Chapter 45

Are you sure we are under the right room? It would be a real shock if we dig a hole and there is a dozen barbarians looking down on us," asked Vanessa to Emily while Weiss had cut through most of the wood.

"Yeah, I heard some of the guards talking yesterday, I am sure it is, " she said.

Weiss made some noise at that time and they saw as she chirped the last thing layer of the wood. They could now see the ceiling of the dark room above them. Emily hesitated for a second and called her brother's name while Weiss turned back.

"James" she whispered.

"Emily?" came an uncertain voice from somewhere beyond the darkness, the next moment there were sounds of footsteps here and there and a bunch of faces appeared over the whole which was apparently in the corner of the room.

"Emily!" one of the faces hissed.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in shock.

"You guys go keep a watch at the door and bring that stand over here we'll need to cover this hole, " James told the rest of the men in the room.

"Here we brought you some food, " said Emily, and since the whole was only big enough to put a hand through it took some time to push the bread through.

"Dean! Your sister's here too! " James said biting on the bread like a starved dog.

"What? No way!" came another mouth-stuffed voice and another head appeared in the hole.

"And, Vanessa too?! Why did you bring her here Emily? You know how dangerous this is," James said realizing who the third was.

"Can't we get some light in here, Dean are you okay? Mom is really worried about you, " Weiss spoke.

"Yeah, I am fine, what about you guys? But I have to tell you this is something, I didn't think you were this brave, " said Dean still astonished.

"All right, now let's talk business, first, we have two dead barbarians' bodies to take care of what should we do?" Emily asked.

"What have you got yourself into? You shouldn't have done that, " they both spoke up.

"They were going to take advantage of Vanessa, she had no choice, " said Emily.

"Oh, well I guess it can't be helped then, just clean any trace of them, and hide them somewhere safe, or bury them, " said Dean.

"Thank you, Dean, we hadn't thought of that," said Weiss mockingly.

"All right, but that's not what we are here for, we need a plan to fight the barbarians," said Emily.

"No they are too many in numbers, we need to wait for help, " said James.

"Even if help will come, we are still in their captivity, if they see that they are losing they will start killing as many as they can out of spite, so we need a strategy to save the people from the inside too," said Vanessa. 

"You are right, but what do we do, they have got all of us locked up and took away our weapons too, they check up on us every day, they are being too careful," said Dean.

"We can fight without weapons too, don't forget we are half-breeds," said Emily.

"But fighting transformed in the middle of the city with tight streets doesn't work, it would give us a disadvantage and we are anyway less in numbers, captain always said, we should use that only as a last resort, you don't have control on yourself if you are too high on adrenaline, it takes years of practice to fight like that, it would be best if we fight with our weapons in hybrid form only," said James. 

"Where are the weapons?" asked Vanessa.

"In some other room in this warehouse probably," said Dean.

"Fine then we will find them and make a hole under that room too, when the time comes, we will widen this hole and then you can all jump out and retrieve your weapons and surprise them by escaping through the sea, the same way we came," said Vanessa.

"Yeah, that could work, we pretty much have a secret door here now, we'll find a way to spread this to the rest of the guys too, it will take some time but we can get out of here this way and they will never see us coming," said James.

"All right then, I and Wiess will come here from time to time and make these passages in other rooms too, we will also supply you with food, you guys need to keep your strength," said Emily. Weiss seemed a bit overwhelmed but she wasn't saying no, which was a good sign.

"This will be a big task, with a lot of things that can go wrong, they will soon start noticing that something's happening if we look like we are getting food from somewhere else, this will only work if there is some help from the outside soon, to keep them distracted, we need to find a way to contact them," said James.

"But how?" asked Emily.

"You guys need to find a way to contact, Dad or Albert, they would know a way to contact outside the city," said James.

"But, Dad and every other minister, is locked in the dungeon under the castle," said Emily.

"I know it's going to be difficult, even more difficult than this, but you guys have started something, that none of us has done yet, you will have to think of something, If at some point you need us, me and Dean can maybe leave through here and come and help you, maybe they won't notice just two of us gone, but not for long," said James.

"Okay we'll think of something, take care," said Emily and the rest said their goodbyes, and the three girls transformed back and swam away. 

"Let's hurry, we need to hide those bodies too," said Vanessa as they came out of the pond behind the castle.

"I hope we don't run into anyone," said Weiss.

"It all looks quiet, where did you k... I mean where are they?" asked Emily.

"It was the store room near the kitchen," replied Vanessa and they hurried off to the room. They found the bodies just like before, the corridor outside was empty, it looked like these were the guards appointed to patrol this area of the castle because the barbarians had all areas patrolled regularly all the time. 

"I have an idea, let's just drop them in the pond, tie some rocks around and they'll sink to the bottom and stay there," said Emily.

"What if they went for a swim or something and saw them?" asked Weiss.

"There are already bodies in there, the ones that were killed in the initial struggle, they won't notice any difference," said Emily.

"Yeah, that's a good idea, let's hurry then," said Vanessa.

Weiss stayed behind to clean the room while Vanessa and Emily took the bodies and dropped them in the pond with rocks around their waists. Then they quickly took Weiss back as she was too scared to go alone and called it a day.