The Tug of Wars

Chapter 2 - Theoleas - The Boys' Area

Theoleas pulled a knife out of the guard’s neck and dragged the body into a classroom. He had nothing to worry about, he knew, as he closed the door. He couldn’t have let the guard live though as he had seen him. The body wouldn’t be found until morning and when it was nobody would look to him as the culprit. Robin would be the one suspicions were cast upon, probably. Everyone in the Boys’ Area knew he walked about the castle at night. The Masters suspected he sometimes did. They had no idea quite how often. Robin was too good at getting around. His wanderings and memory had given him an unmatched knowledge of the prison.

Theoleas came to the first door, muttered a spell and heard the lock click. He opened it and looked inside, really wanting to get his hands on one of the pristine, feeling bitter as he compared them to the sort he got to train with. He always got splinters off the hilts. But he disciplined himself and left. He wasn’t stupid enough to get caught for admiring some swords. Theoleas threw the knife up and down as he walked. He’d drawn it from the soldier’s belt after his sword had missed him by a little more than an inch. Theoleas was lucky that this soldier had been better equipped than most. Few bothered with a knife.

He shivered as he walked through the cold corridors. Winter in the Ungoverned Lands was always bitterly cold. He knew that from experience. One night his parents had been separated, his father forced to sleep in the woods with five others who had been blocked from their homes by heavy snowfall. Theoleas had gone to his mother’s bed that morning to see why she hadn’t started preparing breakfast for her father’s return to discover life had fled her. He spent the next hour getting his two younger siblings wrapped up to protect against the cold and gone to Gilipsea, his cousin, to find out from him that his father and the men with him had also failed to get through the night. They weren’t truly orphaned. Gilipsea’s father Galastie, leader of their Magician clan, took them in without hesitation. But it wasn’t the same as having his own mother and father, for him at least. Gebbi and Lyssie, his brother and sister, were five and four at the time. It was somehow easier for them to adapt than him. Theoleas was pleased that they had Galastie to protect them. Gilipsea had left for Corimanian not long before he had been taken.

Theoleas heard a girlish squeal that made him stop and turn in every direction. He was in a corridor of classrooms. Now he walked very slowly, looking into them all for any sign of what was happening but at the same time trying not to get spotted. He felt he knew what was going on and it was confirmed to him. In the fifth room down one of the Masters had pushed a girl against his desk. She saw him. The Master didn’t. He had his back to Theoleas and was too busy tearing at the thin clothes she had on to notice anything around him. Her eyes were silvery, a colour that could only belong to a Memorium. She looked at him pleadingly and he felt himself moving with the speed that had helped him become the best in Zilitic. He pushed the Master back against the wall and slid the blade across his throat, then moved before the spray of blood hit him. His clothes were all light colours. There was no way he would’ve been able to explain a reddish tinge to them when he walked the same corridors the next morning.

The girl was twitching and shaking, but probably mostly because of the cold now that she was wearing nothing but strips of her thin, torn wools. Theoleas didn’t know what to do. He felt like panicking. One thing he’d freely admit Robin was better than him at was killing. You should’ve thought of that a minute ago, instead of playing the hero, Theoleas told himself. He sighed as he looked at her and then looked around as though hoping for some sort of inspiration. None came to him. He couldn’t get her back to the Girls’ Area. It was a twenty minute walk from here and she’d hardly be as subtle and quiet with her movements through the prison as he was.

Theoleas continued to stand there as blood soaked his boots. He skipped away from the pool of red and took them off. He handed the girl the knife after he cleaned it on a cloak hung behind the door of the classroom. He cleaned his boots as well and put them back on. Then he left the Master as he was, pulling the Memorium by the arm as she tried to cover herself up, still not entirely sure where he was heading, but knowing it was the right way to go. Somehow he didn’t meet anyone along the way to a hidden passageway. He pushed a stone and a door was in front of him. The girl stared at it in wonder as he pushed it open to reveal a dark corridor. It closed as soon as they were both across the threshold. Theoleas was blind, clawing at the door until he found another handle, this one brass. He pushed it open and then pushed the girl, who slid down a steep slope. She gave a long cry but no one would hear her. Robin had put every protective spell he knew on this hidden area of Zilitic, after discovering it a year ago.