Lucretia wakes on the cliffs of Neverwinter. More specifically, she wakes inside a drab, grey stone room in a temple on the cliffs of Neverwinter. She can feel the old magicks that used to run through this place vibrating deep within the foundation underneath her. The stone is cold against her skin as she raises herself-gently, gently, she can still feel the wound's raw edges like a phantom pain even as she skates one hand over the hastily healed skin of her abdomen-but the magic pulses warmly within. Wherever she is, it used to hold powerful beings, maybe deities, once upon a time. But the magic is deep within the stone and when Lucretia instinctively reaches out, it slips away from her like dust on the wind. Nothing but a temple to some long-forgotten deity would be built so far out of the way with so much magic infused in the building itself.

Old magic then, stuff that hadn't been used in a decade or more. Not prone to reaching out to new magic users anymore-or she just can't reach it.

There are iron clamps around her wrists that lend themselves to the idea, but Lucretia is apt to believe the two explanations are not mutually exclusive, especially when she locates the one source of weak light-a slit window in the far left wall- and peers outside. The cliffs of Neverwinter are craggy and foreboding enough to be cliché. There are very few temples still active in the area.

All of this streaks through Lucretia's mind with a clinical detachment. There's another corner of her brain that's screaming and crying and hyperventilating like a terrified child. Lucretia cordons that part off carefully.

How are you going to get out of this one, Madam Director?

Lucretia doesn't even have the energy to reply. She waves the derisive voice off with a frown, wincing as the new skin over her wound pulls. Her robes are a mess, slashed to ribbons and barely recognizable as the regal costume she designed so long ago, but as she slides down to sit under the window, they're enough to wrap around herself.

Why am I here? Why not kill me right away, like the Ragged Harmony have been trying to do for months? Why take me to a secondary location?

Because they're fucking crazy, says a Taako's voice in her head and it actually makes Lucretia snort. It hurts her ribs and her head pounds. She sighs. She's gotten so used to being in pain these days. It's hard to remember what it feels like not to hurt all over.

It's what you deserve.

No.

No?

Lucretia's hands are old and wrinkled and tremble just a little. Her palms are supposed to be soft, because the Director of the Bureau of Balance never did her own dirty work, but Lucretia's hands are calloused and the skin is thick and dark where she held her staff, her paintbrush, her quill. Lucretia worked hard and she worked long and not so very long ago she did not work alone.

Right before he'd given her to the healers-who-were-not-healers, Taako had looked her in the eye. Lucretia could count on one hand the times he's done that since the Day of Story and Song. His eyes had been so blue and so wide and so scared. Her blood had been brushed high across his cheek like a smudged lipstick stain. He'd wanted to say something, she knew it. But he'd opened his mouth and closed it again and he'd looked so close to crying she'd wanted to cry too. He'd tightened his grip on her and Taako had never been very strong and he'd hated her for years and she'd felt safe.

He'd held her when she went down. He hadn't wanted her to die. Davenport had wanted to help.

They wanted to see you die, up close and personal.

But-but they hadn't. Hell, Taako would not have gone to that much trouble for anyone he even slightly disliked, let alone hated.

No, you're lying to yourself, says the poison in her mind, and Lucretia laughs because if she doesn't, she'll cry.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Lucretia is getting very used to being wrong.

The only way Lucretia can measure time in here is the travel of the light coming in through the slit in her window. The dirt and grime on the floor speak to this temple as being abandoned for a long time, but she can see a lighter path through the muck and dust near the north-eastern wall; there's a door somewhere in the stone, probably operated magically, and it's been opened and shut more recently. If she strains her eyes, Lucretia thinks she may be able to pick out footprints in the dust coming and going from the spot she'd woken up, but she may just be imagining things. She's losing light fast.

There's not much to focus on here, but sometimes she can hear the echo of voices outside her cell. The iron on her wrists is heavy and biting cold and Lucretia spends some time working strips of fabric into the gaps in the circles to protect her skin from chaffing.

If Taako hadn't been feeding me this week I probably could've been skinny enough to slip these, she catches herself thinking and has to laugh. If Taako hadn't been around she would've been dead four or five times over before she managed to starve herself to death.

You should be trying to get out, the logical part of her brain tells Lucretia. You're not useless just because you don't have magic.

"No, I'm useless because I haven't slept in weeks and I don't eat and I just almost died for the fourth time," Lucretia mutters. "Oh, and I'm getting old now, so cheers to that."

Her back twinges and aches in agreement.

Lucretia wants to be surprised at herself when she realizes with a jolt that she's been dozing but she's so tired all the time. She nearly misses what woke her in the first place until she looks up. The light outside has faded, leaving her in complete darkness.

Except, of course, for the light blue glow coming from the door materializing in the north-eastern wall. It materializes into thick oak wood, warped and rotting, which swings open with a scream from the hinges. Lucretia refuses to scramble to her feet, drawing herself up slowly. She may have lost a lot of herself these days, but she's hung onto her pride.

A figure steps through, brown hair and brown eyes in a very young face that reminds her so much of herself when she stepped onto the Starblaster for the first time.

"Oh, Daniel." Lucretia sighs. "What have you gotten yourself into?"