Over the course of her life Jessica had had many awkward experiences. One time, when she was six, she was playing tag at a neighborhood kid’s birthday party and struggling to tag anyone out. For some reason, she thought to use a shovel to extend her reach. She could still picture clearly the girl she hit crying while her parents told Jessica to leave.

  Another time, in high school, her Spanish teacher told someone, “If you use the verb like that, it sounds like you’re saying, ‘I am pizza’.” To which Jessica raised her hand and, when called upon, asked, “but what if I am pizza?” Nobody laughed. She still thought about it sometimes when she was trying to sleep.

  None of these awkward moments compared with the mortification of a pink-haired elven lady telling her to strip.

  “You’re— you’re kidding…”

  Mystiferia raised her one eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m kidding?"

  “I’m an adventurer though! I was reincarnated in this world a few weeks ago and—”

  “I don’t care. His Majesty gives me prisoners to process, and I process them. I even handle adventurers when they get up to whacky and age-inappropriate hijinks.”

  “I’m going to be burned at the stake!”

  A gentle smile sprouted across her face.

  “Oh you poor dear. You must have suffered so much, and now to be burnt alive! That’s not a fate for adventurers. No, no, no. Why don’t you let me get things straightened out with Milton. In the meantime though, I’m going to need you to cooperate with me on the uniform.”

  “Oh…” Jessica blushed. That wasn’t the response she had expected.

  She accepted the white linen dress Mystiferia pulled out for her. It wasn’t too bad aside from feeling oddly exposing the way a patient’s gown did. That and the lack of shoes. She opened her mouth to ask Mystiferia about that but a gleam in the elf’s eye told her not to bother.

  Once dressed, she led Jessica down an increasingly dim spiraling ramp into the bowels of the keep. After a minute or so, Mystiferia broke the awkward silence.

  “Why are you being burnt at the stake, exactly?”

  “Sir Hayek accused me of witchcraft because I was making soap,” Jessica replied.

  “Oh no! With lye?”

  “Yes! And because the Barleyfielders… Er, Barleyfield ist—”

  “The place outside Glassbed. I’m aware,” Mystiferia said.

  “Well, they gave themselves chemical burns despite my warnings and Hayek said if I did any more chemistry— I mean alchemy, he would have me burnt at the stake.”

  Mystiferia chuckled. “And you did more alchemy?”

  “Uh…”

  “That was silly.”

  “Well I know how to do it correctly! I haven’t blown… myself up,” Jessica said, leaving vague the subject of whom she had. “And as a matter of fact, I know how to make certain painkilling compounds to ease the queen’s agony.”

  Mystiferia raised an eyebrow. “Is that a fact? I’ve never heard of an Alchemist class making anything like that. They usually heal ‘hitpoints,’ which I take to be some abstraction unique to adventurers’ magic systems.”

  “I’m not an Alchemist job class, I’m a professional chemist from Earth. I know how to mix chemicals. In this case morphine, which is one of the alkaline compounds in opium which gives the plant its analgesic properties,” Jessica explained.

  “That sounds like Dwarvish,” Mystiferia replied.

  “Sir Hayek said it sounded Elvish.”

  “It doesn’t sound Elvish. He’s an idiot. It sounds Dwarvish.”

  “Would you let me make it for the queen? I heard she’s in pain.”

  The elf warden chuckled. “Emotional pain. That hypochondriac fakes illnesses and pains all the time because the king doesn’t give her enough attention and she’s bored.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “W-Well it helps with emotional pain too!” Jessica replied.

  Sadly, she was not above hooking a neglected, aristocratic housewife on opiates to avoid being executed.

  “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. As the Warden of the Dungeons it’s not my business to say. My job is to keep things running smoothly down here while we round up the rest of the Demon King’s leftovers. Which, of course, you are not.”

  “I know how to do other stuff too! Your farms could run so much more smoothly! Y-You know about legumes fixing nitrogen into the soil, right? You use fertilizer? Crop rotation?”

  Mystiferia looked at her like she was a madwoman.

  “We use magic to replenish our soil,” the elf said.

  “Oh screw your god-damned magic!” Jessica said. There was a moment of awkward silence where the only sound was their footsteps in the echoing corridor. “I’m sorry I insulted your magic.”

  “I don’t think the magic minds,” Mystiferia replied. “But i’m sorry to say we don’t need your alchemy to rejuvenate our soil. We’re doing just fine.”

  “H-How about cement? Do you know about cement?”

  “We know about cement.”

  “Have you put steel bars in it yet?”

  “No, that’s a waste of precious steel.”

  Jessica stopped in her tracks. “Hear me out: Gunpowder.”

  Mystiferia placed her palm delicately on Jessica’s back with the force of a feather. “Let’s keep walking.”

  Finding no convincing argument, Jessica allowed herself to be led down a long chamber of barred cells. The corridor was lit by torches between each cell and everything had a faint moistness about it. So far, so dungeony. What surprised her was that the cells weren’t filled with cutthroats and brigands and murderers.

  The prisoners here were a mix of monsters: Goblins, orcs, slimes, demons, minotaurs, and others of the like. Some were vaguely humanoid, and she guessed that these, like Morkal, were higher-ranked members of the Demon King’s army.

  “There’s a lot of monsters here…” Jessica said.

  “Yes, the food bill is astronomical. I badger His Majesty to raise the budget every year,” Mystiferia said.

  “But why? What do you do with them all?”

  “Release them,” the elf replied, “under controlled circumstances. We inform the Adventurer’s Guild where and when we’re releasing them so no one gets hurt and the guild can post a quest. It gives adventurers something to do besides get into trouble and functionally serves as the monster’s execution.”

  “Did you have a morkal in here?”

  “No,” Mystiferia replied, “Morkal has been on our list for over a century but we’ve been unable to catch a single one of her bodies. Every once in a blue moon the guild posts a real quest unrelated to our execution program. I was surprised when Morkal finally turned up in just such a quest. It’s been over a decade since we sniffed one of her bodies out.”

  Jessica blinked in surprise. After spending so much time with Sir Hayek, it was strange to hear someone who knew what they were talking about. She might have even admired Mystiferia if she wasn’t talking about hunting down and killing her friend.

  Or was Morkal her friend? In the time since her arrest, Jessica had become less certain. Morkal had come to her aid, sure, but only when it coincided with the monstress’ own self-preservation. Now that Jessica needed rescuing with nothing to gain, Morkal had abandoned her.

  “About Morkal, I…”

  Mystiferia paused her march to Jessica’s prison cell and gazed at her seriously.

  “Yes?”

  “She um… She’s—”

  “Out with it,” the elf said, her voice growing a sudden edge.

  Unlike her chemistry knowledge, Morkal’s location was a piece of information that might legitimately win her a pardon. Mystiferia appeared to already be guessing what Jessica was about to say and her lips curled in a sadistic smirk. Jessica imagined the pink-haired elf sporting that same smirk as she tortured Morkal for the locations of her other bodies.

  “She’s a— a hivemind, r-right? How many bodies does she have?”

  Mystiferia frowned. It might have been a trick of the torch light, but Jessica swore she saw the elf’s nostrils twitch. Then, she had a gentle smile again.

  “Six, perhaps? Seven? We know of at least six, though a few decades ago we only knew of five so I hesitate to give a fixed number. I don’t even want to entertain the idea that she has learned to replicate herself somehow. That would be a nightmare.”

  Mystiferia indicated the conversation was over by drawing a large brass key from her pocket and unlocking a barred door. She directed Jessica inside and locked it again.

  “I’m sure you’ll only be here for a little while, Ms. Alchemist. Try to hang in there.”

  Whether Mystiferia was conscious of it herself, her tone had taken on an icy irony, as though the malice Jessica stoked in her at the mention of Morkal was being channeled back towards her. Jessica had no time to dwell on this though, as she had a more pressing concern in the pile of scaly coils pressed against the near corner of the room. Already the coils were shifting like a rope unspooling.

  Her heart pounded. Jessica hated snakes. Spiders, cockroaches, and ticks she could handle all day. But not snakes. For a split second she wondered if Mystiferia could read her fears. How else could she have known to throw Jessica in a cell with a snake monster?

  Jessica backed against the far wall as the coils continued unspooling. As her terror crescendoed, a humanoid upper-body emerged from the coils, yawning and stretching.

  “Hmm? Do my eyes deceive me, or do I have a new roommate?”

  The snake lady’s forked tongue flitted from her mouth like a fluttering ribbon. Her hair and scales were black and acid green while her face, arms, and torso were mossy green with occasional patches of black. In her eye sockets were set two large coals with slits of burning orange down the middle. Worse, those two horrible eyes were staring at her like she was prey.

  “S-Stay back!” Jessica said, glancing around for a weapon to protect herself.

  “Ssstay back? How could I?” the snake lady said, her mouth opening in a wide, twin-fanged grin.