“I’m sure this will come as a shock, but I’ve never done this before,” Val seethed as she worked a hairpin into the lock. Her hair plastered to her forehead, face redder than it had been ten minutes ago. She growled as the pin snapped, quickly jamming her last one in.

“Hey, maybe be less rough? Just a suggestion.”

“Get bent, Aleksilkandrin.”

The plan was simple. At least, it should have been.

Raelyn had successfully lured the Sheriff away to his office, letting Alek and Val sneak through the wood covered halls in search of the entrance to the lower level. Which, of course, it was locked. Alek wasn’t sure how that didn’t factor into their planning.

Val bared her teeth, like a snarling animal trying to break free from its confines rather than the woman attempting to break into them. Alek took another look down the corridor, luckily finding the Sheriff behind the cloudy glass of his office, the only guard upstairs with his back turned.

“Can you hurry this up, please?” asked Alek in a hushed yell, barely keeping her voice from carrying down the hall.

“Would you like a go?”

“No.”

“Then fuck off.”

Alek huffed and left her to it, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. She wanted this done with. The quicker they could get Finn out of his cell, the quicker she could find Sir Barnaby and get back in his good graces. She had to complete the job, had to go home. This was her only chance.

The guard turned, presumably for a replacement for the evening shift. Alek was quite aware of how it worked, with a lot of her life taken up by guard duty and patrols around the city. She tugged Val into a nearby room, pressing her against the wall when she wriggled in annoyance with a hand clamped over her mouth. Val glared, eyes filled with fire until she seemed to realise what was happening. She rolled her orange-gold eyes and pushed Alek away, smirking up at her.

“You’re stronger than you look,” she chuckled.

“Are you calling me small?” asked Alek, raising an eyebrow, gesturing at herself wildly with a deep-set look of confusion. She hadn’t lost that much muscle in her time away from Syi Dorei, had she? She hadn’t trained every day for most of her life to be called ‘small’.

Val shrugged, ignoring her to poke her head around the door. “The coast is clear, let’s go.”

Alek followed her reluctantly, keeping watch as Val returned to picking the lock. This time around the door let out a soft click, Alek whipping her head around to Val who crouched with a smug expression. The door opened slowly, Alek grabbing it to stop it from opening too far, remembering the sound of the door hitting the wall that reverberated when she was locked in her cell. Val nodded her head to one side, a gesture of ‘you first’. Alek steeled herself and re-entered where she was captive for so long.

It hadn’t changed, although Alek wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. The moss still grew down the walls, looking sickly in the torchlight. The air still froze her skin. She sighed and grabbed a torch from the wall, closing the door carefully behind Val, not trusting her to do so herself. Val led them down, brandishing a knife that she pulled out of her boots. It only made Alek wonder where else she was concealing weapons. They stopped at the bottom, Alek almost bumping into the white-haired woman.

Val ran her fingers through a thin groove in the wall, a faraway look in her eyes. Her eyebrows knitted together as she traced the line. Alek huffed.

“We don’t have all day, the guards will find us at any moment-” she snapped, causing Val to snap out of whatever haze she was in.

“Right, yes. Of course,” she nodded, stepping back, “there’s just a lot of history here, it’s… captivating.”

“Let’s just get Finn free.”

“Right-o. Lead on.”

The guards patrolled the long row of cells, more than Alek had seen when she was a prisoner. They weren’t overly armoured, at least not by the standards she was used to, but leather armour was still far more than she had on. Val twitched anxiously beside her, full of barely restrained energy.

They watched as the guards split from their mostly aimless routes - the prisoners too weak to escape if they tried. Alek ducked further into the shadows, crouching. She went to pull Val back with her, but she slipped from her grasp.

“Val, no-” started the ex-Templar, going to grab at the woman but missing by an inch. Pain shot through parts no longer there, keeping her in place as Val snuck up on the guard and wrapped a strong arm around his throat. She winced, fighting through the pain to stand, but Val kept a tight hold on the man. “stop, this isn’t the plan!”

Val seemed to notice her then, dropping the limp body of the guard to the ground with a thud. The second guard turned to the sound, drawing his small crossbow from his side and aiming it at Val.

“Oh, come on, it’s not like he’s dead,” scoffed Val, throwing her arms up in exclamation.

“He isn’t?” asked Alek through gritted teeth, holding her hands out to show that she was unarmed.

“Eh, does it matter?”

“Of course it fucking matters!”

The guard, to his credit, ignored their squabbling as he slowly approached them with his crossbow still pointed at Val. He didn’t seem to view Alek as a threat, barely even giving her a second glance. Alek was preparing to jump the man when the door swung open, the bolt from the crossbow flying wide.

Raelyn stood at the top of the staircase, watching over the frozen scene. Alek gave her a thumbs-up and a nervous smile. This was not the plan. The guard unfroze first, pulling out another bolt to load his bow, only to be stopped by a rock pinging off his head from the top stair. Val took his brief hesitation as an opening to attack, her thin frame lunging forward.

Alek winced as Val plunged a knife through the man’s collarbone, the bone making a horrible wet cracking noise. It rooted her to the spot, a part of her wanting to rush to the guard and see if she could save him, the other wanting to run away in case it triggered anything within her, the hunger she had yet to control. She turned to leave, only to bump into Raelyn, who steadied her without a second glance, her gaze locked on Val. The woman in question stood, wiping the blood off her face with a smug expression.

“There. Sorted,” her voice came out huskier than it was before, a few octaves lower, “oh hey, you’re back! Did you kill off the Sheriff?”

“I knocked him out,” said Raelyn, voice low and calmer than Alek felt, “couldn’t stand talking to that pig.”

“Are you not going to yell at me about the-” Val waved her hand vaguely toward the bodies, “-situation?”

“Regretfully, I’m military, I’d be a hypocrite.”

Val looked impressed, holding out a fist to Raelyn who bumped it with her own hesitantly. Alek rolled her eyes.

“We need to get moving,” she said, turning to walk down the rows of cells. With the two guards dead, it would make this part far easier on them, but the outcome far harder. She didn’t want to be arrested for murder, not again.

The cells didn’t seem nearly as claustrophobic on the outside. It was only a small mercy as the wailing had never stopped and was now paired with lechers grinning behind their bars, having witnessed to fall of both guards. Skeletal hands snaked their way out to grab at them, some almost succeeding only to be swiped away.

Finn’s cell sat in the middle of the aisle, further back than Alek remembered, although she had been out of it the last time she was here. Finn himself sat huddled in the corner, his pale skin a sickly blue-purple shade. Raelyn let out a shaky breath.

“Finn?” she asked softly, leaning up against the bars, “you still with us?”

Finn let out a soft groan, slowly untangling his limbs with a hiss. Alek’s heart dropped when she finally met his eyes. He was thin - dangerously so, face gaunt and grey, his eyes glassy and unfocused. His hair fell in strings, glistening with oil.

“You shouldn’t be here” he rasped, his voice barely there, “it’s too dangerous” - a fit of chest-rattling coughs - “she’s coming- cut him off”

“Who’s coming?” asked Raelyn, voice still soft yet full of urgency, “Finn? What’s going on?”

“They’ve been disappearing for days, the prisoners they’re…they’re being taken to Mythra,” Finn fought to get the words out, tumbling over each as he forced his rusty vocal cords to do his bidding, body trembling.

“It’s alright Finn, we’ll get you out-”

Finn shook his head with a whimper. He crouched back into the corner, avoiding their gaze. Val eyed Finn curiously, as if he were but a specimen in a jar waiting to be poked and prodded, or a divine meal she had yet to try. Alek wasn’t sure which of those options was worse.

With a sharp breath after a long silence, Finn finally spoke again. “The Mother, she’s returned,” he said with his voice low and crackling like the fire he possessed within. He stared up at them with his lake-blue eyes, taking in their expressions - or lack thereof.

“Who’s the Mother?” asked Alek, crouching so she could meet him eye to eye, eyebrows scrunched and questioning.

“They say she’s Artemis. Artemis Valcari.”