It didn't take the orphans of Masiela long to realize something was amiss. They awoke in the middle of the night to a loud, boastful cry from outside and they sat up and looked around the darkened room to see the crumpled, folded-back sheets drooping over the side of Amelie's bed. The only occupant on the mattress now was a lonely, one-eyed teddy bear with its stuffing sticking out of its stomach like a surgeon who forgot the stitches.
 
After a thorough search of the premises, the children began talking and they gathered their day clothes and hurried to the palace to report their friend's disappearance to their tribal leader. When they arrived at the palace, they explained the situation to the centurions, and were quickly admitted to Erika's private chambers, where they discovered the princess had already heard about the incident...from the most unlikely of heroes.
 
“...And that's why Lynne is a bitch,” Vic finished saying, just as Eleanor Tearwind of the centurions hurried the last child into the bedroom. “We're still not sure what the rhyming was about...but there you have it.”
 
Eric, who was standing on the end table next to his two companions, nodded furiously.
 
“Amelie was clever enough to cut us free from Lynne's pouch before they fled the city,” he said. “We watched them run into the jungle. I eventually lost them in the trees, but it looked like Lynne was dragging Amelie north, towards the Crossroads. That's probably where you want to direct your search.”
 
“Thank the stars for your keen Elven eyesight,” Erika said. She turned to the armored centurion standing in the doorway. “Eleanor, find Odessa and have her send a search party north of the city. I don't know what's going on, but I'm officially declaring Lynne and her Blades wanted criminals until we get this straightened out.”
 
Eleanor nodded.
 
“Make it clear that I want Lynne brought back alive, but Amelie's safety is our top priority. No one is to act unless they can be sure no harm will come to Amelie.”
 
“I will inform the captain at once.” The centurion duly saluted and left.
 
Erika shook her head and finally took notice of the group of ragtag, weary-eyed children in her room.
 
“I'm sorry to put you children through this,” she said.
 
“Why would someone do this...?” one of them asked. “Amelie never hurt anybody.”
 
Erika was at a loss for words. Fortunately, she never had to give an answer, as they were suddenly interrupted by Fallon, who appeared at the door in a white bathrobe. She was still adjusting the knot around her waist as she wandered into the room.
 
“What's going on?” she asked. “I heard the commotion from my room. Is everything okay?”
 
“I would say not,” Erika said. “It seems Lynne Hawkeye, the leader of the Blades, broke into the orphanage house in the middle of the night and kidnapped one of the girls.”
 
“...What?”
 
“She took Amelie,” one of the orphans said, tugging at Fallon's robe. “The mean lady took her into the jungle and won't give her back.”
 
The waistband slipped from Fallon's fingers and the knot quickly came undone.
 
“You'll find her, won't you, Lady Fallon?” another child asked. “You'll find Amelie and bring her back?”
 
There wasn't a moment of hesitation on the courier's part.
 
“...I'll get my rapier.”
 
“No, don't be silly,” Erika said. “We have an entire army for this, and you are a guest here.”
 
“Then I will go out and search for her. One more body can't hurt.”
 
“It's a dangerous country... I can't ask you to do that.”
 
“You don't have to. I can't sit by idly if somebody is bullying an innocent child.” Fallon knelt down in front of the orphans and gave them a comforting smile. “Don't worry, girls. Amelie is tough. I've seen her fight. If she hasn't already freed herself and beaten up her captor, I'll do everything in my power to seek her out and bring her back here safely.”
 
“Be careful, Lady Fallon...” one of the girls said. Then she handed Fallon a shaggy, sticky-haired, miserable-looking teddy bear. “This is Amelie's. She doesn't go anywhere without it.”
 
“Then I'll make sure she gets it.” Fallon stood up, glanced briefly at a disapproving Erika, and started for the door. “I'll be back soon, I promise. Please don't worry about me.”
 
“If you see Lynne, make sure to finish kicking her ass,” Cain shouted. “We would've finished her off already, but we hadda take it easy...with kids watching and all... You know how it is.”
 
Erika's arms were wrapped tightly across her chest, but she stood with a nervous awkwardness, chewing on her lower lip and tapping her foot against the marble floor. Finally, she heaved a sigh, threw her arms down, and rushed out the door.
 
“Fallon, wait!” she called out. Her voice and footsteps echoed across the grand hallway. “We need to talk.”
 
The courier stopped and turned on her heels just as she had reached the stairs leading to the main floor.
 
“What is it?” she asked.
 
Erika slowed down and approached her with a mixture of caution and reluctance, like a shy child who broke a vase and doesn't want to admit her guilt. Still, there was a sudden emergence of conviction in her face when she raised her cheekbones and looked Fallon in the eyes.
 
“...You make it very hard to stay mad at you,” the princess said, after taking a moment to prepare her speech. “When I received that last letter from Isabella, I felt betrayed...like you had been changing Isabella's words on paper for years now...and I lashed out at you unfairly. I accused you of defending a monster, and yet you didn't hesitate for a moment to help one of my people in her time of need. That kind of selfless act leaves me at a loss for words.”
 
Fallon shook her head.
 
“All of your concerns were well-founded and of good intent,” she assured Erika. “I do not blame you anything. Your position requires the making of some very difficult decisions. As hard as it may be to swallow sometimes, not all of those decisions can be good.”
 
“I just don't understand how you can stand by someone whose every decision is for her own benefit...and at the expense of everybody else.”
 
“It's not like that. Isabella is not nearly the monster you think she is.”
 
Fallon could tell by Erika's dubious expression that she still wasn't convinced.
 
“...You talk about the sacred bond between sisters of blood all the time, Erika. I spent most of my early childhood as an orphan, so I don't know much about family ties, but I do know what it's like to be alone in this world. After I first met Isabella, she became like a sister to me. She's my best friend and I honestly believe she's a good person. In fact, this may come as a surprise to you, but I believe Isabella has the power to save this world. If the end is coming, I can assure you it will not be because of Isabella's doing.”
 
“You must be joking...”
 
“I am not. But this is not the time to discuss such matters. Amelie's safety is more important than our political squabbles.” She flashed a warm smile that was eventually, albeit reluctantly, returned. “If you would spare another moment, Erika, I could use some direction to guide my search. Did anybody see where Lynne was taking Amelie?”
 
“Well, one of my man servants spotted Lynne heading north into the jungle. I can't be certain, but she might be taking Amelie towards the Crossroads. That's where criminals who don't want to be found go.”
 
“Yes, I've heard of the place.”
 
“Then you know how dangerous it is. At least allow Odessa to accompany you...”
 
“We both know that won't work. Lynne knows your centurions. If she recognizes them, she might panic and hurt Amelie.”
 
“Yes... Yes, I know. Okay.” Erika put a hand to her forehead as if she was feeling faint. “I just don't like the idea of sending you into danger without any assistance. You must realize I have a personal responsibility to ensure the safety of ambassadors while they're in my country. Besides that, you're my dear friend, and I couldn't bear to see you hurt.”
 
“Then I'll be extra cautious. But you needn't worry. I have contacts outside of Masiela who can help me... Ones who Lynne won't be directly familiar with.”
 
Erika nodded.
 
“Then I suppose I shouldn't keep you...” she said.
 
“I won't be long.”
 
“...I can't thank you enough for doing this, Fallon. After the way I treated you earlier... Isabella is right to keep you to herself. You always make me remember the good in people.” Erika lowered her eyes. Her face was looking rather pale now. “I suppose the world would be a better place if we could be all more like you...”
 
 
-------------------------
 
 
Captain Vlanis was the meanest, cruelest, most vile warden in all the land. She had a belly like a pig and, when she walked, her footsteps would thunder and the keys on her massive keyring would jingle against her thigh like an extra lump of fat. She marched heavily down the hallway of the dark, damp, dismal dungeon, a shovel thrown casually over her humped shoulder, and swinging a half-eaten chicken leg in her balled fist. Thick yellow juice dribbled from her chin as she took another bite and wrestled with the keyring like a sumo wrestler trying to unwrap a candy bar. Finally, she found the key was looking for, shoved it into the creaky old lock, and threw open the door with her shoulder.
 
Inside, a bunch of dreary faces stared up at her.
 
“GOOD MORNING, SCUM OF THE EARTH,” she bellowed. She walked down the rows of the cells, banging the metal end of her shovel against each and every bar. When she was finished with her head count, she walked to the center of the room and sighed happily. Then she sank her teeth into the chicken leg and ripped off an extra large hunk of meat for herself, chewing it thoughtfully. “...Good news. I've decided not to torture all of you today.”
 
Some of them murmured a cheer. Most of them were too weary to even glance in her direction. One of them tried to reach for her keyring, but she moved out of the way.
 
“I'm feeling generous,” she continued. “I always get this way when I get to set one of my prisoners 'free.'”
 
Their ears parked up.
 
“Not any of you!” She cackled as they moaned. “Don't worry. I'll be back tonight so you can fight over my leftovers. For now... fight over this.” She tossed the bare chicken bone between the bars of two cells and laughed as half a dozen scraggy prisoners dove for it.
 
Then she left them alone. There was only one stop left to make on her patrol. She could barely contain herself. She hurried to the far end of the dungeon, sweating profusely, and hobbled down the chipped, granite stairs two at a time. She passed through a tunnel where a couple of lonely guards saluted her and tried to strike up a friendly conversation, but she pushed through them without another thought.
 
This was it, she told herself. This was the day she would finally get to bury Olivia.
 
When she reached the iron door with the lion's head, her hands were trembling so much that she could scarcely fit the key into the slot. When she finally did, she turned the key slowly, trying to savor the moment, and slowly opened the door to a familiar darkness. The stench of anguish and loneliness washed over her and she reached for a torch off the wall and stepped inside.
 
It was unusually quiet inside. She had become accustomed to the sobs, the horrible scratching of fingernails that had been chewed down to the nubs, the frantic whispers of a madwoman within...but there was nothing today. There was only the crackling of the torch flame as she moved closer to the cell and saw the former countess facedown on the floor in a puddle of water and blood.
 
“No, no, no,” Vlanis muttered under her breath. She fumbled for her keys, realized she had left them in the door, and hurried back to get them. She threw down her shovel and quickly unlocked the cell.
 
“Don't you be dead just yet,” she said, splashing through a pool of sewer water as she stumbled towards the prone body. “I want to kill you myself.” She knelt down and put a hand on the girl's shoulder. Olivia's clothes were torn and splattered in blood, like a painting whose canvas had been chewed apart and doused in turpentine, and her flesh was cold to the touch.
 
But as Vlanis began to turn the body around, Olivia's eyes shot open, and she reached for something just out of Vlanis' sight. There was only a brief moment of realization in the old warden's face before it was struck hard by a wooden bed post. A sea of splinters tore away at the stitches of her scarred eye.
 
Vlanis fell back screaming, her spine rattled against the floor, and soon Olivia was on top of her, beating her again and again over the head with the blunt post. After seven or eight whacks, Vlanis' face was plastered in blood and her nose was as twisted and broken as her heart. Even her one good eye could see nothing but red.
 
Gasping, Olivia let the bed post fall to the floor and looked around. Her eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the darkness. The flame from Vlanis' torch had landed in the puddle and was down to embers now, but she seized it in her grip and crawled—first on her hands and knees, and then finally on her feet—out of the cell and slammed the door. She twisted the key that was still in the lock and yanked it out. The mere force of doing so nearly knocked her to the floor.
 
“What the hell!?” Vlanis howled. She spit out a mouthful of blood and a couple of teeth that had rotted years ago. As she tried to stand, a torrent of blood washed down the side of her face.
 
Olivia hurled the keyring into the corner of the room and stood with one hand on the bars of the cell.
 
“O-out...” she whispered. The language seemed so foreign now. She had to speak again just to remember how to do it. “Which way is out...?”
 
Vlanis continued to whine about her flesh wound and to flop around like a fish.
 
“You cut me!” she screamed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
 
“I SAID I WANT OUT!” Olivia's voice cracked and it wasn't until now that Vlanis noticed how truly scary her eyes had become.
 
She immediately stopped rolling around and glared up at the countess.
 
“...Forget it,” the warden mumbled, taking a moment to wipe the back of her grubby hand across her mouth. “You won't make it. The guards will be all over you the minute you step foot out of this room.”
 
“You're lying. There are no guards.”
 
“Not down here, but you'll have to pass them if you want to reach the surface. But what difference does it make? Where are you going to go? You can barely walk.” Vlanis stood, plucked a few splinters from her eye, and wrung the bars of the cell in her burly grip. Her gashed face was still bleeding. “Open the door and I'll see to it that you get your tea back.”
 
“I don't want any more of your poisoned herbs. You won't control my mind again.”
 
“...Huh? What are you talking about, you crazy bat?”
 
“Just tell me how to get out of here without being seen.”
 
“You can't. When you reach the main floor, my guards will see you and they'll drag you back here. Or maybe they'll gut you like a pig. Who knows? The only thing that should matter to you is that you have no chance of escaping from this dungeon.”
 
“And I suppose you thought I had no chance of escaping from you as well.”
 
Vlanis gave her a smug look.
 
“...I could kill you if you don't help me,” Olivia said.
 
“Ha! You won't kill me. You can't even kill a man.”
 
“You haven't exactly been the greatest hostess to me.” Olivia's teeth glistened through the threads of her dangling hair, but her mouth was so coiled that it was impossible to tell if she was grinning or scowling. “Believe me, I'd like nothing more right now than to see you dead...”
 
“...You really are crazy, you know.”
 
“Yes, somebody should really keep me locked up.”
 
Vlanis grimaced, but she eventually nodded and gave in, knowing she wasn't going to get any mercy from the former countess after all those years of torture.
 
“...I'll tell you,” she whispered, “but you have to promise to let me out of here.”
 
“I'll think about it.”
 
“...Fine.” Vlanis stepped away from the bars. “...Go to the end of the hallway and you'll find two doors. The one on the left leads to the main floor. The one on the right leads to an underground tunnel that will take you outside the city walls. We use it as a secret passage to shuttle prisoners back and forth when we don't want to risk bringing them through Haledon.”
 
“Yes, I've heard of it before.”
 
“If you take that door, you'll be back at the surface in no time.”
 
“The door on the right.”
 
“Right.”
 
“Okay...”
 
“What about me?”
 
Olivia turned around. “You can go rot in hell where you belong.”
 
“Olivia! OLIVIA! OLIIIIIIIIVIA!”
 
Vlanis' screams were muffled when Olivia slipped through the doorway and pulled it shut, but they still echoed in her mind.
 
For a moment, she just stood there. The waning embers of the torch provided just enough light to see, but this was all new. No longer was she was staring at the gray rocks and iron bars that had imprisoned her for three long years. The rocks surrounding her now were warmer. They were thick blocks of sandstone, glowing a reddish-yellow hue in the torchlight, and were adorned with undecipherable scrawlings and the framework for sconces that no longer existed. Even the rats that lived down here seemed friendly and merely watched as Olivia took her first step down the corridor. Only when she came closer did they scurry away and find a safer distance from which to observe.
 
As she staggered down the hallway, running her hand along the wall for balance and support, she eventually came upon two massive oak doors, side by side, true to the warden's word. She tucked the torch under her arm and immediately went for the door on the left. She threw it open without hesitation and held her breath...but only a winding cavern awaited her. The gloomy darkness and the trickling waters from its walls suggested it went on for some ways before ever reaching the surface.
 
“...Thanks, Vlanis,” she whispered as she moved in and let the door slowly shut behind her.
 
 
-------------------------
 
 
The ninja known as Lynne Hawkeye stood at the window and scowled at the full moon that seemed to be mocking her, so high and mighty in the sky.
 
“No doubt you're the one who released those men,” she hissed, looking down at the pouch in her hands. She had her fist shoved all the way through it and could see her fingers wriggling through the tear in the other side. “That's the second time those bastards have gotten away from me, you know... And now, thanks to you, I can't even show my face in Masiela anymore. Those men probably conjured up a grand story to the royal pain in the ass about how I so viciously abducted you and carried you away into the night like a criminal.”
 
“As I recall, I came with you willingly,” came a jeering voice from across the room. “And we had a deal. You promised you would let those men go if I came with you. You got what you deserved for trying to deceive me.”
 
Lynne closed the curtains in an angry swoop and glared at the prisoner on the bed. It had taken her almost ten minutes to bind Amelie's legs and arms behind her back. Lynne had bruises and scratches on her face from where she had been kicked and bitten.
 
“I hate children...” the ninja muttered. “Why don't you go to sleep already? Isn't it past your bedtime?”
 
“Yeah, but I didn't get my bedtime story yet.”
 
“I don't do stories.”
 
“That's okay,” Amelie said. “I got one for you.”
 
“Is that so?”
 
“Yup.” Amelie squirmed around in her bindings until she was able to sit at the foot of the bed and swing her feet over the side.
 
“...Once upon a time,” she began, “there was a terrible, terrible ninja who thought she could get away with kidnapping a little girl from her bed. 'This girl's just an orphan,' the ninja told herself. 'Nobody's going to miss an orphan.' But what the ninja didn't know is that the girl wasn't really an orphan. She had a mother. A mother who could kick that ninja's ass so hard that her butt would soon match the color of her hair. And, because the ninja was so terrible at everything she did, it didn't take the little girl's mother long to track her down to a shack in the middle of the jungle.” Amelie's voice lowered to a whisper and a wicked smirk glittered from her lips in the candlelight. “...You are dead. When my mother finds you, she's going to chop off your head and feed it to the gators.”
 
Lynne's face turned red—a direct clash with her long, cerulean locks—and she dove across the room, landed on the bed, pinned Amelie down to the mattress.
 
“You think I don't know who your mother is and what she's capable of!?” the ninja snapped. She spit in the girl's face and stood up, folding her arms across her chest and tried to make herself look bigger or stronger or more threatening or something. Whatever it was, Amelie wasn't buying it. “...I know all about your mother. We studied together under the Sisterhood of the Blue Rose.”
 
“The Blue Rose? Is that why you dyed your hair blue?” Amelie asked. “It looks really ugly.”
 
“Oh, you think my hair is bad?” Lynne leaned forward and ripped the wig from Amelie's scalp. She held it up at arms-length. “At least I don't go around all day wearing the hair of a dirty tramp.”
 
“Hey, give that back! That's mine.”
 
Lynne flung the red-colored wig into an empty corner of the room and pushed Amelie back down on the bed when she tried to get up.
 
“What's wrong with you, kid?” she asked. “Why do you want to be like Rene Chandel anyway?”
 
“Because she eats idiots like you for breakfast.”
 
“Is that so?”
 
“Yeah, it is. Sometimes she doesn't even chew.”
 
Lynne turned away to hide a smile. “You're in for a surprise.”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“...Oh, nothing. It's just...” Lynne's heart jumped for joy. She finally had the chance to ruin a child's dream and destroy a childhood hero. Her day was complete. “Rene Chandel...is the one who hired me to kidnap you!”
 
“...What?”
 
“Yeah, that's right,” Lynne cackled. “Your precious 'hero' came to me a couple of nights ago, looking for your mother. That redheaded buffoon couldn't do anything on her own, so she asked the best bounty hunter in the land to track your mother down.”
 
“Why would she want to do that?”
 
“Who cares? I don't get paid to ask questions. But if I had to guess, I would say she probably wants to slit your mother's throat. That seems to be a common theme among bandits these days.” Lynne smirked. She obviously enjoyed this too much. “I imagine she'll want to slit your throat as well. We can't leave any witnesses, after all.”
 
Amelie's face finally began to weaken.
 
“...You're lying,” she said. “Rene Chandel wouldn't do that. She only hurts bad people.”
 
“...We'll see. Get some sleep, kid. It won't be long before your mother comes looking for us...and walks right into my trap.”