—Zeta—

  I used to think being lost in that gods-forsaken forest was the worst thing that could happen to me.

  I was wrong.

  Being locked in a cell, with D in audible range, had rapidly climbed to the top of my "Worst Ways to Experience Existence" chart.

  Perhaps if that stupid passive skill hadn't activated. If that oversized mutt had just finished the job, I might be reincarnating somewhere less… irritating. Maybe as a sloth. Or a rock. A particularly inert rock. That sounded appealing.

  "I have it."

  Jay’s voice cut through the miasma of my despair. It had been a long, mostly silent afternoon, punctuated only by D’s occasional attempts at whistling and my internal cataloging of every single way this situation could deteriorate further.

  "Tonight," Jay declared, his voice low and firm. "We escape."

  I just stared at him from my slumped position against the cold stone wall, my eyebrow undoubtedly conveying the appropriate level of profound skepticism.

  Jay’s last three brilliant escape plans had resulted in:

  - D getting stuck halfway through the tiny window slit, insisting he could "Matrix" his way through.

  - Jay nearly breaking his own hand trying to pry a loose stone from the wall with another, slightly smaller stone.

  - An incident involving a smuggled spoon, a lot of optimistic digging, and us earning an extra layer of grime along with the jailer’s contempt.

  Catastrophic failures. Every single one.

  His master plan for the past week had involved intensely studying the lock on his cell door. It was, admittedly, a rather rudimentary affair – a chunky iron bolt and what looked like a very basic tumbler mechanism. Lockpicking. The classic escape trope. Only, we lacked the crucial element: lockpicks.

  This was where D, in a moment of inspired lunacy that almost made me admire his sheer, unwavering idiocy, had proposed using one of my finger bones. His logic, delivered with the breathless enthusiasm of a child discovering candy, was that thanks to my "One Last Farce" skill, it would just grow back. "Like Wolverine, but less hairy and probably more painful for you!" he'd chirped.

  I had, naturally, refused. Vehemently.

  The ensuing debate, however, had been a masterclass in psychological warfare. D appealed to my (non-existent) sense of heroism. Jay, with cold, irrefutable logic, pointed out the rapidly approaching deadline of the 'Mystic Sword' delegation. The pressure mounted.

  Finally, I’d relented. Not because I agreed, but because the alternative – listening to D explain, for the seventeenth time, why his theory about the System being a benevolent AI guiding us to ultimate power was more plausible than Jay’s ‘unethical experiment’ hypothesis – was a fate worse than self-mutilation.

  Ripping off one's own pinky finger with one's teeth, let me tell you, is an experience. It ranked slightly below listening to D earnestly compare the socio-political allegories in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine versus Babylon 5, but only just. The crunch was… memorable. The pain, even with the phantom sensation promise, was quite real in the moment. Jay had then spent a frustrating hour trying to whittle the surprisingly resilient bone into something resembling a pick with a sharpened pebble. The result was less a precision instrument and more a… pointy bone fragment. Still, he'd been practicing.

  Another six days of this delightful incarceration had crawled by since D’s interrogation. Six days of lumpy gruel, D’s increasingly desperate attempts to find the 'good' in our situation, and Jay’s silent, brooding intensity. Only four days left, if D’s intel from Captain Valerius was accurate – which I doubted, on principle – before envoys from the capital arrived. To interrogate us. Or, more likely, to creatively disassemble us.

  The thought of that delegation, especially the "Mystic Sword," did manage to penetrate my usual apathy. It sounded like the kind of person who didn't appreciate sarcasm or a general lack of enthusiasm for life.

  Sometimes, in the dead of night, when the snoring from D’s cell became particularly egregious, I’d try to piece together who I might have been.

  Before.

  My current skill set was… limited. Advanced napping. A talent for predicting the worst-case scenario (and usually being right). A surprisingly high pain tolerance, apparently. And now, a once-a-day 'get out of death free' card. What kind of person did that add up to? A professional crash-test dummy? A very unlucky philosopher? A con artist who specialized in faking his own demise? None of the options were particularly inspiring. I usually gave up and went back to contemplating the structural integrity of the ceiling.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "So, what's the new plan, boss?" D piped up, his voice vibrating with that misplaced, puppy-dog eagerness that made my teeth ache.

  Jay, who had been staring intently at the lock on his cell door for the past hour, finally straightened. He proceeded to outline a plan so convoluted, so dependent on precise timing and a series of unlikely coincidences, that it sounded like something D would concoct after a particularly vivid fever dream.

  It involved, as I’d explained before, a skill he absolutely did not possess—lockpicking— and a tool he had fashioned from my pinky bone.

  And then—somehow—navigating our way out of a fortified town in the dead of night, dodging patrols, and, presumably, further divine smiting.

  Yeah. Jay was losing his damn mind.

  And honestly? I couldn’t blame him.

  When Jay finally finished explaining, D and I—for once, united in sheer bewilderment—chimed in perfect unison:

  "Huh?"

  Jay sighed, a sound of deep, existential exhaustion. "It will work. Trust me."

  Lyra, who had been listening with an expression of amused contempt, let out a short, sharp laugh.

  "Oh, this is rich. You actually think that qualifies as a plan?"

  I glanced at Jay. His eyes had the wild gleam of a man teetering on the edge of sanity.

  "It's a sound strategy," Jay insisted, though a muscle twitched in his jaw.

  "It's a suicide pact with extra steps," Lyra countered. "And what about me? Am I just supposed to cheer you morons on from my cage?"

  "If you have a better idea, I'm open to suggestions," Jay said, his voice tight.

  This, predictably, led to another round of bickering, with Lyra offering increasingly sarcastic and impractical 'improvements' to Jay's plan, mostly involving seducing the entire guard roster or summoning a flock of angry badgers. D, meanwhile, kept trying to inject ideas from heist movies, none of which were remotely applicable to our medieval dungeon chic setting.

  "It's not going to work," I stated, my voice flat.

  Jay glared at me. "And why not, O Prophet of Doom?"

  "One," I began, ticking off points on my fingers—or I would have, if I had the energy to lift my hand.

  "The guards change shifts erratically. You can't predict who’ll be on duty."

  "Two. Have you ever lockpicked anything before? Didn’t think so."

  "Three. I am not giving you another one of my finger bones. If you break the one you have, that’s it."

  "Four. If, by some miracle, you actually open the cells, we have no weapons. The moment we’re discovered—and we will be discovered—we’re dead."

  "Five. If—and this is a very big if—we manage to escape prison, how the hell are we supposed to navigate a strange town at night, with zero knowledge of patrols or layouts? That’s a recipe for immediate recapture."

  "Six. D will inevitably trip over his own feet and alert everyone within a five-mile radius."

  "Seven—”

  "I think that’s enough," Lyra cut in.

  I ignored her. "Seven. I’m tired."

  Jay actually managed a grim smile. "Valid points, Z. Especially number ten. But," he held up the small, painstakingly shaped bone fragment, "I've been practicing on my own lock. It’s crude, but so is the mechanism. I think I can open it. And yours. And D's." He glanced at Lyra. "And maybe even hers, if she stops being actively unhelpful."

  Lyra snorted but didn't offer a fresh wave of insults. A grudging sort of acceptance, perhaps? Or maybe she was just tired of us too.

  Jay then proceeded to refine the plan, addressing some of my (and Lyra's, surprisingly astute) concerns. The core remained risky, but it shifted from 'utterly suicidal' to merely 'highly likely to end in disaster'. It hinged on him picking the locks while the night guard was at his most complacent, likely during the deepest hours of the night. Then, a stealthy exit. No confrontation unless absolutely necessary.

  It was still a terrible plan. No—let’s be honest—it was the same damn plan.

  But it was a plan.

  And with the Mystic Sword looming, doing nothing felt like a slower, more certain form of oblivion.

  So, we waited.

  Night fell, thick and absolute. The usual jail sounds – the distant clang of a gate, a guard’s cough, D’s quiet, anxious fidgeting – filled the oppressive silence.

  I tried to sleep, but even for me, it was a struggle. The faint, metallic scent of Jay’s nervous sweat and the almost inaudible scraping sounds from his cell kept me on edge.

  Hours passed. My eyelids felt like lead weights. My stomach rumbled a mournful protest.

  Then, a sound. So faint, I almost missed it. A soft, metallic click.

  Followed by another.

  And then, a third, more decisive thunk.

  Silence.

  I held my breath.

  A shadow detached itself from the bars of Jay’s cell. He was out. A low, almost feral grin stretched his lips in the gloom, visible for a fleeting moment as he moved towards D’s cell. His eyes, usually cold and analytical, held a spark of something dangerously alive.

  Tonight, it seemed, we were actually doing this.

  Wonderful. Just wonderful.