...City of Crossroads...Dungeon…

Moira stopped what she was doing and sat with her legs up against her chest, staring blankly at Melkan. The footsteps that had warned her to cease her activity came closer and closer, and then, there he was. The interrogator. "I got your letter of authorization. You're going to go to Kami Miyako, not many people ever get such a 'close up' experience with the Sorcerer King, so you're too valuable to risk. So unless you have anything to say, which may influence us to give you a behavioral 'parole' and let you go…" He let the sentence trail off and looked at her.

She hadn't looked at him as he was speaking, and when he stopped, she turned her head up to the little light that came in from a small barred window. "Let me go, huh?" She said thoughtfully.

"You'd do that?" She asked.

"Yes." He replied with an emphatic nod.

"I've got a son back home, you know." Moira said, still looking at the light streaming to the floor of her cell.

He was quiet, he let her talk.

"Do you love your mother?" She asked him.

He was quiet still.

"Please answer." She asked kindly.

"I do." He said.

"Would she die for you?" Moira asked.

"She did." He said flatly.

"I'm sorry." She said sincerely.

"It was a long time ago." He responded.

"I bet if she were back here now, she'd do it again, good mothers are like that. I'll bet when you were a little boy, very small, before you became… this," She waved her arms up and down at the man who stood beyond the bars of her cell, but still did not look away from the light, "that when she'd take you through your prayers, you were thinking not of the gods, but of her. To little children, that's how it is." She rubbed her wrists, they hurt, the chains were tight.

"When they're in the dark, afraid of the terrors they believe are there, even when in reality they aren't, they cry out for 'mommy, mommy, mommy…'. They do it as grownups too. I wasn't at the battle of Ikari city, but before we got there, I volunteered for a scouting mission, and we came across a few of your men, people doing the same job as us. We saw each other at the same moment, pulled the same stupid faces, and we clashed, and your people fell, so did some of ours, but we won. If you can call it that. When it was over, I saw grown men on both sides, huge men in heavy armor, who not minutes before were big, brave, terrors on the battlefield, laying on their backs calling for 'momma' to come and save them from the pain."

He didn't need to see her face to know that she was afraid, that there were tears in her eyes.

"It reminded me of the invasion. I already told you I came from the Draconic Kingdom, you remember that little detail about this helpless prisoner here, right?" She asked.

"I do." He said.

"I had a husband then. We'd been together for two years, with my little boy as our first child. When the beastman invasion hit, we were all caught off guard. I was four months pregnant, and wasn't much of a runner at that point." She smirked, not that he could see it on her face, but he felt it anyway.

"He… he ran away. He ran out of the house, ran to the stable, and got our farm horse, I thought… I thought he was going to bring it over so we could escape together. He didn't. I realized he was leaving us moments before he did so, I saw his face, the terror, but it was only for himself. I called to him only once as the horse passed me by, I tried to waddle after him for a few steps, but I had no hope of catching up. I watched him until he was out of sight, still praying to the gods that he'd realize what he'd done and come back, but he didn't. Father of the year, right?" She said.

She didn't expect, or get an answer.

"I hurried into the house and tried to hide under the bed, still praying to the gods, but they didn't even have the grace to let me fit under there. I struggled for a few minutes to squeeze myself into hiding, but my belly was in the way. So I got out of the house and tried to go somewhere else to hide. I didn't get even three miles away before a tigerman and his advance party caught up to me. My baby is what saved my life then, do you know why?" She asked softly.

"No." He answered.

"Because they liked newborns, a newborn was a delicacy fit for their warchiefs, so they were going to let me live. They taunted me constantly, describing with gruesome detail how I'd be put onto a dinner table when my labor started. I cried, I begged, I offered to let them eat me if they'd just let my child live. It was a big joke to them…" Moira's voice had gone strangely calm as she recited the past, she held her hand out, letting it catch the light, she clenched her open hand as if she could 'truly' capture it in her grip.

"You all were nowhere to be found. They moved me around from place to place, keeping all the expectant mothers alive since they liked to make us beg for our children's lives. We never once saw them spare any, but we did hear the mothers screaming for the gods you love so much to do something for their babes. We never heard an infant cry more than once for the breast, that was the closest to mercy that we got. The mothers never wailed for long either, I guess that was a kindness in its way. All we could do was wait for our turns, getting bigger and bigger, begging and praying and begging some more. I was almost at my due date when I was saved, when my child was saved. It wasn't by you people." She said in a scathing voice.

"Somewhere out there, my son is alive, probably playing outside, maybe at school, spending time with those two girls he met. I think he's a little sweet on them, too young to do anything about it, but maybe… someday?" She finally turned her face to look at the interrogator.

"He's out there now because of the one you're asking me to betray. I don't know much, maybe none of it is even useful, maybe it is, but I won't chance it. I want to go home, desperately, I want to see Goan grow up, grow strong, his first love, his first kiss, his first night under the stars, I want to see how big and strong he becomes. I know he'll be a better man than my husband, may he rot in hell. I want to live and see all those things, because that is what every mother wants if she's worth anything at all. I don't want to die, not just because I want to see tomorrow, but because my death will make him sad, like you were when your mother died protecting you from whatever danger she had to. We want to protect our little ones, our babies, our sweet little boys and girls, and see what wonderful people they make of themselves. I'd do almost anything to get out of here." She said, pausing to wipe her eyes so they'd be clear when she looked at him.

"But if I do what you want, and you do let me go, I'll be spitting on the only one to ever do anything for my son. Would you do what you're asking me to do? Are the people of the Theocracy so low as that? So fine, send me to Kami Miyako, have me asked as hard as you like, doesn't matter, winning will keep him safe from anything you'd ever do to him, and defying you to the very last is the only way I can finally repay my debt. So you can threaten me, or my comrades, you can do whatever it is you think y-you need to do." She said, stumbling slightly over her words as she started to shake.

"But I will give you nothing. Now leave me alone." She laid down on her side and closed her eyes. He stared at her in silence for a very long time.

"I'm sorry." He said, and walked away, but though he looked at the letter, he did not set it aside, it stayed in hand as he went to arrange for her transportation.

He wasn't gone for long when Melkan looked at her in silent contemplation. "Do you have a way to get out of here?" he asked, "Any ideas at all, anything?" He asked.

"Yes… thanks to the rusty and eroded state of these chains, I think I can get out of them, but it'll take hours, hours I don't have. They'll be back soon, then they'll take me away. Once I'm in Kami Miyako, there'll be no way out." She said softly.

"You're not going to Kami Miyako." He said bravely.

"Sweet of you to say." She said to him with an affectionate smile, "But that's where it'll end for me. Either they break me, or I die while they try to. I hope I can hold out, but I'm afraid my words are braver than my feelings." She laughed nervously and went back to looking at the light in the window.

He shook his head. "No, there is one way you can avoid it. Gotta give it to the Slane Theocracy in one area, they're very efficient. On the back of our clothing there are numbers that identify us, so we'll strip and switch clothes, and I'll take your number, while you'll be wearing mine. I'll be all the way to Kami Miyako by the time they realize they've made a mistake. All we have to do is tear the cloth enough to get it off and then resecure it. All these glorified sacks are old and nasty anyway, nobody will notice a few tears."

Her mouth dropped, "But they might kill you?" She said in disbelief.

"So what? They also might not, and I might find my own escape on the way, but we know what'll happen if you go there. Make it quick!" He said as he got to his feet, tore the cloth, and took it off. He threw his prisoner's garb over to her while urging her to move. She hesitated for a moment, then obeyed his instruction, and soon he was putting on her number and she was putting on his. After they'd changed, she asked, "This wasn't just your way of getting an eyeful of me, was it?" She winked, and he chuckled in response.

"One last laugh, I always need one of those." He said as he took up some loose straw and improvised string to bind the cloth back together at the shoulders. She did the same, and soon they were sitting down again.

A guard came by minutes later, "Backs to the door." He said in a bored voice, and they quickly obeyed. "OK… 007, that's this'n" he said, and approached Melkan's back. The guard undid the chain at the wall, then walked him out of the cell. Moira held back the impulse to correct the guard, letting her mouth just hang open and her hand stretch out into the empty air as if to reach for him, until they were gone and she sat alone.

As soon as she felt like there was nobody around, she took advantage of her neglected state to start picking at the lock. She didn't have much to work with, just a somewhat sharp, long splinter she'd managed to take from the table she'd previously been seated at, but old, corroded locks were not exactly the world's greatest security system, and if it was brittle enough… if… She bit her tongue and poked, and poked, and poked at the latch, tapping at it relentlessly until she heard a very tiny 'snap' and a small, victorious smile came over her face.

Time for the next step. She cursed. It was still too early. She went back to watching the fading light as it crept along the length of the floor with the movement of the sun. When it got late enough, someone would bring food.

She moved herself as far from the door as possible without making it evident that she had picked the lock holding the links on her wrists to the chain on the wall She was confident she could just yank it off, but that was a gamble, a gamble she had to undertake.

So Moira sat, afraid to even move, and watched the light.

Eventually, the guard came, the Theocracy's predictability worked in her favor. The guard entered holding a bowl of watery stew. As he came closer, she started looking quizzically at a spot on the floor a few feet behind him. Instinctively, he turned to look where she did, and that was when she jumped up, pulling the chain loose, and looped the portion on her wrists over his head and pulled it tight against his neck.

She gritted her teeth as he tried to grasp for the chain. He bent forward, raising her off the floor at the feet, and he tried to call for help, but could only choke out sounds that nobody other than Moira could hear. She was breathing hard, but he wasn't able to breath at all. He slammed her back against the wall, trying to jar her loose as he clawed at the chains and made desperate gurgling noises. She hit the back of her head, but held fast, gradually he weakened. He slammed her back two more times, but she did not let go. He staggered forward to try it a fourth and final time, but his steps were so labored and weak, he could do nothing but fall to his knees in exhaustion. She kept her grip until he had collapsed completely to the floor and lay unmoving on his face.

She held the chains tight for a little longer, just to be sure he wouldn't get back up. He wasn't a huge man, in fact he wasn't much bigger than she was. That worked in her favor.

She scrambled for the keys at his waist, undid her shackles and put them on him, then she took off her clothes… Melkan's clothes, and took off his. She quickly dressed him in the prisoner's attire, and she put on the guard's uniform.

She lowered herself closely and listened, he wasn't breathing, he was dead, definitely dead. But that meant he wouldn't interrupt her escape… an acceptable loss.

She grunted as she dragged him toward the wall and made it appear that he was asleep, hiding his face away from the door so it might not be noticed, then she took up the watery stew, dumped it out on the floor, and walked out of the cell. She resecured it behind her and walked away.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she feared that at any moment the interrogator would come around a corner or out of a door and see her. She froze in mid-step. "Oh god… no. The others…" She said softly to herself. Melkan had said there were others, the interrogator had said there were others. She looked down at the keys and then back the way she'd come, she looked at the door at the top of a short set of stairs, the exit had to be up there.

'Dammit all… Goan, forgive me.' She thought to herself. She walked back the way she'd come, looking in each cell. Each time she saw one of her people, she made a 'hush' gesture, and walked past, there was one thing she needed as she improvised all this on the fly.

She found a solid wooden door and pressed her ear up against it. Upon hearing no sound within, she tried a few keys on the lock until one worked, then went in. The room was lit with a continual light enchanted item, illuminating a small number of weapons hung along the walls. She took a sword for herself, a long chain with multiple wide circle loops used to attach additional chains on to, and… the other thing she needed, a menacing looking whip.

She wondered how long she had before somebody else came down this way, probably awhile, but she was not prepared to waste a moment.

Moira had to hurry. She moved to the first cell with one of her people and unlocked it, unlocking his chains and then attaching them to the long one meant for leading multiple prisoners. She removed the key from the ring and handed it to him. Then she moved to the next cell and repeated the process. There were nine of them in total.

"Is there anyone else?" She whispered the question as low as she could.

"Maybe a dozen, we don't know the exact number. But they're not here, they're kept in a different area of the prison entirely. Do you want to try to free them?" The man who spoke asked her in a serious but doubtful voice.

"Anyone know where they can be found?" She asked.

"No idea, they separated us, and we know a lot of people didn't survive. Hell, they might already be dead." Another man said sadly.

Moira thought as fast as she could, and then made the call. "No, I wish we could save everyone, but we don't know how many there are, if they're alive, what kind of security there is, or even where they are. We have a chance, but this is all we can do. I'm sorry." She said with a regretful voice that showed she would second guess this decision for the rest of her life.

Nobody argued with her at least.

"Come on, walk in front of me with your head down and start crying and sobbing. Make it good, not too loud, but if anyone sees anything, let it just be a guard with a whip and a sword leading some malcontents out for punishment." Moira said as fast as her lips could form the words.

"Got it." They said together and began to trudge toward the exit with heads down, whimpering and uttering quiet, pathetic pleas for mercy. Behind them, Moira adopted a swagger and twirled her whip arrogantly with a smug, superior sneer on her face.

She was sure other guards heard her, she could hear the echo of their voices in some rooms, but nobody did anything but yell for her to "Give em hell!" She only replied with arrogant laughter, fearing that her speaking voice might not be recognized and thereby draw unwanted attention.

She opened the door to the growing darkness, and it was only after they'd discarded the faux shackles that they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Well, now what?" Someone asked.

Moira shrugged. "How the hell should I know?"

...Army of the Grand Matriarch…

Enri rode at the head of the formation next to Lupusregina Beta and the goblin strategist. They were now within sight of Crossroad City, more commonly known as just 'Crossroads'. The sun in the sky was well past its zenith when they began their approach, and that was when the white flag went up on the battlements.

Enri looked over to Sun, and asked him, "Do you think they want to surrender?"

He stroked his long, thin, white beard and said, "No, no, I don't think they plan on doing that."

"What do you think they're up to?" She asked.

"Maybe a prisoner exchange?" He suggested tentatively.

That got Enri's attention. "General Boabdil did say they had some of ours who survived the massacre of the straw army, but will they really give up captives at this point?" She asked.

"It's hard to say, and there's only one way to find out." He said, and looked at her expectantly.

"Hell. Might as well, we won't be fighting till tomorrow anyway at this point." She took the horn up and blew a halt to the march. The white flag was raised a moment later.

"Lupu, you're with me. I'll try not to get you off during this meeting." She said with a wink to the beautiful, smiling sadist who was… somehow, also her best friend.

Lupu winked in return. "Sun, you stay with the army, if they do attempt an assassination, take the city for me." Enri said confidently.

"As you wish, General Enri." The goblin strategist replied.

Lupusregina and Enri trotted forward on their horses up to the halfway mark between the army and the city walls, and a moment later the gate opened enough for three figures to come riding out slowly to meet with them.

"General Boabdil." Enri said politely.

"General Enri." He said with equal courtesy.

"You did very well at the last battle." He said sincerely, "I find it difficult to believe you were ever a helpless, illiterate peasant."

Her eyes narrowed, and she searched his face for insult in his remark on her origins. Lupusregina gave a low, menacing growl from deep in her throat, and the horses of the Theocracy stamped nervously at the ground.

Enri put her hand on Lupusregina's shoulder, "It's alright Lupu, he didn't mean anything by it, at least I don't think he did." She said patiently. The growl cut off.

"Well, believe it or not, I was, and your soldiers did as well as they could under the circumstances, but you never had a chance from the moment that wave hit you, if you had a chance in the first place." She said as gently as she could.

"Could I ask," Boabdil's voice became curious, "was that your magic? I thought we knew almost everything about you, but there was no hint of you being a magic caster in anything I've ever read." He said, baffled.

"That was His Majesty." Lupusregina spoke up with a big, wide grin.

"He was there?" The general asked in shock.

"No, I'm not sure where he was, but it wasn't with us. He was probably at home in Nazarick." Lupusregina said with a grin.

"Then how…?" He started to ask, then halted as Lupusregina looked silently to Enri for advice. Enri nodded.

"Go ahead, tell them." Enri said.

"Something he found out must have made him lose his temper. That wave of wrath and terror you felt was generated when something made him incredibly angry. Now, can you think of anything that might be responsible for that?" Lupusregina asked with exaggerated curiosity, touching one finger to her cheek as she looked up, pretending uncertainty while the three delegate's faces went pale.

"Why did you call for me to come and meet you?" Enri asked, forcing things back on track. "Are you going to surrender the city?" Her voice on the last question was somewhat hopeful, but dubious.

"More professional courtesy than anything. After all, you won't win this battle. We have walls that are very secure, they won't just fall down like the ones at Ikari did. While I did lose much of my army before, I still have many more troops in reserve, plus this is a very martial city, I'll raise the population to arms, and we have, as you can see," he gestured to the large towers positioned at regular intervals along the city walls, "many an answer to the few dragons you have. This won't be an easy fight for you." He said bluntly.

Enri looked at him with the hard eyes that had let her tame ogres. "Hard fight, easy fight, as long as I win, I'm OK with either. And make no mistake, I will win. Crossroads will fall, Wheaton will fall, Kami Miyako will fall. The Slane Theocracy 'might' hold out through the winter, but by spring your nation will be a province and your independence a fading memory. The old gods will not help you, because there is only one god that actually does anything, and he's behind me, not you. The days of your country using people as meat shields, slaughtering peasants, enslaving other races, butchering demihumans just for existing… those days are all over and done. We will win this war, even if we have to tear down your walls so that no brick stands on brick to show that they were ever there at all."

Lupusregina never once adjusted her smiling expression, but as she heard Enri speak, she'd never been so proud of her friend.

Enri's tone had been hard and unforgiving, but she spared some harshness and said with courtesy, "You at least seem to not have steeped yourself in the sins of your country, or the sins they visited on others. Given that, I hope you survive this, I hope the loss of your country grieves you less and less as the years pass, and that you see the coming of a new world, a better world, and that eases whatever pain you feel in the future after this war is over. Now, do we have any other business?" She asked.

He looked at her in utter disbelief, nor was he alone, his companions were equally shocked that she could so casually predict the fall of a country that had endured for some six hundred years, and within such a short span of time.

When they offered no response to her question as they tried to process her disturbing revelations, she decided to offer them one tiny olive branch. "Perhaps we could at least exchange prisoners. I understand you have some of ours, so we'll trade you two of your prisoners for every one of ours." Enri said generously.

"Deal." He said. "We'll have them all brought here to this spot within the hour."

"Alright, I'll see you then." Enri said, and after politely inclining her head, she and Lupusregina turned their horses around and returned to their front line.

"Why did you offer a two for one trade?" Lupusregina asked curiously, "That isn't a very good deal for us."

Enri grinned, "It's a fantastic deal, the only captives they have are ones from the Battle of the Straw Men. Those were remarkably brave soldiers, and they'll be an incredible asset to have back with us. By contrast, many of the ones we got from them are people who ran away or surrendered quickly. We're giving away two sheep, and getting back a wolf, which sounds like a very good deal to me." Enri said with a very sweet expression that bore a hint of maliciousness that Lupusregina found absolutely delightful.

"You've become very impressive, Miss Grand Matriarch." Lupusregina said with an emphatic nod and a broad smile.

"Thanks Lupu, but you know, I admit there is one more thing I didn't mention." She said with a look down at the grass under the feet of their horses. Behind them the camp was being established, hammers were being swung, tents pitched, fires lit for cooking. She dismounted from her horse and led it over to a groomsman, who took both horses from the women.

As Enri walked towards what would become the center of the camp, where her tent was still going up, Lupusregina walked beside her. "Oh, what's that?" Lupusregina asked.

Enri was quiet while she stood and watched her command tent rise up, the tip thrusting towards the sky. "I'm hoping… hoping that maybe Moira will be one of the captives we get back." She said.

"Oh." Was all Lupusregina could say in return.

AN: Here, eat it up, don't forget to leave a review. :)