The world of stone and shadow suddenly dissolved behind a red curtain of absolute, malicious intent. It wasn't the measured logic of the scholar or the precise hand of the doctor; it was a primal surge that demanded a path through the white and gold.
The heavy weight of the Bohemian Revolver felt like a natural extension of his arm as he squeezed the trigger again. The second guard went down before he could raise his halberd, the metallic crack of the shot sending the huddle of merchants into a screaming frenzy.
"He's gone mad!" a voice shrieked. "The clown is possessed!"
They surged forward, not as a mob of victims, but as a desperate wall of bodies trying to suppress the carnage. But Faust—or the thing currently wearing Mephisto's skin—was no longer a stationary target.
Using the fluid, uncanny flexibility he had perfected over the last three months as a mentor at El Gloriosa, he moved through the crowd like water.
He dodged a panicked lunge, his body contorting at angles that should have been impossible for a man of his fit build. When a knight in polished plate armor swung a heavy broadsword in a desperate arc, Faust's premonition flared. Another robed arm wrapped around his, pinning the revolver to his chest. Without a moment's hesitation, he twisted his joints in a sickening display of his unusual physiology, popping his shoulder forward to slip the knight's grasp.
The Revolver flicked upward.
The knight's blade descended, but the barrel of the expensive American iron held firm; the sword merely slid off the reinforced metal with a shower of sparks. The knight twisted the blade for a thrust toward Mephisto's exposed throat, but the clown was faster.
He aimed for the visor, the distance so close that "aiming" was a formality.
Click.
The knight fell to one knee, but the sound was empty.
The chamber was spent; Faust was out of bullets.
The knight realized the bluff and surged upward, but Faust met him with the heavy grip of the revolver, slamming the metal butt into the knight's helmet with a jarring thud.
Simultaneously, he lashed out with a low kick, knocking the broadsword from the knight's armored fingers. The dull, agonizing pain of his foot striking the cold metal armor finally sent a jolt of reality through the red curtain of madness blanketing his mind.
"Mephisto!"
The voice was a whip-crack in the darkness.
It was Renard, standing near the wreckage of the market stalls, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and recognition.
The name snapped the Duke's child back into his own mind.
The bloodlust receded, leaving only the cold, hard instinct to survive.
Faust didn't look back to see the carnage he had wrought.
He didn't wait for the Bishop's reinforcements to recover.
Drawing on the acrobatic tricks he had learned from Sasha and Masha, he squatted low and exploded upward.
He bounced off the damp stone wall of the pharmacy, his feet finding purchase on a narrow ledge, and launched himself into a high, blurring frontflip. He sailed over the heads of the remaining guards, landing silently on the first step of the spiral staircase.
He didn't stop to breathe.
He disappeared into the absolute darkness of the stairs, the only sound the frantic thrumming of his multiple heartbeats as he fled the sanctuary of the shadows for the streets of Paris.