A single drop of acid fell from Teleri’s vial and fell through the air. Gerrith pre-emptively winced as the drop touched his boot, but nothing could have prepared him for the agony of the acid melting through the leather and burning a hole straight through his flesh. He screamed a blood-curdling scream as Teleri watched him, showing zero emotion.

  “Do you still think I am bluffing, thief?” she asked, maintaining her fake accent.

  “No,” said Gerrith, panting as moist forehead dripped with sweat. “No…I do not.”

  “Then you will answer the questions I ask of you.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will…”

  Teleri shook her head and held the vial out once again. “My ears are keener than your lies, Gerrith. Do you think I cannot detect the trembling in your voice? Do you think I cannot tell that you seek to deceive me?”

  Gerrith looked at her reproachfully and sighed. “My loyalty to the guild is unwavering,” he said. He did not want to say it, but he knew that he must.

  Teleri tipped a drop and it landed on his other boot, burning a hole through his foot. This time, it touched bone and burned a perfectly clean hole that caused him greater pain than before. He wailed so loudly that Teleri feared anyone in the nearby houses would come to investigate.

  “You will speak truthfully, won’t you?” she asked. “Tell me of the Feldorians.”

  “I…cannot…” grunted Gerrith, desperate for the torture to be over already.

  “Perhaps there is another way to convince you,” said Teleri, holding up a hand and beckoning Pheston in from the other room.

  “Showtime, lad,” he whispered to the goblinoid Friedrich who gave a nod in response.

  Pheston picked up Friedrich and restrained him as he struggled against the smith’s grip. He kicked, screeched, and gnashed his teeth as the black-clad man approached the thief. Gerrith’s face was one of utter terror as the goblin laid eyes on him and licked his lips. Friedrich ceased his struggling and drooled over the floor. He was disgusted with himself for stooping to such a vile level, but he knew it had to be done to convince the thief to talk.

  “My friend, Greentoe, has not had a single morsel of food for five days in preparation for meeting you,” said Teleri. “He is a difficult little beast to control, but I have faith that he will listen if I demand he start from the feet and work his way up.”

  Gerrith shuddered and tried hard not to whimper, but he could not help himself. Teleri now knew she could break him.

  “Greentoe,” she said, “take a bite out of his leg.”

  Pheston released Friedrich who leapt onto Gerrith’s web-bound leg and opened his jaw wide. With a feeling of great shame, he clamped down on the thief’s leg and Gerrith cried out for a third time. There was something different about this cry, however, and it was the tears that accompanied it.

  “I’ll talk!” he howled. “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. Please!”

  “Get back,” grunted Pheston, pulling Friedrich away.

  Gerrith was too distressed to notice Friedrich willingly letting go before his kicking and screeching resumed. Pheston hauled him into another room and slammed the door shut as Teleri towered over the man, her concealed face twisting into a grin.

  “There are at least two of my fellow wood elves in your wanks. Who are they?”

  Gerrith sighed and shook his head despondently. “There are more than two,” he said. “If I was to hazard a guess, there are five wood elves in the guild.”

  “And their names are?”

  “I can name four of them. There’s Guinal, Syndil, and the two brothers, Corick and Caldorin.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  In the other room, Ilyria was scribbling down the names, writing them in Balmorian script and then translating them on the fly to their closest human approximations. She did not recognise the names, but she had not honestly expected to. At the very least, it was a lead she previously lacked.

  “Your guildhall,” said Teleri. “Where is it?”

  “Please,” said Gerrith, looking at her pleadingly. “I’ll be beaten and excommunicated for what I’ve told you so far. For revealing the location of the guildhall? Well, I’ll be flayed and executed.”

  Teleri believed he was being sincere this time. If anything, he was underselling the punishment. “Very well,” she said. “Describe the wood elves to me. No detail of their appearance is unimportant.”

  Gerrith did as he was asked and Ilyria continued taking notes. When it came to the brothers, she paused while writing and raised an eyebrow before continuing. The one called Corick sounded remarkably like the blasphemer she had dealt with. If he was the one she had punished, then perhaps his brother, Caldorin, was the one who attacked her in the church.

  Once Ilyria signalled she had what she needed, Teleri spoke to Gerrith again. “You have done what I asked of you, mostly. I am content to let you go now. You are to forget we spoke, you are to forget what happened here. You have not seen my eyes nor have you heard my voice. Are we clear, Gerrith?”

  “Crystal clear,” said Gerrith, sounding relieved. He had been expecting to die in this room and held onto the guild’s location desperately to preserve some level of thieves’ honour.

  “Sleep well.”

  “Sleep well?”

  Marina placed her hands on the back of Gerrith’s head and shocked him into unconsciousness. Teleri then cut the man free with her dagger while the others gathered around.

  “I was hoping we wouldn’t need the backup plan to find the guild,” said Friedrich, “but making him confess its location was always going to be tough.”

  “We should have tortured him more,” said Teleri.

  “We can’t just go around torturing people!” protested Marina. “Even if they are rotten thieves.”

  “We should have at least deprived him of his hands. It would make his devilish thievery a much more difficult task for him. I could not see him snatching a wallet with his teeth and running away so easily.”

  Friedrich rocked his head from side to side. “You make a compelling case—”

  “Friedrich!” scolded Marina.

  “—but, of course, I do not condone such actions…largely because I don’t want the backlash to hit us when we’re already treading on thin ice within the city after kidnapping this man.”

  “Speaking of,” said Pheston, thumping the thief on the head to make sure he was still out cold, “let’s skedaddle before Gerrith here wakes up.”

  “That would be for the best,” said Ilyria, leading the way through the door and closing it once everyone was outside. She turned to Friedrich, who had assumed fox form. “Good luck, Friedrich.”

  Pheston grabbed the fox and threw him onto the upper balcony where Friedrich concealed himself behind one of the stone posts. The others swiftly departed with only Teleri remaining close by. She hid herself on another rooftop, casting off her shadowy clothing and revealing the more elegant attire she had hidden underneath. Her long golden locks flowed down her back, catching the sun and shimmering brilliantly; she was a picture of beauty that not even the most sagacious thief would have suspected of torturing one of their own mere minutes ago. She smiled at Friedrich, who was staring at her from behind the post before averting her gaze. Should she rumble the plan accidentally, she would never have been able to forgive herself.

  After nearly ten minutes, Friedrich’s ears perked up and he heard a muffled groan from inside. Shortly after that, the front door opened and Gerrith cautiously poked his head outside. With a sigh of relief, he limped out into the street and made for the nearest alley, looking over his shoulder continuously as he moved. Friedrich jumped onto the stone below and followed the thief, sniffing out his location every time he lost track. It was made all the easier by the lingering smell of Teleri’s acid.

  Gerrith’s route was peculiar, crossing over his own path several times over. Friedrich quickly realised he was assuming that he was being tailed and wanted to cause as much confusion as possible, but it was no use. The man proved easy to follow as his injured foot slowed him and Friedrich’s nose meant he could perform the role of diligent stalker while not having to keep his eyes on his target at all times.

  It took almost half an hour but, eventually, Gerrith walked into a cramped courtyard with an old waterless fountain in the middle. The fountain depicted a cloaked man holding a frog in his hand, raising it to the sky. It was cloaked in shadow caused by the tall buildings surrounding it, none of which had a single window facing the fountain.

  With a last look over his shoulder, Gerrith hopped into the fountain and twisted an anklet the stone man was wearing. There came a rumbling, followed by the sound of stone scraping against stone. The base of the fountain lowered itself segmentally, revealing a staircase within. Gerrith scurried down it, nearly tripping as he tried to descend on his injured foot. As soon as he was out of sight, the stone raised back up, hiding the passageway beneath.

  Friedrich was overcome with curiosity about the engineering of this entryway, but he knew the how was less important than the where. It was certainly the entrance to the guildhall, but he had to be sure. He hopped up a nearby vine-clad trellis and onto the roof. He could see Teleri nearby, having followed him remarkably well. He waved his tail through the air, telling her to alert the others.