CIRCE

vi

They are herded like a pack of unruly dogs into a room deep within Starka Stronghold, clicked at and scowled upon, but no one speaks to them. Not even to explain where they're being escorted to. The room they're placed in is entirely stone brick, not even those novella carvings etched into the walls, which seem to be everywhere but here. There is one wall that has a door with a window on either side, the muddy orange glow of torchlight drifting through. By silhouettes that shift across the frosted glass windows Jaedah guesses two guards posted outside. Two guards and no discreet escape out.

Jaedah would call it a jail, but there are no amenities customary for a jail. In fact, there are no amenities at all. The room is entirely empty, the air stifled where they've been stuck into the mountain.

It makes her skin crawl, the inertia like little bugs creeping across her body. She takes to pacing the length of the room as that, at least, settles her unease.

"We aren't sitting here forever, are we?" Marlowe asks.

The intelligence officer has tucked herself into the farthest corner of the room, leaned against the wall. The torchlight from the windows dust across the burns scars on her left body in odd shadows, the same shadows which darken her muddy eyes into a yawning gray. She's in the perfect position to watch the entire room with that hawkish gaze of hers.

"What else are we to do?" Granger replies.

He's posted across from Marlowe with his arms crossed, propped against the stone brick. He doesn't appear anymore chipper, his fair features set into a solemn picture.

"Escape," Marlowe retorts.

Granger counters; "How?"

Marlowe sighs through clenched teeth. Her eyes are already scouring the room like claws scraping against a chalkboard, sharp-edged and perceptive as she searches for any flaw, any fault, any chance to wiggle their way out.

"There is no way out," Rowan mutters.

She mopes in the shadows of their makeshift jail, slumped against the wall beside Granger. What should've been a bright demeanor was now diminished, like a flame stamped into saddened embers.

The pinging jingle of metal keys floats through the door. Instantly, the four of them freeze as their eyes turn upon the only way out. Jaedah halts in her pace as she places herself before the door. The lock clicks as Granger rises from his slouch and stands at her side. Rowan lingers behind as Marlowe creeps slowly closer.

The door opens to sleek-muscled build of the Baron General. Their eyes of ice survey the four rigid officers before them.

"You have stepped too far," They speak in a rough, throaty English.

English.

That... Jaedah doesn't know how. They must've learned it through spies, or maybe scouts, some sort of agent that had snuck their way in to the Outpost. Though wouldn't the pointed ears and lleyr, that bioluminescent patterns in an ardean's skin, have stood out among humans?

"How do you know English?" Jaedah asks.

"We see your spies in the trees and the mountain passes. King Arawn does not want you here," The Baron General continues.

Jaedah's brain nags on one word in particular. Spies? She has sent no spies. Not once. She would never give her intelligence officers such audacious authority.

"Baron General, what do you mean 'spies'?" She asks.

Like a bull, the Baron General plows past her inquiry. "Humans do not belong here. We will ask you once to leave our planet. No more. Go home."