When Kasper woke he was tied quite alongside Joakim and Valerius in the dark. They were laying within the corner formed by one of the staircases coming out from the bone outcropping in the Atrium. It provided some shelter, not that they needed it since there was no wind in the atrium.

It took him a moment to get over the experience he had just gone through. He was positive he had been a servant in a noble house, and now he was a thief in a group of adventurers hoping to slay a dragon. In the previous identity, he had even met a girl he fell in love with. In this identity, he had nobody that he was in love with or any blood-related family. Instead, he was traveling with a gorgeous woman who was wonderfully rich - not that he had never had the courage to tell her any of that - and also with a group of friends he had known since childhood.

The terrible experience though, was in the past. If he was going to be a thief with a group of adventurers out to kill a dragon again he may as well do that to the best of his ability. At this point, the challenge was deciding whether or not to wake his companions or just get free of his ropes and get moving. They seemed all quite delirious, a little lost in a state he still couldn't quite describe. Dreamlike seemed fitting, but it trivialized the actual feeling.

The only problem was, Irinia wasn’t there. She was missing from the group. Where she was, Kasper couldn’t tell.

The person who had tied the ropes, he reasoned, as not great at rope tying. Then again, not many could keep a person like himself captured. Well, at least he thought so. To get out, all he had to do was rub the ropes around his wrists and feet against one of the stair's edges. It took a bit, but after a while, the friction cut and burned through the rope, and he was free.

With that, he got up, and slowly crept up the stairs, looking for anyone watching. Nobody seemed to be, and the knights were nowhere to be seen, but he wasn't going to let his guard down.

Something else about the place, other than the absence of Irinia and the knights, caught his eyes. The stone walls of the atrium had been torn into at various places, like claw marks, and the dragon-bone walkway in the middle of the atrium had a large chunk taken out of it. There were also large scorch marks on the stone here and there. Whatever magic Azara had used to escape, it must have been very powerful and beyond his imagination. Maybe the dragon had come and attacked them? His memory of the moments and discussion before he blacked out was patchy and incomplete.

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Eventually, as he crept up the walkway, he figured the best way to go would be out, and he began ascending the stairway.

Halfway up he stopped, seeing a light ahead. It was a reddish color. "Azara!" he called out recklessly.

For a moment, nobody responded, and then -

"Kasper, is that you?"

"Yes, I got fre-" he began, before she cut him off.

"Shush."

She then closed the distance between them and began talking in a whisper. "For a thief you sure are loud."

"A thief? I'm just the humble servant of - wait I mean, I am a thief. I think. I don't know wh-"

"Shh. It was magic. It felt real but it was...just magic, I think. It could be more than that, but I don't know. That sword of his, it has a tear-stone like mine in the pommel, and I think the blade has something in it as well. It has been enchanted with a very particular effect on his foes."

"What do you mean?" Kasper asked, confused, as he approached Azara. “How would he get that? I thought you said yours was special.”

"Don't you remember who he is? That sword...it has to have been a gift from his mother. Something special she has given him."

Kasper, who was still getting his wits about him, shook his head. "Wait, you were talking to that guy like you knew him well earlier. Better than you’d even said back in Midton."

"His father and my mother had a lot of disputes over the years, a lot of diplomatic meetings, things like that. We used to, uh, play together as really young kids. It was a long time ago," she explained.

“And how long ago was that?” Kasper asked.

“About three no - two ye-” she began, before stopping herself, a little flustered. "Just forget it, I've already told irinia about this I don't need to tell you too. It's my business. I've got a plan for this situation, that is your business. Are the others coming? I'd thought he would have guarded you all or something."

Kasper wanted to laugh, he had caught her lie, but decided it best not to call her on it. She was right, after all, it wasn’t his business. "Uh...no. I just managed to escape. The others were very delirious still. How did you get here? How did you escape?"

Azara shook her head. "That doesn't matter right now, as it is also none of your business. Maybe you are a bit different from everyone else - like me. I can resist celestial magic better than most. Konrad is a bit of a reckless person anyway, he probably expected the effects to take longer to wear off or something. That isn't the point."

"So what is?"

"We need to get away from here and formulate the rest of this plan. I think I have an idea."

"Shouldn't we rescue the others?" Kasper replied, questioning the logic in leaving everyone behind.

"Not yet, we may just get captured again or worse. We need to win here."

"How?"

"By messing with him - like how that sword of his messed with us. Come on, I'll explain outside."

Kasper obliged, and the two of them went back up the staircase, out of the atrium.