Ch. 17: Trap

It didn't take the group long to find the barn that they'd agreed to meet Bastion in. With extra time on their hands, Rosy broke the ladder leading to the loft and used the rungs as short practice swords, taking advantage of the fact that Bastion wasn't around to give Adrian a lesson in actual swordsmanship while Lily watched from outside the barn.

When they started sparring, Adrian immediately noticed that Rosy was playing her skills down. She put her usual strength an speed into her attacks, but downplayed her famous finesse, which allowed him to more-or-less predict the strokes of her blade without fear that her blade would do something strange and unpredictable, like some sort of optical illusion, ignoring his parries or intercepting his attacks.

After a few exchanges, he realized that she was falling into a complicated pattern. Falling into a pattern, no matter how complex it was, was a basic mistake in swordsmanship, which an artist like Rosy would never allow in a real match.

Since Rosy wasn't putting enough effort into this to call it a 'match,' Adrian didn't take advantage of her mistake. He fought back hard, refraining from hitting his own pattern for purely aesthetic purposes. For the average swordsperson, watching their match probably looked awesome, but in reality, it was just a hoax. They weren't using any of their actual skills at all.

To fool observers, Rosy added a few basic tricks to her pattern as she started having fun and getting into it, but the more they got into the farce, the less attention they paid to their surroundings, making their fake fight far more dangerous than either of them realized.

Rosy's instincts barely managed to be enough to save their lives.

Their show took them all over the barn, but after Adrian kicked her through a rotten wooden gate into a smelly stall filled with rotten hay and dried feces older than them, Rosy's sense of smell finally shut itself off and channeled itself into her hearing instead.

She pushed him back out of the stall just as she heard it, a faint creaking and the crackling of a candle directly above their heads.

Fueled by adrenaline, her push threw Adrian off his feet, but thankfully only seemed to daze him. She was also thrown backward by the strength of her effort, and her body slammed safely into the wall behind her, just as the weight of their spy broke the ceiling directly above their heads.

Time seemed to slow for Rosy as the ceiling collapsed above her. She felt every vibration in the air as she locked eyes with their unknown assailant, James Bastion.

Rosy knew that Bastion wanted her dead, but she hadn't expected him to attempt a sneak attack while she was taking care of his daughter. She had expected him to attempt to have her publicly executed after having the Resistance take her into custody. She had severely underestimated how convicted he was to kill her, it was actually rather impressive.

Now that he had tried and failed, she would have to keep an eye on him and limit his freedom. Rosy's only concern was how Lily would feel about her father being treated like a prisoner, but the fact that he treated her like scum would probably balance it out as long as Rosy didn't bother to kill the man, which would be counterproductive anyways.

Wait... Bastion's attack missed her, and he would definitely be hurt in the fall, so why was he still smiling? In an instant, a slow simmering at the edge of her perception made her realize why.

"Ad-!" Her warning cry was too late, and was drowned out by a loud "Whoosh!" as Bastion's candle made contact with the ground.

Adrian didn't understand how the fire could spread so quickly, but he knew that one moment, Rosy was pushing him out of the way, and the next moment she was screaming in pain as the entire barn was consumed in flames.

The building groaned as the fire weakened its already falling apart structure, so Adrian moved quickly, grateful that they had made Lily wait outside while they sparred. Ignoring the flames in his way, he jumped over the wreckage from the collapsed ceiling and pulled a flaming Rosy with him as he busted through the wall behind her at full speed.

Adrian's shoulder caught fire where he went through the wall, but it was nothing compared to the open flames covering most of Rosy's legs and back, so he ignored it and helped her extinguish herself instead.

When the flames on them both were finally extinguished, they were both burned pretty badly, but Rosy was far worse off than he was. While Adrian's shoulder had been burned to the point where he could barely move it through the excruciating pain, Rosy's armor was hole-ridden and fused to her back and legs in places. Despite her flesh being covered in boils, she stood up shakily and patted the crying Lily's head, trying to placate the child.

"Rosy, are you sure you're okay?" If Rosy had the same common sense as Adrian, that answer would be a definite no, but instead, she just rubbed her ear (which had been burnt almost beyond the point of recovery), and ignored his question, her hand going to the handle of her sword at her hip instead.

"Come out. Now." She commanded to the shrubbery around them imposingly.

Adrian was amazed at how strong Rosy must have been to look imposing and up for a fight despite how much pain she must have been in. He was suppressing screams with just his shoulder burnt, so a normal person with burns like Rosy's would likely have completely lost control of their bodies out of sheer pain, but Rosy seemed more annoyed by her lowered sense of hearing. 

In response to Rosy's command, dozens of people came out from hiding. The only thing these people seemed to have in common was the fact that they were all armed, making them far from the elite, well outfitted outfit that Adrian had expected from the soldiers of the Resistance. To be fair, though, as long as Rosy stood, standing against her took bravery that could not be discounted.