A cold shock ran through Zara's body.

She found herself in an unknown room. The walls were made of stone bricks and along the walls, there was a locked large wooden door, a smaller wooden door that leads to a bathroom, and an opaque glass window facing the outside. The room would've felt like a prison if it wasn't so well furnished. The furniture was made of high-quality materials and there were plenty of amenities in the room. This was weird, who wanted a prisoner to be comfortable? Or at least she thought she was a prisoner. She put her hands on it and instantly recoiled as the glass was frozen cold. It was summer. How was it so cold? Forcing the window open she saw why.

What lay before her could only be described as a winter wonderland. There was snow as far as the eye could see. From her high vantage point, she saw that the lake in her view looked frozen and the trees of the forest had either lost their leaves or were entirely covered by snow. Observing the building she was in, she saw that she was in a castle, made of the same stone bricks she found in her room. These kinds of bricks were very uncommon in Zaramon, as with modern building technology, reinforced clay was the preferred method of building structures. Putting skeletal frames to reinforce the building and then using clay to fill in the structure created a seamless look was much preferred. It had been many hundreds of years for a Stone brick building to have been constructed. It really looked like a castle out of a fairy tale. It had a drawbridge, a moat, and even towers. This further contrasted with the inside as not only did the structure have modern amenities but, the bathroom had functional running hot water. Which she knew for a fact wasn’t something that existed hundreds of years ago, at least not in this modern fashion. What was going on? Taking one last look out the window. She made a mental note of the path that led away from the castle, that might be her way out of here.

As she looked in the full-length mirror and noticed that the bottom of her dress was burned and destroyed what once used to be a full-length skirt was now knee-length, as well there was some damage amongst the upper half of the dress but it wasn’t as extensive. It was surprising that she didn't have any injuries considering that she was gripped with actual fire.

She sighed deeply, that was her first witness of magic. Humans couldn't use magic innately so they focused on technology instead, or traded for the magical items themselves with other races. This did lead to the majority of humans disliking it, as they could not completely control it. For that reason, her parents never had a fond view of magic. They weren't arrogant of it, due to its potency, but they did not openly acknowledge it. Leaving a very large gap in her knowledge of what magic was and it's abilities. She did know that magic required lots of resources and preparation. As very few beings could manage to use very potent magic with little to no preparation at all. However. it seemed that dragons happened to be one of those beings that we're able to use magic without much preparation.

It looked so different than anything she had ever seen before. It didn’t even look real, the glassy texture, the unreal shapes. It felt as if she had either hallucinated or was dreaming the whole thing. Shaking her head, getting it out of her mind. She made her way to the desk in the room when she picked up a note seemingly left for her.

Please forgive me,

I did not want to force anyone’s hand, but unfortunately, my situation left me no other choice. I don't expect you to understand, I know you humans' opinions of us are low. I have always wanted to make peace between our races, but others like me have thoroughly disagreed with my plans to try and integrate our societies.

This is why I need you, I purposely left in such a way to allow your people to come to find me and hoping to use your influence to help negotiate with your race. I am desperate if there was any other way I would've done it. I'm going to need your help. I will explain everything in due time, but please give me some time. I will come and get you for dinner, but I have some things to attend to.

The door is locked for your safety, please don't do anything brash.

My deepest apologies,

Gilgamar.

So many questions. Who wrote this, Why would they kidnap me if they wanted to negotiate? Who could possibly have done this, and why would they have sent a dragon. It was possible the writer of this was Inhuman. That would explain how desperate they were, and why they couldn't do any negotiating through typical diplomatic means. The current royal family held a very negative outlook on any race that wasn’t a human. Lumping them all into a category called “Inhumans". The knowledge of Inhumans available in Zaramon was extremely limited. All she knew is that they were intelligent sentient beings, but they were still stuck somewhere in the stone age. Savage was a frequent term used to describe them. She believed her family about that, but something inside her started fighting her. She pushed that feeling down and thought back to the dragon encounter.

The whole encounter seemed odd, she couldn't quite place it but decided to set her attention on getting the hell out of here. She didn’t know what would happen to her if she remained. The supposed pleasantries and pleas for help were most likely just a flimsy way of building trust, so they could betray her. Not under her watch. She was used to manipulation and was very aware of when those were trying to employ the usage on her.

The line about keeping the door locked was curious. If whoever this Gilgamar was needed her help, how would locking her up build trust, it seems to her that locking her up was instead a way for them to control her. She clenched her fists. She was taken from one prison and placed into another. She needed to get out,

Approaching the locked door, she saw no way to open the lock without the key. In the past she’s had some luck picking locks, she was by no means an expert but giving the time she was sure she could engineer a solution. However, when she got out, she would need something warmer than her dress.

Opening the wardrobe she saw numerous clothes that were of high quality, many of them with royal crests on them. She did not recognize the crests, which was odd, since if there was anything that her parents did actually care about teaching her it was royal politics. Something was off about all of this, she felt it in her gut. She changed into a warm fur coat, that bore the crest of a raven and some matching warm bottoms. Her once pristine wedding dress was now ruined. burned, tattered, and in disrepair. She loved seeing it in such a condition, it felt as if she was fighting back, but there would be time for celebrating that later. Grabbing a couple of bobby pins she got to work.

She had learned to pick locks as a way to pass the time. She enjoyed learning new techniques that could potentially be useful. While she didn't really think that a princess would ever need to practically use lock-picking, understanding how these things were done did make it easier to both defend against attacks such as that and to personally test the safety of her own equipment. fashioning one bobby pin into an L and the other into a picking tool she got to work. With her rusty skills, she found the lock quite challenging. It was one of the higher quality locks she had dealt with, but it was still something she could deal with; it would just take some time. After ten minutes of getting frustrated and breaking some bobby pins, she finally opened the door and headed into the hallway.

The interior of the hallway was quite barren, only a handful of cloth tapestries along the wall. It was surprisingly well lit, seemingly coming from crystals that were placed along the walls. These crystals were glowing yellow with some small particles occasionally flying off them. Torches always seemed to be depicted in stories of these medieval castles, but times change she supposed. She needed to make her way down to the bottom floor, and find a way out of this damn place. The drawbridge seemed to be the only way out, but if she went there she would surely be found out, however it didn't seem like there was an alternative to this.

Unsure of where to go she followed the hallway down to the left. There were many doors lining the hallway but she decided against unnecessary exploration. Following it for quite a while she found the end. Where a door resided, which was about twice the size of the other doors and was excessively extravagant. Opening it revealed a magnificent room.

The room was at least as tall as any chapel she’d ever been to. It was a long room with short ends that had tall windows, and the longer sides were lined with bookshelves that covered floor to ceiling. They were absolutely packed with all sorts of objects, mostly books, but there were some oddities. In the middle of the, there was a table upon table all filled with stuff one was full of books, another glassware. There was one that especially caught her attention, this table had several maps upon it.

There were some smaller maps that depicted large cities but there was one that really caught her attention. That was the one of Anvilleria, the continent that everyone lived on. This was a map of the entire continent but it was significantly different than anything that she had seen. It showed 3 Major nations, The Kingdom of Zaramon, The Reptilia, and the URM. On maps in Zaramon, it showed only the Kingdom of Zaramon and some outside unconquered lands. They also sure as hell had a lot less detail. This one had every major city in Zaramon, it quite possibly had all the minor ones as well. She found her home, the capital Gurnam, on the map. This was where the castle was so she looked around it to see if there was anything that could lead her to her current location. Looking north of Gurnam she saw a spot labeled Castle Anachro, and south of it there was a town called Hillspack. She would have to flee there from the castle as there wasn’t any other place to go. It would be about a thirty-mile journey which would take some time on foot but it was possible to do so before all the daylight faded, or so she hoped.

The ground shook, Zara stumbled and grabbed a table for stability. Whatever that meant it was time to get the hell out of here. Grabbing the map, sliding it in a nearby map tube, and slinging it over her shoulder she ran for the other door. She cautiously but quickly proceeded through the rest of the castle. While the castle seemed abandoned, it didn’t seem decrepit, as if someone was maintaining it. The castle also proceeded to create more and more questions. Every door led to something that was completely, aesthetically distinct from everything else. It felt as if a thousand architects came together and built a castle each in their own style. These questions could wait for some other time, preferably when she didn’t have a dragon kidnap her.

At the end of what felt like an endless amount of corridors, she found a spiral staircase. She went down as fast as she could, every second could make the difference between escape and recapture. Then she heard a great roar. Even from this distance, she felt the sound infiltrate her bones and psyche. It was impossible not to feel fear at this moment. She pushed the feeling down, with the help of adrenaline. At the bottom of the spiral stairs, she found herself at a corner. One way led to more corridors and the other led to what looked like the main entrance.

She ran and ran, reaching an enormous room. She was standing on a balcony that connected to staircases that wrapped around the sides of the room, leaving a massive space for something in the middle. The wall facing the outside had the drawbridge which was currently upright. Why anyone would need such a massive space was beyond her. Whatever the purpose of this castle was a mystery for another time. She saw a smaller door next to the massive drawbridge, assuming it to be some kind of control room for the bridge she ran down the stairs.

Reaching the small door she thrust it open, revealing a small control room. It completely contrasted the old aesthetic of the castle, as the room was full of technology. What was going on? on one side of the room there was a massive control panel and several screens. This technology was far too advanced for when this castle could have been made. Thrusting all the questions out of her mind she jumped onto the control panel looking for a way out. The buttons were all labeled. There was one that was labeled "Emergency". Not willing to spend time figuring out how exactly this worked she slammed it down.

Everything went red and an alarm blared throughout the castle, she heard the sound of massive chains falling. Stepping out of the control room, she saw the gate opening, and it was falling fast, when it hit the ground the impact made everything in the room shake. Seeing no time to waste she broke out into a sprint not looking back. as she got to the other side of the drawbridge and hit the snow on the other side she heard something large land behind her. The impact startled her for a moment causing her to trip. she twisted as she fell causing her to land on her back and saw who had landed.

The dragon was back.