{Pike}

Pike was not a brave man. He had gained Caesar’s favor simply because he never hesitated to stab a colleague in the back. But Caesar was most definitely dead now, and that meant it was time to pack up and get the hell out of here. All of their traps, their schemes, escape tunnels and backup bases, useless. How were they supposed to plan for people waltzing into their secret base and killing all their guards, and killing Caesar before he could get away? The spells Gnott, their wizard, cast on Caesar before the meeting made Pike’s head spin! But somehow that half-dragon scum had ignored six guards and got through the protective spells. Pike knew Caesar should have signed the deal with that necromancer! He had to retreat and go down his personal escape tunnel.

But first, he had to shake off this lunatic running after him with a dagger!

Pike sprinted down the corridor, the man behind keeping pace with him. He cast a glance behind him and saw the lunatic grinning, doing the universal sign of backstabbing with his dagger in one hand. Pike turned back and sped up, shouting for help. He was nearing the mess hall, there was bound to be at least a few guards there. “I’m gonna catch you, better start running faster!” The man was catching up, but thankfully, Pike had a good head start and was getting closer to the mess hall.

He turned a corner and out of nowhere, some sort of demon abomination crawled its way out of the floor in front of him. Black-skinned, bulky, shaped like a human but well over nine feet, the demon stood up from the hole it made and pointed at him, its red eyes boring into him.

“YOU COMING WITH ME. TIME TO REPENT.” The demon spat the words out as if they were poison, and took an earth-shattering step towards Pike. He scrambled back- Pike’s feet tripped on something and he fell on his back, hard. He looked up and saw the demon gone, with the crazy man looking over him to his right. The man chuckled and said,

“Works every time.” The man slashed his neck with a dagger faster than he could react, and everything grew dark as he gurgled on his own blood. This was it for ol’ Pike, huh? In pure spite, he bled out while flipping his killer the bird.

Pike heard someone laugh before he died.

{Arthur}

He and Kaia set the last tipped-over cage upwards, the dwarf inside righting themselves. Kaia caught her breath and Arthur looked back to the right entrance. Where did Davit go? He better look for him and search this place at the same time. “Kaia, I’m going to look for Davit. Stay here, ill be back shortly.” Kaia nodded absently and observed the expanse.

Arthur made it halfway to the right entrance before a female human to the right of him reached through the bars with one arm, shouting desperately, “Wait! Free me, please! I want to get out of this hellhole, let me out of this cage!” Before the woman said that, the atmosphere in the room was strained hope, not one person making a sound and watching the pair. But the woman incited others to yell out their pleas as well, and from that point every person in the cages was pleading, begging, demanding Arthur to let them out.

He sighed. It would be messier to release everyone before he had killed all the guards here and secured the loot, but the genuine desperate tones in all of these people’s voices, he couldn’t turn them down and walk away. He would have to watch them all after setting them free, but he wanted to collect all of the gold here. And he couldn’t do that while watching these people at the same time. He looked to the human woman who had first called out, locking eyes. She went quiet, silently pleading. He almost sighed again, instead addressing the expanse in a loud voice, “Alright, I’ll release you all. But, you have to promise to stay here until I’ve searched this entire place. All of you are safe as long as you stick with me and her!” He gestured towards Kaia and himself. He turned to Kaia and pointed at the bodies.

“Check their pockets for any keys, try to open the cages if you find any. In the meantime..” He approached the woman’s cage and grabbed two metal bars, attempting to pull them apart. Using all his strength, the bars started to bend. When he stretched the bars as far as they would go, he gestured to the woman, who had backed up.

“Try to squeeze through.” She nodded, and Arthur backed up. The woman tried to go through the opening he had made, but only got a third of her body out before getting stuck. He cast reduce on her. The woman didn’t notice she had shrunk and easily slipped through, shrieking after looking down at herself in confusion.

“What did you do?!” The woman sounded almost hysterical.

“It’s just a simple spell. Look, you’re back to normal.” Arthur dispelled the reduce, and she turned back. After taking a moment to confirm she was indeed normal, the woman shakily stuttered out,

‘T-thank you.” He turned from the woman to see Kaia’s progress and found her opening a cage with a key. The elven man in the cage thanked her and stepped out of the cage, steadying himself. He then slowly walked over to the bodies of the guard. He plucked a shortsword from one of the corpses. The woman joined him in pilfering the guards, occasionally kicking the bodies after they took all its valuables. He shrugged, letting them do so. People said to respect the dead, but those guards were a definite exception.

For the next few minutes, Kaia and the freed woman and elf opened cages with keys taken from the guard’s bodies. Arthur directed every freed person to the middle of the expanse, where he told them to wait.

The mood of the place was a strange mix of happiness and sadness, people crying and hugging others at the same time. He felt uncomfortable at all of the raw emotion going around, but the smiles and thanks given to him by all the people more than made up for it. In just a few minutes every cage was open and every person was standing in the middle of the expanse, the cages moved by Arthur to make more room. When the last person was there he shouted out in a clear voice, “Alright, listen. I need to search this place for anything valuable, and I also need to find my ally. Kaia will protect you all while I’m gone. Anyone able to use a sword should pick one up from those bodies over there.” He turned and headed towards the right door, and couldn’t help but feel relief. Finally, he could find his treasure and Davit. Before he walked out, a dwarf shouted out to him,

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“They have a dungeon where they bring anyone who acts up! Will ya kindly bring anyone there back? Id goes with ya, but me strengths sapped from this wretched place.” Arthur turned back to them.

“I’ll keep an eye out.” He left through the door, back into the winding hallways. Arthur started through the first door he saw…

{Davit}

Pike slammed open the double doors leading into the mess hall. Multiple crossbows were immediately pointed at him, but they were lowered when they realized it was Pike. The mess hall contained multiple tables and was pretty big and roomy. It seemed this was more of an area people would hang around and eat their food than any other purpose. It was filled with ten guards, all of which seemed to have been scrambling around. A group of five was about to leave when Pike opened the doors. One of them said in a relieved voice to Pike, “Boss! We heard you shouting, what’s up? What the hell happened to your arm?” Pike was grasping his bleeding arm, which seemed to have been cut pretty badly.

“Caesar’s dead! We need to barricade the doors, and set up a defensive line with the tables!” All of the guards looked to him in multiple stages of bewilderment and shock.

“Caesar’s dead? How-”

“No time for how! DO IT NOW!” At his shout, the ten guards sprang into action, picking up and hauling the multiple tables towards the doors and creating a barricade. Two guards ran over to Pike with a healer’s kit, but he waved them off, telling them to go help. In just two minutes everything was set up. Three tables blocked the double doors, and behind a row of tables stood all ten guards at Pike’s command, crossbows at the ready.

Davit smirked, under the change shape guise of Pike. The wound was a basic illusion that anyone could have easily seen through if they looked closer, hence why he waved off the two guards. He had always wanted to do this, and he had put these guards in the perfect position.

“Hey everyone, look over here for a second!” Davit had positioned himself at the end of the row, so all of the guards were in a line in front of him. He cast lightning bolt as they all started to turn to him. Taken by surprise, every guard failed to dodge the, well, lightning-fast lightning bolt. With a loud crack, the lightning coming from his finger bore a sizzling hole through each of them. All ten guards dropped to the ground. Davit whooped, pumping his fists in the air. That was the most he’s ever gotten with a single lightning bolt!

He dusted off his hands and started to loot the first body in front of him. He pocketed anything of interest, like jewelry or a cool knick-knack.

When he got to the sixth body, he saw the man still kicking. It seems they were having trouble breathing, gasping for air and trying to cover up the hole the lightning bolt bored into them. The guard looked up to him, and gasped out a strangled, "Why?"

Davit changed his shape back to his human form and grinned at the guard. "Because you're a fool, my friend." He took out his trusty dagger and put them out of their misery with a stab to the heart. Davit continued to loot.

Five minutes later, he was out of the mess hall. Davit wanted to find Arthur. It would be pointless to go off without the red dragon, that was his whole reason for coming here! After a moment, he realized he just now went off without Arthur. Ah well. Sometimes he just couldn’t resist. Sauntering down the hall without a care in the world, Davit went back in the direction of Caesar’s office.

{Arthur}

The first few rooms were nothing special when he searched them, looking to be multiple guards barracks. A few guards were in each barrack-room, and he swiftly dealt with them before they had a proper chance to react. Punching people would never get old, he decided.

He looted the barracks, finding nothing noteworthy. Moving on to the next closest room, he was greeted with the odor of death. Inside the room was a dungeon, or maybe a torture room would describe it better. Multiple devices were about the room, from stretching racks to iron maidens. It was like a scene straight from an old medieval movie. Chained to the north wall were three humanoids. A male Dragonborn, a female elf, and the human man who had been dragged off Arthur recognized. Each of them looked bloodied and battered, and blindfolds covered their eyes. He approached, and the three humanoids stirred at his presence. “Please, no more.” The human weakly gasped out.

“I’m not here to harm you. Come with me, and you all will be safe.” He approached slowly and lifted the blindfolds from each one. While the three were looking around blearily Arthur broke the chains one by one, taking a few seconds to pull apart each chain. He crouched down and looked at the three of them.

“Can any of you walk?” The human and elf nodded weakly, but the blue Dragonborn simply gestured at his leg. “The bastards broke my leg.” He nodded at the Dragonborn and supported him in standing up.

“Come on, ill lead you back to safety.” The elf and human got to their feet, wobbling. They inadvertently stabilized each other, looking at the other and awkwardly apologizing at the same time.

He was surprised by how every ex-slave had been so cooperative so far. He chalked it up to all of them being broken mentally. This place must have been cruel to the hotheaded personalities.

The four of them hobbled back to the expanse, Arthur carrying the Dragonborn halfway there. When they entered the expanse, two armed men came and helped the elf and human walk. The people had made a set up of ‘guards’ in a loose circle around the rest of everyone. Kaia was in the middle, passing out rations. Where had she gotten those? Arthur set down the unconscious Dragonborn. They must’ve passed out while he was carrying them. Thanks were mumbled by the elf and human, and the mood of everyone turned more hopeful. He turned to Kaia and asked, "Kaia, where did you get those rations?"

"The guards had a crate of them to feed everyone here. The dwarf over there pointed it out." She pointed to a dwarf who was also passing out rations.

"Ah. Well, you're doing good work. keep it up." Kaia smiled and continued. He gave everything one more lookover, and addressed everyone in the expanse, "We leave this place the next time I come back. Be ready." He set off back into the hallway.

There had to be someplace Caesar hid his money here, right? He walked past the dungeon room, looking around for a secret door. In the distance, he spotted a figure walking towards him. The human waved and he realized it was Davit. Davit shouted over to him, “Hey Arthur! Sorry for running off, but I got that guy and a whole bunch of guards!” Arthur evenly replied,

“You shouldn’t run off like that.”

“Aw, but I apologized didn't I? Does that not grant some leeway?” He flashed a cheeky smile.

“I care about the loot here.” Arthur crossed his arms. “Did you find any gold? I plan on leaving once we find Caesar's stash.”

“Yeah, I know where Caesar’s gold is. I have a good idea of where he hid it! I checked his office on the way here, and there was a hidden note in abyssal in his desk drawer. Come on, ill show you!” He smiled cheekily and turned to walk back down the hall, gesturing for Arthur to follow. He simply sighed and followed. Arthur had been worried Davit would have run off with the loot, but it seemed like he really had just come here for ‘fun’.

“Hey, ill show you a handy trick you can use to carry all the loot! It involves Change shape!”

Arthur didn’t know what to make of him. Whatever, as long as he got his gold and the slaves were safe and sound in Mirfield, this would be a resounding success. After he got the gold, he would leave immediately.