“Why must I be imprisoned? I did nothing wrong!”

“Why indeed?! You’ve been a good pawn, Reynolds. You’ve served your purpose. So that’s why, I guess?”

“What purpose? All I did was escort a girl here!”

“You are asking this question? That’s why I proclaim that you are useless! I don’t need a servant who has a mind of his own!”

Reynolds blinked at this outburst. He looked down his feet, and said. “Oh, I remember. I am not supposed to be here!”

Reynolds looked in the direction Elysia had disappeared off to, took a step forward, but reconsidered his actions, backtracking, and was about to run away, before one of the hooded individuals was upon him, and gave him a jab on his neck. Reynolds went down, and lay there, as the person uncovered his head, and looked at Oregon.

“Your techniques appear to have grown rusty, Master Oregon.”

“Of course they would grow rusty. I’ve been sealed in this bloody cave for over three centuries. Frankly, you don’t need to worry about my techniques.”

“So it seems,” said the person, glancing at Reynolds.

“My gracious! Are you interested in this man here?” asked Oregon, rubbing his hands.

“Surely you jest, red Oregon. He just… seems queer.”

“Queer?” Oregon observed the well-built muscles of Reynolds, and relented, “well, perhaps he is. He might have served to more purposes than that of a miner.”

“I want to take his custody,” said the person, waving her hair from the back of her cloak; they fell in cascades, resting softly on her shoulders. “I happen to need a champion to challenge the valley of the priestess of the Crescent Moon.”

Oregon looked at her warily. “You already got your previous knight killed?”

“Yes. I did. I don’t suppose you have any problems with that, red Oregon,” said the woman in a singsong voice.

“You seem rather enthusiastic. I wonder what’s got you so excited. You believe there’s gold in the valley? Hitch me up if you happen to find some! If you do find them first, that is.”

The woman laughed. “You’ve really been slumbering like an oaf since the past century, haven’t you?”

The giant slammed his hand on the woman. It was stopped by one of the hooded individuals, with the flat of a huge sword. Oregon was disappointed. “What brings you here anyway?”

“I came to inform you that queen Demesne won’t be taking up your offer of assistance.”

Oregon grew livid with anger, his face dark red with the increased concentration of blood on it. “And I thought I was doing you a favor! Has she lost her mind?”

“To the contrary,” said the woman, “she only surmised that she had no use of a shady seer which resorted to menace at every inconvenience it faced.”

“Are you referring to my seer? I assure you that he has a clean conscience! Why, he wouldn’t even hurt a fly!”

“We’ve had ample time to bear witness to that clean conscience of his. He’s basically a monster raving about gold, and constantly seeking to fulfill desires, and if the person fell short of desires, he would kill the very one whom he had been contracted with.”

“And what’s so inconvenient about it that you would drop his usage?”

“People grow selfish just by using it. These golden monsters don’t care about ranks and will go to any length just to have their target’s desires fulfilled. They unnecessarily create conflicts.”

“If I’m not mistaken, your queen is still expanding her territories, isn’t she?” Oregon scoffed. “That’s far from docile when comparing it to those golden creatures, wouldn’t you say? What you are doing is simply massacring dozens of-!”

“It’s not our fault that some people still keep up tribe mentalities, and come warmongering to us,” intoned the woman loudly.

“Sure, sure. That’s what everyone found guilty of a corrupt conscience says. You are just doing it in the name of chivalry and development, am I right?”

“That’s enough of chitchat. Ah! By the way, your creatures were too weak, so they won’t be coming to see you,” said the woman, as one of the hooded individuals presented a chest in front of Oregon, and opened it.

Inside were gems of all colors, glittering green, scalding red, and even glazed blue. The chest was two feet by one foot in size, and had a height of about one foot. “Oh! How nice of you to have brought these! I was just considering whether I should let you get away with your life or not.”

Oregon smiled, and lifted the small chest with his thumb and index finger. “These preciosities shall head straight for my treasure trove. I don’t want to see you here anymore though. Get going already!”

The woman went up to Reynolds, and lifted him by the shoulder. His face fell upon her opulent chest, and she considered handing him over to one of her guards. But, out of a certain habit picked up from her mother, she didn’t part with the man, and heaved him over her shoulders, before heading away.

“Gold may be wealth for you Oregon, but it is nature which verily has value in this world. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her after all.”

***

Elysia wondered if she should consider escaping from the cave and calling the knights.

The guard in front of her looked like he might need some sleep, and wore his clothes in a sloven manner, prompting her to think that she could make this decision. She was convinced that the giant wouldn’t run fast with his hulking appearance.

The guard remained silent as he walked her to the chamber of the mythril statue. Elysia thought that it was just a room much like the one she had just come from. She was still unsure about the issue of her father, which prevented her from acting, so she could use some clues to clear away her doubts.

Once they arrived at a door with a low ceiling, the guard opened it and urged her to enter. Elysia obliged, and got inside expecting to be alone. However, the first thing she saw were girls. Some of them were lying down near what appeared to be a statue of a woman holding a flower, while the rest were up and about, staring at her as she made her entrance.

The door closed behind her, as the guard left her there. Elysia stared back at the girls, and timidly made a few steps forward. “Hello everyone.”

“...”

She did not receive a response. There were six girls in all in the room. Counting herself, that made seven. Elysia wondered about the giant’s plan for her, and the ones in front of her. The room had a dozen structures which looked like sarcophagi, each evenly spaced, and three of girls were redolent on them.

“What are you girls doing here?” she asked, dreading the reply she would get. Elysia approached them, looking at the girls lying on top of the stone tombs to notice purple threads attached to each one’s right wrist. These serpented along the ground to get under the only statue in the room.

And there were more threads from where the lot came from.

“What are… these threads?” Elysia asked, finding the ones connected to the wrists of the girls to be a more vivid purple. To be precise, as she picked one of them up, she found it to be closer to the color of blood.

Elysia swiftly threw it down. Upon impact, the thread started to bleed a little, before it repaired itself, and the blood on the ground got absorbed back into it. “What… Just what is this thing?”

The girls in the room were younger than her - by her guess, the oldest one was most likely eleven to thirteen years old. The latter just said. “It is a thread. It sucks your blood until you are dry, and that’s the only thing it’ll do to you.”

Elysia stared at the girl. “You mean… until you are dead?”

“Yes, that’s what it’ll do,” said the girl again, her voice empty of emotion.

“I see…” Elysia conferred. “Since when were all of you captured?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl, before staring at the other girls. They all shook their head. “It’s been three times in a row that I’ve slept and then woken up. That’s all I know for certain.”

“Where do you - what’s your name?” asked Elysia, feeling uneasy.

“My name is Ialda.”

“And where’s your home?”

“It’s on the other side of this mountain. It’s in a village called Kingshill.”

“I see,” Elysia conferred anew.”Did you come here by your own will?”

“The golden creature asked the village chief to send us here.”

Elysia was puzzled by her reply. “What golden creature are you talking about?”

Ialda looked at her languidly, and refused to talk. Elysia observed that the latter’s cheeks looked sallow, and her eyes were the only thing about her which shone. The other girls looked pretty much the same.

“Did you eat anything yet?”

“Yeah… We did. We ate mushrooms,” answered another girl, who had pigtails.

“And do you know why you could be here? Besides for giving blood to this statue, I mean.”

The girls all looked at her with wonderment. Elysia found it hard to resist the pain that budded in her heart at that very instant. She fell to her knees, and started praying, staying like this as if her life depended on it, until she heard one of the girls lambent on the tombs say. “I really hope my brother will be safely removed from the statue.”

Elysia wordlessly completed her prayer, and looked at the girls while trying not to cry. She asked them if they had seen any reptilian kind of monsters, and they said that they didn’t. Elysia decided to survey the room for a little.

She looked at the first wall, and then at the second wall. She scarcely found anything of interest there, except for gritty surfaces which surely meant nothing, and she got down to examining the prime object of interest in the room - the statue of the woman.

The woman seemed to wear a dress, and was holding a bunch of small flowers, rather than one large one, as she had been led to believe upon first inspecting it. As far as she could tell, the piece of sculpture had been intricately made, and while Elysia looked under the right foot of the statue, she oddly found some leaves there.

She stooped and plucked one of them, holding it to her nose, to find that it smelled like mint. Ialda followed her, and took a look at the plants growing there. “These are Oregano mints. I wonder how they are growing here. We have no sunlight in this place.”

Elysia found that this plant had motivated Ialda to a certain extent. Ialda started recounting something she had apparently heard from her grandmother. “There was once a giant who disliked trees of all kinds. He disliked them to such an extent, that people even thought up songs to illustrate his passion for hating them.”

“Among the trees and plants that the giant hated,” said Ialda, “there was the Oregano mint, which, by merely its scent, was said to burn his lungs, and by its mere touch, corroded the skin of the giant. Thus, the giant was named Oregon.”

“Well, pardon me, Ialda, but do you know that the giant who had ordered us to be kept here is called Oregon?”

“That, I didn’t know.”

“So that giant has this kind of weakness,” Elysia said to herself, “it’s no use though, since I can’t make use of this knowledge. Well, at least now I know that the trees in the forest next to the mines might be able to stop the giant if he ever gets out of here.”

“But that could well be just a legend,” said Ialda, stifling a yawn. “I wonder how long we’ll remain in this room. Maybe we’ll all die waiting.”

Elysia found herself affected by the gloominess of the girl, and made an effort to ask the other girls their names; they were called ‘Mary’, and ‘Jeanne’. Smelling the leaves of the minty plant she found at the foot of the statue, Elysia thought herself refreshed, and proceeded to examine the wall behind the statue. On it, she saw the engraving of a giant, a tree, and she also noticed a queer drawing of what resembled a bear, or perhaps a wolf in it.

Elysia checked the final wall, and found nothing worthwhile. She took a seat at one of the tombs, as the other girls had already done. And wondered if she would really be able to see her father after all this.