It was the tingling in her fingers that made Orena realise something was wrong and she wasn't happily dozing in her own bed. Her brow tightened as she tried to focus on the pins and needles through the content fog she'd been existing in. Her eyelids felt heavy as she stretched to try and get feeling back into her limbs, only for her to realise that it wasn't sleep, her eyes were so dry that trying to open them hurt.
She screwed her eyes even more tightly shut, trying to work the tears she could feel forming from the scratching sensation under the lids without causing more pain. After a bit of wiggling she finally managed to get them to cooperate and was finally able to look up with blurry vision.
She was in a dimly lit room, not her own, and not one she recognised either. She pushed herself up into a sitting position on the hard slab that she'd been laid on, the skirts of her emerald green dress sliding with her, though still awkwardly bunched beneath her. There wasn't much else in the room, just a couple of bookcases and what looked like some writing scrawled along one of the curved walls that someone had made half an effort to wash off.
A shiver wracked her frame but she ignored it. Right now she had more important things to worry about than the temperature.
There was a door, half hidden in the shadow of one of the bookcases, and she almost didn't dare try it. Instead Orena took a deep breath to centre herself, before shuffling forward so she could touch her feet to the floor. The stone was uncomfortable through her thin pumps, but she almost laughed when she realised that was oddly comforting. She was well used to being able to feel every bump beneath her feet through her annoyingly dainty shoes.
She wrapped her pale fingers around the hooped handle and twisted. Grunting in disapproval as she found it locked. Now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness she could tell the deadbolt wasn't on her side. She took another breath, how had she ended up here? The last thing she remembered was drinking with Cirro at the ball. She shook her head, never mind that, how the did she get out?
~-x-~
Orena considered kicking the door in an attempt to break the wood so that she could open it, but decided against it. Even if she had the strength - which she suspected she didn't -, she didn't know where she was, or why she was here. What would happen if whoever had brought her here knew she was awake?
She had quickly searched through her skirts, but the small dagger she liked to carry for emergencies had already been removed. Not that she was very proficient with it - she'd never been in a real fight and she had only had the most rudimental training to minimise the danger to her -, but it gave her a small feeling of security. It meant she had an emergency back up plan for when everything else failed.
Or she could've tried to use it to try and manipulate the lock on the door. Right now she was only assuming it was a deadbolt, but there was a possibility that it was something else she could work loose with the tip of a blade. If she'd had one.
She tucked a strand of long brown hair back behind her ear as she padded over to one of the bookcases, there was only a smattering of books, most of which appeared to be in a language she didn't understand. Though even if she did it would be hard to read them in here due to the poor light given off by the chandelier above her with half it's candles depleted.
She eyed up the dais again, trying to judge if she were tall enough to reach the chandelier if she stood on it. Attempting to burn the door down was almost certainly more foolhardy than trying to break it down. The smoke would kill her before the fire made enough of a hole in the door, even assuming she could even set it alight.
A metal scraping noise drew her attention back to the door. Orena didn't recognise the man who stepped through the threshold and into the small chamber she had found herself in. He only seemed moderately surprised she was up. "It seems young Cirro is getting careless again."
Orena frowned at him. "About?"
The man laughed. "How do you think you found yourself waking up here?"
Orena tried to think about where Cirro had got the wine they had shared from, but she had seen him drink it too. Could she really have missed him adding something to her glass? "Why seems rather more pertinent," she said instead.
The man smirked at her. "Oh, I do like the smart ones," he said, his tone somewhere between reverence and mocking. "So much more potential for success."
"Success at what?"
"Lie down, and you'll find out."
Orena followed the arm he brandished towards the stone she'd woken up on. Suddenly it looked more like some kind of altar than a convenient surface to rest on, and somehow rather more foreboding. And it had been rather foreboding when she had originally woken up. "No."
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He laughed at her. "It's not a request," he explained, a small knife suddenly in his hand and pointing in her direction. "Now."
Orena shook her head and repeated her refusal. He stormed towards her, and she backed up until she collided with the bookcase behind her. "I will not repeat myself, get back on the table."
At this distance she could see the adornments on his robes, and the symbols on his stole. She might not be able to translate the script, but she recognised it as denoting a magical practitioner. That foreboding feeling roared back to life, making her stomach roll. As he took another step towards her to grab her arm, blade still pointing at her, she grabbed the thickest book she could and swung across his path, hoping to use it to block or deflect the knife. She heard something hit the ground and dropped the book to reach for the paperweight she'd seen earlier and swung it towards his head.
His cry of pain didn't quite hide the sickening crunch she heard as the paperweight connected with his skull. She didn't wait to find out exactly how much damage she'd done, she let go of it and ran towards the door.
~-x-~
Fear fuelled her as she hurtled as fast as she dared down the slightly too dark corridors. A part of her knew she shouldn't risk tiring herself out when she didn't know what was coming next, but right now that was being overruled by the desire to get as far away as quickly as possible. Her moderate fitness be damned.
The first room she passed through looked like some kind of supply or storeroom. Full of jars and containers on shelves in some kind of loose organisation. The second room was much similar, only this one contained more tools, some of which looked ominously stained. She paused to consider them, many were sharp enough to be useful as a weapon, though she would need to be close to use them. The risk of imbued magic she couldn't handle seemed quite small against the very real danger she was in.
She grabbed the one that looked like a fire poker, it was heavier than she would prefer to carry, but it felt like her safest bet right now. Blunt enough to use as a bludgeon if she couldn't stab someone with the pointy end.
Weapon in hand she hurried towards the other door, and found herself now out of storage rooms. This room couldn't have been much bigger than the one she woke up in, and opposite the door she'd entered there was a stone platform affixed to the wall. At first she thought it was just covered in scraps of stained fabric, until they stirred and she realised they were covering a person. No, a corpse based on the smell. But corpses didn't move.
As the mummified remains sat up and swivelled it's head slowly towards where she was standing in the doorway she swore her heart stopped for a moment. She had thought necromancy the stuff of myths. But unless this was a particularly potent nightmare it was turning out to be a very real branch of magic. One that she feared she was very nearly subjected to.
The creature swung it's legs around to drop down onto the floor in a similar manner to which she had not too long ago. Her grip tightened on the poker as it slowly shambled towards her as she froze in place, her mind blank as she tried to process what she was seeing.
As it stretched a rotting hand out towards her, something inside her snapped and she swung the metal rod down across it's forearm. If she was lucky the bone was now broken, but at least it gave her the opportunity to flee. She darted into the room, trying to put as much distance between them. If she had done any damage to it, it certainly didn't care, as it turned to follow her movements. She glanced down at her weapon again, still sturdy and reassuring, but it had done nothing to the creature. She swallowed and took the only other route out of the room available to her as it followed.
Grateful for the fact that it at least didn't seem to be fast, Orena made her way down the next stretch of corridor, coming across another door and trying it out of hope more than any real expectation at this point. She was surprised that it opened under her hand. She could hear the low scratching sound from the creature's feet scraping across the floor as it walked without really lifting its feet. She swallowed as she knew she didn't really have much in the way of choices right now, and pushed the door open so she could step into the next problem.
This room was far larger than the others she'd come across, and filled with benches strewn with more tools, jars and objects. Not to mention other apparatus that she could only imagined were used for brewing potions. Or at least, she hoped that's what they were for. She swerved between the different benches to try and make her way to the far corner where she could see another door.
She was stopped in her tracks by the sound of wings and something dropped onto the bench in front of her. Her eyes focusing on the movement and finding a small winged creature staring back at her. It couldn't have been much bigger than her fist. It leant forward onto all fours as it sniffed at her, and she wasn't sure if she imagined it's glare.
Before she could contemplate the strange little creature in front of her, it reared back at the same time she heard something thump into the door she'd entered through. She didn't turn to find out if it was the corpse or the man and instead continued her journey towards the door she hadn't yet been through. She reached it at the same time the creature sidled through the door it had pushed open, only she couldn't find any kind of handle. She shoved at it, sweeping her hands over it to try and find some way of opening but it held fast.
She heard a rattle behind her and turned to find the mummified creature stalking towards her, one of the benches nearby rattling slightly as if it had bumped into it. Her back hit the door as she tried to think what to try next, raising the fire poker out of instinct more than any real thought she could do anything useful with it.
Her attention was distracted from the corpse by a small thunk next to her, and she saw the little winged creature now on the bench next to her, struggling with what looked like a compact, as if it could haul it open despite being roughly similar sized. It's frantic movements indicated a kind of urgency, and as she glanced back up at the outstretched arm of the mummified corpse as it closed in on her, Orena figured she didn't have anything left to lose.
So she reached for the compact and opened it, brandishing it at the large creature and wishing that she wasn't about to die in the most foolish way possible.