The weight of the absent cuffs was noticeable. Even though to an onlooker Gajeel's wrists were still bound in iron, it wasn't quite the same. The oppressive feel of them. The sensation of being crushed - smothered. Of Gajeel's entire being ground beneath some intangible boot. That was gone. And his own iron may as well have been paper for all he noticed.
Gajeel cautiously slipped under the crease of the cell door and revelled in how he was suddenly free to go where he chose. The sudden freedom of the shadows were as as much a balm as Levy's voice, still whispering in his ear. It enveloped him, soothing the ache of his empty stomach. Giving him clarity. Sharpening his senses. Moving through shadows was like walking parallel to the world - separated by a pane of darkened glass you alone could move through at will. Across the wall of shadow, he could see the Knights - move around them, over and under, still keeping that barrier between. Gajeel couldn't be sure if he laughed, the sounds in this place were muffled, static noise and it was difficult to tell his own voice from theirs.
Provided Gajeel didn't venture far from the cells and was back when the guards did the rounds, the estate house was open for him to explore. In the dead of night, no one noticed the shadow creeping across the floors and up the gold leafed plasterwork. That cold, spine tingling sensation that prickled hairs on the Knights necks, warning them of the danger lurking at their feet went unnoticed. All the while Gajeel moved inches from them. Their good instincts - the ones that had any - were easily and casually played off as nerves. The building was old and their tasks were far from noble. It was understandable that they would be jittery. A trick of the eyes in the gloom was nothing out of the ordinary.
Gajeel's primary goal had actually been to find Lily and assess how many people they'd imprisonment in the cells below, but whether by chance or otherwise - he was in a permanent state of hunger - Gajeel found the enormous kitchens first. The house itself looked to have been a wealthy family home at one point and beneath the sweat and stench of death and cleaning agents, a faint scent of young children still lingered.
The kitchen itself had been made to accommodate dozens. Designed to feed large parties of guests. A walk in pantry as big as his bedroom at the far end, opposite a gas stove with nine cooking rings. The only two guards inside the room were seated across from each other at the table in the centre, an empty bottle of vodka between them. They were unconscious. Drooling. A string of acrid vomit stained the front of one uniform.
Whatever got them through the day. Gajeel had seen enough here not to pass too much judgement if the guards wanted to drink themselves to death. Two less he'd need to feel guilty for killing later.
He downright assaulted the pantry - unable to control himself. Cheeses and breads and cakes. Washing it down with a pint of what gloriously tasted like ginger beer and several knives from the cutlery drawer. He ate till he felt sick. Till he regretted his gluttony and felt like crawling to the nearest toilet.
He audibly groaned, rubbing his now stretched stomach but the unconscious Knights barely stirred and Gajeel knew that when the state of the pantry was discovered, they'd likely be blamed. There was a satisfaction in knowing that. Some little petty vengeance. It was altogether doubtful they'd remember enough to even be able to even deny it. Perfect scapegoats. Fortune could be a tricky thing but right now he wasn't complaining. Gajeel wrapped some food up in what was left of his torn shirt and left the way he came in, sinking into shadow, stomach aching.
Full and without the distraction, he followed his nose in search of the stairs down, until the stench of faeces could guide him the rest of the way to Lily. As he neared closer, Gajeel picked up the smell of his friends blood. Old and dried and half masked by another abominable odor that made his nose ache with its potency. Death and decay. Rot. Disease. Neglect.
Appearing from the stairwell and slipping along the floor he counted the prisoners and was relieved that there were fewer than he'd been lead to believe, but at the same time, he was worried by the number of empty cells. While there was barely a dozen here, he could identify fifty separate prisons that had been occupied. Repeatedly in some cases. This place had seen hundreds. If not more than that.
"Gajeel?"
Pantherlily's sense of smell was not as sensitive as his but it was tuned finely enough to detect him coming.
Gajeel paused and almost hit the bars on his way as he used the shadows to enter Lily's cell. He pulled the Exceed into a hug almost before he'd fully formed - Lily reigning in a half shriek with shock. Surprise at the hug or Gajeel's appearance, he couldn't be certain. Gajeel's heart hammered against his ribs and for a moment he felt his eyes water, tears threatening to fall. Lily was in his more compact form and Gajeel only released him from his near crushing grip when the Exceed coughed out a breathless laugh.
"You alright?" Gajeel pulled back and looked him over. Lily narrowing his eyes, shaking his head.
"Apparently better than you," Carla interjected, crossing her arms - the fur stained dark with dirt. "And here I thought you couldn't possibly look more intimidating, Gajeel."
Her sharp comment made him smile. The casual jab reminded him of better times. Simpler times. When Gajeel was the villain and people disliked and mistrusted him. When he could convince himself he was better than their opinions of him. Convinced himself he didn't care.
"Like you can get high and mighty about appearances," Gajeel snorted. "You look and smell like you washed in a toilet."
Carla kicked a soiled blanket from the ground at her feet and sent it sailing his direction. Lily snatched it from the air before it made contact.
"I think we should perhaps save all of that for our captors," He said with the look of someone dealing with unruly toddlers and expectantly exasperated. He rubbed at his temples, wincing when his paw touched something tender.
"You're hurt?" Gajeel reached out to him but Lily batted his hand away.
"We all are, Gajeel," His voice was a hiss. "What have they done to you, anyway?" He hovered at eye level, close enough to rub a soft paw back and forth over Gajeel's bare scalp.
"Nothin' I don't intend on payin' back... with interest," and that was Gajeel's current truth. The thing that kept him sane. Levy. Vengeance. Freedom. For himself. For the people here that they'd hurt and murdered. For his family. Though he still hadn't decided if justice - if retribution was shaving them all bald and dumping them naked somewhere or slitting every throat he found walking the halls in a white and black uniform.
"Has Juvia been to see you?" Lily asked him and Gajeel's expression must have given him his answer because the Dragon Slayer's jaw just dropped.
"She's here?" Gajeel asked. A tightening in his chest to imagine that this could all be over soon. If Juvia was inside, there was more than hope. There was an actual plan.
"Yes, feeding information out to the others. Check next door," Lily pointed to the right and Gajeel wordlessly followed his direction, moving quietly through the bars.
"Gonna give me a name this time?" Gajeel snarled at the Knight currently chained to the wall. His pristine uniform was stained and his lips were chapped and bloody. He certainly looked like he'd been acquainted with Juvia alright.
"Going to give me the keys to this cell?"
The man visibly, violently recoiled at the sight of Gajeel disappear and re-emerge from the darkness like a red eyed demon, mere feet from him and laughing like the devil himself.
"Eventually," Gajeel crossed his arms, smirking and leaning back against the bars he'd passed through. "I expect you'll be seeing the inside of another cell soon enough, though."
The Knight huffed.
"I'm a soldier - a Knight. I do what I'm told," His excuses sounded all too familiar to Gajeel who simply stood there, unimpressed.
"Easy to convince yourself when someone else is givin' the orders," Gajeel shrugged. He approached the Knight sinking down to eye level. A mirror of the first conversation they had. The positions of power reversed. "But eventually you stop noticing all the ways they abuse that kinda loyalty. It changes yah... And not for the better."
Gajeel watched that settle over the man. Watched him swallow. Saliva and truth catching in his throat as it bobbed.
"We don't have a choice," He said, parroting the words he'd obviously had drilled into him.
Gajeel snarled, his fist forming a blade that quickly found itself at the man's collar, pressing dangerously against the skin. As sharp as a scalpel.
"I could kill you," He didn't need to press hard before a steady trickle of blood bubbled up against the blades edge. Lily called his name from behind but Gajeel's eyes never left the Knight's. "It would be easy. Quick. I can even tell you I've done it enough times to promise it would be painless, too."
The face looking up at him with wide eyes was suddenly that of a boy, frozen in terror. Unsure of what was right and real, unsure of his role in all this. Gajeel took a deep breath and pulled the blade back. Wiggling his fingers as the iron disappeared again.
"The cuffs aren't working?" The voice at Gajeel's feet whispered almost brokenly.
Gajeel smiled letting him see the metal disappear and reform.
"The cuffs were cheap flavourless pig iron and you should get yourself a better blacksmith," He chuckled. "The pantry forks tasted better."
Out in the hall, Carla had taken his small parcel of supplies and was distributing the contents through the bars of the other cells. The occupants where thanking her. Some of them audibly weeping.
"Why do all this? What the hell is so important that you need to make those kinds of weapons?" Charlotte's image burned in the back of his mind and Gajeel's stomach rolled, now filled with food threatening to come back up. He clenched his hands, resisting the urge to wipe them against his pants. Wipe away the absent blood he could still feel coating them. A thought occurred to him. And he left the Knight where he lay, not waiting for an answer. Moving out into the hall.
"Charlie's sister?" He called out once. Twice. And then a hand came shooting out between the bars, a heavily manacled wrist clanging noisily off the iron as fingers waved frantically for his attention.
Gajeel paused at the cell door, looking in at a face that made him stagger. He felt the world move under his feet before a large hand steadied him. Lily holding him upright as he stared and stared at the girl - at Charlotte's almost identical twin.
She signed some words to Gajeel but he didn't need to know the language to understand their meaning and he shook his head solemnly.
"She's dead. I'm sorry."
The girl collapsed to her knees. Like a puppet that had just had their strings cut. Brutal grief hitting her like a punch. They watched on as she slapped herself in the face, perhaps hoping this was a nightmare she could wake herself up from. Saw her pull at her hair and open her mouth in silent scream.
Kneeling on the dirty floor of her cell, the girl covered her face with thin blistered hands and wept silently. For the sister she'd lost and the hope that seemed to have been murdered along with her. Gajeel held out his hand to Lily who passed him the keys Juvia had taken.
The cell door creaked open and gently, slowly, Gajeel took off her chains. There was a moment when she looked up at him, tear stained face and he saw a familiar darkness in her eyes. Something born of suffering and hatred. Of despair. She stood and before he could protest, took the keys out of his hands and raced out passed him with a speed he legitimately found shocking for her emaciated condition. He heard her begin to unlock the cell doors. Could pick out the cries of relief as chains rattled and fell.
"Juvia said to stay put until help arrived. Is this really wise, Gajeel?" Lily whispered to him. Keeping his voice low.
"I ain't gonna tell them to get back in their cells and wait for rescue." He said.
"Understandable, I suppose," Though Gajeel could see Lily was uncomfortable with the deviation to plan.
Back outside the girl had halted outside the Knights cell as the others raced for the staircase, too happy to be free to care that they would likely be caught before getting to so much as an open window. Guilt hit him when he realised that they were going to be the distraction to their escape.
Gajeel cursed when the girl, snarling with anger, hands shaking unlocked the Knight's door, pulling so hard he wouldn't have been shocked if she pulled it from its hinges. She disappeared inside with a hateful urgency that made Gajeel think she'd kill him. Throttle him with her bare, bones fingers.
All three rushed after her but despite their fears they found her standing there, just out of reach. Glaring at him. Her hands moved frantically.
"I'm sorry. I really am," The man was sobbing. "I didn't think they'd pick her out. They normally... they're usually the same. They usually pick same weight and height. Men with men. Women with women," He stammered out. The girl threw herself forward, fists flying, hitting him. Her whole body was trembling when she composed herself again, repeating the same few words over and over. Carla hissed catching it where Gajeel and Lily didn't.
"You're a wretch," She sneered at the Knight. "He told her he would free them, and that he wanted to marry her." Carla announced to them. "Brought them extra food and a clean blanket every now and then and called it love."
At a glance, Gajeel could ascertain that regardless of what else was going to happen, a marriage was not on the table. If it ever had been.
"It was all I could do! I love you, Elle. I would have helped your sister if I'd known, " He was speaking to the girl now. It was difficult to tell her age and though Gajeel asked Charlie, she may have lied to him. There was so much bone and skin and hate on the sisters face now that it made it too difficult to guess. She could have been anything from fifteen to twenty and Gajeel wouldn't have known which.
Lily snarled.
"Is there no one in this place with any decency. And you preached duty and honor? I commanded armies. I led the same battalion for nearly three hundred years. You have no concept of honor, because a soldiers duty is always to the people. And they do not prey on the vulnerable prisoners in their care. I know good men burn that would cities before they'd leave loved ones to this!"
"You don't understand. That's why we're doing this. For the people. To protect them."
"That girl died screaming," Elle visibly flinched. "Who does that help? How does making that poison help anyone?" Gajeel roared. The man went quiet.
The Knight paused, his brow furrowed.
"That's poison is black wyvern venom... and its been around for centuries. We aren't making it. We're looking for a way to immunise people from it, before they use it again," He whispered, his voice steady.
"Use it again?"
Gajeel's senses warned him before the Knight spoke. A silent caution that the next words he was going to hear would not be easy ones. Maybe it was the tightness in the boys face. The quiver of his lips as he drew in a breath - steeling himself.
"The council..." He began. "... the King, the Princess. They were assassinated three months ago at the international summit."
Gajeel stuttered. His mind going blank. Eyes blinking furiously as he struggled to understand. Comprehend. As he tried to believe. Their pictures were in the papers just a few weeks ago at the negotiating table.
"You're lying!" But Gajeel's hearing told him that it was the truth. At least as far as the Knight believed.
"It's all easily fabricated...and if the Kingdom new the truth, they'd panic. And there needs to be order."
"How is this even a Kingdom when there ain't even a King?" Gajeel asked, wiping his mouth.
"The country does function without him. Do you want me to explain how governments work?" The Knight bit out, but Gajeel only snarled. He wasn't in the mood to be patronized.
"Panic?" Lily finally uttered, rolling the word around. "Do you not mean riot? Anger is normally how people respond to assassinations."
The man went very quiet for a moment.
"Riots will be the least of their problems, when they find out that Bosco is planning to exterminate the lot of them, " The Knight finally admitted.
Everyone went deathly still at that. Another segment of information that they'd been missing. One more piece to an increasingly terrible picture puzzle. No one spoke. Till Carla.
"She says your name is Percival," She was looking at Elle who seemed to have become as still as a statue. He nodded and they saw Carla's eyes twitch in restraint. Choosing her words. "You are going to tell us everything you know. Everything that's happening. Everything that's planned. And if you don't," She enunciated slowly. "Gajeel is going to kill you, and if he's had a change of heart due to your little fantastically ludicrous tale of forbidden love, then I will do it myself." She took hold of the front of Percival's jacket. Claws digging deep. "Do we understand each other?"
Elle clicked her fingers and Carla turned. There was a moment of communication between the two that made Gajeel sad he hadn't Levy's flare for languages. Carla turned back, both her and Charlie's sister were grinning maliciously.
Percival Noc had understood whatever it was they'd said and he stilled. Going suddenly deathly pale.
Notes
I just want to thank everyone reviewing this and following. Your comments mean a lot to me. They really do. I hesitate some times when I go to post. Hopefully you're still interested.