Even in the wavering light, the spearhead shone like an ominous beacon of destruction. The palace guard ran his whet store rhythmically along his weapon, fully entranced by his gruesome work.

'Borit would be furious by this man's inattention. He should be standing and fully alert.'

Silver did not realize that the grating sound of metal on metal did far more to unravel the nerves of prisoners than a silent guard on duty ever could. But the Guardian was right in assuming the guard's attention was distracted.

Because nothing ever happened in that forsaken place, the soldier had given up the notion that anything would. So he dutifully sharpened the razor tip until the edge could slice a hair in two. In his mind, he would earn a pretty penny the next night gambling and needed to have a good weapon to protect his winnings. The guard began to hum softly to himself, pleased with the entertainment he saw in his future.

Silver wondered what the man must be thinking to be humming in a place like this torturous hole. Perhaps the soldier was deranged. He did not want to find out. With a cautious glance, Silver passed by him and into the place where every thief hoped never to find himself: the dungeon.

While the commander had a beautiful and very official looking office by the throne room, he wisely kept his secrets elsewhere. Borit trusted no one implicitly, and it was this fact that had kept him alive more than once.

Recalling the map in his head, Silver veered off from the main aisle of cells through a labyrinth of turns. The air was rank and foul, but the silver-eyed man noted that most of the cells he passed were empty.

Lesser criminals would be kept in jails in the countryside or given community service to work off their crimes, and Silver suspected that Borit quickly rid himself, one way or another, of the more violent criminals in his keeping. Whatever the reason for the lack of occupants, the Guardian easily passed by almost completely unnoticed.

"Hey you!" Someone called from the darkness of one of the cells. "Thought you could get away from me, did you?"

The Guardian froze and looked for the source of the sound. A man in an eye patch was staring out at him with a malicious glint and a crooked smile.

The prisoner lunged. Silver flinched. The man picked a mouse up on the ground, clutching it in his fists.

"You thought you could get away. Oh no, that will never happen." The man stoked the mouse's head, and it squeaked.

The Guardian let out his breath. 'He wasn't talking to me."

The man went on blubbering. "No one escapes Dimitri, not now; not ever. Isn't that right, Shadow?" The prisoner's searching gaze shot upwards from the mouse and landed directly on Silver's form.

Although it should have been impossible for the Guardian to be seen in such a low light, he had clearly been spotted.

"Tell mousey here that no one gets away, Shadow. Tell him I am the master of this domain," the filthy man persisted. He held out the frightened rodent to be reprimanded.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Uhh…he's the master all right," Silver whispered in a ghostly voice. 'Master of insanity.'

"See?" The man grinned. "Shadow knows, though he usually doesn't talk around strangers…" His face contorted in confusion.

"Who are you talking to, Dimitri?" a guard yelled down the hall.

Turning his head to press it against the bars, the man with the eye-patch growled. "Leave me alone. My shadow and I were just having a most delightful—" the prisoner's voice trailed off as Silver's arm reached through the bars and wrapped the man's neck. Dimitri gurgled and flailed against the metal in protest.

Pressuring him against the bar, Silver sent Dimitri into a quick and unnatural sleep. The man's hand relaxed and the mouse skittered from his grasp.

"I guess some do get away after all," Silver smirked. "Sleep well, crazy man…" He hurried on before the guard came to see why Dimitri had not finished his answer.

A few more turns awaited Silver, and he hoped the map he held in his head was accurate. With the agility of a cat, he moved silently through the shadowy prison. Thankfully he did not have to play shadow to any more madmen.

Finally, Silver came to a heavy wooden door with an iron lock halfway from the top. With a flick of his wrist, the cloaked figure pulled a set of lock picks from his cloak and began his work.

While a locked door itself was not suspicious—it was a dungeon after all—a wooden door among the metal bars of all the cells certainly stood out. And the lock on this entry was far more intricate than any of the others, resembling the complexity of a safe not a common turnkey.

No guard stood vigil at the end of a hallway as it would have gained unwanted attention. The Guardian was glad now that Borit had selected a particularly out of the way section of the castle for his hidey hole. No one was there to observe as he made quick work of the lock. With a gracious bow to the lock for having put up a good fight, Silver slipped gracefully inside.

The door swung easily on its hinges, obviously well-oiled. Passing through silently, Silver closed the door to a slit behind him. He lit the small lamp that hung from the wall, happy for the bit of light to work by.

Covered in papers, a desk took up the bulk of the room with only a chair making up the remaining furniture.

'Doesn't entertain guests, I see.'

The Guardian went to work swiftly. He began by gingerly turning pages over, but settled into rifling through the pages after only a few sheets.

In truth, the cloaked figure did not care if Borit knew he had been here. The commander kept these papers secret for a reason, and Silver doubted that the soldier would risk the contents of these documents being revealed by admitting they were stolen.

'I just have to make sure I am gone before you discover who did this to you,' he thought, grinning mischievously. 'Maybe you'll come after me and finally finish yourself off. Wouldn't that be nice?'

The work was tedious and soon the Guardian fell into a rhythm of picking up a page and casting it aside into either a 'maybe' and a 'no' pile.

'Either none of you are what Hanna described or I don't know what I am looking for. Surely I will know the papers when I find them...I hope.'

Before the thought had even finished leaving his head. The Guardian's eyes fell across a set of documents that had been recently rolled, the edges still curled.

'Hello there! What are you?' He lifted the paper and noted the wax seal with surprise. The mark was familiar but he couldn't quite place it. The writing itself was completely foreign. Silver was sure that the strange symbols were a code of some sort. Perhaps a cipher? 'You are exactly what I'm looking for.' he realized with triumph.

The Guardian rummaged around the rest of the desk to confirm no other pages belonged to the bundle, then rolled the documents and stowed them in his cloak.

"Huh?" a voice from outside the door grunted. The Guardian ducked under the desk as the wooden door was pushed open. "Hello?" a woman's voice called out.

Silver held his breath. She hadn't seen him. 'Don't move.'

The person shuffled toward the desk, "Commander? I thought you were gone." When no answer came, she sighed. "That man's a slob. Just look at the papers and his chair. And he'll start a fire if he leaves his lamp burning indefinitely."

She reached for the chair and pushed it in. Only Silver's agility and quick thinking allowed him to silently press his body into an upside u against the opening of the desk to avoid the incoming seat. If only living things could go into his cloak, he would have disappeared entirely.

The woman's voice pricked a memory in Silver's mind, but he was unable to place it. That would be a mystery for another day. For now, he just had to stay unseen.

At last the woman gave up her vain pursuit of straightening the papers. Or was she looking through them like he had? Either it was his imagination or she folded up a paper and tucked it in the folds of her tunic.

'Very curious.' In the end she doused the lamp, left and shut the door firmly behind her.

Silver had been very lucky that she was not more curious about the door being open. Or had she, like Silver, also been searching for a moment to peek in the Commander's domain without him there? Either way the result was the same. The Guardian was left alone in the dark without being discovered.

'That was too easy,' he thought to himself, immediately regretting it. After waiting an appropriate amount of time, he turned rapidly toward the door.

'Get out before your luck runs out.'