Okay, I seriously did not think that I would end up in jail of all places. It’s a temporary hold while the law enforcement of this city decides what to do with me, but to be honest I didn’t even do anything that bad! Like, I was just trying to save my friends.

The cell is rusty, musty, and I think there’s a dead guy in here with me. He hasn’t moved once since I got here. There is a teeny, tiny window carved into the bricks at the top lined with mud and clumps of grass, basically blocking any light source coming in. There are also other cells to my left and right containing random guys. They don’t seem like they’d be able to help me out of here, so there’s no point in trying to befriend them.

And there’s a goat in front of my cell… is it on watch? I’m not really sure why it’s here. The city of Langdale isn’t very fancy, and it seems that all of the guards have run off to try to catch my friends who were allegedly terrorizing the city.

You see, we’ve been sent here on a super secret mission to obtain a specific piece of text from the Duke of Langdale, Duke Lyon Earlsmith Gatersnoot. We’re going to get paid thousands upon thousands in gold and other riches, which I desperately need a hit of right now. No, I did not meet the exact person asking us to do this. Just his assistant, who calls himself an ‘apprentice’, but I don’t see it.

There’s loud stomps on the floor above me, a ruckus seems to be occurring. I hear some clanging of metal, crashing, a Wilhelm scream and then it’s quiet. I realize I’m holding my breath, completely unarmed and out in the open for whoever seems to be making their way down here.

Brown leather boots run down the stairs, several pairs of them, and I’m greeted by my friends.

They run up to my cell and Charity, my absolute bestie, is holding onto a heavy set of ancient-looking keys. She starts jamming them in the door one by one.

“How’s it going?” I ask them.

Helen and Pavia roll their eyes. They’re twins and have the exact same voice, so when I get chewed out it double sucks.

“The tower in the city center is still on fire,” Helen says. “It seems that adding poison to the city’s water distribution system has made everywhere with a water source in the town extremely flammable.”

I roll my eyes in return. “Okay but the poison will like, run out into a lake and get filtered out. It’s fine.”

“Only one person has been knocked out by the poison, not the entire city like you theorized,” Pavia says.

“And we still don’t have the text,” Helen adds.

“Aha!” Charity exclaims, successfully turning the key and opening the door.

“Sounds like we at least made a distraction, right?” I ask, slipping out.

“You made an absolute nightmare that has decreased our chances of getting that text,” Charity says.

“Aw, you’re mad too?” I pout.

“What about him?” Pavia gestures to the possibly-dead guy.

“He’s fine,” I say, heading towards the stairs.

We step over the fallen guards at the front of the jail and into the bright, hot day. The sun beats down on the village, scalding the gravel ground. People are running in all directions, multiple buildings are on fire, screaming is bouncing off the walls. A horse runs by pulling a carriage on fire.

“Ok, this is good,” I say. “No one will see us sneak into the Duke’s home.”

“He’s gone, we checked,” Charity says. “So is the text.”

“Well, at least it didn’t catch on fire,” I say. The silence I get in return tells me my joke didn’t land.

“What about that?” Pavia points to a sinkhole to their left. It’s about three feet wide and growing faster by the second. The gravel surrounding the sinkhole trickles away, disappearing into the ever-growing hole. Despite the size, no one really seems to notice or care about what was going on with it except us. It could be a good way to sneak around.

Charity and I exchange a look, then head towards it.

We descend into the tunnel which barely fits my stature (tall, thin, and extremely graceful, ask my friends, they’ll all agree). The rest of the group is shorter, so they don’t have to duck as much.

The air is musty and getting worse the further we go. The scent of sewage is becoming stronger and stronger.

I can feel my custom green leather boots sinking into the mud. Which is fine, they’re washable.

“You don’t have any weapons on you, do you Justin?” Helen asks.

I pat around my green (matches the boots) jumpsuit. Just a small knife.

“They took basically everything when I was captured.” I say.

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“You weren’t captured,” Pavia says. “Stop saying captured. You got high and walked yourself right into the prison because you felt guilty.”

“I didn’t think I’d get high!” I say.

“We all know you were trying to be cool by showing us you could sample a little taste of the poison without being affected by it,” Helen says.

“I guess small amounts of whatever you had is a narcotic or something,” Charity says. “Do you even know what kind of drug it was that guy gave you?”

I don’t say anything. To be honest, when I purchased the poison I was only informed that it was enough to knock out a city. That’s where my idea of putting it in the water supply came from.

“Light ahead,” Helen reports from the front.

I lean into the muddy wall to see past everyone. Sure enough, popping out of the mud is a circular, diamond-tiled floor with a ladder in the center that is lit up.

Helen climbs the ladder, pops off some sort of seal at the top, and continues her climb onto the next floor. Pavia follows and I lose sight of her shortly after. I am just about to step from the ground to the tiled floor when my boot gets caught in the mud and my sock-covered foot slips out, landing on the tile.

I shriek, stumble, then run back to grab my boot.

“Hurry up, Justin!” Charity says, almost fully onto the next floor.

“My boot’s stuck!” I cry.

Charity doesn’t wait, pushing herself to the next floor and disappearing.

“Wait for me!” I yell, tugging at the boot. It is really stuck.

The seal slams shut.

I slip on the floor, sliding onto my side and holding on to the boot which has not moved an inch. Mud splashes up the side of my body.

“No!” I squeal.

Immediately, there’s action above me. I have no idea where the girls went, but there is a commotion. I hear a clanging of weapons. I pull at the boot harder. I cannot continue the rest of this mission with one shoe!

“How are you so stuck?!” I yell at the shoe.

A loud thump hits, followed by two more. I pause the boot-pulling and watch the ceiling, as if it will reveal to me the mysteries occurring above.

The boot pops out of the mud, gaining weight in my hand. I groan, shoving it back on and heading towards the ladder.

I stare up at the sealed entrance above, hands on my hips. Maybe I can just push it open again?

I climb the ladder and push on the entrance. It doesn’t budge. I groan again and push harder. There’s talking above, maybe someone will open it for me.

I push again, and my boot slips. I fall from the ladder, clinging on to the top rung with one hand.

For a second, while I dangle there, I do consider letting go and just leaving. The girls can handle it on their own. Clearly the gods above do not want me to complete this task.

The voices coming from above sound unfamiliar– male. I frown, hauling myself back to the top of the ladder.

“Air it out!” I hear someone shout. “Open the window!”

Someone’s coughing. I don’t hear my friends. I grab my small knife, hiding it up my sleeve, and push again on the entrance seal. It opens with ease.

I pop my head out. The cool air smells much nicer than the tunnel below. It’s a bunker, still underground and paved with the same diamond tile below. The room is circular, with a bed wrapped against the wall on one side, bookshelves and storage filled with colourful books, potions and food on the other. There’s a large window in the ceiling that has been cracked open.

Two men have their backs to me, wearing expensive (but not as expensive as my clothes) robes. They’re both pretty big, with long dark hair. Pavia, Helen and Charity are asleep on the floor.

I lift myself out of the hole as silently as possible. I’m fully out and upright when one of them turns around and freezes as they see me. The other guy turns around shortly after. They look at my friends on the ground then at each other.

“My house was on fire,” I begin, spewing out the quickest lie I can think of, “And I thought this was a way out of the city. Uh… where am I?”

The men scan me over, taking in my green jumpsuit, matching green boots, and contrasting purple belt, all covered in mud.

“Duke Lyon Earlsmith Gatersnoot’s safety bunker,” the man on the right says.

“Oh.”

I look down at my friends. “Are they ok?”

“They’re… sleeping,” the man on the left says.

I spot the text crammed in a packed bookshelf to my right. If I take about six steps I will be there and can grab it. The question is, can I take on these guys too?

“So, how can I get out of here?” I ask, shuffling slowly to my right. “Out that window up there?” I point to the open window in the ceiling.

The man on the right leans in to the man on the left and says something quietly to him. It sounds a lot like, you know, this person does not look familiar to me. Do they even live here?

I keep my eyes on them, still shuffling towards the book.

“My cousin’s gonna be so peeved,” I continue. “I was watching her house while she was away for a bit, and now it’s most likely burnt down. I wonder if she’ll even believe that it really wasn’t me. Fire came up through the sink. It was so weird! I don’t even understand how that can happen.”

“What are you doing?” The right man asks.

I arrive at the bookshelf, pull out two random, heavy looking books and throw them as hard as I can at the men. Each book (fortunately) strikes each man in the head. While they recoil, I grab the actual text we need and shove it in the side of my bodysuit.

I jump over to Charity and shake her awake. Trying to multitask, I use my foot to kick lightly at Helen and rouse her too.

“WAKE UP!” I shout at them.

Hearing the men get up and approach me from behind, I reach for Charity’s sword and spin around, just in time to clang against one of their swords. We exchange a few swings at one another. I'm really not that good with a sword, but I’m better than these two.

We jump between all of my friends on the floor, a dance of clashing swords, a miracle I’m able to hold both of them off for this long, until I lose patience and run to another bookshelf where I begin yanking more books out and throwing them at the men.

“STOP!” One of them shouts in between the stream of books.

“WE JUST ORGANIZED THESE!” The other one said.

I ignore them. The books fly through the air, old and new, some 900 pages, others, magazine sized. My arms are getting tired but I won’t stop until every single book in the bunker has been thrown in their direction.

The bookshelf is nearly empty as finally–finally–Helen wakes up, shakes her head and comes to. It takes her a second to understand what’s going on but seeing as the men are distracted by me, she sneaks up behind them. She sends one down with a strike from the hilt of her sword, which makes the other one turn around. In that second, I hit the other man as hard as I can with a book and he falls down.

We wait a second to confirm they aren’t moving.

“I have it,” I say. “Let’s bounce.”

~~

“We can never come back to this city again,” Charity says sadly, looking towards the burning down buildings behind us.

The rest of the team awoke a couple minutes after we defeated the men. After confirming the text I had was correct we crawled out of Duke Lyon Earlsmith Gatersnoot’s safety bunker and ran towards a nearby forest where hopefully no one else would be heading.

“I-” I begin, but am cut off by a massive explosion that appears to have gone off at the core of Langdale. “I’m just happy we’re ok.”