I woke up with a splitting headache and a churning stomach. It was dark and there was someone warm lying across me. I went to tossle Patience’s hair, but found it seemed shorter than I remembered.

“Oh Nica, that feels lovely.”

“....Tiberius?”

“Cor!? What?”

We both launched ourselves to our feet and away from one another. In doing so I leapt high enough to bash my head on a low ceiling disorienting me and causing me to fall to my knees. I realized then that the floors were cold stone. My eyes adjusted after a few moments.

“Oh thank the gods, we’re just in a prison cell.”

I heard a relieved sigh from Tiberius. “Good. I was worried for a short moment.”

“Me too, luckily there’s not enough liquor in the world to make that happen.”

Tiberius chuckled. “Very true.”

Our relief and good humor faded quickly after that. “Do you know where we are?” I asked.

Tib shook his head. “Recognizing places from the inside of a cell isn’t something I can do. Tristus or Patience maybe.” He winced.”Sorry.”

“No worries. I’m well aware of who I’m dating.” I did a short circuit around the room. It was maybe an eight by eight foot cell with a single cot, a bucket I preferred not to think too much about, and iron bars along one side. There was a light of some kind coming from further down the hall, but it was too faint for me to make out its source. I sighed, “Any idea how we got here? Were we kidnapped?” I asked.

“The last thing I remember is having drinks at the Lament. You got up on a stool at one point and began giving some kind of speech about your guild idea. It’s all a bit of a blur after that. I think we may have left? Gone to some more bars? Maybe the town square?”

I shook my head. “I gave a speech?”

He nodded. “It was very surprising. Not that you’re bad at talking. You just don’t seem the type to rile up a crowd like that.”

“I’m not.” Though, before I came to Tu’reyne I wasn’t a murderer, adventurer, thief, hero, or any number of other things. Add those changes, my now half elven brain, and enough alcohol…I suppose anything was possible. I took a deep breath. “I’d hoped my increased Con might’ve helped me avoid this type of thing.”

“It might’ve, but if you drink three times as much as before anyway I don’t think it matters much.”

“You’re in the same cell as me, last I checked.”

He sighed. “Right.” He shook his head. ”What will my family think of me if they knew I drank to excess like that?”

I frowned. “You’re allowed to have fun. Usually it won’t end up with you in a cell. Depending on your definition of fun, of course.”

He shook his head. “I’m no Millicent.”

I looked at him. “Millicent?”

He frowned. “Oh. Nica told me that in confidence.” He rubbed his temples. “My head is pounding. Hard to focus.”

I let my mind wander over that revelation about Millicent for a bit longer than I should’ve, before turning my attention to the immediate problem. I checked my clothes. I had been disarmed, and had nothing, but what was on my back, which vaguely smelled of liquor. I found myself slightly regretting the fact that I hadn’t chosen Arcane Trickster as my new class, that dimensional pocket would’ve been very useful right about now. Luckily, when it came to the bars, I had a simple solution. I flash stepped to the other side, reducing it to the minimum use possible to save my mana.

As I did so, a noise began to emanate from the bars, a loud repeating noise that left me momentarily deafened, and made the pain from my hangover increase ten-fold. I shook my head trying to regain my senses and looked at Tib who was trying to bend the bars, and having surprising success doing so, when I saw shadowy shapes approaching.

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I managed to square up just before the first of them swung what seemed to be a club at me. I dodged, grabbed the tip of it, and activated my ‘Left Hand Free’ ability to strike him in the face rapidly three times. I kicked another one, knocking him back into his fellows. I could hear a kind of muffled speech coming from them, but my ears were still ringing too much to make it out. I lifted up the club I’d just grabbed to start hitting my way out, when someone grabbed me from behind. I struggled for a moment, before realizing it was Tib. He’d managed to bend the bars far enough to let himself out, and when I saw his face he just shook his head. I decided to trust him, and dropped the club. I realized, out of the heat of battle as my head cleared and the noise died down, that the shadowy figures I’d been fighting were actually guards. We hadn’t been kidnapped as I initially expected, we’d been arrested.

“Ah.” I backed away, and slid myself back into the cell.

Tiberius followed behind me, and gently bent the bars back into place before sitting on the cot. After which the bar’s stopped ringing.

“Sorry about that.” I said to the guard I’d taken the club from, handing it back to him through the bars.

He grabbed it and yanked it back, making what I assumed passed for a rude gesture in Heracleum.

“What in Death is going on back here!?” yelled someone at the far end of the jail. A number of torches lit along the walls, momentarily blinding me, and I heard heavy footsteps approaching until an older man, with an impressive mustache, was standing in front of the cell.

“These two just tried to escape!” said one of the guards, a fresh bootprint from me sitting on his chest.

“I’m sorry. I woke without any memory of how I got here. Thought I’d been kidnapped.”

The man let out a long sigh. “You’re the adventurer right? The one we arrested for causing a public disturbance?”

“Possibly.”

The man stroked his mustache, flattening it, and turned his attention next to me. “Tiberius, is that you?”

Tiberius stood and approached the bars sheepishly. “Good morning, sir.”

“Never expected to see you in here.”

“I didn’t expect to end up here. Sorry to have disappointed you.”

“Hrmph. I told you to join the guard boy. Adventuring is a fool's game. Don’t think I don’t know that you picked it back up because of a woman either. Any woman with a stern glare and brown eyes and you’d forget the shield at your side.”

I laughed.

“What’re you laughing at?” he said, turning his stern gaze from Tib to me. It didn’t have much of an effect on me though.

“Sorry, that was just a weirdly good description of his current lady love is all. You must know him well.”

“I was training this boy for the guard here for quite some time after adventuring here didn’t work out. Of course, once he realized he could adventure somewhere else with pretty women it was all over.”

“Huh, he would’ve made a good guard.”

“Hrmph, exactly.”

“He’s a great adventurer though. Saved everyone in our party on multiple occasions, keeps our heads out of our asses…well, most of the time, there’s only so much one man can do.”

The man frowned at me, and shook his head. “I’ll just add one day to your sentence for the breakout.” he said to Tib, then turned to me, “A week for you.”

Tib spoke up. “Sir, you should give me the full week as well. I don’t want any special treatment.”

“I say you give us both just one day. That’s probably the fairest option.”

“Three days extra. Which means three more days each. Your sentence was basically to just sleep it off before you made a mess of things.”

I grimaced and looked at Tib. “Sorry about that.”

He sighed. “We didn’t know. Besides, you getting us both kidnapped made the most sense to me at the time too.”

“Breakfast is in an hour… you boys looking to stretch your legs at some point?” asked the guard captain.

We both nodded.

“Hrm… I’ll bring you out to the training yard. All the best potential guards wind up in the legions or as adventurers. The leftovers I have to work with could use a whooping or two to help them shape up.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Happy to help.” I’d have preferred to do some sparring with Patience, or slung some spells with Millicent, but this would work fine. I hadn’t had any chances to test out my increased ability scores or my new class and I was itching to do so now. “Any way we can get a message to our friends? Or have visitors?”

He nodded. “You get one message each that we can deliver, I’ll have one of the men get you the parchment for it.”

“Thank you. Can I ask your name?”

“Sulla, guard Jail Captain. Don’t try anything else or it will go poorly for you.”

I nodded, and he walked back out of the jail.

I stretched and laid down on the cot, listening to Tib sigh heavily. “It’ll be alright. Some breakfast, some beating on the guards. You’ll feel right as rain.”

“I think we have very different ideas of right.”

I nodded. “Almost certainly.”