Laying in the same crumpled-up pretzel shape she had last seen her in was the red-haired girl from the jail cell next to hers. Her cheek was flush with the stone beneath it, and she showed no signs of having moved since the guards had apprehended them.

Or had they just apprehended Nikola?

At first, she worried that she was dead, but when she cautiously approached her her eyes tracked her movements in the way that only an alive person could do.

Nikola knelt down and gently rolled her onto her back. "Are you okay?"

Asking her a question made her whirr to life. She tilted her head to the side to properly regard her, though her eyes told the same story of exhaustion they had since they'd met. "I... am in a cage having my life force drained from me... but I have come to... accept it. I... am tired... I have not walked in many moons... I am wasting away, and I can barely keep my eyes open..."

Nikola noted that she had heard some of those words come from this girl's mouth before, but that wasn't what drew her attention most.

"In a cage? I just carried you out of the cage you were in. On my back." She arched a single dark brow in confusion, staring dubiously down at the former prisoner. Who she had just helped escape. At great personal cost. Was she an amnesiac? Was having her life force drained from her causing her short-term memory to erode away? And again, what the hell was she still doing out here, completely unaccosted by the elven guards that had found her escape so disagreeable that they had brought out one of their giant Nikola-seeking butterflies to capture her?

"Did you hear me?"

The red-haired girl responded with a very annoying silence.

"I just rescued you and you're not answering me."

"You have made over 3 queries I have had no set responses for. Chances are--"

"We do not have time for this," Nikola replied as she lowered herself to the ground, moving the red-haired girl from the sorry position she was in and on to her back.

"--you are trying to get me to do something I am not programmed to do, such as leaving my set path when I do not have a side quest that allows me to do so," the former prisoner continued, her voice rattling and emotionless, even as she was being relocated to Nikola's back. "Please come back after the next update, which may give me more dialogue options--"

"We must move on, and this speech is not assisting us with that goal," Nikola huffed while looking behind her, which was significantly more difficult with someone blocking the view.

"--or try speaking to me about something that is more relevant in my main quest. Thank you for your patience, and I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused."

It didn't seem, from what she could see past her cherry-tinted locks, that the guards were on to them yet - so perhaps her fellow escapee hadn't inconvenienced her, but she felt inconvenienced. The words that were coming out of her mouth made her bristle. They felt like a memory to her ears, but they felt like an attack to something deep within her chest and her mind as well. There were things that she was trying to repress that she simply couldn't if those words were being said to her. They made everything too real. She was weaving a basket of denial around herself, and they unraveled her basket.

She shimmied back and forth to make sure her arms were properly hooked underneath the other girl's knees, and then went for first alley that she could see. This city was crawling with elves, and it had been proven that they were more than willing to tattle on her to their purple overlord. When she looked around and saw people noticing them, she used her mouth to grab the fabric of her hood and pull it over her head before carrying on towards somewhere more private.

Having the hood up might make it take longer for people to notice she wasn't elven, she decided as she ducked into the dark space between buildings and hugged the wall to the right. She slipped along its porous, uneven surface, and when she got to the next street she accelerated into a sprint until they were hidden away again.

Nikola bee-lined for the wide archway she could see in the distance; the placement of the stars and constellations told her that that was the exit that was pointed towards her village.

She remembered that when the disembodied voice had spoken to her and asked her to choose a place from her world to travel to, she had made her choice because she was curious what the world outside of her set path was like. She wondered what the pretty purple butterfly location had in store for her, and a naive corner of her mind had wondered if this would be a pretty little garden flush with butterflies and all the nectar she could ever drink.

But it hadn't been like that at all. Perhaps this place would be lovely for an elf - but even if she was one of them, could this place ever really be lovely, considering the suffering it had caused for even just the girl on her back? She was all strings and sinew, with barely even a muscle to be felt under the joint she was cradling.

As she leaned out from the gap between houses, she noticed that the archway was now wider, more prominent. They were close, and from a few cursory peeks over her shoulder, it seemed they weren't being chased yet either. This was the closest she had gotten to escaping yet, not that her first attempt had been anything short of a miserable failure.

From this distance, she could see the arch well enough to see some of its imperfections, some of the craggly bits and cracks. It was meant to be smooth, uninterrupted, shimmering, but it was wearing with age. As she closed the distance between herself and the exit, the houses were thinning, and their dispersal meant having to go out into the open.

She put one weary foot in front of the other, her speed dying off in favour of caution and a nagging paranoia. Many of the citizens she saw passing by were wearing purple around their necks, waists and otherwise, and right now purple was a danger colour. Her esophagus tightened up whenever she saw something that looked just a little too close to butterfly armour.

And it turned out that her fears were not unfounded. In the distance, behind her but not too far behind, people were pointing her out to a fellow donning the uniform the palace guards had been wearing. She didn't get a good look at him, but she noted his lack of mount as she pivoted and pushed frantically off the tips of her toes towards the exit. Her strides went from short and panicked to so long she could feel a pang of pain between her legs each time she stretched them out.

Nikola propelled herself at distances she had never thought possible without a pair of arms to drive her momentum along.

Her heart was hammering against her breast bone, attempting to make its escape as well.

She could barely feel her feet hitting the ground.

She chanced a glance behind her. The guard was hauling ass too, his face beet red as he chased her down.

Nikola took in a short huff of breath and let out the most bitter wail she could muster, crossing past the threshold if only because she couldn't bear to get caught again without at least making it past the entrance. If she was going to be put away, at the very least she would do so knowing that she had technically escaped, even if it was only from the city itself and not from the guard chasing her. Nobody would have to know the finer details when she told the story later in life - if there was even more life to be had. Maybe she would go down fighting today, dead before noon.

Her tragic scream ended in a hoarse, shaking inhale, and as she turned around to face her fate...

She saw the guard's back as he walked stiffly away.