[Tancred]

OOC: This is an attempt to unify the suddenly odd time-differential.

Tancred can see the questions in Draggor's eyes, but can only meet them with one answer. "Run! Get away from him!" as he darts toward the exit. Karnas, busy with dealing with Lord Raptor and Slaughter Margin, doesn't notice.

***

There is a look of extreme concentration on Karnas' face as he starts another spell; but the incantation goes unfinished. Suddenly, he simply disappears. Rhazor's sword strikes air.

***

Gasping for breath, Tancred stops, his lungs bursting. He leans against the wall, trying to marshal his thoughts and breath.
Karnas? Out of the sword?
Tancred thinks back - to the stories he had been told about the mage. A former Cowled Wizard, a renegade troublemaker who had become too unstable to remain within such an organisation but too slippery for them to catch. A man who treated the world and everything in it as a kind of personal playground, who was never really serious about anything. He had changed, of course; but now that he was out of the sword, would he remember any of the lessons he had been taught?
He checks both ways of the corridor before getting ready to run. He feels a guilty twang at abandoning the rest of the bar patrons, but takes the view thet Karnas will probably leave them alone if they have the sense to leave him alone. He gets ready to run.
"BOO!" says a voice.
"AAGH!" Tancred jumps, surprised, as Karnas simply steps out of the shadows.
"Heh. You can run, Holy-boy, but you can't hide."
"How... how did you do that?"
The mage looks puzzled for a few seconds. "Hmm, can't say I rightly know. Not a clue. Still, it proves that you just can't get the drop on Karnas Thoth!"
"My great-grandmother did."
"Making up for sheer lack of intelligence and ability with simple persistence. Yes, thank you for reminding me. I'm going to kill you now."
"Why? What possible grieviance could you have against me?"
"WEeeeeeeeel... none, really. I guess I'm just theorising that as long as YOU'RE alive, I can be put back in there. It's a family sword, as you and I both know." Karnas gestures at the sword.
"What... what if I don't try and put you in there?"
"Hmmmmm... well, better safe than sorry."
"You're not really a very nice person, are you, Karnas?"
The mage grins. "Nope."
"And you're going to kill me, no matter what I do."
The grin widens. "Yep. Sorry and all... but I don't really like you."
Tancred sighs. "Then I suppose there's only one thing left to say."
"And what is that?"
"I never liked you either, you madman!"
Karnas's grin becomes brittle. He begins intoning a spell; Tancred guages the distance between him and the mage, weighs up the chances of getting Karnas with the sword before the spell gets off, and decides it's not going to happen.

A sudden BOOM interrupts Karnas mid-spell. " ... polchier imperium... What was that?"
The two figures stare down the corridor to see a vast, rocky form charging down the corridor to meet them at speed. It roars in a deep basso tone, the tunnel floor cracking under its' immense weight.
Karnas stares, openmouthed. "Holy pants... How am I expected to work under these conditions?"
A spell flies from the mage's fingers towards the colossus, but the energies of the spell dissipate against the creature's skin.
"Hmmm." Karnas' brow furrows. "Holy-boy, I don't suppose you have a Ring of Earth on you, do you?"
"Er, no. It was in the Bag of Holding, remember?"
"Damn. Right then, we'd better -"
The creature ROARs again, thudding both fists into the roof of the tunnel. The roof collapses, burying the creature under tons of rubble and rock. Dust covers the scene for a few seconds, but when it clears the creature is gone.
"Ha! There's a problem that sorts itself ou -"
The creature steps from the rock like a swimmer from water. The Elemental roars again, charging once more.
"Erm... Karnas?"
"What, Holy-boy? I'm trying to think."
"I don't know about you, but I can run and think. I'm going to do a lot of running and thinking right now."
Karnas looks at the Elemental, a bare ten feet away.
"Yeah, I'll go with that. RUN!"
"RUN!"
The two figures, renegade Mage and folorn Paladin, run for it, with an Elemental in hot pursuit.

OOC: I think that works...

Tancred