The horse-drawn wagon bounced on the uneven stones of an ancient cobbled road. This road was in such a state that it clearly had only recently been reclaimed from nature.

Accompanying the wagon was a train of other wagons, each holding supplies or people, and on either side of the caravan marched a column of lightly armored guards equipped with the standard spear.

Another bump in the road caused the wagon to bounce.

Eliza shifted her sore behind that had taken a beating from this gods forsaken road. Her movement adjusted the chains that linked her two feet together, making themselves known as they clattered against her cage's cold, metal bottom.

Having been moved by the cart bouncing on the road, Eliza dragged herself back to her corner of the cell, a simple act made difficult by the rope tied around her knees and wrists.

Upon reaching her corner, Eliza leaned her head against the corner bar of the cage, causing her long straight black hair to drape over the shoulder of her grey cotton tunic. Idly she watched the forest treeline as it passed by, her hands gently fiddling with the small pendant that hung around her neck.

An extensive range of mountains stretched across the horizon through the canopy that overshadowed the forest below. Slowly sinking behind them were the three suns marking the onset of evening.

Her ears picked up on the whispering of her fellow prisoners despite the small radius the group had given her. Keeping her eyes looking out towards the forest, she began to listen in.

“I know she’s from the empire, but what could a child have done to be sent to Grimhold?” An older woman asked, intrigued, her brownish hair and facial features marking her to be from the city-state Kingdoms.

A nearby man snorted, one Eliza already knew as Caldren. He was bi-racial, sharing features from the Citystate Kingdoms and The Empire, among those a mix of black and brown hair. However, that difference was enough that he could sit amongst them while Eliza had been relegated to her corner.

Caldren began to speak, his every word grating on Eliza’s nerves, “Her? From what I could gather, she is nothing more than a traitor who consorted with demons.” In the corner of her eyes, Eliza saw Caldren glance at her with a slight smirk on his face. Eliza continued to appear like she was ignoring all of them intentionally.

The woman's voice rose in astonishment intermixed with horror, “A girl as young as her consorting with Demons? She looks to be barely halfway through her teenage years!?”

“More likely, it was her parents who did it, and she followed along. It's rare, but it does happen. Either way, the punishment in the empire for that is death; she must’ve gotten past the border somehow.” Caldren said.

Eliza flinched, reflexively tightening her fists around the pendant. The words cut into her, opening up a wound she had barely closed if even that. Anguish intermixed with guilt rose in her chest, and, closing her eyes, Eliza swallowed back the rising lump in her throat and took a deep breath. She focused her mind's eye on the face of the man who had betrayed her family, and it didn’t take long for the anger to overpower all other emotions.

Feeling in control, she turned her head and glared at Caldren with her gray eyes.

Upon seeing her reaction, a slight sneer came onto Caldrens face. He raised a challenging eyebrow, daring her to do something about it.

Eliza grunted at him through the gag in her mouth and turned away, frustrated that she couldn’t do anything to wipe the smirk off his face. He had the gall to call her a traitor? It was due to him that they had been captured in the first place! And yet he was running his mouth while she had to listen. She couldn’t do anything because while She was overly tied up like she was, the guards had settled with only chains around the wrists and ankles of the other prisoners.

“Quite ironic, to flee the empire to escape execution due to working with demons only to be captured and conscripted to fight demons until she dies. Unfortunately, if she wasn’t from the empire, my heart might’ve been moved to be sympathetic, but alas, it's a fate we all share.” A gruff burly man said with a self-pitying smile on his lips.

The mood in the cart became somber.

“You think none of us will get out?” The lady asked.

The man snorted derisively, “Have you ever heard of anyone leaving Grimhold? They send new people weekly, but no one has ever seen anyone but the guards come back.”

Just then, a loud clanging sound reverberated off one of the cell bars, drawing the inhabitants' attention. The perpetrator was one of the guards tapping his spear against the bars, who looked at them all with an unamused look in his eyes.

This guard in question was a dark red, scaly-skinned Kobold who stood a little under the height of an average man. He made up for his lack of size with a lean and muscular build. To complement his appearance, he had three long scars that ran from the top of his head down the right side of his face over his yellow, serpentine eye. Eliza was unfamiliar with Kobolds as a people, but the captain looked reasonably young.

The captain of the caravan, Eliza, realized.

“Cease your prattling prisoner cart four. This is your final warning.” He snarled out of the side of his snout before looking towards the nearest guard.

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“ Keep an eye on them, Private Tom. I don’t want to hear anything more from cart four while we’re en route.” The captain said, looking the private in the eyes as they walked. The Private was a skinny, Brown-haired human male that looked like he had only recently entered adulthood. Tom positively withered under The Captain's gaze but still spoke up.

“B-But sir! I didn’t hear them say anything,” The Private stammered out.

“Then listen and pay attention. That’s your job. So you better do it. Am I understood?” The Captain sternly said.”

“Y-Yes, sir.” The private once again stammered out, giving the captain a salute.

The Captain acknowledged the salute with a nod and walked to the end of the Caravan.

The cart fell into an uncomfortable silence, that is, for everyone but Eliza. Grateful for the quiet, Eliza returned her gaze to the forest.

A short time later, The Captain called for the caravan to make camp and the first wagon pulled into a clearing off the side of the road. The clearing was well used, as evidenced by most of the grass still being somewhat flattened by the previous group that had passed through.

Quickly the guards went about setting up camp. It didn’t take long for them to have most of the essentials in place, and it was at that point when a Dwarf guard approached and, after lowering the back wall of the wagon, unlocked the door to cart fours cage,

“All of ya out of there. We don’t got all night for ya to dilly dally.” The guard said in a deep gruff voice. Unlike the other guards, this one had chosen a small battle-ax as his weapon.

Obediently the group shuffled out of the cage, already used to the whole process. Eliza, using the bars to pull herself up, Half shuffled, half waddled her way through the cage to the open door. The guard patiently watched her as she jumped down. Her landing was awkward, forcing her to use her hands to steady herself against the ground before slowly standing up.

Several guards cautiously watched her every movement, almost certainly because she had already tried to escape once before. Eliza began to make her way towards the line where the other prisoners had assembled, a slow process due to the rope binding her legs together, the price for her escape attempt. The dwarf guard followed behind her, probably in charge of making sure she didn’t try anything.

By the time Eliza got in line, the servants of the guards were already halfway down the line passing out food.

From where she was, Eliza could see that dinner was an unappetizing slop.

Nevertheless, her stomach still grumbled. She had been left without food since her escape attempt the day prior, and anything to quell the aching pain in her stomach would do at this point.

Finally, the two servants reached her, and the dwarf guard took the proffered bowl of slop for Eliza. Then, grabbing Eliza’s right arm by the elbow, he began to pull Eliza away from the prisoners who had sat down to eat. As she struggled to keep up with the Dwarf, she heard one of the servants mutter under his breath, “Imperial scum.” Quickly glancing into the bowl of a nearby prisoner and her own, she could tell that she had noticeably less than them.

The Dwarf led her to an open area where she was clearly in sight of everyone. He then slowly sat her down and lowered the gag from her mouth.

He looked down into the bowl with furrowed brows as he sat back, “this sure ain’t enough to feed a growing lass like yerself.” Sighing, he scooped some of the slop and raised it toward Eliza’s mouth.

Eliza could feel the eyes of many watching her as she stared at the hovering spoon. A grimace came to her face, appalled by the thought of being hand-fed by one of her captors. The fact that it was in front of the whole camp made it all the more embarrassing. She glared at the Dwarf.

“I can feed myself.” She said flatly in the common tongue.

The Dwarf chuckled as he placed the spoon back into the bowl, “ Not after yer escape attempt, lass. The poor lad ya bashed over the head with yer bowl last night still has a pounding headache. Orders are not to untie you and give you nothing you could conceivably use as a weapon.”

Eliza looked pointedly down at her bound legs, “What could I possibly do?” She asked the Dwarf.

He shrugged, “Orders are orders.” A small smile peeked out of his chest-length beard. “On a personal sidenote, yer hit was mighty fine, misguided as it was. I wish me son had half the spirit that ye do.” He said, a small chuckle escaping his lips. He once again held up the spoon to Eliza.

Eliza eyed the spoon morosely, feeling another painful stab in her gut. Did they think her pathetic enough to succumb to this pressure? She was a proud soldier from the Silverian Empire, and they would have to do more than-

“We’ll if ya ain’t going to eat, I sure won’t mind extra rations.” He said with a shrug as he started to pull the spoon away.

Before she could stop herself, Eliza lunged forward and clamped down on the spoon. The Dwarf quickly pulled his arm back, taking the spoon out of Eliza’s mouth. Eliza retreated at the same moment, the slop secured in her mouth. She quickly swallowed the bland slop and immediately felt the pain in her stomach lessen. Her eye’s met the Dwarf’s, who had a wry smile on his lips.

Eliza then realized what she had done, and her face quickly reddened. Mortified, she buried her face into her knees.

The Dwarf let out a slight cough, and Eliza raised her head to glare daggers at him. He had already prepared the next spoonful and held it out to Eliza, waiting with a grin on his face.

Seeing the next spoonful, Eliza’s stomach once again reminded her how hungry she was, and she sighed; this would be the longest dinner in her life.

The other prisoners had finished eating halfway through Eliza’s humiliating experience, and the guards took them to the side and forced them to do a variety of stretches and exercises. It wouldn’t do for them not to be in shape to fight demons after all.

Eliza looked and the people exercising with a bit of longing and then at the Dwarf guard, and he simply said, “No, we’re not that stupid.”

He scooped the last bit of slop onto the spoon and extended it toward her.

Eliza sighed as she forcefully swallowed back the last of the food. Right now, just about anything seemed better than having to suffer a moment later through this dinner. And exercise sounded nice after having been tied up and locked in a cage for so long.

The Dwarf packed up everything before dragging Eliza to her feet. At the same time, the rest of the prisoners seemed to finish their exercises, and they all met back up at the carts. The prisoners were then chained up and directed back into the cages. When it came to be Eliza’s turn, the Dwarf held out a hand, offering to help her into the cart.

Ignoring his gesture, Eliza reached up and latched onto one of the bars. She then kicked off the ground with her legs and, using her upper arm strength, pulled herself the rest of the way into the cart simultaneously. She landed awkwardly but managed to stabilize herself using her grip on the bar before shuffling back to her corner of the cage.

The guards locked the cages and then threw in a few pieces of cloth to serve as blankets. They then went about organizing a watch for the night.

Eliza picked up the blanket thrown near her and, after some shuffling around, managed to get it up around her shoulders. She leaned her head back against her preferred bar and closed her. Her hands found their way to her pendants as they did every night, and memories of her parents surfaced. Involuntarily her eyes began to water. What would they think about her now? Especially after having fallen so far?

A lump formed in her throat that she once again swallowed back. She took a deep shuddering breath of chilly night air to calm herself and clear her thoughts. Rather than worry about what her parents thought of her, it was more important that she survived. To survive and get revenge on the man who had framed her parents. That was the least she could do to restore their names.

Slowly, she drifted off to sleep.

In her dream, all that surrounded her was shrouded in dark shadows, and Eliza somehow knew. She was not alone. Her instincts screamed that someone, or something, was watching her. Eliza carefully scanned her surroundings to no avail; the shadows completely obscured whatever it was.

Then she heard a voice. It was a quiet and weak voice that seemed to be straining to speak, “...Help me.” It said, and then Eliza woke up.

Eliza sat up, drenched in a cold sweat, and looked around the dark clearing-turned-campsite.

Outside, a few guards patrolled the camp's boundaries with torches, but the night was quiet and uneventful other than the soft snoring from Caldren.

Her mind began to reflect on the dream, but before making any meaningful progress, she suddenly felt as if something was looking at her again. Slowly she surveyed her surroundings until she saw it. Standing just in the tree line, she could barely make out the form of a giant beast standing on two legs. And though she couldn’t see its eyes, she knew it was looking directly at her.

Instinctively she reached down towards her waist for the sword she always had with her, but, naturally, it wasn’t there. Panicked, Eliza wondered where her family's sword had gone when she finally remembered that it had been taken away from her when she had been captured.

Carefully she watched the beast that seemed to be content not to move until finally, a guard who was patrolling the perimeter with a torch came along. As sudden as the beast had arrived, it was long gone by the time the guard passed.

Slowly Eliza laid back down, and after a while, she fell back into a restless slumber. Though she never saw it again, she never could shake the feeling that it was still watching her.