The next morning Jessica’s legs ached so bad she wasn’t sure she could stand. It reminded her of when she made the mistake of allowing her friend to trick her into doing leg day. The day after was the one and only time she skipped a class in undergrad. This time, however, she had a fully-armored knight yanking her out of bed. Or, rather, off the floor.

  “Up, lazy witch. We’ve ground to cover.”

  It became clear her aches were more than just psychological when they had barely cleared the outskirts of Sawcone and Jessica fell flat on her face.

  “What is this? You had a nice, hearty meal yesterday,” Sir Hayek said as he dismounted.

  Jessica rolled over in the dirt. Blood was dripping from her wrists which had been rubbing against rope almost non-stop for the past 24 hours.

  “Let me walk at my own pace or you won’t have a witch to burn…” she said in-between huffs of air.

  “You’re a flight risk,” he said.

  “I’m not even a walk risk!”

  Sir Hayek reluctantly pulled her onto Burnish and allowed her to ride behind him. Her wrists were left untied after he conceded her witchly powers only extended to soap and flavor crystals.

  Atop Burnish her struggle became about staying upright. Numerous times she nodded off, rocked to sleep by the rhythmic trotting, only to be yanked from the brink by a near fall. This was more mentally taxing than walking but now that she wasn’t about to die of heat stroke they could keep a faster pace. Two-and-a-half grueling days of travel and they were within sight of Elsifeya City.

  Her first look came as they crested a hill which dipped sharply into an enormous prairie. Snow-peaked mountains hemmed this expanse in everywhere but the west where the land ended in sea cliffs. This prairie plateau was so flat and the mountains so tall it could have been five miles across as easily as fifty.

  Roughly halfway to the mountains on the opposite side there was a city which cut clear across a river, damming it before it reached the sea cliffs.

  The river itself was sapphire blue down its entire length as it wound off the mountains and through the prairie. It looked like someone had imagined a river without any thought of sediment, sewage, or algae. Upon reaching Elsifeya City, the water was forced through a series of canals and spillways before being jettisoned into the bay through artificial waterfalls.

  Cleaving through the waterfalls was an artificial promontory the shape of a ship’s bow atop which stood a palatial castle. Atop the promontory, the castle projected a wreath of bastions and battlements into the ocean connected back to the main keep through a series of bridges like the spokes of a wheel. Jessica was far from an expert on siegecraft, but even she could tell this castle was impregnable to anything shy of modern artillery.

  The city it commanded was equally impressive.

  From the hills she could see a lattice of dikes, canals, and aqueducts which allowed Elsifeya to process the river water and channel it into waterwheels. There were only two gates to the city: North and south. It was through these gates that the King’s Road ran before heading northward into the mountains.

  “Wow… It’s gorgeous!” she said.

  “Spoken like a true serf,” Sir Hayek said. “If you really were from Earth you would know their cities are much more impressive. Earthly buildings soar hundreds of stories into the air and are made of the same metal as my armor.”

  “I know. I grew up outside Cleveland,” she replied, neglecting to mention that Cleveland was much, much less impressive than Elsifeya.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I have never heard of Cleveland. If it does exist it must be a piddling backwater compared with the grand city of Tampa from which hails our Emperor.”

  “Tampa sucks ass,” Jessica said.

  “Hah! Now I know for sure you are a liar. No one would call the most beautiful city on Earth bad.”

  “You’ve never been! What the hell are you talking about!? Everything in Florida sucks! Especially its cities!”

  “Hush, before I quiet you myself. Do not slander the Emperor’s home!”

  As they neared the city open fields became farms, pastures, orchards, and even clusters of buildings. Carts and wagons joined the traffic as it swelled into a tide crashing against the shoals of a customs station.

  Sir Hayek bypassed all this by going around the side of the red brick customs house to a corridor with a sign that read, ‘Adventurers and Nobles Only.’ Two guards lazily waved him through.

  From atop Burnish, Jessica could see the flowing mass of people as it shuffled into the city. There was a cosmopolitan mixture of humans, elves, animalar, dwarves, halflings, and a handful of fantasy races she couldn’t identify.

  There were a number of adventuring parties. These were easy to spot even in the large crowds because their hair and outfits were brightly-colored and they held loud conversations, scenery-chewing conversations which were either overly-comedic or overly-serious. Sketch comedy or tragic backstories. Nothing in-between.

  She was about to call for help when, anticipating this, Sir Hayek steered them away.

  “You’re an ass, you know that? You’re doing this on purpose,” Jessica said.

  “I do not make mistakes,” he replied.

  “I didn’t say anything about mistakes.”

  “Good. Because I didn’t make any.”

  The crowds thinned once Sir Hayek turned off the King’s Road. The street they turned onto was lined with gorgeous stone mansions and accompanying gardens locked behind wrought iron fences.

  “I guess aristocrats live here?” Jessica asked.

  “Adventurers. The successful ones, anyway,” Hayek replied.

  Based on the block sizes and the fact that she could see mansions several streets deep, Jessica estimated fifty or more such adventuring parties.

  “How much does it cost to buy one?” she asked.

  “You can’t buy them,” he said. “Adventurers come across their party headquarters naturally during questing. If you were a real adventurer you—”

  “Shut up, dude.”

  By now Jessica knew that he knew she had been reincarnated. His single-minded quest to burn her as a witch had to have deeper, more personal roots, but her efforts at pulling them out during the journey had been for naught.

  There was a tunnel at the end of the street leading down and onto the stone promontory and they emerged between waterfalls plunging into the bay on either side and casting the odor of sea salt up on foamy spumes.

  The promontory was taller, wider, and longer than Jessica expected. The stone path to the outer wall of Elsifeya’s castle was wide enough for a cavalry regiment to ride ten abreast and tall enough for a dive off the side to be fatal.

  They entered through a gate between two watchtowers and the promontory widened into a large courtyard with a garden, mustering field, and stables. The main keep was at the far end and stairs wound around its left side down into the water. Here, the bridges to the outer towers formed arches to allow boats to pass. Thick iron chains attached to bolts kept this from being a chink in the castle’s armor, though the chains were currently put up.

  “Enjoy the view while you can,” Hayek said. “You won’t see the sun again for a while.”

  Jessica didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was getting in her head. Unfortunately, he was. She shuddered against his back which made him chuckle.

  “Alright, off you come!” he said, heaving Jessica off before dismounting himself.

  She was looking forward to at least being able to see a bit of the castle, but the moment Sir Hayek led her inside, a trio of guards whisked her through a side corridor and down a flight of stairs.

  “Hold on! I-I can make something to cure the queen’s pain! Just let me—ack!”

  The guards pushed her into a dingy room full of chests and cabinets with a single desk facing the door. The desk was manned by a strangely familiar elf woman with cotton-candy pink hair with sparkles in it and a pink eyepatch over one eye. Upon Jessica’s arrival, she frowned and stood up.

  “My name is Mystiferia, but you may call me warden.”