“I want to work off my sentence,” she said the moment the bored guard, clad in leather armor, walked up.

The tall guard eyed her up and down, which, in her case, didn’t involve any up looking at all, before he snorted

and said with derision, “And I care what you want… because?”

He started to walk away, just as Tiny had predicted he would. It was the first time Aya realized how much the negative reputation of the city affected the way the NPCs treated her. Unfortunately for her, Aya had received the highest negative reputation Tiny had heard of from anyone not in some sort of clan, race or border rivalry. A personal loss in the magnitude of five thousand points at once was basically unheard of.

“Because it’s still my right as a prisoner of Era,” she replied with her rehearsed speech. “You cannot deny me the opportunity to attempt to right my wrongs. It is against your ethos as a people. And anyway, it’s more cost-effective to let your prisoners work off their time on trivial duties.”

The guard tightened his fists, knowing she had talked him into a corner, before he took out a scroll he had attached to his waist. He squinted at it while he skimmed at it, until a slow smile eventually crawled onto his face.`

“Sorry, kid,” he said with a total lack of remorse and absolute satisfaction. “Looks like we are out of any of the jobs you could qualify for.”

“Wh—”

“You’re either too short or too weak for most of these heavy, labor-intensive jobs and well… all the easy ones, like rose trimming for the mayor’s interior garden, are taken,” he said, rolling up the scroll to put it away. “It’s quite unfortunate, really.”

The guard was about to walk away, but Aya demanded that he read the remaining jobs to her. As he read them out one by one, she realized he was right. She wasn’t strong or qualified enough for any of the jobs. Aya had almost lost hope when the guard read, “Scribe wanted in the Grand Library for the Transcription of Local and General Region Maps”.

“Wait!” Aya interrupted the guard who glared at her for speaking up. “I think I can do that one.”

“Which one?”

“The scribe.”

“You can’t,” he said derisively, snorting in disdain. “Your work has to be approved by a librarian before you are allowed to touch anything,” he added before looking at her in mock appraisal. “And no librarian is going to let your grubby hands touch any of their important documents.”

“That’s okay,” Aya said, completely ignoring his attitude as she took out her notebook. “Take this,” she said, ripping out one of her more detailed maps of the mine region. She did not want to rip out any of the pages in her meticulously-organized notebook but she also didn’t trust the guard anywhere near enough hand him the whole thing. It had quickly become one of her most prized possessions in the game. Especially after her entire fortune had been taken away from her.

The guard glared at her some more before he accepted the page. He looked down at it suspiciously and was unable to hide the surprise when he saw the precision of her drawings.

“You d—” he began in astonishment before stopping short and clearing his throat in embarrassment. “There is no way you drew something like this,” he said before he nonchalantly crumbled the page and tossed it over his shoulder.

Aya couldn’t prevent a gasp from escaping her lips. It hurt, seeing her hard work just being cast aside like that, but the satisfaction she saw creep into the guard’s face irritated her more than the loss of her work. She ground her teeth, trying to prevent the words going through her mind from escaping. The guard smirked at her and Aya almost blew up at him.

“That’s it, kid!” another of the prisoners shouted, making Henry jerk tightly around her arm.

Distracted, Aya looked past the guard at the man who had shouted.

“Let him have it!” the old man with patchy hair, yellowing teeth and an NPC label hovering above him encouraged. “That boy’s head’s gotten too big for his britches!”

“Oh shut up, Nelson!” the guard snapped.

“Or else what?” the man mocked as he leaned against the metal bars of his cell. “You gonna rat me out to Lanya?” Nelson chuckled before turning his attention to Aya and adding, “His mother was still in diapers when I met the king for the first time!”

“Or I’ll add another day to your sentence,” the guard bit off.

“Yadda, yadda, yadda,” Nelson said but then retreated back into the darkness of his cell.

“Yeah, that’s right, you useless old drunk. You’re an embarrassment,” the guard added after Nelson paid him no mind.

The guard then turned his attention back to Aya. The pinched look in his eyes proved that he was not happy about the exchange that she had just witnessed. The forced smirk in the corner of his lips, however, showed he believed the final word had given him the upper hand, forced as it might have been.

He said something, but Aya completely missed his words and by the time her eyes focused on him again, he was already turning to back away from her.

“Hey…. Mister Guard?” Aya said with as much infused reverence for his title as she could muster.

He turned his head back in her direction and she smiled shyly.

“I don’t mean to… be taking any more of your time… I already appreciate all that you’ve done for me… but… If you could… Could you give me a chance?”

“A chance?” he asked suspiciously. “No. You’ve had your chance. It’s not my fault you’re a dishonorable thief. You reap what you sow.”

Aya lowered her head, visibly chastised by his words, but when he again started turning away from her she added, “Actually, I meant my drawing.”

“What?” he asked, slightly irritated.

“You see… I… Can I… I want to draw you.”

He crossed his arms and frowned at her.

“What?” he asked in a pinched tone.

“Well… I’ve never had a chance to meet such a… ” she lowered her head for effect, “Good-looking guard like you before… and well… I just wanted to draw a portrait of you…” Aya wrung her hands together for show. “If you’d let me,” she added in a hushed and reverent tone.

She didn’t look up immediately, but she could feel the suspicion lingering in the air between them. When Aya’s eyes met his, she saw the struggle on his face. His eyes darted down the hall, back to his abandoned post and towards the flickering torches crackling on the walls. There were sounds of disgruntled prisoners here and there, but it was obvious that all the guard saw was the tedious existence of his post.

He turned his attention back to Aya and asked, “What kind of portrait?”

She smiled with innocent excitement to hide the smug slant of her lips.

Busying herself, she asked the guard to bring the stool by his post closer so that she could see his face straight on. The height difference was quite prominent and she didn’t want him to get bored before she could finish. By the time he came back and set himself up on the stool, Aya had her notebook opened to a blank page and a piece of charcoal ready. The angle the guard slanted his face didn’t escape Aya’s notice, and she set to work with firm, bold strokes.

Fifteen minutes later she showed the guard his portrait. It was beautiful, so she wasn’t surprised when a self-satisfied smile brushed the young man’s lips. Taking the drawing from her with much more care than the first, he set his stool back without much comment before he said, “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

He picked up the crumpled page he had cast away earlier and left. When his retreating back finally disappeared around the corner, Aya let herself sigh and take on her own self-satisfied smile. She had won over the guard enough for him to disregard the very negative reputation she had amassed with his province.

A slow clap resonated through the dungeons, tumbling across echoes as they clashed against the narrow walls.

“Bravo, my child,” the old man said as he appeared again by the bars of his cell. “Bravo.”

Henry tightened around her arm again. Aya blinked, caught off guard.

“I’m sorry,” Aya said uncertainly. “What?”

“Don’t play coy now, kid,” the old man flashed his yellow teeth with obvious glee. “We both know that boy doesn’t have a…. How do the ladies call it?” he mused, brushing his hand against the rough stubble on his chin. “Chiseled jaw! He’s about as ugly as a mule’s be-hind and that purty picture you drew him made him look like a regular Hercules… Or was it Adonis?”

“… Adonis,” Aya answered. “… I think.”

“Yeah,” Nelson said before a hiccup interrupted his speech. “That.”

She debated whether or not she should celebrate her victory with the unknown man, but before she could decide, he slumped down in his cell and began to snore. Aya shrugged and Henry relaxed. It never ceased to surprise her how the AI was able to catch onto what she thought of as such subtle human emotions, interactions and manipulations.

A real, gleeful smile spread across her face as she settled back in her own cell.

“Even the people in prison are more fun in Era,” she told Henry.

A slight frown creased her brow as her thoughts went back to the real world for a moment.

“Then again… they’re a lot less human,” Aya added thinking about the transparency of their goals. Unfortunately, real humans were not as predictable. She shook her head to discard the unnecessary thoughts of the real world. There was a game to focus on. A game her real life depended on.

Refocusing her attention on the game she noticed a flashing notification.

Manipulation Successful!

Your tree flourishes.

Stage I: 100%

The manic world is now open to you.

She did not know what the manic world was. Donovan could tell her what it was later. As she wondered about how to let him know what had happened to her, she came across her inbox, which was also flashing. She had two unread messages; one was from Donovan and the other was from Obelisk. Both had received notifications about a new enemy of the province and both of them asked her how she had pissed someone off enough to sink so low in one go.

Aya sighed but postponed replying to either of them until later. She had plans for both of them once she got out of prison. Taking a deep breath, she tried focusing on the present. There was nothing she could do about what had happened, at least not at the moment. She shoved all her resentment in the corner of her mind to deal with later.

By the time the guard arrived, less than two minutes later, she had her emotions under control. It both excited and scared her that they were becoming harder for her to control, especially in Era. It had only been one real life day since she had first stepped foot into Era but it was already cracking the years of self-imposed frigidity. The only thing that kept her from forgetting the ties to her real world self was the Goldilocks rank. It served as a constant reminder of the impending judgment on her further game time.

“Move it,” the guard said, bringing Aya’s attention back to the game as he pushed her out into the sunlight and the arms of another guard.

Her own arms came up instinctively, trying to shield her eyes from the sudden rays but the guard did not give Aya the chance to adjust, roughly pulling her along the cobbled roads until they reached the library a couple streets over.

Large wooden doors led her into a brightly lit, circular room. The guard handed her over to a robed man, who Aya assumed was a librarian, before he promptly exited the building. She was left feeling like an abandoned sack of potatoes, handed off from an owner who didn’t want her to an owner who wanted her even less.

The robed man her towered over her, like everyone else, but the height disparity was much smaller than she had gotten used to in Era. He was only a little less than a head taller than her and as thin and frail-looking as a blade of grass. His robes hung off of him like curtains, dwarfing him even more. His attitude, on the other hand, was expressed with a fierce posture accompanied by aggressively crossed arms that broadened his frame tremendously.

The incongruity of the man’s existence was only exacerbated when he spoke, releasing a deep, gravel-like voice that reverberated through the room’s silence.

“I haven’t heard many good things about you,” he said. “But I like to judge a man or woman… or child… by his or her actions. Myself.”

He pulled her creased sketch from the folds of his robes and added, “If you can re-create work of this caliber, we will get along well.” After a fierce look, he had follow him to a miniscule room that smelled of musty decay and dust.

Aya sneezed, creating an unexpected wave of air in the stagnant room that caused several scrolls on the table in front of her to tumble to the ground. The small table dominated the tight space in the room, less than a step away from the shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls that surrounded it. One scroll in particular drew their attention as it fell to the ground with others and slowly rolled away, leaving scraps in its wake.

A moment of heavy silence passed before the librarian turned to her and said, “Your job is to transcribe as many of these scrolls as you can. The sudden change in weather had an adverse effect on many of our manuscripts. You will primarily be in charge of illustrations and maps as most of our librarians are not skilled in the arts.”

He turned to make sure she was still listening before he pointed out the tools at her disposal. They were pen, ink and paper.

“Your time will be compensated in the usual ratio of two to one. Each hour of work you provide will eliminate two hours of your sentence.” He gave her a steely look before he added, “I will also be evaluating your work at every step. Be careful with these documents. Most of them are worth more than your life.”

He walked to the door in solid, measured steps before he turned around and added, “I suggest you start with this one.” He nodded to the scroll at his feet.

A/N: I have been told that my chapters are too long. So... chapters will be shorter from now on. Let me know what you think. This also PROBABLY means they'll happen more often. PROBABLY.

And as always. HUGE thanks to unice and cur.

If you haven't yet... you should read her fic... obvs. shes like top 10. fantasia. its awesome. much better writer than me.