Sylvia opened her book and began chanting, not taking her eyes off him for a moment. The look in her eyes was scarily serious, as if she were staring at a barrel of oil with a candle slowly burning down to it that could blow at any second.

“If this is about the time I painted all your windows orange then—” Jonatan began.

Before he could finish speaking, a small glowing light appeared in front of her head, vaguely resembling several lines of text in a language he didn’t understand, before quickly vanishing back into the thin air it came from. Ten seconds, thick with tension passed, before a small smile passed across her face.

“All the times in the past you’ve teased me and made my life a mess of uncomfortable rumours, I thought you were just an idiot. Now I see the monster you really are.” Her voice was thick with sick glee.

“In my defence, I just passed most of those rumours on.” Jonatan tried to raise his hands in surrender, but the newly tightened restraints were starting to make his fingertips tingle slightly.

“No more excuses can save you, not from a crime of this level. My school of Wizards are coming to take you and lock you away forever, maybe they’ll let me pry around your mind to find exactly what makes you feel worst too.” She cruelly jabbed her scaley finger into his cheek, hard enough that if she didn’t clip her nails, she would’ve drawn blood.

“…At this point you’ve lost me and I’m out of retorts. What are you talking about?” Jonatan shook his head in pure confusion.

“Don’t play stupid this time, you selfish muscle-head!” She stood up to her full height, her eyes burning with power. “Your kind have escaped justice for too long, and you are the perfect example of why you should receive no mercy.”

“No mercy? My kind? If I knew you hated minstrels THIS much I would’ve never come here. Honest.”

“Oh no. I’m glad you came here.” She leaned down again, a hint of a sadistic smile on her face. She reached down and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. “This is for the looks that the guards give me.”

Jonatan was about to question her unexpected advance, before pain shot through his entire body, as her hand lit up with the blinding shock of electricity stabbing his nerves with malicious intent. He gritted his teeth as his body started spasming with the pain, like a whole-body cramp that he couldn’t stretch out.

She released her hand, and the shock eased, allowing him some time to breathe. He stared up at her, his expression one of pained shock (He had a bad habit of making badly timed puns, even in his subconscious reactions).

“This is for how you made me look like a fool at the new year festival.” An edge of retribution stung in her words.

Her words were not as painful as the lightning that she pushed through him once again, a guttural grunt of pain escaping his mouth. He could feel the restraints cut into him as his body shook against the ever-rising pain. It didn’t feel as hot as he would’ve expected, more along the lines of overzealous acupuncture both in and out of his body.

She released her hand once more.

“And this is for telling me to pour soup over myself at my first week in this village!” She reached down to shock him again, leaning her head closer to his.

Jonatan took advantage of her leaning forward to use as much movement that he had available to him and slammed his forehead into hers, sending her reeling backwards, tripping over her orbs and books, collapsing in a heap.

He had no idea what set her off, but he was in no position to be nice at the moment. He craned his neck, trying to find a way to shake loose his restraints to no avail. Luckily for him, Sylvia was right about one thing. He was indeed a muscle-head.

He flexed his arms, clenched his fists, used every part of his body to leverage as much power as he could muster. His growls of exertion mixed with the creaks of the table beneath him to make a strange chorus of contesting stubbornness. The leather straps that were cutting into his wrists were burning, turning his hands slightly numb, his forehead gained several beads of sweat that burned his eyes, and his gritting teeth started to give him a headache.

The tension broke as the screws that held the leather to the wood came loose, taking sharp splinters of table with them as his arms found freedom from their prisons. He quickly undid the tight leather, letting colour back into his fingertips before unfastening his ankles and rolling off the table onto the cold stone floor.

He could see Sylvia trying to climb her way out of her small pile of books, a look of fury on her face. He felt like it would be the polite thing to do to take his leave. He slung his lute over his back and stood up, meeting her gaze.

“I think we can both agree that you deserved that.” Jonatan massaged his shoulder where she shocked him, the pain still aching.

“You annoying brat. You’ll never do that again.” Sylvia hissed at him, her hands crackling with lightning. “My order will understand if you don’t survive.”

She stretched out her hands, the sparks of electricity vanishing, before being swiftly replaced by cold blue runes that danced around her fingers. She muttered more arcane babble, the runes following her every word, growing in size and number. Jonatan felt a chill creep up his spine as he felt his sweat turn to frost on his brow.

After a final angry word from Sylvia, a knife of pure ice formed in her hands and launched itself at Jonatan, flying like a falcon towards its prey.

His bar-fighting instincts kicked in, as he dived down to the ground, tossing up the table that he was previously bound to for cover. He felt a distinct thud as the knife embedded itself in the thick wood, followed by a sharp cracking sound as the knife seemed to detonate, sending splinters of ice flying in all directions, and a wave of piercing chills through his entire body.

With new conformation that this was indeed a life or death situation, he dug his fingers under the bottom of the table, the frigid cold making them ache immediately. He stood up, throwing her own furniture in her direction, hitting her squarely in the chest and knocking her back down with an indignant shriek. If he wasn’t pulsing with adrenaline, he would’ve been proud of that throw.

He turned and ran towards the large doors that he came in through and tried to shake them open. No matter how many times he shook the handles, they remained stubbornly unopened.

“Why is it that whenever I’m tied down it never ends well?” Jonatan panted, frantically scanning the room for anything that wasn’t an orb, book, or angry Lizardfolk struggling to escape being pinned by her own table. His eyes met a small window slightly above a bookcase, and a completely stupid idea crossed his mind.

Considering the alternative of spending more time with a murderous wizard, he sprinted to the other side of the room, using Sylvia’s squirming table as a springboard to catch the top of the bookcase, resetting her escape progress with further complaining hisses from her.

He scrambled up, sending more than a few dozen books tumbling down to the floor, meeting the window in front of him with a nervously small ledge underfoot. He took a breath, trying not to look at how high up he was, and brought his elbow to the window with a crash. He was hit with a surprisingly strong breeze, the distant scent of the forest blooms that surrounded his hometown filling him with nostalgia.

He didn’t have time to be nostalgic though, and set himself to try and get out of this tower without becoming some kind of modern art masterpiece with the help of the paved streets four stories below. There was one place beneath him that maybe wouldn’t end his life in a grizzly fashion. Maybe.

If he could climb to the other side of the tower, Sylvia’s laundry lines may break his fall to only mildly perilous. Murderous wizards were starting to look more and more appealing.

He squeezed his way out the window, trying to find purchase in the looser bricks. Oh how he loved inconsistent brickwork. He set about quickly but carefully climbing his way around the tower, desperately trying to think of something else other than the sheer fall beneath him.

“Let’s see…I could try to mix ale with grass to make the animals so they could get drunk too? I could ask Charis to travel with me and be a performing duo of lute and impressionist? I could set fire to the town hall and run the safety effort to get free pints?” Jonatan was making a good attempt to distract himself until a flock of birds passing underneath him made his gut turn.

He tried to settle into a slow rhythm, one foot then one hand followed by a desperate attempt not to look down. After he had been slowly climbing round for a minute or so, he heard muffled shouts coming from where the window was, followed by the sound of books crashing followed by a lizardfolk curse. Jonatan couldn’t hold back his grin at those combinations of sounds.

He was just starting to think that maybe he wasn’t moments away from a terrible fall when one of the less stable bricks crumbled under his foot. He stumbled, catching himself by his fingers, safe but terrified. He looked down before he could stop himself, earning him some fierce goose-bumps at the sight of a small plume of brick dust from where the brick landed, accompanied by the surprised shriek of a stray cat.

While he cursed his overthinking mind for giving him the image of himself turning to dust, his eyes caught the white flash of linens blowing in the breeze, several sets of crisp white bedsheets hanging perfectly evenly on lines and pulleys almost directly below him. If he could climb down a little bit further, it should be a relatively soft landing so long as he didn’t botch it.

“Did you think you could run?” A familiarly angry voice spoke close by. Given that he was four stories in the air, he was starting to wonder if he was dreaming. A quick glance behind him revealed that no, he was not.

“You can fly?” Jonatan gasped. He was genuinely impressed and utterly terrified all at once.

“As any skilled Wizard should be able to, yes. Give up, Drunkard, and I’ll offer you a less painful death than the ground.” Her voice held no shred of humour. Then again it never did even before she took a murderous turn.

Jonatan never had been good at strategy, but he had to think of some way to get away from Sylvia, get off this tower, and somehow not die from the fall, all in a timely fashion. Thoughts ran through his head faster than ever before, trying to visualise all the potentially horrible ways that he wasn’t going to get out of this. Eventually, he thought so hard that he gave himself a headache, like a cerebral hangover.

His mind clicked. Headache. Hangover. Alcohol. Tavern brawls. In his last two years of travelling, he lost count of how many fights he got into, and only remembered about half of them. But even with all that fighting, he had never broken any bones, nor had any serious debilitating injuries from any of them. And, as if by clockwork, he came up with a terrible idea.

He steadied his feet, doing his best to turn to face Sylvia, while also freeing a hand to reach into his jacket pocket. He rummaged around and wrapped his hand around one of his favourite hip flasks, newly filled with potent brew.

“Well, seeing as I’m in no position to refuse, I might as well pay the part.” He pulled out his flask with a dramatic flair, and poured the entire contents into his mouth, gulping the sweet flavours and burning alcohol down as he had so many times before, then stowed the flask safely back, flashing Sylvia a cherry coloured grin.

“Even when everyone is serious, even when your life is threatened, even if the world is falling apart, you just cannot help yourself from playing the fool. You just have to turn even the most important things into a circus act. Why is it that you must make light of everything that I hold dear to my heart, and stamp it into the ground like dirt?” Sylvia spat, practically shaking from rage.

“Maybe because you take it so seriously?” Jonatan tilted his head towards her in a deliberate attempt to goad her into monologuing. His face was starting to flush, and the edges of his vision was starting to blur, but he needed a bit more time to let his nerves dull a bit before he was willing to take the leap. A few lost brain cells would probably help too.

“People like you haunt my nightmares. Your ideals make me sick to my stomach as you gallivant from place to place, spreading your filth to each clean stone you step upon, not even casting your mind back to those you leave in your wake. It is more than my duty to cull your kind, but a blessing. And for you specifically, and all the small hells you’ve opened for me, it is my privilege.” Sylvia floated closer, staring death into his eyes.

“See what I mean?” Jonatan raised an eyebrow, his legs swaying slightly.

“Your jokes and jives get you nothing. Stop pretending like the world owes you for existing and face the fact that you are scum that has no purpose in the world of tomorrow.” She spat.

“Alright, fine then. I’ll accept whatever you just said on the condition that you face a fact of mine.” Jonatan’s words started to slur.

Sylvia blinked in mounting confusion.

“What? What fact?”

Jonatan hiccupped, exactly the cue he was waiting for that the rum had well and truly kicked in.

“That I just made you monologue.” Jonatan smiled, his eyes a crazy mix of alcoholic glee, adrenaline, and fear of the long fall.

He used his legs to push himself off the tower, diving towards Sylvia, who panicked and flew out of reach of his flailing limbs. Then there came the fall, longer than any fall should be, a sickening lurch in his belly as freefall took over him.

He closed his eyes and desperately flapped his arms like a chicken to try and stop himself from spinning in the air and landing on his lute, which would break his heart just as much as his spine.

By the time his dulled senses knew what to make of the next few seconds of crisp white chaos, he was tangled in the pulleys and sheets, his face bobbing mere inches above the grass. He spotted a worm digging in the dirt. Nice little fellow.

Before he could appreciate his new interspecies friend, he had a vague recollection that the flying magic lizard above him was intent on seeing his head on her wall, so quickly got around to writhing his way out of his linen net. Several slurred curses later, he faceplanted into the ground, his lute making a small strum as a pillowcase brushed over its strings.

He raised his head, observing the now very disturbed garden. There didn’t seem to be anyone in it, and the gate seemed easy enough to hop. He could take his time to walk around casually until no one was any the wiser.

“You stay right there!” Sylvia screeched at him as she descended, magic buzzing in her hands as she flicked through her book.

Well that seemed to settle things. Run like hell and hope for the best it was!