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Taking a moment to ensure no one is on the street, he dashes across to the burned out building, James follows right behind him.

Pausing a moment, he turns to James and says, “Remember, it’s not very stable so walk where I walk and try not to be on the same section as I am. Our combined weight could cause it to collapse.”

“I understand,” agrees James.

The moon overhead gives them some light with which to see by. Jiron begins making his way through the broken structure, taking the same path he used the last time. The first part of the path leads across a beam lying over an open section in the floor. Stepping carefully, he begins to cross.

James waits outside until he’s cleared the beam, then he steps out upon it and follows. Taking it slow, he stops when he feels the beam begin to shift under him. Grabbing another section of the collapsed ceiling for support, he steadies himself until the beam ceases its shifting. Once the beam again becomes stable, he continues moving along it until he reaches the next one.

Suddenly, they hear a groan and the entire framework they’re upon collapses. James is thrown from his precarious perch and tries to grab onto a section of what used to be a part of the ceiling. He takes a firm hold of it but it breaks off and he falls through the wreckage all the way to the floor, landing on his back. His breath is knocked out of him and it takes him a minute or two for him to get his lungs working again.

The section Jiron was on had remained somewhat stable. Holding onto a beam lying slantwise near him, he was able to prevent falling. “You okay?” he hollers down to where James lies upon the floor.

When he doesn’t receive an answer, he begins making his way down, fearing the worst. From the direction of the street, he hears the sound of several people approaching just as the fragile structure gives out with another groan and another section collapses.

This time, the beam he’s standing on gives way. Reaching out, he grabs hold of a neighboring beam just in time to prevent himself from falling. Hanging there from the beam, he sees the light from several torches approaching. Holding very still, he hopes to remain unnoticed by the men approaching.

Voices talking excitedly can be heard as they draw closer to the collapsing building. The light from their torches soon begins to illuminate the wreckage as half a dozen soldiers come to investigate the cause of the collapse. He can hear their excited conversation as their light begins to illuminate the building.

The light from their torches at last falls upon Jiron as he’s hanging there and one of them cries out when he sees them. Two of them have crossbows and they take aim at him. One of the soldiers says something commandingly to him in the Empire’s language.

When he doesn’t answer or react, he changes to the common tongue and says, “Come out of there!”

Looking at two crossbows leveled at him, he glances down to the floor and gauges his chances.

“Don’t think about it!” the soldier exclaims when he sees him debating about his chances of making it to the floor. “Come out now and you won’t be hurt.”

Jiron quickly realizes he’ll never make it without being fired upon. He swings his leg up and begins climbing back to the top. The structure groans and another piece on the other side of the building collapses before he makes it all the way out. Once back out to the street, the soldiers quickly bind his hands behind him and remove his knives.

“Move!” says the soldier who had spoken to him before, as he pushes Jiron to get him moving. They begin marching him down the street, toward the lights of the main encampment.

James looks up from his position where he’s hiding in the shadows on the floor as Jiron is taken away. Feeling helpless but unable to do anything about it at the moment, he waits for the soldiers to move further down the street. When the light from their torches disappears, he begins making his way up through the unstable wreckage back to the street. Fortunately the settling the structure had done during the last two collapses seems to have