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Jana watched the sunset from the summit of a low hill. The valley below the Galatea mountains stretched into the horizon, blighted by the ugly collection of buildings planted atop like a scab: high gray walls, a rusted iron portcullis, irregular structures within that held stables, guards' quarters, a mess hall, and the central prison tower.

A dry, bitter breeze caressed Jana's face. The sky was as gray as ever, but if the past several years were any indication, not a drop of rain would grace this barren landscape tonight.

Clover, the mild-mannered chestnut mare whose reins she held, bent down to investigate a tough, vaguely-green sprig and promptly decided against it. Jana patted the beast's broad neck.

"Just a while longer," she murmured.

The two of them waited in companionable silence. Jana breathed in her companion's warm, earthy scent and cleared her mind for the task ahead.

Darkness gradually supplanted daylight, with the latter diminishing behind mountainous horizons; when the night at last grew heavy enough for Jana's liking, she mounted Clover and began their trotting path to the Dead End. About halfway along, Jana found a rare patch of grass and pulled the reins. She dismounted, stroked Clover's mane as the mare grazed, then proceeded on foot.

Crouched behind a sparse bush about twenty paces from the wall, she watched the slow rounds of the guards' patrol and soon found what she was looking for: a brief window every minute and a half that would allow her to sprint the remaining distance before she was spotted.

When the right time came, she burst from her low crouch and cleared the distance with powerful, light-footed strides, her cloak billowing out behind her. She pressed herself against the stone, heart racing.

She took a small iron grapple and rope from the oilskin bag slung across her chest. After another round of counting, she threw it upward. It missed, plummeting back down with a muted thunk. She counted off another minute-and-a-half, then tried again. It caught. Jana briefly tugged the rope to test the grapple's hold, and began to climb.

She stopped her ascent just before her head cleared the wall. A guard passed her by, every footstep a gentle metallic clank. Jana peeked over the wall at his retreating back. Every moment from now could not survive a single misstep.

She took a short pipe and a pouch of blow darts from her bag and loaded the former one-handed. She took aim at the guard's sliver of exposed neck and shot a quick burst through the pipe.

Her aim was true. His hand flew to the pinprick-sized wound, but that was the full extent of his awareness before he swayed and collapsed with a disarmingly loud crash.

Jana ducked as two other guards rushed toward him, alerted by the noise.

"Was he ill?" came a gruff voice.

"Don't think so," said another.

"Hold on, there's something--"

Two additional darts found home in their napes, and they promptly collapsed beside the first.

Jana made a mental note to snare some wild rabbits on her way home for Alvir's favorite stew.

She flung herself over the top of the wall, a fresh dart primed. Her left hand rested on the hilt of a knife at her hip, a more conventional solution should luck turn against her.

The rest of the prison wall guards clattered over in a single, disorganized mass of jangling metal. As soon as she could see the pale ovals of their uncomprehending faces, she shot a new deluge of darts. Three collapsed before the others registered what was happening. Like hunting flightless pheasant. Jana almost pitied them.

Her next dart missed. The two remaining men drew their swords and marched forward, naked fear stark across their faces. This could have well been their first true battle.

She drew her knife.

The lankier one swung first, and Jana dodged it. Before his swing completed its arc, she lunged forward and buried the knife into his throat. Hot blood spurted down her fingers and the knife handle. Her head pounded with a combination of elation and horror; she had almost forgotten what this felt like.

Jana yanked out the blade with a wet squelch. The guard's throat gushed scarlet as he fell to his knees, and then to the ground. Blood began to pool in the channels between cobblestones, black in the moonlight.

The shorter guard watched this scene unfold, petrified and entranced, the blade dipping in his slackened hands. He met Jana's eyes and squeaked in terror, still rooted to the spot.

To save on darts, she again put her knife to work.

With the first line of defense cleared and no alarm yet raised, Jana descended into the deserted courtyard. A wide flight of stairs led her to the open archway of the tower entrance. Jana reloaded her blow pipe and surged up the steps two at a time.

The interior was as joyless as the exterior. Wall-mounted torches guttered and danced across the bleak stone, whose golden light provided little warmth or comfort. Jana peeked around the corner of the first corridor, and saw multiple rows of wooden doors lined up ahead of her on either side. Low moans and snores drifted out from within the cells.

A single guard stood in attendance at the end of the corridor, then promptly collapsed as a tiny dart pricked his left cheek. His terrified eyes rolled in their sockets as she passed his crumpled form.

Every man obstructing her path to the top floor was incapacitated before they could do more than jump at the sight of her. Only when she'd peered into the corridor of the very last cell did a minor hiccup arise: Jana had reached for one last dart, and found the pouch empty.

The final guard, his eyes sullen and dull, was scratching absently at his patchy beard. Jana's sudden emergence choked him off mid-yawn.

The guard's expression was almost comical in its naked shock, further tinged with fear as he beheld the intimidating stature of this intruder. She could almost see his mind working furiously toward the unavoidable conclusion: that her mere presence meant that every man preceding him had either been killed or debilitated. Silently, no less. Before he could even break out of his terror to point his spear in her direction, she struck.

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Her knife plunged upward through his chin, tongue, and mouth. His eyes bulged and rolled as spittle and blood dribbled from the corners of his lips. Jana held the blade in place as she slowly, almost gently, lowered his twitching body to the ground.

She tore away the ring of keys at his hip; his arm flopped once in a feeble attempt to stop her.

Her hands were warm and slick as she hurriedly tested each key in sequence. It was the fourth one that managed to turn with a deep, grinding click.

Heart pounding, Jana pulled the cell door open.

*

The boy lay limp atop his mat of shriveled hay. He'd long known that keeping still could often numb the exhaustion and hunger pangs to a bearable extent.

His memories from before his imprisonment were dim. Sometimes, he almost believed that he did not exist at all, and was nothing but a lost spirit trapped within the dark stone belly of an ageless, unyielding monster. Small snatches of conversation from the other side of the door were his sole indication otherwise, and he clung to them like a starving rat to crumbs.

He'd wished for death more times than he could count. In the initial months of his imprisonment, he'd pounded at the door, crying, screaming, scratching at the walls until his nails tore and bled. His questions and pleas went unanswered, no matter how loudly he howled.

His protests gradually faded as the months wore on. He made a manner of peace with his fate, if only to preserve some last vestige of sanity, and passed the single, endless night of his imprisonment in a trance-like stupor. His dreams, once unbearably vibrant and vivid, had become barely distinguishable from his waking hours.

Then, the guards had begun to come.

Most of them gawked. Some of them poked, prodded or dragged him by his hair. But the worst of these new visitors, by far, was the one whose touch reeked of malevolent purpose. This man made the boy's skin crawl in strange, unfamiliar ways; his hands were tinged with a wicked, lecherous hunger as they greedily consumed him. The boy hated this man with a revolted ferocity like no other.

The first time, his resistance had been rewarded with a stinging strike to the face, swelling up his entire left cheek into a tender mass. With subsequent visits, he learned to simply go limp and wait for the ordeal to end.

The guard who'd initiated this new chapter in the boy's life sometimes came to tease him with extra food. The boy did whatever he was bid, anything for a little more nourishment. Harsh, pitiless laughter rang in his ears as he devoured heels of bread or slices of meat he'd won, but he cared little for trivialities like pride or shame. His timeless stretch of imprisonment had transformed into something that now fully engaged his consciousness and will to survive.

Had his memory of life, wretched as it was, not been brutally rekindled, it would have been too late by the time a certain gentle guard had come to see him. The man hadn't touched, grabbed, or mocked; he'd simply held out a small dark stone. It'd called out with eerie, otherworldly voices, pulling his hand forward almost against his will. A trickle of dark energy had then infused his deepest core, followed by a strange, fundamental truth that he could not yet understand.

After the mysterious guard's departure, the ragged young prisoner had finally allowed himself a small, delicate dribble of hope.

*

The click of the lock, for the second time that day, roused him from his light doze. His heart constricted miserably, and he cringed back against the wall as the door swung open.

Blinding light spilled into the cell, outlining an enormous, featureless silhouette at the threshold. Its head nearly grazed the top of the doorway, but it spoke with a lighter, more melodic tone than he'd known in a very long time.

"My name is Jana. I've come to free you."

The silhouette took a step closer, and his chest seized in terror. No. Get away. Don't touch. He raised his arms to shield himself. The intruder grabbed one and pulled him roughly to his feet.

He yelped and squirmed, his heels digging into the damp stone as it dragged him toward the blinding outside. Stop, don't hurt, go away, leave, let go, stop touching! But his struggles were inconsequential against this monster's cold, relentless strength. He bit hard into the hand that gripped him. Hot blood flooded his mouth.

The giant cursed but did not loosen its iron hold. Instead, it swung him around and grabbed his jaw, turning his face upward to meet its own.

It wasn't a man, or a monster. It was a woman.

A faint memory of a different woman emerged from some dark recess of his mind. Her laugh was warm, and she was offering him a handful of freshly-picked figs. Come now, dear, look what I've found! There's no need to cry…

"If you can understand me, listen well," the stranger hissed. "I'm getting you out of here. Unless you'd rather spend the rest of your life in this filthy hole, you'll behave yourself."

Though the woman's face was cold and gaunt beneath the harsh shadows cast by the torches, he ceased his struggles. This was all the cooperation needed, and she roughly pulled him forward into the blindingly bright corridor. His eyes instinctively squeezed shut before he forced them back open into slits.

Something soft and heavy settled onto his shoulders. She'd removed her cloak and wrapped it around him.

A gentle gurgling noise trailed in from his left. The boy turned and jumped at the sight of the man slumped on the ground like a boneless doll. Blood poured from under his chin, staining the tunic beneath his armor. His eyes were blank and glassy, his complexion ashen.

A deluge of indefinable emotions filled the boy's heart, but pity was not one of them.

He turned away and attempted a step forward; his legs immediately buckled. The woman caught him before he hit the ground, sighed, then hoisted him over her shoulder.

"Stay still."

She began her careful descent down the stairway.

Many identical flights later, the world opened into infinity. The boy gaped at the massive, inky expanse above them, around them, stretching up and out farther than he'd ever remembered it going. He breathed in the indescribably sweet scent of the outside, his head as light as air. He inhaled again, deeper, as if his life depended on it.

He raised his gaze to the sky. No, he hadn't dreamt them up--countless pinpricks of light indeed populated that unreachable dome of darkness. What were they called? He'd known once, a lifetime ago.

The woman set him on the ground when they came upon a gridded iron gate embedded into the high walls surrounding them. She took hold of the large wooden wheel mounted beside it, around which ran twin lengths of heavy chain.

"Alert me if anyone in the guards' quarters awakens," she said.

She grabbed hold of the spokes and began to turn the mechanism. With a labored creak that echoed loudly in the still air of the night, the iron gate rose a little to revealing rusted, tapered points previously spearing divots into the ground. She paused, panted, then pulled again. The gate rose further with another tortured grind of metal.

A lantern beside a window in the guards' quarters ignited, a bright yellow square amidst the inky darkness. The boy turned to the woman and grunted softly. She spat an ugly, guttural word that he didn't recognize.

The lantern bobbed along the length of the guards' quarters, then nudged open the door at the far end to reveal a shadowy figure attached to it.

The woman abandoned the wheel and came to stand in front of the boy, a bloodied knife held at the ready.

The man approached them slowly, shuffling down the sloped, rocky ground. As soon as his illuminated face became recognizable, they both relaxed. It was the gentle guard with the dark mustache, clad in shabby bedclothes.

"Goddess curse you, Marcus," hissed the woman. "Return to your quarters, quickly! If you're spotted--"

"Every man in there sleeps like the dead. It'd take another Awakening to rouse them before morning." His eyes twinkled in the warm lantern light. "Might I lend a hand?"

The woman considered, then acquiesced with a grunt.

Marcus set down his lantern beside the huddled boy, and flashed him a warm smile before joining the woman at the large wooden wheel.

"One… two… three." She pushed one side while he pulled the other. The gate squealed again, but reached a good height this time.

They briefly clasped hands.

"Go on, now," she said. "Enjoy your dull little royal post."

"Oh, I'm certain it'll be plenty interesting here in the coming days."

As Marcus returned to his quarters, he paused to look back at the boy and once again made the curious salute with two fingers over his mouth and then his heart.

The woman hoisted him back up and walked them both through the open gate, lowering her head to duck past the iron prongs.

They were free.