I slowly drifted back to consciousness. The warm cottony oblivion receded to deposit me on a cot. A thick blanket was draped over me but I could still feel the heat of a nearby fire soaking through it. I just lay there with my eyes closed for long seconds, doing my best not to lose this perfect moment of bliss.

A sneeze wracked my body. The sudden movement let a little cold air under my blanket and I curled up, trying to retreat to warmer territory.

“Good morning sunshine” Someone joked. I cracked my eyes open, squeezed them shut, rubbed them, then tried again. Light streamed in through a charred gash in one wall, it’s draft fighting against the fire’s warmth. Plenty of huddled forms slept on the floor but most were awake and looking in my direction.

I worked my tongue around my mouth wetting it enough to speak “Is it?”

The blur in front of me shrugged. “As good as we can hope for. We’ve got blue skies, food, and no work ahead of us. Here, eat up.”

I took the proffered trencher, nearly spilling soup from the shallow bowl as I propped myself up onto an elbow. After a hesitant sip, I took a hearty gulp.

“Ahhh. That’s some good stuff. Thanks. ” Waves of warmth emanated from my belly and I could practically feel the nutrients coursing through my veins, bringing me back to life.

“Glad you like it. We don’t have much to work with here but I do what I can.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“You can call me Pierre, Chef extraordinaire.” Pierre had considerably more meat on his bones than the rest of the slaves but his skin sagged slightly as if he was deflated. Despite his haggard appearance, he held a spark in his eyes. Looking around, all the slaves that looked back had that same spark. I might not have noticed it if I just met them today but after several days of looking into their eyes and seeing empty pits, it was hard to miss.

“Nice to make your acquaintance Pierre. I take it the revolt was a success.” I said gesturing to the captured guard-house. That prompted a round of laughter from the former slaves.

“There’s actually some grumbling that you didn’t leave enough guards for the rest of us. After you took out their captain, those cowards gave up without a fight.”

That was unexpected but I would take it.

“What did you do with them?"

“They’re locked up tight along with that traitorous scum.” Pierre spat on the floor. My chest tightened as I remembered why I tried to go toe-to-toe with the guard captain.

“Pierre!” Complained an exasperated voice “what do I keep telling you about hygiene? It was one thing when we were forced to live in squalid conditions but there’s no reason to grease up the floor like that.” Pierre rolled his eyes.

“I’ve had it just about up to here with you and your hokey superstitions Liam. A little spit never hurt anyone and I’ve cooked my own way for over a decade. I don’t need you telling me to wash the utensils like some prissy lord.” He glanced in my direction nervously “No offense Patrick”

“None taken,” I assured him, not sure why he was apologizing “but I agree with Liam in this case.” I looked down at the bowl of soup suspiciously before shrugging. It was too late to worry about now.

I took another large gulp before asking “So, anyone know where Bodrin got to?”

“He’s watching the prisoners with a few others.” Pierre said offhandedly.

The knot in my chest tightened even further.

“And how long have I been out for?”

“Just most of the morning.” Pierre assured me. That was still too long. I sat up the rest of the way only to have Liam push me back down. The rail-thin man had a gaunt face set with coal-black eyes flanking an impressive beak.

“Not so fast. You’ve got a nasty cough. If I had my tools I’d be able to set you right in a jiffy but as it stands, the best I can do is enforce bed rest and keep you warm. Witch-doctor’s orders.” 

“You don’t understand. There’s still more I need to do. We’re not safe yet. We need to get ready for the next phase of the plan.” My protests fell on deaf ears.

Liam fixed me with a heavy glare which did more to press me back into the cot than his hands. Pierre backed up the witch-doctor.

“You’ve done more than enough already. We can take it from here. Just tell us what needs doing and we’ll see it done.” The former slaves gathered around all nodded their heads in enthusiastic agreement. Seeing how outnumbered I was there wasn’t much choice.

“Fine, I need you to gather up anything with writing on it and bring it here.” Instead of a flurry of action, my words were followed by awkward glances and an unnecessary amount of shuffling.

Pierre was the first to find his tongue again.

“Well, you see. The thing about that is. Um…”

“Just spit it out already.” I groaned, putting a hand over my eyes.

“Well, after you burnt up the woodshed, there wasn’t much firewood left. Liam here said you needed to get warm or you would be in danger. So, we burned whatever we could find.”

He gestured to a partially dismantled desk and chair.

“Let me get this straight. We conquered a military outpost, and your first instinct was to burn all the documents you found?”

“Not my instinct, Liam insisted”

Liam reeled back “I never told you to burn the books! Why would you do that?”

“They burn real good.” another chimed in helpfully. I stopped the accusations before they could really get going.

“Is there anything left? Did you burn it all?”

After scratching at his scraggly beard Pierre hesitantly said: “There might be something down in the cellar...”

“What cellar?” I asked.

Pierre indicated a trap-door “They keep barrels of water, preserved foodstuffs, blankets, and the like down there. Might be some other supplies too.”

“Okay, let's get a full accounting of the tools at our disposal. While we’re at it, let’s put someone with good eyes on top of the tower. Even if we find another copy of the shipping schedule in the cellar, I want to know exactly when the next ship crosses that horizon. There’s no point in continuing work on the tower until then. We also need some people to wash and repair the guard uniforms as best we can.”

My orders were met with blank stares.

“Unless you want to just stay here until the empire sends fresh soldiers to investigate why the captain stopped sending reports.”

Now they scrambled to follow the orders. All except for Liam and Pierre who stayed to take care of me and the half-dozen other former slaves who were recovering from some illness or another. Pierre looked at me sideways.

“What do you want to finish the tower for?”

I drank another mouthful of the soup before answering.

“I don’t, but if the next crew bringing supplies sees a burnt out guardhouse, no guards, and no workers. They’ll probably just turn tail and run all the way back to the empire.”

Pierre grew pale considering the implication. Liam simply nodded as if he expected this.

“So you use decoys to lure the ship in. Then what?”

I was tempted to tell him that I was still working on that part but I stopped myself just in time. It was one thing to wing-it when it was just me. Now I had to consider how these men perceived me. Pretending to have all the answers to inspire a little more confidence in them would be well worth it. The soup provided a convenient excuse to think over my answer before speaking again.

“From what I’ve seen, merchants will let us onto their ships to unload their cargo. That gets us onto the ship but we’ll need to wear our chains again to pull off the ruse. That makes a straight-up fight a bad idea. What we can do is hold onto a few of these.” I produced a poisoned crossbow-bolt and snapped it, making a piece small enough to hide in my palm.

“At my signal, we’ll start a little scuffle, scratching as many of them as we can.”

Pierre interrupted “Won’t they just kill us?”

“That would be one hell of an overreaction for getting scratched. Besides, the sailors I know wouldn’t want to have to pay the empire for property damages. Even if they decide to get belligerent, I have my stunning wand and the idea isn't to take the ship with just a few people. The scuffle will give our fake guards a reason to storm onto the ship. By the time the sailors realize their reinforcements aren't friendly we should have them surrounded. With the added threat of a few crossbowmen and a dozen slingers hidden nearby, that should be enough to start negotiations from a position of power. I can probably strike a bargain with their captain at that point, trading their ship for their lives and a bit of antidote. Then we make for the free city of Navarone. After that… I’m not sure. I would guess that most of us would part ways there.”

Pierre stopped stirring the cauldron over the fire to ask “Isn’t that a bit too complicated? Wouldn’t it be easier to charge the boat all at once? I don't like the idea of bargaining with those slavers either. Why trade with them when we can just kill them?”

I honestly hadn’t considered a frontal assault. “We could do that, and if the plan goes to shit we can always fall back to trying to force our way on board. The one thing we can not allow is for them to sail off. Getting some people on board should prevent that even if they can't take the ship on their own. As far as killing goes, that should be a last resort. Even if their deaths would make things easier for us, I'm not willing to go that far unless they leave me with no other choice. There’s a saying where I come from: There, but for the grace of god, go I.”

“Which god?” Asked an interested Liam.

“Doesn’t really matter. The point is that it’s really easy to look at someone you don’t understand and call them evil. These words remind me how little there is separating me from them. If I was born where they were born, and experienced the things they experienced, would I really be any different? It’s all luck, chaos, and the whims of the gods. People like to make things simple, but they’re not. It isn’t good versus evil, it’s just a bunch of confused people drawing arbitrary lines in the sand.”

Pierre scowled "You're honestly going to sit there and tell me that the Empire isn't evil?"

"No, but the people who make up the Empire are just people. The guards here might have families they are trying to support, they might have a boot hanging over their head waiting to crush them if they step out of line. I know the guard captain thought he was some kind of benevolent savior, giving us a chance at redemption. Everyone's got their reasons. No one gets out of bed in the morning with the goal of spreading misery."

We lapsed into silence as more barrels and crates were brought up from the cellar. I thought back to how naive I acted when I first arrived in this world. The prospect of exploring a fantasy world was so exciting that I never stopped to consider that this world is just as real as the one I came from. The locals aren't simple cardboard cutouts and fantasy tropes, they're real people, with all the mixed-up order and chaos that comes in that package deal. It was morbidly ironic that I had to watch the life fade from a man's eyes before I could realize this obvious truth. 

I slurped on the soup as best I could from my reclined position and tried not to feel useless. It couldn’t be good for them all to work while their leader lay in bed eating but Liam was not to be disobeyed. After he threatened to tie me down I stopped insisting that I was fine.

At least I had time to review some prompts that were waiting for me. It looked like they all waited until the end of the battle, then were delayed further by my little nap. There were a few experience notifications which I skipped past, trying not to imagine the dead eyes of the guards I had killed. There were only a few more notifications. I was a little put out that freeing an entire penal colony hadn’t earned me any boons but the consolation prizes were nice.

Congratulations! You have learned a new spell!

Arcane Cannon - Project a shell of solid mana

Damage type: Crushing

Congratulations! You have learned a new skill!

Leadership - lv1

+2% speed of decision making -1% delay before your commands are carried out

Congratulations! You have earned a new title!

Exemplar - You have set a shining example, inspiring those under your command

+10% chance for your followers to adopt your beliefs

That new title was a little worrying. I wasn't really up for leading a cult. Eventually, a barrel stuffed full of nautical charts was unearthed and I had something else to distract myself with. The rest of the day was spent studying the empire’s fleet deployment and charting safe routes south. I was shocked by the scope of the empire. I had only seen the tip of the iceberg and these charts painted a daunting picture. Where Navarone barely registered as a blip near the southern edge of the map, the empire extended north from the mining town all the way to something called the icelands. Even now, I was only seeing the coastal regions. I had no idea how far inland the empire extended.

As the hours passed, the chill in my bones thawed away and Liam pronounced that I was finally fit to get out of bed. He wasn’t happy when I immediately headed to the water. While someone made a valiant effort to remove the blood caked onto me from the previous night, I still felt like I had treated a medical-waste chute like a water slide. Once I was thoroughly rinsed off I went to check on Bodrin. He was keeping watch over the pen with a handful of his slingers.

“Ho Bodrin!” I called out. 

“Ho Patrick!” He waved merrily “Good to see you up and about. I’ve been keeping this safe for you.”

He handed over a bundle of cloth. When I unwrapped it I saw my heavily tarnished circlet. My heart sank when I saw that it only had four durability left but at least it was still in one piece.

“Thanks. I heard what you did for me last night. Sounds like I owe you my life.”

Bodrin chuckled and his slingers joined in. “I told you he’d do something like this. He gets himself enslaved, takes out half the guards, frees, feeds and arms us, then for an encore, he takes out the guard captain single-handedly. After all that he still wants to put himself in our debt.”

Bodrin shook his head “How have you lasted so long?”

I couldn’t help cracking a grin and joining in with a little self-deprecating chuckle.

"Well, I could probably use an advisor. You know any old suspicious bastards who might want the job?"

All of the humor was sucked out of the air by a snide voice. “Oh come on! You’re seriously falling for his tripe again? Where’s your ship captain? Yer pirate friends leave you out to dry?” I turned to see a prisoner with a familiar red hand-print on his cheek and grinned. This was going to be fun.