






The young woman crept in, her bare feet silently pressing against the tile floor. The stag had known of her presence for a while now, but chose not to speak of it. Jergens was oblivious, although he had never been observant to begin with, and mentally fretting over his boss didn’t help any. The woman snuck up to him, bent over, and leapt up onto his back.
“Tag! Yer it!” she screamed, encircling her arms around him. Jergens hollered in surprise and sprang away from her, much to her disappointment. “Who the Hell are you?!” he gasped, putting a hand to his chest. The woman cocked her head and looked down at Bartleby, who was breathing quite nicely now. “Humm… He sleeps so much…” she grabbed his arm and wiggled it back and forth. “Faaaiiith… wake up…” she mumbled, too softly for Jergens to hear. The stag cleared his throat and spoke. “Lady Bartleby, please don’t do that.” He muttered in masked annoyance.
Nippers stood and turned to the stag. “Oh! Hello-…” Jergens saw that her eyes flicked up to the pictogram floating atop the stag’s head for a few moments, as if regarding it. She continued, “…Do you know why Faith is sleeping so much?” she smiled sweetly. The stag glared at her silently, a sign that she was not wanted. After a few moments Nippers seemed to get the idea. Reluctantly, she left, politely closing that door behind her, leaving an irked stag and a confused (but amused) young man.
After a little while, the stag spoke again. “You have questions.” It wasn’t a question; it was just a passing comment, as casual as remarking on the weather. Jergens’s head was swimming with questions, and he was grateful for the opportunity to have them answered. “Who was that just now?” he asked the stag.


Bartleby’s hand was still bleeding. Jergens, being the understanding and kind gentleman that he was, shrugged and hoisted Bartleby onto his back.
“Wha… What are you doing?! Unhand me!” Bartleby struggled against him his kidnapper casually ran down the halls at a casual pace of casualness. “Hell no, man. Besides, you think I want to carry you? Yer freaking blood is leaving a stain on my shirt.” Jergens didn’t even know where the ‘infirmary’ was. Hell, he didn’t even know WHAT an ‘infirmary’ was. He hoped he was going in the right direction, but knowing his own luck, he probably wasn’t.
After a while Bartleby, growing a bit faint from blood loss, lightly tapped Jergens’s shoulder. “Do you even know where you’re going?” he almost whispered. “The infirmary is well behind us now; you see the plaques on the walls, don’t you?” Jergens turned around without a word and doubled back, noticing that there were indeed little sheets of metal on the wall with unrecognizable scribbles on them. Jergens guessed that these were probably words telling one where to go to get to somewhere… or something like that. Hell, he didn’t know.
After a bit more of running and pushing away bewildered servants, Bartleby tapped his shoulder again, this time barely moving. “You passed it again…” he managed to mumble out. “You can’t read… can you? I should have known…” he faltered and fell limp against Jergens. The red-headed youth promptly began to panic and took a random turn into another hallway.
It wasn’t very well lit, and the whole area seemed to be giving off some bad vibes. At least to Jergens it was. Unlike the rest of the estate, it didn’t look like anyone maintained it. He saw that there was a large door at the very end of it all, and he walked towards it, exhausted from carrying the extra weight of Bartleby around. His hands were supporting both of Bartleby’s legs, so knocking was out of the question.

