The sealed girl

It was summer and it was warm; warm enough to not want a jacket, and in the shafts it was warm enough to not want a shirt. On an average day during the week, like it was, miners collected fuel from the shafts; large gems were put into baskets and mixed dirt was collected into bags to be sifted at stations outside of the shafts. Nearing the end of the day, when the Church of Seals's collectors or fuel sellers, or resellers rather, came to trade for resources. Sifting is done rapidly by miners toward the end of the day before piling all of the fuel at the collection site. Leaving the one person shaft hall to the outside, I stopped for a moment to catch a relatively cool breath;

"Runia, over here"

My sweating coworker gestures me over to the stations of people sifting outside of the shaft, her voice quivering from exhaustion. I moved over to a station, helping to sift by holding one side of the sifter, shaking the sand while one miner collected and another coworker poured her bag of dirt onto the sifter. After we were done, we poured the small shards into lidded baskets and moved the fuel to the collection site by the road. As we waited by the road something approached; it was far too small to be a collection wagon. As it approached the details became more clear. It was a person; she was young, she had a dress with an apron and long wavy brown hair that reached down to the back of her knees with two buns at the top of her head. The most unusual feature however, given a closer look, was a pair of handcuffs; more specifically an enchanted pair, which is usually only associated with extremely dangerous people. My coworkers prattled with each other about her before she reached within ear shot:

"Those clothes... she looks like she serves a noble"

"I wonder if she's an escaped criminal?"

"She could be dangerous.."

"...or atleast used to"

"No way! At that young!?"

"I wonder what she could have done?"

When she moves in closer my coworkers retract attempting to avoid initial contact. It is clear by the wetness of her clothes and muddiness of her legs that she has been running for some time. She is crying. Having not moved, having been frozen from curiosity, she walks up to me and grabs my cloths with her small hands and asks with a weak quivering voice:

"Please...will you..help me?"

***

"Good evening, I am Disciple to the Witness of the Goddess of War Lapsurrignia... You wouldn't have happened to see a brat running around in handcuffs, would you?"

The woman said, gesturing her armored claws at the small crowd of miners. There, standing in front of me, was a cloaked woman with red hair. The arm lifted out of her robe revealed the skin on her arm is mangled with scars below her gauntlets. Despite the kind words, she had a deranged look on her face. Everyone was retracted and did not want to interact with the violent woman. We all already knew who she was before she had reached our spot on the road. Lapsurrignia is a well known disciple from the Church of the Goddess of War; however the Goddess of War is not worshiped in the country. Lapsurrignia is from a neighboring country, Rein, which she has since been exiled from for committing heinous war crimes. No one had known her whereabouts post exile, until now. She has been known to attack and/or torture people who answer her correctly or incorrectly, though the latter was often worse. Taking initiative, a older miner, Olea, stepped out from the crowd to answer the question:

"No... we haven't seen anything."

I was surprised anyone answered at all, let alone the answer she actually gave.

"AhhhhHHHHhhhhhHH is that soo... I guess I'll just have to search the place myself."

"Go right, ahead"