The primary concern for me is that this place is filled to the brim with bleeding-edge-quality necromancers as well. They absolutely figure out how he died, and maybe who did it as well.
Well, he's unlikely to be looking up at the roof unless he's taken a sudden interest at stargazing, so take a peek, if all looks clear have Piecewise do the same and if all looks clear from his end as well, then he can come catch us when we jump. Then we put the grate back in its place and get out of there ASAP.
If the area is not clear however, then this is more of a problem. We've got to move now, so we don't have time for an elaborate distraction. We can try for a simple distraction or go for a Bavarian fire drill but that might backfire and just draw more guards here. It might be easier to just take him out. Too bad we don't have birdwise available.
If there's a single guard, then if he has something that's easy for a rat to steal (like a beret) throw our most not-undead-looking rat at him, have it steal the thing and run away with it. Hopefully that will distract the guard long enough for us to get away with the help of Piecewise. If he calls for assistance, then have the rat head towards the front group of guards to stop them from reaching the back.
Else, if the above plan won't work and he's close enough to jump on, just order our body to jump on him and take him out to take advantage of our super-precision mode. Then we can just drag him in the sewer with the help of Piecewise.
If there's more than one guard... I dunno, I guess we'll have to wait and see how they're arranged to think of something.
Removing my original +1, voting for this except wait instead of attacking
+1 to the addemdum
You slowly drag yourself to the edge of the building and get up on your hands and knees so you can peek over the edge. There's no one behind the building at the moment, and you don't hear anyone moving on the sides of the building either. Now or never. You shoot an order to Piecewise and the grate lifts with great speed but complete silence and is carefully set to the side with equal precision. Piecewise, moving in a strange, almost slithering fashion, silently rises from the drain and moves to be underneath you. You swallow some trepidation and, in as smooth and quiet a motion as you can, lift yourself up onto the lip of the roof and then roll off. There is only a second of free fall for you to consider your actions before you feel Piecewise's hands hit your back. He moves with you, absorbing the momentum of the fall and wrapping his arms around you. Instead of placing you on your feet and letting you walk to the drain, he carries you like a log, slung between both arms, and then basically dunks you straight into the hole. Like everything he does, it all happens with great speed and precision and this time with almost complete silence.
You fall a good 10 feet before you can jam your feet into the wall and wedge yourself against the opposite side of the wall. You, with the memories of the pain of others, expect it to hurt a good deal but you only experience a dull ache for a few seconds and then nothing. Hmm. You look up above and piecewise is already in the drain, carefully settling the grate back over the hole. You listen and you hear what sounds like people confused chatter. The soldiers apparently thought they heard something and are now listening. No sounds of boots though, no alarms. You breathe a sigh of relief automatically, a remnant of the absorbed memories, and then go back to not breathing at all. After a bit you slide down the drain and Piecewise follows you. The rats, who apparently followed along on all this, are already waiting for you when you reach the main pipe down below. By the time you reach the end of the sewage drain and replace the large grate -sort of wedging the bolts loosely back into place- its near 6 and the sun is just starting to peek into the woods, casting long hazy shadows and dancing god rays through the trees.
You sit on a flat stone and consider what to do next. You've lost a good deal of time here; if you leave the forest now you'll bump into those early waking fishermen and have witnesses. It would be hard to explain what a professor is doing in the woods at night, dressed in dark clothing and carrying a folder of stolen military documents. You hand that folder to piecewise and have him secrete it away somewhere on his person as you continue to think. You could try and sneak in now...or wait till the nightfall and go. Cause a distraction? A fire? Hmmm. If you had brought everything from the inn you could have just hopped on the train and left right away...no good thinking about that now. That bird is still coming back to the inn too...
Night seems your best option, but you'll need to find a good place to hide out till then. One preferably far from this base and unlikely to be happened upon. You start walking and notice an odd sensation on your back. Cold, and a feeling of something fluid. You touch it and find that your shirt has ripped and that there's blood on your hand when check it. You touch your back again and despite the blood, can find no injuries; not just a lack of pain but literally no damage. You spend the next several minutes slowly walking while feeling all over yourself for what you think must be some sort of hidden injury and find nothing. Huh....
About a mile off from the base you find a fallen and hollow log and squeeze into it with piecewise just behind you. You have the rats find sticks and leaves and random forest debris and plug either end of the log, sealing it off from the world outside. You close your eyes and order yourself to sleep for one hour, doing this again and again when you wake up until its finally nighttime. You worm your way out of the log and start heading back to town. You get in sometime around midnight and finally climb up to your second floor window sometime around 1:00, having spent a while avoiding late night drunks. You close the window and sit down on the bed, absentmindedly knocking dust and dirt off your clothing until you notice that Birbwise is sitting on the end table, staring at you.
Author
Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 119201 times)