Chapter 17 #3
Fieran pressed his back to the wall as Dacha unlocked and cracked the door open. After a moment, Dacha opened the door wider and motioned for Fieran to follow.
Padding barefoot in Dacha’s footsteps, Fieran crept out the door into a hallway. The white floor tiles ran here too, but the walls were painted a basic gray. Several more doors were set into the hallway while additional doors blocked both ends.
After glancing both ways, Dacha headed toward the right. He pressed his ear to the door to the next room before he opened the door.
The room must have been empty since he opened the door the rest of the way, stepping inside.
Fieran followed, taking the door from Dacha and making sure it closed softly instead of slamming closed.
This room held shelves upon shelves of magical power cells, these filled with a variety of colors of magic.
But there was something about the sense of the magic in this room.
As Fieran walked along the shelves, occasionally placing his hand on a power cell, he could feel the aliveness of the magic held within.
These held more than magic willingly stored by the wielder.
This was the very essence of a person’s magic contained within glass and steel instead of a living body.
Another steel table sat in the center of this room while the stainless steel countertops here held microscopes and even more notebooks.
A familiar, semi-scorched pack lay on the center table. Beside it, two sets of swords gleamed in the overhead lights, the blades unmarred where they lay beside the sheaths.
Dacha strode straight for the table and picked up his swords, holding them for a long moment as if drawing strength from them.
Fieran crossed the room at a slower pace, pausing to glance at his swords before he opened the pack.
Inside lay all four cases with the glass vials of juice laced with healing magic.
Sticky stains and glass shards showed that several of the vials had broken in the crash, but the moss padding had preserved most of them.
“It looks like they collected anything with even a hint of magic from the wreckage. Perhaps they planned to study these.”
Dacha paused in buckling on his sword sheaths, the leather straps looking rather ludicrous over the white lab coat. “Drink one of those.”
“We might need the magic for later.” Fieran didn’t reach for one of the jars. What if Pip or Uncle Edmund were hurt worse than he was?
Dacha drew one out and pressed it into Fieran’s hands. “Drink. You will need your strength for rescuing her.”
Well, he couldn’t refute that logic.
He struggled to twist the lid and break the seal, but finally he got it off.
He took a sip, the sweet raspberry flavor coating his tongue, and the soothing warmth of the healing magic filtered into him.
It wasn’t as strong as a direct healing, but it finally took the edge off the dizziness and pain.
He drank about half of the jar before he twisted the lid back on. He might as well make it last as long as possible. He placed the jar back in the case before he reached for his swords. “Do you see any of the packs with our clothes?”
“Unfortunately, no.” After grabbing the pack, Dacha moved away from the table toward the countertops. Once there, he stuffed more of the notebooks into the pack without taking the time to look through them this time. Once done, he shrugged the pack on over his swords and the lab coat.
Fieran managed to get his swords buckled onto his back, the leather rubbing across the wounds in his chest. He tried to shift the lab coat to prevent chafing as best he could, but it was never meant to be worn underneath swords. Or as one’s only stitch of clothing besides underwear.
The two of them set out again, checking each of the doors and the rooms behind them. They found a room filled with records, and the door at the far end of the hallway led to a morgue where a body was laid out on the table in the middle of a dissection.
The body was that of a male who had been starved before he died. His skin was a patchy green with a faint brown tint. His ears were rounded but his head was completely bald. Instead of hair, a few black lines of ink twisted over his skin in some sort of design.
An ogre. The first Fieran had ever seen. And proof that ogres were held here, somewhere.
He and Dacha tiptoed back down the hallway the other way and paused before the door at the end of the hallway. Voices came from the other side, but they were faint. Likely not right outside the door.
Dacha opened the door and led the way into the hallway on the other side. A room opened into what appeared to be a headquarters of some kind. The voices were louder now as several men discussed the latest shipment of some sort. Stairs to their right led upward.
With a tilt of his head, Dacha crept up the stairs, and Fieran followed.
They passed another level of what appeared to be quarters for the now-dead scientists and their staff.
A few people slept or moved about in their rooms, but Dacha and Fieran were able to find enough unoccupied rooms to raid the closets and obtain clothing.
Fieran had never thought to be thankful for something as basic as a shirt and trousers before.
The stairs ended at the roof, and Dacha crouched as he crossed the roof to the low wall surrounding it.
Fieran followed, kneeling next to his dacha and peering over the wall. The early afternoon sunlight beamed down on him, extra hot here on the exposed rooftop.
They seemed to be in some kind of complex formed of concrete buildings. The next building was a military barracks with men in gray-blue Mongavarian uniforms strolling in and out.
More soldiers strode along the various barbed wire fences dividing the parts of the complex and stood on the watchtowers at various points.
More buildings, separated from this one by a fence, belched smoke and rang with the sounds of factory work while several more concrete barracks buildings lay farther beyond the factory.
It took Fieran another few long minutes of study to recognize the layout. “I saw this in Uncle Edmund’s photographs. We’re definitely at the Ludin facility.”
“Indeed.” Dacha pointed, although he kept his hand and arm below the edge of the low wall to prevent it from being seen. “If there are ogres or Alliance prisoners held here, they will be over there.”
Fieran squinted into the sunlight, trying to pick out the figures moving around the factory and barracks. “What’s the plan now?”
“The prisoners are our priority.” Dacha tilted his head in that direction before he met and held Fieran’s gaze, his eyes searching, his jaw hard. “There are only two of us. We do not have the manpower to take prisoners of our own and see to the well-being of those we rescue.”
Fieran swallowed and nodded. Perhaps at the beginning of this war, he might have been surprised at what his dacha was telling him. Appalled, even.
But he understood better now. Agreed, even.
It wasn’t like this had ever not been the plan. Even if the four of them had reached Ludin in the airship, they always would have had to unleash merciless death on the Mongavarian guards in order to prioritize the safety of the rescued prisoners.
But with only the two of them and no convenient airship out of there, they would have to be even more ruthless, even more swift, about it.
“All right.” Fieran faced the facility once again. “How do we divide this up?”
“I will take out the guards on the perimeter and in the bunkers in the surrounding fields.” Dacha kept his hand low as he gestured.
“You need to head straight to the communications shack there, take it out before they can get a message out, and then secure the captives before the Mongavarians can begin killing them. We can worry about anyone left after that.”
A sound plan. Fieran probably should mention the lingering pain in his chest and his uncertainty about his magic. But he didn’t. Right now, he just needed to shove the pain aside and do what needed to be done.