Being stuck inside of a prison cell for 12 days was perhaps the most boring experience of Lucas’ life.

Day in, day out, it was the same crap. Eat the same disgusting gruel, read up on some dumb magic history stories, wonder why the hell he was sent to this planet, pretend to listen to Seldra’s lectures, ignore the guards when they make fun of him, cry a little, etc. Actually, he obviously never cried those tears, just so you know. He wasn’t a crier. Definitely not. But the definitely-not crying wasn’t even the worst part of staying here. No, no, no. It was that damnable wall scratching that had been getting louder each and every day.

The scratching didn’t keep a consistent schedule, nor did it care for what Lucas thought of it. Each and every day, for roughly 3 hours, but once upwards of 9 hours (nine! Nine!) something, or someone, would incessantly drag their nails, or their claws, or whatever tool they were using, across the insides of the stone bricks that made up this cell. Screech. Screech. Screech. The noise had no purpose as far as Lucas could tell, either. At first he thought that someone was trying to make a break for it, get out of prison, run off into the cold, snowy expanse outside the village. But Seldra had not-so-subtly told him that he was the only prisoner here, probably in an attempt to get him to reflect on his “violent nature.” Pah.

Even the guards, who claimed they couldn’t hear it before, complained about it to him in passing now. In passing, being the operating phrase here. No, they never gossiped to him directly, because that would probably break their chivalric code of oppressing innocent people, but he’d heard more than a couple of them whining to themselves about the high-pitched scraping when they delivered his food.

One of the guards even seemed to have the not-so-bright idea in his thick skull that Lucas was the one making all the noise, and he threatened him over it! Said he wouldn’t give him his food anymore if he kept making all that annoying noise! The guards’ sheer stupidity astounded him. Lucas didn’t even have the power to get himself out of his cell, making annoying sounds all throughout the basement of the manor was absolutely a feat he couldn’t accomplish. He told the guard as much, but the guard just snorted at him in disbelief. The daily deliverance of his bread never stopped though, so that dumb guard obviously had no power either. It was good to see that the dense, thick-witted jail guard – who probably got his job via some sort of nepotism – didn’t have the ability to starve his prisoner.

The only slightly amusing event to happen during this entire experience had been when Tyra visited, but even then the man never told him what he wanted, and everyone else seemed to want him to leave. But apparently he wasn’t one to listen to anyone else’s wants; from what he heard on the grapevine (read: what he heard from Seldra), that snakish old man was still hanging around in the village though, so he hadn’t really pissed off yet even though everyone here seemed to hate him for whatever reason. Tyra just half pissed-off, cutting his piss off mid stream.

…

Okay, maybe being in prison ruined his tasteful metaphors and turned them into toilet humor. So what? He was here for a crime he didn’t even commit, of course he felt a bit shit about it all.

Speaking of crap, though, he really needed to go.

“Hey! Knights! Guards! I need to use the toilet,” He screamed. There were no guards standing outside his door, so he had to yell like this. Instead they liked to loaf around in the adjoining lobby, as they played poker or something. He’d seen the cards on the table before, when they had dragged him in and out of his cell for various calls of nature, and it amazed him that this world had the same playing cards Earth did. Perhaps he wasn’t alone in this world, which wasn’t really a surprise or a twist or anything like that, but a small part of him hoped he would be the special Earthling in the magical land or whatever. Not being the first person to experience this place ruined what little naive fondness he might have had for this world.

As he held in his natural urges, one of the guards eventually came over to let him out. After slowly fiddling with the key ring, he found the right key to unlock his cell, and motioned for him to come out.

“No funny business,” he warned.

“Yes sir,” Lucas replied. Pooping definitely wasn’t funny, he knew that much. He’d read enough terrible stories in his creative writing workshops, and they’d all done the poop funnies. There was nothing to be laughed at when it came to butt-mud. Nope. None at all.

He quickly lead him to the toilet, which was just down the hall. Seriously, this world had some surprisingly high tech sewage. Which was nice – he didn’t exactly like the idea of having to do his business in outhouses. But that begged the question, why did his cabin in the middle of nowhere, that was barely furnished and didn’t have any insulation, not have a toilet? Obviously it was because no one was meant to actually live there.

“Make it quick,” the guard said. When he first came to this toilet days ago, he had complained that there hadn’t been any toilet paper, but when the guard pointed out that there obviously was toilet paper, it appeared right next to him. His [Observation 0] skill had nearly forced him to wipe with his hands. Luckily, the toilet paper hadn’t pulled its mysterious disappearing act since then, as it welcomed him into the small cramped restroom.

After doing his business, the guard led him back to the cell, and slammed the door shut. No funny business was attempted, because he knew better than that. No doubt some witty anime protagonist would have tried using their magic to knock out the guards and escape, but he had no reason to do that. Outside was cold, and there would probably be someone trying to kill him. And if there wasn’t someone trying to kill him, knocking out a guard to attempt a jail break would certainly convince someone here to end his life prematurely. Because, quite literally, his luck was 0.

He really needed to try and up that stat as soon as he got the chance, but it wasn’t like being a prisoner gave him too many chances to get XP and level up.

“What the hell is this?” he heard a guard shouting from down the corridor. “It smells like crap!”

“It’s the toilet you idiot, of course it smells like crap!”

“No, it’s terrible!”

“It’s always terrible! You’re in a jail, mate!”

Two guards were distinctly arguing about the crapper. Ha. Okay, maybe that was a little funny. Or maybe not, since the guard was complaining about how Lucas’ feces stank. But come on, they fed him the same stale hard bread every day, of course it wasn’t going to smell like roses and buttercups in there.

Hm.

Perhaps he needed to get out of here as soon as possible. He hated how he had so little to do that laughing at terrible humor was his only form of entertainment. Well, actually, sure, there were the books that Seldra lent him, but he’d already gone through the history book, and the magical theories were too difficult for him to understand. He felt like he was a toddler and his older sibling handed him college-level textbooks, and then proceeded to tell him to learn calculus. Of course he wasn’t learning anything from those dry textbooks, because he was lacking too much information.

Speaking of a lack of information, that noise came back again, scratching at the walls. This time, it sounded unnervingly close, like it was right at his cell. The noise scraped at his skull, hurting him physically. How could a sound be this awful? He’d heard nails on chalkboard before, and that wasn’t even as bad as this.

“Aha! I caught you in the act!” a familiar voice shouted from just outside the cell. It was that nameless guard, who had accused him of making that awful scratching noise.

“It’s not me!” Lucas screamed.

“It’s coming from your cell!” The guard triumphantly said, like he solved the world’s most difficult riddle.

“Lay off him, Gregory,” another gruffer voice said.

“But it’s coming from his cell, sir,” Gregory said. “It’s him!”

“You idiot,” the gruff voice said. One of them opened the door, and they both stared at Lucas as he covered his ears to try and mute the wall scratching. It didn’t help at all, but what else was he going to do, not cover his ears?

“Look, he’s clearly not doing anything.”

“Then where is this racket coming from?” Gregory asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Xandrious, step out of the cell.” The guard ordered him to get out, and Lucas obliged. Once again, he was out in the hallway, and once again, someone else would have no doubt used this as a chance to try and run away. He was not that someone else, however, and he was interested in seeing what that guard/knight/whatever-job-title-he-had was going to do. The man walked into Lucas’ cell, pulled out his sword, pointed it upwards as far as he could without touching the low ceiling, and shouted.

The sword turned blue, and started to exude an extremely cold aura. Its cold blue light slowly enveloped the room, and even stretched a little beyond it. Instinctively, as the aura got close to Lucas, he backed away. He could already feel the icy feeling from outside its reach, no doubt being inside of it would be a terrible cold experience-- wait. He had cold resistance! Why was he feeling this cold, then? Why did it hurt him? Why does this world not follow it’s own damned rules? Cold resistance had been the one thing to not let him down this entire time, but now it did just that. He wanted to cry, but since he obviously never actually cried, all he could do was let out a sorrowful moan.

“What? Are you crying?” Gregory asked.

“No,” Lucas sobbed.

“Looks like you are,” Gregory said with a grin.

“I’m not,” Lucas denied.

“What’s that on your face, then?”

“Sweat.”

“Sweat from your eyes.”

“Yes.”

“Stop being disrespectful, Gregory,” the guard in the cell ordered. Gregory clicked his tongue and stopped talking. Presumably, whoever was in his cell making everything all icy was the captain, because he could order Gregory around. Plus, only a captain could be powerful enough to nullify Lucas’ best skill. Yes, that had to be it. His skill was great, but the big guy in there was just better. Ha, there’s always a bigger fish, and that dude just happened to be it. He was sure his skill would work everywhere else. It’d worked in the middle of a blizzard, after all, and if it could beat that it could beat anything.

Almost anything, anyway.

After a minute, the scratching finally stopped, and the captain withdrew his cold magic. Or cold sword technique. Or cold aura. Whatever it was. Lucas didn’t know, but it probably wasn’t technically “magic” since he seemed to use his sword. There was probably some knightly equivalent of magic that warriors and the like used so magic wouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of destruction in this world.

“Are you done?” Lucas asked as the captain stepped out.

“Yes. Whatever was making that scratching is dead.” he said.

“That’s go-”

“Probably,” the guard said, interrupting Lucas. Everyone had to interrupt him. It was the cool thing. No, he wasn’t annoyed by it at all. Nope. Not one bit.

“Get back in the cell, Xandrious,” the captain ordered, and Lucas was about to comply but Seldra rushed down the stairs like an undergrad rushing to the test center. She already had her sword drawn, and had a worried look on her face. Yup, just like an undergrad.

“What’s going on? I felt your aura,” she said.

“It’s nothing ma’am, just tried killing whatever was in the walls,” the captain said as he saluted her.

“Don’t use your aura for that!” Seldra screamed at him. “Are you even a knight? What kind of knight uses aura to kill rats in a jail cell?”

“Sorry ma’aam, won’t happen again,” the captain said with a tone of voice Lucas knew all too well. He’d used it plenty of times when talking to customers back at ***dy’s. It was the type of voice one used when they had to acknowledge what the other person was saying, but was going to completely disregard it anyway. ‘Yes ma’aam, I’m sorry your fries weren’t fresh at one in the morning, we’ll be sure to make it fresh as can be next time.’ It was that kind of voice.

Seldra shoved her sword back into her scabbard and stared at Lucas. From the glint in her eye, he could tell she was stressed about something more than the captain’s errant use of his power.

“Xandrious, follow me. Father’s here.”