Rats in the Cellar Page 11

Valerin is fighting a losing battle for control now. She has carelessly let the little buggers rope her arms, and the message STILL isn’t getting through that she can't just out-muscle them like she has probably done with countless opponents before. Right now, she’s fighting using individual limps, and that’s just not working. With the ropes where they are, the only thing that’s going to give her reprieve is heaving herself over onto her hands and knees and rising up. If she did this, she might have kept hold of the mace and been able to fight them off.

Also, all her armor is gone at this point.

Another thing I've noticed about Valerin's capture is how much more premeditated it seems than the others. While the other captures all happened because either Avora and Deirdre stuck their noses into something they shouldn't have (while alone, anyway) or because Luther Vandermoor's an imbecile, this trap seems tailor made for Valerin. That leads me to believe that she is the only one who was specifically targeted for this stage of Maladyne and Jervil's machinations. The wisp that was watching her earlier could easily have followed her around on jobs and recorded her fighting style and Jervil could have used that to make some kind of magical simulation to train the gremlins to take her down. This reaffirms my belief that she does have both renown for her skills and her tendency to help hard luck cases like she thought Ana's was. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed.