Oathblood

'Sheka!' Tarma cursed, and threw herself out of the cage, did a shoulder roll to cushion her impact, and came up running, heading for Kethry. Keyjon was so astonished that she stood there, mouth hanging wide open, while Tarma grabbed Need and shoved her through the bars at Kethry.

Kethry grabbed it just as Keyjon recovered, pointing at the three of them, and shrieked something foreign even to Kethry's ears. Whatever it was, the two suits of armor at her side straightened, drew their weapons, and headed straight for Tarma.

Kethry had seen spells of animation before; this one was better than she had anticipated. The armor moved easily, smoothly -- and quickly. Tarma escaped being sliced in half by a two-handed broadsword only because she was a hair faster than they were. She wasn't going to be able to escape two of them for very long, not out there alone.

Hopefully she wouldn't be alone much longer.

Kethry pulled out the little lock-pick she kept in the side-seam of the scabbard, and set to work on the lock of the cage. Keyjon seemed to be concentrating on Tarma and ignoring them; she hoped things would stay that way.

Now, just so Stormwing doesn't decide that since he's a man, he can do this better than I can-

Stormwing pressed in dose beside her, and she looked up, ready to brain him if he tried to take the pick, and saw that he was clinging to the bars of the cage with both hands, his body carefully pressed up against the door so that most of what she was doing was hidden from Keyjon.

'Thanks,' she whispered, and then set to work on the lock, shutting everything out, including the fact that her partner and blood-bonded sister might die in the next few moments.

When you work on a lock, she heard the voice of her thief-instructor say, Nothing exists for you but that lock. If you let yourself be distracted, that's the end of it.

Except that he had never had the distraction of two magic suits of armor trying to make his partner into thin slices less than an arm's length away.

She felt the lock give just as Keyjon noticed what they were up to. She shoved the door open as the woman shouted another incomprehensible command, and one of the automata stopped chasing after Tarma, and turned, its blade arcing down over its head-

But not aimed at Kethry.

Aimed at Stormwing.

He couldn't dodge, caught in the doorway as he was. He had no weapon of his own, and no spell Kethry knew could possibly be readied in time to save him.

She watched the blade descend, knowing that she would never even be able to get Need up in time -- if only he was a wo-

CLANG/

When her teeth stopped rattling, her brains stopped vibrating, and her watering eyes cleared, she thought for a moment that she had gone quite entirely mad. For there, with the automaton's blade held a hand's breadth away from his head, was Stormwing, crouched down, one hand raised ineffectually to ward off the blow that hadn't arrived.

For what had interposed itself between him and the broadsword was Need.

They all stood like that for a moment, in a bizarrely frozen tableau-

Then Stormwing dove out from under the arch of sheathed sword and unsheathed, scrambled to his feet as the automaton disengaged and began to turn, and yelled, 'Duck!'

Somehow she knew to drop into a ball, and Stormwing dove at the automaton's chest.

The timing couldn't have been any better if they'd practiced it; the animated suit of armor was very heavy and already off-balance, and when Stormwing shoved it, it went further off-balance, staggered backward, and tripped over her, landing with a hollow clangor inside the cage-

The cage which permitted no magic to function within it.

'Move!' screamed another voice from across the clearing; both Kethry and Stormwing scrambled out of the way as Tarma pelted across the intervening space, the other suit of armor in hot pursuit. She fled right into the cage -- it had too much momentum to stop.