Always by your side

Chapter 22 - Dangerous? I'm in

We had to prove our worth to the Owl Lady, but breaking into the conformatorium sounds a little extreme. Nonetheless, I'm in it now, I promised Gus to help him and I'm sure he won't back down. We have to come up with a plan though. Getting in won't be a piece of cake, but hopefully, Gus' illusion skills will be helpful. I scheduled a meeting with him to make a more detailed plan than 'just walking in'.

Gus was waiting at our usual meeting spot, the library entry. We had to study the basic layout of the conformatorium and I'm sure some kind of blueprints must be here because Luz was studying them in the past. We went through various sections of the library, but we didn't find anything useful. It meant that Luz had to get everything directly from Malphas and sadly neither I nor Gus were friends with him. Guess that means we will have to go blindly, how perfect...

"So, what do we do now?" I asked Gus since he was much keener to go through with everything even if we weren't particularly ready for it.

"We figure everything out on the spot, I guess. The best course of action would be to get some uniforms and pretend to be coven scouts."

"Probably." Robbing the emperor's coven is something I would never say 'no' to. Even though I would prefer a polished plan we had to toll with what we got. It was time to begin, first we had to find two unsuspecting scouts, and considering how lenient they were in Bonesborough it shouldn't be a problem.

We strolled through the city, reaching its more obscure parts and quickly located a pair of guards on a patrol. They had no time to react when plants attacked them from all sides. When they were knocked out, we took their uniforms and left them to rest in a nearby shack. We had the easiest part of the whole operation behind us, now it was time to enter the conformatorium.

We decided that it will be best to wait till tomorrow and go there right before noon. Theoretically, the guards wouldn't expect an attack in the middle of the day so it should be easy to avoid unwanted attention. I was supposed to meet Gus in the forest around 9 am in order to prepare everything. I had no idea what his plan was but I'm going to trust him on that one. If anything goes wrong, there will be at least one backup plan, brute forcing our way out. As much as it sounds unrealistic, I think I would be able to hold everyone off to let Gus escape, hopefully, it won't come to that.

We met in the forest right on time, I greeted Gus with a kiss, immediately putting him in a better mood. We got into the uniforms, and it went towards the building. It was the moment of truth, either we will get caught or get in seamlessly. This time luck was on our side, we were greeted by the guards near the main gate and walked into the conformatorium.

"Where now?" Gus asked.

"I don't know, we should try the main block, there is the highest chance that they will be there." I said.

A voice from behind our backs interrupted our conversation; "What are you doing here maggots? You should be guarding the east wing, go there immediately." We turned around and saw a coven Capitan. Since we can't blow our cover, we have to comply. Luckily Gus thought the same way and soon we were both pacing to the east wing. I hoped we picked the right direction since I had no idea where we should go but I figured out that since the other guard wasn't yelling at us, we guessed right.

When we got around the corner Gus sighed in relief; "That was close."

"It was, indeed, what now?" I said.

"I think we should go to the east wing for now, I have a feeling this guy will come and check if we followed the order, we could go search for King and Hooty later."

"East wing it is then."

As expected, the same guard came around 20 minutes later to check if we were where we were supposed to be. After he left we decided to continue with our plan, hoping we won't be double-checked on guard duty.