Chapter 177 - Whispers and Walls

Clay was moving the moment his feet his the deck. In so many ways, this new world was a blessing as much as it ever had been a curse. He used to be one hell of a security operator, way back in the day. He'd been active duty Air Force, worked as a pararescue soldier. That was when he was young. The Air Guard was a nice place to keep some of his skills from turning entirely to dust while still collecting a paycheck being of service.

Now, though? Holy shit, he only wished he could move like this, back when he was twenty! He'd been good, back in the day, but he'd never been this good. With the crystals powering his Strength, Agility, and Stamina, he could run circles around his younger self. Literally.

Both guards atop the tower were dead. He made his way swiftly to the stairwell and rolled on down the steps, taking them as swiftly as he could while remaining quiet. At the bottom of the steps he froze, then peeked around the edge. All clear. He gave Kara and Patches a hand signal to move, and they flowed into the room behind him.

The trio moved like ghosts, slipping quietly from one space into the next. They'd discussed the plan of attack while Selena napped back at the barn, and finally settled on some likely courses of action. Without a map of the castle, they had no way to know precisely where their target lay. That meant they needed to go find it. There were two things they felt certain of.

First, it wouldn't be in the upper levels of the castle. As they were demonstrating, those were vulnerable to attack. It was too easy to slip into a tower. But more than that, the main enemy Peter was working to keep away from these eggs or hatchlings or whatever they were was a dragon. The mom had wings. He wasn't going to leave this prize anywhere high up.

The other thing they knew was that wherever it was, it would be heavily guarded.

That meant they wouldn't be able to steer clear of guards. Whatever the source of Peter's power over the dragon was, there would be only two places he'd keep it: on his person, or in the most heavily guarded place he could manage.

If they'd been wrong and the control he exerted over the dragon came from some magic item, then they were screwed. They'd wander around the inside of the castle looking for the most heavily fortified location and throw themselves at it for nothing. The odds of escape at that point were poor at best. The odds of victory, near zero. The entire venture was a risky one, relying on poor intelligence and their limited understanding of what the Event had done to the world. If there'd been another way to accomplish the mission, he would have pushed back hard against a plan this desperate.

But what they'd all discussed about the nature of the Event rang true. There was no sign of 'magical treasures' capable of casting spells. All magic seemed to be inherent or created. Like, the Alchemy potions would hold their power, whether it was to heal or harm, for a long time. So clearly items could be made. He found it unlikely Peter managed to make an item capable of controlling such a high tier dragon. Like spells, items had tiers.

No, the idea of Peter having captured the dragon's young rang true. It was precisely the sort of gambit he could see the man taking.

Clay stepped out into a shadowed room, then back around the corner. Two men in the room, talking on the far end. He made hand gestures to his team, passing orders. To Kara, he signaled security. To Patches, he signaled attack and pointed at one of their foes. The pair nodded in reply.

A moment later they exploded into motion. Clay and Patches darted around the corner first, utterly silent as they moved. Then they each cast their Phantom Step spell, teleporting them instantly from the pool of shadow by the doorway to the ones in either corner, not far from where the two guards stood. From there, it was just a few quick steps for each of them to slide up behind their target and end his life with some quick knife work.

Clay found himself more than a little surprised at the ratkin warrior. Patches seemed so gentle most of the time, but that was deceptive. Under the placid face, Patches had revealed a ruthless streak that had kept him alive through some tough battles.

They dragged the dead guards back into the hallway they'd departed. It wasn't going to fool anyone who paused for more than a cursory glance. The bloodstains on the floor were far too telling. But once they doused the torches, the room was cast into deep shadows, the blood invisible in the darkness. It was all about delay, at this point. Sooner or later someone would stumble across one of the guards they'd killed or see a pool of blood or something. But anything they could do to push that further into the future was a plus.

Clay had some idea of the castle's layout from his first visit. He'd managed to figure out roughly where Eddings' rooms were, for example. The man really was as paranoid as they came, because he didn't have high-up rooms in some tower, but rather was on the ground floor, with a few windows facing the courtyard. He doubted the man would have baby dragons in his bedroom, of course, but Peter was the sort of man who'd want to keep his power close, where he could touch it. No, the dragonets or eggs or whatever wouldn't be in his bedroom. But they'd be somewhere nearby.

Two more sets of stairs and three hallways later, he knew they had to be getting close. Clay peered around yet another corner and spied two more guards. This time, they kept watch over a closed door that led into rooms off the hall. He leaned back and gathered the other two close, whispering as softly as he could.

"I'm pretty sure that's Peter's rooms ahead. Two guards. The problem is, there's no shadows to jump to. Plenty of torchlight in the hall. We need a distraction to get them away from that doorway."

Kara held out a palm and spun a small globe of darkness there. "Or we can just make our own shadows."

"Excellent," Clay said. He flashed her a grin. "Make that shadow. We'll take them down."

Kara set herself on the corner, with Clay and Patches right behind her. She peeked out and cast quickly. As soon as she moved, Clay and Patches rushed around her, getting ready to make their attack. By the time they rounded the corner, the spell was already in place, a black sphere of shadow covering the doorway. The two guards trapped within cried out with alarm, but they weren't loud yet. They needed to yell louder if they were going to call down more guards.

Before they could, he and Patches darted forward with a quick Phantom Step, then slashed the guards' throats with their daggers.

It was gruesome, bloody work, but Clay didn't feel guilt over it. These people had brought the fight, a battle nobody needed or wanted except Eddings. They all had enough on their plates just figuring out how to survive. No one sane wanted a war under these conditions. And any fighters working with Eddings had to be treated the same way Peter would be, once they caught him.

He pushed open the door, letting them all into the room beyond. It was a sitting room, or an office of sorts, perhaps. There were two sofas, a large desk with a chair behind it... Shit, the asshole had laid the room out so it looked something like the Oval Office. Of course the arrogant piece of crap would do something like that. More than anything else, Clay wanted to close his fingers around Eddings' throat and squeeze. It galled him that the other man was almost certainly stronger than he. Eddings was whip-thin, where Clay's arms bulged with hard-won muscle. But the smaller man was stronger.

He'd still give it the old college try though, after what Eddings had done to Selena. Even if he died trying, it would be worth it to make that asshole bleed.

They hauled the bodies inside where they wouldn't be as easily seen and got to work.

Clay searched the desk while the other two looked for anything out of order in the book shelves, but he already knew they wouldn't want to spend much time here. Best guess was they had maybe half an hour left before Peter arrived on his dragon. They wanted to be gone before that happened, which meant moving fast.

"We're not going to find it here. Let's press on," Clay said. Patches and Kara formed up behind him while he opened the door behind the desk.

He didn't think they'd find more guards in Peter's rooms, and he was glad to be right. The next room was a more private office, with a lot more bookcases and an even more elaborate desk. There were also a few oversized beanbag chairs lying about. One even had a book still sitting on it, bookmark in place.

"Dungeon Crawler Carl, huh?" Clay said, picking it up. He hadn't pegged Eddings as a reader, but at least the man seemed to have interesting taste in fiction. He set the book down and moved deeper into the room.

There were two exits. Clay opened the first while his partners pulled security on the other two. This door led to a bedroom, which in turn had two more doors leading away. They pushed ahead into the bedroom, Clay's pulse quickening. He'd thought earlier that surely the man would keep the dragonets close to where he slept. Were they maybe just on the other side of one of those doors?

Not the first. That led into an expensive bathroom, with both a shower and a claw-foot tub. For a moment Clay wanted to go over and check to see if the shower ran. How could the place have internal plumbing? It was built after the Event, so maybe they could have arranged a cistern up high, but if so, it was impressive engineering. Something to remember for the future.

Back into the bedroom. He checked the other door, but it led to a long hallway that ended in another door, this one locked. That felt promising. He whipped out a pack of lockpicks and went to work.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Kara whispered to him as she kept watch.

"Back in the E-4 mafia," Clay replied. There was a click, and the door was open. "What? I wasn't always a Master Sergeant."

But that door only led them back out into another main hallway. There were no guards present, thank god, but he closed the door quickly and relocked it.

"Just another exit from Eddings' rooms. Let's head back to the second office." Clay led the way back through Peter's bedroom, walking swiftly now. They had to be running out of time. Sooner or later, a guard shift would change, or someone wouldn't check in, and the alarm would go up.

Back in the office with the beanbags, there was one last door they hadn't tried. He went to it and checked the handle. It was locked, too. Clay crossed his fingers and went back to work with his lock picks again. He hoped this was it. This had to be it. They were out of other doorways to go through, and he didn't know where else int he castle they would store something of such terrible importance. If not close to Peter's rooms, then where could it be?

If this doorway opened to another nothing, where could they go next?

The lock popped quickly, and the doorknob turned. It was time to see what lay on the other side. As Clay swung the door open, alarm bells pealed out, first one, then others taking up the call. They'd been discovered! The oppressive sense of sand sifting through a timer doubled as he stepped through into whatever lay on the other side of that door.