Damn it all, how had he gotten here?<br/><br/>Sven hadn't anticipated being thrown into the heat of a battle. He'd signed up to help, certainly, but not with blades or bolts. He was a musician, for the Goddess' sake, not a knight. His actions in the down-times before battles raged were much more his style, keeping morale up and generally helping around. Swiping extra coins when available wasn't exactly a job requirement, but a skill he excelled at nonetheless. But today, there was no time for musical performances or sneaking about. Creatures of dark were at their front door, breaking it down along with droves of their men.<br/><br/>An axe in each hand, and wearing a vest of steel chain, Sven looked about as prepared as he could be. That was, to say, not very. The light armouring had been a choice he made himself (one he was swiftly regretting, now that he was actually out in the field) for the sake of movement's ease, but seeing men stronger than him being crushed even in fully encased steel wasn't making him confident. At some point during a skirmish, the dwarf managed to get separated from a band of warriors he was fighting in. Stuck inside a stone house, door closed by collapsed stone bricks, he was alone and covered in dust. For a few minutes, he'd attempted to escape and rejoin the soldiers. Sounds of screams and the sight of blood flowing through the stones made him reconsider the action quite quickly.<br/><br/>"Okay," Sven said aloud, surveying his surroundings. A storage room, he'd guess. A multitude of wooden crates stacked about, as well as a partial second floor made of rather drab-looking wood, didn't give off a lived-in vibe. "How the hell are we gonna get out of this one?" Idly, he spun one of his hatches around in his finger, walking and turning around to try and find a way out. He finally managed to catch sight of a large high window, and decided it was a better chance of escape than clearing out an entire broken wall.<br/><br/>Sheathing the axes on loops at his sides, Sven got to moving, taking a ladder up to the second floor platform. He cursed the lack of them there. It certainly would've made escape easier, or at least given him a view outside. Storage rooms hardly needed them, to be fair. Couldn't blame the architects. Walking along the room's perimeter, he began pushing crates toward the wall that had his potential exit. The first few stacks were simple enough. Slide the boxes over, lift a few, get them atop one another. After the third or so layer, however, it became clear that makeshift stairs weren't going to work. It may as well have been time to just give up and hide, and hope that everyone else outside didn't die.<br/><br/>But by some grace of the Goddess, Sven remembered that the wooden crane in the room had a rope attached to a rather large iron hook, holding a platform near him. With luck, he could obtain it and repurpose it. The crane was stuck out in the center of the room, the platform suspended by ropes extending from its corners as well as the crane's own. The rope ran along the crane's limb, the base of which was on the side of the platform. While a primitive contraption of pulleys and wheels, it did its job well, so the rope must have been strong. No matter how strong it was, it didn't survive a swing from a hatchet, and the severed rope immediately went limp and dropped the platform to the ground.<br/><br/>The crash was loud, and Sven was sure he'd broken something, but escape was more on his mind than the building's insurance. A quick trek down to the first floor let him obtain the hook and the length of rope it was attached to, and an equally swift return to the second floor led him ever-nearer to freedom. He scaled his stack of crates, and with a swinging start, launched the crane's hook at the window. The first attempt failed utterly, slamming against the stone wall. A muffled<span style="font-style: italic">"Crap"</span>escaped Sven's lips. The second throw broke the glass of the window, but failed to hook its crossed metal bar. The third, finally, swung the rope around the bar and managed to hook its length on the other side of the cross.<br/><br/>Letting the rope fall, he left his box stack and moved to the wall itself, tugging his makeshift grappling hook to make sure it was secure. He then began scaling, carefully lifting himself and walking vertically along the wall for stability. It was an ordeal, but he managed to reach the window. He brushed aside broken glass with a gloved hand, and taking hold of the bars, hefted himself onto the sill. The spaces in the bars were large enough for him to barely squeeze through, and opened into another rooftop.<br/><br/>Things outside looked bad. Very, very bad. Slithering through the window and onto the opposite building's roof, he swiftly moved to the edge to look over.