Chapter 34
“Alright, we have a prisoner on the loose somewhere in the building. We know he hasn’t tried to escape yet, because we have the grounds covered. What we don’t know is what he’s after. You are to stand guard where ordered, and not leave unless given permission to do so. Understood?”
“Yes sir.” The robed guards responded. They stood in a circle around Rasmus, while he looked around at their hooded faces. The torchlights kept him from seeing much, but he could make out their unbending jawlines and mouths, all kept uniformly serious. He looked at one guard in particular, who wore a small pendendant around his neck. “Alright captain, they’re yours. Don’t let anything bigger than a fly get past you.” Rasmus walked down the corridor to his chambers, and closed the door, leaving the guards with their captain.
“Stay here and stand guard by his door. You’ll have to be alone for now, but I’ll get you someone else as soon as possible. I know how Rasmus likes to keep his room under close watch.
“Yes sir. I’ll stand by and await any further orders.” The guard that spoke stepped back from the others and made his way toward the chamber doors, stopping at a pillar beside them to stare down the hallway toward the group, and the only entrance to the area. The captain continued talking and let the group of guard away, turning a corner. Their voices echoed in the stone corridors for a few moments, and then slowly disappeared, the final words hanging like an epitaph in the air: “He is dangerous.”
The guard looked around. The light form the torches successfully got into the alcoves on either side of the hallway, so that he could see behind the pillars almost perfectly. He smiled. This is an easy post. Only one way in that’s not from Rasmus’s room, and he’s locked himself away. I can handle this without a problem. He took his hood off to scratch at his head, fiddling with sword with the other hand. One thing the guard did was to make sure he never took his eyes off of the other side of the hallway, which is why it came as a shock that he felt a blade press into his back.
“Don’t move,” a voice growled. The guard would have gone for his sword, except the voice was so close it could have been coming from within his own head. He paused, and the blade in his back lightened up slightly.
“Who are -“ His sentence was cut short by the sudden presence of something hard and metallic in his mouth, pressing against this lips, sitting lengthwise. Although unable to look down, the guard was fairly positive he was being threatened by a dagger in his mouth.
“You don’t want to talk. You are going to slowly walk backwards, until I say otherwise.” The pressure on the guard’s mouth increased and he felt a sharp pain suddenly appear at the front of his mouth. With the faint taste of blood beginning to appear on his tongue, the guard began to step backwards, away from the pillar, and into the shadows.
A muffled thud echoed through the hallway, and after a moment, the hooded guard reappeared at his post, though the hood was further down his face. The doors to Rasmus’s chambers flew open, and Rasmus stepped out.
“What was that sound?!” The guard shrugged. “Where’s the captain? I need to speak with him.” The guard pointed down the corridor, toward the direction the group had left in earlier. Rasmus stared at the guard for a moment longer. “You seem familiar…” Rasmus shook his head and quickly left the hallway, torches flickering in his wake. The guard stared after him for a few moments longer, then walked into Rasmus’s chambers, closing the doors behind him.
With an audible click, the lock swung into place. Miika quickly removed the guard’s robe and tossed it to the side. Looking around, he walked up to the nearest bookcase, and began to randomly pull books off of the shelves. After clearing most of the bookcase onto the floor, he moved to the next one and started over. After he had cleared that one out, he stood back to look around the room again. The walls were lined with bookcases, and Rasmus would be back long before Miika could go through each one. There has to be a faster way, he thought to himself. Ah…of course!
Miika stood in the center of the room, facing the doors. He placed his hands together in front of him, clasping them partially open, so that the palms still faced downwards at an angle. He began to chant, his voice echoing off of the hollow walls of the room. As his chanting intensified, the books on the shelves began to vibrate, the sound slowly joining the rhythm he was producing. His chanting increased again, and the shelves themselves began to vibrate angrily, until finally a bookcase to his left ripped off of the wall and scraped across the floor a couple of feet. His chanting stopped, and he ran over to the bookcase, slipping behind it. Reaching into his pocket, Miika pulled the key out, cringing at the red stains on it. He wiped the key on the bottom of his shirt one last time, but he had done everything he could earlier. It appeared that blood wasn’t as easily cleaned as he had hoped.
Miika slipped the key into a small slot on the wall, and a door materialized in front of him. Grabbing the ring that served as a handle, he swung the door open, and saw a wooden box on a table. Carefully opening the box, Miika smiled as he saw before him two glittering rings; one silver with an obsidian pearl situated in it, the other one gold with a ruby in it. Gingerly picking them up, he studied them closer to his eyes. I had thought these were only legend. I didn’t realize they actually existed…
Loud yelling from the hallways snapped Miika back to his senses, and he crouched low to the ground to listen. It didn’t take him long to realize that the guard’s lifeless body had been discovered. He began to move from around the bookcase when the doors rattled with a loud bang, and more yelling. The hallway sounded like it was filling up, and Miika didn’t want to be around when it was full. The only source of escape he could find would be through the windows, which was not an experience he had wanted to repeat. His right hand began to grow warm, and Miika opened it. The rings were glowing with some other-worldly light. They were glowing.
The doors creaked under the force of the guards in the hallway, and before he could think, Miika slid one ring onto each finger and took off for the windows. The doors flung open, and guards began flooding the room, aiming themselves at Miika. As he reached a window, he leapt at it, turning around and throwing a dagger in the direction of the crowd as glass exploded all around him. Guards rushed forward to the windows, but there was no sign of Miika anywhere. The glass from the freshly broken window blanketed the ground, but the various sorcerers present in the room couldn’t make out any footprints, nor could they locate him through any magical means.
Rasmus appeared at the room, visibly angry at the events that had just unfolded. He tried to step in, but his progress was impeded by something large on the floor that stopped his foot. Looking down Rasmus’s eyes came upon the sight of the captain of the sorcerer guard on the floor, on his back, a shocked expression on his face, and a dagger through his throat.
“Gentelemen!” Rasmus shouted, getting their attentions. “Ready yourselves and all of the other sorcerers. I will contact the City Guard and speak to their captain. We are going after Miika. No matter what he does, he will not be allowed to escape. Now go!” As quickly as they had arrived, the guards vacated the room, leaving Rasmus to his thoughts and the blood stain on the floor that marked the resting place of the former captain just moments ago. Rasmus looked around the room, at all of the books on the floor. Walking over to the moved bookcase, he looked around, at the empty room behind it. Well then. I’m going to have to make an example of him.