—D—

  I was trying, I really was, to maintain a sunny disposition, but the rough rope binding my wrists behind the equally rough wooden chair was making it a significant challenge. My shoulders screamed in protest.

  Three days. Three whole days we’d been guests of… well, I didn’t actually know whose guests we were. But they had a jail, so they were clearly an organized sort of unfriendly.

  Still, looking on the bright side – and there was always a bright side, you just had to squint hard enough – prison life wasn't entirely terrible. Three meals a day! Okay, they were mostly gruel that tasted suspiciously like boiled sadness, with the occasional mystery chunk, but it was food.

  We even got new clothes! Coarse, scratchy, shapeless tunics and trousers the color of dirt, clearly designed to be as unflattering and humiliating as possible. But hey, they were clean! Ish.

  And we had a roof. A leaky, damp, stone roof, but a roof nonetheless. Silver linings, people!

  Our capture had been… abrupt. After Jay heroically (and terrifyingly) took down that oversized, rabid wolf, and Zeta did his bizarre ‘undo death’ trick – which, by the way, holy cow, I still couldn't get over that – this armored dude just appeared. Sir Grumps-a-lot, I’d mentally dubbed him. He hadn't been impressed by our battle prowess or Zeta’s apparent resurrection. "Poachers!" he’d boomed, his voice like gravel in a cement mixer. "Defilers of sacred ground! Slayers of a Guardian!"

  There wasn't much room for negotiation. He and the two equally armored, equally grumpy soldiers who’d materialized from the trees with him had efficiently disarmed us (not that my sling was much of a threat against full plate). They’d bound our hands, then unceremoniously dumped us into a rickety, open-topped cart. The journey was bone-jarring. Every rut in the poorly maintained track sent shivers up my spine and made my teeth ache.

  We’d rumbled into a small, fortified town nestled by the river. Oakhaven, I think one of the guards had called it. Wooden palisades, a few stone watchtowers, muddy streets. The whole place smelled of damp wood, livestock, and unwashed humanity. Quaint, in a "probably has a high mortality rate" kind of way.

  The jail was a squat, stone building attached to what looked like the town hall. Not exactly a five-star resort. We were processed – which mostly involved being stared at by a balding, pot-bellied man who seemed to be the head jailer – given our lovely new outfits, and shoved into separate, but adjacent, cells.

  "This," a familiar monotone drifted from the cell to my left, "officially sucks." Zeta, naturally.

  "Hey, look on the bright side!" I chirped, trying to inject some cheer. My voice echoed a little in the damp stone. "Three square meals! A roof! What's the absolute worst that could happen?"

  "Don't you dare start," Jay’s terse voice came from my right.

  "Torture, then a slow, painful death, genius."

  The new voice was sharp, definitely female, and laced with a cynicism that could give Jay a run for his money. It came from the cell directly across from mine.

  My head whipped towards the sound. "Huh? A girl?"

  Holy. Moly.

  Okay, so "girl" was an understatement. She was young, probably our age, crammed into the same charmingly degrading sackcloth tunic we were sporting. Except, on her, it looked… different. Considerably different.

  The rough fabric did a spectacularly poor job of hiding… well, anything, really. She had a tangle of dark, wild hair, eyes that sparked with angry fire, and a smudge of dirt on her cheek that somehow just made her look more… roguishly attractive? My brain, deprived of any positive female interaction for weeks (and possibly my entire forgotten life), did a little internal happy dance, quickly followed by a "danger, Will Robinson!" alarm. She was leaning against the bars, arms crossed, glaring at us with open hostility.

  "What, you thought only blokes got chucked in these shitholes?" she sneered. Her voice was surprisingly rough, like she'd gargled with rusty nails. "Name's Lyra. And you three are the dumbest-looking poachers I've ever seen."

  "Hey! We're not poachers!" I protested. "We're… uh… adventurers? Lost travelers? Amnesiacs, actually."

  Lyra snorted. "Right. And I'm the Queen of Elbaria in disguise. They're saying I'm a witch." She spat on the stone floor. "Accused of making a cow's milk go sour and seducing the baker's dimwitted son with my 'devilish wiles'." She rolled her eyes. "Idiots. The son wishes. Anyway, sounds like we're all in for a miserable end."

  "A witch?" My eyes widened. "Cool! I mean, not cool for you, obviously. But, like, actual magic? Do you have a staff? Or a talking cat?" This was getting more like a proper fantasy setting by the minute!

  Lyra just stared at me like I’d grown a second head. "Are you touched in the skull, pretty boy?"

  "No! I mean, maybe. Amnesia, remember? But look, we can get out of this!" My mind raced, pulling from countless movie escape scenes. "Okay, plan A: Zeta, you still got that ‘undo death’ thing, right? Maybe you can play dead, they open the cell, then BAM! Surprise!"

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Zeta sighed. "It’s a 'once-a-day' thing. And I’d rather not test the 'ironic and painful countermeasures' the System so generously warned about."

  Lyra’s eyes narrowed. "System?"

  "You know, the game mechanics? Stats, skills… all that fun stuff."

  "Fuck. Why is it always the crazy ones that talk to me?"

  I blinked. "Wait—you don’t see the Status screen?"

  "Fuck no. I’m not crazy, you bastard."

  "Uh… okay." I cleared my throat. "Plan B, then! We need a distraction. Jay, can you pick locks with that intense stare of yours? Lyra, maybe you can use your… uh… witchy wiles on the guards?"

  I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.

  Lyra's glare could have froze fire.

  "What in the blighted hells are you babbling about?" Lyra demanded, her irritation growing. "My 'wiles' involve a sharp rock to the temple if they get too close. And if you waggle your face-caterpillars at me again, I'll find a way to pluck them."

  "He has a point, though," Jay interjected, his voice calm and cutting. "We need a plan. Not half-baked cinematic fantasies. Both of you, quiet. I need to think."

  Zeta, true to form, had slumped against his bars and appeared to be either deeply asleep or communing with the spirit of utter despair.

  Just then, the heavy wooden door at the end of the cell block creaked open. A burly guard, the one I’d mentally nicknamed 'Brute Squad Number One', stomped in. He was built like a brick outhouse and carried a general air of someone who enjoyed his job a little too much. He stopped in front of my cell, fumbled with a large iron key, and unlocked the door with a jarring clang.

  "You. interrogation," he grunted, grabbing my arm. His grip was like iron.

  He dragged me out, down a short corridor, and into a small, windowless room. It contained a single, rickety table and two chairs. One looked vaguely comfortable. The other, which he shoved me into, felt like it had been designed by a sadist with a grudge against spines. He tied my hands to the chair's back.

  "Alright, scum," he growled, leaning over the table, his face uncomfortably close. "Let's talk. Who are you? What were you doing in the Sunken Grove? Why’d you kill one of the Blessed Hounds? Where are you from?" The questions came like machine-gun fire.

  "Look, I told your boss, we don't remember!" I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. "Amnesia! Big blank! Nada!"

  WHACK!

  His open palm connected with the side of my head. Stars exploded behind my eyes. My ears rang.

  "Don't lie to me!" he roared. "Elbarian spies, ain't ya? Sent to stir up trouble!"

  "Elbaria? I don't even know what that is!" Another lie, technically. Lyra had mentioned it. But admitting that felt like a bad idea.

  The guard’s face purpled. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back. "Maybe a few missing teeth will jog your memory!"

  He drew back his fist. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact.

  "That's enough, Corporal."

  The new voice was female, calm, but with an underlying authority that made the air crackle. The guard froze, his fist still raised. He slowly lowered it, stepping back as a woman entered the room.

  She was tall, easily Zeta’s height, with a lean, warrior’s build. Fiery red hair was pulled back in a practical braid, and her eyes were a startling, intelligent green. She wore well-maintained leather armor over a dark tunic, a sword at her hip. She radiated competence. And she looked vaguely familiar… those eyes… like the armored knight who’d captured us, but without the helmet. Sir Grumps-a-lot was a ma'am!

  "Captain Valerius!" the corporal stammered, snapping to a clumsy version of attention. "I was just… encouraging the prisoner to cooperate."

  Captain Valerius’s green eyes swept over me, lingering on the red mark on my cheek, then fixed on the corporal. "Your 'encouragement' looks remarkably like assault, Corporal. What's the situation?"

  "Spies, Captain!" the corporal blurted. "From Elbaria, I’d wager!"

  Valerius raised an eyebrow. "They don't look Elbarian. Their accents are… peculiar. And their attire, before we gave them regulation sackcloth, was unlike anything I’ve seen."

  "Then why," the corporal retorted, a note of smugness creeping into his voice, "did the report cause such a stir in the capital? Word came this morning. The Council is sending a full delegation to investigate. They're even dispatching one of the Ten Mystic Swords. Personally. They arrive in ten days."

  My blood ran cold. Ten Mystic Swords? That sounded… significant. And probably not in a 'let's all be friends' kind of way. The capital was interested. That couldn't be good.

  Captain Valerius, however, merely looked thoughtful. She shook her head slightly. "What the Council desires is their own affair. Our orders regarding these three—and the girl accused of witchcraft—are clear: hold them securely until the delegation arrives. No unnecessary… encouragement. Understand, Corporal?"

  "Yes, Captain!" he said, though he looked deflated.

  "See to it," she said, turning her sharp gaze back to me. For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of something other than stern duty in her eyes – curiosity? Pity? It was gone as quickly as it appeared. "Take him back to his cell."

  The corporal, clearly chastened, untied me with far less enthusiasm than he’d tied me up. He practically threw me back into my cell. I landed in a heap, every part of me aching. My cheek throbbed, my head spun.

  "What happened?" Jay asked, his voice low. Lyra was gripping her bars, watching me intently. Even Zeta looked vaguely awake.

  I took a shaky breath. "Bad news. And potentially… really, really bad news." I explained about the interrogation, Captain Valerius, and the incoming delegation. "They think we're spies from Elbaria. And someone called a 'Mystic Sword' is coming in ten days to check us out."

  A Mystic Sword. That sounded capital-I Important. And probably capital-L Lethal.

  Awesome. And terrifying. Terrifyingly awesome?

  My brain felt like scrambled eggs trying to process it all. Ten days. We had ten days before someone way, way above our current 'getting-beaten-up-by-local-thugs' paygrade arrived to decide our fate.

  And somehow, I doubted they'd be impressed by my encyclopedic knowledge of anime tropes.