A metal beast is beyond Xas's imagination, but not the clash and drag of sword blades, and not the plummet of two grappling bodies from the floor above, half-hidden by shadows, tangled in their own wings without the space to unfurl them.

One, smeared with black blood, lands unbalanced on the edge of a chasm and tumbles through it to the next floor; the other stands, sword in hand, and looks straight at Xas. Through the dark only her eyes glint, then her teeth. Beneath the ruthless cheer, the grin says, stay out of this.

She leaps down after their brother. Xas chooses the stairs.

He springs forward, just a frightened animal, and lands crouched halfway up the damaged portion with his weight spread between his four limbs. The wood protests but doesn't break. Chinatown, he thinks nonsensically - trying to make sense - before more scraping down the stairs pushes him forward again, this time in the clumsy crawl of a creature never meant to be so close to the ground. His feathers hiss against the surfaces they brush.

He isn't aiming for the roof. With his wings useless the sky won't save him from whoever is on the stairs behind him, and might hand him to his siblings and their swords and their single-minded savagery. Two stories further, that's all, and he twists out of the stairway and into the dark. Hiding worked last time.