Caraain Bedell loved the night. There was a powerful, almost sexually inviting, aspect to it, she thought. She immersed herself in it, wrapped herself in it, and only found herself truly "alive" as she reveled in it. She loved the invisibility that the moonlight's shadows afforded her, and loved the feel of the slight breeze on her bared face. The breeze seemed cooler and more refreshing in the evening-time. She reflected on this as she dropped from the top of a stone wall and into the private grounds on the other side. There was no noise as she landed on her light, padded feet behind some bushes. She remained still on her haunches for a moment, listening to see if anyone had noticed and came to investigate. Caraain heard nothing, and no one came.
She looked towards her right and left, gathering her bearings. It was a grove of some sort, as depicted by the bountiful bushes and trees around her, all thickly blanketed in pristine new-fallen snow. I'm in the castle's southeast corner, she thought to herself. The nearest entrance would be thirty paces to the left, and another fifty straight ahead. The map of her surroundings that she had memorized earlier burned brightly in the forefront of her mind.
"Kill the lord, Caraain," the man... her client... had told her two weeks ago, "and you shall be handsomely rewarded for your...troubles." He gave her a leather pouch that was full of heavy gold coins, promising twice that later, and pointed out where on the map he would be found at this time of year. "He is but a minor lord, beneath the notice of other lords including myself. But there would be... complications if we were to be directly involved in his...disappearance. Be sure to leave no traces of any connection to us."
Caraain remembered laughing, telling the lord to his face that he was an overly cautious fool. I am a professional, she thought. Among the best of them. I do not make mistakes or leave messes behind me.
Quietly she made her way through the bushes of the nobleman's grounds, and towards the nobleman's manor itself. At a clearing, she stepped into the open, and raised her hood above her head. Even at nighttime, there were many people coming into and out of the place, particularly through the servants' entrances. However it never hurt to take precautions while you could. One never knew---
Caraain's thoughts abruptly stopped as she neared the usually unguarded door. She slowed to a halt, and stared. There was a man there, obviously a hired guard by the quality of the sword's scabbard hanging at his waist, and the absence of a palace guard uniform on his wide frame, smoking some tabac. Even at the distance between them, Caraain could smell its distinct, pungent aroma.
Caraain looked at herself. Her clothes were cut in the same style as those of the servants of the nobleman who lived here, although entirely in black and grays. She had taken that precaution earlier. She clenched her fists and walked directly up to the door, congratulating and admonishing herself at the same time for her undauntedness. By thirty paces the man hadn't even looked up-- a good sign, she thought-- until he finally glanced at her and came to life.
The sound of his blade rasping as it was unsheathed was loud to Caraain's ears, and she winced somewhat. The hired guard, or mercenary, Caraain could not tell which he was, regarded her levelly, with his slim blade tilted towards her. She noticed it had a heron etched near the pommel of the otherwise unadorned hilt, and sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.
"Who are you, and state your business, woman," he barked at her. His voice was cool and level, despite a hint of rashness and laced with the edge of a temper. Caraain could not make out his features very well, despite him facing the moonlight. That was good. It meant she would only appear as a darkened silhouette to him. After a moment's pause, she drew nearer.
Within twenty paces of the mercenary, or guard, she threw wide her cloak, exposing the servant's uniform underneath. He seemed to relax, and then sheathed his sword again. "Only a servant," she heard him mutter under his breath. He picked up his fallen pipe, and took a draw from it, and leaned back against a crate. She exhaled slowly.
The mercenary eyed her up and down, as she came nearer and smiled to himself. "Hold on, now," he said, with what he thought was a disarmingly charming smile. "I thought I knew all of the girls here. And you're certainly a better catch than the others are. What's your name?"
Caraain regarded him with a flat level look and tried to make her way around him, but the mercenary raised his foot so it rested on the doorframe, barring her from passing. So close. So close....
"Please sir," she said, with as meek a voice as she could manage, "It's late, and I really must rest." She tried to continue forward, but he caught her from taking another step, his hand placed just under her breast. She tilted an eyebrow at him. She was losing her patience with this fool of a man.
The mercenary wagged a finger at her. "Not until you pay the toll, dearie," he said, pointing to his puckered lips. His eyes were closed and he leaned forward so that she could reach up to him. His other hand seemed to be inching upwards now, nearly touching, and brushing, against her breasts....
His youthful face was aglow in the moonlight, and his hair was held back with a thin leather cord. She would have found him desirable, under other circumstances, if he were not so much of a pig. What the hell, she thought, I gave it my best shot. She held his face in both her hands and pulled his face to hers. Their lips met, and parted to merge with each other, under the stars.
After a moment, the man screamed. Well, tried to scream, considering she was biting down on his tongue as hard as she could. He tried to pull himself free, but instead he was thrown back by Caraain, and fell to the ground with a crash.
"Whore! Bwoody fwaming whore," he cursed, spitting the blood that was now dribbling out of his mouth. Caraain stood over him, laughing musically. "I'll teach you a lesson, and have my fun while I'm at it, servant or no," he added, his hand reaching for the sword at his side.
Kick them when they're down, she was taught. Don't give them a chance to get up again, especially if they're larger than you are. Take whatever advantage you can of the situation, or they will take your life. Caraain remembered this, as she reactively stepped forward and stamped her heel to where his legs met.
There was a brief, loud scream of excruciating pain, silenced quickly with a ragged blade drawn across his throat. Caraain watched for a brief moment as blood spurt out of the gaping wound, steaming as it fell onto the blue-white powdered snow. It reminded her of a legend she heard once while training to become an assassin, that the Dark One harvests the souls of those killed in violence. With a dull look in her eyes, she wiped the blade on the man's pants leg, and reconcealed the blade somewhere on her body.
Caraain stepped over the corpse and picked him up by the arms, and dragged him towards a nearby weeping willow tree, its vines wrapped in ice. Cursing under her breath, she wondered what time it was, and hoped it was too late for anyone to be up and around, and that could have heard his scream. Her ears were alert, but she heard nothing. If anyone did hear the man's scream, she thought as she wiped some light perspiration from her brow, concealing his body should at least buy me some time. Then she went over to where the man fell, kicked some fresh snow over the bloodied patch, and went inside the manor. She decided to be on the safe side, to take the longest, most inconvenient way out of the vicinity.
She was impressed with how lavishly the interior of the manor was furnished with products from the world over, with even a few relics that could have survived from before the time of the Breaking. She never expected this from a supposedly minor lord. Perhaps, after the job was finished, she could be a cat burglar too, and pick up something she liked.
Not many were in the manor. She was concerned only slightly; she could not believe her good luck at being able to travel through the place so easily. She should have seen many guards by now, and a good number of servants scuttling about, minor lord or not. There were only the occasional hand-servant carrying linens in her arms, and one or two lightly armed foot soldiers patrolling. No one noticed her, and there was no need for her to eliminate any of them. Nevertheless, she palmed a few throwing dirks in either hand.
Caraain arrived at the lord's bedchamber within minutes, having maneuvered throughout the entire manor without incident. She saw candlelight flickering from underneath the doors, and heard noise from within. She hesitated, before cracking open the door and pushing it slowly, silently.
She gasped in horror. Her knives fell from her hands, and clattered on the ground.
The three...monsters turned in unison to face her. She did not know what they were, but Caraain had never been more afraid of anything in her whole life than she was now. They were immense in size, as tall as she was even crouching, and wore menacing-looking black armor covered in spikes. One had a goat's head, another an eagle's head, the third a wolf's, and each of their gaping jaws dripped or were crusted with blood, as they circled over some unfortunate carcass.
A deep growl rose from within wolf-head's throat, and was followed by one from the goat's and the eagle's. They rose from their knees in unison, and the corpse fell from between them, his head bouncing with a hollow sound on the tiles. Caraain could see it was the petty little lord she had been hired to kill-- his throat and intestines ripped out mercilessly. She gasped and felt herself sickening up, in spite of herself.
Goat-head stepped forward, drawing forth a large cudgel. It was basically a huge wooden stick, but the end of it was wrapped in barbed wire with a large black spike protruding through the thorny mesh. It bobbed up and down, as if in anticipation, as goat-head took another step with a deep unnatural growl emanating from its throat. Its two companions seemed to be grinning behind him, as they presented their own weapons. Wolf-head unsheathed a menacing-looking blade unlike anything she had ever seen before, black as the night. Eagle-head took a butterfly knife in either hand from behind his belt. Suddenly wold-head growled some sort of bark, and goat-head and eagle-head charged in unison.
Caraain automatically stepped backwards, nearly tripping herself. She had little time to unsheathe her own weapon, a scimitar, with notches on the flat edge of the blade indicating a sword-breaker combination. Goat-head reached her first, his cudgel already falling towards her head. She caught it with her hand and deflected it, the spike just barely missing her left ear. At the same time, she freed her own blade and sliced it in an upward arc, catching one of eagle-head's blades. The knife slid into one of the deep notches in Caraain's blade, and with a sharp twist of her wrist, she broke that blade in half.
Caraain did a jump spinning kick into goat-head's side, where she approximated its kidneys to be, and it roared with fury and pain. As it fell to its knees clutching its side, Caraain swiftly brought her leg up to her shoulder and axe-kicked it with her heel across its collar bone. It howled in pain and caught its breath on its knees before getting up again.
She leaped to the side just as eagle-head brought its other knife down, and stabbed at her with the stump of the broken knife. She sidestepped his thrust easily, and threw a roundhouse kick up as the assailant whooshed by. The tip of her steel-toed boots connected with his solar plexus perfectly, and the monster was down on the ground, clutching at his own torso. He screamed with surprise and the initial shock of it, and his disfigured feathered head seemed to be going red. The scimitar whirled in Caraain's hands and turned point-down. She leaped towards the monster with a wordless cry, the hilt clutched with both white-knuckled hands.
Eagle-head rolled over just in time, and a boot out of nowhere kicked her blade aside as it pierced the tiles. She turned and hissed as she saw wolf-head grinning at her, pink-tinted rows of fangs slick with the lord's blood. The ominous black blade whirled in its hands as it spun from one form to the other, chopping and thrusting and slashing, as Caraain threw herself to the ground, trying to roll and scramble away from its reach as quickly as she could manage. Suddenly she bumped into something. Something big, and smelling of musky fur. She spun wildly, her left arm coming for a cross punch at whatever stood behind her.
Goat-head laughed as it caught her fist easily, and with a gauntleted fist the size of her head smacked her across the face. Caraain winced, her cheeks stinging with the pain. Something wet was dribbling from her mouth, she spat and saw it was blood. She looked up at the gloating monster, fear and hesitation replaced by disgust and bloodlust.
"You BASTARD!" she cried, as she spun and brought her other arm's elbow directly into an area directly under its armpit. She followed that with a palm uppercut into its jaws, which sent it to its knees. Just as it was falling, Caraain grabbed it, and with the butt of her palms, stuck its eye sockets simultaneously from behind. She grabbed one of its horns and supported the monster upright, and, raised one of her boots against the nape of its neck. Kicking out violently with her boot while pulling on the horns, she felt its skull pop as it dislocated. Goat-head slumped to the floor wordlessly, easily.
"Heh!," Caraain said under her breath, wiping away the blood that now trickled down her chin. She picked up her fallen scimitar, and waited. She raised her free arm to shoulder height, and beckoned them with a gesture.
Eagle-head hesitated as it saw this, and actually stepped back. It turned to face wolf-head, with what looked like a confused or questioning expression on its face. So that's the leader, Caraain observed. Her eyes glanced down to the blade it held in its hand, which was in the form of a human's but was furred and clawed. She wanted it.
Wolf-head stepped forward and raised its hand. Eagle-head lowered its weapon to its side, but Caraain noticed it still had a firm grip on the hilt. It seemed to want to talk to her. Caraain was confused.
"That's far enough," she said just as it was far enough so it couldn't reach her with the sword. She immediately felt foolish, unsure as to whether the monsters could understand her. "If you want to discuss things, do it from there. I am a trained killer," she declared, hoping they got the hint and slunk off somewhere, "and I have already killed one of yours while sustaining only a minor injury myself." She hoped it understood what she said; the monster seemed fixated to one spot, looking as it if it was translating what she said in its head.
"You. Come," it, said, slowly. It raised a paw...or hand... towards her. "You come. We take. We take you. Come to big boss. We take you. You prove. Yourself. Come." Its voice struggled with the foreign, unaccustomed words and gave up. It growled in frustration and shook its head so that its silver-gray mane shook like a bolt of silk threads.
Caraain saw it sheathe its great sword, and Eagle-head followed its example. After a moment of thought, she lowered her weapon to her side, but did not sheath it. Wolf-head looked genuinely pleased by this, and hopped up and down with overjoyed excitement.
"Do anything funny and I'll kill you were you stand," she said to them. She hoped to the Light that they couldn't tell she was bluffing. With the adrenaline slowly fading from her veins, she suddenly felt as heavy as a rock, and her arms felt like lead. "Now," she added, "take me to this leader of yours."
She looked towards her right and left, gathering her bearings. It was a grove of some sort, as depicted by the bountiful bushes and trees around her, all thickly blanketed in pristine new-fallen snow. I'm in the castle's southeast corner, she thought to herself. The nearest entrance would be thirty paces to the left, and another fifty straight ahead. The map of her surroundings that she had memorized earlier burned brightly in the forefront of her mind.
"Kill the lord, Caraain," the man... her client... had told her two weeks ago, "and you shall be handsomely rewarded for your...troubles." He gave her a leather pouch that was full of heavy gold coins, promising twice that later, and pointed out where on the map he would be found at this time of year. "He is but a minor lord, beneath the notice of other lords including myself. But there would be... complications if we were to be directly involved in his...disappearance. Be sure to leave no traces of any connection to us."
Caraain remembered laughing, telling the lord to his face that he was an overly cautious fool. I am a professional, she thought. Among the best of them. I do not make mistakes or leave messes behind me.
Quietly she made her way through the bushes of the nobleman's grounds, and towards the nobleman's manor itself. At a clearing, she stepped into the open, and raised her hood above her head. Even at nighttime, there were many people coming into and out of the place, particularly through the servants' entrances. However it never hurt to take precautions while you could. One never knew---
Caraain's thoughts abruptly stopped as she neared the usually unguarded door. She slowed to a halt, and stared. There was a man there, obviously a hired guard by the quality of the sword's scabbard hanging at his waist, and the absence of a palace guard uniform on his wide frame, smoking some tabac. Even at the distance between them, Caraain could smell its distinct, pungent aroma.
Caraain looked at herself. Her clothes were cut in the same style as those of the servants of the nobleman who lived here, although entirely in black and grays. She had taken that precaution earlier. She clenched her fists and walked directly up to the door, congratulating and admonishing herself at the same time for her undauntedness. By thirty paces the man hadn't even looked up-- a good sign, she thought-- until he finally glanced at her and came to life.
The sound of his blade rasping as it was unsheathed was loud to Caraain's ears, and she winced somewhat. The hired guard, or mercenary, Caraain could not tell which he was, regarded her levelly, with his slim blade tilted towards her. She noticed it had a heron etched near the pommel of the otherwise unadorned hilt, and sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.
"Who are you, and state your business, woman," he barked at her. His voice was cool and level, despite a hint of rashness and laced with the edge of a temper. Caraain could not make out his features very well, despite him facing the moonlight. That was good. It meant she would only appear as a darkened silhouette to him. After a moment's pause, she drew nearer.
Within twenty paces of the mercenary, or guard, she threw wide her cloak, exposing the servant's uniform underneath. He seemed to relax, and then sheathed his sword again. "Only a servant," she heard him mutter under his breath. He picked up his fallen pipe, and took a draw from it, and leaned back against a crate. She exhaled slowly.
The mercenary eyed her up and down, as she came nearer and smiled to himself. "Hold on, now," he said, with what he thought was a disarmingly charming smile. "I thought I knew all of the girls here. And you're certainly a better catch than the others are. What's your name?"
Caraain regarded him with a flat level look and tried to make her way around him, but the mercenary raised his foot so it rested on the doorframe, barring her from passing. So close. So close....
"Please sir," she said, with as meek a voice as she could manage, "It's late, and I really must rest." She tried to continue forward, but he caught her from taking another step, his hand placed just under her breast. She tilted an eyebrow at him. She was losing her patience with this fool of a man.
The mercenary wagged a finger at her. "Not until you pay the toll, dearie," he said, pointing to his puckered lips. His eyes were closed and he leaned forward so that she could reach up to him. His other hand seemed to be inching upwards now, nearly touching, and brushing, against her breasts....
His youthful face was aglow in the moonlight, and his hair was held back with a thin leather cord. She would have found him desirable, under other circumstances, if he were not so much of a pig. What the hell, she thought, I gave it my best shot. She held his face in both her hands and pulled his face to hers. Their lips met, and parted to merge with each other, under the stars.
After a moment, the man screamed. Well, tried to scream, considering she was biting down on his tongue as hard as she could. He tried to pull himself free, but instead he was thrown back by Caraain, and fell to the ground with a crash.
"Whore! Bwoody fwaming whore," he cursed, spitting the blood that was now dribbling out of his mouth. Caraain stood over him, laughing musically. "I'll teach you a lesson, and have my fun while I'm at it, servant or no," he added, his hand reaching for the sword at his side.
Kick them when they're down, she was taught. Don't give them a chance to get up again, especially if they're larger than you are. Take whatever advantage you can of the situation, or they will take your life. Caraain remembered this, as she reactively stepped forward and stamped her heel to where his legs met.
There was a brief, loud scream of excruciating pain, silenced quickly with a ragged blade drawn across his throat. Caraain watched for a brief moment as blood spurt out of the gaping wound, steaming as it fell onto the blue-white powdered snow. It reminded her of a legend she heard once while training to become an assassin, that the Dark One harvests the souls of those killed in violence. With a dull look in her eyes, she wiped the blade on the man's pants leg, and reconcealed the blade somewhere on her body.
Caraain stepped over the corpse and picked him up by the arms, and dragged him towards a nearby weeping willow tree, its vines wrapped in ice. Cursing under her breath, she wondered what time it was, and hoped it was too late for anyone to be up and around, and that could have heard his scream. Her ears were alert, but she heard nothing. If anyone did hear the man's scream, she thought as she wiped some light perspiration from her brow, concealing his body should at least buy me some time. Then she went over to where the man fell, kicked some fresh snow over the bloodied patch, and went inside the manor. She decided to be on the safe side, to take the longest, most inconvenient way out of the vicinity.
She was impressed with how lavishly the interior of the manor was furnished with products from the world over, with even a few relics that could have survived from before the time of the Breaking. She never expected this from a supposedly minor lord. Perhaps, after the job was finished, she could be a cat burglar too, and pick up something she liked.
Not many were in the manor. She was concerned only slightly; she could not believe her good luck at being able to travel through the place so easily. She should have seen many guards by now, and a good number of servants scuttling about, minor lord or not. There were only the occasional hand-servant carrying linens in her arms, and one or two lightly armed foot soldiers patrolling. No one noticed her, and there was no need for her to eliminate any of them. Nevertheless, she palmed a few throwing dirks in either hand.
Caraain arrived at the lord's bedchamber within minutes, having maneuvered throughout the entire manor without incident. She saw candlelight flickering from underneath the doors, and heard noise from within. She hesitated, before cracking open the door and pushing it slowly, silently.
She gasped in horror. Her knives fell from her hands, and clattered on the ground.
The three...monsters turned in unison to face her. She did not know what they were, but Caraain had never been more afraid of anything in her whole life than she was now. They were immense in size, as tall as she was even crouching, and wore menacing-looking black armor covered in spikes. One had a goat's head, another an eagle's head, the third a wolf's, and each of their gaping jaws dripped or were crusted with blood, as they circled over some unfortunate carcass.
A deep growl rose from within wolf-head's throat, and was followed by one from the goat's and the eagle's. They rose from their knees in unison, and the corpse fell from between them, his head bouncing with a hollow sound on the tiles. Caraain could see it was the petty little lord she had been hired to kill-- his throat and intestines ripped out mercilessly. She gasped and felt herself sickening up, in spite of herself.
Goat-head stepped forward, drawing forth a large cudgel. It was basically a huge wooden stick, but the end of it was wrapped in barbed wire with a large black spike protruding through the thorny mesh. It bobbed up and down, as if in anticipation, as goat-head took another step with a deep unnatural growl emanating from its throat. Its two companions seemed to be grinning behind him, as they presented their own weapons. Wolf-head unsheathed a menacing-looking blade unlike anything she had ever seen before, black as the night. Eagle-head took a butterfly knife in either hand from behind his belt. Suddenly wold-head growled some sort of bark, and goat-head and eagle-head charged in unison.
Caraain automatically stepped backwards, nearly tripping herself. She had little time to unsheathe her own weapon, a scimitar, with notches on the flat edge of the blade indicating a sword-breaker combination. Goat-head reached her first, his cudgel already falling towards her head. She caught it with her hand and deflected it, the spike just barely missing her left ear. At the same time, she freed her own blade and sliced it in an upward arc, catching one of eagle-head's blades. The knife slid into one of the deep notches in Caraain's blade, and with a sharp twist of her wrist, she broke that blade in half.
Caraain did a jump spinning kick into goat-head's side, where she approximated its kidneys to be, and it roared with fury and pain. As it fell to its knees clutching its side, Caraain swiftly brought her leg up to her shoulder and axe-kicked it with her heel across its collar bone. It howled in pain and caught its breath on its knees before getting up again.
She leaped to the side just as eagle-head brought its other knife down, and stabbed at her with the stump of the broken knife. She sidestepped his thrust easily, and threw a roundhouse kick up as the assailant whooshed by. The tip of her steel-toed boots connected with his solar plexus perfectly, and the monster was down on the ground, clutching at his own torso. He screamed with surprise and the initial shock of it, and his disfigured feathered head seemed to be going red. The scimitar whirled in Caraain's hands and turned point-down. She leaped towards the monster with a wordless cry, the hilt clutched with both white-knuckled hands.
Eagle-head rolled over just in time, and a boot out of nowhere kicked her blade aside as it pierced the tiles. She turned and hissed as she saw wolf-head grinning at her, pink-tinted rows of fangs slick with the lord's blood. The ominous black blade whirled in its hands as it spun from one form to the other, chopping and thrusting and slashing, as Caraain threw herself to the ground, trying to roll and scramble away from its reach as quickly as she could manage. Suddenly she bumped into something. Something big, and smelling of musky fur. She spun wildly, her left arm coming for a cross punch at whatever stood behind her.
Goat-head laughed as it caught her fist easily, and with a gauntleted fist the size of her head smacked her across the face. Caraain winced, her cheeks stinging with the pain. Something wet was dribbling from her mouth, she spat and saw it was blood. She looked up at the gloating monster, fear and hesitation replaced by disgust and bloodlust.
"You BASTARD!" she cried, as she spun and brought her other arm's elbow directly into an area directly under its armpit. She followed that with a palm uppercut into its jaws, which sent it to its knees. Just as it was falling, Caraain grabbed it, and with the butt of her palms, stuck its eye sockets simultaneously from behind. She grabbed one of its horns and supported the monster upright, and, raised one of her boots against the nape of its neck. Kicking out violently with her boot while pulling on the horns, she felt its skull pop as it dislocated. Goat-head slumped to the floor wordlessly, easily.
"Heh!," Caraain said under her breath, wiping away the blood that now trickled down her chin. She picked up her fallen scimitar, and waited. She raised her free arm to shoulder height, and beckoned them with a gesture.
Eagle-head hesitated as it saw this, and actually stepped back. It turned to face wolf-head, with what looked like a confused or questioning expression on its face. So that's the leader, Caraain observed. Her eyes glanced down to the blade it held in its hand, which was in the form of a human's but was furred and clawed. She wanted it.
Wolf-head stepped forward and raised its hand. Eagle-head lowered its weapon to its side, but Caraain noticed it still had a firm grip on the hilt. It seemed to want to talk to her. Caraain was confused.
"That's far enough," she said just as it was far enough so it couldn't reach her with the sword. She immediately felt foolish, unsure as to whether the monsters could understand her. "If you want to discuss things, do it from there. I am a trained killer," she declared, hoping they got the hint and slunk off somewhere, "and I have already killed one of yours while sustaining only a minor injury myself." She hoped it understood what she said; the monster seemed fixated to one spot, looking as it if it was translating what she said in its head.
"You. Come," it, said, slowly. It raised a paw...or hand... towards her. "You come. We take. We take you. Come to big boss. We take you. You prove. Yourself. Come." Its voice struggled with the foreign, unaccustomed words and gave up. It growled in frustration and shook its head so that its silver-gray mane shook like a bolt of silk threads.
Caraain saw it sheathe its great sword, and Eagle-head followed its example. After a moment of thought, she lowered her weapon to her side, but did not sheath it. Wolf-head looked genuinely pleased by this, and hopped up and down with overjoyed excitement.
"Do anything funny and I'll kill you were you stand," she said to them. She hoped to the Light that they couldn't tell she was bluffing. With the adrenaline slowly fading from her veins, she suddenly felt as heavy as a rock, and her arms felt like lead. "Now," she added, "take me to this leader of yours."