89.

  If I thought I was going to get any reprieve, even for a moment, just to catch my breath, I should have realised I was dealing with scumbags. These hyenas sensed I was weak. As I turned the corner of the narrow, winding staircase going up, I heard heavy, thudding boots flying down the stairs towards me. I looked up and saw another four, maybe five of them, charging down. The one at their head was the smallest and the quickest, and I kid you not, this guy actually leapt the final four steps and threw an honest-to-goodness flying roundhouse kick at me, straight out of the karate films. I don't know if this guy actually knew karate or just watched too many movies, but it was a wild sight to see.

  I ducked him easily, grabbed him as he flew past me, and hurled him down the steps, his spine and neck hitting every corner as he tumbled downwards and out of sight. Then the other four were on me, grabbing hold of me, punching, kicking, and tearing at me. The attack was so wild and ferocious that it caught me off guard, and soon enough they had forced me into the corner of the stairwell, screaming the whole time. But I wasn't going to be taken down that easily.

  I lowered my head, clenched my jaw, and started throwing wild punches back. It was then that I realised they were trying to throw me down the stairs. One of them even slipped and grabbed hold of my leg, holding on for dear life. The others were pushing, pulling, and tearing at my clothes. They almost had me when I saw the metal railing of the stairwell. I sent power through the Magnet Rune, and attached myself to it. Now we were in some sort of weird tug-of-war game, as they were trying to pull me off, but the Magnet kept me fastened where I was.

  The problem was, now I only had one hand to defend myself with, and they were still kicking and punching, throwing down wild, uncoordinated strikes at my head, neck, face, and shoulders.

  "Get him! Get him! Fucking get him!" an idiot with a bleach blonde mohawk screamed at his friends, pushing them forward.

  He then lunged at me, reaching over their heads and grabbed me by the collar of my jacket. The doofus reared back and tried to headbutt me over the top of his friends. I grabbed him by the face and dug my fingers into his eyes, making him scream. He clawed at my hand while his friends tried to spear me around the midsection and hurl me down the stairs. My fingers sunk deeper into eye sockets. In desperation, he threw himself back, my fingernails tearing deep trenches in his cheeks. He screamed. His eyes were red and bleeding. His high pitched wail was earsplitting. I snarled and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying down the stairs after his karate friend. I grabbed another by the side of the head and slammed him into the wall, pushing him back into his friends and clearing a path for myself. I stumbled out of the corner and saw a rusted, dust-covered fire extinguisher on the wall. I grabbed hold of it, spun, and brought it down on the head of the closest goon to me. There was a hollow, empty thunk as it crashed onto his head, and his body crumpled to the floor as if all the bones had vanished from his body.

  I swung the fire extinguisher wildly again, and the one thing I didn't expect was that the damn thing still had powder in it. As I swung, I caught the corner of the staircase which must have perforated the fire extinguisher's rusted body, and it exploded. A cloud of powdery gas engulfed us. The toxic cloud was magnitudes worse than any of my Chalk Bombs. I was blinded and half-choked by the sudden explosion, and the goons in front of me got it even worse. We all staggered blindly, choking and gagging. I heard another body fall down the stairs, followed by a yelp of panic. Then I blindly struck out and caught another one in the throat, I think, from the way he gargled, and then I heard him tumble down the stairs.

  I didn't wait to figure out if that was all of them or not. I turned and took off running up the stairs, stumbling and spitting foul powder out of my mouth. As I yanked up my balaclava, I scrubbed at my eyes, turned, and fled up the next flight of stairs. I didn't hear them pursuing as I took deep lungfuls of air, trying to purge the noxious powder and the creeping fatigue from my body.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  I had reached the end of the staircase, but it wasn't the top of the building. Where was I now? I'd completely lost track. Maybe I was on the 8th or 9th floor, maybe even the 10th. I looked around to try and get my bearings and found that I was on a strange floor with a big reception area and apartments only on one side. The other half seemed to have been destroyed, just the empty shells of people's apartments with no walls or doors were left.

  I stared into the darkness. There were no lights, just a sickly green glow of emergency fire exit leds on the ceiling that barely cast a glow into the gloom. I could see all the way to the other end of the hallway where the other staircase resumed and realized I would have to traverse this barely lit corridor full of dark spaces and shadows. Instinctively, I reached up to my head for my see-in-the-dark goggles but they weren't there. I frantically tapped around the top of my head and in my hood, but they were gone. I must have lost them back in the melee. Shit. I groaned and squatted down for a moment, spitting more foul powder out of my mouth, sucking wind into my body, my lungs screaming at me, and my body aching. The muscles in my arms and shoulders felt like they were made of lead, and I could barely raise my arms above my ribs anymore. I didn't even bother trying to count or assess my injuries. I wrote off my whole body as one giant contusion at this point.

  I looked back down the open space again and gritted my teeth. Like it or not, I was going to have to make my way down there and deal with whatever might be lurking. Tentatively, I took a step forward into the darkness, my eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom. The fire escape lights were spaced so that there were pools of darkness between them. I knew I could be walking into possible booby traps or there could be another dozen goons hidden in the alcoves or behind the crumbled walls, just waiting for me to get deeper into their trap before they pounced. I didn't know how much more brawling I had in me, let alone brawling in near darkness. The sickly green lights distorted and contorted everything around me, throwing long shadows, making me feel like I was walking through some bizarre sunken ruin. My ears pricked as I tried to rely on them to warn me of any danger.

  I heard scuttling to my left and froze, my head twitching left and right. Then I heard squeaking, followed by the scurried scratching of tiny feet. Just rats, I thought. Just rats trapped in this building, just like me. I clenched my fists and grimaced at how swollen and battered they were, and I was fairly sure that even with the knuckle dusters, I'd probably broken some of the bones in my hand. The Zap Knucks fizzed and crackled as nervous energy ran through them

  I continued further into the destroyed floor. It was like a bulldozer had come through here. There was debris and chunks of brickwork lying everywhere, as if some maniacal maelstrom had torn through the hallway, destroying everything in its path. The only sound I could hear now was my own breathing and the crunch of masonry beneath my feet.

  I was deep into the darkness of the floor, perhaps halfway, when I heard a heavy footstep to my right. Some instinct screamed at me to dive. I threw myself forward blindly into the darkness and felt the whole floor quiver beneath me as something huge smashed into the ground where I'd just been standing. I landed hard, my chest taking the brunt of the impact as I skidded across loose bricks and chunks of plaster. Again, the same instincts screamed at me to move, so before I'd even finished skidding, I twitched and rolled myself to one side. The giant boom happened again, this time closer to me, the entire floor rattling, chunks of wood and plaster flying into the air and smacking me in the face.

  I kept rolling until I hit a half destroyed wall. Then I pulled myself up into a sitting position to look up at perhaps the biggest human being I'd ever seen. I wouldn't have called you a liar if you said he was seven feet tall and more gorilla than man. He was as broad as the front end of a flatbed truck, and in his hand, he wielded a giant sledgehammer. His little thumb-like head balanced perilously on top of his giant body that was as much flab as it was muscle. He grinned down at me with a stupid look on his face and wide-spaced, wonky teeth.

  "Smashy smashy, little mage," he chuckled. “I’m gonna turn ya to mush!”

  “Oh shit,” I groaned as he raised the hammer.