23. No Way Out But Through
General Summary
Full Scene
The party snuck in around the back while Ta'lok, Saeldor, and Cri approach the front gates, aiming to distract Amir while Mirage and Cypher sneak around.
They peeked in a door on the third floor and saw the Avariel who gave Mirage her tracker tattoo. Deciding to avoid confrontation for the moment, they fled down the stairs before he could spot them, and found a small library with a study desk.
A locked, trapped desk drawer containd a fiendish journal, but Mirage had to cut a hole in the desk to get at it. With unignorable evidence of trespassing behind them, Mirage decided to bag every scrap on the desk and move on, hopefully landing them further off and better-hidden when the damage was discovered.
Scanning, she sees two exits. A door to the south, unfamiliar, and one to the west, which brought cold memories of being pulled, bound, through on her way to the lab and tattooist upstairs.
Cypher's got one eye on the stairs they came down, but Mirage has point on this mission, so he's not bringing her anywhere she don't wanna go. The look on his face is "your call."
Mirage speaks in a whisper. "My old cell is down that way," she says, indicating the east door, then pans to indicate the other one in the south wall, "I’m thinking his suite wouldn’t be on the ground floor, so I want to peek around the other door.”
Cypher nods, keeping his voice low as well. He glances at the door which leads to her cell. "We can link back and rip it apart on the way out if you want," he says, with an eagerness that is transparently self-motivated.
Mirage hesitates, grinding her teeth, extremely tempted. “Fuck, maybe. Dirt first, sabotage second.”
"Right."
He follows her as she heads to the south door and puts her ear against it. It's quiet in there, far as she can tell. But the adreneline and nerves are making it hard to hear past her breath and heartbeat.
Nimbus brushes against her cheek, a cooling mist. He offers to scout for her again.
"Thanks bud," she murmurs. The cloudform slips under the door, just enough to perceive the room on the other side, but only for a second before he quickly retreats.
The room is a bedchamber, single occupancy, pretty standard furnishings but there's something odd going on.
Every drawer on the chest of drawers is standing open, and there's a book floating above the bed, pages flipping. It's not perfectly still, kind of wavering in the air.
She relays this in a hushed whisper to Cypher, whose "the fuck?" facial expression mirrors her own, but only for a minute before she sees the wheels turn, and his eyebrows rise. He motions her away from the door, and waits until they're both several paces away from it before whispering in a voice so low she has to strain for it.
"Invisible. Fey, or maybe minor fiend? No way to be sure. We need a way to get Saeldor along on these things."
“Yeah I had the same thought. It’s a fucking bedroom, we need in there.”
"Do we need in there now?"
Mirage gives him a frustrated frown. That's her dirt in there.
He holds his hands up, palms out. ""I'm not saying skip it, I'm saying let whatever's already snooping look around and go in when it leaves." He pauses, thinking.
"Nimbus, were there other doors?"
The cloudform looks at Mirage, who repeats the question. He sends her an image of a door facing this one, sunlight shining from underneath it. Windows in the east wall with curtains drawn over them. She relays the message.
He nods, gears are turning, "If you want to draw it out of the room, then we should try to distract it southward. I'd rather be able to retreat through known ground, if we have to retreat."
Mirage nodded, considered her options. An invisible enemy. Hard to stab what you can't see. The first step, she reasoned, was to render it visible and therefore stabbable.
To render it visible, she had to know where it was. Focusing on the area outside the south door, Mirage practices her ventriloquism.
From two rooms away, the sound of approaching footsteps; djinn-size footsteps.
She waits a moment, just long enough for the invisible creature to take the bait. Then, kneeling by the door, she breathes out, channelling the air into a slim stream running under the door and along the floor before guiding it up in a cloud of gathered dust near the southern exit. Keeping lookout, Nimbus sends her a flash of creature, revealed by the particles.
Batlike wings, a scorpion tail, a gaunt, sharp-cornered body, about the size of a halfling.
As soon as she has a target, Mirage focuses her attention on the air around the creature. Specifically, in its lungs. It scrabbles at its throat, suffocating as she zooms into the room, finishing it off with a few deft slashes.
It falls, throat split, to the floor and shakes a second, before disappearing in a puff of sulphur.
The cloud has not even dispersed when Mirage begins her search of the room. She does a cursory sweep of the place in general, and quickly determines it too plain and too near the outer wall to be Amir's chambers. Her next stop is the journal the imp had been reading, though she is careful not to touch it. Infernal again.
Finished checking the exits, Cypher clocks her frustration. "Want me to have a look?"
She nods, "but don't touch it."
He tugs a sleeve down to cover his hand, and takes the book from her. His eyes glass over as it levitates in the air above his palm. The pages flip as his eyes flick rapidly back and forth. When the back cover flips down and the book falls back into his hand, his eyebrows raise. He glances up, towards where they saw the avariel earlier.
"Chucklefuck's a spy." He looks back down at Mirage. "This Amir asshole's just making enemies left and right, huh?"
"Oh my god."
Mirage was expecting dirt, but not of that kind. "Any fey shit in there?" she asks.
He shakes his head. "Not that I saw. Do you have a way of checking for, like, secret compartments or anything? This thing" indicating the journal, "was right out in the open. Does he just... not care if his mark knows he's a mark?"
“Who do you take me for, of course I do”
Mirage focused, and eddies of winds move out from her, carrying her awareness with them. Slipping behind shelves, floorboards, open drawers.
Nothing.
“What the fuck, was this planted on him? My brain hurts.”
Cypher's also bothered, frowning, thinking
"Either Amir already knows he's under suspicion and that chuckles is watching him, or maybe he can't read Infernal. Or maybe he's scared enough that Chuckles knows he won't come in here. I don't know. I don't know enough. We should keep searching. This is weird, though."
Mirage nods, frowning in thought. Does Amir read infernal? If his pact is with the fey, there's no reason for it, but then what are imps and infernal spy journals and creepy fiendish flesh-books doing in his palace?
Cypher is looking at the closed journal, "I don't think the details in here are worth carrying around," he says, "I skimmed, but knowing what time he had coffee with who doesn't seem helpful."
"Yeah, let's keep moving."
Cypher places the journal on the nightstand, jerks a thumb to the unexplored door. "Some kind of chapel in there, lots of open windows."
"We should check it out, at least briefly."
Cypher shrugs, and she leads the way to the southern door, stepping carefully through after Nimbus verifies the coast clear.
The iconography is familiar. It's that of Akadi, a primordial and goddess of wind, air, freedom, travel, and movement. A very popular religion in Auria for obvious reasons. Wind moves freely through this chapel as is traditional for her holy spaces.
"Bullshit," Mirage spits. She doesn't believe for a second this guy cares about Akadi.
It draws a raised eyebrow from the warlock.
She faces him. "A man who keeps prisoners doesn’t give two shits about freedom, or autonomy.”
A brief look of confusion, followed by understanding and a nod.
"A front, then."
Mirage nods, and starts her search.
The chapel is clean, normal, well-maintained. She gets a few peeks into the courtyard, which is shockingly verdant for a fortress. The edges near the walls are crowded with lush greenery and huge, vibrant flowers, the inner area is scattered with a naturalistic arrangement of the same; leafy ornamentals, berry bushes, fruit trees, shrubs, flowers, everything green and growing. There's a lovely smell on the air from it. Must be the work of that botanist Saeldor talked to.
She heads back to the door and Cypher follows her back through to the study, where she approaches the east door in the direction of her cell with a hammering heart.
She presses her ear against it, listening.
She hears voices. Muffled, probably not in the same room; adjacent. The baritone is Ta'lok's, followed by Cri's alto translation, even fainter. Her stomach flips.
The next voice is like a pour of cold sludge down her back. A drawling, arrogance that makes the walls close in and her throat close. She stops breathing.
Hovering by her shoulder, Nimbus bumps her cheek in an attempt at comfort that fails to penetrate the suffocating fog that's muffling the same voices which brought it on.
"Marwa?"
The tenor draws her eyes back into the room like a shot. Eyes wide, she realizes his hand is on her shoulder.
"Two rooms over," she croaks. Her voice sounds strange, far away. Her heart is shaking her ribs.
Nimbus still hovers nearby. She sends him not even words, just an instinctive desire for more information, specifics, distance, exits. He spreads into a transparent fog and slips under the door.
"Okay," this from the warlock, "Breathe, kay?"
She nods, jerkily. She realizes she's moved. Stepped further away from the door. His hand is still on her shoulder. She focuses on his face, trying to fill her lungs, to think. She puts her hand on the hilt of her knife.
Cypher is watching her closely, concern is making creases around his eyes.
"Wh... what do you need?"
Terror and fury are warring across her mind, she can't fight like this, she can't get herself or anyone else out of here safely like this. She can't breathe.
She presses an open palm against his chest, the other on her own, trying to match his breathing. Concentrates to meet his eye.
"Okay?"
Her voice is still hoarse.
A millisecond's confusion, followed by gentle comprehension.
"Para você, yes."
She focuses, tries to follow the inhale, exhale. Slow, deliberate.
Breathe, breathe.
Slowly, the air in the room is returning. The stars start to clear from her vision.
Cypher's eyes dart to a point over her shoulder.
"Company?"
She turns to follow his gaze. Nimbus is back. He sends her a visual of the hallway that the door opens into. Almost directly across from this door is another with two guards posted on either side of it. The voices come from beyond it.
“They’re with him in a guarded office," Mirage relays.
She can breathe again. She drops her hands, kicking herself, remembering Ta’loks comments earlier.
Focus up.
It’s not like last time, I’m not alone.
Looking at cypher while these thoughts run through her head.
"Guards are posted, not patrolling?" Cypher directs this question to nimbus, who bobs a nodding motion in the air.
"Boa."
"what?"
"'Good.' Sorry. Good."
She nods, still trying to gather her thoughts into something useful.
"Marwa?"
"Yeah?"
"Look, we can go. We can slip out how we came in, wait for Boss and the others to leave, and nuke the place if you want. But listen, if you feel like we're not done here, then like I said - like you said, you're not here alone."
He pauses, "Not that you need the backup, but, well, I really hope you don't think I came here to stand idly by." He cracks a small half-smile. He's rambling, disorganized.
Listening to him and feeling his breath and remembering Ta’lok’s words is grounding. The anger feels like control. She leans into it.
Cypher smiles as her personal winds start whipping up a tempest around her.
"Fuck this guy, yeah?"
"We're not done," she says firmly, "Fuck this guy."
A squeeze from the lingering hand on her shoulder before it drops.
“You got any ideas?" she asks.
"Oh, several."
"Hit me."
"I already mentioned liquification, catatonia... Oh you meant for getting through there."
She snorts.
He grins; quick, genuine.
"If you want to slip by, I can try to distort both of us, we'd have to move fast, though."
“Fuck yes. Should I try and help or try and make a distraction to draw their attention?”
"A distraction could be good - it's not invisibility. Can you throw your voice again? That north door probably leads outside"
“You bet your ass I can.” She turns toward the door.
"Wait."
"What?"
"Which way are we going?"
She considers while she relays the exit options that Nimbus told her about.
"Up the tower stairs, I think. This floor is still too close to the entrance for his chambers. I bet you this arrogant fuck sleeps right at the top."
"Got it."
Report Date
03 Mar 2025
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