After Eva left, Alex and Marc began with the plan they had come up with before going to sleep last night.
The idea was simple: to share half of everything with each other, and run in separate ways if things went wrong. They also agreed beforehand that if they were to be separated, they would run towards Perrin's Gate, the town west of Rilven, and meet in 15 days' time.
So Alex gave Marc half of everything, together with the fire gathering and the fire fist, as it was evident that they were a set.
"Damn! You even got magic books!" Marc was impressed with the loot.
After sharing the load, they quickly reached the other 3 people.
"Hey, we almost thought you wouldn't make it." Medric said with a smile.
"Yeah, it took Marc a while to find me, since I was in the last room of the mansion." Alex replied, leaving out Eva. Marc also didn't mention her.
"Okay, then let's leave the hell out of here before the guards storm out, right now they must be searching every room inside, but they are five, so we have little time." Medric concluded and signaled the others to follow towards the forest.
As they were running, Alonso and Oscar naturally fell behind, but Marc took notice of this.
As they entered the forest, sure enough, there was a storm outside the mansion. The guards were running amok trying to find the thieves or the woman.
As they walked further inside the forest, Alex was actually thinking they might not need to put Plan B into action.
But not long after said thought vanished, he felt pain rise through his side.
Marc, on the other side, saw the movement of Oscar grabbing the dagger to stab Alex from behind, and rushed and punched with all his might into his face before he could.
"Fucker!" Shouted Marc as his fist landed squarely on Oscar's face with a loud 'Thump' noise, and saw the dude fall limp on the ground like his connection to conscience was severed.
He punched the living daylights out of Oscar.
Oscar, even though he didn't manage to stab Alex, he did manage to cut his side before being sent to force dreaming.
Blood was leaking from him, but Alex paid no attention. Instead, he looked at Alonso, also trying to stab Marc.
"Marc on the back!" He shouted to his friend, but he could do nothing, since Medric was running at him, dagger in hand.
Medric swiftly approached and slashed horizontally from left to right.
Alex twisted his torso back, but the tip of the dagger still reached him and left a bloody cut that started to ooze blood on his chest.
While falling from the momentum, Alex kicked forward, aiming at Medric's chest.
His kick landed squarely, and Medric was sent stumbling backward.
Alex took that moment to jump onto his feet, and even though he had the bag, his body was pumping with adrenaline, so it seemed weightless.
Meanwhile, Marc turned around as Alex told him and saw Alonso raising his dagger to stab him.
As Alonso stabbed down, all Marc managed to do was place his hand in the way of the dagger.
The dagger stabbed right through Marc's hand until it reached the hilt, then it stopped. Marc, feeling the pain, screamed:
"Motherfucker!" and aimed to do to him what he did to his brother.
But Alonso saw it coming and pulled the dagger up, cleanly slicing Marc's hand in two vertically and retreating out of Marc's fist's path.
"AAG!" Marc screamed yet again, holding his bloody hand to his chest.
Returning to Alex's side...
They were circling each other, just as Medric was about to jump on him again, they heard one of the guards shout:
"There they are, kill those fuckers!" He aimed the crossbow at the group and shot.
Alex, seeing this, ducked, making Medric his cover. Soon enough after the shout, a bolt hit Medric on the thigh from behind.
"Aagh!, shit!" Yelled Medric, in pain, now he was unable to move properly.
Alex took this moment to look over to Marc, and seeing him gazing back, they both nodded at each other, then turned around and fled.
"They are running away!" Screamed the same guard, aiming his crossbow at Alex, who was running into the forest and shot.
The bolt landed squarely on Alex's shoulder, going through the back and the tip exiting from the front.
"GHHH!" Alex tried not to shout, but left a muffled scream instead.
He quickly took cover behind a tree and kept running.
He quickly looked to the side to check on Marc and saw that he was in a better situation, with the only guard with a crossbow aiming at him. Marc could run uninterrupted out of the conflict.
Even if he had one guard chasing him, Marc had no armor on, so he was faster.
Having a sigh of relief, he kept moving through the dense forest.
Some time after, he peeked over one bush to evaluate the situation.
The crossbow guard was looking out for him from a distance, and in the entrance of the forest, one guard was interrogating Medric while breaking his fingers one by one.
Oscar's head ceased to be attached to his torso and was instead impaled on a guard's spear eye's wide open. It seems he was set as an example.
Alonso, on the other hand, managed to escape as well, with one guard chasing after him too.
That's all he could manage to gather in 15 seconds.
Alex again turned and started to move to the forest, using what he saw to dodge the guard's view, walking unoticed. He wasn't so dumb as to stay a moment longer.
He also had no pity on the traitors, as they got what they deserved. The only thing unexpected was the use of daggers.
He didn't expect that a bunch of homeless people were carrying weapons.
Looking at his wounds, Oscar's cut was shallow since it was done with the momentum of the punch from Marc.
Medric's injury on his chest on the other side was quite gruesome, not deep enough to bleed him out in minutes, but deep enough to kill him if left untreated.
The bolt sticking from his back was blocking itself from bleeding Alex to death, but it's gonna be a chore to take it out and treat the wound.
Alex finally reached the inner part of the forest and heard no noises anymore.
Now came the actual Hard part of this whole shitshow.
To survive the forest.