Still Waters 3, Book 2, Chapter 23.5, Ako Imprisoned
The Magic Eater walks a razor's edge; one wrong step will lead to ruin and death.
Subject Izumi Ako, Sophie's Dream Journal
Izumi Ako opened her eyes, and couldn't help but sigh. Above her was the same stone ceiling she had been waking up to for the past two weeks. The bed she had been sleeping in was quite comfortable at least; but then again, she supposed that was to be expected in a room as well furnished as this one, even if it did amount to little more than a fancy prison cell. She turned her head to look at her jailer, seated in his chair with his back to the heavy wood door. He was a very big man, easily as tall as Max-sensei but bigger. Seeing him seated there in that chair with his arms crossed and his head inclined forward, one might think he was slow and fat; Ako knew different.
Her first escape attempt had been thwarted when he had opened the door, spotted her trying to climb outside, and darted across the room and grabbed her by the wrist before she could lower herself out through the window to attempt the perilous climb down the thousand-foot cliff face below and the mountainside below that to the narrow strip of rocky beach far, far below between the the base of the mountain and the sea. He had held her dangling outside the window by her wrist for a good thirty seconds, watching her, as if saying the only reason she wasn't splattered across the mountainside was due to his intervention. Ako, for her part, had met his eyes the whole time, giving him a no-nonsense glare that her friends back home would have been shocked to see her make. After that incident, she had been moved up to one of the tower rooms with, she had noted upon first being thrust into it, barred windows and solidly made floors, walls, and ceilings. The door was of heavy wood, warded against rot, and while the windows were small, she could have squeezed through them if not for the thick, solidly set metal bars that crossed them. And, while the furniture was quite nice in a massive, overbuilt sort of way, there was not a single thing that wasn't bolted to the floor short of the blankets and pillow on the bed, the clothes folded in the drawers, and the tableware she was given when it was time to eat; even the chair at the table was attached to the floor...! The only loose piece of furniture was the big man's chair, and he always took that with him when he left the room. Her 'Magic Eater' ability was useless, as well...the big man seemed to be immune to its effects, and even though servants came and went, thus far he had been the only one watching her.
She had considered trying to break the big mirror attached to the chest of drawers opposite the table, but Ari Sigurd, the man sitting in the chair by the door, was present almost all the time, and she didn't think he would take any threats involving broken glass well.
"Turn around," she said. Ari promptly stood up and turned his wide back to her, his arms still crossed as she climbed out of bed. She glanced back at him to make sure he wasn't looking, then quickly gathered some clothes from the dresser and changed out of the pajamas she had been given to wear. The clothes they had given her weren't anything special, or even weird; they were just...clothes, like what she commonly wore back in Japan, if a little less fashionable: a pair of pants, a plain t-shirt, and undergarments. She hadn't expected to find such normal clothing in a castle, especially since the few people she had seen other than Ari tended to wear simple clothing without decoration, stuff that looked almost like it had been made on-site. "I'm changed," she said. Ari turned around and sat back down in his chair.
"Is Rale around?" she asked. Rale, the boy she had met at the festival, had seemed nice enough when she first met him, if awkward. 'Wait, scratch that...he's INCREDIBLY awkward,' Ako thought to herself as she recalled their little get-together the day after they met. Misa, Madoka, and Sakurako had all called it a date, but it wasn't! It really wasn't! Ako wouldn't ask a younger boy out on a date... She felt her face turning red and turned her back on Ari so he couldn't see.
"Initiate Rale has other duties this morning," Ari replied.
"Oh," Ako said. The room again fell into silence, and she sighed as she moved over to the window. Rale was the only one she had met in this place so far who didn't look at her as if she was some rare species of unicorn or something; he had even tried to help her escape at the end, before she had been captured by that other big man. She paused, wrinkling her brow in thought. 'What was his name...? Cort? He seemed like a normal person too; so what's with all these others?'
The few other people she had seen here were weird, all looking at her as if alternating between adulation and terror; from what she could gather, they seemed to be some sort of cult...one that, for whatever reason, had chosen her for...what? Worship? Sacrifice? She shivered; both options were terrifying, each in their own way. She quickly turned her mind toward another subject.
The castle she had been taken to was quite large, easily bigger than even Himeji Castle back home in Japan, though it was more like something she'd have expected to see in medieval Europe than Japan, with its tall stone towers and massive walls. While her old room had given her a view of the sea, the new room she had been given in the tower allowed her to view the enormous main courtyard of the castle as well as the walls. From what she could see, there was a series of high walls protecting the main structure of the castle, with open areas of varying sizes between them, depending on the mountain's terrain. If she put her head up against the bars on the right side of the window, she could just barely see part of a winding mountain path on the other side of the furthest wall; to get an army up that path wouldn't be easy, especially one big enough to assault such a monstrous castle. The castle boasted quite a sizable defense force as well. Ako should know; she watched them training in the courtyard below to break up the monotony between visits by Rale, who seemed to be so low ranking here that he was treated like a servant, bringing her meals or dropping off bundles of clean clothes. Rale was the only person she had met since her arrival here that actually seemed capable of holding a conversation with her; while Cort had seemed like a normal person, she hadn't seen him since her capture, and she sort of got the idea that they wouldn't have anything in common to talk about, even if they did meet up again. Ari was out of the question; he would only respond to questions with a direct answer, killing any chance of conversation before it could even start. Rale, on the other hand...Rale was just a normal boy, one she knew distressingly little about. Why had he come to Mahora with the rest of the group that had captured her? Why wasn't he as...as reverent as the rest of the cultists? Why had he even joined up with this bunch of weirdos, anyway?
Ako shook her head to clear it. The whole thing was getting ridiculous; maybe it was time to take a chance. Taking a deep breath to quell her nervousness, she turned and looked directly at Ari. "Mister Sigurd," she said sharply, trying her best to copy the tone Ayaka used when ordering others around. The man seated on the chair just looked at her, waiting.
Ako took a deep breath. "I want you to bring Rale to me right now," she said, more forcefully than before.
Ari cocked an eyebrow. "Initiate Rale has other duties this morning," he repeated. "He has to make up for his mistakes."
Ako blinked. Ari had given her...an explanation? His responses had only ever been single sentence answers with no elaboration. What had changed...? The way she had spoken? She steeled herself for another go.
"Mister Sigurd!" she said sharply, almost barking the words. To her surprise, he visibly stiffened, watching her warily.
"Yes?" he said.
Ako stifled the smile that tried to form. Ari Sigurd had never asked her a single question before this! "I command you to bring Rale to this room now!" she bellowed at him, pointing for emphasis even as her voice cracked slightly as the end. She tried to ignore it, clenching her fists nervously as she tried her best to stare down a man three times her size.
And it worked.
"Very well; I will return," he said as he stood up from his chair. Ako fought back a shiver of delight as he almost forgot his chair and had to turn back and get it before he opened the door...and then the door closed behind him and he was gone.
'Well that answers one question...it's probably worship,' Ako thought to herself. She wasn't comfortable with the idea, not at all, but it was infinitely better than being sacrificed to some dark god she had never even heard of. And hey, now she would even have someone to talk to...! Ako smiled; Rale seemed like a good boy, even if he was in bad company. And even though she couldn't escape on her own at the moment, there was always the chance of an unexpected opportunity showing itself at just the right time, not to mention the fact that, should she not be able to escape, her friends would come after her...of that she had no doubt. It would just be nice if she could escape first and save them the trouble, not to mention keep them out of danger... But in any case, until then, she would cause these people so much trouble they couldn't wait to give her away...! She smiled deviously as she started working out various ways of causing them trouble. Now, finally, she had a way of putting all that experience in dealing with Misa and Sakurako's pranks to good use...!
Author's Notes: So, I figured it would probably be a good idea to give the readers a clue as to what's going on with Ako since her kidnapping at the festival. Yep, a bunch of cultists kidnapped her and shut her up in a huge mountaintop fortress in Mundus Magicus; the exact location and what exactly these people want is still a mystery, however. We'll just have to see what happens from here, shall we?