Free from the bonds for the first time in nearly a week, her neck felt strangely exposed and a little raw. She gently rubbed it as she stood, and walked to the side of the exit of the room. She paused, her back pressed against the left wall by the doorway, listening for any sound of approaching footfalls, but heard nothing. After feeling a.s.sured no one was coming to investigate the noise, she gingerly stepped into the narrow, dimly-lit corridor and crept towards the end where the guards she was meeting with would meet her.

Creeping around the final corner, she peeked her head around to investigate the next chamber. Ordinarily, from what she could remember, this room served as a guard room for her holding cell, as well as several others, with multiple guards on duty. But to her confusion and surprise, there was no one in the room. The rough-hewn tables were empty, and she could here no one down any of the other corridors. The unexpected emptiness made her uneasy. Had their plan been found out somehow? But if it had, why not ambush her as soon as she tried to escape? Or take all of the components she'd been smuggled? Or had something else happened entirely.

The thought shot a quiver up her spine. What if Jack and Rose and Madeleine had come for her? What if there were no guards here because they were busy dealing with intruders?

She brushed the possibility aside. Even if that were what was happening, which was unlikely, she couldn't rely on the three of them to somehow defeat an entire tribe by themselves, no matter how talented Rose was with a blade, or how gifted Jack had become. But that a.s.sumed they were even still alive. It occurred to her at this moment that she'd never really considered the possibility that her sisters and Jack were gone, fallen to some horrible fate worse than her own. They could be in a ditch somewhere, staring blankly at the sky for all she knew.

No, she could hope, but she was going to have to find her own way out of this. But not before finding that drolling, dog-faced b.a.s.t.a.r.d and pulling his spine out through his throat. She wasn't leaving until she was certain he would never be able to harm another creature ever again, especially not another girl like her.

But how would she get there? The original plan was clearly no longer in effect at this point, whatever the reason. So then, it was time to improvise. She reached into her components pouch again, and removed the tuft of gnoll hair she'd saved from before. She gathered it into her left hand began to recite the formula for Polymorph, one she'd never bothered to memorize before her time practicing in chains. Dragging the fur slowly across her exposed neck and forming spellsigns with the other, she chanted as the fur left her fingers and began to magically embed itself in her skin.

The Polymorph process was never a physically pleasant one. While not usually painful, the feeling of ones bones realigning and enlongating, or growing wings or new limbs or fur were all very, very unsettling. Eleanor had to bite her tongue and brace herself against the nearest wall to keep from crying out or falling over while her limbs felt like they were being placed in a stretching rack.

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