Chương 216: Chapter 73: The Mist That Does Not Discriminate

The opportunity presented itself when Selena learned, listening to conversations between drunk guards, that the berry harvest would begin the next day in one of the most distant fields. It would be an exhausting day for everyone: the slaves would work until they dropped from exhaustion, the guards would be more concerned with the harvest and their own fatigue than with night surveillance. Furthermore, no arrival of slave wagons was scheduled for that night; it was an interval between shipments.

Most crucial of all: Baron Scargoth himself would be in the field personally supervising the harvest. It was his perfect cover, the source of legitimate income that laundered the money from drugs and slavery; he would not trust anyone else to manage it. Under the mantle of a crescent moon, Selena smiled in the dark, a heatless gesture. The void in her chest vibrated, attuned to the night. She had the map. She had the moment. Only action remained.

The truth, and whatever justice she decided to meet out, awaited behind the stone walls of the estate; she was ready to claim both. She dedicated the following day to a simple, almost elemental plan, because she knew that uncertainty and complexity was the first casualty. She would infiltrate the estate alone under the cover of night. The objective was clear: kidnap Scargoth, leaving him unconscious with the sleep-inducing power of Мгла.

The black stone ring, cold and opaque on her finger, was perfect for that: a deep, non-violent sleep, induced by mere intent and touch. Then, Fjora would wait for her near the plantations, at a pre-established point, with a fast and well-trained titanopod; they had spent a good sum in the village to ensure the insect responded to the Nordic girl without hesitation.

As their refuge, an old cave near the baron's grounds, mentioned by the locals as an occasional hunting spot and perfectly isolated, would serve for the interrogation. Although Selena was not naive. Simple plans were good because they allowed flexibility; and flexibility, in this case, meant contemplating failure. If things went awry, she would be left with only two brutal options: escape leaving her objective behind, or carve her way through blood and fire, killing every guard who stood in her path.

She squeezed her fist against her chest, right where her heartbeat, and prayed, not to any god, but to the cold chance of the universe, that she would not have to choose either of those alternatives. She consoled herself with the pragmatic soldier's mantra: simple and flexible plans are the ones that best survive contact with the unforeseen. She had the tools, the knowledge, and the will. Only the night was missing.

When night fell, it was a cloak of black velvet studded with cold stars, with the first traces of the crescent moon barely illuminating the shadows. Selena ventured into the grounds of the estate; after days of meticulous observation, it was unbelievably easy. She already knew every patrol, every interval, every blind spot.

She waited patiently atop a coral tree, motionless as just another branch, until early morning deepened, and the silence grew heavier, broken only by the distant, sleepy footsteps of guards with torches.

The timing could not have been more favorable: the twins, following their secret ritual, had each gone out to meet their lovers; the boy, punished for another display of compassion, was locked in one of the floor's punishment holes; and that very night, a heated argument between the baron and the baroness had ended with her retiring to sleep in a separate room. Perhaps, Selena thought with a tinge of dark irony, my small plea to the void had indeed been heard. Even if there were no gods, sometimes chaos aligns.

She approached the large estate imperceptibly. Her footsteps did not make the slightest creak, not even on the gravel of the path. It was the written touch, drawn with her own blood on the soles of her boots days before, a spell of total stealth that consumed minutes of her life but guaranteed her absolute silence; it was a necessary expense.

She climbed an ancient tree leaning toward the house, her fingers finding cracks in the bark with the assurance of a spider and entered through the half-open window of one of the twins' rooms. For an instant, passing in front of a fogged mirror, she saw her reflection: a figure sculpted in darkness, completely clad in a jet-black fabric. Only her eyes, green and cold, gleamed in the gloom. Her hands trembled slightly, not out of fear, but from the accumulated tension, from the weight of what she was about to do.

She took a deep breath, holding back the tremor. There was no room for doubt. It was the only way out if she wanted the truth. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The corridors of the house were plunged into a sepulchral silence, broken only by distant snoring coming from some service room. The darkness was almost absolute, but it was not a problem for her.

She had used one of the few parchments she still kept from the Dungeon of Eternal Life, those that allowed the iris to capture and amplify the slightest particle of light. Now she saw the world in shades of emerald and gray, with the clarity of a great nocturnal feline. Every piece of furniture, every door, every irregularity on the floor was engraved in her perception. She headed straight to the baron's room, gliding like a specter through the shadows.

Once, she hid in a large wardrobe when a sleepy servant girl passed down the hallway to extinguish the last oil lamp. She continued to the door that fate had prepared for her, and wrestled with hairpins to pick it up for minutes, until the door yielded to her silent pressure; the sound that greeted her was a loud, guttural snore. The baron lay sprawled on the bed, tall, with a prominent double chin and a hairless skull that gleamed faintly with the night's sweat. He wore no pajamas, only loose linen underwear.

A wave of disgust, visceral and brief, ran through her stomach; but there was no time for sentimentality. The man was there, vulnerable, surrendered to the deep sleep of the guilty who do not fear being caught. Selena approached. She extended her left hand, and with her index finger, lightly stroked the smooth, cold surface of the black stone ring. She did it with pure intent, with the concentrated desire to bestow rest, to wrap him in a mist of dreamless sleep.

A fog arose instantly from the ring, but it was no simple vapor. It was a deep, dense mist, almost palpable, expanding with supernatural speed. Selena, startled, stepped back. The mist did not limit itself to the room; it flowed through the half-open door, seeped through the cracks, and flooded the hallways. She looked out the window and her heart leaped: a perfect circle of mist, with a radius of at least twenty meters, extended from her position, enveloping part of the garden and the nearby paths.

There, right at the edge of that circle, the guard making his night rounds collapsed all at once, his torch falling to the ground with a smothered sizzle. Fuck, she thought. She had not calculated the radius of effect. The ring did not discriminate; it was an area of influence. The sudden silence, the fall of the guard, would attract attention.

There was no time to lose; so with an effort that made the muscles in her back creak, she hoisted Scargoth's unconscious body onto her shoulders, he was heavy, soft, disgustingly warm and sticky and climbed out the window through which she had entered, sliding down the tree trunk with desperate agility. She heard, in the distance, alarm voices beginning to rise from the house, confusion, questions.

But she was already in the shadow of the bushes, then between the rows of mollucapras whose shells gleamed faintly in the residual mist. She carried the man for eight minutes that felt like a thousand hours that night, but when she finally made it, there at the agreed point was Fjora. The Nordic girl, impassive, held the reins of the titanopod, the nervous insect moving restlessly. Upon seeing Selena approach with her load, Fjora lit a small oil lamp, its faint flame protected by smoked glass.

—My lady —she murmured, without further words, helping to tie the baron's inert body onto the animal's back using quick, secure straps. The entire operation, from the activation of Мгла to that moment, had taken less than ten minutes. A burst of precision and risk. They mounted and set off at a steady trot, moving away from the estate whose lights were beginning to multiply like enraged eyes in the night. Half an hour later they reached the cave, a discreet hollow on a low hill, hidden by vines and brush.

They brought Scargoth down, still deeply asleep, and tied him to a natural stone column that rose in the center of the main chamber. It was then that the ring's side effect hit Selena with the force of a mace. An abyssal fatigue, as if the hours of sleep of everyone affected by Мгла had been summed up and dumped onto her, bent her knees. The world spun, the edges of her vision blurred. With tremendous effort, she managed to stay conscious, but every blink was a battle.

Before darkness claimed to her, she saw something that pulled a weak smile from her, a flash of gratitude amidst the exhaustion. Fjora, with her silent efficiency, had taken a small vial from her pouch, it was a herbal sleeping potion that Selena had prepared with materials acquired in the village, and was opening Scargoth's limp jaw to pour the contents in. The baron would remain asleep, without dreams, without nightmares, until they decided otherwise. Selena could no longer resist it.

She closed her eyes and let herself fall onto the coldness of the stone floor, while sleeping, heavy and well-deserved, dragged her into her own abyss of restorative darkness. The first part had gone well. The difficult part, the interrogation, the truth, and the decisions that would follow, would await her awakening.