I do not own Dungeons and Dragons or any of the characters. Never played DnD, just going off of what I can find on the million and a half wiki pages, general fantasy BS, and Honor among Thieves.

Rescue

Soldiers shuffled around the fortress, all of them with their heads down, going about their business in silence. All of them wore matching armor and longswords, helmets with their faces hidden, and all of them largely ignored each other, as each of them knew their jobs like the back of their hands from the daily repetition of their duties. Only when something changed did their patterns change. And something had changed. As the soldiers lumbered around in silence, a single, feminine voice shrieked over the wind, screaming a mixture of profanities and curses over the howl of the wind. Prisoners were a rare occurrence here, but it had happened before. And, like before, it was as good as a death sentence. As with all of the others, first would be days of neglect, abandoned in a freezing cold cell without food and barely any water. Once she had run out of strength, the soldiers would make their rounds, partaking of the added company. Once that was done, she would be fed and watered, and then tortured. Then, eventually, she would be killed.

As the voice continued to scream profanities at her captors, a single soldier deviated from his otherwise monotonous routine. He walked down the stairs to the dungeon with a single cup of water. As of yet, the prisoner of the last three days had not been given anything, so no one questioned him as he walked into the dungeon, then to the cell where the woman was being kept. She was a mess already. Her face was bruised and swollen in places from being beaten when she was captured, her golden hair was a mess, tangled and stained with dirt and blood, and her light green clothes were torn and tattered, leaving her barely decent. The soldier stepped up in front of the cell door and for a moment, the elf glared at him, then smirked.

"Took you long enough," she grinned as the soldier unlocked the door.

"You said you'd be at the other fortress," the soldier said, handing her the cup, which she drank greedily before allowing the soldier to free her hands and remove his helmet.

As his long, wavy brown hair cascaded down his back, she threw herself at him, kissing him hungrily. He smiled as he kissed her, then finally pulled away as his hair began to shrink toward his scalp, lightening from brown to silvery white. It shrunk back until it fell messily around his head, just shy of chin length. His soldier's armor began to change, shifting into a black brigandine with a diamond pattern over the front, a pair of black vambraces, and black boots over a dark grey, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of lighter grey pants. He passed the sword he still had to the elf just as a shadow began to seep in through the crack under the door, wisps of smoky darkness curling up off of it. He smirked, holding his hand out, and the shadow stopped below him before darkening a second before a long, dark brown, wooden shaft rose out of it. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft and pulled a javelin free of the shadows. Its entire length was a dark brown wood, with a leaf-shaped head, two smaller leaf-shaped blades sticking out about an inch and a half from the bottom of the head, making it a three-pronged spear, then a section between the head and the shaft that was shaped almost like the hilt of a sword with extremely short arms on its guard and wrapped in moss.

He slung the javelin in a sleeve across his back with the end metal to safely hold the head of the spear, then the sleeve open for most of it before having a loop to hold the shaft of the spear about two thirds of the way along the spear from the head. Once the spear was secured, he knelt, reaching into the shadow, then standing with a trio of other weapons. Two of them were curved daggers, knives with curved handles and curved, single-edged blades roughly a foot in length. Like the spear, they were both entirely wooden. As was the object he'd removed from the shadow. It was a sword, one styled like a rapier with a hilt bearing the appearance of a tangled root for a handle, a cross guard, and the knuckle guard. The blade was dual-edged, flat on the sides and broader than most rapier blades, but still slender and delicate-looking. Despite the fragile appearance of the rapier, and all four weapons being made of wood, they were as sturdy and deadly as any steel weapon. His were made out of Ironwood, a special, magical wood that was better than most steel.

"Still carrying your usual weapons, I see," the elf smiled. "You never change, Jasper."

"Come on, Mia," Jasper smirked. "You know me. I never let a true beauty go."

"Must be why you came for me," Mia smirked.

Jasper shrugged. "You're passable."

"Mhm, sure," Mia snorted. "So, what's the plan for escape?"

"The usual," Jasper smirked. "No witnesses."

Mia nodded, and they both walked calmly out of the dungeon. Instantly, the two guards outside the door who Jasper had passed on the way in spun toward them, but before either could draw their blades, Mia stabbed one of them, plunging the stolen longsword she held through his chest as Jasper spun around the others, his Ironwood daggers shredding the soldier anywhere there were gaps in his armor, ending with severing his spinal cord, rendering him immobile and unable to make a sound as Jasper lowered him to the ground quietly and left him to bleed out in silence. Then, he sheathed his daggers, the scabbards both behind his waist to hold them with the hilts to either side of his waist. He drew his rapier from his left side instead, and together, they walked out of the dungeon into the fortress's courtyard. Instantly, Mia shrieked in surprise and discomfort as the frozen air greeted her exposed skin, her ruined clothing doing nothing to keep her warm.

"I always tell you to wear something appropriate for where you're going to be," Jasper said, ignoring the face that his own choice of clothing was now barely any better for warmth than her lack of decent clothing, unlike the soldiers' insulated armor, which included sheep's wool inside of all of the clothing.

A trio of soldiers charged them, but as they reached them, Mia slashed one's leg on the inner thigh, severing his femoral artery as Jasper deflected the first soldier's sword, then slashed the side of his throat before transitioning the slash into a stab, driving his slender blade through the eye hole of the third soldier's helmet and into his brain, withdrawing it before the soldier began to collapse.

"And I always tell you that I dress to impress," Mia said. "The best way to defeat soldiers bigger and stronger than you is to distract them."

Case and point, as she spun to engage a pair of soldiers charging from a stairway behind them, the tattered remains of her shirt lifted up, baring her small, firm breasts, and the soldiers, without any conscious decision, hesitated for a fraction of a second, allowing Mia to dispatch both of them easily as Jasper expertly danced through his opponents, his rapier carving through the soft spots in their armor like wet tissue paper. As they finished that group, the doors into the upper levels of the fortress burst open, soldiers pouring out of them at the same time as archers raced along the walls of the fortress. However, as they did, the shadow that had brought Jasper his weapons suddenly shot from the door up to the walkway where it transformed from a round shadow on the ground into a full-sized, three-dimensional silhouette of a manticore. It roared, lashing out with claws the size of daggers, the claws shredding armor and flesh alike. It lunged, crushing soldiers underfoot, jabbing them with its scorpion stinger, biting into soldiers and flinging them. When the first archers finally turned their bows on it, their arrows passed through it and into other archers. Then, the silhouette dropped, streaking back the other way before a massive, serpentine silhouette shot out of it, its jaws clamping around the entirety of one archer's torso, its fangs punching through his torso before it released him and shot forward, coiling around three more and squeezing, crushing them in seconds. Then, it released them and was suddenly a wolf, its jaws biting into another archer's throat. And then, it was a bird double the size of a horse, though it was too indistinct to know what type of bird it was. It took to the air, shrieking deafeningly, then swooped low, its talons raking across soldiers and knocking them off of the wall, any not killed by the talons crushed to death on the landing.

"I love that shadow of yours!" Mia grinned, spinning around a soldier and slashing him down the back.

"She's the best," Jasper smirked, deflecting a soldier's blade before his left dagger sliced into his neck.

He turned sharply on the spot as he did, and jabbed his rapier into another soldier's throat, just to the right of center, blade angled vertically, stabbing through both carotid and jugular. The soldier dropped, and Mia passed Jasper, slashing a soldier's blade out to the side just before Jasper's spear flashed over her, its broad blade severed the soldier's neck entirely, and as the head spun into the air, Jasper, spun, slashing another with the spear head across the throat. Another charged from behind, but Jasper flipped the spear under his arm and stabbed backward, driving it into the center of the soldier's chest before dropping the base of his spear to the ground, sending the soldier flipping over himself. The dead soldier crashed into another, knocking him to the ground, his helmet bounced away. He grunted, then glared up at them with his squashed, scarred, Hobgoblin face, only for Jasper to jab his rapier into it three times in a second as he passed.

Three more of the soldiers charged toward them, but before they arrived, the shadow swooped down from above, grabbing the three of them in its talons and streaking into the air before dropping them to their deaths. Jasper and Mia both ran for the gate, exiting the fortress and beginning to flee from a hail of pursuing arrows. Before rejoining them, the shadow made one more pass, mowing down the archers before streaking back into the ground as a shadow and racing after Mia and Jasper. By the time it reached them, Mia was astride a large, brown horse. When it caught them, the shadow instantly merged with the horse's shadow.

"I was wrong, Jasper," Mia smirked down at the horse, which glanced back at her. "You have changed. You finally mastered Wild Shape."

The horse brayed proudly, continuing to run for an hour before cantering to a stop inside of a cave. Mia slid to the ground and the horse reared back as it began to change, its haor sinking into its body as its body deflated, transforming in a second into Jasper. He let out a sigh, stretching as a roll of clothing emerged from his shadow.

"Sore?" Mia asked, picking up the clothes and stripping what remained of her own off.

"Quite a bit," Jasper nodded. "I did just run for over an hour."

Mia shrugged, pulling on her new outfit, her favorite one. It consisted of green Ironwood pauldrons, a skin-tight, light-green one-piece with short sleeves and open from her collarbones to just above her waist, the fabric reaching in more over her breasts, then open in back from the base of her neck to the curve of her waist in back, long, blade-like leaves hanging around her waist like a skirt, tight, green leggings, black, high-heeled, leather boots, and a pair of dark green, fingerless gauntlets that looked like leather, but that were enchanted. With a single activation command, both of her gauntlets would produce a blade from the back of her forearms that had a talon-shaped blade at the base near her elbow, then a longer, curved blade that reached up along her forearm and past her hand outside the reach of her fingers before curving forward slightly to straighten out, reaching a length of about a foot beyond the face of her fist.

Jasper shook his head as he surveyed her outfit. "I still don't see why you choose to dress like that."

"I've told you, it's a tactical distraction," Mia smirked.

"You might as well be naked," Jasper pointed out.

"Says the one who really is naked, and chooses to use his Changeling abilities to replicate clothing instead of actually wearing any," Mia countered.

Jasper opened his mouth to argue, only to close it again and shrug. "Valid point."

Mia grinned victoriously before stepping forward, looping her arms around his neck. "Besides that, if you want me to be naked, all you have to do is ask."

Jasper smirked knowingly. "I probably wouldn't complain much."

He captured her lips with his own, only to stop as the rumbling and clinking of several pairs of armed feet echoed outside the cave. He turned, transforming into a dog and sniffed, then growled, transforming back and pushing himself up, quickly slipping his weapons off and dropping them into his shadow, where they vanished in seconds.

"How many?" Mia asked.

"Too many," Jasper answered, just before several dozen soldiers, these ones humans, charged into view, those nearest the cave leveling their spears at them, others raising swords and shields.

Jasper and Mia raised their hands, walking slowly toward the soldiers, and the soldiers carefully moved out of their path, allowing them to exit the cave. As they did, Jasper sighed, recognizing the coat of arms on one of their shoulders. It was a mercenary gang who caught escaped criminals and murderers and transported them to the nearest prison.

"Let me guess, you just happened to be passing by when we broke out?" Jasper asked.

"That's right," one of the soldiers nodded. "Bad luck for you, eh?"

Mia glanced around, seeing Jasper was right. She also recognized the coat of arms, but while they could handle probably a couple dozen of these mercenaries, even without Jasper's pet shadow, there were more than a hundred soldiers here. They had other prisoners, but only a handful of guards would have to guard them, which left far too many for them to fight and survive.

"Yeah," Mia nodded, her inspection having taken less than a second. "Bad luck. We surrender."

"Just like that?" the mercenary in front of her scoffed. "After seeing the state of that fortress, we were expecting a little more of a struggle."

"We don't start fights we can't win," Jasper said.

The mercenary nodded, and the pair were quickly bound, a cloak being thrown around both of them to help them survive the cold, before they were placed with the rest of the prisoners and loaded into a transport cart. There, they sat in silence as the cart trundled along toward the nearest prison. Although, it would take a day or two for their bounty to spread and go active, but the mercenary gang wasn't stupid. They'd take their time reaching the prison so that there'd be a full payday.

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