Way of the Wicked Chapter Two
The dice, carved from pale wood and crudely marked with simple numerals, made a pleasant clattering noise as they rolled onto the table, and Victor couldn't help but scowl when he saw how they'd landed. Five of swords… precisely what he didn't need in order to finish this round on a solid footing.
Across from him, Carver grinned broadly at the sight and scooped the dice up again in one massive, bear-like paw. "Think that makes it my win, right?"
Victor's only response was to scowl even harder, before nodding grudgingly as his opponent laughed at his success. They'd been playing for close to an hour now, with a short interruption from their mysterious visitor earlier on, and he was growing steadily more and more convinced that his opponent was cheating somehow. Carver didn't look like the sort of man to swindle a fellow soldier out of his hard-earned gold, but then the best cheats never did, and it couldn't be deny that the big man seemed to have a never-ended procession of 'lucky rolls' that turned up when he most needed them.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." He grumbled, sitting back in his chair and making a rude gesture with one hand in Carver's general direction. "You can't win forever, old man, and when you finally screw up I'll be waiting."
There wasn't much sense in trying to call him out on his cheating, after all. Carver would only deny the accusation, which wasn't something that could be easily proved in any case, and then all he'd get was a distinctly frostier reception from his fellow guard whenever the duty roster brought them together again in the future.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, pup." Carver said with a chuckle, returning the dice to the small pouch he wore on his belt. "Anyway, you going to the gatehouse tonight?"
Victor shook his head with a sigh. "I can't. Need to keep some of my gold for leave, and if I go I'll lose it all. That Blackerley is a damned thief."
Victor supposed that he should probably refer to him as 'Sergeant Blackerley', but somehow it never turned out that way. Thomas Blackerley just didn't strike him as a sergeant, or indeed as anyone in any kind of authority, which was honestly rather worrying for a man in charge of the guards at one of the country's leading prisons. Had they met anywhere else Victor would have been convinced that he was speaking to another regular soldier, maybe one with some kind of unofficial rank due to seniority and connections but certainly no formal authority. He seemed to regularly go out of his way to undo any progress that might signal him out as anything other than 'one of the lads', which made him easy to get along with but not exactly a sterling exemplar of his Majesty's armed forces.
The games in the gatehouse were just one example of that trend. Every few days, Blackerley and any of the men who were off duty – and one or two who were technically meant to be on it – would make their way to one of the rooms in the castle's main gatehouse and spend the next several hours playing cards. The sergeant always seemed to have an endless supply of reasonably good-quality booze to dispense to his comrades, and the positioning allowed them plenty of time to spot anyone more official coming along and get rapidly back to their posts. Not that it was a serious concern, with the Warden all but refusing to leave his tower at night and the nearest other garrison over a day's travel away, but even someone as thoroughly laid back as Blackerley had to keep some kind of eye out for potential trouble.
"Well, if you know that, why do you keep going?" Carver said with a smile that was almost paternal, sitting back in his seat and adjusting the belt on his uniform for more comfort. Victor had to admit that he had a point. Going to the regular games in the gatehouse wasn't doing his purse any favours, and he was reasonably sure that the main reason that Blackerley continued running them was because he was carefully filling his own pockets with the proceeds, but he still felt oddly compelled to go along anyway. Part of it was peer pressure, the desire not to make any enemies while he worked through a posting far away from any other units and was stuck next to the same cast of characters that he could ill afford to antagonise, but that on its own wasn't really enough to justify everything. In the end, he could only really come up with one other easily defined reason.
"The beer's good."
At that, Carver snorted, a noise somewhere between amusement and disgust. It wasn't like the old soldier was any different to the rest of them, any more virtuous or less likely to indulge in the petty pastimes that made life bearable, but he was old enough to remember when things had been different.
"Light, but this place has gone down the pits. Gambling, drinking on duty… Captain Callidan would have had a fit if he'd still been around to see all this."
"The Warden would probably be furious too." Victor said by way of agreement. "Or at least he would, if he ever came down to walk the walls, rather than sitting in his tower all night petting his owl."
"Is that what they call it now?" Carver said with a grin, making a crude gesture with one hand. He chuckled lewdly and then nodded in the direction of the cell block door. "Then again, maybe I shouldn't blame him, not when he's got such a rare beauty to motivate him."
Victor laughed, and pitched a small pebble at his filthy-minded comrade in mock-protest. They both knew that he'd meant the comment literally – Mattias Richter was known to have a pet owl that he was very fond of – but the old soldier had never been one to pass up a chance for a crude remark.
And he wasn't exactly wrong, Victor had to admit. Mirabelle Barca, the solitary prisoner currently confined within Branderscar, was a rare beauty indeed. Long dark hair like black silk, eyes that shone like emeralds, a body made lean and toned by years of military service… as far as he was concerned she was just about perfect. He'd heard people described as a 'dangerous beauty' before, but the fallen captain was perhaps the only woman he'd ever seen who truly exemplified the term. Something about her managed to be both deeply appealing and yet undeniably menacing at the same time, even when clad in rags and branded as a common criminal. Perhaps especially then, given the kind of determined confidence that she had held herself with, an iron will that had stood in stark contrast to just about every other prisoner he'd seen pass through these walls over the years.
It was a pity she was due to be executed, really, but what else was there to do? The crimes of each prisoner tended to make the rounds through the garrison fairly swiftly after each one arrived, and the consensus in this case was that the noble Captain Barca was a murderer. No one was quite sure what had prompted the deed, and the specifics of the tale tended to vary depending on which version you heard, but there were certain elements common enough to be accepted as fact. She had lured one of her fellow officers out into a field near the fortress where they served, stabbed him through the heart and then claimed to know nothing of his whereabouts when she returned to her post. It was apparently only due to the testimony of another soldier who'd been hidden nearby that she'd been caught at all, her guilt confirmed by the divine light of Mitra and the judgement of the courts.
Murder, especially the murder of a fellow officer while on active duty on the Wall, was among the most serious secular crimes someone in Talingarde could commit. For decades the punishment for such a deed had been execution by beheading, and though her trial had dragged out for a considerable length of time the outcome had never really been in any doubt. Victor had heard that the High Inquisitor himself was intending to preside over the execution, though hopefully that was just a rumour. Lord Tyrath was an almost proverbially unforgiving of any laxity among those he held authority over, and if he decided to conduct a surprise inspection of the facilities while he was here the outcome would probably be ugly. Maybe he could arrange to take leave around that time, just in case…
Victor's musings were interrupted at that point by a faint noise from the direction of the cell-block. Frowning, the young guard glanced over at the door, wondering if he'd imagined it. Distance and the thick oak planks of the door had rendered the sound difficult to define, but if he had to guess he would have pegged it as two metal objects colliding. But that didn't make much sense – the prisoner was securely chained, kept well away from the bars of her cell and otherwise denied access to anything metallic. How would she have even made such a noise?
The sound came again, an echoing chime that rang out clearly enough to be heard all the way down the hall. Victor glanced at Carver, who was likewise sitting up and frowning, and then rose from his seat.
"Maybe she's just trying to get our attention?" He offered, though his hand still went to the stout wooden club hanging from his belt. It was a sensible precaution, after all – noise meant restive prisoners, and this kind of noise meant a prisoner that had somehow managed to slip or otherwise loosen her bonds. For all that Victor was proud of his service and his strict adherence to the military's fitness standards, he was perfectly aware that in a straight fight the ex-Captain would almost certainly eat him alive. Some of the kingdom's officers might owe their position to patronage and politicking, but no one was stupid enough to try that sort of thing on the Watch Wall. Mirabelle Barca had commanded military forces on the very edge of civilisation, and that by default made her a skilled and experienced warrior. No way in hell was he going anywhere near her without a weapon.
Across from him, Carson nodded seriously and drew his own club, rising to flank him. "Well, let's see what she wants, then."
Steadying his nerves, Victor opened the door to the cell block and walked through, doing his best to stride rather than creep. He might want to move softly and look around in every direction for danger, but they'd had some real scum in these cells over the years, and the common factor in all of them was that they didn't react well to perceived weakness. Granted, most of them didn't respond favourably if you strutted around the place like an arrogant fool, but of the two he'd rather deal with derisive inmates than outright predatory ones.
Moving down the line of cells towards Barca's cell, it slowly dawned on him that something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, precisely, but there was something about the image in front of him that was simply off, somehow. His instincts were screaming to him about danger, and he knew better than to ignore them. Taking a tighter grip on his club, he moved closer to the cell door and…
The door. Victor felt a cold rush go through his gut at the sight, as though he'd swallowed a mouthful of ice. The door to Mira's cell was closed, but it most certainly wasn't secured. The bars around the lock had bent and deformed slightly, and where the lock itself had once been there was nothing but a horribly misshapen lump of metal, still glowing faintly around the edges. The air was warm and full of the scent of ash and brimstone, two scents he had never before encountered but recognised all the same.
"Sacred Mitra…" Victor breathed, utterly aghast at what he was seeing. "Carver, man, we're in trouble."
His only response was a wet gurgle.
Victor didn't hesitate. Even before his mind had fully begun to process what was going on he was turning, passing the club into his secondary hand as he dropped into a defensive posture and began to draw steel. It was a sensible course of action, conducted with a speed and precision that would have impressed even the least charitable of his old drill masters, but it was also far too late.
Cold steel sliced across the back of his off-hand, causing the club to drop from suddenly nerveless fingers, and a hand closed around his dominant arm in a grip like iron to prevent him from drawing his sword. He turned; trying to dislodge the hold, but his assailant simply stepped closer and moved with him. For an instant he found himself face to face with Mirabelle Barca, gazing into her cold green eyes from barely an inch or two away… then one leg wrapped around his own, she leaned forwards and the two of them went crashing to the ground together in a tangle of limbs.
Something cold and sharp touched his throat, and he froze.
"Good boy." The prisoner said, having controlled the fall so as to end up virtually sitting on him. Some distant corner of his mind noted that there were worse places to be than pinned to the ground between the legs of a beautiful woman, but it was rather thoroughly drowned out by those parts of him that were concerned with the dagger she had pressed against his jugular.
A dagger? Where did she get a dagger? And clothes, a full set… she must have had help, this is too well planned…
"Now then, I have some questions." The noblewoman continued, her voice perfectly calm and controlled despite the frantic struggle just a moment before. "If you answer them, completely and honestly, I will let you live. If not, you will join your friend back there. I think that's perfectly fair, don't you?"
Victor couldn't quite stifle a terrified moan at those words. He couldn't see Carver from where he laid, his captor's body blocking any line of sight back down the corridor, but he knew for a fact that the old soldier wouldn't be so silent if he was still breathing. The thought should have filled him with righteous anger, but with a knife to his throat and the angle rendering him unable to draw his weapons he couldn't muster up anything more than an icy cold feeling of helpless terror.
A slight frown creased his captor's forehead, and the pressure she was exerting on the knife increased noticeably, skin slowly giving way beneath the razor edge. "I'm waiting."
"Yes! Yes, perfectly fair!" Victor choked out, desperately trying not to move and risk slicing himself open on the knife. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know! Oh, Mitra please, don't hurt me…"
A sense of disgust and self-loathing began to boil in his gut as the cowardice overwhelmed him, but at that moment he couldn't bring himself to care. Honour, duty, courage… none of those seemed to matter very much in the face of the very real threat to his life and limb. He'd heard that you didn't really know what you were capable of until put to the test, but he'd always assumed he was better than this...
Atop him, his captor smiled slightly, a cold expression without any shred of actual amusement or warmth. "I wouldn't try invoking Mitra if I were you." She said conversationally. "I'm not feeling too fond of him right now, and all things considered making me angry is not an intelligent course of action."
Trembling in fear and shock, Victor stared up at her, trying to decide how he could respond that wouldn't end with him drowning in his own blood. Then his eyes landed on the necklace hanging from her neck, the small icon swinging back and forth slightly in the air before his face. The inverted silver pentagram...
Oh sacred Mitra, she's a devil-worshipper. Is that how she got out of her cell? Damn it, we weren't prepared for a spell-caster, but none of the files suggested anything of the sort...
Mirabelle followed the direction of his gaze and chuckled darkly. "Pretty little thing, isn't it?" She said easily, scooping the pendent up with her free hand and tucking it away inside her shirt. "Not something you should be concerned with right now, though. Instead... tell me, how many guards are on duty right now, and where can I find them?"
A slight increase in pressure on the knife at his throat was ample warning of what would happen if he didn't answer. Gripped in fear beyond anything he'd ever felt before, Victor wept, and told her everything he knew.
-/-
The guard was being both completely obedient and perfectly cooperative, and that was something of a problem.
Mirabelle was, for all her confidence and hard-one skills, well aware that the odds were currently stacked heavily against her. The guards at Branderscar might have allowed themselves to become weak and easily distracted over the years, but they were still trained soldiers. They had arms and armour, the advantage of numbers and the skills to make the most of both. If she was going to overcome all of those advantages and escape, she would need to be smart, fast and ruthless. And part of that meant not leaving any of her captors lying around where they could potentially sneak off and summon reinforcements or otherwise return to threaten her again. Which in turn meant that the sobbing man currently pinned to the ground between her thighs needed to die.
Unfortunately, she'd promised to spare his life if he cooperated. A foolish promise, made in haste to help guarantee that he wouldn't try to resist or call for help, but a promise none the less. And if there was one thing her tutors had taught her, one inviolable belief her upbringing her instilled in her heart, it was that you did not go back on your word. Well, not lightly, at least. Certainly not for anything as petty as simple convenience. True, it could be said that if she broke her promise now and killed the guard no one else would ever know, but that wasn't the point. Her word was sacrosanct; keeping her promises a matter of honour, not simply a cold consideration based on how others might perceive her actions.
Well, so be it then. Sticking to her principles here might make things more difficult in the long run, but that was just the price she would have to pay. Hopefully, the information she'd managed to extract here would be enough to make up for it in any case, for the young soldier had been willing to spill a great deal of useful intelligence for even the chance of postponing his demise. The number of guards, their patrol routes, the location of various points of interest around the prison, the weeks current password that would get her past the gate, even the fact that most of the soldiers here would likely be bored and distracted if not outright absent from their posts altogether in favour of joining an illicit gambling session in the gatehouse. It was he sort of report that would have sent her into an apocalyptic rage had she still served the crown of Talingarde as one of its officers, but as it was everything about the shamefully lax garrison was simply another point in her favour.
Still, the young soldier was fast running out of useful information to divulge, judging by his stammering and the increasing length of the pauses between each factoid. If she kept pressing him for more he'd soon be forced to start making things up in order to satisfy her, which would be less than ideal when she found herself needing to depend on that information to survive. It was time to bring this improvised interrogation to an end.
"Well, you've been very helpful." She said sweetly, removing the knife from the young man's throat and allowing him to breathe easily once again. "Thank you. As a reward, you get to live."
With that she spun the dagger around in her hand and brought it sweeping across, smashing the pommel of the weapon into his face with a vicious speed. There was a dull cracking noise and the soldier went still, blood already starting to leak from the side of his head and stain his hair. A quick check confirmed that he was unconscious but still breathing, and then Mira clambered back to her feet once more. The rags that she'd been forced to wear upon her arrival looked reasonably sturdy, so with quick and economical motions she tore them into strips and bound her unwilling assistant hand and foot. After a moment's thought she stuffed the remainder into his mouth as an improvised gag, being careful not to obstruct his airways - choking him to death after going to all this trouble to leave him alive would not be ideal.
There wasn't much point trying to hide the bodies. Confronted with two guards coming to investigate the noises she was making and aware that she wouldn't be able to handle them both, she'd been forced to take the older man down as quickly as possible in order to maintain the advantage of surprise. A slashed throat certainly ended the threat he could pose swiftly, but the sheer quantity of blood a severed artery could produce was nothing short of astounding. Even if the bodies themselves were removed from this corridor the stench of copper and the telltale stains upon the stone floor would reveal what had happened to anyone else that wandered by.
Still, that didn't mean she was going to leave them entirely untouched. Crouching by the first corpse, Mira first studied the man's build, sizing him up and judging relative measurements with the ease of long practice. Who would have thought that all those fashion lessons back in her teenage years would have actually produced a useful skill? After a moment she nodded, satisfied that the two of them were at least reasonably similar in build, and began to strip the corpse of anything useful. The chain shirt would need adjusting if it was ever going to be a comfortable fit, but that wouldn't stop it protecting her vulnerable flesh from attacks, while the longsword belted at his waist was a weapon far more suited to her preferences than the slender daggers she'd been provided with. There was even a ring full of keys, each carefully labelled with a small piece of paper that indicated what they opened, which she attached to her own belt with some satisfaction.
Outside, the skies had finally made good on the threats they had been making for the past few hours, and now the howling wind had been joined by the endless hiss of heavy rain. That was good - nothing like a downpour to help conceal your movements, and she could not afford to be easily seen tonight. Moving swiftly, she headed along the corridor between the empty and abandoned cells to enter the small guard room at the end. The staircase in the corner would lead her down to the ground floor of the keep and from there out into the courtyard, but that was not really a viable option. Not only would it be guarded, the route would take her straight past the main barracks on the ground floor, which could have any number of off-duty soldiers in it to serve as reinforcements should one of their colleagues sound an alarm.
Instead, she turned her attention to the fireplace. She'd seen it when the guards brought her to her meeting with Tiadora, and much as she had hoped that brief glimpse had turned out to be reasonably accurate. The chimney at the back of the fireplace ran the whole height of the castle, connecting to the main kitchens on the floor below and as a result was almost comically oversized. So long as she was both patient and careful, climbing down to the ground floor shouldn't be too much of a problem, and from what the young soldier had said the kitchens had a side door that led out into the courtyard. And from there... well, one step at a time.
Moving as slowly and silently as she could, Mira lowered herself into the chimney and began to climb.
-/-
Outside the window, the rain hammered down. Every now and then a rumble of thunder would wrack the sky, loud enough to send the glass rattling in the windows and send any sane man running for cover.
Safely ensconced in his tower, Mathias Richter glanced over at the nearest window, shook his head and turned his attention back to the book in his hands. It was one of his latest purchases, a thoroughly unoriginal work by some author in the Heartlands whose name he couldn't be bothered to remember. Just about every element of the story was derived from other, better works and crammed together with no real appreciation for classical plot progression or meaningful character development, and he absolutely loved it.
The old man chuckled to himself at the thought. Oh, how his contemporaries would sneer at him if they were to ever find out about his reading preferences. They were all well bred and educated men, senior members in some of the richest and most influential families in all of Talingarde, and absolutely none of them had bothered to remove the gold-plated sticks from their collective arse in over a decade. Most of them preferred to read books written in Celestial and filled with enough self-absorbed philosophical musing to choke a horse, apparently under the impression that this was a mark of a superior mind. Mathias, by contrast, was firmly of the opinion that wealth and high station meant absolutely nothing if you couldn't have some fun once in a while.
Pursing his lips, he turned the page and continued reading. This work was a fine example of his personal philosophy, because for all its narrative flaws and unoriginal story it was at least fun to read. It was a marvelous tale about the adventures of a young and improbably well-endowed half-elven lass, with a knack for getting into mortal danger every other day as she traveled across the world, fighting terrible beasts and saving grateful innocents from horrific fates. A stirring tale of heroism and valour to match anything you might find in an inspirational sermon, but did it grace the shelves of any of the nation's great libraries or have a place in the private collections of any prominent noble? Of course not, because absolutely none of them could ever bring themselves to take half a step back and relax for five minutes.
Take his nephew, for example. Young Gaius was the very picture of what was wrong with the world today, a man blessed with good looks and a keen mind that had promptly squandered both on a life of petty political games. It was Gaius that had arranged for him to inherit the position of Warden at Branderscar Prison, knowing that it would enhance the reputation of House Richter to have one of their members in such an important and prestigious position. Did the fact that Mathias was an elderly scholar without the slightest idea of how to run a prison matter? No, of course not, that was what [i]underlings[/i] were for.
Not that Mathias would ever call Sergeant Blackerley an underling, of course. He'd brought the man in for a private chat two days after getting the position, confessed that his appointment was basically entirely driven by political concerns, and generally agreed to stay out of the way and leave the management of the prison to someone who knew what they were doing. So far, everything that he'd seen merely confirmed the decision as the correct one. For close to a year now the prison had kept ticking along with Blackerley at the helm, and in all that time they'd never had a single problem; the prisoners were obedient, the soldiers professional and the responsibilities laid on the position of Warden kept to an absolute minimum. Just the way he liked it.
On his perch nearby, Soren ruffled his feathers and hooted softly, gazing out into the stormy night with golden eyes. Frowning, Mathias set his book aside and stood up, crossing to the window and peering out into the darkness. His familiar had been at his side for far too many years by this point for him to comfortably ignore a potential warning, or at least a hint of serious events unfolding somewhere within the owl's keen gaze. Indeed, even as he watched the door to the kitchens opened and a hooded figure hurried out into the rain, crossing the courtyard towards the base of his tower with hurried steps. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the grounds, highlighting the gleaming rings of chain-mail on the stranger's torso. One of the guards, then, it had to be, but why would any of them be coming to bother him this late at night?
Perhaps there was a problem with their prisoner. Mathias could not help but frown at the thought. In truth, the fact that there was a scion of the House of Barca confined within his walls made him feel distinctly uneasy. The Barcans were an old and powerful noble family, one that had actually managed to survive being removed from power with most of their resources intact and had only expanded since then. The fact that one of their most decorated members was due to be executed in only a few days was exactly the sort of thing that would stir up the kind of political storms that he so thoroughly detested, to say nothing of the possible consequences for the House of Richter as a whole and him personally. Mathias was uncomfortably aware that he didn't really have a great many friends among those of real influence in the kingdom, his arcane studies and bookish demeanor serving to distance him from those who would otherwise be his peers. If the Barcans decided to exact a little vengeance on him for the death of their scion, there wouldn't be much he could do other than grit his teeth and bear it.
Not that he was going to let personal consequences dissuade him from doing his duty, of course. He might not have particularly desired this commission and he was well aware that he wasn't exactly good at it, but it had been entrusted to him by the word of the King, and that was a sacred charge Mathias was quite unwilling to set aside, especially for something as petty as mere personal convenience. He'd never broken his word or given in to personal weakness before, and by this point he was sufficiently old and stubborn enough that he would rather die than change his ways.
In the courtyard below the hooded guard vanished from sight as he reached the base of the tower, and not even a minute later there came a firm and insistent knock upon the door to the Warden's personal chambers. Mathias closed his eyes briefly and let out a sigh. So much for his faint hope that this didn't need to involve him, then.
"What is it?" He called out, aware that his voice sounded more than a little peevish. Well, he had a right to some irritation, seeing as apparently the developing situation was going to drag him out of his lovely warm tower and into the windswept night.
"Warden Richter, sir." The guard replied from the far side of the door, any distinguishing elements to his voice muffled by the thick wood and the raging storm outside. "I'm afraid you'll need to see this. There's a problem with the prisoner."
Muttering a curse, Richter strode over to the door, already running through the list of available spells in his mind. He'd invoked the initial rituals for several of his more utility-focused works earlier in the day as part of his habitual morning routine, committing the final segments to memory with the aid of the great mental discipline he'd developed over the years. Most of them should still be viable, the lingering magic still there to be called upon for several more hours before they inevitably started to unravel, but none of them were particularly suited towards investigation. He probably wouldn't need the combat spells either, given that the alarms hadn't be raised, but he had to admit he felt a bit better have them there to call upon if he absolutely needed to.
"What's the situation, soldier?" He asked, pulling open the door with a brusque motion. "Give me a full report..."
He was rather abruptly interrupted at that point by a sudden impact and a feeling of icy cold water in his gut as a long length of razor-sharp steel entered his torso just below the rib cage and punched out of his back a moment later. He looked down at the sword for a moment, eyes wide in a total lack of incomprehension, then slowly dragged his gaze back up to the one holding it.
"She's escaped." Mirabelle Barca said simply, her dark hair beaded with droplets of rainwater and her cold green eyes studying him with a detached interest.
Desperately, Mathias tried to draw breath to speak, to move his hand in one of the arcane gestures necessary to unleash his power, but the cold pain of the steel in his guts made focusing on anything else impossible. He could only twitch and cough weakly as the fallen knight pushed him back into the room and forcibly removed the blade with a harsh tug. The cold sensation began to spread, and as his legs gave out under him he was acutely aware of the alarmingly large amount of blood beginning to stain the front of his robes.
"Nothing personal, Warden." The prisoner said with casual disdain, stepping over his recumbent body and moving into the library beyond. He clawed at her leg as she went past, but the gesture was devoid of any strength to the point where he doubted she even noticed. "I don't know you nearly well enough to actually hate you, but unfortunately you happen to have something I need."
Desperately mustering what remained of his strength, Mathias clamped one arm around his wounded midsection, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood. It had been a long time since he'd studied any anatomy, but he was grimly certain that the injury the Barcan woman had dealt him was a serious one, likely even fatal. He needed... there was a healing potion in one of the cabinets, something he'd cooked up in his latest foray into medicinal alchemy. That would stop the bleeding and repair some of the soft tissue damage, enough to see him stable at least. But it was on the other side of the room, directly past his assailant, who was even now rooting through the various documents strewn across his desk and side-tables.
"Namely, this. A map of the nearby area." Mirabelle continued, picking up one particular piece of parchment and studying it for a moment, before wrapping it up tightly and stowing it away inside her cloak. "After all, it wouldn't do me any good if I made it out of the gates only to get lost in the swamps and eaten by an oversized frog, now would it?"
With slow, agonizing motions Mathias began to drag himself along the floor towards the cabinet, leaving a trail of blood on the rich carpet and gasping with pain at every flash of cold fire from his injury. Mirabelle watched his progress for a moment, her green eyes considering and her lips pursed.
"I should probably put you out of your misery. Don't want you mustering a hunting party and coming after me with whatever spells you happen to know, after all." She mused, while the old man tried his best to ignore the way the edges of his vision were going slowly grey. "On the other hand, I've always believed that strength and willpower deserve to be rewarded. And if you can actually make it all the way over there with your guts carved up like that - I'm impressed you can even move, by the way - well, you probably deserve a chance to make up for this rather shocking failure of duty."
He could barely even hear her now over the sound of his heart thundering in his ears, a fact which he was rather grateful for. Why was she talking so much? Was this some strange brand of psychosis that demanded she explain her motivations and rationale at every conceivable opportunity?
" I'll be honest, I rather hope I never see you again, but if I do... well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, good night Warden. I wish you good fortune."
Then, with the rapid clack of leather boots on a stone floor, she was gone, leaving Mathias Richter alone in his library. The wound in his torso was bleeding even more heavily now, and he could taste copper on his tongue, but he was so close. Barely even three metres separated him from the cabinet and the potion within.
It might as well have been three miles.