When Rikuto and Daniel arrived in the Castle of Mornistae, their perspective was a sudden magic circle appearing beneath their feet, a blinding flash of light, and in Daniel’s case, arriving in a strange place when the light finally faded. For Rikuto, the only additional step was meeting with Ryukana to receive her gifts prior to the arrival.
For anyone standing in the ritual room, however, it seems that the spectacle is a great deal more magical than anyone could imagine. A great deal of mana was gathered into the air above the ritual circle, building into a powerful and ethereal core that burst into the heavens to call in a request to the gods themselves, in hopes that they might answer with sending an otherworlder to assist with Zenkon’s most dire problems.
The answer from the Divine Realm returned with just as much of a splendorous and divine tableau. Glowing mana of various colors seems to roll away from the epicenter of the spell circle like a heavy fog.
When the air clears enough, Rikuto’s heart tightens. He was afraid of what would happen if the spell were to falter, but he only now realizes the true gravity of what he has done.
He has taken responsibility for and completed a ritual that pulls a person from another world.
Assuming it went the same as his own summoning, Ryukana the goddess would have verified that the chosen person accepts. During this time, the summoned individual is bestowed with magic and specific powers unique to them even in the world of Zenkon.
If it goes like Daniel, however, the person arrives in the world with no magic and never spoke to the goddess. That person would be akin to a kidnapping victim.
Now, seated on her knees in the middle of the ritual circle, is another apparent American with fair skin, golden blonde hair in a ponytail, mahogany-brown eyes, and a large backpack decked out with camping equipment.
In fact, she looks like a hiker, with obvious brown leather boots, all kinds of equipment tied to her bag, denim shorts and a lightly sweat-stained blue tee shirt.
Feeding into Rikuto’s fears, her eyes are as wide as saucers as they adjust to the dim lighting, and she scans the room briefly.
Yaulander stands up suddenly with a boisterous exclamation of victory. “Ahhh! You did it! Amazing! Look at her! She looks so very foreign, and yet, truly heaven-sent!”
She flinches with a start at the Grand Prince’s joy, and she asks frantically, “Co się dzieje!? Gdzie ja jestem!?”
This catches Rikuto off guard, and Yaulander asks, “What was that? What did she say?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Didn’t she come from your world?”
Rikuto nods. He asks in English, “[Excuse me? Do you understand me?]”
The young woman looks between him and the Grand Prince, asking with the same panic in her voice, “Kim wy jesteście?! Jak się tu dostałam!?”
She’s of European descent; that much is clear. And, the camping equipment she has all belongs to the modern age. He doesn’t see anything especially alien to him from the year he left. However, he doesn’t recognize the language she’s using. If he had to guess, he would eliminate French and Spanish, since it doesn’t sound like what little he knows of those, but there are still a lot of options remaining that he can’t eliminate for certain.
Yaulander’s impatience gets the better of him, and he marches proudly towards her. “Listen to me! You are a Divine Summon brought to our world to-...”
He is cut off when the blonde whips out a canister from a holster on her belt. It’s about the size of an energy drink can with a looped handle and a pushbutton on top, as well as a nozzle pointed directly at the golden-haired Grand Prince. The young woman quickly scans the room, springing to her feet. She snarls at the Grand Prince, aiming the canister at anyone who moves closer to her, “Nie zbliżaj się, słyszysz!?”
Yaulander simply laughs, putting his hand on his chest. “Obviously, you wouldn’t yet know who I am, but I am Grand Prince Yaulander kos…” The girl bolts for the nearest doorway, startling everyone.
Rikuto calls out, “Wait!”, while the Grand Prince shouts, “Stop her! Don’t let her escape!”
Several guards close in on her, attempting to block her escape. Rikuto hasn’t ever owned one himself, but he easily recognizes the canister. It is a can of pepper spray; specifically, it is a specialized pepper spray designed for protection against bears.
She delays her flight from the room only long enough to take solid aim at the left guard’s face, unleashing a jet of bright orange fog straight into his metal helmet. She swiftly aims at the right guard, doing the same to him, and in just a couple of seconds, both guards are screaming in agony until falling into a fit of coughing and wheezing. They instinctively stumble back away from the source of the spray, giving the young woman enough of a window to dart between them under the cloud of irritant and slip out of the room through the doorway.
Other guards follow her, but even with her backpack, she is much faster than they are in their armor.
Rikuto watches as the Imperial guards belonging to Yaulander chase after the summoned woman, minus two who are on the ground in agony, unable to breathe properly. A few guards and maids try to tend to them, pulling their helmets off to give them fresh air. Plenty of the spray reached their faces, meaning the two are down for the count, no matter what anyone does for the time being.
“That fool!” shouts Yaulander. “Who does she think she is!? I had her called here! Does she think she stands a chance out there without me?”
Rikuto listens to him vent for a moment. He can’t help the thought that immediately enters his mind.
Daniel survived, and he arrived with little more than a cell phone and a computer chair. Now, he’s enemy number one. That girl looked more like she was ready to survive without help than either me or Daniel.
Yaulander snaps, “Order your guards to seal the city and capture her. She won’t get far.”
Rikuto hesitates for only a second, nodding soon after. “Of course, your Imperial Majesty.” He still can’t stand, too dizzy to focus on much of anything now that the girl has fled.
If I can, I’d prefer to bring her in without his knowledge so I can try to protect her. I shouldn’t have stepped in. What was I thinking?
Rikuto turns to his own Royal Guardsmen and begins giving them instructions. They also need doctors and healers to start treating the collapsed mages.
They’ll need to find the young woman before she gets lost, or something worse happens.
***
Zuzia runs down the stone corridor, too surprised to really take in her surroundings.
How did I get here? Was I drugged? I obviously got kidnapped, but by who? The last thing I remember, I was in the middle of the forest!
She turns around a corner, coming to a stop and aiming her anti-bear pepper spray. As soon as a trio of armored men turn the corner, she sprays them with a solid fog, incapacitating them and tripping several more. It should restrict the hallway for a moment or two.
The Polish woman resumes her sprint down the hall, narrowly avoiding a random medieval cosplayer in a full Victorian era-like dress. Zuzia glances at it briefly, but keeps her focus on her escape.
What is this place? Those guards… that pompous guy? That language? How could I get kidnapped from a forest near my hometown to another country!? It’s definitely not a castle I recognize. What was the one I visited in school? Moszna? This definitely isn’t Ogrodzieniec. It’s too new, and no rock-faces.
Zuzia scoffs, joking to herself. At least I know it’s not Kaer Morhen…
Several guards ahead notice her, and they challenge her. However, the language is completely alien to her, and she doesn’t understand.
“Sorry!” shouts the blonde as she sprays them in the face, dropping them as they flail back against the wall. She keeps running.
I never had to use this spray in all of the times I went camping! Now, I’m going to empty it in a freaking castle!
She uses her free right hand to check her backup spray, which is still firmly locked into its holster. Bear attacks are extremely rare in Poland, but since she likes to go on solo backpacking trips, she chose safety. And, the bonus is that pepper spray strong enough for bears works just fine on people.
Well,... At least,... I hope none of them die, but I’m not being a prisoner to a bunch of drugging kidnappers!
She notices sunlight up ahead, and she runs as fast as she can. She already used about 3-4 full seconds of her current can of bear spray, meaning she probably has one good burst left.
Please be an exit! Please be an exit!
The young polish woman is just running. She has no idea where she is, where she’s going, and how she’s going to get home. For now, she has to get away from the kidnappers.
Because, if this is some sort of weird cosplay cult, she wants nothing to do with it.
Several women dressed like ancient European maids step out of a room carrying wooden pails, and Zuzia does her best to dart around them. She nearly plows into a statue, shoving off of it as she keeps running.
The source of the sunlight proves to be a window, and she nearly sprints straight out of it until she manages to stop herself.
It’s about a thirty meter drop if she is to jump, and the ground is made of stone blocks forming a courtyard around the castle.
She gasps.
It is a castle! How the heck did I end up in a castle!? And where is this!? She glances around in the distance for any clues as to whether or not it’s one even remotely close to her small hometown, or even if she recognizes enough of the terrain to find Warsaw or any other big city she can use to navigate.
I don’t recognize any of these buildings. In fact… What are those houses made of? Thatched roofs? I didn’t think any castles were still in service like this, other than tourist places. Is there some kind of fair or event going on?
She hears the guards calling out, and she glances at them. The armored soldiers are getting closer, and she resumes sprinting up the hallway.
Okay, I’m in a castle about two or three stories up, right? More? I don’t know! Gah! How did I end up here!?
Zuzia nearly falls when she tries to come to a sudden stop. Ahead of her, several more guards turn a corner to enter the stretch of hallway she’s in, boxing her in.
Thinking quickly, she darts into the nearest room, which appears to be a huge bedroom.
Everything looks ancient, with the large bed structured with large curtains to both keep the heat in and keep bugs out, as well as a huge decorative chandelier.
Seated on a loveseat are a man and woman. They don’t look like they were in the throes of passion, but they are clearly very intimate.
The young woman groans out loud, “Aww! I don’t want to interrupt. Sorry!” She whirls and sprays the first couple of guards to enter the doorway, seemingly against the caution of the other guards, given the shouting. The two that take the last of the bear spray scream in recoil, pulled away from the door by their comrades as the soldiers begin shouting.
“I didn’t ask to come here!” shouts Zuzia in reply. “Take it up with your people!”
The man behind Zuzia, dressed in an elaborate blue cloak perfectly complementing the woman’s ocean blue dress, shouts something, and she looks. He and the woman are escaping through a secret passageway.
“Perfect!” cheers the blonde. She throws the canister out into the hallway, and the guards recoil a bit. Hah! I wish it was a grenade, stupids!
She bolts after the man and woman, managing to slip through the secret doorway hidden behind a bookshelf before it closes. She then draws and clicks on her flashlight, startling the man and woman in the dark just as they’re trying to activate what Zuzia would guess to be the lights. She sprints past them, shouting over her shoulder, “Sorry again! Be fruitful and multiply or whatever!” She follows the narrow and dark tunnel, seeing some kind of lights built into the wall, but not recognizing the style of bulbs. In fact, they look more like those bottom-lit salt crystals some people buy, if anything.
Of course, none of that matters to her right now. Zuzia has to escape this place and find a good place to call the police. Whatever country she’s in, they have to have police.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Wait? What’s the emergency code for this country? Are they all the same? No, I think they’re different, right? Still, how far could they have gotten me while I was drugged?
Zuzia checks behind her. So far, there’s no signs that she’s being followed. That said, there’s also an extremely high chance that they know where the tunnel lets out, so they’ll likely be waiting for her.
When she comes to an intersection, she studies it for a moment, listening while she thinks.
I’d guess the straight path takes me to the intended exit, but why an intersection in an escape tunnel like this? Must be connections to other VIP rooms. Or, maybe tie-in tunnels to family members? It is a castle. Could these cultists be pretending to be royals? Isn’t that illegal or something?
Zuzia decides to go down the left tunnel. She’s hoping it’s a tie-in tunnel, meaning the guards will be less likely to expect her to exit that way, since it’ll probably be on the same upper floor of the castle. She follows it for a while, turning off her flashlight when she hears sounds coming from behind her. She remains quiet, listening as she holds the finger-ring for her second can of bear spray.
She sees the glow of fairly normal torches pass by where the intersection is. The metallic clanking of armor continues down the path, though one torch lingers at the intersection for a while.
Zuzia remains silent. The tunnel is rather dark, so there’s almost no chance she has been noticed specifically.
And, thankfully, the torch disappears as the soldiers continue down the center path, likely headed for the exit.
The blonde woman continues in the dark, following the wall of the pitch-black corridor for a bit. Her heart is finally starting to settle a little bit, but she’s far from safe. She has been terrified of kidnapping for some time, though she hoped her homely appearance was below the threshold of what would be considered ‘worth’ kidnapping. That said, she knows she has to keep her head, or she’ll lose more than just her freedom.
She still can’t figure out what kind of place this is, though. It seems like the whole castle has been kept clean and authentic, with the entire population of people living like they’re in the middle ages or something. If she was naive enough to believe such a thing, she would assume the man and woman who tried to slip away into this secret passage were a king and queen, respectively.
But, that would be absurd.
Some celebrities might be a special kind of awful, but this is taking it to a whole other level. If they are awful celebrities that Zuzia doesn’t know, then they kidnapped her to a movie set or something, given how everything seems like an authentic medieval castle. At least, it’s ‘authentic’ as far as her VERY limited experience is concerned. It’s not preserved in a museum-like state for tourism the way the castles she’s been to were. This one is in active service as the home of these people.
The Polish woman finds the door, and she carefully feels for any kind of latch or mechanism to open it. When she can’t find anything, she checks behind her, making sure there are no torches following her. She then briefly uses her flashlight, covering the head to restrict the amount of light to just enough for her to search, while hopefully minimizing the chances of anyone at the intersection spotting her, as well as anyone that might be on the other side of the secret entrance.
She finds a safety latch and slowly releases it, trying to remain as quiet as possible. Once the secret door is unlocked from its mechanism, it swings open rather easily.
Zuzia peeks through the doorway to find another bedroom, just as she hoped. This one looks like it belonged to a young girl, given the dressing screen adorned with frilly dresses and the other feminine trinkets around the room, like dolls, jewelry, and mirrors.
Zuzia cautiously sneaks into the bedroom, making sure to scan every part of the room with her eyes. No one is present, and it looks almost exactly like she might expect an ancient princess’s room to look. Everything looks clean and new, but not in the way that it might for a stage play or a movie. It looks completely real, like this really is a medieval castle. Even the dresses seem to be made differently than modern fabrics. They have a sort of roughness to them, even with what appear to be higher quality materials, as if made completely by hand.
The bed also looks like it isn’t quite even, like the mattress was made by hand.
What is this place? Is this some sort of hardcore medieval experience? But, why kidnap me?
While she has a moment to herself, she takes a drink from her water bottle. It’s a lot of food for thought, and she hasn’t had long enough to piece it all together before now.
“Very strange…” murmurs the young blonde to herself. She tucks her water bottle back into her backpack and continues towards the door. She keeps one hand on her bear spray, ready to defend herself if need be.
She cracks the door open and peeks out into the hallway.
And, just then, the door is pushed open, startling her back a few steps. It’s the same pompous blonde man that was in the weird room. Now that she’s had a moment to reflect, there were bodies all around that room, and this man didn’t seem the least bit worried about them.
Zuzia screams, startling the man, who doesn’t seem to have expected her being there. He screams in turn, backing away towards the opposite wall. Still yelling, the blonde woman quick-draws her second and last canister of bear-rated pepper spray, and she sprays the princely man in the face. Her wailing of defensive terror continues as she slips through the door, spraying two more armored cosplay knights in the face and allowing her to slip by them as all three men scream in agony. She begins sprinting down the hall anew, reaching the corner she had to abandon earlier, and she whips around the corner, running as fast as she can once she’s sure she has a long opening.
She glances out of one of the windows as she’s running by, noticing something that she can’t stop to inspect yet. She rushes to the next window, prepared to stop to look outside a little more deliberately. She takes a few seconds to observe what she saw.
A river.
Specifically, it’s a river that flows directly into the castle, apparently. She leans out just enough to be able to confirm, and sure enough, the river flows under the main structure of the castle. A little further, and she might be able to make it.
She pushes away from the window, continuing her sprint up the hall, breathing as smoothly as she can. She’s used to hiking, not marathon sprinting. However, now isn’t the time to conserve energy. Her legs are a little tired, but she still has plenty left in her to make it to the river.
She just hopes she can manage to get back to the surface with her gear.
I was backpacking in the woods! Was this castle somewhere nearby and I didn’t see it!?
Zuzia still can’t make sense of her predicament, and escaping is entirely the one thing on her mind.
Some more guards appear in the hallways in both directions, but she reaches the location that she wanted.
Or at least, close enough.
It’s not a window, but a doorway to a balcony, and she sprints out onto the castle structure, glancing around for any alternate escape routes so she doesn’t have to take the iffy one.
She’s not especially adventurous by nature, other than enjoying backpacking and camping. It’s something she used to do with her grandfather a few times a year. Now, she continues their little tradition.
That said, if taking a life-threatening risk is the difference between her freedom and all of the horrible things that can happen in a strange kidnapper cult’s castle complete with a dungeon, she’ll take her chances with the river.
Zuzia steps between the block-like merlons, halting as her toes reach the edge of the embrasure. It’s about 45 meters (~150 feet) to the water’s surface below her. It’s also a river that flows into the fort’s outer wall, under the castle, and presumably out of the back side. She doesn’t have to clear any structures, thankfully, but it’s still a daunting height to willfully jump from.
Voices call out to her, and she merely glances. At least one of the guard does seem to be a human being; he’s terrified seeing her at the edge of the battlement, as if he knows what she’s contemplating. Maybe others are worried, as there’s a lot of yelling and waving at her.
However, there are swords drawn.
Actual metal swords.
A solid meter or more of sharpened steel meant to kill.
She can’t escape now. Not without jumping. It’s her only option, other than to surrender. She doesn’t have enough spray left to incapacitate such a large group, who have blocked both exits of the balcony.
Zuzia wishes she could say something suave or cool, reminiscent of an action movie hero. She wishes she had a cool one-liner that would send the guards straight to the burn unit at the hospital.
Instead, she can only hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. She can feel the itchiness of adrenaline in her veins. Fear grips her heart.
One of the guards tries to rush her with his lithe frame, seemingly moving like a cat, rather than a man, and Zuzia’s instincts kick back in, denying her chance to go out like a puckish rogue.
She steps forward, using her position to kick off of the lip of the embrasure with all of her strength, and she manages her angle as best as she can before closing her legs in and folding her arms over her chest. It’s a terrifyingly long time that she is careening towards the water; long enough for her to have thoughts, to be afraid all over again, to curse herself for jumping, to realize she noticed something strange protruding from the helmet and backside of the cat-like man, as if he had triangular ears on top of his head and an actual feline tail.
During her long fall, she has time to ask herself in her own thoughts, Wait, are there furries here, too? What kind of mix and match cult…?
Her feet hit the water, and she braces to try to hold her breath as long as she can, scrambling to the surface as quickly as she can manage. However, her bag is weighing her down. She had hoped there would be enough pocketed air volume that she might float, but that’s not the case. Her equipment is too heavy.
She saw buildings, so she's in a town. Though, if cultists have control of such a huge castle right out in the open, they probably have a great deal of influence in town.
Either way, she doesn't have the luxury of hesitating or thinking about it.
Zuzia unbuckles her backpack, slipping free of the straps just as she feels it settle on the bottom. Her ears ache painfully, but she doesn’t think she's much more than three, maybe three and a half meters deep.
The young woman quickly spins, flipping her backpack over and opening the main pocket zipper so she can grab a couple of her granola bars and her water bottle. She also gets into the small front pocket to retrieve her fire starter rod and a multi-tool.
Just in case, Zuzia tries to lift her backpack and swim with it, and she can move. Perhaps it was just because she was upside down. Not delaying further, and now that she has emergency supplies if she does have to ditch her bag, Zuzia slings it over her shoulder again. Feeling the burn in her lungs demand attention even after buying herself a few extra moments by exhaling slowly, she kicks off of the riverbed, swimming up to the surface. She barely reaches the surface when she absolutely has to inhale, and she takes in a massive breath of fresh air. Some water droplets find their way down her windpipe, and she coughs, treading water with her salvaged necessities. Her cellphone is in her shorts pocket, so as long as she can get clear of the immediate danger, she can call the police and try to figure out how to get home.
And, just in case, she has the granola bars to tide her over as she tries to hike to the next town away from this cultist compound. Zuzia’s fine with people having their own personal preferences and interests, but she’s not fine with being kidnapped into them.
And, as if to continue raining on her ‘happy’ little parade, the smell at the surface of the water degrades quickly as she drifts with the current, planning her route of escape. She is now under a tunnel structure, and the air quickly becomes a putrid, sewer-like smell.
It’s then that she realizes that one of the biggest advantages of being on a river like this, exploited by organizations of all levels since time immemorial, is that waste can be simply dumped into the river and it floats away… only to slowly destroy the environment and disrupt the ecosystem.
Oh, hell no! thinks the Polish woman. There’s no way THIS is legal! Just you wait until I figure out where the heck we are! She gags and coughs, doing her best to keep hold of her tools, but agonizing over foul stench invading her nostrils and making her cough. She feels horribly sick, and the downstream way is blocked by a gigantic metal grate. She can’t fit through any of the gaps in the bars, and she begins to panic. She’s still a bit winded from fleeing at a full sprint, and she doesn't want to sacrifice her expensive camping gear at the bottom of a river that a castle full of lunatic kidnappers dumps their waste into.
She searches for options, and her best bet is likely to climb out via the metal grating.
Zuzia shoves her fire starter and multi-tool into the pocket not containing her phone, and she grabs onto the portcullis with her newly free right hand so she can shift herself to allow her to shove the granola bars into her back pockets. It’s tightening her shorts on her legs, restricting her movement some, but she should still be able to run.
She grumbles to herself, “‘Get the ladies’ shorts!’ they said. ‘They’ll be super cute!’ Dumb, stupid… Why did I listen? I should’ve bought men’s shorts…” Zuzia clings the free strap of her backpack back onto her shoulders, but she avoids buckling it for now in case she needs to ditch it. The blonde starts climbing, but she hears the banging of metal armored boots as they approach, and she looks up at the gap above her.
Soldiers appear over the edge of the tunnel roof, shouting to each other and pointing at her.
“Dupki… Debile…” grumbles the Polish woman in her native tongue. Great. Now what?
She looks around as the guards call over reinforcements, while a couple of them bark orders at Zuzia.
I really can’t place that language at all. Who the heck are these guys?
Just out of idle -and admittedly desperate- curiosity, she tries pulling on the bars near her. The metal gateway consists of metal bars that are roughly four to five centimeters across forming squares about ten centimeters at the widest all the way across and up to the top of a stone-block archway.
As she pushes on it as much as she can, bracing herself with her left hand against a separate section, the bar she’s pressing on snaps one end of the section of a square with a loud metallic ‘pop!’ that startles her.
Surprised, she pulls the metal bar back the other way, and the other end of that small section of bar forming the side of a square snaps off as well with a metallic pop.
The guards fall silent, while Zuzia looks at the roughly 8 centimeters of metal she has in her hand.
Okay… I am definitely NOT this strong. This has to be a movie set or something, right?
She tucks the metal piece in between her belt and the waistband of her shorts, in case she can use it later, since it’s good metal. The Polish woman then grabs the newly created double section of a horizontal piece of flat bar, and she pulls on it with both hands, using her feet to brace herself. She yelps as the metal buckles and gives way, snapping off, though this time, the vertical piece that goes down from where her piece was broken bends. She twists a couple of times as she is slowly sinking in the water, snapping the bar free.
There is now a square gap that is roughly twenty centimeters wide and tall through the portcullis.
Zuzia swims back to the surface, inspecting her handiwork.
The guards have also fallen strangely quiet, though she can see they’re still up there, staring down at her.
She states caustically in Polish, “[I’m not sorry about your stupid movie props! You kidnapped me!]”
The blonde then takes a couple of moments to pull bars free under the water so she’ll be able to swim through, rather than trying to climb through. It may be movie prop metal for whatever dumb action scene, or because they’re stingy cultists with their own castle, but it’s still definitely metal. She doesn’t want to get scratched.
A net drops on her, and she yelps, “Gah!” She immediately kicks downwards into the water, bracing herself against the portcullis and pulling against the net as they try to draw it back up.
She encounters resistance for a moment, and it’s rather tangled around her, meaning she’ll have trouble escaping as well as avoiding drowning if she doesn’t get free quickly.
The Polish backpacker bucks backwards against the tension, and it seems to pop free of whatever it was, allowing her to sink with the weights attached to the net. She begins pulling against it to get free, and to her pleasant surprise, the ropes begin breaking.
Thank goodness! thinks the young woman to herself. Just as she has the thought, though, heavy splashes hit the surface of the water, and emerging from the rising bubbles are two armored bodies that sink like stones made of metal. They both flop down onto the bottom of the river bed, struggling to climb to their feet.
During her flailing while tangled, she kicks the portcullis, and the whole thing gongs through the water, startling her briefly.
Geez! This place is crazy!
She pries the netting free and scrambles clear, observing the two knights as they manage to get to their feet. But, with all of that armor, there’s no way they’ll make it to the surface.
What do I care!? I’m the victim!
She swims back to the surface, returning to her hole in the portcullis.
What am I even supposed to do, anyways? The others are coming.
As she pries another section of the metal bars free, she has a thought.
I guess… if their armor is as cheap as this metal…
Zuzia groans as her guilty conscience starts to nag at her.
***