I touched my cheek and winced as the throbbing intensified. If Priss’ bruised mug was anything to go by, the entire side of my face was purple and swollen like an overripe plum. I let out a regretful sigh and held my knees to my chest. Why had I let her work me up so much? All that amounted from our fight was an unwilling draw and a bunch of face pain for both parties involved. I hung my head lower, then yelped as my cheek brushed against my kneecap.

“Quiet down, will you?” mumbled Priss. She was sitting in the center of the room and staring blankly out of its single barred window. I guess the sight of the palace’s swirling fog-wall soothed her or something. After a while she turned to me with a light frown. “I have something to say to you, Darni Voker.”

I looked at her without raising my head. “Then go ahead and say it,” I grumbled. I bet she’d come up with some new insults to sling my way. Something that’d rile me up for a second round of beatings.

“Hmph! I just want to . . . I just wanted to thank you for your concern earlier. About The Klazmitz and all that,” she said. She scrunched her face up and turned away quickly. “It was improper of me to be so hostile in the face of empathy— no matter the source.”

I sat up and looked at her. She was repeatedly glancing over her shoulder taking peeks at my reaction like a little kid. It’d probably taken a lot of effort and self-scolding to push past her pride and say that. I let out a long sigh and scratched the side of my head. Guess it was time to be a big girl and accept her thanks.

“You’re welcome, I guess,” I said.

She perked up at that and relaxed her shoulders a little like a huge weight had been lifted. I scratched my unbruised cheek and smiled. I hadn’t intended to ever make nice with her, but I guess that’s how things were going. May as well if we were going to be stuck together, right? It’d be better than trying to strangle each other every time we opened our mouths.

“You know, you weren’t kidding about those boxing skills of yours,” I added. “If I wasn’t so good myself, you’d have knocked me clean across the room.”

“Wha—?” said Priss. She met my gaze and froze, then spun around and faced me. She was sitting cross-legged with her hands planted firmly on her thighs. “I-I mean, but of course! As a member of the illustrious Afinsheer family, it’s only fitting that I’d be trained in the art of combat!” She puffed out her chest, then deflated and slouched forward. “However, I’m quite curious about the origin of your skills. Wherever did you learn such masterful techniques? And for that matter, from where do you source your equipment? From a glance I can tell that armor of yours is masterfully crafted.”

I grinned at her. “Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?” I asked. Really, I just wanted to prod her to make her uncomfortable.

She balked at my question and crossed her arms. “I am always nice!” she announced. “It’s just that you’ve given me no reason to direct my kindness towards you before now!” She turned her nose up and looked at me down its bridge. “Would you prefer I revoke it and antagonize you again?”

I waved my hands quickly. “No no, the kindness is fine!” I giggled.

“A wise decision,” said Priss. “Since you’re unaware, I’ll inform you that you’ve only witnessed . . . fifty-percent of my possible wrath. Pray you never witness its full breadth!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

After that, I spent a while telling her about my time training under my mother with the Suryinian Queen’s Guard, about my mother’s adventures, about my father and his endless knowledge of the royal archives, and basically explained my whole deal to her. She did a lot of nodding, a lot of arm crossing, and a lot of gasping at some of the wilder details, and, in return, she told me a bit about herself. I’ll give you the short version without all the obvious embellishments. Her family is rich beyond belief and owns most of Balistag, she styles her own hair, she’s traveled all over Zaftia’s southern coasts, she owns multiple things named Klazmitz (the boat was the third member of the family), and her father likes to spoil her rotten.

“You should have said you were nobility in the first place, you dolt!” she said when I was done. “I’d have been far more courteous if I’d known your name had weight!”

“Don’t call me a dolt, you jerk!” I snapped. I took a huffed and let the aggression flow out peaceably. No point in fighting with her when we’d just gotten on speaking terms. “Anyway, for your information, I’ve never considered myself one! Yeah, we were upper class, and yeah, we attended all the fancy events, but we were there because of my parent’s hard work, not because they were born into it!”

She looked at me like I was a brainless pile of moss. “Does any of that matter?” she asked. “Be it nobility by birth or nobility by service, nobility is nobility!” She pointed directly at my nose. “Admit it, Darni Voker! You are not so different from I!”

I clutched my chest and fell to the side dramatically. “Gah! Why would you say that!?” I shouted.

“Because it is the truth!” she bellowed. She loomed over me like some classical villain ready to finish off the hero. “You cannot deny the reality of your station! Oh ho ho ho!” She sat there laughing for far too long, then placed her hand on her stomach with a frown. “As a change of subject, have you any idea how long we’ve been trapped here?”

I sat up and brushed myself off. You get way dirtier than you think when you’re being dramatic. “No clue,” I said. “We were out for a while after knocking each other’s blocks off, remember? It might already be tomorrow.”

Priss grimaced and fell onto her back with her arms splayed out. “And those infernal statues still haven’t provided us with a meal!” she groaned. She rolled onto her side and pointed at me. “I don’t know about you, Darni Voker, but I require sustained nutrition to function! Without it I’ll wilt and wither like an untended rose!”

I smiled and said, “Ha! The noble girl can’t handle missing her breakfast?” I looked down at her like she was a pitifully vanquished foe. “When you’re a seasoned adventurer like me you learn to get by without—”

GROWR

My stomach let out a faint, though audible growl that obliterated every chance I had of continuing my chiding. I blushed and looked away while scratching my chin. “Yeah, I’m hungry too . . .” I finally admitted. I hadn’t eaten anything at all the previous day due to my excitement about reaching the palace and it was starting to get to me.

“Do you have anything to eat in that pouch of yours?” asked Priss.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Pouch?” I said.

“The bag slung across your shoulder!” she snapped.

Oh right, my satchel! I undid its latch and rifled through its contents. If I recalled correctly, I should have had some rock candy that I’d been saving for a long time. It wouldn’t be much, but anything is better than nothing. I pushed aside a tin of armor polish, fiddled with a little hand mirror, lifted up a red handkerchief with the initials D.D. sewn into it, pushed aside a green-painted bone die, then furrowed my brow. That’s right. I’d already eaten the candy that day we all pigged out on our contraband foodstuffs. I frowned and shook the bag’s contents around one last time hoping to find a crumb or something, then pulled out a pair of thinly wrapped seaman’s biscuits. Bingo!

I held the biscuits over my head and said, “Consider our hunger staved!”

“By those? What are they?” asked Priss. She got up on her knees and shuffled over. “Are those— seaman’s biscuits? Do you really expect that to satiate me?”

“Satiate us, you mean,” I said. I dropped one of the biscuits into my lap and held the other out to her. “I think there’s some water in that urn over there if you need it.”

She stared at the chunk of hard, crispy bread and pouted. “I’m not thanking you for this,” she said. She snatched it from my hand and held it close to her chest like she was scared I’d take it back. “We Afinsheers don’t accept charity, so I’ll consider this payment for my assistance in escaping this Loros-forsaken prison.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” I said with a smile. I guess that was her prideful, arrogant way of saying she wanted to work together.

I took my biscuit and shoved it in my mouth, then gagged as its bone-dry surface absorbed all the moisture in my mouth. I rushed over to the brown water urn and grabbed hold of it, then saw that Priss, with a mouth as arid as a desert, had both hands on it as well. We tugged it back and forth, neither of us willing to let the other drink first, then both let out muffled gasps as a bunch of water sloshed over the edge onto the floor. In lieu of wasting more precious, throat-saving hydration, I relented and allowed Priss to take an overly long drink. Once she was done, I lifted the urn over my head and gulped down every last remaining drop.

“Bwaaah!” I said as I set the urn down. “I thought I was going to choke there for a second!”

“I’m glad you’ve avoided your demise, but, if you haven’t noticed, that was our entire supply of water!” said Priss. She threw her hands up and bared her teeth. “If they haven’t fed us, there’s no guarantee that they’ll water us either! We’ll shrivel from thirst far before we starve!”

“We’ll be out of here way before that happens though,” I said. It’d be best to withhold the fact that I still had a waterskin of my own.

“And what makes you think that?”

I smiled and crossed my arms. “Nothing in particular, I’m just confident in myself!”

Priss stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then let out a stifled guffaw that grew into a full-on chortle. “Self-confidence? Really? How utterly preposterous!” she said between gasps. “Fine then, Darni Voker! If you’re willing to hedge your survival on nothing but your confidence, then I’ll hedge mine on my own!” She stood up and raised her fist to the sky. “No prison, no matter how mythical, can hold Priscillanna Afinsheer, so do I declare!

I stood up and raised my fist too. “It can’t hold Darni Voker either, so do I, uh, declare too!” I added. We both threw our heads back and laughed at the ceiling, then sat back down to burn our brains thinking of an escape plan once the moment passed.

“Perhaps we could escape by means of the window?” asked Priss.

We both looked up at it, then shook our heads.

“No, that won’t work,” we said in unison.

It was too tall to reach even if we stood on each other’s shoulders. And then, even if we did somehow reach it, there was the issue of removing the bars. It was best to rule it out completely

“Did you try the door?” asked Priss. “It might be possible to wedge something beneath it and—”

“Not happening,” I said. “I already checked it. It’s perfectly flush with the ground and we don’t have anything sharp enough to wedge between.” I crossed my arms and scowled. “If we had Bravesreign, or even that axe of yours, we could probably manage it. Those stupid golems were smart to take them from us.”

Priss crossed her arms as well. “And I suppose busting down the walls is beyond our abilities? My, this is quite the conundrum . . .” She looked around the room, then zeroed in on my satchel. “Could anything in that bag of yours aid us? Its proven useful once already.”

“I can take a look, but don’t expect much,” I said.

I opened up my satchel and gave it another look. It had the same junk as before, sans on seaman’s biscuit, but a certain green cube caught my attention. I grabbed the little die and held it up in front of my face.

“Oh, this might work!” I said. I cast the die between us and watched it skip soundlessly across the floor. Perfect!

“A die?” asked Priss. “You gamble?” She shrugged and let out a long sigh. “No, why am I even surprised. A . . . worldly— girl like yourself is bound to partake of—”

I held up my hand. “Shut up a second,” I said quickly. I grabbed the die and rolled it at the door. It skipped and jumped along, then clinked against the door-slab lightly. “Haha! I think I just found our way out!”

“Using that?” asked Priss. She brought her head right next to mine so she could see what I was seeing. “What is it you have planned? What can that little cube of yours possibly do?” She shimmied away and squinted at me. “You haven’t gone stir crazy already, have you?”

“Nope!” I said happily. “And neither will you! All we need is for them to come and check on us and we can get out of here in seconds!”

Priss furrowed her eyebrows, then slowly relaxed. “Fine, I’ll trust in this plan of yours, but only because I haven’t any better ideas myself!” She pointed at me with a little smile. “Know that I’ll be furious if this gambit fails!”

And so, we waited, and waited, and waited some more until the window’s light dimmed and evening’s orange glow washed over the palace. Eventually, just as the tiniest bit of despair bubbled up in the bottom of my heart, I heard the clinking of stone feet approach. Priss and I both sat against the walls with our heads between our knees in a display of mock despondency.

TOCK TOCK TOCK

“The prisoners must be fed,” said a golem as she knocked heavily on the door.

The door slab slid up into the ceiling, revealing a trio of expressionless golems. The two on the sides were carrying chipped iron swords, while the one in the middle was carrying an urn of water and a tray with two bowls of colorful mush. She stepped inside and set the tray on the ground, then replaced our empty urn with the new one and marched out of the room. I rolled the die around in my palm and tossed it towards the door as carefully as I could. It skipped and bounced across the floor until it landed right in the groove where the door slab sat while closed. The two sword-toting golems lowered the door slab and stomped away, none the wiser to our plan.

I waited until the footsteps had completely faded, then jumped to my feet and ran to the door. I shoved my fingers between the gap created by the die and lifted the door slab as much as I could.

“Help me open this!” I said.

“Aha! So that was your plan!” said Priss.

She scrambled over and joined me in lifting. We grunted and grit our teeth as our muscles bulged and tensed until we finally forced the slab up over our heads. It receded up into the ceiling, and a tinny click was our signal that it was locked in place. I stepped back and panted while my muscles cried out in pain from the strain.

“Yeesh, could they make that any heavier!?” I said.

“I echo your sentiments . . .” huffed Priss.

She grabbed the bowls from the ground and handed me one. The mush looked to be rice porridge with a mish-mash of boiled fruit mixed inside. Not exactly fine dining, but it was a dream come true in a situation like ours. We both raised the bowls over our heads and scarfed the sweet slop down as fast as possible, then wiped our mouths with smiles.

“Okay, next goal. Find our weapons!” I said. I crossed my arms and furrowed my brow. “But, uh, where do you think they took them? Would a prison tower have store room or an armory or something?”

Priss put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “I would think so. Our dungeon in Balistag has room to store the belongings of the interned, so it’s likely that the same is true of this one.”

“You own a dungeon?” I asked quickly. I don’t even know why I was surprised.

“I-Is that really important right now!?” snapped Priss. “Come, let’s retrieve our things and be gone from this horrible place!” She marched out of the cell and down the hall without waiting for my response. I guess she was embarrassed about letting that detail slip.

In response, I shrugged and followed her out, but not before grabbing that lucky die and our serving tray. You never know when these things will come in handy!