The two guards in the dungeon glanced down at the gray short-hair at their feet, with a thin collar.  The cat meowed again, and rubbed up against one of their legs, purring, its tail straight up except for the curled tip.

The guards exchanged a confused look, even as the cat moved over to the other guard, rubbing up against him.

He gently booted the cat away, and said, "Outta here, kitty."

The other guard asked, "How the hell'd it get in here?"

"I dunno-"

A shrill human scream split the air, and the cat bolted off down the corridor in fright.  The scream was a woman's, in pain beyond the capacity of sanity.

Both guards looked in the direction of the scream, and then sullenly resumed their post.  They ignored the scream as best they could.

In one of the many thick-walled, thick-doored cells with slits only large enough for a food tray down at the level of the floor, someone whimpered -- supposedly in sympathy.

Maverick leaned against the door, listening, and wishing he could close his ears against the sound.  He was lean and lithe, a man in his mid-thirties that still had the speed of youth and the whipcord muscles of an endurance runner or swordsman.  His clothes were shades of gray, from dark gray riding boots to a light gray vest, a darker gray shirt, and charcoal gray breeches.  All matched the moods and colors of his gray eyes, and at that moment, they were the lighter gray of his shirt.

To those who knew him, it was the gray of frustration.

He dropped down to the floor again, and peered through the slat, hoping against hope that he had been wrong.  He saw only the boots of the guards, and the slit in the wood on a cell door opposite his own.  The rough-packed dirt floor hid nothing, and Maverick flexed his hands in frustration.

The cat was his, and carried with it his lock-picks.  He had almost been able to get the cat, Claws, to drop his picks.  Maverick had spent months training the cat, and training a cat was as hard and arduous and pain-staking a process as anything else in his cold life had been.

He cursed the desert elf that had captured him, and cursed himself for getting caught in Rilan -- the spiritual heart of Rakore.  Sir Bridar had known who he was, but how he had known where and when to catch Maverick still had the thief confused.  He banged his fist against the dirt floor in frustration.

He'd sensed that the deal with the monks at the Star's End monastery wasn't right from the get-go -- and he'd been right.  The monks had wanted him to steal a special scroll from a temple in Rilan of all places!  Maverick'd taken extra time and extra precautions to tour Rilan as a trader, and worked in the city for close to a week before-hand, just to ensure his chances of success, Claws in tow.

Another scream echoed throughout the dungeon.  Maverick swallowed, and hoped he wasn't next.

"Mrow?"

One of the guards shifted his feet, as though he were about to push the cat away with his boot, again.  Claws darted next to the door and meowed piteously.  The gray short-hair lay down as though to be as far away from the guards as possible, and then tried to crawl into the cell by squeezing through the slit.

Maverick had just enough time to remove the picks from the inside of the collar, before one of the guards said, "No you don't!" and grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck.  Claws whacked her head against the slit in the door as she was pulled out, and Maverick's eyes went wide as eight claws suddenly came out of their sheathes.

There was a yelp from outside the cell door as Claws went crazy, then the thump of a cat hitting hard dirt, and bolting away.

One guard asked, "You all right, man?  Damn, he got you good."

"Shit.  Look.  I'll have to go get one of the healers, or I might get cat-scratch fever."

"Damn.  Hurry up, though, would ya?  I hate being down here alone."

Another scream, followed by loud whimpering, echoed through the dungeon.  There was silence for a moment, and then the guard that had been scratched up said, "I think I'd rather be scratched up."

Maverick waited patiently, and used the screams of the tortured woman to undo the shackles about his ankles.  Free of those restraints, he tackled the lock on the door -- a far more difficult process, with the lock inaccessible from the inside to most people.  Maverick was anything but 'most people', having recently completed an apprenticeship with Arkumil Despot.

'The Master Thief' was how Arkumil was usually known.  Maverick had been good, before working with Arkumil for half a year.  After training with the Master Thief -- a man simultaneously used and hunted by the intelligence agents of Rakore -- Maverick had gone from good to incredible.

With a style distinctly his own, Maverick kicked open the door to his cell.  The remaining guard started, not understanding how the bolt could be undone and unlock from the inside, and went to draw his sword.

Maverick rolled forward and came up with his feet in the solar plexus of the guard.  The sword clattered to the dirt as the guard bounced off a cell door and then crumpled, his breath gone.  Maverick picked up the sword and rose gracefully to his feet, the guard's key ring in his other hand.

Behind him, he heard a cell door open, and the expression in his gray eyes went from a gray of excitement, to the dark gray of fear, his pupils dilating and his nostrils flaring.  The thief turned on the toes of his feet in the sudden silence, peering into the torch-lit corridor.

Bridaraarayus stepped into the corridor, his massive shoulders and enormous height snaking out of the cell behind his nearly luminous orange eyes.  Those eyes bored into Maverick with a kind of anger and bloodlust that caused the thief's heart to skip a beat.

Blood ran darkly over the desert elf's tattoos and leather armor, adding a hint of red splashes to the black and orange-gold of his skin.

Maverick took in a short and shallow breath through his flared nostrils, seeing the torches sputter in slow motion, and the huge desert elf slowly begin to sprint towards him.

The cat, Claws, stood up on her hind legs before the desert elf, between Maverick and the rapidly approaching orange eyes.  The gray-furred cat grew in size, proportions changing, until the thief was looking at the back of a naked woman with a thick main of platinum hair that hid her face from his view.

She held out one hand towards the desert elf, and said, "Prophay."

Sir Bridar ground to a halt, before he had really begun to sprint, dismay and fear forming on his face.

Maverick wasted no time waiting for explanations, stories, information, or hints.  He turned and sprinted up the stairs as fast as his legs would take him.  He put aside from his mind the terror of the murderous rage in Sir Bridar's eyes, or of his cat Claws suddenly turning into a curvy woman with an hour-glass figure before him.

He burst out of the stairwell, and ran past two guards before they realized what had happened.  The guards gave chase, and Maverick's training with Arkumil kicked in.  He spun on the ball of one foot and slammed his elbow into one guard's forehead even as the pommel of the sword hit the solar plexus of one of the other guards.  Arkumil trained hard in hand-to-hand and close-combat fighting, as well as cracking safes and stealing jewels.

Maverick wasted no time and disappeared into the shadows even as two more guards, this time with torches, ran around a nearby corner.  They looked around frantically while aiding their comrades.  But of Maverick there was no sign.