Looking into Inazuma’s eyes as the boy confidently accepted the responsibility levied to him, Taraak felt at least some of the tension behind his eyes uncoil itself slightly, only to migrate to another part of this wildly unbalanced equation that this entire operation represented in the folds of his frantic mind. The look in those eyes was one he recognized very well. It was the look that communicated that he would complete the task, or he would die trying, a look that always left Taraak with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever he recognized it.
Far, far too many times, such peopled ended up dead trying.
I suppose that answers all my questions, then…
[/Color] He thought somewhat bitterly to himself. Inazuma would follow his orders, even to his death.
This boy would have made an excellent assassin.
And this scared Taraak even more.
"Let me guess, we are to get the key. But are we just coming back here, or is there another place we are going to meet?" Kano asked, pointing to a part of the building plans. Gathering all the information before diving in, just like he should. Taraak felt his heart ache just a little bit more.
Right then, there came a very small, tentative presence brushed over his mind, so small that he did not bother to try and block it out, figuring he knew who it was anyway. Gods, his mind was getting to be a regular playground for all of the telepaths in the group.
And I assume Kunna will be coming with me? While the mental words were soft and tentative, he did recognize them to be Mali’s.
Before he could open his mouth to answer either question Maeve glided smoothly into the gap. "I doubt it will be safe here forever; he would be better served with us." She said, her elegant tone of voice as pleasing to the ear as ever. More importantly, she had voiced his thoughts exactly. Almost disturbingly so, in fact. Once again, he was left wondering just how much she could sway his thoughts and feelings without his notice. As he contemplated this, she seemed to finish her examination of the young dragon, fixing him with a stern glare. “So long as he can behave.”
“Well, there’s a bit o’ flippin’ good news!” Butted in Ramsey, subtle as a brick to the head. “I… Shut up, yeh grotty little wanker!” She broke off, launching into another half-heard argument with Ikehr. Apparently, it did not end well. Taraak sighed, stepping in between the two before Nemo’s flailing feet could put a severe dent in Ikehr’s usefulness to this operation, restraining her with a firm hand on her shoulder. “Easy Ramsey. No sense getting your hammer all bloody before we even hit the enemy.” He said quietly. He had found that quiet words were usually more effective than loud ones, especially to those who preferred loud words themselves. From the glare he received, Taraak had no doubt that she would have decked him right then and there, had she not been so distracted wanting to get to Ikehr. Taraak braved the heat of her glare for a full three seconds before the fire in her eyes finally died down slightly, allowing her facial expression to retract from ‘boiling with rage’ to her neutral state of ‘mightily pissed-off.’ She nodded once, taking a step back out of his grip. "How, right you are, Derek.” She said, patting the hilt of her hammer. “Alright, snake boy! Stay outta me sight or I'll waste me hammer on yeh!"
“…Likely won't want to abandon it after it's been secured. Even for all of the overwhelming beauty of this spectacular closet." Taraak just caught Maeve saying from behind him, obviously addressing Kano. Shutting his eyes, Taraak summoned the memory of the past few seconds, this time focusing past Ramsey’s words and listening for what the older werecat was saying.
"I would assume, Inazuma, that we would be meeting the rest of our party at the gate, as they'll be… relieving” -slight pause, probably smiling- “the guardsmen from their posts and likely won't want to abandon it after it's been secured. Even for all of the overwhelming beauty of this spectacular closet."Ah, good. So Maeve had officially taken charge of that part of things, and answered all of Inazuma’s wonderings. One more thing that he didn’t have to worry about. “Thank you Maeve. Very well put.” He said, turning to the rest of the team. “Now, if that’s all your questions, then let’s get moving. Convel, Nemo, with me. Ikehr…”
I’ll be following at a distance,’ The dragon said, making him flinch slightly. He would just never get used to that.
‘When Ramsey becomes angry, she becomes stupid. She’ll need what intelligence she has.’Taraak sighed inwardly, opening his own mind to think a message back.
Hell with you two. Ride on my shoulders if you have to. We need you for all the telepath work, and I’d rather not have you isolated and have your neck broken in a corner. Just keep it in mind.[/Color]
He stood up, blowing out a small breath. Now that it was all sorted out, it was time to go. They had spent far too much time here already, and the guard would finish changing any second. He checked his weapons and gear one last time, nodding once to Mali and Kano. “Good luck. Head out about thirty seconds behind us.” With that, he started toward the door, gesturing for his side of the team to follow. As he did, his eyes fell on those of Maeve, who was looking at him with an inscrutable expression on her face.
Try not to make too much noise. Came her silken voice inside his head, just as casually emotionless than ever, a final friendly jab at his abilities just like any of his former brother assassins would make as a parting ritual. He doubted it meant for her the same thing it meant for him, but all the same, he turned toward the door to help conceal his smile behind his turned back, opening his mind to send a return thought.
You too.[/Color]
Convel, he noticed, was still muttering about burning and pillaging and other such suicidal and totally unnecessary actions. Nemo merely fell into step behind them uncharacteristically quietly, but with her incongruously beatific smile more than making up for it. Finally Ikehr hobbled unsteadily in the rear. All in all, it was not the quietest group ever assembled, a fact of which Taraak was keenly aware as soon as they made it to the echoing emptiness of the corridor. He winced at the noise that was suddenly reverberating around him, loud as a dwarven forge-hammer in his ears. Before he could open his mouth however, Convel's gait changed to a hunter's step, immediately almost dropping out of Taraak's perception, leaving only Nemo's slightly irregular sailor's tramp, rendered in a staccato rhythm by her diminutive height. Well, he figured, that was probably about as quiet as it would get. After a few moments of making their way past the other merchant offices and climbing a single flight of stairs, they finally arrived at a T-junction in the hall, with one passage leading off to the right, the other continuing straight on. His destination lay to the right, around the edge of the fortress. When Mali, Kano and Maeve arrived, they would be taking the other direction, deeper into the fortress. Taraak blew out a breath. This was the waypoint for this operation. As soon as he took the next step, it would be too late to abort, the point that Baric had always called the Tipping Point. Taraak had crossed this point countless times before, and yet, this time he felt strangely reluctant to do so. Was there something he had missed? Some factor that he hadn't calculated? Why did he suddenly feel that the benefit of this operation wasn't worth the risk?
He almost jumped as a hand tapped him once on the shoulder.
He turned, finding Convel looking at him with a wondering expression on his painted face. "What's wrong?"
Immediately, Taraak felt his face harden again. No, it was worth it, just as it always was. His life, and that of every member of his team was a mere pittance compared to what the Varden was trying to accomplish. It was his task to see this through, not to question why.
"Nothing." He said gruffly, turning to confidently step across the threshold of the right-hand passage. "Let's go."
. . .
The life of a mage really wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Sure, it was rather fun to be able to move things without touching them and put on parlor tricks for friends, but really, when it came down to it, the job truly was not as glamorous as most seemed to think.
Rall Tomas never felt the truth of this more keenly at this moment then he ever had. Here, at this moment, it really wasn’t any fun at all.
It had only been two years ago that Rall had discovered his gift for magic, on the very night of his twentieth birthday. Before that night, he had been a nobody. A son of a lowly sergeant in the king’s army, off fighting the wicked Varden rebels and barely bringing home enough to feed the family. He had been living a more or less normal life until the night he had been ambushed by a group of cutthroats, intent on beating him into submission before taking what little money he had. Somehow, Rall had managed to set the leader of the band on fire, killing him and causing the rest to flee. When he had gotten home, he had hushed it up as best he could. But apparently, someone had witnessed his little revelation. Someone important. A week later, he had a man in swirling black robes knocking on his door, asking to see him. Of course, the two soldiers accompanying him made sure to communicate that it wasn’t really a question. The memory was oddly surreal to him now. That day, in the familiarity of his humble kitchen, the cloaked man had told him what he was, and what he could do. Rall had heard of magic before, of course, but before that moment, it had merely been the stuff of childhood stories. But then, the man had told him that
he was one such person, possessing the gift of using the very thing around which so many legends were written. The man then offered him the opportunity to go with him, to a place where his talent could be developed and nurtured under the care of others like him.
Now, Rall had grown up in the Empire all his life. His father was a sergeant in the army. Therefore, he knew perfectly well that if he said no, he only had to wait a few days before there was a break-in at his home and a foul-smelling handkerchief over his face before he would wake up at wherever this man wanted to take him anyway. So naturally, he said yes.
“Oy in there. You falling asleep, boy?”
Rall jumped at the sudden voice, coming immediately back to the moment at hand. “No sir! Just thinking, that’s all.”
It had not really been bad at first, he decided. At the training camp he had been taken to, he suddenly found that he was not as special as he thought. Along with ten other youths, he did nothing for the next six months but eat, sleep, and breathe magic, learning as much as possible about his gift as efficiently and fast as possible. The training had been rushed and brutal. Even now, over a year and a half later, he felt that he was only just beginning to really understand his gift. Of course, it had been discovered there at the camp that he wasn’t particularly strong in magic. He could barely levitate his own weight without fainting, much less warding an entire battalion on the battlefield. And so, when he had finally graduated, the officers in charge of assigning him had taken one look at his record and shipped him off to Teirm, attaching him to the garrison there with the job of sitting over the Special Offenders section of the cellblock, sitting on the other side of a magical gate on the off chance that one of the prisoners might escape. Basically, spending time in a damp dungeon all day, doing nothing except fending off pestering soldiers who had about as much respect for his abilities as his instructors at the training camp. He was doomed to sit here, on his well-worn bench, with a magical gate between him and the eight guards assigned to this block. One such soldier was accosting him now, grinning through the bars the enchanted barrier between them.
“Well, stay alert in there, your magefullness.” Burd said nastily, tapping the bars. “You never know when one ‘o those blood-thirsty miscreants might come bustin’ out of there to eat us for breakfast. You’re the only one who can stop ‘em, after all.”
Rall looked up slowly, fixing the soldier with his patented dubious look. “If you don’t shut your trap Burd, I might just let them.” He really didn’t know why he rose to the bait every single time, he really didn’t. He knew that Burd was just as bored as he was, and only trying to goad him into an argument because there was nothing else to do. There were only two prisoners in the cells right now anyway. And even if they did make it past the warded cell doors and overcame him, they would never get past the magically-enhanced gate that the Empire had installed. Risthart apparently believed that keeping magic-users where they were put was worth the taxpayer’s coin. It wasn’t really a bad job, he supposed. He earned far more than his father ever had to send home to his family, and pretty much the worst danger he was in was muscle atrophy from all of the extreme sitting around he had to do. Really, the only thing he wished for at this very moment was that something exciting would happen.
“Eh, why do I even bother with you.” Burd was saying. “Where’s our relief got to, anyway? They should be here by now, and I’m ready to go home.”
Rall frowned. It was true, actually. His relief should have come a few minutes ago at least. Still, he wasn’t about to let Burd know of his concern. “What do you want from me? It’s not like I can snap my fingers and get them here. Why don’t you go inhale the latrine fumes until you grow some sense?”
“Hoy, Burd, are you two going at it again?” Came the flint-edged voice of the squad sergeant from the other side of the gate, beyond Rall’s view. “I swear, you two are worse than the fishwives at the docks…” The words trailed off, giving way to a small, strangled gasp for air.
“What in the king’s name…” Burd swung round, drawing his sword…
Before the weapon could make it halfway from its sheath, a kind of short arrow or quarrel zipped from beyond Rall’s field of view, striking Burd in the neck with a loud
snick. An absent part of Rall’s mind figured that there must have been some kind of incapacitating agent on the tip of the projectile, as the soldier did not make a single sound as he slumped out of the mage’s view. There was a myriad of sharp
snaping sounds, followed by the distinctive sound of armored bodies hitting the floor. Finally, there was silence.
Rall was left waiting, listening with every fiber of his being as he tried to quiet the racing of his heart. His own breathing suddenly felt as loud as a bellows in his ears, threatening to reveal him to whoever or whatever was out there. Suddenly, he bitterly regretted his wish of a few minutes before. Irony was a very cruel mistress. All he wished now was to go back to his dull, boring assignment, away from the people that were probably out to kill him right now. But it was far too late for that now.
As he listened, he could hear nothing more beyond his own pulse. He frowned. What did that mean? Did whoever was out there simply kill the soldiers and move on? But that hardly made any sense. How could anyone be stupid enough to simply attack soldiers of the Empire for no good reason? And in a secure wing of an imperial facility even?
For what seemed hours, he sat listening, hearing nothing beyond his own pulse. At last, able to stand it no longer, steeled himself and stood up, looking out through the bars of the gate.
There were six of them. At first glance, they merely seemed to be ordinary civilians, all dressed in non-descript variations on tunic and cloak, all in muted shades of black and grey. The only thing that marked them out as unusual was the shared expressions of neutral determination, the look of soldiers in a combat zone.
That, and the compact, deadly looking crossbows they all carried, with the quarrels bristling from pouches hung on their belts.
Even as he finished taking in these details, one of the men spotted him. Oddly enough, there was no cry, no expression of alarm or recognition, there was only silence. The crossbow was immediately at the man’s shoulder, pointing straight at Rall before giving another muted
snap.
Now, while the gate was secured heavily against attack, most of the attention was focused inward. After all, it was a prison, and prisons where far more concerned with people getting out than people getting in. As such, there was no ward on the outside of the door that would prevent a projectile from passing.
Rall knew all this. Somehow, his mind managed to calculate all this even as he stood there, staring. The knowledge however did him no good.
Something hit him hard in the chest, and the world went red.
. . .
For Taraak and his companions, the cautious journey to the secure wing, as tense as he felt, was uneventful. He had expected that they would need to dodge at least one patrol, or duck into a few doorways here and there, but there was nothing. The entire fortress seemed suddenly still and silent. Taraak had long ago come up with a name for it; a
waiting silence. A silence that went beyond simple lack of noise. It was silence that was an entity of its own, and entity that liked to make its presence known. A feeling of foreboding began rising within him, forming a cold knot just beneath his heart that intensified with every step he took. Something wasn’t right. He
knew it, even if he did not yet have any evidence to why.
Finally, he came to a stop, holding up a closed fist in the usual military squad-signal for
stop.
He nearly tripped as Nemo bumped into him from behind, and again when Convel knocked into her. Nemo hissed venomously. “Hoy, what’s the bloody ‘old-up, Derrek?”
“I’m not sure.” Taraak responded absently, listening hard. “Something’s wrong. I can’t explain it, it’s just… a feeling.”
Nemo, he could see, what not very impressed with his intuitive powers.
“…Uh-huh. Well, moment yeh get any feelin' back in yer common sense, you can catch up." Without further ceremony, she advanced forward again, shouldering him roughly aside. Taraak blinked, his mind making small sputtering noises as he processed this sudden shift in the marching order. “Wait, hold on…”
He turned around, reaching out to put a restraining hand on her shoulder. As if she had eyes on the back of her head, she whirled sharply, the heat of her glare hitting him like blast of a furnace. "And
don’t get chippy with
me, Two-Face!"
Without his conscious decision, his extended arm snapped to his side with a muted
slap of cloth.
Satisfied, Ramsey turned smartly, marching resolutely down the deserted stone corridor with her head held high, leaving Taraak blinking in her wake. He turned a questioning glance at Convel, who stood slightly to the side, also staring after Nemo. One look into the Alban’s eyes was enough; he too was getting the feeling that there was something wrong with the lack of activity in this part of the fortress. Silently, the larger man drew what looked like a kind of long knife from his belt. Nodding, Taraak followed suit, sliding his much smaller blade from his sleeve. Dagger at the ready, he jogged after the retreating form of Nemo, watching just as she disappeared around a corner. He sighed.
This can only get worse from now on…[/Color]
As he rounded the corner, he discovered he was right.
The torches were out. Throughout the fortress, the hallways and rooms were constantly illuminated by bright torches in regular sconces and in chandeliers, lit by a division of the lamp-lighters responsible for the city street-lamps. Taraak knew for a fact that the torches where always lit just before dusk. He had once posed as just such a youth, before his obvious age cut off the possibility. That was why he knew that the yawning blackness he saw enveloping the corridor ahead was not natural. His eidetic memory of the fortress plans was not wrong. This was indeed the right corridor leading to the correct wing. They were still several feet underground, so a draft was unlikely, even if a sudden wind could blow out such resilient torches with such precision. No, the only thing that Taraak could think to explain the blackout before him was that someone had put it there.
Still, it was too late to abort. There would be no choice but to go on, no matter what the darkness held.
Taraak looked down, finding Ikehr, who had been plodding along stoically in the rear up to now, looking off into the darkened curtain as if trying to burn it away with his eyes. Taraak tapped his foot once to get the dragon’s attention. “Ikehr, try to send a message to Mali and Kano. Tell them that we might have run into a bit of trouble here, so go careful.” As he said this, he threw his hood over his head. Along with his dark cloak, he knew this would help to conceal his shadow and silhouette amid the darkness, turning him into a shadow in the gloom. Apparently, Convel’s blackened face would be serving him well after all. At last, adjusting the grip on his dagger one last time, he strode forward into the shadows before finally stepping beyond the boundary of the last torch into complete blackness.
It was slightly disorienting, stepping into the dark. Still, it was always slightly comforting for Taraak, despite the current circumstances. As his eyes adjusted, he knew with absolute certainty that there were very few men better than him at maneuvering in the dark. As a part of his training, sergeant Baric would often lock two or more trainees in a large room, each with a mission to hunt the other. The obstacles of the room where modular, able to be arranged in a new configuration each time, and all was in complete and total darkness. Taraak’s first memories of such sessions were of constant shadowy phantoms amid the gloom as his visual-starved mind created fanciful imaginings to fill the gap. Eventually however, he learned to move and fight without such visual cues, relying entirely on touch, hearing, and occasionally smell to locate his opponents for the exercise, then using slow and silent patience to approach for the simulated kill. He had never been as good at it as Torska, but he still won most of his matches in the Black Pit, as it had finally been called. After that, navigating along a linear corridor for which he remembered the schematics was no challenge at all, and he was soon able to move almost as if it was bright as day. He was also easily able to make out Nemo’s muffled profanity not far ahead. He quickened his pace slightly, silently approaching the spot and extending his hand to about where he thought Nemo’s shoulder would be, coming in contact with a leather-clad arm. There was a sharp
huff of breath, making Taraak think of…
He ducked, just as a heavy-sounding object
whooshed over his head.
“Shh, Ramsey, it’s me, Derrek.” He hissed quietly, stepping back to what was hopefully out of hammer-range.
“Oh, it’s you.” Came her voice in the darkness, just slightly too loud as always. “I bloody tripped over summat…”
Taraak frowned. There really shouldn’t have been anything to trip over in these corridors, not with even the Empire’s level of military cleanliness. Crouching down, he probed the floor with his fingers, looking for this odd obstruction… His fingers did not have to go far before bumping something, something that moved limply under his touch. Taraak knew that kind of movement. He came across it far too often. It took only a short inspection to confirm that it was indeed a dead body, probably a soldier judging by the armor.
Before he could begin looking for whatever had killed the man, his quick ears caught a faint series of sounds floating from further down the corridor, sounds of the sharp suddenness that immediately made him think of a weapon being discharged. He straightened up, brushing neatly past Nemo and padding quickly in the direction of the sound. It all made sense now. The extinguished torches, the body of a soldier, and now some kind of fighting up ahead. It could only mean one thing…
The light was growing up ahead, shining from around another curve. Taraak eased to a halt, pressing himself against the wall. Easing forward, he peered slowly around the corner, making sure only one eye would be visible.
The room he was looking at was just as the building plans had described it, a smallish guard-room, designed as a chokepoint that could be defended by the soldiers that were always posted there. The torches still guttered fitfully in their iron brackets, revealing the simple rectangle of the room, along with rough wooden benches on either side that were its only furnishings. Everything about the room rather seemed to fade to the same uniform color through age, like an ancient parchment. The one thing about the room that was obviously recent and modern was the official-looking silvery finish of the double metal gate on the room’s far side.
All these details were noticed on the periphery, however.
Taraak’s immediate attention was drawn to the eight dark-clad men clustered mostly in the center of the room, each holding a rather small but incredibly deadly-looking crossbow.
One man was staring through the bars of the gate, nodding his head as if satisfied with something. “Damn, he’s not getting up again. That’s the last one sir. Orders?”
“Nicely done, people.” Said another man, probably the leader of the band. “Now we just have to wait till team two gets here with the key to this thing. Two of you secure the corridor, the rest of us will wait here. And get those torches out!”
As Taraak watched, two of the subordinates detached themselves from the cluster, moving toward him with crossbows at the ready. Swearing silently, Taraak drew back, looking for a place to hide.
Why could a mission never,
ever go as planned?[/size][/blockquote]