Jessica was awoken by a kick to her ankles.

  “Time to prove your ‘flavor crystals’ aren’t poisonous,” Sir Hayek said.

  “Hurry up then,” she mumbled as she failed to blink crust out of her eyes.

  Mid yawn a spoonful of MSG was jammed into her mouth. Her entire body, from face to toes, curled in discomfort. Worse, Hayek left the spoon in until she swallowed.

  “Doesn’t seem very appealing,” Sir Hayek said.

  Behind him the dog chef was nervously pacing, apparently worried he would be punished for not making flavor crystals correctly.

  Jessica spat on the floor. “Hey dumbass! If you dump a spoon of salt in someone’s mouth they’ll react the same way! Put it on a steak or something, for God’s sake.”

  “Mind your tongue, witch! Though perhaps it isn’t poisonous. I will try it on a cracker,” he said and turned to leave.

  “H-Hey! Where’s my dinner!?”

  “You’ll have the scraps from our table when we’re finished,” he replied.

  Left alone to reflect on her situation, a well of resentment rose in Jessica. Oddly, it was aimed at Morkal.

  Now knowing how Tushita and the Tapestry worked, she realized in retrospect that Morkal had screwed her in more ways than just her magic system. What she had done was remove Jessica’s ability to affect the world. Tushita ran on the connection reincarnated adventurers had with the Tapestry. Locked out of it, Jessica was at everyone else’s mercy.

  In another world, she was living an adventure that entailed clever use of chemistry to outwit her opponents while she gradually accumulated power and industrialized a medieval fantasy world. Her agency robbed from her, she was forced to react to increasingly awful circumstances. All because of Morkal.

  In a way, Morkal shot herself in the foot too. Unlike all those stupid teenagers who just wanted to kill monsters and endlessly get stronger, Jessica had real ideas about how to make the world better. She came equipped with knowledge of artificial fertilizers, rebar, pasteurized food, electricity, and everything else people imagined they would introduce to a medieval world but didn’t actually know how to do without a search engine.

  Jessica did know. And she could have used that knowledge to take power away from the sociopathic adventurers Morkal was so afraid would destroy the world. Now it didn’t matter.

  “Miss witch, the Earl requests your presence.”

  Jessica looked up to see the catgirl maid from earlier staring at her.

  You’re gonna have to untie me then.”

  “Let me get formal approval first.” The maid went back upstairs and a few minutes later came back down. “Okay, I have approval to untie you.”

  “Thanks… I guess?”

  “You may thank the benevolence of Heinrich, Earl of Nunavaria,” the maid said as she untied Jessica’s wrists.

  “Nunavaria is what, this region? Earldom? County?”

  “County.”

  “So that’s where Barleyfield is located?”

  “I have no idea what or where Barleyfield is.”

  Jessica sighed. Exotic as her cat ears and tail were, the maid was about the dullest person she’d ever met.

  “What’s your name?” Jessica asked.

  “You may call me Pusfrau.”

  Jessica rubbed her wrists as Pusfrau worked on her ankles. “Thanks, Pusfrau.”

  “You may thank the benevolence of Heinrich, Earl of—”

  “I am not going to do that.”

  Pusfrau squinted at her, trying to decide what level of respect to accord the arrested witch. Whatever her misgivings, Jessica had been bestowed the benevolence of the Earl, a fact that the maid seemed to care quite a bit about.

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  “Understood, ma’am.”

  “Call me Jessica.”

  “Understood, ma’am.”

  Once Jessica was untied, Pusfrau led her to an ornate dining room of dark wood wainscoting and navy blue wallpaper with silver fleur-de-lis. The bulk of the room was taken up by a long, hardwood table and chairs. At the head was a very large man with a very large moustache.

  “Ah! There’s your witch! She’s rather tall. And quite bony. If she was paler she might look like a morkal,” the earl said, stroking his double chin.

  “I said the same thing,” Sir Hayek said, his mouth full of red meat. “Though she’s put on a bit of a tan after working in the fields.”

  Earl Heinrich chuckled. “What a waste of good talent! Think of the meals we missed out on, her languishing in the fields like that. Please, sit. What should I call you?”

  “Jessica,” she said.

  “Bow properly,” Hayek said, “and refer to him as ‘Your Lordship’.”

  Jessica bowed. “Sorry, Your Lordship.”

  “Strange name, Jessica…” Earl Heinrich said in-between piling more roasted potatoes in his mouth. “Are you an adventurer?”

  “No,” Hayek said at the same time as Jessica said, “yes.”

  “She doesn’t have magic, so she can’t be an adventurer,” he added.

  “Well, these flavor crystals are quite magical! I’ve never had venison so scrumptious! So savory! So full of— je ne sais quoi!”

  The French took Jessica aback before she remembered the expression was imported into English and subsequently imported into Tushita. She wondered how common a phrase had to be to make the cut.

  “Thank you, Your Lordship,” she said with another bow. “I did indeed come from another world, but Morkal took my connection with the Tapestry, so I lost the ability to use Tushita’s magic system.”

  “Oh? You were attacked by a gang of them?”

  “No, just one of her.”

  The Earl looked at her like she’d confronted him with a riddle.

  “Er, Morkal is a hive mind. She—”

  “Nevermind that! Mouths are for eating, not talking,” he said, digging into his own meal.

  Jessica gazed at the place set for her. It was laden according to the Earl’s proportions which were as generous as the man himself. There was venison steak the size of Jessica’s head, a pile of roasted potatoes basted with pork fat, glazed carrots and peas, a dinner roll, and a glass of red wine. Everything except the wine glistened with monosodium glutamate.

  The other dinner guests side-eyed her as she ate. Among them was the little shit who laughed at her soap a couple weeks ago. Jaxson—or whatever his stupid name was—wrinkling his nose.

  Ignoring them, Jessica dug into the food. Objectively it was the best venison she’d ever eaten. The dog chef clearly knew his art. Despite that, the actual eating event was dreadful. Plain porridge with the Serf family would’ve been infinitely preferable to fine dining with twelve sycophants silently listening to Earl Heinrich eat with his mouth open while pretending they couldn’t smell Jessica from across the table.

  When the meal slowed, Pusfrau and the other servants cleared the table and set down new silverware for dessert. During the interim the Earl dominated the conversation, talking to one person and then another, much to Sir Hayek’s chagrin as he dodged the man’s large and expressive arms. Eventually, the conversation turned to Jessica.

  “So, how do you like it here?”

  “Err… by here do you mean Nunavaria or Traehagen?” she asked.

  The Earl looked confused. “Traehagen? Like the store chain?”

  “Isn’t this town called Traehagen?” Jessica asked.

  The Earl’s belly laugh boomed around the dining room. “Gods no! Traehagen is a chain of general stores that stretches all over Elsifeya. No, no, our village is called Sawcone.”

  Jessica inadvertently snorted and then covered her mouth.

  “Is there something funny about Sawcone? It’s a portmanteau of saws—our main industry—and the pine cones which decorate our forest trails,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s an Earth thing. Don’t worry about it.”

  The Earl turned to Sir Hayek who shook his head. “She’s lying, of course. Trying too hard to invent otherworldly knowledge. If there were truly such a thing as ‘sawcone’ we would have heard tales.”

  Jessica bit her tongue to keep from getting dragged behind a horse tomorrow.

  Once she had control over herself, she said, “I have made my case to you several times, Sir Hayek. Even other adventurers like Min-woo have acknowledged me as reincarnated. Find one, any one, and they would be happy to corroborate my claim.”

  And maybe drag her in front of the adventurer’s guild for her crimes, she supposed, but that was better than being burnt at the stake.

  Eyebrows raised at the mention of a member of the Original Eight. Jessica felt perverse satisfaction at tossing Min-woo’s name around to awe a bunch of nobles.

  “Unfortunately, there are no adventurers in town,” Sir Hayek said, “and I do not intend to wait for any. You are just trying to postpone your execution.”

  Jessica turned nervously to Earl Heinrich. “H-Hold on! You’ve seen the value of my flavor crystals! Your Lordship, you know he’s wrong. I’m clearly from Earth. I was reincarnated here and you have this delicious venison to prove it!”

  Earl Heinrich shrugged. “Well… the flavor crystals are delightful, but it’s also a fact that you don’t have a magic system. A fatal flaw. How can anyone possibly believe you were reincarnated in another world if you don’t have a magic system? It is simply one of the undeniable facts.”

  “B-But—! But I’m not a witch! And I made you the flavor crystals!” Jessica said, fear crawling inch by icy inch through her veins.

  “Yes, but that proves you’re a witch. Flavor appearing in crystal form is simply magic.”

  “So if it’s magic then I must be reincarnated!”

  The Earl smiled sheepishly. “I simply don’t see how that connects. But thank you for the recipe nonetheless. I wish you the best of luck with your burning.”

  Jessica found any response crushed under the weight of her situation’s absurdity. She stood up from her chair under the eyes of the entire table. Sir Hayek stood too and moved around to grab her arm and frog march her toward the door.

  “No more of that belly-aching. It’s back to the basement with you.”