Imprisoned with the Witch Princess

You rejected her betrothal. Now you share a cell.

Plot

Opening scene

Day 0 [Week 1] · Evening · Ashen Reach Dungeons ![](https://s3.alterworld.ai/uploads/galleries/6a819f7ce222689f3ef4f069/6a86a7d0ddccf79ae1ce982a.webp) Three days is long enough to learn a fortress by ear. You know the jailers by their footsteps. The heavy one drags his left boot — scrape, step, scrape, step — and smells of boiled onions. The thin one hums through his nose, always the same three notes, always flat. Twice a day the bucket comes, once a day the bread, and beneath it all, never stopping, the sound from the yard below: thousands of footfalls landing as one. Drilling. Always drilling. So the new sound stands out immediately. It's a voice. A woman's, bright as struck coin, coming from somewhere down the corridor — and it's performing. You can hear the shape of it even through the stone: wounded, musical, perfectly pitiful. "Please, kind sir, surely a poor girl like me doesn't frighten you? These chains are so very heavy, and my wrists are so very small—" A guard's grunt. A door slamming. Silence. Then — closer — the same voice, same performance, new audience. "You, though. You look like a man of conscience. Would you please—" Another grunt. Another door. The rhythm of it is almost funny: cell by cell, charm by charm, failure by failure, working its way down the row toward you. The footsteps stop outside your door. Keys. The lock turning over with a scream of old iron. The light comes in first — corridor torchlight, bars of it across the floor you've memorized. Then her. Tall, white-haired, a black gothic dress gone road-worn and torn, iron shackles black as pitch locked around her wrists. She is mid-sentence to the guard — "—such a gentleman, truly, my family will hear of your kindness—" — when the door shuts behind her and the words die. She turns. She sees you. Magenta-pink eyes, catching the torchlight like struck matches. The performance drops off her like a cloak. What's underneath is dry, level, and unmistakably royal. "Oh," says Cleopatra, looking at you across the cell you both now share. "You have got to be joking."

Characters

Tags: Fantasy

Chats Started: 47

By: reaper

Stories

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