There wasn’t much to see beyond the confines of my cell. The walls were built of formidable stone bricks, tough enough looking to prevent most anything from getting in or out. Before me was a typical set of prison bars with a door made of thick steel, I could recognize it from my days as a blacksmith. Surprisingly though the cells were well maintained and kept clean.
I couldn’t turn to see the ventilation behind me thanks to the table I was restrained onto. It was a large wooden table that had me laid on my back. Thick metal handcuffs held me down onto the table, suppressing my ability to cast my magic. The chains on the cuffs only loosened when the bare minimum for dinner hours was brought around so I could eat. However the magic suppression stayed on. I assume the same was done for the rest of the captives. It was awkward and uncomfortable.
I was laid back, unable to do anything. The cuffs wouldn’t break, nor was I able to fit my hands through. If my hands were smaller maybe but thanks to being of Keraxe descent my hands were huge, and if they were smaller I would likely have gotten smaller cuffs anyway. My thoughts of trying to break out were quickly interrupted by the visceral screams of another prisoner. What the hell happened to them? This can’t be good.
One after the other I heard more people scream in pain, the chain of anguish slowly approaching toward my cell. Still I had no idea what was going on, dread loomed overhead. I saw the occasional cloaked individual pass by my cell. I’d shout out to ask if they could explain what’s going on, but each time I’d get ignored. So much for that.
The sounds of my fellow inmates suffering started to bother me. It wasn’t just coming from down the hallway, there were fainter noises echoing throughout the facility. Each scream made me want to rip these cuffs out of the table and break the cell bars to stop whatever was harming them. But despite my best efforts I couldn’t break free.
Eventually the cloaked figures reached my cell. They were bringing along a strange table on wheels. It seemed to have multiple vials that met to a sharp point almost like a needle. It looked like syringes but nothing that I'd seen before, two of them were set aside seemingly for me. One seemed to be full with a light blue liquid that I didn’t recognize, and the other was larger and completely empty. I did not like the look of this one bit.
One of the men forced my head down onto the table and locked a cuff around my neck. I was instantly alarmed at this as they’d never used this neck cuff before. Before I knew it however one of them had pointed the syringe with the blue fluid at my side and stabbed it into me. It hurt like hell as I winced in pain, watching them push the contents of the needle into me.
“The hell did you just stab me with?!” I shouted at them furiously.
“Don’t worry, Stanford Magnusson. It won’t hurt for much longer.” one of them responded calmly.
Sure enough I felt a bit drowsy soon after, whatever they just injected me with seemed to have some sleeping properties to it. I’m not sure if this was lucky or not but the effects didn’t seem to last all that long though. One of the shrouded figures turned around to grab the other needle.
“Alright now just to extract the magic essenc-'' one of them started before being cut off.
“Richards? You might want to look at this.” the other interrupted.
“What could possibly warrant-” he started again being interrupted by what he saw.
I was just watching along seeing what he was doing when I looked at what they were looking at puzzled, Myself. I don’t understand it myself but I was radiating a golden aura I’d never seen before. A power I didn’t recognize was building up inside me that I didn’t know I had. The one with the syringe apparently named Richards spoke up.
“Stevensson, Do you know what this might be?” he asked his co-worker.
“Not the faintest clue.” he answered.
The energy continued to build until I realized this was going to be too much for me to hold in, but this might be the opportunity I was looking for. The two still looked confused so I took the chance. I opened the palms of my hands and just hoped that would let it free like how it worked for my Metal Magic. One of the order members took a hint as their expression changed from one of bafflement to one of terror.
“Richards! Get down!” Stevensson shouted.
“Wha-?”
Before he could even finish his sentence a large explosion of this energy erupted out from me creating a bright golden light. The force of this explosion launched both cloaked figures into the walls with a loud crack. Behind them were large cracks in the bricks. The iron bars before me were bent horrifically out of shape. But most importantly the explosion shattered the cuffs holding me in place. Finally I was freed. I pulled myself up on my feet off of the table. I checked both of my captors.
“...They’re both unconscious, they must’ve been pretty tough to survive an impact like that.”
Whatever that explosion was seemed to be powerful. Luckily it looked like both of them would survive it. Now all I needed to do was figure out how I was going to get myself and as many of these prisoners as I could out of here.
I knew I didn’t have much time before more members of the group arrived to investigate. Quickly I stole one of their cloaks and all possessions in it before making a run for it. The cloak had a logo on it that I didn’t recognize, not that it mattered in this moment. I put it on and ran. Sure enough more members of this cult ran towards the explosion as I ran in the opposite direction, None of them seemed to notice I was a prisoner. I took a second to catch my breath as an alarm began to sound throughout the prison. Not long though I heard a voice.
“Hey, you!” said the voice to my right.
I looked to my right to see another cell with another prisoner. The prisoner had messy gray hair, the colour of his hair didn’t seem to just be a regular gray, it seemed like an almost drained gray, like in the absence of colour. I’d heard of some mages having their hair share a colour with their magic. His eyes looked very tired and his skin was oddly pale in the same shoddy outfit that I had. As well he wasn’t bound to a table like the rest of us seemed to be. He spoke again.
“You don’t look like the rest of those cultist bastards.” he pointed out, admittedly I didn’t have ample opportunity to make a convincing disguise.
“Yeah, I just broke free. I’ll get you out of here.” I told him
“Perfect. I’ve had it up to here with this place and their experiments.” he replied
I didn’t question it too much and just broke the bars to his cell, using my metal magic to break his cuffs setting him free. He stretched his arms and legs out finally being uncuffed. He spoke up.
“Thanks for the help. Let’s light this prison up.” he said, snapping his fingers to create a ball of Ash Magic, which he looked at incredibly confused.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“No, it’s nothing. C’mon let’s get moving, the group will be here soon now that they heard your metal magic.” he answered. “Do you have one of their keys to open the doors?”
I checked my pockets and did actually find a key.
“Yeah, here.” I passed him the key which he took.
“Perfect, If you want to start breaking the people on the lower floors free, I’ll start breaking the captives on this floor free.” he organized this jailbreak pretty quickly, it surprised me.
“Sounds good, By the way what’s your name in case I need backup?” I asked.
He took a second seemingly thinking before answering.
“Baltazar, what’s yours?” He answered a bit apprehensively.
“Stanford, Stanford Magnusson.” I gave my name back quickly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. Let’s go.” he said a bit anxiously.
“Right.” I complied running back the way I came to the lower floors.
We split up to cover more ground, Baltazar bolted deeper into the higher floors of the prison while I ran back down to the floor I came from. The lantern lit hallways were in complete chaos as the hooded captors were running around, shouting and panicking in disarray. As I ran past I was able to hear a couple of the things they were saying.
“Move guys! He’s gotta be here somewhere!”
“Which prisoner escaped?!”
“Someone, tell the boss to lock down this sector of the prison!”
My cover hasn’t been blown yet as they haven’t discerned me from the rest of them with the identical cloak. Them talking about locking down this sector is worrying though, just how many prisoners are there in this place? Hopefully Baltazar was able to find some way to keep the place from getting locked down.
I eventually made it to the end of the hallway where I came across an open room. It was a better lit room with the same lanterns and reinforced bricks holding the rest of the place up with the same stone tiles on the floor. It was filled with a bunch of crates, chests, and barrels. A couple members of this group were in here guarding it. This had to be a storage room. The two cloaked men turned to me suspiciously.
“Funny, I don’t remember any members of the Order with a beard like that.”
Order? What Order? I didn’t get a chance to think for long as one of them drew a blade. Quickly I jumped to action. I put my arm out and fired a copper blast at him knocking him back into the wall. The other one raised their leg creating a gray aura around it, I recognized it as Iron Leg. He lunged at me quickly with a kick, I narrowly avoided it as they crashed into the wall creating cracks in it. I sprinted in the direction he came from with a beam hitting him square in the back as he tried to recover.
Both of them recovered from my attacks, one of them swung their sword creating a slash of force cutting through the air towards me, while the other ran up for another kick. I ducked the flying slash and used my magic to leap above the other, hitting my head on the ceiling a bit. When I landed I unleashed a burst of copper magic knocking both of them into the wall. It hit both of them as the room was small, the guy with the sword being knocked out cold.
The one with the foot of steel was still able to get up and kicked towards me with great force knocking me back into the wall with his buddy. I fired one more beam of copper at him, which with his attack being sluggish he took the full force of also falling unconscious. I took a second to catch my breath, I was pretty well beaten up by those two however I needed to keep going.
I conjured up two larger blocks of copper and propped them against the doors while I figured out what was in here. Hopefully that should keep the members of this “order” out while I look for something to help me out of here. Surprisingly, I found a multitude of boxes of possessions. Likely from the prisoners however they weren’t named. I looked through a bunch of them as I heard slamming on the doors, and yelling from outside.
“What’s going on in there?! It sounded like there was a fight in there!”
I ignored it, continuing to search until I opened a crate finding my armor set. It was a large set of steel armor and boots with steel chainmail leggings. The chestplate had blue brandishing and symbols reflecting my days back in the navy. My navy cape was still in there too. It was nice to see they hadn’t destroyed my stuff. Quickly I redonned my armor and kicked the copper block back to the cells I came from.
Time was of the essence as I went from cell to cell breaking the prisoners out. I saw tons of prisoners of different types being held here. Samerians, Ravenneans, other Keraxians, they took everybody they could. There was one prisoner I found though who seemed especially distressed. As I got to their cell it was a Ravennean woman. As I ran up to break them out of their cuffs she started talking.
“Holy shit, thank you so much!” she said.
“No worries, are you alright?” I asked back, worried.
“Mostly… a bit drowsy because of whatever they stabbed me with.” she answered. She seemed relieved but that quickly turned into worry as she seemed to remember something, she asked me.
“Have you seen someone named Antonio Loch?” she asked with more distress on her face.
“No, not yet.” I answered. None of the inmates I freed so far said their name was Antonio. She looked saddened at that. “I’ll keep an eye out for him though. What’s your name so I can tell him you were looking for him?”
Just that reassurance seemed to cheer her up. “My name’s Amena, he’ll know as soon as you tell him.” She answered. “What’s yours?”
“Stanford. Nice to meet you” I smiled. “Once I get you out of here, head down the hallway to the left. There’s a storage room with all our possessions in there.”
“Sounds good, thanks for the save!” She thanked me again. I broke her cuffs free and she ran down the hall to the left.
I continued on breaking more inmates free, this actually led to some of them fighting back against the order members while others continued breaking more out. A trend I noticed however was that the ones fighting back were using stolen weapons and varying choices of fighting styles. However there weren’t many spellcasters. It was an odd pattern I’d noticed.
As the jailbreak began to spiral out of control, I spotted a group of prisoners sprinting down the hall from the storage room I’d been pointing them towards. I noticed Amena in the crowd who ran up to me in a panic, now dressed in a black coat, casual clothes, a blue feathered hat and an amulet. Chasing them was a group of these order members. I quickly took action.
“Get behind me!” I commanded the prisoners as I channeled a magic circle.
As I approach the oncoming threat one of them creates a ball of lightning which he throws at me. I create a pillar of metal to defend against the attack which creates a cloud of dust on impact. I throw a beam of metal back towards them which gets blocked by a bolt of lightning in a clash of magics.
Through the dust another one of them runs up landing a punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of me and sending me skidding backwards across the floor. As they rush back up I charge another blast of metal in my hand, throwing a haymaker in return as he gets close, he was barely able to put his guard up though it knocked him back too. As he flew backwards another bolt of lightning flew in hitting me in the shoulder.
As I’m still trying to recover from the last assault I hear the sound of a gun firing and I instinctually throw up a self explosion of metal. From within the blast I hear the sound of something ricochet. As the blast fades I create another blast of metal that I throw back at the one with a gun. He ducks out of the way and fires back again, this time I block by creating a wall of metal blocking the hallway. Through the wall I hear them trying to break it down, I start charging up two blasts of metal, one in each hand. I turn to the rest of the prisoners.
“You all, get out of here! I don’t know how long I can hold them for!” Turning my head back and shouting at them to flee.
At that moment the wall dissipates and I throw both blasts as hard as I can. One of them connects into the one with the gun and the other into the one with the gloves. The one with the gun gets launched down the hallway on his back, while the one with the gloves takes the attack head on, reeling in pain from it. The one that I didn’t attack throws another ball of lightning at me, I respond with a beam of metal which rips his blast apart causing a loud noise throughout the facility. The beam nearly connects but the mage dodges in the nick of time.
The boxing user rushes up to me while I’m preparing my next attack punching me square in the jaw. He follows up with a flurry of punches I couldn’t even react to, before throwing an uppercut launching me down the hall towards the fleeing prisoners sliding on my back. I try to look back to get up but I see the one who just attacked me prepare to launch in for more. I hear the sound of a gun fire behind me though and the cloaked figure before me stops his charge and looks over. I also look over to see Amena holding a smoking flintlock, with a look of terror on her face seeing how she missed.
“Oh shit.” she muttered, looking pale.
I took the window she gave me and launched myself backwards away from the boxer back onto my feet. A bolt of lightning flies by towards me which I’m only barely able to block with my magic circle. I see in the back the one with the flintlock got back on his feet, as the one with the gloves rushes past me towards Amena.
I turn my back to the two other members launching a beam of metal into the one rushing at Amena knocking him out cold sliding along the floor and stopping just at Amena’s feet. After that brief victory I’m reminded by reality as I hear another flintlock fire and a large impact to my back as I’m knocked back down to my knees. I turn around to see the flintlock smoking and another lightning ball flying in. I’m barely able to stop the attack with another explosion of metal.
I’m on my knees but I put my arm out forward creating a circle of magic below their feet. The lightning mage sees it and launches themself back with a leap of cackling lightning, but the one with the gun wasn’t so lucky being blasted to the side into the wall, going down like the boxer before. As the dust is settling I pull myself to my feet and create a large metal blast to hit the entire rest of the hallway. The lightning mage also charges an attack.
I throw my blast of metal down the hall, the lightning mage throws a large barrage of lightning bolts impacting into the blast trying to slow it down. It’s slowly getting slowed so while I’m channeling it with one hand I throw a beam of metal in behind the blast allowing it to plow through the lightning and impact into the mage knocking him unconscious as well. After the order was cleared out I dropped back down to one knee, I didn’t realize what toll that fight took on me in the moment of trying to protect those people.
“Stan, are you alright?!” Amena asks.
“Y-Yeah… Just a bit winded…” I said, I wasn’t exactly lying but it wasn’t just that I was winded. That was a hard fight and after so long in this prison I don’t have the energy for fights like that. Still I have to press on and get out of here.
“You seem pretty tough, do ya mind if I stick with you?” Amena asks, seemingly believing me.
“Sure… We gotta try and regroup with Baltazar though. We’ll need his support if we’re to get out of here.” I told her between heavy breaths.
At that moment though I heard the sound of a door slam open. I looked down the hall to where it came and I saw at least five more order members walk through towards us. Amena looked mortified, and frankly I felt the same. Still though I tried to pull myself back up as painful as it was to do so, but to no avail. Amena put her hand out, but nothing happened.
“W-What?” she said fearfully.
She tried again but still nothing, she tried a few other movements that looked like spell casting movements but still to no avail.
“The hell? Why can’t I cast my magic?!” she shouted terrified.
The order continued to approach, one of them having magic circles creating spells of fire, a couple others wielding swords and one arms up ready to fight. Though one of them stood out casting a large ruby crystal with an aura of red around it, not too far off from the energy that was used to break me from my cell. I didn’t know what it was but it didn’t look pleasant.
I prepared another circle of magic preparing to fight to the end to buy time for more people to flee. I began to turn to tell Amena to run when suddenly the wall between us and the order just crashed down. Through the wall and the rubble walked out Baltazar from before, this time in strange white wizards robes.
He was followed by another inmate donned in a set of what looked to be white titanium armor with some pouches on the belt. He has a long black cape draped over his shoulders. His helmet had a gap on the left side, revealing a missing eye underneath. This inmate also seemed to be casting a strange blue fire magic. Alongside them were two other inmates both with black hair and the usual prison garb.
“Hey, you must be the Magnusson that he was talking about,” the one clad in armor said, pointing to Baltazar behind him. “Need a hand?”
“Y-Yeah, I could use a hand, Bless the lord that you all showed up.” I thanked him gratefully as he helped me back to my feet.
“Don’t worry about it. Here, have a bottle of healing potion, we got more of them to deal with. ” he said, passing Amena and I a healing potion each. He turned to Baltazar while preparing a ball of blue fire. “Alright, Let’s roll. They’re coming.”
“Alright.” answered Baltazar, preparing an ash spell of his own.
After saying that they both throw their blasts down the hall at the oncoming order members. The one with the crystal threw a blast back to stop the oncoming attack, though the spell dissipated Baltazar’s spell, Ace’s went right through it. She puts up a wall of crystal which is able to stop the blast. She launches a beam of crystal back which Ace blocks with his left arm.
Baltazar takes the cutlass he's holding and slices through the air upward creating a magic slash which flies through the air towards the order. One of them puts their magic circle forward and creates a beam of fire destroying the attack. The two with the weapons create slashes of their own flying towards Baltazar. Despite my injuries however, I’m able to create a pillar of metal to stop the attacks from connecting.
“Thanks.” he says.
“No worries, get your next attack ready.” I responded, preparing a metal blast of my own.
As we’re doing that Ace throws several daggers of blue fire this time towards the crystal user, the one wielding crystal magic barely avoids it before preparing another attack of her own. Baltazar throws off another flying slash as I send a blast in support. Both attacks get stopped by a shockwave from one of the member’s fists. Ace managed to block the Ruby blast in time with a small buckler of blue fire before it hit him, thankfully.
The same member of the group charges towards Baltazar who’s able to block their fist with the cutlass. He kicks him back and whips the sword around creating a whirlwind strike. As he does this I throw a metal blast towards the brawler as well. While the order member does dodge the whirlwind the metal blast connects, sending him reeling.
As the berserker is catching his breath the two with the swords run out from behind him, one of them charging Ace and the other throws a flying slash at me. I try to dodge but my injuries make me slow and it hits my shoulder. In pain I fire back with a metal beam, as the swordsman dodges to the left, almost mockingly.
The one who charged Ace wasn’t quite so lucky, as Ace simply dodged to the right and broke their arm to disarm them. He launched a flurry of blasts at the order member, launching him down the hall further with each hit. With the opportunity Ace creates a shortsword of blue fire and sends it after the order member he launched. The order member was only barely able to get out of the way of it by falling on his back as it went over him.
The one leading the pack seemingly grabbed an amulet they were wearing with another hand out and fired a blast of red energy towards Baltazar. I recognized it as similar to the blast that set me free, I fired a Metal Blast in front of Baltazar to deflect the attack causing both attacks to destroy each other.
Baltazar goes to run up to the one who attacked me, but is hit by a blast of fire from the mage in the back. The leader of the group takes the opportunity to fire a beam of ruby towards Baltazar. He’s only barely able to stop it in time with his cutlass, however the beam doesn’t disappear. The order member continues channeling magic into the beam pushing Baltazar back and causing the cutlass to crack and warp.
Instinctually, I create a pillar of metal in the middle of the beam causing a large burst of magic energy, launching all of us back. Ace catching himself quickly launches a blazing beam knocking the leader further back through the hall. I’m still pulling myself back up off the ground as I hear Ace call out.
“Last chance for you lot to piss off!” he shouts confidently with his arms outstretched in front of him while charging up a large magic circle.
“Why should we!?” The leader of their group shouts back.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of what I’m about to unleash.” He shouts back, intimidatingly.
The crystal user prepares a blast of their own however the rest of them started shouting at her that they had to flee. She threw her spell towards us which I barely stopped from hitting Ace with a metal beam. They ran into a panic grabbing the unconscious two on the floor as Ace threw the spell.
The spell was a gargantuan surge of fire down the hall. The five of them carrying their two unconscious friends bolted out the door for safety. Frankly, I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that either.
“Well, that scared them off.” I said.
“I’m pretty sure that would’ve killed them.” Baltazar stated.
“They would’ve been roasted to death had they stayed just a bit longer.” Ace said, confirming Baltazar’s suspicions.
“Well regardless, we should try to get out of here. That crystal user looked pretty tough and they didn’t look too far off of the rest of the group here.” I said with a bit of concern.
“Right, this place is just getting more hectic the longer we’re here for.” Baltazar said in agreement. “It’s only going to be a matter of time before the inmates turn tail and run and we don’t want to get left behind.”
“Does anyone have a way out of here?” I asked, unsure of how we were going to escape.
“I know a guy.” Ace said.
“You…” Baltazar said disapprovingly.
“Dr. Fjord probably knows some backdoor passage within the building.” He answered back.
“Well, I like the idea more than just standing here waiting for more of those cloaked guys to show up.” Amena added.
“Sounds good to me.” I agreed.
“Then let’s backtrack this way.” Ace said, pointing at the hole in the wall behind him.
“Alright, let’s go.” I said.
“Are you sure we can trust-” the rest of Baltazar’s sentence was cut off by the sound of the rest of us running through the hole in the wall. He reluctantly followed us.
Following Ace higher into the upper floors we had to flee from more members of the order. Oftentimes I had to throw up a metal wall to block them off so they’d lose us. We were nearing our destination when I heard a loud gunshot from behind us. I turned around to see one of the black haired inmates alongside us bleeding out on the ground, and one of the order members down the hall with a smoking musket.
In that moment I saw red, and fired a metal beam down the hallway impacting into his chest knocking him out cold. Baltazar spoke up.
“We can’t stay here and fight them, keep moving!” he shouted to me.
“Baltazar, we have a man down!” I shouted back. “He needs help!”
“We don’t have the time nor the potions! Come on!” He commanded back.
I looked back at the injured inmate on the ground, I knew Baltazar was right. But I couldn’t just do nothing. I quickly grabbed the injured inmate and threw him over my shoulder before running after them.
Eventually Ace led us up to a cell on the higher floors, inside the cell was another cloaked figure just reading a book while sitting at a table with a chess board on top of it. I was a bit suspicious as to who this figure was and if they were hostile. Before I could make any decisions though, Ace spoke up.
“Dr. Fjord?” he asked.
“Huh, why are you all here? Aren't you supposed to be escaping the prison?” he said as he's putting down the book he was reading.
“That's precisely why we went back here to get you.” Ace said while adjusting his gauntlet, “Do you know of any secret passages within this prison? Since any large building is bound to have some.”
“Ah, I see…” he lights up a cigarette and puffs it while standing up “Yes, there are in fact some secret passages within the building. Follow me, I’ll lead the way.”
I was a bit suspicious of him, and looking at Baltazar and Amena I could tell they felt the same way. But Dr. Fjord turned back to look at us.
“As well, I understand your concerns, Baltazar, Stanford, and Amena.” he said while eyeing the three of us. “However, I'm just your average doctor around here. No magic or anything of that sort.”
“Then why are you helping us?” Baltazar asked.
“I can explain that when we get you guys out of here.” Dr. Fjord responded.
He then went over the prison's general building structure and then led us down some passages that I didn't even notice until he pointed them out, guiding us on our way back down. Surprisingly he was able to navigate us through, out of the line of sight of more members of the prison’s guard. We followed him, a bit hesitant until he led us down to the hidden docks.
“Alright, this is where we stop and part ways.” He pointed over to the sailboats. “Just take one of the sailboats there and you should be able to sneak out undetected.”
“You haven’t explained why you were helping us.” Baltazar said still suspicious of Fjord.
“Explaining the reason why I’m helping you all would take too long, and the guards will arrive soon." he said while flinging the butt of the cigar to the sea, watching it as it floated away. "But if you all insist.”
I was a bit skeptical of him so I wanted to know why a member of this group was helping us. Baltazar also seemed suspicious of him. Amena less so but she paid attention.
“I am indirectly the cause of the experiment they performed on you all.” He explained, “I made that serum they used with the hopes of saving people, but by the time I discovered what it was truly used for, it was all too late.”
Serum? Does he mean what was in the needle they tried to inject me with? I looked over at the others, Amena looked on in horror, while the rest of the crew just looked confused.
“I’ve gone too far down the wrong path even if I didn’t intend to, so this is the least I could do to atone for my sins.” he said, remorse visible in his expression. A bitter smile crept onto his face.
Without hesitation, I walked up to Dr. Fjord and placed my hand on his shoulder.
“Even if you’ve made mistakes in your past, it’s never too late to change for the better.” I told him, “Why don’t you come with us Dr. Fjord?”
“Are you sure?” he asked us. Seemingly unsure of whether he deserved it.
“You said it yourself, you made it in hopes of saving people. You didn’t know what they’d do with it.” I told him reassuringly. “To me, you deserve the chance to make things right.”
He stood there, for a moment. Seemingly in thought before speaking up.
“...Alright, guess this “sinner” will have his chance at redemption then. I’ll come with you guys.” he said. “Anyway, what are you all going to do once we get away from here?” he asked.
Baltazar stayed quiet at first, seemingly still distrustful of Dr. Fjord. Understandably so considering how the rest of the order here treated us. But he spoke up regardless.
“...I’ll likely need to lay low for a while. I’d rather not have more of these cloaked bastards after me.” he scowled with disdain for our captors.
Amena, after regaining her confidence, then spoke up.
“I gotta go back and find Antonio. In the chaos he's surely got outta here, I need to know he's safe too.” she said in a worried tone. Dr. Fjord nodded silently, wishing her well.
Ace spoke up next.
“I’ll regroup with my crew and investigate whatever this Order is doing.” Ace said confirming this is some form of Order. “Though getting some leads about it might take a while.”
I spoke up next with the inmate that wasn’t injured speaking up as well.
“We’ll decide our next course of action on the go.” we said in unison unintentionally. We looked at each other surprised.
Dr. Fjord seemed a bit amused with the alike thinking of our great minds. He spoke up once again.
“Sounds like all of you got your next step planned already, that’s good.” Dr. Fjord said, as he waved Baltazar over as well. “Baltazar, if you have a moment.”
The rest of us walked up to a sailboat and boarded it waiting for the rest of them to join us. Realizing pretty quickly that this is gonna be a tight fit for 5 people and the injured inmate on a single Sailboat. As we were trying to figure out how we were going to manage this, Ace walked over.
“Hey Magnusson, how’s the boat?” he asked.
“It might be a tight fit with how many of us that’ll be leaving here.” I answered.
Ace looked at us, then back at Baltazar and Dr. Fjord who were still talking, before looking back at me with an expression that could only be described as a long drawn out shiiiiiiiiit. While he was contemplating that, I took a look at his armor and I noticed a large gash through his chestplate and a small gap on the left side of his helmet where the eyes are. Something I noticed earlier but forgot to ask about.
“Oh, Ace. I’ve been meaning to ask.” I asked.
“Go ahead,” he said with some curiosity.
“Why does your armor have such extensive damage to it? With the craftsmanship of the chestplate and the style of the wound, it would have had to have been caused by a mighty blade.” I asked, my blacksmith brain running wild.
“...It’s a long story.” he sighed, “I’d rather not tell it now, but perhaps sometime in the future when I feel comfortable sharing.”
“Ah, Sorry if I hit a touchy subject. I was just concerned because of the wound… and admittedly intrigued with the craftsmanship of the piece.” I explained.
“I get that a lot even from my own crew members, it’s fine.” he replied, as he looked at his own armor. “Maybe I should refurbish the entire set after all, perhaps adding some trims would be nice while the idea’s still hot.”
“Anyways,” I said, bringing up the elephant in the room. “How are we getting seven people out of here on a single sailboat?”
“Why not take that caravel tucked in the corner over there?” Dr. Fjord suggested, walking over with Baltazar.
Sure enough, we looked over and we saw a lone caravel over by the end of the docks. How we missed it is beyond me.
“Talk about convenience, huh?” Ace jokingly said.
“Sure is.” I said, relieved we weren’t going to have to cram all 7 of us into a tiny sailboat.
“Anyhow, I’ll be sailing.” Dr. Fjord said.
Baltazar seemed to immediately understand the predicament and began calling the shots.
“Me and Ace will take the seats, we keep our hands behind our backs and look like we’re cuffed even though we aren’t. Amena and Morden you two stay under the stairs and out of sight. Stanford, if you still have that cloak you can serve as our quartermaster. We all need to keep Tucker on the other side of the deck to avoid getting ill, we don’t know his condition and can’t risk it if we get found. Do we all understand?”
I paused for a second, mentally blinded by the amount of information he just threw at us. Almost like my train of thought stopped for snacks at the market.
The other inmate, I assume named Morden, nods.
“Uh, Okay?” Amena agrees, a bit overwhelmed.
Ace takes his seat. But I’m still a bit confused.
“Hang on a second, that was a lot in a short amount of time. Why do you seem almost experienced with this sort of thing?” I was baffled with the details of the escape plan.
Baltazar paused for a second thinking to himself before saying.
“...Just do it, We don’t have time for me to explain!”
“Alright! Alright.” I agreed and put the cloak on.
Baltazar releases the sails on the ship and takes the other seat with his hands pinned behind his back. Ace leaned back looking a bit comfortable to Baltazar’s slight annoyance. Amena and Morden both under the stairs of the ship doing well to stay out of sight. I took my spot near the helm of the ship as the quartermaster while Dr. Fjord took the helm of the ship and sailed us out of the order facility, finally we were free once more. As Ace and Baltazar bickered, we sailed off into the sunrise.