[This is part of my Creative Writing Experiment.]
With the main entrance magically sealed and a surprising lack of large, openable windows, the girls were left with few options. While Sharon voted they try go higher to find another exit, the others out-voted her in descending to the lower levels to try free the other captives. There was strength in numbers after all. At the end of the large cellar was a spiraling staircase leading deeper underground. More of the armored guards patrolled here so they were very careful to move quietly without torch light and only engage stragglers in quick, silent skirmishes if necessary.
Eventually they came across what seemed to be a strangely unguarded but empty prison block, yet all the gates were locked and the ones blocking the torch lit hallways needed to be picked or broken open. As they turned a corner they suddenly found an occupied cell, and from behind the bars stood Cecilia. After exchanging a moment of shock, Cecilia spoke "You don't look like guards, who are you?"
"C...Calandra?" asked Sharon meekly from the back of the group. The woman nodded, shocked that the strangers knew her name.
"Your twin sister hired us to rescue you," explained Drisana as Sharon went to work again on the lock. "I'm sorry to say she... she didn't make it."
Sharon stopped her work as she noticed other figures in the room behind Calandra.
"They are what's left of my group," said the woman as she looked back at them and signaled them closer. "Shorn, Tanglor, Amber, and San Raal."
It occured to Drisana that unlike Insal, all these people were actually still armed, albeit poorly. She put one hand on Sharon's shoulder to prompt her to continue picking the lock but also squeezed gently to her know that she should do it slowly. "How did you get stuck here?" Drisana asked politely.
"Same way you did," muttered Shorn, a bearded stocky fellow. "We walked in."
Seeing the blank expressions on their faces Shorn just laughed and unlocked the cell door from his side, "Some rescue you are!"
At this the girls jumped back, weapons at the ready but Calandra quickly moved between the two groups, hands raised to prevent any violence.
"Please calm down. We were ambushed just before dawn in the nearby forests and those of us that surrendered were forced to help carry our dead down here. Eventually the soldiers let their guard down and we managed to take some of their equipment and flee here. We didn't know why they didn't follow us, but it soon became clear when we tried to leave."
"The first one who touched the door went BOOM!" exclaimed Tanglor with expressive hand gestures. Like Shorn, he was also a stocky and bearded fellow though apparently more simple.
"A magic trap," coughed the thin and dark skinned San Raal who seemed to be doing the worst of all of the captives, leaning heavily on a broken table leg he was using as a cane. "One that is difficult to dispel."
"You've been in here for how long... surely there's another way out?" spat Nessa in her usual non-polite manner. The other group looked to one another before Shorn spoke up again. "Oh, we found one but you're not going to like it."
