The color of the world waned and flashed around her. Buildings spun in time with each step. The guardling had the courtesy to let her follow after him; at every turn in the streets she stumbled and battled the urge to fall down, with the certainty that it was impossible to continue but the determination to make it to her new shelter anyway.

They reached it, somehow, a dark and imposing building strewn with moss. The façade was at odds with all the rest of Kaimas—twelve steps to a banded iron door, with two dark green marble pillars as its frame.

The guard was very small against the door. This place was not built by halflings.

Past the door were a handful more halflings on watch. Eris hadn’t been listening, but her escort never stopped talking once throughout the trip. Now she paid attention:

“…everyone needs a few days to calm down, ya know. Ya know, after I got married—right this way, miss—the Sheriff, oh boy, we got so drunk, we went on a tear around town. You wouldn’t believe the party we had! You ever met Mrs. Norne? Oh, jeeze, you’d like her, real good knitter, but she can hold her mead, too, good friends with the apiarist…"

…down a staircase…

“…anyway, the fireworks went off too early, and he nabbed us all, rounded us right up like a buncha cows…”

The only light came from torches on the wall. Eris’ vision sharpened suddenly. The corridor was narrow. They were deep enough underground that the mana in the air was thin; it always was inside, away from the aether in the heavens, but being beneath tons of brick and marble made it so much worse.

She hated the feeling. It was like being fed stale air.

“…yeah, that was a long time ago, but you’ll like it here, I promise. We take good care of the folk who come through. Welp. Here we are.”

He motioned toward a cell and pulled the door open. Her eyes followed.

This was not ‘real nice.’ This was a dungeon. A dungeon not six feet by six feet wide, with a single, tiny, halfling-sized bed and a basin filled with stagnant water.

“So,” the guard smiled, “in ya go!”

Manipulation. Taking advantage. Not submission: she was using these ‘people’ for her own purposes. She looked the bars of the door over—they were nothing special—and decided that this was according to her plan after all. A cell was safe. A cell had a bed. A cell came with food. A cell was free, in the strictest literal sense. And these bars could not hold her if she wished to escape.

So she stepped inside.

The door was locked.

She collapsed on the bed, which was, for her, a chair, and instantly fell asleep.

And so it was she spent the week in a dungeon’s cell.

The meals were not a lie. They fed her thrice daily in small portions over-adjusted for human stature, with more meat than she could have afforded most places on her own budget. The preceding nights had been so miserable that any confines would have been worth it for those meals.

She spent the time in thought. Replaying their last two battles in her memory. Contemplating what might have gone differently, and how to do better next time. There would be a next time—she was sure of that. She practiced smothering the torches in the hall beyond her cell and lighting them again: bettering herself never seemed more important than those few days after their defeat. Beyond that, resting, healing, and recuperation.

She was just taking advantage of Kaimas’ naïve hospitality. That was all. This happened on her terms, not theirs. She could leave whenever she wanted.

But there was something else. A rogue thought that wormed its way through her mind as she closed her eyes and suppressed the pain behind her forehead:

Why does it linger?

The deal. The deal they made was for power. So much had happened since that it was far from her mind until that very moment.

“She is not well,” Eris whispered.

It is weak.

“You promised a shard of your power.”

Power will come. It will show its people, yet it is gaoled.

“Her time will come.”

It was right. Its days are very brief. It grows old already.

Eris possessed no phobias, but she was familiar with the concept of revulsion, and the need to overcome it. She centered herself like another woman might before facing down a nest filled with spiders: closed eyes, a deep breath, and all those uninvited thoughts pushed away in an act of meditation in miniature.

She was free of the wyrm after that. It let her be.

On the sixth day her mind cleared. Vigor returned. Any sickness from overcasting washed away; the chafing of her skin healed over; her bruises healed and swelling died down. Her muscles finally stopped aching. She was ready to be done with this place. She was ready to groom herself again and put on clean clothes.

It was then she received a visitor.

“All right, miss, we’re comin’ down to see ya, make sure you’re ready, pull your pants up ‘n’ all that. Now can I trust the two of you won’t get into any trouble down here?”

“You can trust me,” a man said.

“Well I sure hope so! I think folk’re too suspicious these days, don’t you? She’s just down the hallway, second cell to the right.”

Eris rose from her seat. Through the bars of her cell she saw Rook. His arm was in a sling. His black eye hadn’t healed over but, all in all, he looked better than when they last saw each other.

She pulled the tangled and matted hair from her eyes. “Rook,” she said. She was elated to see him but determined to seem unimpressed.

“Eris. You look nice,” he said. His eyes glanced around the dungeon. “So, this is the price of freedom.”

She folded her arms. “I am here at my own volition.”

“Do the guards know that?”

“Funny. And how is the temple? Are you enjoying eating oats and reading scriptures?”

He leaned against the wall. “Their facilities do lack certain accoutrements. Cell bars, for example, and they haven’t a leaky ceiling in the whole place. Actually I shouldn’t joke too much because I’ve had to share my room with a troll for the last week and I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep again.”

“A troll?”

“He’s on pilgrimage.”

“I see. There are vacancies here, I am told. Booking a room is as easy as raising your hand in violence. Your left hand,” she added.

“There’s plenty time to end up in dungeons later in life, no need to seize this opportunity now. I’ll stay put until I’m forced to move.” He paused. “And how is confinement?”

“They have treated me well enough. There has been plenty of food, example. It is true that the premises are hardly prepossessing, as you say, but it sounds like I have escaped no worse off than you in the long term.”

“I thought you'd be furious. When I heard you were here—you refused to ask others for help, but rot contentedly in a jail?”

“Do I look to you 'rotten?' And I refused to beg like a stray pup at the feet of priests. The night’s watch, however, came to me.” Rook did not seem to appreciate this subtle distinction. “Speaking of strays, how is Zydnus? Is he yet living?”

“When I saw him I didn’t think to ask.” Rook sighed. “He’s looking to hunt down the dwarf.”

“I will go with him.”

“Not to break bad news, but you’re in a cell.”

“They will let me out presently, and if they do not, I will melt my way through the bars.”

“Look—I can’t come.”

“So?”

“I don’t think you should go, either.”

“Why? Because I will not have you to protect me? Why, Rook, I did not know you cared about me so deeply!”

“By no means are my motives so altruistic—only, when they kill you, our replacement sorceress won’t be nearly so beautiful. Therefore it’s in both our interests for you to stay.”

“You needn’t fret, for they shan’t kill me.”

“They beat us.”

“They caught us off-guard. That will not happen again.”

He was at the bars now, leaning against them with his one good arm and looking into her eyes. The expression on his face was most curious. He chose his words carefully:

“If we would track them down, we should at least be at full strength.”

“We will not be at full strength until we have tracked them down, and if we wait until your wing is unclipped they may be gone. They may be gone already, in fact. And I am repulsed by the suggestion that I need you as a bodyguard; I will go, not least because I wish to recover my things. You cannot persuade me otherwise.”

“It’s your decision,” he said after a long pause. “Be careful, okay?” He turned.

Eris watched as he went, but called back out to him: “How is your arm?”

“Ask again when you get back,” he called back.

There was something about talking to this man that nearly always resulted in her feeling flustered. As much as she enjoyed his flattery she doubted very much his attestation was true, and the attempt to control her, to tell her what to do, still left her angry. Yet even so—but it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

And now she was ready to be let out of her cell.

“Hey! I thought you were in prison!”

They were outside a small house, small even by local standards, in Kaimas’ suburban central ring. Zydnus was there, along with two humans—a man and a woman.

“And I thought you were an adventurer, though you seem to have spent the last two weeks safely in the care of your mother’s arms.”

“Shows what you know! I don’t even have a mom, I’ve been staying with my dad!” He gave a child’s sneer. “Rook told you then, huh? Fine. This is Guinevere and Alp. They’re coming with us.”

Eris’ eyes panned from Guinevere and to Alp.

Guinevere was a lean and savage looking monstrosity with wild bleached-blonde braids. She balanced a battle axe over her shoulder on its heft. She wasn’t especially tall and no doubt Rook could subdue her with ease, but she was intimidating for what she was—that was, a lunatic, who might be prone to wield that axe in unpredictable ways. She was older than Eris, eighteen or nineteen.

She bowed.

“It’s a hon-or ta meat yoo,” she said. Her accent was thick with glottal stops, something Northern and barbaric.

Eris frowned.

Alp was less fearsome. He was short, unimposing, and hesitant to make eye contact. He had a bronze shield on his back and a sword on his hip. Fifteen, maybe.

“Hi,” he said.

“Very well,” Eris said. “No doubt there will be plenty more to take, in addition to what we have to reclaim.”

“Yeah! Now, we split everything equal, all right? But a few things are off-limits: my gold, my bacon, my dagger, and above all, my lantern! Got it?”

“Ieh teyk only whaet Ieh neeyd, master haff-ling,” Guinevere coughed.

Alp nodded submissively.

“They claimed the bounty on Erkent's corpse, did they not? Thus they have come to town? Surely they have sold the lantern by now?” Eris said.

“No way. That was a real Kem-Karwene bronze-heart mountainstone lantern, nobody would sell something like that. Nuh-uh! Especially not a dwarf! They’ll have it, all right!”

“Very well. For my part, I seek to reclaim a bracelet that was taken from me, as well as a necklace. Another companion of ours lost his sword and an heirloom dagger, and if indeed we recover everything, then I should like to take and sell the Dwarven sword we found. The rest we may split. Presuming the two of you do not intend to sit idly by while we do the work.”

Guinevere lifted her axe. “Keeypin’ the land sayf frum brigunds? Ieh’d do et fur free.”

“Aye,” Alp said, “you can count on me.”

“…I do not suppose you know where we’re looking for the dwarf and his band?”

“Why,” Zyd said, “didn’t you do any research?” He was grinning, egging her on.

“Unlike you, my injuries required recovery. I have been indisposed,” Eris said.

“Well unlike you I’ve been doing work for the good of the party. I asked around, and I found out some bandits have been ambushing travelers to the north for weeks. Weeks! That means they’ve got somewhere to stash the stuff they’ve been stealing, and I think it’s in an old dwarven watchtower. I used to see it all the time as a kid! Up in the hills, north of the mines!”

“I do recall they claimed to be ‘adventurers’ like us. It may not be the same group.”

“No, no, no, no! I heard! I heard there was a dwarf that a hunter saw up near the tower all by himself! What would a dwarf be doing by the tower by himself? Huh? It’s him!”

“Because they are such rare creatures, dwarves, so elusive. Why—we are nearly one hundred miles from Kem-Karwene! To see a dwarf, by a dwarven watchtower—“

“Eh seys et’s them, et must be them!” Guinevere said, “I trust master Sid, ‘ow far ‘s et?”

The languages of Esenia were all closely related and easy to learn with practice, but most spoke Kathar as the tongue of commerce and diplomacy. Most spoke it well. As a native Kathar, to encounter one who seemed not to speak it at all, Eris was stunned.

“I trust Zyd,” Alp said.

“See! So there, let’s go!” Zyd said.

That was even more stunning—that anyone would trust Zyd to do anything right. Whether or not they found these bandits at this watchtower, though, she supposed it was a likely place to have some degree of plunder, and anything was better than the nothing she found herself with for the time being.

“Fine. Take us there,” Eris said.