Sarah sat on her bed, her legs held in front of her and her face resting between her knees. Bandages were wrapped around the entirety of both of her legs, as well as in some places on her arms. She felt a bit like a mummy. A really unhappy, depressed mummy. ‘I don’t think I’ll get another chance to escape.’
Sarah let out another sigh and pulled up her status screen again, staring at it with dead eyes. ‘What can I even do with this? Am I in a virtual reality game? Is that why I can see a status screen?’
Sarah cleared her throat and spoke. “Log out. Exit. Help.” She then frowned as nothing happened.
‘Well, I suppose this has been a bit too real for something like that. Can I select my class? How? Do I just need to think a specific phrase like how I opened my status in the first place?’ Sarah groaned and fell back onto her bed. ‘I’d ask somebody, but the guards at the door to my room refuse to talk to me or let me leave, and I have no other way to find anybody to talk to. That is the only exit to this room, and there are no windows to shout out of. I tried pestering the guards earlier, but they are remarkably good at remaining quiet.’
“Select class. Choose class. Access class list. Open class menu.” Sarah grumbled, frustrated when nothing works. ‘Imagine if I could select a class like escape artist or teleportation wizard right now, I might be able to do something. As it is, day will arrive soon and I’ll be forced to prepare for the wedding ceremony by the dozens of maids around here. Maybe this is like in some of those fictional stories. Perhaps only a priest or member of the clergy can select a class for someone. There really isn’t enough information to go off of here.’
Sarah yawned, the exhaustion of the nights events slowly hitting her. ‘Maybe I just need to sleep to be able to change my status at all. There are some games where you can only level up while sleeping, after all.’ Encouraged by these thoughts, Sarah closed her eyes, turned to her side, and tried her best to get some sleep. ‘Though I have already slept in this world once, but perhaps I had to have opened my status first before sleep could change anything.’
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Sadly, sleep did not change Sarah’s status at all, as far as Sarah could tell, anyway. Sarah shuddered at the thought that any second now, several maids would enter and prepare her for the wedding she was refusing to see, but as she sat in the bed, it never came to pass. Instead, when the door to her room entered a kind older woman entered instead.
“Baby, my baby! Are you alright?!” The woman cried, and rushed over to Sarah, sat next to her on the bed and hugged her close to her bosom. “You can’t believe how anxious I was to hear how you were assaulted last night! Taken to the catacombs, and had wounds cut across your limbs to prevent you from struggling. I can’t even imagine how terrifying that must have been! Thank goodness for the quick response from our servants, or they might have succeeded in taking you away!”
Sarah was silent, completely dumbfounded by this reaction. ‘What on earth is this woman talking about?’
“I’ve talked about it with your father, and we’ve both agreed and contacted the Prince as well. Your wedding will be delayed for a few days while we sort out security and track down these fools who dared to harm my baby. Just relax in our estate for now, if you need anything, anything at all, just ask.” The woman continued on, her hug growing tighter and tighter as she spoke. “I know you're strong, but even the strongest person alive would feel nervous after being exposed to such danger from the safety of their own home.” The woman continued, only to suddenly turn and shout, “ISABELLA! BRING ME SOME OF THAT HERBAL TEA!”
‘My father? Is this woman my mother in this body? I can hardly believe the assumptions she has been getting out of my actions last night, but I’ll happily go along with it.’ Sarah thought to herself, slowly piecing together how her actions last night might have been misinterpreted.
“Oh, my poor baby. So scared you can’t even speak? Don’t worry, Isabella will bring you some nice soothing tea to calm your nerves. Just take nice deep breaths and calm down.” Despite the woman’s words, the arms she was squeezing Sarah to death with were anything but calm. Rather, they were shaking from nerves as they constricted like a snake, deepening the embrace. In fact, Sarah was starting to struggle to breathe and started patting the woman’s back in an attempt to calm her down.
Luckily, Sarah’s efforts were rewarded. The woman pulled back and then kissed Sarah on her forehead and whispered in her ear. “It’s all right now, everything will be alright. Mama’s here.”
Sarah opened her mouth and almost spoke, but froze up. ‘Wait, how did the original Sarah talk to her mom? Would I be in danger if I said something and gave away I don’t know this woman? Did anything concussive enough happen to Sarah’s head lately that I could explain this away with amnesia? No, I don’t think it has. What do I do?’
An older maid entered the room carrying a tray with a tea set on it. Sarah’s mother beckoned her over, and the maid delivered the tray to the side table next to the bed and Sarah’s mother, then curtsied deeply towards Sarah and her mother.
“You may go.” Sarah’s mother spoke coldly, waving a hand in a shooing gesture, a sharp contrast to her tone when she was speaking with Sarah. Sarah closed her mouth a swallowed a bit of saliva from nerves as her mother took the tea pot and poured a cup of tea. “Here you are, my baby.” She said, her voice suddenly soft again as she put down the tea pot and moved a tea cup and saucer over to Sarah who dimly accepted the cup.
As Sarah lifted the cup to her lips with one hand with her hand shaking, she took a sip. ‘I hope I didn’t just break several rules of etiquette or something from how I drank this tea, though surely I’d be forgiven after this supposed incident my mother seems to think I have had.’ Sarah then decided to follow her mother's advice and took a deep breath. She really did need to calm her nerves, though not at all for the reason her mom was thinking of.
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The same maid who brought tea suddenly reentered the room and curtsied again. “Madam, the duke requests your presence in the parlor. Guests from the palace have arrived.”
Sarah’s mother made a disgruntled sound with her tongue, unhappy but clearly compelled by this news. “Inform them I will be down there shortly.” She declared as she rose from the bed, giving an unhappy but worried glance towards Sarah before she turned and departed from the room.
Sarah took several minutes longer to finish her tea and let out a sigh. There was so much she didn’t know and sitting in bed was getting her no closer to being safe from her predicament. She had managed to accidentally buy herself some time to escape this marriage arrangement, but her problems were by no means solved.
‘Am I supposed to call in a maid to help me dress? How am I supposed to do that, clap my hands twice like I’m pretty sure I’ve seen happen in a movie, once? Maids definitely dressed me yesterday, but perhaps I’m being neglected to give me more time to calm my nerves in bed or some such nonsense.’ Sarah pondered to herself. ‘I suppose I hadn’t had much time to explore my room as of yet. Maybe I have a book on etiquette stashed away somewhere, though a family this wealthy would probably have such things in a private library, if I could even imagine such a thing.’
As Sarah explored her room, she found it remarkably bare of things of note, besides feats of grandeur. Her closet held hundreds of dresses, none of which Sarah was keen to be wearing. Her room had a few paintings, and the room was thoroughly decorated with vases, ornate rugs and banners. The room did have a desk off to the side with a large mirror atop the back of it. As she began rifling through the drawers of the desk, she found several sheets of blank paper and empty envelopes, along with ink and a stationary stamp. In another drawer, all she found was a strange picture of the human body with vein like lines painted in a network throughout it, with small arrows drawn here and there throughout it.
‘Why is this being kept in my desk?’ Sarah asked herself, but it certainly didn’t seem like it could be that important. At a loss, she closed the desk back up and returned to sitting on her bed, pondering over her next move.
‘Alright, let’s go over everything I’ve learned so far. I’m a princess of a duchy, my mother appears to have some affection for me. We have some connections with the prince and the palace, and we have several maids and guards. Since I was brought back from the catacombs, whose entrance is located in the middle of the duchy, I was confined in my room by a pair of guards. Considering my mother's concerns for me, I could guess that perhaps this confinement is merely a temporary thing, riding out waves of expected “hysteria” they are expecting from me after such a “traumatizing incident.” That said, there are giant spiders which exist in this world, so I would agree that I am pretty traumatized. Oh gosh, are there spiders in here? Wait, no, I fully explored this room and didn’t even see a web, surely I am safe? Actually, while there are massive spiders, perhaps small spiders don’t exist? Am I tempting fate too much with that question? I did run into a giant spider after I first convinced myself that spiders didn’t exist, after all.’
Sarah shook her head furiously, driving thoughts of spiders away from her head. ‘That aside, I can also pull up a mysterious status, ah, there it is again, which does nothing except tell me my name, that I have no class, and that I can’t gain any EXP, whatever that means in this world. Also, this princess owns no pants. It’s horrifying, but I might be forced to wear dresses and skirts until I manage to escape, which will no doubt be even harder after my flubbed first attempt.’ Sarah bit her lower lip, nibbling on it as she sank further into contemplation. ‘Well, I doubt the servants or my family will let this body starve, so perhaps my isolation to my room will end soon enough. I should check my room one last time to make sure there are no spiders hiding here, and then wait for the maids or my mother to return. There are none under my bed, right? Surely our maids are paid well enough to prevent such a thing. Are our maids paid?’
Sarah turning her room over looking for spiders proved far more fruitful than anything else she had done this morning. As she searched under her bed, she discovered a strange, egg shaped container. She managed to pop open the container, its lid taking about one third of the eggs total length. Inside, she discovered an empty vial housed in a strange white material, with pulsing blue veins visible within. “What in the world is this?” Sarah mumbled to herself, holding the single strangest thing she’d seen all morning.
Sarah felt like her heartbeat was syncing up to the pulsing of the blue veins in the eggs encased white material. She wasn’t sure if this was just a natural response to “feeling the beat”, or some strange supernatural phenomenon, but she didn’t like it. She quickly shut the lid for a moment and took a deep breath, steadying her heartbeat to a different cadence before letting her curiosity win and reopening it. She poked at the material, but was unable to discover much. The material was cool to the touch, and felt like an extremely firm, non-malleable gel like substance. None of the blue veins were within reach from its surface.
Curiosity temporarily sated, Sarah closed the egg pod and slipped it between the mattress and the bed’s frame, not trusting it to remain out of sight under the bed for much longer. There wasn’t nearly enough dust build up there, so it was likely cleaned regularly, though there was still enough that it clearly wasn’t every day. She didn’t want whatever this enigma was to disappear from her grasp before she determined if it was unimportant or not. Particularly with her likely leaving the mansion soon, whether due to marriage or her inevitable plan to escape. The mattress didn’t seem to deform noticeably from the small egg shaped pod underneath it, so Sarah figured the hiding place would do for now.
‘I really need to get access to a library. The longer I go without being able to tell if something is strange or ordinary, the more likely it is I will make some inevitable mistake.’ Sarah thought to herself. ‘For all I know, this princess drinks some vitamins after every meal to maintain excellent nutrition, and that pod is what feeds the vial with essential minerals or something. Or, that egg pod is extremely unusual and could be a clue to how I ended up in this mess, or how the princess is no longer in control of this body. I wish I had some way of telling time in here. Having no windows, sun dials or clocks is going to make me go insane if I am to stay here much longer.’
Luckily, this thought didn’t have much time to fester as a maid entered the room immediately after. “Greetings, my lady. The duke and duchess have called you to the dining room for a lunch. The duchess would like it to be clear that you may decline and eat lunch in your room, should you prefer. Your health is of utmost priority.” The maid, the one Sarah vaguely remembered being called Isabella by her mother earlier, spoke to her eloquently with a small but held curtsy.
“Yes, please assist this princess.” Sarah said, nervously hoping her guess at faked etiquette wouldn’t sound too strange. Luckily, either the etiquette was correct or the maid didn’t care enough to mention it as the maid merely stood up and nodded before proceeding towards Sarah’s closet to find an outfit for lunch.