The world in its entirety was chaotic, but small parts did have the ability to be ordered. At least that’s what Olivia told herself on days like these, where half her office was overflowing with old reports and badly-filled-out dungeon-entry requests she needed to sign off on before the end of the week.

Why exactly she had the duty of sorting through who was allowed to enter the dungeon at what times was something she couldn’t explain, and neither could any of the people above her. During the founding of the city, the old guard captain had simply picked up the task while the administration got its feet on the ground, and… since it had never seemed like the biggest issue from an outside perspective, there had never been anybody around to take it away again.

And, to be fair, it usually wasn’t that much of a concern. Ignoring the burns and cuts that her men were stupid enough to get regularly, there wasn’t much that truly required her attention. Balancing an ever-tightening budget, stopping idiots from forcing themselves through the dungeon entrance, and managing the actual entry requests were just about all she had to do normally.

But then came this. An entire night and day was spent filling the city with wanted posters, an extra chunk of the budget wasted so those on leave could go back into their uniform and help, and then they have the gall to take it all back.

“They want all posters removed and burned before morning, ma’am,” Fred said, the lower-ranked guard wincing as Olivia’s desk buckled under her grip, dents forming on the surface. “We got the message just now.”

She was angry.

“Hundreds of man hours for a rush job and now they want us to tear it all down,” Olivia muttered, the grip on her desk tightening further until her fingers went all the way through. That calmed her down, though the splinters forced into her skin helped as well in their own way. "Did they give us any reason for the change of mind?”

“None, ma’am,” Fred reported, just staring at her as she sighed tiredly. She was hitting three all-nighters in a row now. Two was usually her limit these days, but it seemed that pushing the extremes was just her new way of life. “What do you want us to do?”

Rip the idiots apart and put their heads on spikes.

That was the private person inside her talking. A very reasonable suggestion when put alongside her current sleep schedule, even if the professional part of her brain thought otherwise.

“There’s nothing to do but obey, I suppose,” Olivia said, resigned to fulfill her duties to her best efforts. Or at least to some degree of effort. Her men liked this about as much as she did if the sour faces outside her office had anything to say about it. “Maybe… maybe there is something rotten about this.”

And maybe her duty was more than just obeying the orders sent in from above.

Of course, it was.

She had signed up for the betterment of the city, just as many others had done. Those above her had sworn off this ideal as well, with the context given with every large or abnormal order. Context was the standard, yet it was completely absent here.

An abnormality in the part of the world meant to be orderly.

It didn’t sit right with Olivia. Something was wrong with this.

She had to get some clarity.

“Ma’am?” Fred said as Olivia pushed past him, opening the door out into the dungeon entrance where the rest of her on-duty squad sat, ready to accept her commands should she give them.

They all looked at her.

Olivia walked right past them, the stone arch in front of the dungeon gone through as she headed into the actual city.

“Ma’am, where are you going?”

“To get answers,” Olivia answered, before realizing her position. The others hadn’t questioned her actions too much, getting into formation and following her. That wouldn’t work. “In the meanwhile, you split into groups and tear down every single poster you’ve put up. Don’t leave any of them behind, or our asses will be on the line. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“And, Fred, make sure to let Elijah in when he comes around. And ask him to take down the poster in his shop.”

Two others stayed behind with her second-in-command to guard the entrance, of course. Even with their trust in her judgment, the unsaid hadn't needed to be voiced at all. They were still guards focused on the dungeon and the daily activities associated with it, and they would prioritize that above all other orders.

Yet now we’re told to do just the opposite.

Maybe those above in the rank hierarchy really were incompetent. A strange thought, since they’d been so good in the past. Had there been any shifting around in the command structure recently? Olivia couldn’t remember.

Wouldn’t have been good if there had, since it meant she would’ve needed to wait until morning to barge into the Command Office down on Royal Street. But, luckily, there were still the same worn-out names on the doors as usual, and Olivia was able to walk into the guard commander’s workroom without the slightest issue.

Somebody with an intact and healthy sleep schedule wouldn’t have been in their work area at this time of night.

But she wasn’t the one in this country that had invented the practice. The honor for that went to the older man sitting in the chair before her, one with bags under his eyes that rivaled her own.

“... Olivia Blackwell. I’m surprised to see you visiting at this time of day,” Mateo commented, the older man glancing at the clock on the wall. They were rapidly approaching midnight. Olivia heard a mumble about that fact, the words able to go through the commander’s gray mustache with some difficulty. “I’m guessing this is about the recent orders you’ve been sent?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Did you even have to ask?

“No shit,” Olivia replied with the bluntness this situation deserved. At least the commanding officer before didn’t take her words too harshly, eyebrows hardly lifting at her remark. “I’ve had more guards active in the last 24 hours than ever before, all because of an unexplained order, and now you want me to do it again to remove the work we did the first time.”

“Believe me when I tell you that I wasn’t happy with this either,” Mateo promised, tone even and professional. Olivia couldn’t find the slightest hint of distaste in his voice. “But these commands were from the royal branch. We must obey them, even if we don’t understand it.”

What?

Olivia’s angry heart quieted down, as a contradiction formed in front of her.

This didn’t make sense.

“It’s the royals that ordered this?” Olivia questioned. “Not another branch that discovered the body of the victim, or the ones who interviewed the group that somehow saw the faces of the perpetrators with such intricate detail that perfect renditions could be made of them for the posters?”

“It’s the royal branch, Olivia. Not the actual royals,” the commander corrected, not acknowledging the last part of her statement. Her anger began to reform from that fact alone. “And where this order comes from shouldn’t concern you either. You have been given a duty to fulfill, you have made sure it came through me, and now you go do it.”

“But—”

“Did you not hear me? Go.”

…

“Of course, sir,” Olivia said, eyes downwards as she left the office of her superior behind. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

“It’s fine. Just get the posters removed before morning comes around,” Mateo said, the annoyance in his voice gone and replaced with indifference. “Oh, and, before I forget, please dispose of the file you were sent regarding this case.”

She stopped in her footsteps, an idea coming to mind.

“Sorry?”

“The file that came with the last messenger had wrong information on it,” Mateo explained, the commander’s eyes already focused on the documents on his desk once again. “We’ve fixed and put the new version in the archive, but all the old ones need to be burnt before we can put this ordeal behind us.”

“... Right,” Olivia replied. “I’ll get on that, sir.”

“See that you do.”

She closed the door and headed down the hallway once again. Instead of going outside and back to her station, however, Olivia went up the stairs and onto the second floor of the building.

During the day hours, it would be absolutely filled with administration workers, dozens upon dozens making sure everything financial and mercantile was properly documented and without falsifications. How it all worked, Olivia couldn’t say, but she had been up there plenty of times in the past to visit the adjacent archives.

The large door to it was locked, of course, and she knew from experience it was heavy enough that nobody would be knocking it down alone. Not that she needed to, seeing as all captains had the keys required to get inside.

Pushing the metal door open, the smell of old air and even older documents nearly made her cough. How anybody stayed inside for more than a few minutes at a time was a mystery to her.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t need to.

Where exactly are you hiding, little file?

Calling the archive unorganized would be a dishonor to all the chaotic messes in the world, but the people around here did have a preference for putting all recent entries into the front of the mess. From the dates on all the boxes on the first few shelves, Olivia could see that they hadn’t changed in this respect just yet.

Would’ve been great to have some readable name tags on the front as well, but that’s just too much to ask for around here.

Olivia sighed, ready to manually look through all the boxes. Before she could get the first one off the shelf, however, red dots caught her attention.

One of the boxes at the top, nearly hidden from her view, had a few dried spots of red on its front. Not the kind that would form from having liquid drop on the surface, but the kind that came from it seeping through from the other side.

Pulling it down and looking at the date, Olivia found that it matched perfectly. And… opening up the box and looking inside, a bloody robe met her eyes.

Got you.

The fabric was shredded and bloodied, the robe itself looking to have been crudely ripped in half. Maybe the mage who’d been wearing it had suffered that same fate, seeing how the majority of the dried blood was focused around the cuts.

And Olivia knew it was a mage. A Royal Mage at that, seeing as nobody else in the city was allowed to wear a thing like this.

Why would they hide this?

A Royal Mage had been killed brutally, by the looks of it, and she and her guards had been told nothing of the sort. This was more than newsworthy. The public would’ve been in an uproar if they learned that one of the most respected people in the country had been killed while walking around in the slums.

Which begged the question of why they were out there, to begin with.

“What are you hiding?” Olivia muttered as she pulled the robe out from the box to look at it better. The darkness of the archive had made it hard to see the details and—

Her issue was solved when the metal door into the archive opened up five meters away from her, two men freezing as they saw her already inside. Olivia didn’t care much for their appearance, however, as the extra light allowed her to see the light coating of green dust on the purple robe.

This isn’t possible.

“What are you doing here so late?” one of the men questioned as she put the robe back into the box and put it onto the shelf.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Olivia fired back.

“Official business, on behalf of the royal family,” was the instant response. “Now get out.”

Though she narrowed her eyes, she didn’t fight the order. With her hands up, she ventured out the door and into the regular administration area. When looking back, Olivia was able to spot one of the men taking down the box she’d held just a second before.

Then the door closed and whatever happened next was hidden from her eyes.

That’s the last time anybody will see that robe, isn’t it?

Probably was. And that fact infuriated her.

There was something wrong here. Olivia had known that since the first order had come in from her commander. Now, with this display of corruption, she had ground to stand on. Shaky ground but ground nonetheless.

And that green dust…

After so many years working as the head guard of the dungeon, Olivia could recognize that pollen from everywhere. It wasn’t uncommon for warriors to be covered in it after venturing down to the mid-depth floors.

And that robe had gotten a very recent coating, which meant the mage who owned it had been in the dungeon depths the night that he’d been killed. Inside a dungeon nobody was meant to have been able to enter without Olivia taking note of it.

There was meant to be only one entrance, after all.

…

Olivia had to know the truth.