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Anything Charonite had been going to say to Nemesis died in the wake of Elaine of Astolat's last note. Neither of them seemed to waste time with chat. They should have gotten married, except that Elaine was a door and there was no way Charonite would ever have married anything. He scratched for a very long time.

Yes with a key. Noose sign = traitor, apparently he was in too much of a hurry to write 'equals', scroll means? Purse means? Why was I in noose

-- "Soon I'm going to throw you over my shoulder," said Charonite. "So act ten years old, or act like a woman and let me solve this."

"Huh, how apt," she couldn't help but remark at the door's message, her tone not really judgmental, rather, it just seemed to be an excuse to pick at Charonite a little for irritating her earlier. Nemesis couldn't pass up a golden opportunity like that. "Clearly I've committed no crime, since I wasn't in the cell." That was nice to think about.

It was then that Charonite voiced his little warning, and very carefully Nemesis took a step to the side, as if to put herself out of risk of Charonite following through with his threat. In a universal gesture of defeat, she held her arms up in the air briefly. "All right, all right. You can solve it." He seemed to have a better mind for these puzzles than Nemesis - Nemesis never had the patience to solve them. Now she sort of wished she did, so she could attribute a little more than snarky side-line remarks and stupid questions.

She had said that she would stop distracting him, but she couldn't help but speak up when she peered over the door's next response. "Who's the King? Maybe the coin-purse stands for a pickpocket, or a thief. What were the other symbols? An axe? Could be a murder." Nemesis really had no idea what the point of figuring out what the symbols meant was.

Warin? You know Warin?

It seemed something had gone right in Charonite's thinking.

He's gone?

The writing hesitated.

Are you sure?

Then I suppose he had the last laugh on the rest of us. Elaine minced no words. I don't know how he left, though. There's only one way out: the door the guards came in through, and even if we could have gotten out of our cells, there's nothing here that would break it in. Then again, that was Warin.

If he appreciated it, he appreciated it by not reaching out and pushing on her forehead again. Charonite nodded brusquely at her all-clear. "She says she doesn't know," he said, and put the stone to door in that endless scratch scratch scratch again.

He wrote about the Wizard

Which felt unhelpful. More shots in the dark. What light there was at the end of the tunnel was really damned hard to see by when it came down to it. He said aloud, "His door was locked. Why lock a cell door behind you?" and wrote:

Warin magical??

She read Charonite's short script quickly, commenting shortly, "If he was magical, and got out that way, it doesn't help us one bit. Right now we're not magical." If they knew how Warin had gotten out, it might be able to help them a little, but Nemesis really didn't think so. The only clear escape seemed to be through magical means, of which Nemesis and Charonite were sorely lacking right now (never mind that Nemesis' attack would have done nothing to help them in this situation).

"There has to be a... logical, non-magical, way out of this," she insisted softly. But then again, any method of escape seemed impossible. The door was blocking their path, and no matter how much they played around with games and riddles, Nemesis did not think that answering such questions would open the goddamn door.]

Hm. Well, stranger things happen.

Elaine didn't seem the dramatic sort either. Perhaps it was a pity she was, in fact, a door.

Have you seen any of the guards' keyrings? They all have a key to some of the cells and then this door. But I presume if you had we wouldn't have to have this conversation right now, Charonite.

They still had the keys, a large untidy bunch of them. "What did you think I did first," he said, because his first act had been to try each one in the keyhole when Nemesis was behind him to see if any of them would work. They hadn't. None of them had even fit.

We have keys no match for this door. Warins cell wrote about wizard -- as she'd said, what good would that do for her or for them? His impatience wore away to frustration. Guards stopped coming why?