He didn't move a muscle. Not a hair. Not even his sweat dripped another single inch.

He traced the outline of the Red-woman's eye-makeup with what little vision he had, noting the intricate, tessellated pattern that adorned her forehead, her rubied cheeks, and the intensity of her stare, all contained in that crimson veil that afforded nothing but a small visor of her face to him. Even he had to admit - there was beauty there. She was like an exotic, painted bird. Or a doll.

Which one fit her best though? That was the real question that nagged at him. He at least knew that, considering the time she was taking not killing him, he was probably going to survive to find out the answer.

Though his mouth twitched with the necessity to say something, he held it at bay when he heard her voice finally whisper beneath her veil.

"You are making escape."

Truth or lie, truth or lie? He contemplated. It was a game he was used to playing.

Looking into those eyes again he figured truth would probably serve him better.

"Yeah," he said with a gulp. "Though I'd say I'm not doing a particularly good job of it."

She didn't flinch a single muscle - didn't even blink. She held his gaze like a bird of prey, keeping its tiny meal in sight.

"You are coming with me."

He felt the effect of her voice deep in his marrow. It was rough, even caustic in its timbre, and yet there was a confidence in there that did not become a slave. As she removed her weapon from his neck (turned out it was an elongated steel nail she'd been aiming right at his jugular, easily concealable and lethal in equal measure) she walked with the practiced grace of a dancer toward the door and gestured for him to follow.

"Not like I have much of a choice, eh?"

She barely regarded him as she answered: "None of us do."

His legs wobbled as he paced toward her. He could try his luck with another Dirty Trick, sure, but somehow he reckoned that the guards finding the Don's prized little bird beaten on the storeroom floor would do little to help him. So, with no alternative, he trotted along behind her towards his inevitable doom.

Ushered in by a woman, he thought with a sneer. Ain't that novel?

It turned out his suspicions only grew more complex with each new observation he made. First of all, there were no guards waiting outside. Then, the girl checked her corners like an experienced jewel thief before ushering him on with a stealthy grunt. He followed her through the adjacent corridor heralding the way to the guards' private quarters in the North section of the palace. Once again, no guards patrolling. No servants around. No sign of life at all.

Next to the Head Guard's room she suddenly stopped, checked her surroundings, and palmed a piece of loose brickwork that Marius kicked himself for not noticing before.

It was a goddamn solid gold palace. It obviously had to have secret passages, right? The Everloft was a veritable hellscape of nightmarish imaginings, but it still took some cues from kids' books.

As the wall split apart and revealed a shadowed staircase, the Red girl slipped behind him, brought her hidden blade up, and whispered a curt command into his ear.

"We go."

Hey, honey, no arguments here.

He heard the hidden doorway close as he ambled on up the steps, feeling the tip of her steel against the bulging vein on his neck, and trying to keep himself from gulping. The ascent was silent, but painless. The staircase wound up what must have been one of the palace's golden spires, and Marius increasingly felt like this girl probably knew every step of this passage by heart. For a while, there was no light at all, and then suddenly they rounded a bend in the spire and Marius was given a vision of the Audience Hall - the place of unrestrained decadence which he and Yelena had past through on their way to see the Don two weeks ago. He slowed his pace, and felt her do the same behind him, as he took in the sight. It must be some kind of one-way mirror, for none of the hybrids engaged in their acts of revelry even paid them any heed at all. Marius watched the women dance in their low-cut dresses while the dark-cloaked men drank, fondled, drugged and jeered their way through their afternoon, surrounded by the aroma of narcotic incense and perfumed cushions. It was the place for the Don's private soldiers, only. No servants were ever permitted access. And no matter what that lad, Aeder, thought, Marius doubted they'd ever be allowed to enter the pleasure wing of the palace any time soon.

His new companion didn't seem to share the general fondness for what lay beneath them. As they looked through the glass he heard her distinctly swallow what might have been a curse beneath her breath. Her fist clenched tighter beside his neck.

Resentment, then? That's interesting.

When they finally came to a dead end she ordered him to halt and palmed a seemingly random piece of the wall. Instantly, the shadowed bricks began to peel away to reveal a new room, filled with more velvet cushions and a four-poster, gold-rimmed bed. The intoxicating scent of lilac and gooseberries assailed Marius' senses as she nudged him into the room and closed shut the passage behind them. The olfactory assault on Marius' senses after two weeks of nothing but filth temporarily paralyzed him, so he barely acknowledged her stalking around and settling on a throne of cushions at his feet.

"Be sitting," she said.

He half-suppressed a chuckle, noting the calmness in her voice.

"Listen, I'm not gonna lie down in a spider's nest. If you're bringing the Don here, or his favorite son, I'm gonna have to give you the slip."

She didn't blink as she held up her hand and removed her viscous weapon from her fingertips.

"You are being safe here," she said.

"I've heard that one before," he replied.

"If I am wanting to have you killed, I could have done so," she said, measured and straight, so that he actually took a little step back in surprise. "I could be giving you to guards as soon as we left storeroom. Instead, I am sending them away."

His raised eyebrows asked his question for him. They listen to you?

Her silence told him she wouldn't answer. So, with his signature sigh of resignation, he sank into a set of cushions across from her.

"They are not as you and I," she said, still watching him with hawk-like attention.

"That much I noticed," he agreed. "What's their deal?"

She stretched out her legs towards him, letting them rest by his side.

He ignored their tanned sheen.

"They are not of flesh," she said. "They are creations of Everloft."

He leaned forward. "You mean like the Crocarachnids? Or the other monsters out there?"

She shook her head. "Not monsters," she corrected. "Children of Everloft."

"Right, so basically they don't have any will of their own."

She nodded. "They follow routines," she said, and then began tracing a circle on her leg with her thin, flexile finger. "Programmed. When the Silver One came, he builds this place, and steals these children from the Sands to be guardians. Then, when he goes below, Revok takes over."

She broke eye contact with him, and gazed off into the distance. What she was looking at, he could only guess. To him it seemed like she was transfixed by nothing but air.

"He takes this place, and so they follow him. They follow ruler - whoever it may be."

"And the ruler is the one who sits on that throne, I take it?"

She nodded. "The Don."

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He thought about that, whilst trying to keep himself from sinking into the comfort of the cushions. He was debating, letting the cogs of his mind turn as they always did, slotting in this new information and seeing how they could be added to the plan that was forming in his mind.

"And let me guess," he finally said. "You'd rather he wasn't sitting there."

She snapped her vision back to him abruptly, and he was struck, once again, by the fierceness in her stare.

"I want freedom."

"Sure," he said. "And I want a free passage into Amarata's promised heaven. Doesn't change the fact that, to get there, I'd have to snap a few Glancer's necks."

She brought her legs back. "Freedom is belonging to me. The Don cannot take it."

Marius gave a dry smile. "Many slaves have said the same. They're still slaves."

She rose slowly and gracefully, and again Marius was reminded of the smooth moves of a dancer who was experienced in their trade, employing their art for entertainment, seduction, and, when necessary, distraction. As she made for a gold-embroidered armoire by the bedside, he wondered which category she felt this meeting fell into.

She produced a small, elaborately carved pipe with a silver orb glimmering at its apex. As she set it down between them, she stroked her side of the device and two small rubber tubes fell to the floor in front of them.

She took hers up as Marius looked on, unimpressed.

"Take," she said.

Marius knew that her tone, coupled with the way she glanced for a second back toward her relinquished nail-blade, meant that this was not request. It was an imperious demand.

"Look," he said. "I like a good trip as much as the next guy, but I'd really rather keep my wits about me, yeah? Besides, I'm on duty."

She slipped the pipe under her veil and drew in a small puff of whatever gas was floating in the orb.

"Okhram is not for trip", she said with disdain. "Not like those poisoned servants of the Black Bird use it. Okhram is for seeing."

"Yeah," Marius nodded slowly. "And I've 'seen' a bunch of stuff in my time, believe me."

She shook her head again. "One can not be seeing without Okhram. Okhram used by servants of the Black Bird is being corrupted. It is used to obscure now, not to see."

And with one swift, fluid motion lighter and faster than a gust of desert wind, she was suddenly beside him, then behind him, holding his hand steady and feeding the pipe into his open mouth.

"Look - wait!"

Too late. She'd already inserted the thing and clenched down on the tube, and a noxious cloud traveled up passed her glittering hand and into his mouth, down his throat and through his nose, resting somewhere behind his eyes.

"Breathe," she whispered.

He did. And then he started seeing.

Above the little silver orb that bubbled in the middle of the room, a cloud of red-orange smoke had formed. It shifted as it began to expand, bathing the room in the glow of the crimson sun that hung over the sands outside, and he saw that he was floating above the same desert he'd landed in forever ago.

Unconsciously, he felt her hand take his, skipping through the cloudless sky with him and flying over the land, watching shapes begin to twist and form out of the formless sands themselves. As they did so, they began to move and act out some distant pantomime which she began to narrate beside him.

"We of the Shifting Sands were once a free people," she said. "Born from the dreams of the Everloft, existing in this sun-domain. We had no need of the surface. We had no memories of it. We had been blessed with new lives."

As she spoke he saw them - people moving in and around the sand dunes, building little villages and conversing with bipedal dogs that looked like the Canis of the surface world, but were far smaller, more frail, and with drooping, lame necks.

"We make peace with the denizens of this place," his guide continued. "The Gnolls of the Sands offer us protection against our cousins - those who had been changed by the old magic. We trade with them, we live with them."

He say she spoke true. There they were, these small-hyena like creatures fighting off Crocharachnids, desert wasps, spiders, what looked like walking dead, and Amarata only knew what else. Yet, at the climax of the soldiers' victory, a shadow darkened the skies, and Marius felt his bones grow cold as he beheld the silver-haired form of the guy they all seemed to hate - Jael - appear from within the darkened skies.

"Then the Silver One returns," his guide said, her voice shaking with anger. "He had come to us before, and we had let him pass in peace. He had sat with us, shared tales with us, eaten with us. He was a surfacer we could respect. But this time he is being different. He tells us 'You must go below with me and my soldiers. You must fight with us, for our Lady Amarata says it is good.' And we tell him we have our own life, our own ways, and he must let us be. But he does not listen, and he strikes down our protectors as the child tears legs from insects."

He saw that that was true, too. He saw flashes of blood, blades clashing, and the cries of the dying Gnolls fill the air. He felt tears - real tears - spring to the surface of his eyes as he watched the Gnolls run to the far side of the desert, leaving their people behind.

"He builds his great palace and says: 'You will come with me, or you will serve here. This is your life now.' Some of us are following him down, for they have nothing now to be living for. Many he takes by force. He takes our men, he takes our sons. We are not seeing them again.

Again - every word was accompanied by a vision that attested to their truth. The people languished under the rule of this Jael, and when he had his army that he needed, he bugged out.

And just as he left, Marius saw the final image resolve itself in the midst of the bloodied sands: that of a jet-black wing rising from beneath the earth, threatening to cover all the land.

"When the Silver one goes, he is leaving behind his unwanted," the Red-woman sighed. "He says to them, 'You will stay behind, and guard this place with your lives.' But they are knowing the truth. They are thieves, or ill, or invalid, or weak. The Silver One does not want weak men. They are knowing this, and so one comes to lead them and take this land for himself: the Black Bird."

The rest of the moving fresco was self-explanatory. Marius could have filled in the details himself: this Jilae, Revok, decides to revolt against the 'good' Argents with his band of cutthroats and scumbags. They kill anyone who doesn't side with them, Revok sets himself up as 'The Don', and the reign of the thieves and murderers begins.

When Marius came out of the narcotics-induced hallucination, he had to blink, flex his jaw, and hold his head in his hands. He couldn't be sure it was really just a crazy-strong trip after all. For a moment, he thought it must've been The Glance, and just as the thought occurred to him, he looked back up at the Red-woman and saw that she was back sitting across from him, fixing him with her hawk-like eyes.

"Freedom is ours by right," she said with conviction. "We must be taking it back."

"So you mean to tell me that all those sad sacks in that town outside are all that's left of your people?"

He glanced up at her hand and held her gaze. For a moment she held his, too, and then nodded gravely.

Marius just shook his head dumbly before letting it fall to the ground.

"Its a tale as old as time," he said. "A people oppressed by a tyrannical foreign power, looking for a hero to guide them out of their dark days. But - and I hate to tell you this - I ain't no hero."

He heard her breathe deeply. She wasn't sucking in the Glance-drug - she was taking a puff of the air that she wanted, so desperately, to call her own again.

"We are all having our part to play," she told him. "Me, you, your friend in the dungeon, and The Lightbringer."

Marius double-blinked. "The who now?"

"The Lightbringer," she repeated. "The one born of fire who shall lead us against the Black Bird, burning his wings and breaking the hold he is having on us. The Lightbringer is here, now, and has come just as you are coming to the Everloft. It is not coincidence. It is fate."

There it is, Marius thought. That word all religious zealots liked to bandy about whenever it was convenient to them. This whole thing was beginning to reek of the stench of prophesy, and he didn't like the idea of being part of someone else's plan. He'd had enough of that upstairs.

Then again, maybe he could use this, too?

"Cut to the chase," he said, and when she cocked her head at the phrase he kicked himself and just asked "Why did you bring me here?"

She stood now and walked around to him, holding out her hand and never once breaking eye-contact.

"You are trying to escape, and you must free your friend," she said. "We shall free her, together, and find the Lightbringer."

Marius switched his gaze between her and her hand.

"Then what?" he asked.

She barely even needed to think about it. "We are destroying the Black Bird and his minions."

He had to chuckle at that. How wrong he'd been! A revolutionary, not a slave. She spoke with the kind of fanatical determination that only the most debased dreamers all shared - those who looked up at the stars themselves and thought that, with enough grit and righteous anger to guide them, they could reach them.

But what was he gonna do, refuse? One wrong word and she'd run to the Don and see him hang, or just kill him right here.

He noticed she was wearing the nail-blade again. She wasn't an idiot kid.

He sighed again as he rose and took her hand.

"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth," he said. "But how exactly can you help us escape? Aren't you one of the Don's special little birds? Kinda instantly recognizable? Wouldn't leaving with you pretty much be like wearing a shiny red sign on our backs saying 'here we are, big guy! Take your best shot!'"

In response she did nothing but raise her hand, slowly, to touch his cheek. And just as he started thinking that she was going to attempt that kind of persuasion, he felt a distinct pang of sound vibrate against the side of his skull and coax some little black letters into life before her face:

Performance (LVL III/VII)

Sometimes an actor holds all the cards: use the performance skill outside of combat to initiate a short action depending on your own particular skillset and equipped items.

LVL III bonus: Can create a short (5 minute) performance that may serve to distract up to 10 enemies. (success dependent on your CHA skill vs targets)

Marius felt his sly smile plaster itself across his face. The cogs of new plans were beginning to slot together in his mind.

"This is how you got the guards away," he said. "You 'performed' on them?"

She said nothing. The cogs kept turning.

"A five minute show?" he asked. "That really knocks 'em out?"

She shrugged. "Five minutes is all I am needing."

His smile only grew. A slave fighting for revolution, using the best weapon available to her: her body itself. He respected that.

"So," she whispered. "Are we having deal? I am distracting guards, you are getting your friend, and we are getting out."

"One problem," he replied as he lowered her arm. "How the hell am I meant to get my friend out of her cell without us all ending up sleeping in those sands out there you love so much? I've stumbled my way through this place enough to know that your 'social skills' don't work on real, flesh and blood mortals like you, me, and our favorite lizard boy who runs the show for the big bird."

Her veil moved in an odd little way that suggested movement behind it - laughter, maybe? Or a smirk that told him there was still some mischief hiding in those crimson eyes of hers.

"I believe you are already having plan for that, are you not?"

Her eyes moved to his leather greaves and the tiny bulge in his pocket. She'd seen what he'd taken from the storeroom. Of course she had.

"I'll admit, its been a puzzle" he smiled again. "But I think I just found the final piece."