And already Anilec ran back to the clearing. I looked again in the direction in which Arika and the riders had disappeared and then followed Anilec. When we arrived home, we quickly wrote to our parents that we were allowed to stay with our friends for even longer. When that was done, we told Jack and Corvo about Arika and Araña. Shortly afterwards came a message from Ophelia. Her brother had ordered a fireproof cage, and when she secretly went to check in his room, she saw Arika, who had a chain around her neck and was chained to a small pillar. We sent the pigeon back with our thanks and the request if Ophelia could continue to watch her brother. We sat down in the main room and thought about how we might be able to free Arika. I was already quite lost in thought when Anilec suddenly jumped up and said, "I think this could work. I'll go and see if I've written down the addresses somewhere else, and you should tell Jack and Corvo about your plan. And don't worry, we will bring your sister back safely." And already she was gone. I briefly thought about what she meant by that. But then I remembered again that we could hear our thoughts. I went to Corvo and told him about our plan and then immediately went to the old tree in the clearing and woke up all its inhabitants. Last night it occurred to me again that this was our "message tree". The birds that lived in this tree brought news all over the world. I explained to them that the messages Anilec was tying to her legs were of the utmost importance and had to be delivered as soon as possible. Jack came over to us and told us that we didn't have to go hunting with us today and that we should rather rest. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep so well that night. I kept waking up screaming. In my nightmares, I saw Araña and Loco torture Arika. After the twelfth time I went out, turned into a raven and flew up to the castle. I landed in front of the window of Araña's chamber and saw a few guards lifting up a black cage. In the cage, something red lay flat on the floor and hardly moved. The guards carried the cage out of the room and disappeared towards the stairs. I flew over to the courtyard and through an open window into the throne room. I flew out the door and sat down on the chandelier in the entrance.

The guards just came down the stairs and luckily didn't notice me. They went down a flight of stairs and I followed them unobtrusively. They turned right and left several times through windowless corridors before going outside through a door. They briefly crossed the training ground and went through another door that led to the dungeon. But instead of going through the next door that led to the dungeon, they turned right. They went down another flight of stairs and then another one. Now they walked through a wide corridor towards the only door here. Behind the door was a large round room with a huge hole in the middle. In the ceiling of the room, just above the hole, a grid was embedded. Through the grid you could see outside. In the hole there was a lot of grass on the ground and a small ditch at the edge which was filled with water. In the wall were 19 doors. Around the hole there were trapdoors in the ground everywhere at least two by two meters in size. Also 19. The guards opened one of the trapdoors, attached the cage to a rope and let it down. One of the guards took a rope ladder from the wall and attached one end of the ladder to two hooks which were smashed in the floor next to the trapdoor, then he climbed down to the cage and opened it. As soon as the cage was open, he climbed up the ladder as quickly as he could. His colleagues loosened the rope, pulled the ladder back up and hung it on the wall again. They closed the trapdoor again and went out again. I flew through the grid in the ceiling and flew back home, where I woke up Anilec and told her what I had just seen.