It took a while before Nyxis could stand on his feet without feeling like the world was spinning and could topple underneath him any minute. Cyrdel just popped back up and was now stalking towards the only door where the two of them materialized.

"What was that?" Nyxis demanded as he took one step and began swaying. Suddenly, there were two Cyrdels. The brownie yanked a door open. The rusty grit the hinges screamed made Nyxis wince.

"A transport spell I happened to find in the old manuscripts," Cyrdel's voice was fading as he barged into the succeeding hallway. "Do you want me to explain how it works?"

Nyxis stumbled after the heir and braced the wall to keep his knees from shaking and his steps straight. "Do you wish to make my head explode?" he said. "Where are we?"

"See for yourself," Cyrdel peeled back a veil of dull red curtains.

Nyxis caught a glimpse of the brownie throne room where they once housed a number of brownies who had their shadows stolen. Only now, gone were the bright lights once illuminating the room. That's why Nyxis couldn't make sense of where he was. It was dark.

As Nyxis's stomach and muscles settled back into their places, he jogged to catch up to Cyrdel who paced towards a hidden door to the far left of the throne dais like he was being chased by a hungry graspel. Well, if those patrol guards caught up to them, they might as well be.

Nyxis tried to not look back at the upturned and half-burnt state of the thrones where the Brownie King and Queen once sat. According to Airene, Cyrdel, himself, saw how Synketrian soldiers murdered the royals and proceeded to wreck the throne room while she got Cyrdel and Ravalee out.

How in Rudik's horns was Cyrdel faring well now?

All around him, a heavy emptiness settled in the air and made it thicker to breathe. It's like the souls of the brownies who departed in these halls hadn't really crossed to the Land of Wonders nor were they planning to.

Cyrdel wrestled with a lock to the door, cursing as he hefted a piece of metal that apparently snapped into two. The fact that they were breaking in during a night when Crozal was the brightest didn't help either. Nyxis looked around as if he was expecting for people to turn up and start asking them questions.

The council seats on both the left and right wing were empty. From Nyxis's vantage point, he could make out more piles of dried clay. The curtains draped lifelessly as if they could sense the throne room being abandoned and their purpose has long passed.

The floor below where defendants used to stand during a trial had snapped into two with a grace equal to a sugrarsask. Piles of ash carpeted the stone floor, no doubt from the rows of wooden seats which spread out in the throne room. Some of those were thrown against the wall, causing cracks to spread across the supposed-to-be hard stone the Alkaran estate was hewn out of. The ceiling didn't fare well either. It looked like the brownies dealt with aerial attacks too, judging from the holes punched through the ceiling.

Nyxis flinched when Cyrdel gave a triumphant whoop. A sharp click of a lock resounded across the room. Cyrdel could have done a victory dance with it too but the heir simply yanked the grated door. Nyxis didn't need to be a mechanic to know the hinges hadn't been oiled in such a long, long time when they creaked and grated louder than a belching pelgar.

He followed Cyrdel down a set of dark stairs. The moonlight from the throne room faded behind them as quickly as Nyxis's eyes adjusted to it. Cyrdel jogged down, the thump of his soles dull against the stone steps.

Nyxis squinted enough to make out Cyrdel's tunic in the dark and tried memorizing how it looked in case he got lost in the dark. The brownie tore through the thick darkness, running his fingers against what appeared to be a wall.

Nyxis reached out and poked the space beside him and his flesh met hard stone. Okay, a wall then. Wood. The dark became more and more familiar to Nyxis as their journey progressed. After a few minutes, they came across a metal door which didn't look anything brown. Strange, since Brownies typically worshiped the color.

Cyrdel touched the metal with his hand and it swung open even though he didn't do anything. Nyxis opened his mouth to ask but closed it again. He didn't need more lectures about machines and other magical innovations. He learned it the hard way in a span of a week.

The metal door thudded shut with such finality, sending reverberations down Nyxis's boots, as soon as the both of them were through. Would they be able to get out when they needed to?

Cyrdel answered by cranking a protruding lever from a spot on the wall to the door's left and lights flickered to life, revealing a small, cubical room. How great was it that the walls were made of wood? Probably for starting a fire. If someone thought of doing that from the outside, Nyxis and Cyrdel would be grilled in a matter of minutes.

The brownie paid Nyxis's own mental turmoil no mind and began leafing through the room. To Nyxis, it looked like Cyrdel was simply perusing and not running on a tight schedule. Before Nyxis could say anything, though, Cyrdel turned to him.

"The scepter's gone," Cyrdel's voice bounced along the wooden walls and settled on Nyxis after a few seconds.

Nyxis strode to where the heir stood, past a barrel of what looked like rolled parchment. "What do you mean it is gone?" he said. "Have you looked thoroughly?"

The lines of Cyrdel's face deepened when he frowned. "It is as easy as looking at an animal and realizing it is a krou," he said. "It is supposed to be here but it is not and no amount of 'looking thoroughly' would find it if it is not here in this room."

"Where is it, then?" Nyxis scratched his head.

Cyrdel turned away without answering and began tearing parchments scattered on a table Nyxis hadn't even noticed.

Nyxis knitted his eyebrows. His arms didn't know if they would stop the heir or help him. "What are you doing?"

"Protecting state secrets," Cyrdel said in a flat and final tone.

Nyxis's eyes wandered to a table similar to where Cyrdel was pushed against the western wall. His eyes settled on a single parchment laid on the desk, bearing notes of what looked like a complex gadget. "State secrets?" Nyxis hefted the paper to make sure those two words were really what they were. "Like a way to break the barriers?"

Cyrdel's hand shot out like a nimba from Nyxis's shoulder and within seconds, the parchment joined their torn kind in a pile in another table. "None of your business," the brownie dusted his hands off like a professional cleaner. "Now I know why Cardovia and Synketros are so confident in attacking Penleth. They know where the Ice Capital was since the beginning."

Nyxis blinked. "What?"

"They have the scepter," the brownie trudged to the metal door without regarding Nyxis. "They must have waited for someone from our side to get in so they can skirt around the blame of invading and eventually leading outside forces into the Capital. That way, they could have torn us from the inside before they could even do the real damage."

"Ingenious," Nyxis said. If they hadn't succeeded in persuading the Grand Marshall into helping them defend the Capital, there wouldn't be enough of Nyxis and his friends to even stand a chance against Cardovia and Synketros let alone them as one.

How were Reeca and the others faring from Penleth, anyway?

"So, what is the plan?" Nyxis followed Cyrdel out of the room as they tackled the dark stairs once again. "Going through both enemy camps will take days, not to mention we can actually die there."

"We go to my workshop first," the brownie said. "Then we can decide where to go and what to do next."

Okay. That seemed like a plan. So, onward they went. Silence thickened as both of their collective thoughts spiraled beyond their control. The facilities Nyxis once walked about trying to help the brownies manage the loss of their shadows whizzed by him in their muted splendor. When they got to Cyrdel's workshop, Nyxis could tell the place didn't escape scrutiny, if one would call wrecking the room scrutiny.

Cyrdel stood still as he regarded the mess. It wouldn't take a god to realize Cyrdel wanted to weep then and there. Nyxis would feel the same way should someone rip his satchel off of him and burn it in front of his eyes. This was Cyrdel's life work, probably the only thing he felt proud of, and seeing it trashed and touched by people with ill intent would crush him.

Without a word, the brownie trudged to the rack of tools and began prying a few off of their perch. Nyxis watched Cyrdel fall into his old routine of checking the state of things around him before doing anything.

Finally, the brownie made a beeline towards a table and yanked out a drawer full of assorted knick knacks which would take ages to sort into. Nyxis approached and dared take a peek. He couldn't begin to describe the amount of varied things he saw. His mind only registered jutting cranks, protruding levers, and visible metal boxes with several buttons on the surface.

Cyrdel leafed through these objects with expert familiarity, eyes trained for something only he could identify. Metal clinked. Wood thunked. Steel hissed against each other as Cyrdel pilfered around, upturning objects without care until he gave a satisfied exhale and drew out a small, blue stone.

"A sirtya," Cyrdel announced like it meant something.

Nyxis racked his brains on what a sirtya was but he came up with nothing. "What does it do?"

Cyrdel clicked his tongue. "It breaks down your soul into compressible packets of transportable energy—"

"Okay, ease up on the mechanic talk," Nyxis pressed his hand in the air to placate. "Why do we need this again?"

"It is a teleporter," the brownie passed the stone to Nyxis. "We use it to travel long distances in an instant."

A teleporter, huh? Nyxis's eyes twinkled as he took the stone between his fingers. It glowed dully under the crimson moonlight pouring from the single workshop window. Cyrdel stuffed more gadgets into his tool belt pockets until they bulged.

The question Nyxis had been meaning to ask about the sirtya evaporated in his mind when they heard a commotion in the gardens. Sounds of boots scratching against grass and of men arguing emanated from the window. Whoever those were, they weren't here for a chat.

If they don't get out of here, it's going to be messy. Nyxis grabbed Cyrdel by the crook of his arm and began dragging the brownie out. Hurry.

"Do you know somewhere high up?" Nyxis's eyes darted around for any possible entry and exit points the men could find themselves in. Through the garden, past the small hatch of a door, the door from the council quarters, and the door leading to Cyrdel's wing where Xanthy once played the lute for them.

"That would be my rooms," Cyrdel raised a finger as he ran alongside Nyxis through a corridor decorated with faded oil paintings of monarchs long gone. "What are you even planning to do?"

Nyxis gritted his teeth. "You will see."

They dashed up the stairs. Nyxis took two at a time with Cyrdel close at his heels. The men discovered the entry to Cyrdel's workshop and clambered through the small latch. It's only a matter of time before the men caught sight of them. Nyxis threw the door to Cyrdel's room open. The garden came into full view from the floor-to-ceiling glass window. Not enough.

"Higher up?" Nyxis turned to the panting brownie who followed him into the room.

Cyrdel knitted his eyebrows. "There is one more floor in the council's quarters."

"Where?"

"Through the dining hall."

Nyxis dashed to where he remembered the dining hall to be. He was almost grateful there were no brownies milling about when they ended up in the corridor leading to the dining hall. More men poured into the compound, shouting and claiming they found the illegal immigrants. He followed Cyrdel's directions and burst into a corridor which took both of them inside an elaborate building. No time to admire the intricate carvings in the stairs' handrails. Second floor. That's the spot. Higher, perhaps. Cyrdel's footsteps were close by as Nyxis dashed towards it.

"What are you even planning?" Cyrdel wheezed as they came to the flat ground of the third floor. "Why could we not just vanish away from here with the sirtya?"

Nyxis positioned himself against the nearest window that looked out to the gardens below. There, that's better. Cyrdel paced towards where Nyxis was and craned his neck down at the maze of unkempt landscape shrubs. "Now what?"

"Now we wait," Nyxis said. "We have to make them think that we are just common thieves and not side missions running around under the Sovereign and the Heiress's noses. We wait for them to see us. We could not let this be reported to anyone."

Cyrdel frowned but didn't say anything. The sounds of footsteps and shouts were coming up the stairs now. Nyxis passed the heir a vial he procured from his satchel. "Break that against the window when they get here."

Cyrdel took the vial and held it against the moonlight. "This is?"

"You do not need to know that."

The first of the men poked their heads past the stairs and gave a collective gasp, pointing fingers at Nyxis. "There they are! Quick!" a burly man in Synketrian uniform yelled. "The illegal immigrants have nowhere to go!"

"Get ready now," Nyxis smiled and gripped Cyrdel's arm. There was quite a distance between the stairs and the window. "Shatter the vial."

Cyrdel glanced at the window then back at the advancing soldiers. "Now?"

"Now," Nyxis threw a terznite ore at the glass and launched himself into it as it shattered into a thousand shards. He dragged after him a screaming Cyrdel with him into thin air.

"You're crazy!" the brownie shrieked, not even caring that he had just switched to Keijula. "You're bloody, absolutely crazy!"

Nyxis gave a small chuckle as he fished the sirtya from his pocket. He closed his eyes and thought of a place close to his heart. They vanished, the smell of wet clay trailing behind them.