<div class="floatright">(http://i.imgur.com/d3ClSG1.jpg)<br/><br/>(http://i.imgur.com/pQPTzqv.jpg)</div><br/>There was something so disarming about the absolute darkness that surrounded her.  It made her feel more defenseless then the fact that she didn't have her weapon.  She couldn't see anything as she stumbled, shuffling one foot in front of the next, her hand touching the wall.  Was the wall warm?  No, that had to be her imagination.  A shape took form in the darkness, a mote of lightness that coalesced into a wispy form, then vanished.  Was there something there?  Was it her imagination?  She continued, another foot, another.<br/><br/>She felt a touch behind her and whipped her free hand out behind her to slap away...nothing.  There was nothing there.  But that whisper of wind again, just at the very bottom of her hearing, "staaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy....."<br/><br/>She took another step as her eyes tried to focus on pure inky blackness again causing her to see ghostly spectral images of things that weren't there.  The memory of Mistress Tamilla's naked form floated through her mind, the fat incubus with the huge cock, even the stuffed golem wolf with hard and dripping cock.  She almost cried with releif as she felt the edge of the wall, the corner leading to the western hallway.  There!  THERE !  She saw a thin crack of light coming from her lantern in the steward's chamber.  A razor thin line of dim light, but it had to be her lantern, it could be nothing else.  Hope and releif swelled in her breast and she shuffled towards that light, ignoring the soft whispers that might be in her mind alone, ignoring the sensation of hands on her body that could not be there, ignoring the feeling of breath on her neck from nothing that was behind her.<br/><br/>Her relief was dashed as she felt the doorknob to the steward's office and turned it... but it would not open.  It was locked.  She rattled it, threw her body against the door, but no, it was locked from the inside.  She could not get to her lantern and the saftey it provided.  She forced her racing heart to slow and remembered that she had entered that room by going through the mistress's sewing room.  It took every ounce of her willpower to leave even that razor thin mote of light that barely showed from beneath the doorway, but she shuffled south, searching for the door to the mistress's room.  Her hand closed on the doorknob and she turned it and went through, slamming it behind her.<br/><br/>Then she went blind, no not blind.  Light flooded this room, and the transition from pitch black to a well lit room was disorienting, her mind swam trying to make sense of what she was seeing, of what was happening, as her eyes tried to adjust to the sudden light inside the sewing room.  She pressed her back against the now closed door behind her and even though her vision was not yet clear she got the sense of movement in the room  and she heard a small<strong>"oh?"</strong><br/><br/>She looked to the side and saw an intricately garbed noblewoman sitting at the cross stitching hoop, Mistress Tamilla!  She turned around on the stool she was sitting on, needle still in her hand as she looked at Arisa with a perplexed look on her face.<strong>"What are you doing disturbing me in my sitting room without knocking servant?"</strong>She frowned and then added,<strong>"Who are you, you're not one of our normal maids, don't tell me that Fritz hired on another pretty peasant girl without consulting with me first!"</strong>Her face started to turn from a frown into knit eyebrows of anger.