A Legend Changes

Chapter XVI: First Mission

Chapter Sixteen: First Mission

   I remained silent, instead I thought about what we could possibly end up doing. We waited for some time. Eventually, Merlin appeared in the wide space between the bed and the balcony window. Delrand and I looked over to him. He didn’t look happy, something must have come up on the Mordred situation.

   ‘We may have a spy problem in the school to deal with,’ he hinted.

   I looked sideways at Delrand; he looked reasonably unconcerned, as though he had expected it to be inevitable. ‘We can easily render it. All it takes is sneaking around and creeping along the corridors.’

   ‘Alright, I’ll leave it to you two. Watch out for anything and be careful; knowing you, Delrand, you’ll probably try to blast them into little pieces.’ I smiled at the comment. ‘And keep the power and noise as low as possible. We want them alive if you can manage that.’ With that he disappeared. Delrand turned to me, with a slight smug smile on his face. I narrowed my eyes lightly.

   ‘Best go, we need to be as stealthy as we can once we’re inside.’ He got up off the covers and walked to where Merlin had just stood.

   ‘Finally, all my months of training have paid off,’ I mused as I followed him. He held out his hand and in return folded my arms. ‘I don’t need your assistance with travel, Delrand. I’ll meet you there.’

   He vanished without a word, not even a resounding smile. With closed eyes, I pictured the school and traversed from the room to near the front gate.

   In the darkness I could make out his figure near the high wall, a darker shadow than the surrounding blackness. Mordred’s spies are highly trained in sensory, they may already have felt us arrive. If we took opposite wings and worked from bottom to top we will be able to locate them quicker. Don’t forget to kept to the walls and listen outside doors with light beaming out.

   This will be very time consuming. I hope you keep to Merlin’s warnings, don’t kill them and keep the noise down.

   We crept inside using the ‘secret’ way (who knows if the signal had been passed directly to Mordred), and went our separate ways. He took the west wing, I took the east. If anything comes up tell me and I’ll come to help, he assured me.

   You do the same with me, then.

   You know where to cut the main building once you’ve finished each floor?

   The main stairwell, I answered as I walked through the nearest doorway. All was quiet, including myself. I had always been a silent walker, no matter whether I was walking or running my feet never resounded thuds as I contacted the ground with each step, excluding unexpected crunches of leaves or grass (if I was outside).

   I wandered around each floor and checked every doorway, passage and corridor with my mind before walking through or along. I couldn’t feel any active minds apart from Delrand’s (who was being a little too swift, for my liking, with his half of the search). I traversed the last passage of the school before I could finally reunite with Delrand downstairs. There had been a few rooms whose candle light flickered from within but all were empty. The tedious task seemed pointless after stepping onto the landing. Hesitantly reaching out with my mind and expecting blankness, there came a gash in the veil of my shield; a heavy blow from a nearby door that was silhouetted from within. I took in a deep breath and pressed my back flat against the wall. Letting go of the magic, I returned my attention to the handle. It didn’t move and the light across the floor did not shadow over. Hoping my luck was true again, I crept step-by-step along the floor, still in contact with the wall. When the handle was in arm’s reach I stopped and listened intently. I heard hushed whispers that an untrained ear might have mistaken for the wind hissing through a small gap between the window and the sill. Magnifying my hearing and trying to focus on the more vigilant voice, I defined a few meagre words. Then was able to pick up complete sentences in streams.