Caracara's Hunt

When they reached the third floor, Arawn was surprised by the strange decorations. Instead of the lavish carpets and body-sized paintings, the walls were covered in weird weapons and masks. There were wheels with sword-like edges and handles, whips with spikes, daggers with curved blades, and various other weapons whose purpose he couldn"t decipher.

All between them were half-face masks. They were made of wood and painted in different colors. The most common pattern was a white mask with red lines around the eyes and cheeks, but it wasn"t the most shocking one. That t.i.tle went to a deep crimson mask with black and purple b.u.t.terfly designs. Each line on the cheeks and around the eyes was arrow straight, speaking of elite craftsmanship.

Yet Arawn felt no appreciation for the talent required for such a feat. He was disturbed by the hundred empty eyes staring at him from the walls.

"d.a.m.n, I didn"t think about this. We"ll have to risk it," Rain murmured and raised her hand.

"Didn"t think about what?" Arawn asked, watching her with curiosity. Nothing had yet happened, had it?

The trio stood by the exit from the stairs and were just looking around. They were tense and ready to spring to action at a moment"s notice.

"Are you stupid?" Val snapped. "We"re blind here, and if she lights the ether, we"ll be discovered."

"What do you suggest then?" Rain whispered back in a harsh voice. "To walk around here blind and hope we don"t trip over any guards?"

With a quick look around, Arawn realized that there were no windows in the hall. There were sconces hidden between the masks, but all of them were dark. No light could be found in the hallway.

"I can see," he said. "There"s no one besides us around here."

"It"s pitch black here," Betty grumbled, reaching for him with her hand, but it was a blind grab.

Arawn had no idea what she was planning, but he wasn"t going to move into her range just to find out. He pushed through everyone into the hallway and quickly described to them their surroundings. Of course, they didn"t believe him, so he materialized a small ball of ether to light up the hallway for a few seconds.

Everyone"s expression changed so drastically that he barely held back a laugh. Was it really that surprising that he could see in the dark? They seemed more shocked by it than when they had seen how much ether he could call upon himself.

"How do you do it?" Rain asked in awe.

"Do what? See?" He shrugged before realizing no one could see it. Darkness was quite annoying that way. "How do YOU see?"

Betty scoffed. "Unlike somebody, we don"t have night vision. Where did you even pick that up?"

"Born with," Arawn answered before turning to Val who had started walking.

After the moment of shock, the man"s expression had returned to sternness. With his left hand on a dagger"s hilt, he advanced forward in slow steps, listening to the noise around him. There was only them in that particular hallway, but who knew if there were guards behind the next bend.

"Come, just walk straight," Arawn told the two women and jogged forward to catch up to Val. "Let me go first."

There were no obstructions on the ground, so he just made sure everyone stayed away from the walls. If any of the weapons crashed to the ground or hit each other, there would be enough noise to bring over all of the mercenaries from downstairs.

Since they had seen the girl on the southern side of the building, they aimed to go in that direction. However, once inside, the house became nothing short of a labyrinth. The hallways snaked right and left, going in such zig zags that it was no longer possible to tell in which direction anyone was moving.

"We should start checking the rooms," Rain whispered after a while.

They had avoided doing that since they might stumble upon some mercenaries sleeping, but it didn"t seem like there were any obvious clues for where the princess was hidden. No guards stood by any door.

"I can open them, but I won"t be able to see inside," Arawn said while stopping by one door.

It didn"t look like anything special. Made of dark brown wood, it looked like a thousand other doors.

His companions hadn"t noticed that Arawn had stopped and stumbled into him. He windmilled a few times to catch his balance and turned around with annoyance. Val was standing behind him with a thunderous expression.

"Fine, I"ll stay quiet. We don"t have time in our schedule for a shouting match."

"What do you mean you won"t be able to see?" Rain asked. She seemed to have sensed that he might be stopping and had extended her hand to check on the distance between her and Val.

"Same as yours, my eyes need time to refocus in the light. For a moment, we"ll all be blind."

While he said that, Val took a step back. "Then you open the door and fall back. We"ll look inside once we"re sure no flying projectiles are being shot at us."

It sounded like the best solution at that moment, so they did just that. Everyone fell back while Arawn touched the doork.n.o.b and pulled on it. The door opened with a soft creak, and as he stood behind it, they all waited for the the telltale sound of an arrow let loose.

There was nothing, however. Arawn took a deep breath and poked his head out from behind the door to look inside the room. His hands still held tight onto the door. If anything inside moved, he was going to jump back so fast frogs were going to envy him.

But nothing moved. He blinked a few times, getting used to the soft light of the moon shining into the room. It was fine to go from little light to a lot of light, but total dark to any light was a change his vision didn"t appreciate.

When he regained clarity of sight, he saw that the room was empty but for more of the weird weapons and masks on the walls. Here, they were packed next to each other till there was almost no s.p.a.ce between them.

"Empty," he said to his companions, and they relaxed.

Both Rain and Betty let go of their weapons. Val clearly thought about it, but decided against it. His hand seemed to be glued to his dagger"s hilt.

They repeated this procedure with every door on the southern side of the building; Rain had come into one of the rooms with windows and made sure that they were exploring the right side. It was a time-consuming exercise, but no one wanted to risk their life and just barge into every room like they owned the place.

It would quicken the search, but when they finally reached the right room, they might say goodbye to their life before even knowing what had struck them.

When they were about to turn another bend, Arawn hissed for everyone to stop. He crouched down and looked with one eye around the corner. There was nothing there, but he could have sworn he had heard the crackle of fire.

"Stay here," he ordered in a barely audible whisper and snuck forward.

Sneaking was not one of the skills he had learned in the dungeons, but it was nothing more than being silent. He instinctively knew how to put his feet and move his body so it wouldn"t break the quiet of the place.

With his head raised to listen to any sounds, he took careful steps forward. The hallway curved to the left, away from the southern side of the building, but it wasn"t the first time. Some time later, it would return to its track.

Yet when Arawn was about to go there, he heard the crackle of fire again. It was now mixed with the sound of light snoring, and it came from behind him. He looked there.

Another door like any other stood there. With extreme caution, Arawn moved toward it and pressed his ear against the wood.

Moments later, he heard the breathing again. It was steady and rhythmic, but also a little erratic. He wondered if there were two people when something fell to the ground. It b.u.mped with a dull noise, softened by something, and a man cursed in a gruff voice. His low words were like a shout in the quiet of the night.

There was no telling who the person was, but Arawn didn"t plan to barge in by himself. Cautiously, he pulled away from the door and stepped back. There was no reaction from those inside, so he took a few more steps, and then ran back. His footfalls landed softy on the floor, not making a single sound.

In a few moments, he was before his companions. "I—"

A short squeak escaped Betty, but more dangerous than that were the two daggers coming his way. Arawn fell backwards, rolling on the ground to avoid the sharp projectiles. "Hey, it"s me!" he hissed in a harsh whisper.

Val and Rain stopped, looking around with exasperation on their faces. "I want my dagger back," they said almost in unison.

Arawn rolled his eyes. Of course that was what they were concerned about. His well-being was only secondary to them having their weapons back.

The daggers thumping into the ground had made some noise, but the two strangers were in a room two hallways down, so they shouldn"t have heard it. Their hearing would need to be extraordinary to pick up on such a soft noise.

After quickly collecting the two daggers, Arawn explained what he had found. "I"m not sure if they"re the guards we"ve been looking for. There might be another room behind them, or there might not."

"We have to check it," Val said instantly.

At the mention of guards, his eyes lit up like two embers, and he looked in the direction from which Arawn had come with barely contained eagerness. His hand was even trembling slightly.

"But noiselessly," Rain said. "We can"t make a commotion in case it"s not what we"re looking for."

"Did the door have a keyhole?" Val asked, turning back to Arawn.

He thought for a moment before nodding. "I think so? I didn"t think to look for it."

"You can leave it to me then. There"s a reason why water is known as the a.s.sa.s.sin"s element."

His smile sent a chill down Arawn"s back. "You shouldn"t kill them," he whispered. "Knock them out and it"ll be enough."

"No." Val"s voice was as cold as an arctic night. "They kidnapped my sister and held her prisoner for months. I"ll kill every b.a.s.t.a.r.d I can get my hands on."

"You can"t," Arawn refused, shaking his head.

The mercenaries might be bad people, but there was no proof that they were murderers. The girls were still alive, weren"t they? Thus, those people should be sent to a dungeon to think about their mistakes and not killed.

"I WILL kill them, and you can"t stop me," Val swore, pulling out his dagger and pointing it in the general direction of Arawn.

"You should know you can"t kill me, and without my help, how are you planning to navigate this place? I could just stop helping, and you would get caught in the next ten minutes."

It was an exaggeration, but not a large one. The only reason Val and Rain had chosen to risk themselves on the bare bones of a plan was because they were desperate. There was no telling when the king would decide to apprehend them for being Mairyan spies or something.

Their only chance to succeed relied on them working together, but unlike the two parties, Arawn didn"t have much of a stake in the mission. He wanted to meet the princess, but it wasn"t a debilitating need. Since it was some conspiracy by the king or those around him, the girl would probably survive, and he could meet her later.

The only reason he was still around was because he felt guilty about what had happened to Val. However, that didn"t mean he was going to accept murder as a solution. There was always a better way to do something than killing innocent people.

"I"m not kidding," Arawn whispered again, his voice growing cold as well. "I won"t let you kill anyone."

Fury stole over Val"s features. His face twisted with hate and disgust as he held back himself from rushing forward to attack Arawn there and then.

"Hold it," Rain said and grabbed Val by the shoulder. Forcefully, she pulled him around to face her. "Think of your goal, think of why you"re here. Is your sister"s life more important or killing a few d.a.m.ned mercenaries?"

When Val froze, struggling to get his emotions under control, Rain glared at Arawn. Her gaze was dagger-sharp. "And you? Do you want us all to get killed? Why are you instigating a fight?"

She let go of Val"s shoulder and pulled out her own daggers. "Now lead us to the door and no more of this foolishness. Can you manage that?"

Arawn nodded, feeling a little chagrined. Was it so bad that he just didn"t want for people to get killed? How was it that instead of being right, he always ended up antagonizing his companions by suggesting to look for another way instead of killing their opponents?

The time when Corwal got hurt when he hesitated to attack wasn"t yet gone from his memory. Whether that sacrifice was faked or not, it was a fact that Arawn would have gotten hurt for staying his hand. The soldier had went at him with killing intent after Arawn had spared his friends" lives.

"Is this the same? Will the guards attack us from behind if we leave them alive? But why is death always the solution? There should be other ways to stop them and not get stabbed in the back..."