“You know, this really isn’t all that bad,” Leo said. “It’s not too damp down here, and I think they even changed the straw recently.”

“I swear to the gods, Leo. If you don’t shut up, I will bludgeon you to death with these manacles.”

To stress the point, Ferez brandished the heavy metal gloves covering his hands. They weren’t ordinary restraints, they were laced with Resonance Ore and enchanted with a very nasty Caelis enchantment. If Ferez tried to burn his way out, the metal would absorb his magic until it hit saturation, at which point a storm of cross winds would literally tear him apart.

Leo scoffed and reclined on his bed of straw. “Honestly, Ferez, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think you’d never been locked in a dungeon before.”

The dungeon in question was in the depths of Gascoigne’s castle. After being soundly thrashed by Ingrid, he’d been shackled, hitched to her horse’s saddle, and dragged back to the fief’s main settlement. It had not been a pleasant experience.

“I haven’t been locked in a dungeon before.”

“Then this is a fresh experience! You should savour it!”

“The only thing I’m going to savour is your execution.”

“Ferez,” Leo said with a frown in his voice, “that wasn’t very nice.”

“I don’t care. This is all your fault! You didn’t think it pertinent to mention Ingrid wanted to kill you?”

“Not until we were out to sea and safe from the assassins.” Leo hesitated and scratched his jaw. “And once we were out there, I knew you’d react like this.”

“Gods, you’re unbelievable,” Ferez said, getting to his feet and resuming his march around the cell, looking for weaknesses or defects in the stone, tapping experimentally on the banded wooden door. “Though, out of curiosity, why does she want you dead?”

“Well… remember the partner I was telling you about?”

“Yes?”

“He was her brother.”

Ferez whirled on Leo, his face contorting into a grimace of rage, a scowl and finally cracking into a grin as he started laughing.

“You murdered-“

“Uh! Uh!” Leo interrupted as he put a piece of straw in his mouth to chew. “Not murdered. It was self defence.”

“You murdered her brother? How on Telrus’s green earth did you expect this to go any differently?”

Leo shrugged. “They weren’t close.”

Ferez kept chuckling, unable to help himself. The situation was too ridiculous to even contemplate. But just as he considered making good on his threat and beating Leo to death, someone appeared on the other side of the door. There was the rattling of keys, a heavy clunk as the lock opened, and then the door swung open to reveal Ingrid, a goblet in her hand.

“Hello, boys. It’s time we had a chat. I think.”

Ferez curled his lip and stood his ground, despite the urge to back away pulling at his feet.

Ingrid looked him up and down and sniffed. “So, I’ve taken a bit of time, had a drink to settle myself, and I’ve decided to give you a chance to explain before I execute you.”

“Excellent!” Leo piped up, scrambling to his feet. “I knew you’d-“

“Not you, Leo,” she interrupted. “You’re fucked.”

“Oh come on! You tried to kill him yourself on three separate occasions!”

“As is my right as his sister. You, however, are not family.”

“Fucking Skjar,” Leo muttered as he settled back on his bed of straw, though he still seemed remarkably calm given the situation. Ingrid turned her attention back to Ferez.

“This rogue mage you’re hunting. What’d he do?”

“You don’t want to know his name?”

Ingrid gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I know plenty of rogue mages. No doubt you’re talking about one of them. What they’ve done to piss off the college is more interesting to me than who it is.”

Ferez nodded. That made a certain sense in his mind. “Very well. He murdered nine people, including six mages. I believe his actions are tied to a Resonance artefact.”

“Killing mages and ‘stealing’ from the college,” Ingrid said, nodding. “I can see why that would aggravate them. Any battlemages among the dead?”

“Two. Fitzroy and Gadfir.”

Ingrid’s eyebrows twitched ever so slightly. It was the most intense outward display of emotion Ferez had seen from her so far.

“Only one rogue mage I know with the punch to take down those two,” she said.

They spoke at the same time.

“Fahroul.”

“DuBois.”

There was a moment of silence as Ingrid shook her head, confusion plastered across her face.

“Fucking- what?”

“Oh, I thought we were on the same page there. Awkward. I’m after DuBois, I have no idea who this, Fahroul is.”

“Right, forget I mentioned his name,” Ingrid said, crossing the threshold and taking a seat against the wall. “DuBois killed those people?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Fucking oath, I’m surprised. The gutless prick couldn’t burn his way out of a dry paper bag.”

“I’ve heard as much. Hence why I think the artefact he’s carrying must have something to do with it.”

“Fairly safe bet, I’d say.”

She didn’t say anything more, just sat there frowning at the dirt. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Ferez cleared his throat.

“Are you going to release me now? Or later?”

Ingrid started, as though she’d forgotten he was even there. With a slight groan, she got to her feet and walked over to him. She stopped a few feet away, hands resting on her hips.

“I’ll deal with the little shit myself. You aren’t going anywhere, college boy.”

Ferez opened his mouth to protest, Ingrid’s eyes daring him to say something, when they heard what sounded like a muffled explosion above them. It was followed by the rapid thumping of booted feet and shouts.

“Cael, give me strength, what now?” Ingrid said, turning on her heel and stalking out the door. Ferez watched her go, helpless to do anything else while bound, and strained his ears to piece together what was going on. The bootsteps all seemed to converge somewhere deeper into the lord’s castle, where the entertaining room usually was in these places. It was hard to make out through the layers of floors and walls between them, but it sounded like there was a battle taking place.

“Well, it’s been fun, Ferez, but I’m going to be taking my leave now.”

“What are you on about now, Leo?” Ferez asked, turning to face the mage. Leo was sawing through his restraints with a circular blade made of red ice. “Where the Pit did you get that?”

“Ingrid forgot her wine,” Leo replied with a toothy grin as the shackles fell from his wrists.

Ferez laughed. “Great work, Leo! Now free me and we can get out of here.”

Ferez held his hands out towards the smuggler, but Leo stayed where he was, his smile growing just a little broader, his eyes just a little harder.

“You were willing to let her kill me, Ferez. You didn’t even try to convince her otherwise.”

“Leo, come now, you must understand. I was angry at you, you’d nearly gotten me killed, and I assumed, correctly I might add, that she had a legitimate reason for wanting you dead. You would have done the same in my shoes!”

“I saved you, Ferez! I dragged you away from the assassins in Salazaar. I fished you out of the sea off the coast. And you couldn’t even bring yourself to ask, ‘hey Ingrid, is executing my friend here really necessary?’”

Ferez’s mouth dropped open. He assumed he had something to say, but the words faded away when he realised Leo was right.

He’d saved him from the assassins. Saved him from drowning. Sure, both those situations were at least partially Leo’s fault to begin with, but he had Ferez’s back every time. And Ferez had been perfectly willing to let him die.

“I’m- I’m sorry, Leo. You raise a good point. I guess, I’ve been a little self-absorbed. I should have looked out for you, the way you looked out for me.”

Ferez looked away, his face burning with shame. He saw Leo’s boots appear in the corner of his vision, and he looked up, hopeful, into the other man’s eyes. Leo laid a comforting hand on Ferez’s shoulder and smiled.

“I’m so glad you could admit that, Ferez. I feel like we just grew a bit closer as friends. If you figure a way out of here, come find me. Maybe we could become partners!”

“What?” Ferez asked, dumbfounded as Leo turned to leave. “You still won’t release me?”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the heartfelt apology, Ferez. I just don’t believe it. Sorry!” he said, waving as he stepped through the door, his little bubble of wine trailing after him.

“Wait!” Ferez called, wracking his brain for anything to make Leo come back. “You won’t get out of here by yourself! Not with that cup of wine, at least.”

He held his breath for a few long seconds, and released it when Leo reappeared in the doorway.

“What’d you mean?”

Ferez sighed. “You can hear that, right? It sounds like a battle.”

“Yeah, a real roaring one at that.”

“Who do you think is fighting?”

“Given this is Lord Gascoigne’s castle, I’d say his men at arms.”

“Right, and who else?”

Leo frowned. “His enemies? I guess? Don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“Leo, what if it’s not his enemies? What if it’s ours? If the Guild followed us here?”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would the Guild attack an Aderathian lord’s castle just to kill a smuggler?”

“The artefact! Look, Ingrid recognised the names of those mages DuBois murdered. It seemed to rattle her. What if they were part of her smuggling network? Think about it, if DuBois and the Guild are both targeting smugglers, they could be trying to cover their tracks. We knew they were after you and I, but now we’re here with Ingrid-“

“The woman in charge of the entire operation,” Leo said, his eyes going wide. “They’re trying to get us all at once.”

“Exactly! So they’ll be hunting you too. You need me to get out of here.”

Leo fixed Ferez with a long, hard glare, before grudgingly walking back into the cell. He grabbed Ferez’s wrists and held them up, inspecting the Resonance gloves.

“Not much I can do about the gloves, I’m afraid. I can saw through the chains if you give me a few minutes though.”

“A few minutes?” Ferez shouted, “you cut through yours in seconds!”

“These chains are thicker than mine, and magic or no, I’m still working with ice here. I don’t have a competitive advantage over steel.”

From somewhere in the hallway, they heard a door being smashed in and a man swearing in a thick Aderathian accent. The Guild was here.

“Shit, no time, uh…” Ferez said, looking from his shackles to the chains to the wall.

The wall!

The chains were secured to a couple of steel plates an inch wide that were bolted into the stone.

“What about the anchors? Can you gouge them out of the stone?”

“That I can do.”

Leo hurried to the wall and started hacking the plates free with quick, precise movements. After a few seconds, they came loose and Ferez bundled up the extra couple of metres of chain in his arms.

“Let’s go!”

They burst into the hallway in time to see an assassin open the throat of one of the lord’s soldiers, then turn his cowled head towards them. There were more cloaked figures behind him.

“Run!” Leo shouted, taking off the other way down the hallway, Ferez on his heels. They burst through the first door that didn’t look like a cell. It opened onto a flight of stairs, heading back up to the ground floor. Without pausing to see if the assassins were still behind them, they both took off, reached the top, fell through the doorway, and slammed it shut behind them. Fortunately, being an entry point to the dungeons, it had an external deadbolt, though it wouldn’t take the assassins long to backtrack and pick up their trail.

“Where do we go now?” Leo asked, wheezing.

Ferez wracked his brain for ideas. If the assassins had spare men to raid the dungeon, the battle mustn’t be going well for Gascoigne’s forces. They could try to run for the entrance, but he’d bet there were more assassins lying in wait to pick off survivors as they fled.

But they couldn’t fight either; Leo didn’t have enough water and Ferez couldn’t do anything at all as long as he wore the gauntlets. They needed the damn key!

“We need to find Ingrid,” he said.

“Are you insane?”

“I know, I’m not happy about it either, but we aren’t exactly swimming in… well, water, here, and I can’t fight without my magic. We need her to unlock my restraints so I can fight our way out of here!”

“More likely she just kills us both where we stand.”

“Not likely, Leo. She’s a powerful mage, Pit, she humbled me, but the assassins are everywhere. She’s losing this fight, somehow. She can’t afford to reject our help right now.”

Leo nodded, though he didn’t look happy.

“Where to then?”

Ferez grimaced. “Wherever the fighting is thickest.”

*

They had torn through the ravaged castle, narrowly avoiding a few groups of assassins, but most of the squads they saw were preoccupied mopping up holdout groups of soldiers. As they went, Ferez noticed a few of the corpses scattered about had been killed by mage fire. But they didn’t quite look like any he had seen before.

They were blackened, sure; the skin melted away and the underlying flesh charred like a chunk of meat left to sit in an open flame. But they were… warped. Limbs mismatched lengths, skulls given strange dimensions and shapes. Ferez would have chalked it up to the effect of extreme heat, but they didn’t smell right, either. Burnt human flesh let off a host of smells ranging from appetising, to acrid, to metallic, depending on what exactly was incinerated. These corpses smelt earthy and sickly sweet. Like mushrooms sautéed in caramel, if caramel sautéed mushrooms made your nose hairs curl and a primal revulsion crawl down your spine and into the tips of your fingers.

Something was very wrong here.

They paused to catch their breath outside the entertainment hall. Ferez had been right, the focus of the fighting had been inside, but though the sounds of battle could still be heard, there seemed far fewer people now. He cracked the door open a sliver and glanced through.

The floor was littered with bodies; some assassins, but mostly Gascoigne’s men. He opened the door wider, taking in the expansive dance floor and the band’s stage, and realised there wasn’t a single soldier left standing. They were all dead, many of them burned in the same manner as the corpses outside. The sounds of battle were from the assassins trying to take down Ingrid.

She looked battered, her robe was gone, and she was covered in wounds. She blinked blood from her eyes as she held a hand to her gut. More blood seeped between her blackened fingers, her whole left arm charred from shoulder to the tips of her fingers. Her breathing was laboured, and she looked on the verge of passing out as the surrounding assassins renewed their assault.

They leapt at her in unison, knives raised, shouts on their lips, and she slammed a fist into the ground, a blast of air hurling the assassins back. She followed one poor bastard as he flew, propelling herself across the room and driving her fist into his gut. Blood, tissue and what looked like part of his spine erupting from his back as Ingrid’s wind magic tore a hole through him. She whirled and went after her next victim; her face set in a savage grin as she crisscrossed the room, literally tearing apart the remaining guilders. When the last was dead, his body from the waist up landing in a completely different spot to his legs, she slumped to the ground. Ferez ran over and dropped to his knees, pulling her into his arms. Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared at him, as though trying to comprehend what she was seeing. Then they opened wide, and she snarled.

“You’re meant to be in the dungeon!”

“We thought it prudent to vacate our cell when the assassins came knocking,” Ferez replied. He wanted to smirk, but seeing the severity of her injuries up close, he couldn’t bring himself to. Ingrid scoffed and turned her head with difficulty, seeing Leo hovering over Ferez’s shoulder.

“I see you brought the idiot. How did you get out?”

“You forgot your wine when you stormed out.”

Ingrid groaned and raised her charred hand to her face. “I guess that makes me the idiot this time. Alright, fair’s fair. Finish me.”

She let her hand fall away so she could look Ferez in the eyes. They stayed there, eyes locked, for a few long moments. He couldn’t kill her. She may have had every intention of executing him along with Leo, but she was a warrior, and an exceptional one at that. No warrior deserved a death like this.

“How about, instead of killing you, you give me the key to these gauntlets, and I help you get out of here?”

Ingrid smiled, actually smiled when he said that. Not like she did when they fought on the beach, or when she was slaughtering guilders. It seemed like it had actual compassion behind it.

“You should take this opportunity, fire mage. You won’t get another.”

“I can live with that.”

Ingrid sighed and stuck her good hand into her pant pocket, fishing out a heavy iron key. Ferez helped her sit, then held out his hands. The restraints fell to the floor with a satisfying thunk as he rubbed feeling back into his hands.

“Right, now let’s get out of here. Leo, you carry her, I’ll clear the path.”

Leo went to pick Ingrid up, but she stopped him with a gesture. “I think not. I’ll walk.”

“Walk? You can barely sit! How do you expect to walk out of here?”

“Very slowly and with great difficulty, but you’re the one who decided to save me, so deal with it. I’m not trusting this buffoon to carry me anywhere.”

She had a point.

“Alright then, at least give us an idea of how to get out of here?”

“In terms of finding a path? That’s easy. The musicians have an entrance behind the stage. We can take that through to the servants’ quarters, into the garden and out over the wall. Assuming the Guild hasn’t torched the town, I’ve got a guy there who can get us out.”

“Excellent, let’s not delay then.”

Ferez stood up and started walking, but Ingrid grabbed him by the wrist. “There’s one more thing.” She used him to pull herself to her feet, letting go when she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t keel over. “DuBois was here.”

“’Here’ here?”

“Yep. Why else do you think I had so much trouble?”

Ferez had to admit that, seeing her dismantle the assassins, he had struggled to figure that out himself. If she had fought DuBois first, though…

His admiration for her grew. DuBois had demonstrated how dangerous he was when he murdered the other mages, but she had survived her brush with both him and a contingent of assassins.

“Where did he go?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. He had me, just needed to finish me off, when he started blabbering to himself about some nonsense and wandered deeper into the castle. Rude bastard left his cronies to do the deed.”

“Didn’t work out too well for him, did it?”

“No, but there’s still time and we aren’t free yet.”

The three of them turned as they heard voices growing outside the hall. Ferez doubted very much that it was Gascoigne’s men.

“Shall we?” Ferez asked, offering his arm to Ingrid. She batted it aside and started walking, but stopped and hurried back. She bent down and collected up the chained gauntlets, then set off again.

“Why in Val’Pyria’s name are you bringing those?” Ferez asked.

“Probably so she can lock you back up in your sleep,” Leo said, still looking sulky about going back to Ingrid. She shot him a glare.

“These things are expensive. I’m not leaving it for the Guild to take home as loot.”

The three of them hurried to the stage door as the voices grew louder, slipping through and quietly closing it behind them. Ferez pressed his ear to it and listened as a group of people burst into the hall.

“No no no no no NO!” an unfamiliar voice screamed. They sounded manic. “Where did she go? They said she would still be here!”

“Maybe you should have finished her when you had the chance, DuBois?” replied another voice, low and refined, smooth like the surface of gently churning milk.

“Shut up! If you had captured the fire mage and the smuggler like WE TOLD YOU TOO, I wouldn’t have had to waste precious time SEARCHING FOR THEM!”

“I told you we had the situation in hand. It looks like they came back through here, anyway. If you’d left us to do our job, you would have gotten all three of them.”

“Shutupshutupshutup! Let me think… What was that? Oh, yes. Of course. Yes, good idea.”

DuBois went silent, and Ferez heard a scraping sound, followed by a high-pitched giggle.

“The blood is fresh, not yet set! Tasty, tasty. They were here just a second ago! Spread out, pick a door, any door, but pick every door! Find them!”

Ferez expected immediate movement, but there was just silence, before the second voice asked, “Did you really just lick that?” followed by a sigh and a ‘come on’ to whoever else was there.

Ferez pulled back from the door and looked at the others.

“Let’s go.”