Unspeakable Secrets The Alchemist Series (A Dark Medieval Progression Fantasy)

Chapter 57 Fellow Prisoners

He peered through the keyhole once more, checking that nothing had changed, and then eased open the door.

The hallway was indeed empty. Lined with heavy dark iron reinforced doors like that of the one to his own room. Each of them had a viewport slat that could be moved out of the way to look within. Seven of them.

On the far end of the hallway was another door made of solid dark iron.

The other end, nearer Connor, was the door he'd been brought through when they'd first taken him to his cell. He remembered the way vividly.

Connor pulled the freshly cut piece of the bolt lock free from where it rested in the door frame, just to make sure it didn't fall out and alert the guards to something being wrong with the lock.

He slipped it into his pocket.

He crouched down and looked through the keyhole of the door that blocked his path back up to the surface.

Beyond it, he saw a more open area of the ship, though much of his view was obscured by a thick section of a mast going up through the ceiling. There was a trio of visible staircases leading upward. And at least two that went down... the furthest was hard to make out in the dim light... but he couldn't see a stairway leading down beneath it.

Guards, or what Connor thought of as guards, milled around in the dim light. A few seemed involved in quiet conversation while one wandered around alone and seemed to be on some kind of patrol.

It was difficult to see much in the low light and with the keyhole and mast in the way... but they were definitely armed. Across the way, he saw polished wood walls. But with the mast in the way, it was impossible to tell whether that was another prison section or some other partition.

None of what he saw was outside of Connor's expectations. And the low light levels would surely help him move around. It seemed wise not to skulk around too much as in the gloom, he could pass for a guard from a distance. Especially if he worked on making his silhouette resemble theirs.

Hells, he doubted most of the crew or the guards even knew what he looked like. The Syndicate seemed to have put far less effort into preparing for a potential escape than they had into the design of their cells. Which, he had to admit, had been well thought out. They'd only missed a single crucial detail after all. A detail that he himself had overlooked for far too long.

Still... if it did come to a fight... he had no potions and no weapons. He could be easily overwhelmed...

He looked back over his shoulder, down the corridor at the cells lining either side and the thick dark iron door at the opposite end of the hallway as his thoughts turned to the creature he'd heard when they'd brought him to his cell.

It'd caused quite a fuss then...

He saw no sign of the damage it'd caused now, either because the light was too low to pick it out or it'd been too well repaired, but he couldn't help thinking that it might be useful to have such a creature on his side.

Provided I can actually get it on my side, Connor thought.

It wouldn't do much good to get himself torn apart by some monstrous beast... still... it seemed worth investigating. Besides, he wanted to know who else was in the cells anyway. Partly because it might provide useful information he could use against the Syndicate but more importantly... he hoped to find some of those he'd so disastrously led into a trap.

If there were any of his people here, then they could help skew the odds in his favor. More than that... he could begin to undo the damage of his mistake. Begin to set things right.