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There were more people in this one building than anywhere else in Faerûn, Astarion was sure of it. They were duplicating themselves, they had to be, entirely because he was trying to sneak past them. He had the benefit of an invisibility spell from Wyll and a potion of the same in his pocket, but he couldn't do things like open doors without losing the affect. And there were so, so many doors between him and Taran.
They were simple bandits, was the galling part. Just simple idiot bandits to managed to catch them with their pants down. The arrows that had struck himself and Taran had some kind of paralytic poison on them, and he'd watched them drag her away as Gale grabbed him by the arm and teleported him out of reach.
("I could reach you," Gale had defended himself when Astarion regained the ability to snarl at him. "I couldn't get to them. Would you rather we were all imprisoned?")
Astarion ground his teeth, staring at a door and willing it to open. Of course he didn't want that, and a few tendays ago he'd have commended Gale on his good sense and moved on. But things were different now, he was different now, and if they'd been taken together at least he'd know if she was alive. If there was even a point to sneaking through this entire fucking castle they'd somehow managed to hole themselves up in.
Well. There would still be a point. If he got to Taran and she was dead, he'd get to kill everyone on the way out. Which was the plan regardless, but he could get so much more creative.
Someone finally walked through the door and Astarion darted forward, slipping through before it closed again. Thankfully he'd been correct about the building's layout, and was faced with a long hallway made up of jail cells. Unfortunately there were also guards every few feet, and he couldn't just wait for someone to just open Taran's cell.
There had been an argument made for the lot of them to just storm the place, and he was starting to wish he'd gone along with it. But the fear remained in the back of his mind that the bandits would simply kill Taran, and he'd insisted on coming alone. On account of he was a complete idiot.
He managed to crouch in front of Taran's cell without her guard noticing. She was on the small cot built into the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. Aside from the arm of their robe being bloodied where she'd been shot, they seemed unharmed, and something in Astarion's chest loosened. She was alive.
Now he could get to work.
He crept back to the door, where a guard was stationed next to a speaking tube presumably meant for sounding an alarm in case of a jailbreak. Astarion slit the man's throat, which he thought solved the issue quite neatly.
The invisibility broke as his knife slid through flesh, and the other three in the room stared at him for a full second before launching themselves forward. Throwing one of his daggers into the throat of the farthest attacker, he jammed the other deep in the gut of the man who reached him first. He dragged it sideways, splitting him across the middle before yanking it out and turning towards the last guard, the one closest to Taran's cell - only to find him frozen in place, his face a mask of pain and confusion. The guard dropped to the floor, revealing Taran with one hand stretched between the bars of her cell, lightning still crackling across her fingertips.
"...well done, darling." Astarion retrieved his other dagger from the throat it was embedded in and dropped into a crouch in front of Taran's cell door, digging his lockpicks out of his pocket.
"You're here." Taran had approached the door to crouch next to him, or as near as she could get.
"Is there somewhere else I should be?" The lock was both simply and badly made, and he popped it open without much thought. The door swung open and Taran practically fell on him in a hug.
"No, of course not, you're right where I need you to be, I just - " When she lifted her face from his shoulder there were tears starting in her eyes. "I wasn't sure what happened to you," she whispered. "After they dragged me off."
"The wizard saw fit to evacuate me," Astarion said, trying not to sound bitter. He pressed his lips to her forehead, briefly but firmly. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. Come on, let's get back to the others."
"Wait." She crossed the room, stepping lightly over the corpses, and knelt in front of a low, wide trunk. "My staff - "
Astarion came up behind them, investigating the lock hooked onto the front of the trunk. Nudging Taran out of the way with his knee, he brought one foot up and slammed it down onto the lock, snapping it loose. Taran looked up at him in surprise.
"I didn't know you could do that."
"Not all locks are made equal." Voices sounded in the hall and Astarion's head snapped around to watch the door. "Do hurry, please, darling, I suspect we're going to have to kill our way out of this place and I'd rather not start with you unarmed."
"I'm a sorcerer, I'm never unarmed." She lifted her staff out of the trunk with a hum of satisfaction. "However, this is how I do my best work."
"With your hands wrapped around wood?" Astarion received a knock to the back of his leg for the quip, but Taran was giggling when she stood. She was resplendent, he thought, bloodied arm and all.
"Come on, darling," she said with a grin that bordered on feral, just as their uninvited guests made it to the door. "Let's go home."