"Oi! You, with the violin!"
"Fiddle.." Lucifer corrected in a murmur, then lifted his head to see who was shouting at him. Approaching him was a rather heavyset, muscular man. He looked to be approximately forty years of age, was too well dressed to be a slummer, and yet his manner of walking as well as his language implied that he was definitely not from the mansions, either. Possibly some sort of bodyguard, maybe a messenger.
"You're not welcome here!" the man growled, grabbed one of Lucifer's shoulders and leaned closer, throwing a glance sideways as he did so. Then, quietly, in an urgent whisper: "I don't know what you've done, but there's a stoneThrower after you. Hit me to make it believable an' run."
Lucifer knew it was probably stupid to do so, but he hesitated, trying to discern if he was being lied to. The man shook him, "There's no time! Take your blasted violin and go, now!"and received a painful kick to the shin. "It's a fiddle!" Lucifer shouted over his shoulder as he took off, pushing violently through the crowd. Inwardly he thanked the man, for he could already he the howls of the stoneThrowers. The crowd started panicking, growing into a loud, barely penetrable mass of fleeing bodies. It wasn't hard to mingle, and Lucifer could move, (more importantly, dodge) fast. Even though making escapes was second nature to him, he wasn't sure if it was fast enough.
***
Lucifer just barely avoided falling off the edge of the roof, spotted an open window on the opposite building, and decided to chance it. He scrambled down a drainpipe, made a backwards bend to grab the ledge of a conveniently placed balcony, (thanking Kiara that the dense population of the city resulted in the houses having been built so close), and kicked off of the wall, swinging his legs over and onto the balcony, where he could have landed a bit more gracefully. Cursing and picking himself up, he paused to see if he had outdistanced his pursuers. A terrifying howl answered his question unfavourably, so he scrambled once more, getting up on the railing and awkwardly tumbling sideways into the open window next to the balcony.He got up and then froze, because he found his eyes feasting on an unexpectedly lovely sight. A red-headed girl was standing barely a meter from him, staring at him in a frightened way, wearing nothing but a pair of dark green, lacy panties. Lucifer, recovering from the initial surprise (shock, from the girl's point of view), slowly reached out and tousled her hear. Thrilled that she hadn't yet screamed and/or punched him where it would have definitely hurt, he looked her up and down, smiled, and continued his flight by running across the room and diving out the only other window the room possessed.
stoneThrowers:
Beings from an old race, dark and powerful, loyal only to the DukeUnderTheMountain, (who practically runs the surrounding cities). They have chilling, double-voiced howls, (one medical doctor was particularly fascinated with their vocal chords, he has studied them for 7 years and has since then written 23 books on the extremely complicated anatomy of the stoneThrowers). As the name implies, they attack any offender by throwing stones, practically pebbles, at it. It may seem a feeble source of injury, but anyone who has encountered a stoneThrower knows that their precision is very, very impressive. And deadly.
