It seemed the imp was not done with whatever it was doing, to my annoyance. I had been in this room for quite some time now, and standing around even longer was probably not the way to a successful escape.

"Status."

Ewynne

Age: 18

Level: 4

Experience: 43/400

Race: Half-blood

Class: Enchantress

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 14

Agility: 12

Constitution: 8

Endurance: 8

Intelligence: 20

Wisdom: 12

Willpower: 15

Perfection: 14

Charisma: 12

Health: 30/80

Mana: 122/470 (12/minute)

Stamina: 80/80 (16/minute)

Unallocated Attributes: 3

I looked at the scratches on my arms and the bite on my hand with some consternation. They had reduced my Health by another four points, and now they bled slightly. As filthy as I was, I felt there was a serious risk of infection or worse; I really needed to get clean.

I took another look at the imp, but seeing no change I went back to considering my status. I had three unallocated points. I would have liked to put them into Willpower, for the same reason as last time, but also since I wanted to reach twenty and hopefully branch it, just like Intelligence.

Considering my situation though, I felt that my most immediate concern was the risk of actually dying. While Willpower increased the damage of my spell; Fire Burst, in every sense so far, I would be better off enchanting more.

A look at my Mana told me that unless I used Fervent Casting, which I had still not tested, so it might not work as I thought it did, I could not currently cast a single spell. While that would improve to one soon, it would take a considerable amount of time before I could cast two spells.

Constitution it was.

I walked over to the as of yet unopened door and listened, trying to hear anything from the other side. Unfortunately this one was well made too, and no sound carried. I went back to the imp, whatever was going on still was not finished and I seriously considered leaving the creature behind. But the whole is bound to your soul part, made me feel that it might not be the best of ideas. Though at this point I was very tempted anyway.

It took another minute or so for the imp to start moving and the delay grated on my nerves. The creature blinked rapidly for a moment before straightening with a small frown and a sigh. I could somewhat sympathize, I would not appreciate loosing levels or halving my size either. But it was a choice the creature made, it had other options as I saw it, so there must be a reason it thought this was the preferable one.

Seeing as I now had the imp's attention I wanted to get on with the important issue, of not being here.

"How do we get out of here?"

The imp looked at me seemingly in confusion for a moment, before flapping its wings once and shooting up to be face to face with me. That made me start in surprise, which made the imp grin, until it realized I was not scared by the abrupt movement, but rather curious as to how it managed to fly as it did, I leaned this way and that, looking at its wings in confusion. They kept flapping lazily, which should not keep the imp as still as it was, or even afloat to my mind, this was not how a bird or even an insect managed it.

"Focus! You really are like those crazy Mages in their towers, getting distracted way too easily. There is a portal through the door there." The imp pointed at the door, which I had tried to listen at recently. I considered that for a moment, it might very well have been lying earlier about the people in there, but I doubted that.

"Details, please."

The imp managed to look a bit sheepish at that.

"Well... I didn't exactly pay attention when I got here, my master was busy being, well, murdered. And so my attention was on not joining in that experience. A few details might have, gone past me unnoticed if you would." I pinched the bridge of my nose as I felt a headache coming on. At least having the familiar was not exactly expensive.

Being tied to someones soul was supposed to be permanent though, so why would the imp just run away from a master and be fine afterward?

"If you were his familiar, how did you survive him dying? I thought it was a rather permanent arrangement."

The imp nodded slowly, with an expression clearly stating that it was picking and choosing how much manure to throw into its concocted story. I rolled my eyes at it all.

"Well, you see... Most of the time... Mages have a contract you see... It will... Sometimes... You see..."

I wanted to shake the obnoxious thing.

"Out with it, so we can move on."

"Most Mages never take on a true familiar through the Order, since that is a permanent bond. They use blood contracts instead, which are less restrictive and final." The words came out in a rush but I just shrugged.

I had assumed taking a familiar was permanent, I had only been considering the lack of downsides, not the permanency of the arrangement. The fact that the imp had fled confused me, and now why was clear. There was no true bond between the Mage and the imp.

Apparently the imp felt I should have reacted more, its confusion was evident.

"You know there is a portal in the next room, since you came through it. But you did not pay attention to anything else, busy with not being killed. Is that all you know?"

The imp made a strange shrugging motion while flying.

"The room is really big, they seemed to have built something under what used to be the floor, and taken out part of the ceiling for some reason."

I sincerely hoped the imp was wrong about that being all it knew, because that was close to nothing.

"Where was the portal, near the door? Middle of the room? More importantly, where does the portal go?"

The imp was quiet for a moment, in what I hoped was thoughtful contemplation and not a planning out of lies.

"The portal is quite near to the door, on the remaining floor, a short distance to the left. The portal... the portal connects to wherever it was opened last."

I stared with incredulity at the creature.

"And the reason we want to use a portal that could take us anywhere, rather than sneak out is, what exactly?" My temper was rising and I felt an urge to finish killing the creature.

"Well, you know I mentioned my previous master? He was not too good with time you see, got the days mixed up more often than not. You see, there should be an attack on the compound anytime now."

Not quite getting the problem I asked the obvious question.

"Would not that be a good thing for us? Cheer on our saviors?"

The imp scratched its head, grimacing.

"Have you heard of the Champions of Truth?"

I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Alright, there is a portal on the other side of this door leading somewhere, that sounds reasonable."

The imp nodded emphatically.

"Yes, it will take us to a place set from this side, not where my former master came from. No Champions of Truth, wherever it goes, no one would be that stupid."

I nodded in return and moved up to the door. Following my recent habit I slowly opened it, taking in what I could see as I did so. It soon dawned on me that there was no point in moving so carefully. Except for about two meters of floor along the walls, the large room was hollowed out, both upward and downward. A quick peek showed that there was no one on the same floor as me. Moving carefully would not make people fail to notice me if they looked down from the floor above and did not make me visible to anyone below me anyway.

Once inside the room, I looked around. The removal of the floor and ceiling was not done by skilled craftsmen, the work was shabby and haphazard. I could not help wondering what this place had been used as before, since it was no doubt at least twenty meters across, which seemed very large for a single room.

The room was dimly lit by a few wall-sconces on each side. There did not seem to be any light on the floor above and as the windows on the floor I was on were dark I assumed it was night outside, which would also explain the lack of people around.

I frowned, there was something about that thought that did not sit right with me. Shrugging after a moment, I moved up to the edge of the remaining floor, to look down at what was below.

Someone had put down a lot of work to dig several meters into the ground, and then done a poor job of everything else. There was a floor down there, though I hesitated to think of it as such, it looked as if someone had thrown wooden boards into the muck until they stopped sinking and then repeated that across the ground until it was something that would hold weight. The result was barely functional and did not look very safe.

A bit off center there was something interesting though, a large stone basin, a couple of meters across, filled with what looked like tar.

Why would someone dig a pit, inside of a house, and then put a tub of tar in it? I shook my head and looked around the dug-out area. I spotted several people in a far corner, some of them were sitting crouched in the shadows along a wall, where the illumination from the wall-sconces barely reached. Whereas others walked carefully towards the center. As they came more into the light I could see that each held a gem like the one the guard in the pen had earlier. They stumbled along on the uneven footing until they reached the basin, and then carefully dropped the gems, one by one into the tar. I sat crouched and waited for something to happen, but nothing did.

I was startled out of my observations by a hissing in my ear.

"Don't you think you should stop looking at the scenery, and, oh, I don't know, use the bloody portal!" Having said that the imp waved a hand towards a softly glowing circle set in the floor, about halfway between where I was and the far wall. There had been a bit of extra floor left intact for it, and it was surrounded by inlaid symbols, some glowing and some not.

Deciding not to try to figure out what was going on here and taking the imps advice I swiftly shuffled over to the portal.

The symbols around it seemed similar to the ones that had been on my one and only spell book, which meant I could not read them at all. I glanced at the imp and it shrugged, pointing at one symbol that was a simple circle.

"That one activates the magic, step into the portal, I will use it and follow." It hissed out in a whisper.

Fighting down images of me exploding in some elaborate trap, I stepped into the portal. The imp pressed a hand down on the circular glyph and followed me quickly.

That was when it dawned on me, the thing that I could not put my finger on earlier. I turned to the imp as the magic formed a dome around us, no doubt to make sure no one lost an arm or a leg during transportation.

"It is in the middle of the night. The Champions of Truth would never ever attack at night!"

The imp shrugged as the world faded around us.

"Oops?"