried to strike at him with the cleaver, but Drust grabbed that wrist as well and snapped both of them with a simple twist.
	The butcher boy—and the others growing unnervingly closer—howled. In a single motion, Drust took the fillet knife from the Forsaken and slashed it across the butcher boy’s throat, silencing him in a waterfall of red.
	The butcher boy stumbled back, choking and gurgling. He tumbled backwards over the window forgen as it tried to lurch to standing, the younger Cursed grasping at its own bleeding wound. The Forsaken’s weight pinned the dying youth to the ground.
	While Drust disposed of the butcher boy, Elayra looked to where Ghent fought against his clingy forgen. She swiftly drew the stiletto from her boot. With the precision of a sniper, she threw it at the forgen’s head sticking out beside Ghent’s.
	Too preoccupied with clawing and sinking its teeth into Ghent, it didn’t see the weapon coming. It punctured its skull with a wet [i]shunk.[/i]
	Before its hold fully loosened, she grabbed Ghent's arm and pulled him forward. This time, she didn’t let him go, not wanting to risk him tripping again.
	She locked her gaze on the opening to their destination, trying to not look at the newest corpses as she stepped around them.
	Drust lingered behind them only long enough to retrieve the stiletto from the fallen forgen. His long stride caught up to his charges quickly, though he kept a few paces behind.
	Ahead, more Curse-ridden had started to trickle out of other doorways.
	Elayra tugged Ghent down the right-hand alley Drust had directed them to. Narrower than the first, the path wove in a serpentine wave, the decaying walls of the buildings built to match. Here, thankfully, there were no doors, no windows.
	After taking a sharp turn, Elayra skid to a halt, ready to pull Ghent with her if she needed to.
	Her eyes widened, and she swore her heart skipped a few beats.
	A hodgepodge wall created from a mix of stones and bone blocked their path. Newer than the alleyway’s walls, it rose the full three stories of the buildings hemming them in. Metel poles strewn with netting stuck out of the top. A few dead birds weighted the netting.
	The trio had effectively trapped themselves.
	“Drust!” she spun toward him, voice quivering with the fear she’d tried so hard to keep hidden.
	Drust stopped behind her, snarling, his neck twitching. He glanced at the dead end, then to the walls, then up to the relatively flat roofs, then to Elayra’s blood-stained sword.
	“Sheath it!” he snapped.
	Elayra stiffened, fitting Drust’s glances to his logic. “I can’t jump that! And Ghent—”
	“Sheath. It!” His neck and fingers twitched with each strained word.
	Elayra obeyed, some part of her cringing at shoving her soiled sword into its scabbard. Such a small, stupid thing to care about with a hoard of Cursed on their tail, but still.
	With the forgen and Forsaken’s cries and gibberish words echoing around them, growing closer, Drust flung Elayra over one shoulder, Ghent over the other, then ran toward the dead end, gathering speed.
	Behind them, a man all jutting bone and a woman with more bulk than reasonable for someone living in squaller raced into the narrow space. The spindly man scuttled quickly closer, his movements insectile. He lunged for them just as Drust leapt at one of the alleyway walls. 
	The Forsaken’s fingers brushed against Drust’s boots, but found no purchase. Thrown off balance from his miss, the Forsaken tumbled to the ground.
	Elayra clung to Drust as well and tightly as she could. She silently prayed Ghent would hold still, would avoid knocking Drust off course as the White Knight sprung off one wall, twisted mid-air, and pushed off the opposite wall, kick-climbing to the rooftops.
	With a last, calculated leap, he landed deftly and light as a cat on the edge of the rotting roof, and released his charges.
	Above the putrid city, the sky shone in the dark pinks and oranges of fading twilight. The sun itself had sunk beneath the horizon in the east, as if even it was tired of bearing witness to what had become of the land it watched. Night chased it’s heels, dark blues slowly consuming the sun’s fire.
	Around the trio, the rooftops stretched before them. Narrow gaps showed where one string of buildings ended and the next began. Some roofs were slightly steepled, some flat. Some were rotting away or sagging, others riddled with repairs like a patchwork quilt. Some shingled, others a hodgepodge of supplies like the walls they’d encountered entering the town.
	“Town Center! To the north!” Drust ordered with a quick, jerky gesture to indicate north. Elayra glanced behind her as she heard the familiar scrape of him pulling his katana free.
	Below them, the Curse-ridden clawed at the walls, trying to find a way up after their prey.