At the sight of Raine, Sera reacted instantly, slamming the door shut behind her and sliding the deadbolt in place.

“Oh sorry, Ryuji,” she yelled behind her. “The door was heavier than I expected, and it automatically locks. I’ll get the guard to open it in a second.”

Rather than doing what she promised, Sera stared at the guard and her face contorted in a series of strange winks and twitches that made me almost worried that she was having some sort of spasm, but rather than calling for a medic, the guard simply nodded and stood up from his seat behind his desk.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he half-whispered to Raine, walking up to her and blocking her from my view entirely with his large body. “Could you come with me for a second?”

Raine, who had been watching the events play out in front of her, gave the guard a confused look and cocked her head to the other side.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

The guard gave a brief backwards glance at Sera who nodded at him. Without any further hesitation, the guard pulled back his sleeve to reveal an eye tattoo on his forearm on the same place that Sera had hers.

“Official Mediator business,” he said. “I’m afraid it might be dangerous if you stay here. Please remain calm and come with me.”

Raine’s eyes widened in recognition as she stared at the tattoo. No doubt, she was debating with herself whether to believe his claims or not. She glanced to the side, to meet my own eyes.

I nodded, deciding from Sera’s lack of reaction that he was with her. “He’s telling the truth,” I said. Ryuji’s muffled shouting made it seem like my voice wouldn’t be audible through the steel door unless I shouted, but I whispered anyways, not wanting to risk it.

I was glad that she trusted me enough to nod back at me, though she still resisted when the guard placed a hand on her shoulder.

“My brother’s still in there,” she said, pointing at the door behind me.

“He’ll be safe,” the guard said. “What’s important is that we leave right now.”

“I refuse to leave without him,” she said, literally digging her heels a few inches into the stone floor when the guard tried to gently push her along. “Or her for that matter,” she said, gesturing to me.

I heard the door banging behind us, and I watched in terror as the single deadbolt that held the door shut slowly bent outwards. “Raine! You need to go!” I hissed, afraid of what would happen if Ryuji saw her. I didn’t know who else from her tribe was apparently here, but the cells had solid doors. If one of her tribe brothers was currently in jail, Ryuji wouldn’t see him unless he specifically popped open the cell door that he happened to be in.

Raine frowned, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through her head at that moment, but before she could come to any sort of conclusion, Sera tackled me to the ground.

There was an explosion of sound and the entire building seemed to shake. Large clouds of dust, dirt, and loose bits of stone erupted from the walls and ceiling. The sound of the explosion disoriented me, and it took me a second to get my bearings before I noticed Ryuji standing awkwardly at the doorway, holding his hand out in the exact spot where the door should have been.

Following his gaze, I looked towards the other end of the room, where a nearly unrecognizable sheet of crumpled steel that used to be the prison door lay discarded on the ground.

“Umm,” Ryuji said. “My bad.”

Sera pushed herself off of me and stood up, brushing the dust off of her clothes casually, as if what had just happened was a normal everyday occurrence.

“Wow, you really are strong!” she said, putting as much enthusiasm in her voice as she could. “But you didn’t have to open the door. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Oh,” Ryuji said, avoiding her gaze as he looked guiltily to the side. “I couldn’t hear you properly.”

I didn’t know why Ryuji was lying, but Sera didn’t seem to care. “Oh well, what’s done is done,” she said, leaning down and wrapping an arm around my shoulder. Once again, I was shocked by the surprising amount of strength that she packed in her small body that allowed her to pick me up with ease and steady me on my feet. “C’mon, Lena, Ryuji. We should get going.”

“Really?” Ryuji asked, looking around the room as the dust continued to settle. “Shouldn’t we explain this to someone before we go?”

His eyes landed on the guard, who was just picking himself off the floor with his back to Ryuji. He was taking his time getting up, using only one arm to push himself up off the floor. In a moment of panic, I realized that I couldn’t see Raine anywhere, but before I could assume the worst, I noticed her being cradled to the guard’s chest.

It seemed that the guard had tackled her to the ground like Sera did with me. It took me a moment to figure out why he was still holding her so close, but I remembered why I’d been so afraid for Raine in the first place. The guard was trying to hide her with his larger body.

“It’s alright,” he said, coughing out a small plume of dust. “Happens all the time. You folks are good to go.”

“Really?” Ryuji asked again, looking pleasantly surprised.

“Yup. A little bit of paperwork to do, but nothing I can’t-“ The guard’s bullshit explanation was cut short by a hiss of pain.

“Oh no. Are you hurt?” Ryuji asked, as if he wasn’t the one who’d potentially caused it in the first place. “I can help. I have healing magic.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No!” The guard yelled, then calmed down immediately as he turned his head to smile at Ryuji. “I’m fine, sir. Just an old injury of mine.”

“Oh, maybe I can heal it for you anyways?” Ryuji asked. “I know you said it was fine, but I do feel guilty for breaking your door.”

“No, no,” the guard said, his smile straining slightly. “I couldn’t impose.”

“Ryuji,” Sera said, still holding me up. “Maybe it’s a private injury. Something he’s embarrassed of?”

“It is,” the guard said, taking the suggestion instantly. “My hemorrhoids are acting up.”

I heard Sera let out a barely audible sigh beside me.

“Oh… I see,” Ryuji said.

“Yeah,” the guard replied.

There was a long awkward pause, as was commonplace in my life nowadays. The only sound that filled the room was the dampened sound of chatter directly outside of the guard station, no doubt from concerned citizens who were wondering about what the loud noise had been. I was jealous of them. I wanted to be just as ignorant as them.

The silence was only broken when the guard let out a sharp hiss of pain and withdrew his hand from his chest, giving Raine the opportunity to drive her elbow into his gut and push herself away from his grasp when he stumbled back.

“I do not appreciate being manhandled, sir,” Raine said, snarling at the guard. I saw a flash of crimson on her teeth, before she wiped her mouth against the back of her bare arm, smearing a dull streak of blood across her skin. “Now, can someone please explain to me what in the blazes is going on?”

I froze as Raine turned to me, as if expecting an explanation, though she seemed to forget about me quickly, her attention shifting elsewhere.

I paled and I whipped my head around to stare at Ryuji. He was looking at Raine, his chin and chest still covered in his own nose-blood, as he gaped openly at her.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and in the tense silence, I could hear my teeth chattering in anticipation of what he might do. I looked to Sera, hoping that she could do something to stop the possible murder from happening in front of us, but what I saw made my heart sink.

I could see a similar fear in Sera’s eyes as they remained fixed on the scene in front of us. For all her skill and experience in handling Otherworlders, the only response she seemed to be able to summon in the face of this standoff was a grimace. In that moment, I remembered that regardless of what organization she belonged to, Sera was still a human. If Ryuji chose to kill Raine, there would be nothing any one of us could do to stop it.

“Umm.”

I gave a start when Sera’s head whipped to the side to stare at me, wide-eyed. I didn’t understand why at first, but I slowly realized that everyone in the room was staring at me now. Had I spoken up? It had sounded like my voice, but I still wasn’t sure.

“Umm,” I said again, barely able to stop my teeth from chattering together. “Raine, this is Ryuji. Ryuji, this is Raine. She’s my magic tutor and a close friend.”

I gulped as the words left my mouth. I didn’t know how far Ryuji’s hatred of Goblins ran, and whether or not I was deliberately placing myself in danger by associating myself with Raine like this, but I wasn’t willing to let Ryuji kill Raine right in front of me. Medric’s death had already been horrifying to watch, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to live with myself if I just watched Raine die in the same way.

I knew there wasn’t much I could do to stop him, but there was one thing that I hadn’t tried yet.

Getting down on my knees, I slowly bowed down, resting my forehead on the stone floor.

“Please don’t kill her,” I begged.

I knew that being submissive to an Otherworlder was generally considered a bad idea, and not just because of the potential consequences that it could bring to me. Showing submission to an Otherworlder was risky in a way that could threaten communities on a much larger scope, potentially endangering entire countries if not handled carefully.

There was a large reason why I had refused to show any signs of outright submission until now. It was the same reason why I had to pretend that he was merely “talented” in magic, rather than acknowledging the monster that he was. The fact that Ryuji was simply unaware of the sheer threat he posed to the country and the world was potentially the only thing that was stopping him from destroying it. The Crown taught us that we had to be strong in the face of an Otherworlder, that any weakness that a citizen showed was weakness shown by the entire nation, and that weakness could lead to our destruction.

But that was only the worst-case scenario. I’d always thought that it was a little nonsensical to assume that the submission of an individual could snowball into the destruction of a nation.

Besides that, I’d spent a week with Ryuji. I’d been surprised by how mild-mannered he had been during our travel through the Forest, and even though he had killed a man today, he seemed to be genuinely remorseful about it. I was sure that if I begged for him to spare Raine’s life, he would spare her for my sake. He did supposedly love me after all, right? It only made sense. As I continued to justify my decision to myself, I felt my confidence growing in Ryuji’s benevolence.

So why was I shaking and crying?

When Ryuji spoke up, I heard my breath hitch in my throat, waiting for the hammer of judgement.

“Wha- why would I kill her?”

I couldn’t quite trust in what I was hearing. I lifted my head, and even through my watery vision, I saw Ryuji backing away from me, an almost fearful expression on his face.

“You won’t?” I asked, daring to hope.

“What? No!” Ryuji shouted. Both he and I winced at the unexpected volume of his own voice. “I know I killed Medric,” he said, the new volume of his voice being so low that it would’ve been impossible to hear if it weren’t for the complete silence of the room. “But that was an accident! I’m not some sort of monster. Why would you think that?”

He shrunk in on himself, reminding me of a child once more. It had been a while since we’d left the forest, but the memory of the awkward, strangely human conversations we had during our travels resurfaced. “I-I don’t think you’re a monster, Ryuji,” I said. He gave me a frown, and I was suddenly aware of how unconvincing I must have sounded, still kneeling on the floor. “I just- I thought since Raine was a Goblin…”

My voice trailed off, leaving the implications unsaid. From the corner of my eye, I could see Raine’s eyes widen in surprise and narrow at Ryuji and her body tensed as if she were preparing to fight.

I was about to tell Raine to drop it, but the guard walked up beside her, his hand still bleeding from the teeth marks gouged into his skin. Raine noticed and swiveled her head towards him, but he simply leaned down and whispered something to her. Her hands and jaw immediately dropped as she looked back at Ryuji with a new fear in her eyes.

Ryuji stared back at her, as if he’d just noticed her for the first time.

“That- she’s a Goblin?” he asked, frozen in place.

“And my friend,” I said, surprised by my own bravery, now that Ryuji’s own seemed to be wavering. “Please don’t kill her,” I asked again.

Ryuji didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on Raine instead. I wasn’t sure he even heard me.

“But she talked,” he said. “Can all Goblins talk? Are Goblins people?”

It was a simple thing to realize, really, and one thing that I was surprised I hadn’t figured out before. I knew that Ryuji came from a world that didn’t have any sentient races other than his own. He had already known about Goblins, for some reason, so I’d been working off the assumption that he had some sort of knowledge on them, but was it possible that he simply hadn’t known that a Goblin could possibly be sentient, just because they didn’t look similar to him?

“Yeah.”

The simple word was surprisingly effective. Ryuji staggered back, tripping over a piece of rubble that had been torn off the wall when the doorframe bent out of shape. He didn’t seem to care, picking himself up immediately and running down the hallway, back towards the cells.

The sound of his frantic footsteps faded away and the echo of a distant closing door reached us where we stood.