“Are you alright, Jessssica?” Naga asked.

  “Nope. I’m really not,” Jessica said.

  Her jaw was wound so tight it was just an unspecified migraine at this point. She was nearly ready for some of the queen’s morphine to accidentally fall off the tray.

  “Would you like sssome coil time?”

  “I would like you to move away from the stables because you’re scaring the horses.”

  All through the morning and afternoon the lamia had been sunning herself, moving with the sun as it traversed the sky. By late afternoon this put Naga on the east side of the courtyard right by the stables. The horses were not happy about being near a giant snake who could crush and eat them (Naga’s human-sized mouth aside).

  “Oh please. I don’t intend to harm them and a little excitement ought to do them good, cramped up in those ssstables all day,” Naga said.

  “Naga, I’m serious,” Jessica said as she looked around for any eavesdroppers. She lowered her voice. “Mystiferia is back.”

  Naga yawned. “Yesss, I sssaw the loathsssome little creature return in her carriage. How unfortunate she wasn’t ssslaughtered on the way home.”

  “Okay, but she wasn’t and she knows I know where Morkal is and she’s looking for any excuse to get me thrown in prison again so she can interrogate me and I’m pretty sure that’s going to involve torture whether I cooperate or not. You and Riza need to be on your best behavior so she has nothing to work with. Otherwise she’ll try to use you two to get to me.”

  The lamia sobered up immediately and coiled herself up to move.

  “That sssilly lizard will be the liability, I assure you. Not me.”

  Naga moved away from the stables only to start heading for the long bridge connecting the castle with the city of Elsifeya.

  “You’re not going to go lay on the bridge, are you?” Jessica asked.

  “That was the plan,” Naga said. “What would you have me do? I am a lamia. All we do all day is sssunbathe and eat flesh.”

  Jessica rubbed her temples. “We need to get you some kind of job. The better your reputation around the castle, the harder it’ll be for Mystiferia to have you imprisoned. I need you to become the best damn worker this castle has ever seen.”

  “Hmm… I don’t like work. I like relaxation,” Naga said, “but if it’sss for the sssake of my dear jessssica then I sssuppose I mussst. What do you propose?”

  “Well, based on what you said you like to do all day, maybe you’d be a good cook?”

  “Jessssica I don’t cook my—”

  “Oh shit that’s Riza,” Jessica said, sprinting to the stairs down to the harbor.

  What had her so frantic was that Riza had a homemade spear in her hands and was hurling it into the water.

  “Stop, Riza, stop! Right now!” Jessica yelled.

  Riza looked up in confusion, spear cocked back. “What? I checked for swimmers.”

  Jessica grabbed the spear from her. She wasn’t even sure how Riza had created one so quickly without tools, especially since it had an iron head affixed to the tip. Visions of the castle blacksmith screaming about a thief flashed before her eyes.

  “Those are the king’s waters. I’m like 99% certain it’s illegal to fish in them.”

  “What!? It’s water! No one owns water! That’s ridiculous. That’s like saying you own mountains or clouds!” Riza said.

  “People do claim to own mountains.”

  “Well that’s as ridiculous as saying you own clouds or water! Fish belong to whoever can catch them. This is how things are. If this king believes he can stop me—”

  Jessica ran through the same explanation of their situation she gave Naga and it had the exact same effect on Riza.

  “You can count on me to do my part,” Riza said, glaring past Jessica at the lamia peering down from atop the harbor stairs. “But you should keep an eye on that feral monster. I don’t want you to suffer simply because she gets hungry and eats a child.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Naga is not going to eat a child,” Jessica said with very nearly perfect confidence.

  “She has before.”

  “What!? When!?”

  “I don’t know when, I just feel like she has.”

  Jessica curled her fists and exhaled. “We need to get you a job too. Unlike Naga you’re not too scary, so what I may have you do is talk with the queen about you taking over some of my babysitting duties so I can focus on making myself useful to the king.”

  If Jessica could bypass Capra’s obnoxious advisors and get some face time with him, she was sure she could impress him with her chemistry knowledge. Queen Samara made it sound like there was nothing that could be improved about the kingdom, but there had to be something she knew that could convince him to put her in a position of authority. She could make his steel dirt cheap, give him gunpowder to fight the bandits north of the mountains, or even invent rebar so his capital city could look like Tampa, Florida.

  “I am not sure what babysitting would entail. At my age members of my tribe are encouraged to be wild and adventurous. It is only after we have exhausted ourselves that we take up the role of minding children,” Riza explained.

  “It’s not that hard. Plus they can be pretty wild and adventurous too. I’m sure the kids'll love you,” Jessica said, patting her on the shoulder.

  With the matter of Naga and Riza’s jobs squared away, Jessica felt a lot better. The head chef was willing to give Naga a trial run cooking for the servants and Queen Samara was happy enough to have Riza watch Katarina and Capra Jr. under the assumption that the lizard girl would ‘enrich their horizons.’

  After grooming and feeding Burnish some candy, Jessica headed up to Galloway’s laboratory.

  “Forget something?” he asked, standing over a completed brick of morphine

  “Oh… shoot. Sorry about that,” Jessica said, her cheeks flushing. She had left a morphine synthesis ongoing when she heard the servants complaining about Naga scaring the horses. Messing up in the lab was the one thing she’d trained herself never to do.

  “Thanks for finishing the reaction,” she said.

  “I don’t mind, but give me some heads up first,” Galloway said as he tidied up his table.

  “I uh… I had a thing with Naga to deal with.”

  “Understandable. You’re going to have your hands full dealing with a real-life monster in a castle full of people who hate monsters. Congrats on getting her released, by the way. And learning to ride a war horse at the same time? My granddaughter would have thought you were the coolest.”

  He set the tray of dehydrated morphine down by other bricks they were stockpiling in the event of an emergency. The queen was doing her best to make this a challenge.

  “What do you make of Mystiferia, by the way?” Jessica asked as she took over at the table for him.

  Galloway paused at the doorway and rapped his knuckles against it in thought.

  “Well, she’s quite pretty. Probably the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. And before you call me a creepy old man, you oughta know she’s older than I am,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Okay, but what about her personality? What do you make of her as a person?” Jessica asked.

  “As a person? I can’t rightly say. She spends so much time down in those dungeons of hers, I hardly see her outside of high-level meetings and official events. Such a shame, too. A pretty face like that ought to be out in the light.”

  Jessica bit her lip. “And how about her standing with the king and queen? Do they listen to her, or…?”

  “Oh yes, they’re quite fond of her. She has helped the King of Elsifeya capture and contain monsters since the time of the Demon King. I think she’s worked here for… gods, two hundred years now? Three? She doesn’t say much in meetings, but I’d wager her opinion is the most respected of anyone’s.”

  Jessica mouthed a word starting with ‘F’ before thanking Galloway for indulging her curiosity. She debated telling him the truth about the bind she was in, but she wanted to know where Mystiferia stood reputation-wise before fishing for allies. Unfortunately, it was looking more and more like it was her, Riza, and Naga against the castle until she could figure out how to sway the king.

  Once Galloway left Jessica set about preparing more acid for tomorrow’s synthesis. Doing chemistry in a proper laboratory calmed her nerves somewhat. It would’ve been better if it wasn’t organic chemistry, which was probably her least favorite type, but being able to fall back on comfortable habits in a dark room by herself where the outside world couldn’t get her was as close to a rest as she was going to get.

  After she prepared everything she went to check on her… she wasn’t sure what to call them yet. Definitely not her harem. ‘Retainers’ felt better. And since Galloway’s laboratory was in the same end of the keep as the children’s playroom, she started there.

  From down the hall she heard Riza’s voice cackling. “The lantern-bearer had seen the children, so it was too late! They ran! They screamed! Blindly through the forest they ran, fearing nothing but the headless monster whose light would melt their eyeballs from their skulls if they turned around to look!”

  “No!” Katarina screamed. “No, no, no! I don’t wanna hear it! No!”

  Jessica opened the door to find the two royal children with their eyes shut and their palms pressed to their ears.

  “Riza what the hell are you doing!?” Jessica said.

  “Telling them the old stories,” Riza said with furrowed brows. “This is how the village elders take care of younglings. They must know of past things and the dangers of the world.”

  “You’re scaring them!”

  Riza glanced at the two cowering children before looking back to Jessica. “Yes, but it is a cautionary tale. They should be afraid. This teaches them to fear what might harm them. If they learn this fear now they will not have to learn it later when monsters come to kill and eat them. Like that disgusting lamia.”

  “Hey, hey! It’s okay guys. That story was spooky, wasn’t it? But it’s not real. Do you guys wanna hear more stories about Earth school? Does that sound fun?” Jessica asked the kids.

  The two children peeled their eyes open and their hands off their ears and nodded like shell-shocked soldiers. Jessica had Riza go back to her apartment while she sat Katarina and Cappy down and told them stories from her elementary school days. Midway through a side-track about what airplanes were, Jessica heard retching out in the hall and her blood froze.

  “I’ll be right back guys, okay?”

  Out in the hall, a butler was doubled over a flower pot, vomiting into it. Jessica bit her lip and prayed it wasn’t for the reason she thought it was.

  “A-Are you alright? What happened?” Jessica said.

  In-between heaves, the butler spewed out. “Bad— Bad chicken…”

  ?? November 2025 Writathon Winner

  ★★★★★

  LitRPG Progression Portal Fantasy Summoning

  DENIED BY SYSTEM - HE SUMMONS HIS OWN

  The System rejected him. The World took his wife. And now, his daughter...

  Sasaki Jin must master a forbidden power to ensure his child doesn't share her mother's fate. He will tear down the gods themselves to keep her safe.

  "A high-octane, addictive read that perfectly balances “dad energy” with cosmic power."

  — kurowinter88

  "If you’re a fan of Solo Leveling, then I think that you’ll enjoy this story, too."

  — SockySake

  Inspired by Solo Leveling & Pokemon...

  ? Competent MC: Street smart, ingenuity over luck.

  ? Unique Summons: Each with distinct personalities and powers.

  ? High Stakes: Death is a mistake away.

  ? DAILY RELEASES (8AM GMT+8)

  Join the Writathon Winner's Journey now!