At the sound of the war horns, the Seidha knew his time to escape had come.

He looked down and smirked at his restraints. Iron was as good at containing magicks as a bucket full of holes trying to hold water. The Wolves really knew nothing of magicks, then? 

That would be quite useful.

Outside his cell, the two guards blocked the exit. One, who was leaning against the wall, barely could keep his eyes open as he read a book, but the other had his sight trained directly on him. The younger one, of course, was the more attentive one. He hadn’t put the years into guard work to grow bored of it. It was sad he would never have the chance.

“How much do you men value your lives?” he asked, amusement filling the edges of his voice. He didn’t really care for their answers, but just to know that they were going to lose something so precious in a few seconds.

“Quiet, necromancer,” the younger guard said. “If you value your tongue, you’d best not speak.”

It was his tongue he wanted, then? Well, if he insisted...

With his eyes still trained on him, the younger guard moved closer to the cell. He was weary, it seemed, of the chains—wanted to make sure he wasn’t fiddling around with anything. But he hadn’t moved an inch. To kill these guards, he wouldn’t have to.

The guard glanced at him again.

The Seidha stuck out his tongue.

“What in nine—”

The piercing that had been stuck in his tongue whipped in the air, then bored through the younger guard’s neck, coming out the other side. Blood spurted out of the hole, and he fell to the floor, clutching desperately at the wound. 

The older guard, too slow to gather his bearings in time, soon found his eyes gouged out by the piercing. He screamed—far too loudly—and the Seidha grew bored of it rather quickly, slitting his throat to shut him up.

And now for the best part. The escape.

“Took you long enough, woman,” the Seidha hissed at the shadow looming at the top of the dungeon stairs. He rose to his feet, the iron shackles falling to the cell floor as he stretched out his arms, as if he were tearing a fishing line. 

The chains melted into a mush of steaming metal before they even hit the floor. Iron was truly useless against magicks. Snowsteel, however, was a different story. It was a much sturdier metal, much stronger against the heat of magick.

“Good work here, Varn,” the woman said, stepping over the dead body of the older guard to unlock the cell door. A gray cloak was pulled over her hair’s wiry curls. 

“Say hello to Mother,” she continued, pulling something out of the pocket.

There were many strange things about Nerina, the woman from Erid who claimed to have “the sight.” This trinket of hers—the one she called “Mother”—was the strangest. It was a wrinkled eyeball attached to a chain by a thin nail stuck through the center. She spoke to it, and even though it didn’t speak back, she insisted it did. And she insisted that if you worked for her, you’d respect “Mother.”

“Hello Mother,” he said uneasily to the eyeball. 

“Give her a kiss, would you? She missed you.”

His stomach churned. He knew better than to say no. Bending over, he brought the eyeball—which waved back and forth on the long chain—near his face. Then, he closed his eyes and...

The dungeon door swung wide open. Nerina quickly pulled Mother back into her pocket and retreated for the shadows further into the dungeon.

Whoever this interruption was, it was a welcome one.

Perhaps he wouldn’t kill them.

“Oh.” The man descended the dungeon steps, his eyes scanning the bloody scene in front of him, then to Varn standing amidst the corpses. “Oh, Gods...”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Erik,” he said, voice shaky, hand gripping the wall behind him. The look in his eyes was tantalizing, like an animal caught in a trap. Every fiber in Varn’s body wanted nothing more than to kill him. But instead, he called the piercing back to him, catching it in between his fingers. He turned it over and examined it.

His people called this type of thing a Galdr nail, a runed piece of metal that can be controlled by Seidha sorcerers. 

“Erik,” he said, laughing. The name sounded, funnily enough, just like a Seidhan name. “This will only hurt a bit, Erik.”