Without wasting time fighting with the guards, the magistrate approached the mage with two jumps and killed him. Then he ran to the gate that was supposed to open onto the river embankment. The palace hulk covered him from the demur here in the courtyard and should have covered him on the embankment. But it was quite unclear what to do with the closed gate, which was guarded not by useless guards, but by mages and paladins.
Though it wasn't that important. It was possible to jump through the second floor windows and run across the building, literally through it. Apparently realizing the fugitive's ability to do such a thing, the gates opened and two paladins rushed towards him. The guards had done the right thing. They just forgot to warn them that the former head of the scouts not only became one of the vampires and killed the king, but also stole the main treasure of the kingdom.
And what are paladins deprived of the ability to use personal magic? They become common soldiers. who don't stand a chance against a super-strong and super-fast creature. Simply tossing both paladins aside like kittens, Rudolph ducked through the ajar wicket of the palace gates and, once on the embankment, dived into the river without a second thought.
Several "ice arrows" pierced the water column as he dove deeper. The Magister was not afraid of magic, but he decided that it was not the best idea to dive right now and swam underwater along the shore. It would have been a good idea to swim to the opposite shore, but it was flooded with demur rays. And of course I didn't have to choose whether to swim along the current or against it. The Yarka had a very fast flow of water and had always been used by merchants for rafting goods to the Night Sea, while the merchants preferred to go inland along its neighbor, the Vurka, which had a very slow current and was very full of water.
It was possible to get out of the river only in the Lower Town. First of all, because the central part of the Frese, lying downstream, was traditionally well guarded. By the time the wet Rudolph reached the shore, the demur had almost completely disappeared behind the roofs of the houses, and now only its faint reflections on the rooftops were visible. It was going to get dark soon, which meant that the mages could expect the clouds to cover the sky, hiding the demur from view.
The special relationship between vampires and the night luminary had not gone unnoticed, both by the mages and the church, and the enemy was being weakened in every way possible. The power that dark creatures derived from the light of the muras served both as a reason for additional hatred of vampires and to inspire fear by their incomprehensible nature. Rudolph had been fond of the nighttime gatherings on the roof of his parents' mansion since he was a child, which he enjoyed almost every day.
Silence, interrupted only by the rustling of heavy branches of apple trees and the bright clouds in the sky. The world seemed perfect to him at times like this. Becoming a vampire made him even more fond of such pastimes. The light of the mur literally penetrated him to his very essence and even his bloodlust dissolved in it.
The mages had taken that away as well. Deciding that he should visit one of his hiding places first and only then go to his companion, the former master returned to the water and huddled under the dock. It was worth waiting for darkness to fall before walking around the city.
The twilight that had fallen on Valeria's capital city had expectedly brought clouds to the sky. Rudolph dried his clothes and walked confidently through the streets, trying to reach the Upper City as quickly as possible, where a small but valuable hiding place was located in one of the parks. The other two hiding places were in the craftsmen's quarter, but the workers who lived there preferred to spend their bedtime in the numerous taverns and taverns, which made it not the safest place to be in the evening.
Getting into a tavern brawl and getting a couple of good kicks there was much easier than even convincing the city guards to let you into the Central District of the capital. And the ghoul had no time to waste in useless fights.
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