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Spear in hand, she crouches in the branches of a gnarled tree blue-green leaves tugging through her inky hair. It’s close, closer, still fuzzy but its shape is clear. Her hand tightens on the spear, waiting for the flat aerial fish to get just a little closer, its scales glittering blurrily with each wiggling flap of its fins. Meira flicks her hair out of her eyes, tensing for a leap just as something stirs between the foliage. With a cry she jumps the fish a second too late and it bubbles away, startled by something wandering through the foliage.
“Gwah–look out!” Meira yells, tumbling back from the force of impact with nothing as she barely misses impaling somebody. She totters back, hauling her spear on her shoulders for balance. “Hullo! Ehr, sorry, gent! You unbattered, right?!”
She bends over to see under the stranger’s hood and he tenses. Meira bobs back, trying to remember the polite way to greet a human but with a mental shrug reverts to her usual greeting.
“Live well!” She says, her hand jumping to a salute showing her palm over her forehead, the spear tipping off her shoulder. Instantly she catches it, dipping into the appropriate bow, which gives the spear another chance to escape. “Meira Kalyani-silver! And you called?”
“Um…” He gives a fractional shrug, eyes shifting uncomfortably. Cocking her head onto her shoulder she decides he looks so scrawny it makes her hurt. Meira juggles the spear back on her shoulders, gives up, and thunks the butt of the weapon on the ground in front of her.
“I was spear-fishing!” She announces twisting her hands around the spear while swinging into it a little, wondering if he can look any more uncomfortable so she gives him a friendly jostle on the shoulder before everything jolted into darkness…

“Let me tell you a secret,” He kicks aside a pile of books with his foot, firelight blankly reflecting the murder-black glint in his eyes. Curled around Connel’s arm by her tail the green-sapphire draekonet puffs hot breath on his neck between her slim pointed nostrils. “People…they tend to accept the idea of monsters, just the idea of course, not the real thing.”
The night air is cold and stagnant and bites into his fingers against the steel rim of the hilt sliding out the niche of his surcoat. As if reading her master’s mind, the draekonet shifts her scaly hide into his shoulder before pouncing onto the paper-splattered floor out of his way. “See, in your mind you’ve always assumed there’s some line some moral that one simply doesn’t cross. People assume that, isn’t that right, Tatira?” His eyes trail to the sleek draekonet, a darkly flickering smile twists the corner of his lips. “But you see, monsters really do exist, they hide in everyone, just untapped by most people because there’s always that line, that quiet little voice that says you simply…can’t do that it’s ‘wrong’”
Candle in hand, he turns, dropping his gaze to the drooped form plastered to the chair, head stirring with a dizzy moan.
“Ah, you’re awake.” Connel twirls the small blade around his fingers, strands of black hair in his face sharp against the dim gold of candlelight. “About time, I was afraid I’d have to find someone else to answer my questions.”
“Where–what–?” The taste of panic caught in someone else’s eyes is something almost calmingly familiar meaning everything still going according to plan. He sets the candle beside the man, the knife sliding back to its hilt as his impatience fades back to the sidelines.
“Now, before we begin, I’d like to fix a common misconception people have here. You probably have it in your mind, like I was telling my friend–” Connel motions to Tatira with his head, picking up a fractured book from the mess. “I was saying how every person has an untapped monster held back by that little inner voice called consequence.”
“I don’t…don’t know what you’re…-”
He laughs softly. In a second the tip of his sword slaps out of its scabbard with a sharp slick! under the man’s chin. His other hand flips over pages of a book set on the table, aching to be able to read written words.
“Of course you don’t. Let me finish,” Connel says “you see, people don’t fear actions half as much as consequences. You…you probably wouldn’t dream of killing someone, after all you’d feel a lot afterwards, you’d lack that person’s existence from then on, not to mention you wouldn’t get away with it.
“But I don’t fear consequences. So,” he says calmly “I have no line I’m afraid of crossing. See?”
Lifting his head from the book he stares coolly into the man’s eyes. “So that sweet little voice in your head that says I wouldn’t unflinchingly break you. Entirely and at every level you can or can’t imagine. If you care about any aspect of your pointless little circle of existence, you’ll tell that naïve voice to go to the ghouls, and you’ll do everything you need to to survive which would be cooperating as much as you possibly can.
“Do we have an understanding?”
“I don’t…I don’t know anyth–”
“First question,” Connel props his foot on the chair unnerving close, a green cord of tail coils between the wooden legs with a low crisp purr. “Now, I remember being told in the old war there was a certain herb or drug that people used to deactivate ability-borns’ powers. How do I find that drug?”
“I can’t…I don’t kn…”
“Think about it carefully,” Connel says “which are you more afraid of; the kingdom or the man with a sword under your throat?”
“There’s…I don’t…I don’t know if…if it even exist–”
“I’ll take hearsay,” He says in a disturbingly patience voice. Restless energy beginning to creep through his bones, visible from the eyes that lack all caution.
“Ok…ok, it’s…there’s a pit in the Sioan Forest and there’s…so there’s the cnidarian, you know th–”
“Yeah, go on.”
“The nemato plant inside it’s…it’s the…just, I don’t know after…after that but it’s…any herbalist can–”
“Sure, that works,” Connel lets Tatira scamper onto his arm and across his shoulders tangling his death-black hair like twisting shadows. He watches the tip of his reflective steel blade close to his captive’s face. “Next question, someone I’m looking for, an Alessio Eliakim, a man with a scar across his forehead–”
His eyes widen
“I don’t know any–!” Slam! Instinctively the man tries to jerk back, blood slowly trickles along the tip of his ear reddening the phantom-white blade. Connel tilts his head back to meet his eyes, hand clinched loosely along the hilt of the sword.
“Remember I have nothing against my inner monster.” he says evenly “Now, take a breath and think about how you want to answer. Remember you have a family.”
“I don’–” An icily flat look quells the man’s protest.
“Think about it carefully,” Connel’s voice is very low. He releases a sigh. “You have two kids, both girls, you’re oldest is twelve. I don’t hurt kids but I wouldn’t imagine you want them to be orphans, especially not in this world, most stray kids are sold as slaves. Your girls are very pretty.”
“I can’t…I can’t tell you anything about…about…nobody’s seen him since…since the–”
“Don’t waste my time. Give me a trail,” he purrs “I know you can.”
“Look he’s just–he’s just a nice boy there’s nothing–”
“I want to do this the easy way, I don’t particularly like hurting people,” he says “but I’m very good at it. Most people think he’s dead anyway, just give me somewhere to look?”

“I don’t know any–” The blade etches deeper into the chair, clipping several pinned threads of hair with it. “The Silver Tree! Like that Thayer legend, he’d…he’d if he’s still alive he’d have–”
“Would he really be that crazy?”
“That boy…that boy you don’t know him he…he’d…yes, he’d try”
“Fine,” Connel withdraws the naked sword from the wood of the chair, the blade still touched with red and open to the gasping fire of the candle. “One final question; tell me about the prophecy.”
Then the world swirled black before the scene changes…

Ok ladies and gentlemen…actually I think there’s only ladies here…XD
This will be a writing challenge to test our plot skills apparently since villains are nothing without malicious and applicable goals. So:
1. Find one thing that will drive your character to say here not just forcibly but to complete a mission; this is a great change for worldbuilding your own story. We’re gonna work with ‘shadow’-characters and setting every element intended to drive your individual villain’s new or old goals.
2. Establish stakes and raise them. The question of the round is: what would your villain die for? Show it and kill it :). Like worst fears only it’s the one thing they care about genuinely.
3. The first room of the Labyrinth shows what they care about and gives each of them a mission to reach the second room to save that thing in a way that they have to work together.
4. They require a guide; that’s the first townsperson they meet.
To recap, the goal is to force each character to be invested in gaining something from the castle. The castle wants to narrow the chosens down to one person. Aaand it is past my bedtime game master will scene-out first challenge pending *wink at @hannahrenner*