Elemental Cats

The hallway's ceiling had been high enough that the light from the torches lining the walls was too weak to reveal Toz and the cats' hiding spot. A few of the guards had looked up, but they could only see the shadows.

Toz waited a few moments to make sure the guards had time to get further away before sticking his head past the corner. The cats joined him one by one, starting with Lucy, whose head popped out next to the ground. Mindle put her head on top of Lucy's, after which Nil got squeezed in between Asilean and Mindle. And Scrael rested her head on top of all the other cats' heads.

Toz and the cats followed the hallway to the left since it was the only way to go, despite it being the same way the guards went.

Simple and robust doors lined the corridor until the end, where it split up into two hallways that went left and right. The doors were pretty obviously where the guards slept, so Toz and the cats didn't bother searching through them.

Toz and the cats walked soundlessly over to the crossing and, after confirming they couldn't hear the guards, gently sneaked a peek again.

The two hallways looked identical to each other and went on for a short distance before turning. Toz was beginning to feel like the inside of the castle was a labyrinth.

Toz and the cats held a quick vote on where to go, left or right. However, they didn't go anywhere since the vote finished with three votes for left and three votes for right.

Since being democratic didn't work, they decided to be practical. The guards' footsteps went down the right hallway. That could mean several things. It was the right way to enter the depths of the castle, and the guards wouldn't be coming back from that direction. For those reasons, the right hallway seemed like the safer option.

However, the guard captain had told the guards to avoid the councilors, and the councilors were more likely to be closer to their wealth, so the left might be the hallway the guards didn't choose because it led straight to the center of the castle, where the important places of the castle are.

Since being practical didn't give them an easy choice either, Toz grabbed one of the torches on the walls and put it out before placing it on the ground.

Toz let go of the torch and let it fall to the ground according to an old trustworthy trick that usually helped when Toz and the cats had difficulty deciding which way to go.

To the dismay of three cats, the torch fell to the right. But since the decision made by the torch was absolute, everyone agreed to go right.

Considering how much sound the guards made when walking, Toz and the cats chanced on noticing the guards before they noticed them, so they decided to save time and run through the hallway.

They encountered the occasional door on the way, but most of them led to small empty rooms with nothing inside. They also encountered a bunch of crossroads. Thankfully, Toz brought the torch and used it to continue deciding their path forward until they no longer needed it.

Eventually, they followed a smaller corridor into a large hallway with decorations and portraits of people along the wall and a red carpet in the middle of the floor.

The large and exquisite hallway led to a set of wooden, decoratively carved double doors.

Sounds of laughter and conversation spilled out through the closed doors. Toz and the cats sneaked over to the door after deciding that the occupants would be too busy to notice if they cracked the door open enough to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

The door didn't show any signs of locks or enchantments. It just relied on its weight to stay closed, so Toz applied just enough pressure to open the door so that he and the cats could see the other side.

The slit was so small they could only use a single eye and saw only a limited part of the room. But from the little they saw, it looked like a large ballroom filled with light, decorations, and people. Since the door was far away from the activities, it was difficult for Toz and the cats to make out the details of the ballroom.

Toz and the cats wanted to get a better look at what was going on inside the ballroom, and they leaned forward into the gap in the doors so they could see better. However, they forgot that they couldn't lean on the doors or each other. After pushing closer to the door, the six of them ended up losing their balance. They quickly regained it, but not after accidentally shoving the door open. The door didn't open all the way since there were a couple of guards directly on the other side that stood in the way.

However, their little accident had irrevocably exposed Toz and the cats.

At least they got a better view of the ballroom. However, Toz wasn't sure if it was worth it since there wasn't anything special, just a bunch of well-dressed arrogant types that looked to be the higher-ups of the Blue Lounge League of Pirates. It would have been different if they were doing something interesting, but they were only mingling, eating, and drinking, pretending to be the nobles of some kingdom or something. The people in the ballroom were about as far away from what Toz and the cats expected pirates to be.

Toz straightened his legs and entered the ballroom with the cats, closing the door behind them. Despite having elaborately decorated armor, the two guards were useless since they didn't even try to stop the intruders.

Toz didn't know if it was because of shock or because they were too stupid to react to an unknown situation where they didn't know what to do or anyone telling them what to do, but the guards kept backing as Toz stepped deeper into the ballroom.

One of the guards foolishly tried to grab his sword, but he ended up collapsing to the ground with a thud.

"Who are you!?"