It was cold here, amidst the quiet and almost imperceptible hum of the machines, the temperature kept artificially depressed at the Doctor's insistence. To refridgerate the entire colossus of apparatus and the hulk of the building that housed it cost the Estharian treasury more than they could really have afforded at this stage, after the depredations of the past rule, but nobody so far had challenged the fact of its necessity. Nobody wanted the Sorceress to escape. He took another step, deep in the middle of what they had begun calling- they, the Estharians- Adel's Tomb. It wasn't really a tomb, not if you went by the proper definitions. More like a prison, more like a hell. The sorceress Adel was still alive- the threat of having another with her powers and longevity, however pure the intentions the inheritor might have started out with, had been deemed too great. That was one part of the resistance's decision to leave Adel alone; the other part was that they were afraid. They had half expected their hastily constructed plans to fail. Once Adel had been neutralised, no one wanted to face her again. Except now, where there was a need for it. Laguna closed the distance between himself and the tomb, afraid that if he stopped he would run out of courage. He needed to do this. For the Estharians, for the Adel resistance. After all, he owed them. For Ellone. In repose, Adel's face was frozen into a rictus of agony, terror, and fury. There had been shock there, once, but not now. Further proof that the seals were weakening, that it would not be long now before they failed completely. They had not been designed to leave their captive concious or aware of her surroundings. The captive wasn't supposed to be able to react. There seemed to be an unnatural sheen of cold surrounding Adel, manifest in the biting chill, the thin but solid layer of frost covering the tomb. Sorceress ice, he thought, and wondered for a moment how he knew that. This was different from the first time he had faced Adel. This was bloody murder, pure and simple. He had never killed someone in cold blood before, only in battle where his enemies were armed and ready to face him, where usually his enemies were the ones to elicit confrontation. Killing across a battlefield, armed with a gun which fired at a distance- that was battle, and that was completely different from what he had planned to do now. Laguna put out a hand to touch the surface of the tomb, and immediately flinched. The ice was hot, not just warm but searing; it was a wonder it hadn't melted yet. Sorceress ice, indeed. Obscurely, it made him feel a little better, as if knowing that his intended victim was not exactly helpless was a reassuring thought. Well, he told himself, no getting past it now, Laguna Loire, this is something you have to do. You owe them, and this sorceress is big and bad and evil and well, ugly's not something a person should die for, only she's not ugly in the aesthetic sort of way, and.. Coward. He took the knife they had given him out of its sheath. It was sharp and unusually long, almost a short sword, but plain and unadorned. The handle was unfinished wood, the grain rough against the palm of his hand. The irrational urge to test the sharpness of the edge using his own flesh flickered in his mind, and ruthlessly he quashed it- he was stalling. It frightened him. He hadn't know he could be so cool, so detached, before.