The Barton city jail was… pretty nice. The cells were virtually indistinguishable from rooms at an inn minus the magically reinforced walls and doors that locked from the outside. The beds looked at least as good as what the angel had back at the Siren’s Alcove and she’d smelled the pleasant aroma of cooked food on the way in, likely what would be the prisoners’ lunch.

When she mentioned how nice things looked to the two men with her, they politely informed her that the penalty for escaping confinement was death. In a world where anyone could casually throw fire or lift boulders with a single hand, there was only so much one could do to restrain another person. This was doubly true if one wanted to build a jail that was capable of holding anyone and everyone.

What was common in Flynnette was to install the bare minimum safety and security measures to ensure someone young and stupid couldn’t break out and give the rest the looming threat of the death penalty. With the fear of punishment being the true thing that kept the inmates of the jail confined, it left the city watch free to install nice curtains and other amenities for the more civil prisoners being housed before eventual release.

There was also no long-term confinement. It was much easier to believe people who said they had no interest in committing future crimes when a magical truth spell was vouching for their honesty. This was how most arrests went. Someone was caught doing something, penalized for the act, swore on a truth spell that they wouldn’t do it again, and subsequently released.

Restitution was handled on a case by case basis with the perpetrator taking whatever steps were required to make the victim whole. In almost all cases, these steps were financial in nature since few injuries would not be mended by the System over the long term. This wasn’t to say the results of the justice system were perfect but they were good enough for a handful of towns and cities in Velk to get by.

For those situations where the criminal was unrepentant, it varied from city to city. Frontier cities like Barton executed people. They did everything within their means to rehabilitate prisoners but they weren’t releasing someone back into society knowing that person would harm others. This was especially the case since so many people were capable of inflicting great harm on society at large. Folks with combat classes or skills received extra scrutiny and often harsh treatment. Adventurers did not get special treatment.

This was also why Lucian Ashford being in jail worried his team leader, Alden Porter, so much. Lucian attacked Brivaria because he thought she was doing something wrong. To him it had been a just and noble act in the moment. When he said that to the guard afterward, what they were hearing was “I would do it again” and that put the rogue’s neck on the proverbial chopping block.

A couple visits from Alden later and some questioning using different words moved the rogue onto the “to be released” list instead. Alden was fairly certain that would have happened anyway as the watch was fairly thorough in their final examination of a prisoner but it was still a relief to the warrior. He didn’t want any of his friends or teammates running afoul of the law.

Alden had explained as much to Brivaria and Edison Kor on the way to the jail. As a result, the angel now understood why Edison had been so frantic about his own potential incarceration and why Sparrow’s Revenge was so calm in the face of theirs. Sparrow’s Revenge entered the forest against the Count’s wishes and swore they’d never do it again which was a discernibly true statement. Now it was just a matter of waiting out their sentence or waiting until the jail acquired enough prisoners that they would be released early to make room for others more deserving of the cells available.

Alden, Edison, and a once-again-human Brivaria were all made to check their weapons before entering the cell block. Brivaria summoned forth her sword, mace, and then a couple knives before the guards asked how many weapons she carried in her Inventory skill. When the angel said a lot of them they decided to simply make her swear not to use the skill while in the jail. That was easily done though they kept everything she’d already taken out.

Trixie had no weapons to check and was ignored at first. The golden sunchaser was very sociable and, when left to her own devices, wandered around to make friends. Some ignored the golden but several guards stopped to pet the dog. By the time Brivaria and company were done with the check-in process, the dog had enticed half a dozen guards into petting and playing with her. They reluctantly went back to work when the angel called for the dog to follow her.

This was how the three adventurers and one dog ended up in the large cell in which the three members of Sparrow’s Revenge were held. The jailed adventuring team was made up of a human man, a man with slightly pointed ears that was likely a half-elf, and a lephori woman. The team captain was the human and his name was Rameus. He, like the rest of his team, wore the prison uniform consisting of a generic brown shirt and pants. All three adventurers were in their late twenties and surprised to be getting a visit.

“Edison, you’re back and who are your friends?” Rameus asked while rising from his bed and walking over to extend a hand.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Rameus, I’d like you to meet Brivaria, captain of the Divine Blessing adventuring team, and Alden Porter, captain of the Seasoned Steel adventuring team. I told them some of what you told me and they had some questions,” Edison explained. Brivaria and Alden both shook hands with Rameus. The ex-silver rank warrior was the first to reply.

“Yes. Edison said you overheard them discussing where to take you. Can you tell us what happened?” Alden asked. Rameus nodded and began speaking

“We’re a team of rangers and herbalists. We make our living by foraging for herbs, roots, and other plants. Not everything can be grown in captivity so we take bounties for certain plants. We’re knowledgeable in finding, harvesting, storing, and transporting them. We also know a lot about wilderness creatures. We needed a few roots from the western forest and wanted to see the hind. We weren’t going to attack it. We just wanted to see it and thought we could be in and out of the woods with no one knowing we were ever there. A couple days after we made the decision, we ventured into the forest.” Rameus was about to say more when Alden held up a hand.

“How did you get into the woods? The mercenaries are pretty quick to spot anyone entering the woods or so it’s rumored,” the swordsman said with a curious expression.

“They’re good but it’s a big forest and they’re far too small to do the job of surveilling the whole thing. They rely on warding and alarm spells. Whoever breaks the tree line triggers an alarm for the nearest group to respond to. Our fourth team member caused a distraction by tripping the alarm. Once the mercenary guards were out of position, the three of us went in. We figured that we’d have a pretty large head start and, even if they had trackers, that the three of us would be pretty hard to follow. It was a pretty solid plan,” the man said with a cocky smirk.

“Yet you were caught,” the warrior retorted. Rameus was nonplussed at the correction.

“We were. We’d expected to have to go deep into the woods to locate the golden hind. What we didn’t expect was to damn near trip over the thing less than an hour in. It was just hanging about the woods close to the city. We stopped to observe it and the mercenaries caught up to us.” The ranger looked to his companions as he talked. The lephori woman rose from her seat on the bed and walked over. Rameus gestured to her. “Tana here can tell you the part you probably care most about. Things got chaotic at that point. There was a lot of shouting and arguing. Laurence and I didn’t hear what she did.”

“Indeed,” the lephori said with a wry expression directed toward Rameus. “While our esteemed leader was arguing quite excitedly with the men apprehending us, I heard a few interesting things. Two of the marauders hung back to discuss what to do with us. One wanted to take us to the city and the other wanted to ‘take us back’ but I didn’t have any context for what that meant. Maybe their camp? At the time I was more distracted by the other voice.”

“Other voice?” Brivaria and Alden asked at the same time.

“Yes,” the lephori ranger replied, “it was soft and faint. Truthfully I could have been hearing things as it didn’t seem to have any source. It was a magical voice that didn’t come from anyone or anything but sounded like it was right next to me. It’s not totally uncommon. Forest sprites will sometimes do things like this. They love pranking innocent people but they will seldom lurk so close to the edge of the forest and even less frequently near a city. They could have been following the hind, I suppose.”

Over the next ten minutes Edison and Alden took turns questioning the adventurers. The sense Brivaria got was that something funny was definitely going on. The rangers surrendered almost immediately and put up no fight unless Rameus’ yelling counted. The men who captured the adventurers were incredibly nervous, unreasonably so given the circumstances. Alden couldn’t think of a reason the mercenaries would drag the adventurers back to their camp which was the only place that made sense in the context. Neither could Brivaria.

Of course, that was assuming the mercenaries were on the level. If the mercenaries were part of the kidnappings like Edison suggested then it was very possible they had another destination in mind that the rangers wouldn’t have returned from. Brivaria wasn’t so certain. It all came back to when the mercenaries arrived and when Terrance Grand disappeared. She really didn’t want to consider the idea that there were two wholly separate groups kidnapping people.

“Before I forget, did the voice or forest sprite you heard say anything of note?” the angel asked, breaking into the conversation after quietly listening for some time. She was content to let Alden ask the questions because, unsurprisingly, intervention didn’t often leave too many people alive to question and angels were never the ones doing the questioning. A lot of Brivaria’s experience and knowledge was very focused. There were many areas she needed to improve in and watching other, more experienced people was one way to do that.

“Oh, right,” Tana said before nodding, “well, I wouldn’t say it was ‘of note’ as such. It was peculiar. The voice said ‘hello’ over and over.”

“That’s it? Just ‘hello’ and nothing else?”

“That’s it,” Tana confirmed. The angel asked a couple more questions but there was little else to talk about. The group wished the adventurers well on getting out of jail soon.

Alden visited Lucian briefly to confer with the rogue. Brivaria declined to meet the man who had tried to kill her. It was petty but she was still upset. Edison’s attempt had been comically inept but Lucian had come very close to succeeding and the angel wasn’t certain what would happen if she died on Zlithia in her current state. Maybe the angel wasn’t as upset as Kseniya was on her behalf but she wasn’t ready to see the rogue yet regardless.

While Alden met his incarcerated teammate, Brivaria took Trixie back around to see her new friends in the guard. It cheered the angel up to see her very sociable golden getting along with everyone. Not all the guards had the time or inclination to indulge the hound’s curiosity but several did. Trixie had a knack for making friends wherever she went.

“Are we ready to go?” the swordsman asked as he returned. The tanned-warrior regarded the golden dog bouncing between guards with a fond smile.

“I think so,” the angel answered as Edison joined them. She called Trixie over, much to the disappointment of many, and the three left the jail together.