10k word chapter, delivered after 0100 local time… again T_T

I hate when chapters grow that much longer than intended.

Small change:

-DeMorte’s mithril disk is in is a small ball of iron fillings inside his bone armor – which is now a cube of solid bone that the Histones are still holding on to. (Under the name DeMorte)

Note/Reminder:

-I kind of glossed over it, but DeMorte really went to town on his own body over the years and has not really stopped, just slowed down. Against mages it hardly matters, but for this chapter and into the future it will get more important… Also: although I have yet to have him figure out how to slow down aging, he is still taking notes on that type of thing.

I am curious to what you readers will think of this chapter… DeMorte spends most of it not learning people’s names.

Chapter 37: Visiting the Tower

“Maltiza! Not maltillta, maltiza!” the man insisted.

“Maltiza.” I repeated, trying to get the pronunciation right.

“Good, now with feeling: Mal-”

The door to our rather nice cell bounded open and exposed the iron gates beyond. Technically we could open or close it for the sake of our privacy, but the iron bars outside were a reminder of our current standing. The privacy would not even exist if not for the normal occupants.

The guard, one of many and with an unimportant name, started barking at us. “What in the name of the gods is going on here?!”

“Oh I was teaching little Isabella a few choice words from the old lands.”

“Shut your hole you Whiro worshiping trash, or I will give you another beating.”

Silence rained for a minute as both my cell-mate and I regarded the guard with unimpressed eyes. Whiro was the god of darkness, deceit, trickery and basically crime in general. There was rarely a temple dedicated to him and the temples dedicated to the whole pantheon typically tried to hide his statue away (luckily for them both the gods and his followers seemed to prefer this.)

The guard sneered in response and walked over to me first. “Does the killer whore have something to say? I heard you wanted a dick so bad you killed a man for NOT giving it to you.”

I kept my face dead neutral and did not let him get the pleasure of seeing me react.

He whipped around “As for Captain Blowhard’ over here I-” I stepped forward and knocked the guard on the head as hard as I could without killing him. Instantly the wards struck me and sent me to the floor as the wards ripped into me with electricity. I spent quite some time spasming on the floor before the pain finally stopped.

I recovered quickly, but that just meant that I was aware when the kicking started. At least they were not stupid enough to try anything else, I told them that the first man to actually get inside me would find that his manhood would be broken, along with his nose before the wards could do anything.

A small group tried last night, but in the space between my first blow and the wards striking, I do believe that I made 2 men infertile. The fact that they got shocked by the wards too meant that I could cast a small spell and shock them too. Between that and my abnormal physical strength I quickly caused a few broken… bones.

The rigorous shocking that the wards gave me were well worth such minor moment of domination, if only to teach everyone that the wards would not stop me if I wanted to kill them.

That said, I was in quite the situation and it was only getting worse by the day. As the kicking finally stopped I noticed that there was a Sister in the room treating the still unconscious guard. I tried not to shiver when I saw her. The friend, who had been the first and last among a few to kick me, sneered and spit on my face.

I made a neutral face, as if I was just walking down an average street and ignored the damp feeling on my cheek. The guard looked like he was about to start again before the Sister spoke up. “He needs rest, but he will be fine soon enough, he is just knocked out.” She turned to face me, “Her on the other hand…”

“Leave her Sister, the whore should keep the bruises as a reminder.” The guard who spat on me was doing all the talking as the others carried their companion out of the room. “She will hang in a few days as long as you Sisters keep your noses out of it.”

The Sister stood up to him and stared the guard straight in the eyes before speaking quietly enough that I had trouble hearing it when I was fairly close to them. “She supposedly infiltrated the Sisters with the intention to steal our secrets and I would very much like her to survive long enough to answer some questions. If you broke her ribs it will be hard for her to talk to the visitors we have coming later.”

I snorted and interrupted their whispering, “Please do not joke about that, he is nowhere near strong enough to break my bones that easily.” I stood up and casually stretched to prove my point.

The Sister and the guard stared at me before he ground out something about having to hit me harder next time. After that he simply left with the Sister, ordering us to: “Behave and keep talking to a minimum or else you will get beaten again.”

I watched the guards and the Sister depart and sneered, cleaning myself was functionally impossible in this place unless they allowed me to. Of course, I was not allowed such things as a second class magical criminal.

Ironically, while I being kept in the same prison tower that local nobility would be, if they were caught committing a crime, I was treated like common scum. If I was considered nobility I would be afforded all sorts of small luxuries to keep me happy in case the charges were proven false or otherwise dismissed, but instead it was like any prison I stayed in before, just with more open space and some furniture.

Naturally they knew nothing about me beyond what that traitorous servant told them and I used at least 4 different names while wandering around this city, none of which were Bella. I was Stella to them most of the time and occasionally Bastet when I was feeling board.

“Did that serve a purpose?” The man who I shared my confines with was a good enough scoundrel, for a pirate.

“It proved that the wards are tied into the individuals as much as anything else and they do not need to be ordered to attack if the individual is threatened.” That meant that if I was going to escape it would either have to be so quietly that they never noticed or when they moved me to be hung. The problem with the latter was the iron spikes that would be driven through my hands prior to removing me from the wards.

I was stronger now than I had ever been in my previous life, but I had no subordinates on the outside to help me escape this time around. That meant that between the spikes and the escort of mages that would be provided for security, I was dead unless I could find some way to sneak out.

All my spells were absolutely nullified if they lasted even the slightest bit of time. Attempting to heal my hands from being spiked with iron was a painful process and underlined the futility of it.

If I was fast enough I might be able to create a few germs or a small batch of nerve gas, but the shock spells would hit me too fast to do anything more than that. Considering the nature of those spells however, I had not experimented with them enough to confirm what would happen. I might kill everyone including myself if things went wrong.

I might be able to use a death spell, but only once since the wards would likely kill me in response. Other spells to escape would result in a good shock or, in case I did something serious, outright stun spells that would leave me incapacitated until one of the guards told the wards I could move again.

Thankfully the guards were not allowed to misuse that aspect of the wards, and I could still cast spells in such a state, but I hated the idea of being so helpless.

Stones, I could not even cultivate my mana in any form, including using Gía. I was practically a normal human inside these wards.

Even with my enhanced physical capabilities, I now confirmed that the option of knocking out the guards was impractical. With spells, Gía, and violence in general out the window, which was around 20 meters up in the air over a 2 meter deep trench, I was left with trickery and whatever I could cobble together from the room.

If I was forced to count the pirate as resource I unsure how he would help. I glanced over at him and opened my mouth, but he spoke up first. “No one from my crew is going to come get little Bella, we are on our own here.”

I did not blink at his correct use of my name, he had been trying to rhyme ‘Stella’ since he heard one of the guards call me it. I had introduced myself to a guard as ‘Teller’ a few moments before, but the pirate misheard it and made it into his own little game.

…I did not even remember what his stoning name was, but I might be forced to count on him.

“Never any honor among thieves,” I joked, “Do you have any ideas on how to get us out?” I was running out of options fast and I would even accept help from a stoning Nalk at this point.

The man stood up for the first time since he started teaching me his native curse, which apparently referenced a man who spent too much time with horses. The pirate was nearly 2 meters tall with muscles that attested to a mixed life of sailing and fighting that they would have impressed me even in my previous life. His bald head, unshaven beard, and piercing blue eyes only added to the appearance of someone who was a larger than life menace.

The fact that he had 10 circles worth of mana just made him that much more dangerous, despite being trapped in here like I was.

He walked over to the window and stared out of it. The fact that the so called window was around a third of a meter wide and barely larger than that in height, did not seem to bother him. It did offer a fairly good view of the city, but I could not see beyond the walls that surrounded the prison tower.

Prison Towers, or as the guards liked to call it, The Tower, kept people like me or the pirate in and left the walls around them kept others out. They were specially designed to hold magic wielding individuals against their will, although there was a big difference between the usual residents and the 2 of us.

A young noble sent to The Tower for a few days might get scared, but for someone who had broken out of such Prison Towers before, it was less intimidating for me… although I did have to deal with the fact that I had never broken out of one alone before.

“I see you are the dramatic type.” I offered, “Or do you just enjoy staring out windows while talking?”

There was a chuckle, “a bit of both, but I was thinking about the last time I was here.”

This stoning pirate had been here before? We were quite some distance from Kampus, the nearest ocean, and captured pirates were rarely transported beyond the port before they were executed. “You escaped?” I asked cautiously.

“I had help at that time, a good friend of mine stole the navigation charts from my crew, back when we had some… special items to sell. We had to hide them for a bit and got ambushed while on land, trying to arrange their sale.” He gave a deep, throaty, laugh at that point. “The maltizas managed to kill most everyone who knew how to navigate to the atoll, except me who they brought back here to torture.

“With the charts gone and most dead they got greedy and managed to break me out after a while. Got a new ship with my cut, but I do not have any big payday pulling those fools back for a second attempt.”

I frowned as I listened to his story, a few things did not add up. The first thing that came to mind was the amount of effort the crew would need to break him out of this place. Outlaws were, as a general rule, not driven to make that amount of effort for anyone. If you had a payout big enough, maybe, but with the risk of being executed when found? Even if he could buy a nice boat with his share, that was still a bit much “How?”

Without turning around he explained, “I took poison strong enough to nearly kill me and the Sister on duty here insisted on getting me to her temple,” I flinched, “to save my life. The people I stole from ‘encouraged’ this and in their hurry to keep me alive, sent a minimal force to escort me.”

“At which point your crew returned the favor from the time you were captured.” I finished. “How did you end up here a second time?”

“You know the port of Haereticus?” I nodded, the temple city was a byword for corruption and frequently changed hands based on who paid them best. It was also the center of a trade that sat on the mouth of one of the largest rivers on the Eastern continent. “Well I went there to do business and this pretty young lady heard I was a wanted man and well…” He looked back at me with a nearly shameless grin, “I thought the sparkles in her eyes were from an interest in me, not in my bounty.”

I was not sure how to react to that. I understood the pull of the human sex drive just fine, but I stopped letting my guard (completely) down around women a long time ago. They could be just as cruel and manipulative as any man, plus could distract me more easily.

I took a deep breath, “then, regrettably, it seems that neither of us have reason to expect someone on the outside to help.”

“You sure about that? I heard them say something about a friend of yours.”

I shook my head and grimaced, “I have no friends. I have acquaintances, associates, tools, and occasionally comrades, but no friends.” I walked over to one of the nicer chairs in the room and sat down. There was some basic furniture here, but only things that could not readily be broken by a mage throwing a fit. Most of it was made of decorative iron that I had a suspicion were donated by nobles or the families of the nobles who had been obligated to spend some time here.

“That is an incredibly depressing statement, Kella, for more than a few reasons. What about family?”

Friends made the best daggers to cut you from behind and family were like friends, except you tended to be more genetically predisposed not kill them. He was right though, I needed some tools by my side for cases like this.

Stones, in some –no, in many ways, I was lucky to get this far without people I could call tools at the least. I would have to fix that after this was over.

Between the Guilt and the fact that I was practically surrounded on all sides by possible Nalk players, including the pirate, I was hardly in a position to carve out another kingdom. There had been too many historical cases of inventive mages coming up with things like poisonous gas spells for me believe that I would last very long alone, regardless of my advantages. Sure I could unleash a few plagues and decimate society, but even if I survived the Guilt with my mind intact, I would still be alone…

It was rather funny actually, the last half of my previous life was me hating that I had to watch and wait for even the best of comrades like Osiris and his brother, to make sure that they drank the mead first. That all of my food was tasted in advance for poison. I needed people following me to make me into the power I was, but I hated those same people for making me see threats from every direction.

Heh.

I let the smile linger on my face for a moment as I realized that it took me getting locked up and looking death in the face for me to remember something so basic. That a King without followers was just a regular man.

“Did I say something funny?”

I shook my head and let the smile flee from my face as I spoke up and half lied. If there was anyone listening, I did not want them to know that particular truth… though the only person I knew was listening seemed to be oddly proud for some reason, though the feeling vanished before I could pursue it. “No and my family, unless they have been reincarnated and want to get revenge on me personally, will not be interfering.”

The pirate did not respond and I took the moment to think about the wards and how they were interconnected to the building. Since people were naturally lazy, there would be some place which was left with minimal ward interference. If I had to somehow tunnel through the floor to find it, then so be it, but there had to be some way out. Where did the wards not touch?

“How old are you girl?” I met the confused looking pirate in the eye and raise an eyebrow. “You go from being a friendly enough person to a brooding son of a caltrop-” my other eyebrow joined its twin “-in the briefest of moments. You keep looking around and analyzing everything a dozen times over and you are obviously paranoid.” He shook his head while staring at me “that is not what a teenage girl should be like.”

I let my eyebrows relax and shook my head. “Maybe I was a bandit chief in another life. The point is that we are on our own and I doubt that anyone is going to encourage them to let us out.”

“Nothing to bargain with?”

“I could only tell them one thing and they would not believe me if I did, so what would be the point? That is assuming that they would even be willing to negotiate.”

“That would depend on what you have I suppose.”

I kept quiet for a moment thinking it over, before sighing and shaking my head. If I even dropped a hint of what I knew he might betray me for an extra few days of life and leave me to be tortured. He did not strike me as desperate, but people changed when they stared their mortality in the face.

We stopped talking afterwards.

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Later that day I found out what the Sister was talking about when she said visitors were coming to speak to me.

It was a pair of Sisters I recognized and Dras of all people.

Seeing the Sisters made me think of what I saw under the temple and if I had not been mentally preparing myself, I would have shivered. Instead, I just raised a single eyebrow as they brought Dras in and asked why the tournament winner was here.

Apparently expecting more of a reaction, the Sisters prompted Dras by asking him if he recognized me. It was a really sad way to interrogate someone, they did not even shock me, but instead just alternated between asking me and Dras different questions. Most of which were aimed at establishing a connection between us.

Naturally, without my most noticeable feature, elf ears, Dras was especially confused as he could not place me. That I changed my face slightly was another bonus, although I spent less time on my vocal cords and he seemed to be recognizing something in me. Maybe it was my diction or attitude as he was frowning more and more as I kept talking.

Finally, one of the Sisters just shook her head and directly asked me why I healed him after the tournament.

I shook my head and explained, talking directly to Dras instead of the Sister who asked the question. “Your muscles do not match your physical ability. When I saw you fighting that day I wanted to observe your body to see if there was anything special about you.” I nodded towards my cell mate, “His muscles have developed differently because of his time at sea and I could list the differences if I wanted too, but your body just seemed a bit too strong for an average swordsman.”

Dras stared at me, with disbelieving eyes that kept returning to my ears. He thought he recognized me, but he could not believe the differences between my old self and my current self. There would be no official connection linking me to Bella, besides our names and… I stopped moving for a fraction of a moment. Even blood magic could not connect me to anyone from Entrials anymore, but Dras could.

Dras’ body had been changed by me based off of the changes to my own body and while we were not the exact same, I still had some changes in my body that I had not figured out how to improve on and they would be the same as Dras. That would be enough of a connection that any major accusations against me could travel back to the kingdom of Zootriofi and cause some damage.

They were not my responsibility, but I did not want to be theirs either.

I looked him in the eyes and silently willed him to leave, to get out of this stoning city as fast as he could, but no matter how much I wanted him to understand, Dras could not read minds. Not even magic could do that.

“I, I swear I have met you before, but I cannot place it. We could just be remembering when I saw you after the tournament thought. Is anything wrong with my body? A mender from my village told me not to talk about it, but to try and avoid healers because I was special, for some reason.” Stupid graveborn hardly saw the rest of the room watching our interactions, plus he did not listen to what I really said back then.

Though there was something else that bothered me and I could not hiding my surprise at it so I used it to my advantage instead. “You still have not realized it?”

He blinked and shot a questioning glance at one of the sisters, “What?”

“Your mana pathways are healing. You will not even be a 3 circle mage, but you are not a no longer a burnout.”

There was almost a tangible movement in the air as the room seemed to collectively breathe in sharply at that announcement. The pirate, Dras, and the guards in the room all stared at me in shock while the Sisters just exchanged a look. I shrugged before continuing, “I am not sure if you will ever be able to call yourself a full mage, but it is obvious that your pathways are still in the process of healing and that means that your burnout is essentially cured, somehow.”

“You had nothing to do with this?” One of the Sisters probed, looking like she had just caught me in a lie. It took me a second to realize that she had not figured out how someone would know he was a burnout if his pathways were healing. I could not bother to explain though without looking like I was justifying.

I turned to look her dead in the eye and made sure she knew how absurd I thought she was being. “I have no idea what causes burnout so it would be rather hard for me to cure it. Being thrown down a zugoran mine would likely be to cure burnout that most anything I can do.”

Dras looked uncomfortable with that idea and I took the opportunity to ask him if that actually happened, however, the Sisters suddenly exchanged looks and the one who kept quiet earlier spoke up. “Sister Delos, would you kindly take Drasiedi back outside, I do not think that he will be able to help us with the rest of this conversation.

Dras was escorted out of the room and I wondered if the real interrogation was about to begin.

A skilled interrogator knows just how much pain and pressure to apply as well as how to apply it. The Sisters, though they might have practiced Soul Magic, the insane graveborns, were not used to doing what had to be done to get answers.

Unfortunately, there was another pair who gave me the idea that they were much better interrogators. The pirate, who was watching my reactions like a grok, and one of the higher ranked guards, who had accompanied the Sisters up to my cell.

I had a feeling that those 2 were experts in catching liars and the fact that they were watching me so closely was both annoying and unnerving to say the least. I could suppress my reactions to an extent, but I knew enough about questioning people to realize that suppressing your reactions was a different type of reaction.

Neither of them actually said anything, but that could change at any moment.

The questions however, turned to why I infiltrated the Sisters, or why I left on that night in particular. What they did not seem to realize was that I actually seceded, they all assumed that I failed and left that night because I feared my “loss of purity” being discovered.

I wanted to laugh at them so much that I actually started wondering if this was a different type of interrogation technique. Honestly the idea of them asking what amounted to idiotic questions and random probing to make me feel comfortable, while they watched my reactions, was more comforting than dealing with fools.

As the ancient saying when: nothing was fool-proof because fools were so ingenious.

In the end though, I started to wonder if this was less a planned interrogation than the Sisters pushing a pit too hard to be the ones to make me crack. They were Healers (and stoning Soul Magic practitioners) and not accustomed to such things, but the guards never said a word. That the questioning continued for the rest of the day without interruption by anyone else screamed politics more than anything.

Eventually though, everything ends, and as the sun set outside the window the Sisters seem to give up for the night.

Sister Defool, or whoever she was, regarded me with hate in her eyes and turned to the other one, shaking her head before looking back at me. “We have more than a few more questions for you to answer and we have requested a stay of execution, but you only have an extra few days. I suggest you be prepared to answer our questions tomorrow.”

So I had a few more days at least, but only a day and a half before my mind finished merging and only 5 days after that before I was stuck in this body.

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I did not sleep well that night.

There were no outright nightmares, but I did have my old dream of shadows. It was always the same dream too, shadows of sorts that seemed to assault me from all sides, trying to control me and push me in one direction or another. It had literally been a lifetime since I had that dream in particular.

I was never sure what the shadows were, but I knew that I could not kill them and that was enough to make me hate them. In the dream I commanded them to stop pushing me and the shadows just rippled before going back to attacking me. They all wanted to own me, I knew that much, to control who I was.

Waking up from that particular dream was always a relief. Today though it woke me up a bit early and as a result I was fully awake well before dawn.

I walked over to open up the single window to open up the shutters and it briefly occurred to me that this thing was a suicide hazard, before I realized that it was meant to be one.

Only guilty people killed themselves and all that nonsense.

I shook my head quietly as I opened the shutters and looked out onto the still sleeping city. The night air helped banish the old dream. Oddly enough, I recognized the time I woke up instinctually by the darkness of the night sky. It was the iron call, the period immediately preceding the blood call.

It was easy to understand their names once you realized that they were named for their value in ambushing someone. Specifically, it was the perfect time to make a night attack as the night guards were near the ends of their shift and everyone else was still asleep. That the period following this was the blood call was no accident.

Of course that was partly because I named the 2 back when I was trying to write that book on tactics, which, come to think, of it that was a rather odd endeavor. Particularly since I knew things like when to attack from experience and had never bothered to explain ‘why’ after the fact.

Not that it mattered in the end, the books I wrote towards the end of my life were as much to keep myself busy as they were impulses that some of my advisors agreed with.

I checked on my cell mate and confirmed that he was still asleep before turning towards the wooden door as I decided to annoy the night guards outside it. If I was not feeling the best and it would be good stress relief after having that dream again.

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Although I did wonder how far I could go without pushing them too far. After all, if they actually managed to knocked me out there would be very little that I could do to defend myself.

When I opened the wooden door out to the hall, I found that one of the guards had already in a bit of trouble. There were a pair of them, but only one looked at me after I opened the door. His friend was groaning face down on a card table.

“Good morning! What is wrong, too much liquor?” I asked, deliberately making my voice bright and cheerful. I was not particularly a morning or evening person, but I knew from experience the effect that acting like one had on others and took the opportunity to enjoy it.

A louder groan greeted me as the guard whose face was down looked up and tried to glare at me despite his pale face. The other spoke up for him, “It is too early in the morning for a whore, ask your booty plunderer.”

I ignored him and looked at his friend, confirming that he was holding his stomach. I started making bubbling sounds and watched as he turned even paler than before. Walking over to the iron bars I leaned on them as I talked liked I had nothing to worry about, “You people keep calling me a whore, but you could afford me if I was one. Is that why you keep pretending to be interested?”

The healthier guard stood up and strode over to the iron bars that separated us, though he stayed out of reach. “Are you actually admitting that you are ugly?”

I smirked, “I made sure that I am more hard muscle than soft flesh, that way I could make sure that no fools got too friendly.”

“Yet,” he stepped closer, “you went and killed that mage for getting too friendly did you not? Or was it that you wanted him to get friendly and he refused?”

I sighed, losing my smile for a minute, it was amazing how literally every single guard wanted to make a joke about that. There were usually some guards who only did the bare minimum according to the rules, but I could not seem to find them. Maybe they were all reserved for the snot-nosed noble kids.

“Why would you kill a mage inside their own wards, something that is almost always done with poison, only to sit around until the wards catch you? Plus, I still had business with the man and regardless of what you think of that business, you should still understand the stupidity of killing him

He stepped within arm’s reach and I had to resist the urge to pull him into the bars. Not only would the shock from the wards likely continue until I was nearly dead, but there was no point as it took both the guards to unlock the gate next to me. “Who knows what goes through the mind of a murderess?”

I gave him a disappointed look and made a long string of bubbling sounds that had his friend cursing and scrambling for the room’s chamber pot.

I chuckled as the healthier guard yelled at him, “Gods above man, take it to the next room!” I actually laughed when he added “already stank the place up before they emptied the last one,” under his breath. The other man quickly shuffled off, but

“Normally I would offer to help, but I am a bit tied up right now, even if you cannot see the rope, though” I paused with a curious look on my face, “I did not notice the smell because you always smell that bad.”

“You vile little slut when-”

I realized at that moment, that the word slut had a surprising history of making me do something I would normally call stupid. It had happened in my previous life too, but it never affected me like it did after I became female.

Deliberately channeling my Gía to allow me to grab his jaw. Naturally the wards objected to this a fair bit and delivered a nasty bolt of electricity that would definitely leave major burns if I let it continue too long.

Keeping that in mind, I suffered it just long enough to make my point and stopped using my Gía. The guard in question collapsed on the ground coughing and gasping for air. I was in better shape partly because of my Gía and partly because I was being used to shock spell by now.

That said, I still had to deal with the after effects of the electricity as my muscles continued to spasm and I found that both my hands were gripped fairly tightly. Fortunately for the guard, I did not break his jaw in doing so, but I still made quite the impact. After dislodging that hand I noticed that I made a major mistake in not dealing with the other hand first, as it was still gripping the iron when I lost my temper.

I felt my flesh rip and tears as I slowly released my grip on the iron. My hands had been burned and then it cooled while it was gripped around the bars, so it was an extremely unpleasant experience.

Surprisingly, the smell was worse than the pain as it reminded me of when I died. I also found myself suddenly appreciating how nice it had been to be able to heal my own wounds. The fact that I could not heal inside the wards annoyed me even more than the burn hurt.

Then I saw the iron. The bars were not that thick and since they were made of iron they naturally could not be connected to the wards. While I was letting the fool get electrocuted and concentrating on not accidentally killing him with my Gía enhanced strength, I used that same strength to bend the bars in my other hand.

Between that and the guard being nearly knocked out by the wards themselves, no one noticed. The wards simply did what they were designed to do and did not care if the guard was hurt in the process. I could not even shake my head in disbelief as I knew this kind of thing happened all too often when specialized prisons only saw the fairly well-mannered or absolutely insane. No noble would risk such a method to try to escape, even if they could withstand the pain, they were safer bribing their way out of trouble.

I on the other hand, had nothing to lose and quickly tore at my robe for some cloth to wrap my burned hand. It hurt horribly, but I was too ecstatic to care. If this worked I would have a very small window to run like Gorith himself was coming for my soul.

I wrapped my arm around through as many bars as I could and flooded it with Gía for just long enough to bend the bars.

After I recovered from the shock, which was even more intense than the previous one, I realized that I only managed to bend about a 10cm hole. I only had to slip out sideways, but even then that was a bit small, so I repeated the process on the other side, taking the time to make sure that I was touching the guard again as I did so.

He had been starting to wake up, but the shock put him back on the ground. It would not work for long, but all I needed was the wider opening to slip out. The wards registered attacks, they registered magic, but what I was doing slipped right by them.

I strained and slowly slipped through the now bent bars. I thought briefly about the pirate as I did so, but what I needed right now was speed.

There would only be around 30-40 guards in the building right now as it was almost empty of occupants. Of those I tried to remember the layout from what I saw when I was brought in. The pirate had explained some of it, but I only paid attention to the broad strokes.

The first 2 floors were maned guard posts and storage areas, with the next 2 floors being sleeping arrangements for the guards, followed by the Tower’s servants floor, 2 floors for nobles servants and the floors above that were for us magic wielding prisoners.

I was on the 8th floor, so I could likely get down to the 5th without too much trouble, due to both the odd hour and the lack of inhabitants. However, once on the 5th floor the servants would be waking up soon enough, so it was anyone’s guess if I was going to get caught there. If I got past that… I knew that there were several floors with windows, maybe I could get down to the second or

Oh and if I happened to use Gía, or any other magic outside my cell, the wards would likely figure out who I was and shock me into either unconsciousness or death.

For now though, I finished slipping through the bars and grabbed 1 of the 2 lit torches off the wall before I sprinted towards where I knew the stairs were. When I got there I found a closed door and realized, to my shock, that the door handle was made of brass and had mana from the wards running through it.

I cursed and tried to look at the ward. I could not pick through it for a few reasons, starting with the fact that I was only mediocre at breaking into wards and ending with the fact that I would have to use magic to do that. That said, I could at least extend my mana towards it and try to test what I needed to pass it.

The wards reacted to mana use, not its gathering, and not as I gently pressed it to the wards. I poked at it and quickly tried to find out if it was tied to an external item, like a magical device in the shape of a key, or… an internal list, like those of a certain blood.

I grimaced and turned back towards my cell, I needed the guard’s hand. I quickly arrived and found the guard trying to come back around so I gently hugged his neck and cut off the flow of oxygen until he passed out again. After that I leveraged him over my shoulder and took off, vaguely remembering that accidentally burning him with the torch was a good way to wake up.

I reached the door and watched with my mana like I had before as just placing the guard’s hand on the handle removed the danger. Then came the stairs though…

Not long after I was jogging down the hallway of the 6th floor as fast as I could, but this was testing my endurance. The graveborn on my back weighed more than me and I was hungry from the lack of good food recently. Not to mention that I had to be very careful on the stairs.

If I ever build a prison, I thought, I will test it periodically to make it harder to escape. This place is far too dependent on wards, but for now, for me, that is a good thing.

I went down the stairs and paused at the entrance to the fifth floor to listen for movement. Most servants got up at the blood call, but a few naturally woke up earlier and those were the ones I had to be careful about.

I carefully started to make my way through the floor when I heard one of the doors ahead of me open. Not worrying about whose room they were I used the guard’s hand to try several doors. One finally opened and I ducked inside for just long enough to let the sounds pass by. The room I was in was currently empty, but that was hardly surprising given how empty this entire place was.

How many servants did they even have here? I certainly had not seen many.

I went back out into the hallway after a moment and slipped further down the hall, but I heard what sounded like a half-drunk guard arguing with someone who sounded like a woman near the stairs and found myself pressed against a surprisingly warm room.

Knowing that I would have to wait for the guard and whoever he was arguing with to leave and with vague images of food in my head I ducked into the room.

I barely closed the door before I dumped the unconscious guard against it. Graveborn was making my shoulder stoning sore.

It was not some kitchen area was in some type of cleaning room, with heating runes carved into the walls and a few empty buckets and I felt heavy amounts of magic coming from the walls near them. I did not have time to check them, but based on the sheets that were folded nearby, I would guess that the magic near the wall involved moving water.

As for why this place was on the fifth floor and not the first, which would make it easier to move water… I had no idea. People did not always make sense and it might have just been here because it was the servant’s floor.

In any case, I was running out of time fast. I had gotten here quickly enough, but I could not count on that guard’s stomach keeping him near a chamber pot forever. That said, I saw the tiny window’s outline and my mind instantly went to work.

Sheets, window, and I needed a counter-weight – the guard.

First though, I opened the cover on the window and poked my head out to check for guards patrolling around the building. I was on the opposite side of the front gate though and the walls were, like the rest of this place, more dependent on the wards than the guards. It looked like there was a pair of guards at each corner of the wall, but I might have been wrong, all that mattered to me was how much time I had left.

I tied one end around the guard’s chest to distribute the weight and made sure that he was still out like a candle before I started to work towards the end of the sheet I used. At which point, I discovered that these were not sheets, but curtains.

I did understand why these were here though, any nobles who were trapped in this place would likely try to cover the otherwise barren walls to forget their surroundings.

As I tied the ends together I felt a brief flash of guilt that I had not brought the pirate along as a seaman would be a lot of help with knots, but it hardly mattered right now. I wanted out of here and if I had to jump out then so be it.

More knots followed and I only paused to make sure that the torch was away from the window. The light would still attract attention, but a few curtains hanging out the side of the building would too, the key was to keep attention to a minimum for just long enough for me to get outside the wards.

I checked outside again and confirmed that no guards could see me before I started shoving the curtains out the small window. It would not be a comfortable fit, but I confirmed that I could get my whole body through.

That said, what I did next was more falling than climbing down. I only moved so fast though and I deliberately lowered myself further and further down.

When I reached the third floor window though, I felt my knot slip and froze for a moment. I tied it in a hurry and now I was about to pay the price.

The knot near the top of my makeshift rope gave out and I fell. I missed the 3rd floor window, but my arm caught the 2nd floor window and arrested my fall… at the cost of dislocating my shoulder and slamming me into the side of the tower, knocking the wind out of me before my hand slipped off the ledge.

I fell from the second floor and slammed into ground that sloped into the trench around the building. I somehow managed to keep from twisting my ankle or breaking my leg, but when I finally stopped moving I found my head spinning and my ribs bruised.

The remainder of the curtains quickly fell over me and I tried to recover as quickly as possible, though that was not saying much.

I ignored my shoulder as best I could and stumbled along swearing very quietly as I realized the amount of night soil I had fallen in. I really disliked that, but I moved on. Between the angle of the trench and fact that it was not even the twilight of blood call yet, I could move around completely unseen to the front gate.

There I saw the final piece of my escape. They were loading up a night soil wagon. I had just planned to try rushing a wall or the gate itself if they were not looking, but that would do as well. I had no idea what defenses were placed to stop me from simply jumping over them with Gía, but I had better odd of surviving that than a hanging.

The guards were yelling at the night soil men to get out already because of the smell and were practically waving their torches in front of their faces, as if that would ward off the smell.

I was beyond thinking at this stage, it was in the timing and my body knew it better than me. Smell was not an issue because of the wagon, even covered like it was the stench leaked out. I was barefoot so I only really had to worry about the sound my slightly wet robe could make and if the contents of the large copper ball in the back of the wagon sloshed when I got in.

Thought was useless though, I moved by instinct. Between the time that the guards turned away from the night soil men, after the first one got in the driving area of the wagon to start yelling at the mules, I was out of the trench.

When the second man started to get on the wagon I was quietly opening up the back as the 4 men nearby were all turned away.

It had been a very long time since I was this desperate, but I could practically see the hangman so I did not hesitate to take a silent, but deep breath. The stench burned my lungs and made me want to gag, but I was just far enough away from the opening to keep from doing that.

Then I slid in, burrowing into the night soil wagon without further thought. I also made sure to move as close to the wall of the container as possible, ignoring both my screaming lungs and my burning shoulder. It was still evening, but if someone looked too closely I could still get caught.

I had both trained and modified my heart and lungs to be more efficient, but this was a disgustingly new experience so I tried to concentrated on making my air last as long as possible. To that extent even I covered my nose using the rags that covered my burned fingers. I had no plans to breath, but I would rather keep the smell out of my nose all the same.

The wagon started moving forward and even if I could breathe in this filth, I would have held my breath. I was close, but this was all completely spur of the moment and I had no faith that I would not be caught. There were several calls and I felt the wagon stop.

In my head I started planning for what I could do. If I was close enough to the gates I might be able to rush out before-

Then someone got on the wagon and I saw the hatch open. Someone stuck a long pole in stirred up the contents in the center of the container of sludge. Were they checking for me? I tensed up and started reaching for my Gía before someone complained about the stench and the person who must have been holding to pole shouted that is was free to go.

I saw the hatch close and felt the wagon rock a moment later, along with the unmistakable rumble of the gates, I felt hope grip me for a fraction of a moment before I squashed it.

I was not free yet.

I did not move, did not breath, and did not ever pray as the wagon slowly moved. I would need to breathe soon, but I kept dead still until I heard the gate start to move again, this time on the other side of the wagon.

The wagon rumbled on for a few moments and I really started to mentally celebrate before a nearby bell started to sound. I was not sure what it meant, but I guessed that it was the warning that I had escaped.

Not wanting to stay anywhere near those infernal wards and knowing that I had next to no time before they would start calling out mages to track me down, I lunged at the back hatch of the container.

A moment later I was using my Gía and throwing myself out of the wagon to cleaner air. I ignored the shouts of surprise from the nigh soil men and started running at full speed, while casts a handful of decontamination and cleansing spells at the same time.

By the time I was a block away and ducking into the first of many alleys, I was feeling much less disgusting, even if I did not feel clean just yet. In fact it would likely be several baths before I could even imagine such a thing.

Half worried that I would be followed by smell alone, I modified a spell designed to throw off dogs and used it as liberally as I could afford to. I was hungry and now had next to no fat left on my body, meaning that too many spells would see my body start to cannibalize my muscles. That said, I did not stop while I was doing this and navigated through the alleys as best I could in the darkness.

I did stop long enough to put my shoulder back in and kill a handful of rats before absorbing them with mana roots. I tried to keep the magic to a minimum as I knew that mages would already be trying to track me, but they would not be able to feel my Gía, just my magic, so I simple ran a little more to get away.

I was on the opposite side of the city before addressing what to do next.

I needed food, a change of clothing, and access to Jorgensen’s old home. Though not necessarily in that order as The Tower was currently sounding off all sorts of alarms, both magically and otherwise. I could already imagine the gates out of the city on high alert and the increased guard patrols that would be organized.

No what I needed to do first was make sure no one I did not like, which encompassed almost everyone in the city, managed to find me. New cloths and a new face would help with that, while food would help me regain my strength.

As for why I needed to get back to Jorgenson’s home, even for a pervert of a mage like him there should still be notes on how to perform the sex change spell located somewhere close to where he lived. It was something drilled into the brain of any conventionally trained mage and even outlaw mages like I was – like I am again – understood to write spells down when first practicing them.

As a result, the chance of Jorgensen keeping notes on how to perform the spell were relatively good and if I understood how the spell worked I might be able to modify it before using it on myself.

Of course there were extensive dangers with such a plan, primarily because I would be essentially helpless to change the spell once it was cast. I could use the freeform method of spell casting, but that could backfire in so many ways that I would rather have entrusted my body to Jorgensen without any precautions.

The twilight of the blood call broke through the horizon sometime while I was thinking and I realized that, because of my delays in The Tower, I only had until the tomorrow’s sunrise to make sure I was prepared for my merge with Bella. Though she had been so quiet for so long that I would have assumed she was already a part of me if not for the Nalk mental wall that separated us.

Some of my problems were solved easily enough with the generous application of stun spells on unsuspecting people who passed by and an illusion spell to keep others from seeing who I really was. This got me some easy money and let me buy some food and clothing without looking suspicious in my currently torn and toughly disgusting robe.

Of course, the ever increasing number of guards and mages running around looking for me made it more difficult, but once I had something to eat and found a peaceful enough place to change my face I was ready to start my own search.

* * *

Leo’s Office

That is how you play a move, brat. Leo sent. The younger Nalks flinched as they received the message, causing Leo to sneer.

The child had suppressed the temple guard’s urge to call for a Sister to confirm DeMorte’s departure from the cult, like he normally would, and it had resulted in DeMorte arriving too early, right after Jorgenson died and just in time for the servant to improvise his framing.

This had led to DeMorte’s arrest, Leo’s humiliation, and the counter that gave DeMorte the opportunity to escape.

It was a simple matter of a fly being pushed in one direction over the other, but it started a chain reaction that left the one key guard to prevent DeMorte’s escape with a horrible case of the runs. After that, DeMorte’s natural personality kicked in and after the guard stepped on the wrong landmine, the escape was set in motion.

Pick your specialty and play it well young ones, but never forget that your elders had been observing our players for far longer than you. If you want to play the events, then play the events, if you want to play the individuals, then do that. However, never play other Backers, much less the Game Architect!

Leo blasted the message into their energy clouds and then pushed them to leave immediately. They fled and Leo marked their respective players for penalties. They were minor things, making one come down with a cold and the other trip at a key moment, embarrassing himself badly, but both moves would affect the Game.

The fact that their Backers managed to sneak a move past Leo was infuriating though. He had caught no less than 5 others around the same time, all in different areas of the biosphere that made up the game. They were all appropriately blocked and penalized, but if Leo had proof that they had coordinated that attempt, then it would be much more serious offense.

[AN: I reserve the right to change ‘biosphere’ in the future, but no alien invasions are currently planned to take place…]

Over all there had been very little that actually changed, but Leo was still furious that the other Backers had to nerve to even try such a move. Unlike Selaugh’s move, which gave DeMorte his mithril disk and was officially registered as a ‘move’ in the Game, all the others had attempted to cheat. Still, all Leo could do was give them small penalties because of the way they did it.

DeMorte himself was the one who gained the most from this debatable, realizing that he both needed others to help him reach his full potential and that he had a deeply embedded hatred of that particular word. He would have figured both out soon enough, but the advantage of figuring it out earlier than he should have caused his chance at winning to jump by nearly half a percent.

Leo’s energy rippled around him as he reconsidered the Game he had set up. A dozen players on the ‘lost’ continent, a few more than that in the southern one… The majority of cannon fodder were in the central continent for political purposes, with a few dozen combat specialists and non-mage players scattered across both the eastern and western continents.

The problem was that Leo knew the moves of everyone and everything in this biosphere and he knew that DeMorte had been given a new path to follow. The Bone King was coming and when that occurred, DeMorte could easily dominate in the chaos that followed… assuming that he won the upcoming little fight with Bella that was.

Leo put the odds that DeMorte would win at nearly 70 percent, but Selaugh was making it more difficult. She was still deciding between Bella and Maria for a Player, but regardless of what she did or who she chose as her player, it would undoubtedly throw even the best laid plans in chaos.

No amount of skill could stand against her unique method of play and DeMorte still had his own demons to tend to.

Not realizing he was doing it, Leo buzzed with energy, he was both excited and vengeful, but he could do nothing without violating the rules and… for the first real time, Leo started hooping that DeMorte would actually win.

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Nalk ex Machina combined with DeMorte and a really badly run Prison Tower hopefully makes an acceptable escape, if it doesn’t, please post and I will overhaul the entire chapter later.

Either way thank you for reading, I dislike it when chapters get this long, but the only reasonable options that I could think to avoid the prison escape sequence were: someone showing up and setting DeMorte free because they figure out that he is not guilty of this particular crime, him bargaining for his freedom, or Dras deciding to break Bella out for some reason.

If more than a few readers post that they prefer any of these to the current version I can update this at a future point, or just do it for the rewrite, until then I hope that you enjoyed this week’s chapter.

Thank you all for the feedback and thank you very much for reading,

Bob_Sagit.