Her feet are bleeding again.
She leaves red footprints in her wake as she paces around her room, too distracted to bother with wrapped them up again. There's no tape here, like she'd normally use, only thin strips of cloth that don't compress well enough. Things have gotten harder since she got here.
Len mutters to herself as she things, counting up in a spiral. She'd reached the highest she could go yesterday and started over a couple of times already. The sun was up again. She hadn't slept, but she didn't feel the tired anymore.
"One to two, to two to three, to three to five, to five to eight, to eight to thirteen to," on and on. It helps her think, it always has. The sea shell that hung around her neck had been worn so much by her nervous fingers that the catch of each segment was smoothed flat by now.
She pivots to the right, staring hard at the innocuous note left by her intrepid sister.
Her foolish sister, off on an adventure. Len is caught between pride and unadulterated terror. Jen had gone to rescue the princes, to fight a witch and a knight and its all very brave but god damn it Jen is just a kid and she's never been on her own before and Len is responsible for her in this fucked up world they've landed in.
She snatched up the letter again, glancing across the crumpled paper.
"- to Nine eighty seven to fifteen ninty seven, to fifteen ninty seven to twenty five eighty four, to-"
Len
I overheard Soren talking to Viren. He's going to kill the princes if he finds them. I can't let that happen so I'm going to stop them. Don't try to follow me, you'd only get hurt. Don't trust Viren.
Short and simple. Jen has never been the type for poetry or flowery words. She chafed visibly under their parents strict rules and acted out differently than Len, who snuck about and did her rebellion without getting caught until she was old enough to leave.
Jen is brave and Len is proud. Jen is so goddamn stupid and Len is going to lose her mind.
It's not a hard guess to figure out where the princes and their elf kidnapper are going. There's only one place she would possibly take them, and only one place that everyone else will be following them.
Xadia.
Theoretically, Len knows how to get there. Keep going west until you hit the giant lava river, cross the giant lava river, and you enter the land of the fae. Or whatever the fuck. In actuality, it was much more difficult than that.
The town that the sisters had first been allowed to stay in had been near enough to the border that if she looked carefully at night she could see the cherry red glow far off in the distance, beyond the trees and across the river that was warm enough to kill bacteria and fish both. The places to cross the river were few and far between and Len had never known them. The elves would. She could go back, maybe, if she could remember the way, but that was no guarantee that the princes and her sister would be anywhere near the village. Len couldn't track the way that Jen could.
There was only one person who would know exactly where the elf kidnapper would have gone.
"-to thirty one seventy eight eleven."
Len stops pacing. She turns and holds the letter up over a candle, letting it catch on fire. No one could know what was going on. Probably, she should get word to General Amaya, but she doesn't know who was loyal to her and who was loyal to Lord Viren. The only one whose loyalties she is sure of is her own, and the two fellows chained up in the dungeon.
This is, arguably, the stupidest idea she's ever had in her life.
Len knows herself. She's reckless, her curiosity is all encompassing and she doesn't always think things through. But she needs to get to Jen, before something happens to her. Lord Viren's children are dangerous. Claudia walks on an apathy for other living things that frightens Len more than she cares to admit.
Soren, she fears nothing from. Another boy with a sword, and not even a threatening boy. Talented, yes, but swords are metal and so is she.
Mind made up, Len starts bustling about.
Len decides that this is not, actually, the stupidest thing she's ever done, but it is the most ill prepared thing she's ever done, and she's going to have to deal with that fact as she goes on. She packs up all the food she can that won't spoil, rolls tight packs of clothes, and the thick blanket off the bed. Her bag won't be light, but it's compact and she can carry it. Len is a ballerina, she's got endurance to spare.
She wraps her feet again, the bleeding has stopped, and stuffs them into thick hiking boots that had come with her. Her jeans are long gone. She misses them.
With everything ready for a hasty exit Len walks out the door on quiet feet, aiming for the kitchen. It's time for her to visit Runaan as it is.
She sweeps in, moving swiftly as she gathers the bland porridge and the water, enough for Runaan and Gren, and if she snatches a little extra no one notices. Len moves swiftly, through the long corridors. She has to fight not to print as fast as she can. She can't attract attention. This is delicate work, for her, and she is about to do something very, very crazy.
Excitement buzzed in her veins against her will.
She hadn't gotten into this much trouble in-
Well, maybe in ever, if she was being honest.
Len rushes into the dungeon. She passes by Gren, stopping short when voices came from the other room.
"You've done it," says Runaan, a note in his voice that Len hasn't heard before. Fear. She stands up straighter. Just what is Lord Viren doing?
"Oh, have I?" his voice is smooth. Intriqued. Len takes another step towards the hallways. Gren hisses at her.
"Dont! Whatever Viren is doing, don't get involved," he hisses.
Len glances back at him. Her heart is picking up again, beating hard in her ears. The hallway feels smaller. She fights the claustrophobia trying to creep back into her system. She shoots him a comforting smile and steps forwards again. Down the long, reaching hallway. Runaans voice, so different from before, comes to her once more.
"That mirror? You have found something worse than death."
Mirror?
Len stops behind Lord Viren, standing just in the shadows. At some point since last night Lord Viren had brought in a large wooden table and, of all things, a full length mirror. She can't see much from the back, but it looks old. Of course, everything is old as balls here. Still. There's something about it that sets her on edge, a copper in the air, the taste of nitroglycerin creeping onto her tongue.
"Then, tell me," Lord Viren sound excited. Expectant and angry at once. "What is it?"
Runaan looks up and the fire in his eyes threatens to consume everything. Len feels her breath leave her all at once.
"I will never help you."
She watches, quietly stunned, as Lord Viren stands straight, putting his weight on his staff. His shoulders draw back and his voice is chipped ice.
"Then you are of no use to me."
He lifts his cane, a dark violet electricity crackles across it and Len breathes in, feeling it draw its way into the fibers of her being.
"Lord Viren!" she blurts out. He spins to her, his eyes a terrible purple and for an instant Len is caught between fear and wonder and a burning need to understand what caused it. She stamps it down and stands before him, as tall as she can be. The light flickers out, and Lord Viren stares hard at her. His veins are pronounced, dark against his pale skin. It had taken Len half a week to find out that no one but her could see them, creeping away from his eyes like cracks from a chasm of darkness.
"Lenore," he looks down at her. "You're no longer needed here. We will only have one prisoner after tonight."
"Oh," she says. She glances at Runaan, who for the first time since she's met him looks truly frightened. There's still a fierce undercurrent of pride and unbending will there.
"Don't tell me you were gaining some sympathy for this monster?" Lord Viren narrows his eyes. Len can see it, clear as day. How this man might send someone to kill a child. How this man could crush living beings under fist for just a fragment of power. She is reminded, again, of her old employer, but now she can see where they differ. Where Xanatos' limits were, Lord Viren's stretched beyond.
"Of course not," she says smoothly. "Sympathy for the devil? I was just surprised you would let him off so easy… after what he did to King Harrow."
She sees the exact moment the darkness in his eyes shifts. He looks back, at the elf who looks at Len like she's betrayed him. Which, she has.
"Oh, he won't get off easily at all," he promises.
Len nods, once. "As you say. In any case, mistress Opeli was looking for you. I believe it was important…"
Lord Viren grumbled, looked between her and the elf, and threw a sheet across the mirror once more. Len stepped away as he swept past her, his staff clacking hard against the stone beneath him.
"Feed Commander Gren and be done with it. Understand?"
Len nodded. "Of course, my lord."
She waits until his footsteps are gone and the feeling of static across her skin fades before she slumps against the table, her heart pounding in her ears.
"You're doing me no favors!" Runaan snarled at her as soon as Viren is gone. Len knows that its a waste of time but she cant help it. She pulls the sheet back off of mirror. She expected… something. What she got was just a mirror. An old mirror, yes, but a mirror nonetheless.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall…" she murmurs. But no magic happens. There's runes around the edges that patter in a sort of spiral. She squints at it. Xanatos had had a book of 'magic' that he'd kept in his office for a while. Len had flipped through it a few times when she'd been waiting for him in his office with new plans. They're not exact, but she can line up some of the symbols/
"Its weird. I know some of these," she touches the edge of the mirror. "Saroir, eternity. Cython, wisdom. That ones almost Cynath, death, but its missing a marker. So, undeath? Hah… Is that one light? And that one's night. I think," Len traces the mirrors edge, she can feel something in it. An energy that thrums beneath her fingertips. Her palms itch and she shoves them swiftly in her pockets.
She pulls away and looks at Runaan. "What is this mirror?" she asks. The wide eyes that stare back at her make her decidedly uncomfortable.
"You're a mage?" he hisses the word at her like a curse. A mage. Like Viren. She kicks her ass into gear.
"I am definitely not," she says firmly. She pulls away from the mirror and crouches in front of him. This is her only chance. Viren will find out about her lie and she can only hope that Opeli is somewhere hard to find. "How would you like to get out of here?"
Runaan narrows his eyes. "What kind of trick are you playing?"
"Not a trick. A bargain," she takes a deep breath. "Lord Viren has dispatched his children to kill the princes of Katolis. And my sister has gone to rescue them. From the princes, and from the elf that kidnapped them in the first place."
He sits up straighter. Sucks in a breath that's part relief and part horror and Len knows that she has him caught.
"You might be dead, Runaan, but she's not. And neither is my sister. She's the one I'm after. I'll free you, if you swear that you'll take me with you after them, so I can get my sister back safely. Do we have a deal?"
"What about the princes?" he asks suspiciously.
"I don't want them to die. I don't think children should be killed for the crimes of their parents. So if and when we find them, I'll try to keep you from hurting the boys. But I'll risk it, to find my sister."
She knows that Jen won't let him kill them willingly. And she knows that the band on his arm keeps getting tired. She'll hedge her bets on him being unfit to fight properly once they catch up with them, if he even has an arm left. She stays still, looking him dead in the eyes. She's honest and forth coming, and whatever Viren had almost done must have frightened him to his core for he finally, finally, dropped his chin.
"Fine. We have a deal."
"I'm trusting your word, Runaan," she reminds him. He meets her gaze steadily. Satisfied, Len grasps his shackles and unlocks them, one, then the other.
"You should eat, deadman, before we go."
Runaan stands. He rubs his arm, barely wincing. It looks back. Dark and an angry purple. She watches him manage to work the band around it down to his fore arm before it stops there, not going any further.
"There is one more thing," he says. Len frowns at him.
"You didn't say that before."
"I'm saying it now," he replies smoothly. He nods towards the mirror. "We bring that with you."
Len falters. "Excuse me?"
"The mirror. We can't let that man keep it. We have to take it with us. Or I don't bring you with."
Len shoves herself right up in his face. "You're full of so much shit. We're gonna go so slow with that thing."
Runaan stands slowly on minutely shaking legs and looks down at her, unintimidated. He has a good foot on her, towering above her.
"That's my deal."
Len worked her jaw back and forth before she nods, swiftly.
"Fine," she says, trying to revise her plan. The mirror will pose a problem. He has a bad arm, and she's too small to carry it easily, no matter its weight.
She spins around the rushes from the room. Sprints down the hall until she's standing in front of Commander Gren, with his freckles and his messy hair and his wide eyes, looking at her. Afraid, worried, and hopeful.
"Why didn't you tell me about Lord Viren?" she asks, even as she unchains him.
He drops to the floor with less grace than she has and she catches him, deceptively strong for how short she is. Smaller than both of them, but the most physically fit and how sad is that? Her arm isn't even real. She's quietly grateful neither of them ask how she unlocks their chains.
"I didn't want you to risk yourself. You're not a soldier, Lenore."
"Len," she corrects immediately. "Not Lenore. Or, Nevermore!"
She ignores his puzzles look. "How much did you hear?"
"All of it. I'm in."
"You're not going to go to General Amaya?" Len can admit to being surprised.
"She entrusted the princes safety to me. So where they go, I go."
"Okay," Len starts to smile.
This is looking a little more doable, with the three of them.