Chapter 3: Manacle to ManacleMiz’ri stood ramrod straight, the heavy manacle on her right wrist rubbing a raw spot of friction against the expensive, crimson leather of her glove. The other end of the chain, a heavy, eight-foot length of bck iron, tethered her to the heaving, soft mass that was Talisa. The iron was cold, thick, and an utterly unforgiving reminder of their predicament.

  They had been dragged from the temple district to Saj’fal city's detention block, a solid, grey stone building that smelled not of casual filth, but of bleach and stale ink.

  They were shoved into a small, well-lit office dominated by a functional, oak desk. The Judicial Officer , a middle-aged human woman with hair pulled back in a tight bun, was methodical and utterly professional. The two guardsmen holding the delinquent women shoved them forward, forcing them both to their knees. “State your names.”

  “Talisa Helena Magleby, ma'am!” she said with almost too much enthusiasm. The question was then addressed to Miz'ri, who simply stared back,her lips pressed into a thin, dangerous line. She maintained the absolute stillness of a predator waiting for its handler to look away, her gaze cold, crimson, and unwavering.The officer, clearly uncomfortable with the suspect’s silence, quickly looked down at her. “Lovely. An Unidentified Dark Elf.” Writing ‘unknown’ on the paperwork in front of her. “She's high risk, make sure to keep her chained up to her accomplice.”

  “Accomplice?!” Talisa said with a sudden burst of fear and guilt. “I only met this woman this morning, and she has nothing to do with what happened anyways, which is a complete misunderstanding to begin with. She's innocent I swear! I'm innocent!”

  Hardly. Miz'ri chuckled internally. I'm not sure I was even born an innocent, they rarely survive in the Reaches Below.

  “So you admit you know her. What's there to misunderstand? We know you Julisian. You walk into our town as if you're not here to rob our graves. Did you think your two companions causing chaos would give you enough time to dig another one up?”

  “What are you talking about?” Talisa questioned, cocking her head almost comically to the side, scanning her mind for whatever they could mean.

  “Surely you know She threatened half the market, assaulted three men, and then robbed a Tavern before fleeing the scene - all before the evening bell.” the Officer expined. Miz'ri couldn't help but smirk at her accomplishments. “While we don't have eyes on your rge male companion, given his limp he should be found soon.”

  Talisa was openly weeping now, blubbering incoherent words in her own defense, trying to expin but failing to find anything that worked. The officer continued, "You will be held overnight in the city detention block, and face a summary tribunal tomorrow morning at the Ninth Bell."

  Talisa erupted. Her terror finally boiled over the edge of repression, forcing Miz'ri to brace her stance against the sudden strain of the chain. “No! Wait!” Talisa scrambled forward, the heavy chain snapping taut between them, forcing Miz’ri’s wrist up. “This is a terrible mistake! I am on a Holy Pilgrimage!”

  The JO did not flinch. “Protest noted, Miss Magleby; take them away.”

  A Guard Captain, a powerfully built woman in polished Saj’fal armor, entered the room. "Processing now," she said curtly. The captain led them through a side door into a bare room with a sturdy, metal table. Two more guards waited. Miz'ri felt the humiliation building—the systematic dismantling of her defense. "You," the captain pointed to Talisa. "Hand over everything you can remove. Jewelry, pouches, loose items."

  Talisa fumbled with her robe's ties, eyes wide and panicked. Fingers trembling as she removed the velvet coin sack at her hip, prayer beads around her neck, the many shiny bracelets on her wrists, and finally a single silver ring that caught Miz’ri’s eye. The captain, seeing Miz'ri's motionless contempt, moved to her next.

  "Dark Elf. Weapons, tools, and clothing not essential for modesty will be removed, can’t be too sure with your type." Miz’ri stiffened. Her crimson leather gloves, one of her st heirlooms, were pulled off first. Her belt, bearing the heavy, expensive Dark Elf rapier was unbuckled and set aside. The only thing they couldn't take was the cold promise of vengeance running through her mind. The captain grabbed the chain a foot from Talisa’s manacle and pulled the whole assembly, dragging both girls down a flight of stone steps.

  The cell block was a concrete echo chamber, but it was functional. The bars were thick and clean, the lock mechanism was robust, and the stones were closely fitted. The air was oppressive, but the pce was secure. They were shoved into a cell near the corner.

  The Guard Captain locked the door with a loud, final metallic cnk.

  Talisa instantly colpsed onto the narrow stone bench, burying her face in her arms and emitting a miserable, shaking sob. The chain cttered against the floor. Miz’ri remained standing, beginning her cold, silent assessment. This is professional work. The lock is not trivial. The iron is good quality. I cannot simply snap it. She scanned the room, then fixed her eyes on the duty guard—alert, pacing with purpose, keys secured with a heavy, thick loop of leather. Her moments of situational analysis were punctuated by Talisa's gasping sobs at the other end of the chain.

  “Quiet,” Miz’ri demanded, her voice a low, gravelly whisper that cut through the silence. “Your weeping is drawing flies.” Talisa only trembled harder. “Focus on the manacles, not your frock. Blend into the rot.”

  Talisa finally spoke, pulling her arms away from her face, her eyes red and puffy. “I can’t blend into the rot! I can’t!” she whispered fiercely. “This isn’t right! We didn’t do anything! Theodore will be so worried. He’ll send the Church! He’ll—”

  Miz’ri stopped scanning the cell and turned her cold red eyes to Talisa. “Theodore. Who is that? Your nursemaid?”

  Talisa flinched at the tone, but the panic needed an outlet. “He’s—he’s my betrothed. We’ve been engaged since I was sixteen; the ceremony is set for two months from now. I’ve already been gone a month on this pilgrimage, I was supposed to finish in Vigil next month, and then rush home for a month of preparations. If I am still here tomorrow morning, the entire timeline is ruined! My parents—Theodore—everything is wrong because of this stupid, senseless crime!”

  Miz’ri’s eyebrow arched. A clock ticking loud in her ear after two years of waiting. “A groom,” Miz’ri sneered, savoring the word. “What makes him so potent? Do you think he will kick down the door and come save you from the gallows?”

  Talisa just stared at the other woman, sck jawed, her face flushed with the anxiety of searching for an answer. “He is a devout, good man,” Talisa insisted, her voice tight. “He works at the Ministry of the Word. He would not allow my reputation to be soiled.”

  Miz’ri couldn’t help but push, trying to needle the girl out of a mote of fury for her incompetence thus far. “So what does he allow you to do?”

  Talisa stammered, her gaze dropping to the dirty stone floor as if the answer were written in the dust. She pulled her knees to her chest, the chain rattling softly.

  “He allows me to… to be present,” Talisa said, her voice small and unconvincing, trying to wrap the words in a dignity they didn't possess. “He is a very important man, with heavy burdens. Every evening after our weekly lessons, he clears his schedule for me. For one gracious hour.”

  Miz’ri leaned back against the cold wall, a cruel smirk pying on her lips. “One hour. How generous. And what happens in this sacred hour? Does he ravish you on his desk? Scream your name to the rafters?”

  Talisa flushed a deep, blotchy crimson. “No! It is… it is a time of reflection. We sit in his parlor, bonding. He sits at his desk and reviews the Ministry ledgers, and I sit on the chaise and knit… I wait. In case he requires tea. Or silence.” Her eyes drifted away again. “He always requires silence.” She let out a heavy-hearted sigh. “Theo says that true intimacy is two souls existing in the same space without the need for idle chatter, completely at peace.” Talisa recited, the words sounding rehearsed, like a sermon she had memorized to convince herself. “He holds the key to my virtue, and he guards it fiercely. He says… he says touch is a distraction from the spiritual path. Until the wedding night, we are to be minds, not bodies.”

  Miz’ri watched the girl, seeing the lie trembling in her hands. She saw the way Talisa hugged her own ribs, a subconscious desperate attempt to feel something holding her. “So you sit in a room, once a week, and watch him ignore you,” Miz’ri summarized, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. She shifted, deliberately letting her boot graze Talisa’s shin, a sharp, grounding contact. “And you think that makes him a potent mate? He sounds more like a gelding. Or a rotting corpse.”

  “It makes him disciplined, honorable,decent!” Talisa insisted, though her voice cracked. “He is saving me!”

  “He is training a dog,” Miz’ri corrected. She leaned forward, the chain sckening, her voice dropping to a sultry, dangerous whisper that made Talisa shiver. “A dog he only remembers to feed once a week. Tell me, little mouse, when you sit there in your silence… Do you look at his hands? Do you wonder what they’d feel like if they weren't turning pages? Imagine how they’d feel wrapped around your neck? Or have you forgotten that you have skin and needs underneath all that wool?”

  Talisa opened her mouth to argue, but the air caught in her throat. She looked at Miz’ri—really looked at her—and for a second, the hunger behind the pilgrim's eyes was visible. Raw. Terrified. Miz’ri opened her mouth to tear into that vulnerability, to break the girl further, but movement in her peripheral vision snapped her attention away. The guard at the end of the hall shifted slightly, rubbing the back of her neck. Miz'ri saw her chance—the best chance she'd get to study the key ring's attachment.

  “Enough of your boy,” Miz’ri commanded, her voice dropping to a near-silent hiss. “Look at the wall. If you shift, even to breathe, I will break your fingers. Can you do that, or are you too busy weeping for your white knight?”

  Talisa, paralyzed more by the Dark Elf’s icy threat than by the lock, froze.

  Miz’ri slowly, silently, extended her left arm toward the bars, calcuting the exact limit of the manacle. She needed one more foot. She strained, leaning her weight, trying to reach the lock casing just with her fingertips.

  The chain snapped taut, the weight of the iron holding Talisa back. Talisa, anchored by fear and the tug, let out a small, sharp gasp of suppressed breath. It was enough. The chain, pulled to its absolute limit by Miz'ri's leverage, scraped across the stone floor with a Sccch-crkkk that echoed in the silent hall. The guard’s head instantly snapped up. She straightened from the post and walked slowly down the corridor toward their cell.

  Miz’ri’s jaw tightened in furious defeat. Her incompetence was tethered directly to her. She retreated immediately, shrinking back against the wall, assuming a posture of sullen resignation.

  The guard stopped before the bars. “Settle down, both of you,” she said, her voice low and even. “Do you want a tribunal tomorrow , or the gallows tonight? I have little patience for creatures from the dark.” She waited for a beat, eyes locked until the threat registered, then returned to her post.

  Miz'ri settled into the corner, the heat of her own failure burning worse than the coarse wool of her tunic. Eyes locking on Talisa, full of contempt. Silence reigned, thick with Talisa's repressed tears and Miz'ri's controlled rage. After what seemed like an eternity of staring at each other, a sudden, loud, grinding noise started—not from the door, but from the solid stone wall opposite them. Talisa gasped and scrambled up, the chain yanking Miz'ri with her. The wall exploded, breaking inward—not with a battering ram, but with the specific, clean force of something inhuman. Herkel, the walking skeleton, appeared in the dust, the rge wooden travoise acting like a shield. Herkel pointed a skeletal finger at Talisa, motioning for them to run.

  “Pappy! Good golly, H-how did you do this on your own?!” Talisa cried, a breathless, choked sound of relief. The skeleton simply stared back with gaping eyes and a beckoning motion.

  “Less questions, more running.” Miz'ri, instantly alert, stood and pulled the frantic Talisa toward the hole. “Don't just stand there. Move!” They scrambled toward the hole, their manacles catching briefly on the broken stone.