Ember teleports onto the roof.

Well, no, she doesn't do that. She just knows, in the Apollonian flow of no-thought, where she needs to go, where she needs to grab. Her handholds might as well be slathered in yellow paint. Her nails dig into windowsills and she flings herself across the little roofs of Beri. There is only one place where this can happen, after all, only one tower jutting up into the sky: the belltower.

From here, the people of Beri call out the hours of their lives. From here, time is stretched out, measured, and cut into strips. From here, a sniper (an ally of Mosaic, or else Sagetip wouldn't be ambushing her) could take down the chariot. And from here, Sagetip can instead unravel the entire defense with her pistols.

A shot goes off; it stings. Ember rolls into it. She is so good at running. Every obstacle course, every punishment for not being good enough on the obstacle course, has pushed her into this moment, into this jump across rooftops. Another shot, and this knocks her into the alleyway between the tailor's shop and the chandler's den, but she bounces between the two walls and uses it to approach the belltower from below. The third shot catches her on her arms, raised above her head. Each one is a blossoming flower of pain with tentacles for petals.

But she's inside, and climbing. She grabs a plate left here by a bellringer; a shield, a discus, an unexpected advantage. She pulls off her [i]focale[/i] and, as she bursts through the door, tosses it as a distraction, a moment of uncertainty, a way to hide the way she scrambles, all the better for diving at her from an unexpected angle, knife out and ready to cut away her battle-sister's bandoliers.

[[i]Keep Them Busy[/i] of [b]8[/b].]