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@kari-karast (Oh, yeah, I’m getting to that part 🙂 )

Anna looked around the small room at the shelves lining the walls, crowded with papers, scraps, and scrolls strewn all around.  And directly in the middle of the room sat a relatively-bulky telescope.  Anna slowly walked to it curiously.  She wrapped both hands around the telescope and shifted it up, tilting the end downward.  Anna leaned forward and looked through the apparatus with one eye.  She scanned the fortress down below and saw countless soldiers pacing all over like ants on a hill.  Then she looked closer.  Anna observed a wide, courtyard scattered with soldiers and other people alike.  Slaves, she realized.  Men, women, and young children slaves huddled together protectively in corners of the courtyard.  Some even appeared to defy the soldiers’ commands and thrashed about in their bindings.  Anna looked away.

That’s horrible, she thought, backing away from the telescope.  A rush of determination traveled through her veins.  I need to save them.  She was about to leave, but the seemingly discarded papers caught her attention.  Anna walked over to the nearest shelf and carefully picked up a piece of paper, curled at the edges.  A map! Her eyes scanned over the paper; this map was of an large armory.  Hmm…  Anna returned it back to its original place and rifled through some other papers, looking for just the right one.  She didn’t find what she was looking for on that side of the room and turned to look on the opposite side.

Oh, duh.  She shook her head and walked over to the wall beside the entrance.  Pasted on the wall by a single thumbtack was a medium-sized map of the surrounding area.  It had her current room’s location, the courtyard outside, some surrounding rooms, and an outline of a much larger building nearby.

“I better get back soon,” she whispered aloud to herself.  Then she remembered that Kieron had said something about special rubies.  Anna glanced back at the map, weighed something on her mind, and snatched the map off of the thumbtack.  She yanked the thumbtack off and replaced the empty space with a different map lying around.  Anna folded up her newly acquired map and slipped it into her pants pocket underneath her battledress skirt.  She willed her invisibility back on and silently slipped out of the room.
***
Anna ducked back into the dim archway.  “Kieron?” she whispered softly.  “Kieron, it’s me, Anna.  Where are you?”  She kept her invisibility on and squinted her eyes, growing accustomed to the dark.