"Keep her quiet!" the Marshal barked, a hand held back in a command for silence. He barely breathed while he scanned the room, his expression set in a grave scowl; every cell of his body protested to this place, where one false move could bring hellfire upon all their heads. The dusty air seemed to buzz with tantalizing energy, just waiting for the right spark to set it all alight -- and there was an obstinate princess gallavanting somewhere among the spells, all the more dangerous for her small body and tail. Whatever possessed the queen to turn her into a [i]cat[/i] was beyond him. Turtles were much more convenient.

"Sir --" one of the guards protested warily -- and indeed, the two were having enormous trouble just keeping a grip on the squirming and thrashing girl. Covering her mouth would prove a daunting if not impossible task. They fumbled with her limbs and shoved her weight between them, bruising her with their gauntlets.

The Marshal turned in a fury and glared at her. He stepped forward and grabbed her chin in one strong hand, forcing her to look at his deadly serious blue eyes. "This is a dangerous place," he hissed in a low, articulate voice. "One false move -- one [i]word[/i] from you could kill us all. That tingle in the air is dark energy, and it's not welcoming."

While he growled at her, the cat appeared high atop a cabinet behind him, her ears perked, legs coiled, tail twitching. She flashed her fangs. Marshal Derrick had been her father's confidante, once -- a man they both had thought was just, loyal, and worth of the trust they had given him. But for this betrayal, this foul self-preservation, for this base display of his true and revolting self, she could never forgive him. Now there was an innocent girl dragged into the worst of predicaments, and it was all her fault.

The cat leaped, and the Marshal roared in pain as claws and teeth sank into his scalp. He jolted away from Sam and stumbled around the room, his gauntlets too inarticulate to catch a grip on the squirming, lashing cat. He bumped into a small table and a glass vial shattered on the floor; the room screeched a piercing, ugly howl and the temperature dropped to freezing; spirits of the dead rushed between them, wisps of human forms, cackling and sobbing as they rushed in a blur around the room.

The cat leaped off of the Marshal and clawed at one guard's face until he, screaming, released his grip on Sam. Dorothea lighted on Sam's shoulder, and she spoke. "Run. This way." She bounded away, dodged the Marshal's reach, and sailed out of an open window, while the crowded spirits screamed and writhed.