It was demeaning, it was painful, and it was annoying. Despite that, Learn didn’t have any questions. In a matter of hours at most, he would be freed. Conquer wouldn’t allow anyone to take his son from him, not now, not ever. Pillage, the leader of the Thrasher clan, could not even begin to imagine the fury that was about to be brought down onto his head.

Pillage had no family, no children. His clan was of days past, now a shadow of their former strength. He had to resort to taking those like Learn, those who stood at the outskirts of their own clans. Irregular, oddities. He was clearly under the mistaken assumption that Conquer would just let his whelp go, since he was different.

He was wrong.

The sound of tearing and shredding from just outside the tent confirmed Learn’s suspicions, and he shuffled his body around and sat up, bound wrists aching, complaining at him. He was greeted by his father’s face, and bared his tusks in respect to the warlord in front of him.

“Mine.” Conquer growled, and the dripping blood from his jaw reflected that truth.

The mixture fizzled and sent sparks flying up into the air. Learn swore in Talk and swiftly patted out the concoction, then picked up a pen to write in his now-slightly-smouldering notebook. It wasn’t quite the effect he was looking for, but he was getting closer.

Perhaps with a more enclosed space… he would have to experiment more, yes. But he was getting closer.

He was shaken out from his thoughts by something, though he couldn’t recognize exactly what. But he had begun to trust his instincts more, so he calmly, carefully put away the bowl he was working with, along with his notes. He stashed them underneath a pile of notebooks, and calmly turned and stood, eyes flitting around the room.

He didn’t see anyone in the room with him, not at first. The sensation pervaded, and it took him a second to recognize it, its familiar oiliness, slickness. A Command.

There! A sheaf of papers he had set aside, on the corner of Magister Lrfshmn’s desk had shifted. His suspicions were confirmed, but that made acting all the more difficult. Hide was unreasonable, terrifying, and worst of all, Learn still didn’t know what made her tick.

He didn’t have her suit finished yet. He had been working on something else, something he thought was very important, and he didn’t want Hide to see it. Hopefully she didn’t care about what he was doing. But what to do now? When every action was equally bad as taking no action, though, it didn’t much matter which path you took. He took a breath and prepared for the worst.

“Know you’re there, Hide.” He said into the empty room, and suddenly, it was no longer empty. There was no moment of revelation, no appearance from the shadows. One second it was him alone with the mess of books and bottles, the next, the woman known as Hide was there alongside him.

“Where’s the suit?” She asked. Her fingers tapped incessantly on the pommel of the blade sheathed at her hip. Her mask was slightly off-kilter, Learn noted. Something was different about her, she was in disarray. She wasn’t being incessantly irritating, either. Something was definitely off.

“Not finished yet,” he responded pensively. If she was off her groove, he wanted to take full advantage of that, maybe glean some information from her that he couldn’t otherwise get his hands on. “Need more time.”

Hide twisted her head to look behind her, then turned back. Underneath her mask her eyes flitted back and forth, scanning the area. She didn’t know about the boots, which meant she wasn’t following him all of the time. Learn allowed himself to relax slightly. He forced his shoulders down from their tensed position. She had shown herself, she had revealed that she wasn’t tailing him everywhere. She had given up advantages for no reason. All in all, this meeting with a megalomaniacal maniac was going about as well as he could hope.

“Shit. Okay,” Hide muttered. She began to pace the room. As Learn watched, he slowly, carefully moved himself toward the edge of the desk. He knew that there was a letter opener lying in the mess on the floor. If he could just get his hands on it, he would have a better chance, should this encounter come to blows. Though he hoped it wouldn’t. Magister Aethyn would take any excuse to remove the “bloodthirsty brute” from the Forum staff. A bloody fight in Lrfshmn’s office would give the prejudiced elf just the excuse he was looking for.

“None of it is finished?” The woman Learn only knew as Hide asked.

“No.” Learn slowly leaned himself forward. As the tip of his finger brushed against the cold wooden handle of the letter opener, Hide was upon him, her blade already drawn and aimed at his throat.

“Don’t fucking try it,” Hide hissed. “Drop it. Get up.”

The woman knew what she was doing with her blade, using the very sharp, very present point for the threat, rather than the longer edge.

“Okay. Dropping.” Learn said. Slowly, without breathing, he unfurled himself, carefully putting his hands up and to his side, palms up and open. He wondered if he would be able to reach the materials he was experimenting on. Likely not, and even if he did, would he be willing to take that risk? If the effect was too large, he would go up in flames, but if it were too small, Hide would just kill him.

“Don’t do something stupid. We’d both regret that.” The woman said, preempting his thoughts. “Now, I’m going to put this blade aside, and you’re going to follow me, okay?

“Okay.”

————

The streets were emptier than Learn had grown accustomed to. There was a breeze wafting, bringing the chill deep through Learn’s bones, carrying with it a sense of unease, one that was not only caused by the situation in which he found himself.

This city was supposed to be alive, to thrive even in the cold of oncoming winter. There were supposed to be salespeople hocking their wares on every corner, there were supposed to be stalls full to the brim with cheap trinkets and overripe fruits. The silence was palpable, deafening.

“Where we going?” Learn asked. He held his hands carefully, wringing them together behind his back. A single sudden movement could bring the tip of the blade through his throat, could make him as dead as his surroundings. The woman held it casually, but he had seen her in action, had seen the tricks she could do with shadows, with fog. In a blink, the blade could be through him, and Hide would barely waver as she did it.

“You’ll find out. Just keep going.”

Learn continued to walk without knowing their destination, putting distance between himself and the safe haven of the Mage’s Forum, hoping to come across someone, anyone in the street. Minutes passed. Hide forced him to swerve, to take alleys and side roads, to snake backward, then retrace, then go in an entirely different direction. To his growing dismay, nobody was on the streets, nobody stopped them. Every door was closed, every window was shuttered.

Until they ran into Alvin. The dwarf was rushing through one of the main southbound streets. He had bunched up the hems of his robe in his fists and he was running, short, stout legs pounding against the street. He skidded to a halt when he saw Learn.

“Oh, Pater be praised. Learn! What are you doing outside? There’s a war on!”

Learn grimaced and shook his head. The dwarf looked at Learn, who turned over his shoulder, startled to see that there was nothing there, though he could feel the cold steel jutting at his lower back.

“Going… somewhere. War?” Once again, Learn wished that he had his tusks. He tried to send a message with his eyes and expression, but it didn’t work the same. Alvin walked up to him, panting lightly. Learn heard a whisper at his ear: “Keep going, or I kill the dwarf. Tell him I’m here, and I kill the dwarf.”

“A war! With the Red Desert!” Alvin exclaimed. “Jotep Rule has advised citizens to stay indoors, in case they breach the walls. Of course, I wanted to hide, but I needed to make sure you’re okay. I got nervous when you weren’t at the Forum, so I ran all over looking for you! We need to get to safety, Learn.”

Learn knew he was a bad liar. He knew that Alvin would pay for it if he did anything that gave Hide away. So he didn’t lie.

“Need to go. Important, life or death.”

Alvin’s eyes watered slightly, and the dwarf clasped his hands together in fear. Good, Learn thought, be scared and go. “Life or death?” the dwarf asked. Learn nodded. The dwarf blinked, then to Learn’s surprise, nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Now? He shows the slightest hint of a spine, and chooses NOW to do so?

Learn meant to tell Alvin no, to head back, to get to safety. What actually came out of his mouth was: “Okay.” The orc hadn’t realized, but the dwarf’s willingness to ride into danger with him had moved him. If they fought now, Learn could maybe take Hide down with Alvin’s help. It was a slim possibility, but it was there.

Hide jabbed him with the tip of the sword and pushed his arm, sending it jostling to the left. He assumed that this was where he was supposed to go, and so he motioned to Alvin. “Follow.”

————

“Ugh, it smells terrible down here, Learn. What are we doing?” Alvin asked as he pinched his nose shut. Learn agreed with the dwarf, but he didn’t know either, and Hide hadn’t elaborated since motioning Learn into the sewers with whispered words and less-than-polite jabs of her sidearm. She was still there, the blade still at his back.

The layout made no sense, at first. There were passages that looped back around themselves, random doors leading to nowhere, alleys and trapdoors and large, open areas. The area was nonsensical. Or so Learn thought, until he tried to think of why someone would build a sewer system as such, and then it clicked into place.

This was a city. Or, it had been, and now it was slowly being overtaken with garbage and waste. People had lived down here. The whole layout had been developed naturally, rather than intentionally, communities spreading out, nexuses forming in the most used locations.

“Dwarves lived down here?” Learn asked, both out of curiosity and in an attempt to distract Alvin. If the dwarf decided to recall his jumpiness, Hide might skewer Learn out of safety. Better to distract the boy. Plus, history. He had to learn, after all.

“I don’t… uh, probably?” The dwarf touched one hand to the curved wall, then pulled back rapidly in disgust. “Dwarves sort of lived everywhere, at one point or another. I mean way, way back, when we were all travelers.”

“Like you. Traveller.”

Alvin nodded. “Yup. My dads were really, really into the whole dwarfish history thing, so they wanted me to try and reclaim some of that. I was supposed to travel the world and see new things, meet new people, you know. All of the stuff I don’t do. I guess they didn’t realize how expensive it was to get to most places.”

“We’re here.” Hide whispered from too far away. Learn tensed up, looking toward the nearest door, then toward Alvin, noticing too late that he couldn’t feel the weight of the blade at his back.

“Alvin!” He shouted, but too late. Hide materialized next to the dwarf, blade pressed up, half-entangled within the mass of beard at the dwarf’s chest. Alvin let out a yelp, and Hide grinned, eye’s wide with a sick enjoyment.

“So nice of you to join us, dwarf. You’re just the kind of hostage I was waiting for.”

Alvin looked to Learn, who could only clench his fist and grimace, powerless. He couldn’t move to save the dwarf without risking his life.

“Now,” Hide started, “I don’t want to hurt this poor little boy if I don’t have to, but,” she pressed the blade in tighter, and Alvin whimpered. “I will if you decide to disobey now. And we were having such a good time together, weren’t we Pebbleskin? Don’t ruin it.”

“Won’t. Through the door?” Learn asked. Hide nodded. “Okay. But let Alvin breathe. Stay your blade. He’s harmless. I’ll do what you say.”

Hide just grinned again, and Learn had to suppress a shiver of discomfort. This had all gone rotten. He had gotten Alvin into this, and by his Name, he would get the boy out if it cost him his life. Slowly, hand shaking, Learn reached forward to open the door, peering through the corner of his eyes at the human and the dwarf.

As Learn looked through the doorway, he couldn’t stop himself from taking a shocked step back. That… didn’t make sense. No mental scenario of possibilities had included this scenario. He was at a loss.

“Learn,” Conquer said in Talk. His voice sounded like an avalanche, like a sandstorm. Like a period at the end of a particularly long sentence. Conquer’s voice sounded like finality. “Close the door.”