Kupi and the group of well-trained spies met little resistance while entering the compound. In fact, most of the guards weren’t looking for intruders, but were guarding something inside, which made their entrance so much easier.

They did, however, take care of all the guards they could as they made their way in to make their escape easier. They were here to rescue Gabriel and Arabelle, not to have a challenge, after all. One after another the armed guards were knocked out, their weapons removed, their bodies tied, and their mouths covered.

They weren’t going to leave anything to chance, so they all tried their best. They were now in front of a big building with big windows which looked great, but security wise wasn’t the best. One of the individuals sent by Poco took something from his clothes and less than a minute later the eleven had made their way into the mansion.

Even though it was the middle of the night, there was more than usual activity in the mansion, noted another of the well covered spies. At this time usually most of the lights would be turned off and only the service sections would have some activity and although it wasn’t a market at the middle of the day, most of the halls were lit and there were more guards than usual.

And now, that they were inside the mansion filled with relatively tight corridors, their movements got limited and they had to be more careful with which guards to knock out. Sometimes it was better to let a guard pass by to arouse less suspicion by the missing guards.

This strategy worked pretty well, and they had made their way through half the mansion searching for the entrance for the dungeon of this building when they heard an alarm ring. It seemed that one they had been found, so they were now under a bigger time pressure, but to their relief they found the spooky entrance to the dungeon, which was guarded by eight guards.

Usually there would only be two of them, but with the offer the guard captain had received he really wanted to make sure that the two kids didn’t escape. These eight defenders put up a sizable resistance, hurting three of the trespassers, but they managed to keep their mobility high as they had been trained through such situations.

While the ten spies had been fighting the guards Kupi had been observing them and realized that none of them had keys to unlock the gateway down, so he took a metal toothpick and started changing its shape to try to unlock this door. He made his way to the metal fence and looked inside the hole.

Kupi would usually just try it instantly, but with his recent experience with Gabriel he had decided to be more thorough with his lockpicking which up to now hadn’t really helped in anything but lose time, but he decided that it was better to prevent such a situation from happening again, even if they had escaped unfazed.

This lock was a normal, albeit somewhat challenging lock to unlock as it was handmade so that every lock had a different, unique code and key to unlock it. It took Kupi between two to three minutes to unlock it during the meantime the hurt spies covered and treated their wounds.

Now inside the dungeon everything was dark. No lights were on, and some creepy monster-like sounds could be heard. Growls, scratches and howls could be heard echoing through the maze-like underground. The owner of this mansion liked to experiment with mind control, but not only on people, also on beasts.

He didn’t experiment too much on their body, so they were the basically the same to their wild counterparts, but their behavior changed. They coexisted with other animals with which they’d usually fight for territory or food but with their mind controlled they didn’t see each other as enemies anymore, but rather as members of the same tribe. They also didn’t need to hunt for food as this was given daily by a group of carefully selected butlers.

These men were clothed with some especially smelly clothes which the beasts were trained not to attack, but anything that wasn’t part of their tribe and didn’t smell like that was attacked. This helped keep prisoners inside their cells because it discouraged escaping and it also helped to get rid of the pests that sometimes plagued the mansion.

Talking about prisoners, Gabriel had already freed himself and his sister from the chains that bound them and had even unlocked the gate of their cell, but soon after he exited the room to plan an escape he met with two of the animals that guarded the halls and although he could defeat them, it would take effort and Gabriel didn’t know whether there were more of these beasts walking around the halls, so he ran away back into his cell.

He was once again entrapped with limited resources, although his mobility was still high Gabriel thought to himself while he remembered that time, he had been caught with Kupi. Now he didn’t have the help of anyone. Maybe his sister could help in something, but with her current mental state he didn’t put too much trust in her.

Gabriel stripped the room of all its resources, he took the metal handcuffs and chains they had used to keep them in there, a few rope fibers that were on the ground and some moss which had grown on the walls. When he looked on the other nearby cells they had similar resources, so he would need to make a plan with only these resources. And his magic, of course.

As Gabriel started planning his escape seriously, the infiltration group made their way through the underground maze, defeating the beasts when possible and escaping on tougher situations. They had already come this far, so they didn’t want to miss their chance and they were also in a hurry as the guards above had probably already realized that something was wrong.

With their grouped experience they decided to stick together and move as one. Some of them fought the beasts below, others looked inside the cells and two of them kept track of where they had gone and from where they come from. They didn’t want to get lost inside, after all.

Gabriel was now making his way out of the cell, without any other being in sight. With his sister behind him he veered to the right instinctively and as he turned around the corner he heard a loud howl behind him, which startled the kids.

Luckily, they didn’t make too much noise, however the beast that had made the sound was an unusually big wolf which thanks to causality was born much better than most wolves and as such had increased listening abilities which weren’t hindered by its size. It was as tall as the hallways and his body let no way to get through him except defeating the beast.

Its steps were getting closer and closer, so Gabriel decided that if they were to escape, they would have to run away from this monster, as they could, in theory, hide inside another cell, but they would be sitting ducks and they only had this day to escape. If anyone found out that they tried exiting without permission their “reward” probably wouldn’t be desirable.

On another hallway in the dungeon Kupi and the accompanying team had been beating beast after beast that got on their path, growing tired and now they were faced to face with a pride of eight lionesses which were too much for them in their situation. They could only turn around and run away.

They didn’t run too quickly, hindered by their exhaustion and physical wounds, but the lionesses of the pride seemed to be toying with them as they kept their distance from them. The formation of the felines caught the attention of some of the less physically exhausted spies as their formation was unnatural, almost following the shape and order of a human military formation.

Although this was curious, they didn’t have time to waste and kept running and running, turning and steering to different paths, staying together as a group and at some point, they saw someone else running towards them.

As they got closer, they realized that it was two kids and soon thereafter they realized that there was a huge wolf following them! They had just passed through the last hall they could’ve exited through and were now stuck with a pride of lionesses on their back, the two kids in front of them and a huge wolf behind them. How they would save themselves they didn’t know, but they had at least found their targets and now just needed to escape. Not that it was easy.