I said nothing, as we were led out of that basement, past the onlooking crowd in the common room, and up the stairs, to our rooms. I was barely aware of anything, except the floor in front of me, if I was being honest. My mind was no longer frozen, as it had been when I was down in that awful place, but my thoughts were still sluggish, moving in stops and starts, as I tried to pull myself together.

Vestele guided me to the bed, and helped me sit. “Mel? Melinda, are you alright? Do you want to talk about it?”

I took a breath, and looked up. Vestele was on one side of me, sitting on a bed, and Siora on the other, with Fartooth perched on a chair nearby. They all had looks of worry and concern on their faces. All of them looking at me.

My eyes tracked over the room. It wasn’t much to write home about. The materials were different, the architecture slightly alien to my eyes, but, in essence, it was an inn room, designed to be used by wealthy merchants on the road. I’d seen the like a hundred times before. Nothing to distract me from reality there.

I took another breath. “Once again, I’m sorry for not being more help against the Inquisitor. I thought that all of that was in the past. But I guess that the past doesn’t always want to stay buried.”

Siora shook her head. “I said it before, you know. Back when we were dealing with the wolves. We all know that one doesn’t become a Twice-Born by leading a happy life. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen you lock up like that.”

Fartooth chirped, “Does it have something to do with what you mentioned when we freed the elf princess from that slave collar, before we went to stop that whole mess in Elfland?”

My breath caught in throat for a moment, and then I nodded. “Yes. In my old life, my old world, I wasn’t powerful. I was just a normal girl. Just living my life, you know? Until He happened.

“I don’t remember his name. Blocked it out, probably. Didn’t matter. He made sure that I knew to always call him Master, and he beat me if I didn’t.

“There was no magic in my old world. No system to guide someone’s development. I was just a girl, weak and powerless against someone bigger and stronger than I was. When he kidnapped me, I was still only a child! But that didn’t matter to him. All that mattered to him was that he saw something he liked, so he took it.”

“Oh, Mel,” Siora hugged me.

I took a breath, steadied myself. “He raped me, again and again. I was his slave, and he kept me in a basement to his little cabin, filled with stuff like you saw in that basement. I tried to run, but he had friends in the local police, what you’d call the city guard. They just brought me back to him, and he let them ‘play’ as a ‘thank you’, before beating me again.

“Eventually, the inevitable happened. I started getting sick in the mornings, and my belly began to grow. The bastard took me to another of his ‘friends’. They… they did a ‘procedure’ that made me lose the child, and made it so He would ‘never have that problem again’.”

A knock on the door interrupted my story. It was a server, with food and wine for us. The girl said to just leave the dishes outside the door when we were done. Siora thanked her, and gave the woman a tip for the service.

As the door closed, I sighed. “That was the last straw for me. I don’t know when I decided, but that was what made up my mind. After he went to sleep, I beat him with a pan. Don’t know if I killed him, or if he was just knocked out. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Just acting. But there was blood, so much blood.

“I threw a lantern onto a pile of clothes, or something. Don’t remember. Something flammable, though. The fire started fast, and spread faster. I had to get out. Didn’t have time to pack. Didn’t have anything to pack, actually. Just the clothes on my back.

“It was snowing that night. I was only wearing a thin dress, and no shoes. I was so cold. So very cold. But I kept running. Had to keep running.

“Wolves were chasing me, following me. Hunting me. I kept running, but I didn’t know where I was, or where I could go. He kept me blindfolded the few times he took me to town. I was lost in the snow and the dark, alone, with wolves on my scent.

“I knew I was going to die. But I still ran. Getting killed by wolves would hurt, and I was so tired of hurting. I didn’t want to hurt anymore. So, I ran.

“I never saw the cliff. One minute, I was running through the woods, and the next, it was like I was floating in the air. And then I saw the rocks, coming up to meet me. I closed my eyes, and then…”

“And then you were reborn, in our world?”

I smiled at Siora. “Yes. I had a good family, a good tribe. Because of them, I put the past behind me. I healed. I grew strong, promising myself that I would never again be in that kind of situation. Even when I was on the brink of death, or dealing with assholes who reminded me of that man, I never felt trapped, or helpless.”

I took a deep breath. “And then this happened. When I saw the devices in that room, everything just flooded back. I was back in that basement, with him. Powerless.”

Vestele nodded. “It isn’t uncommon for people who have suffered terrible tragedies to have those memories rear up when they least expect it. It is possible that you will never be truly free of those memories. But I would not worry about that. That you are able to talk about it, so soon after, says that the memories haven’t broken you.”

Her arm wrapped around me, pulling me close. “You are healing, my friend. You are no longer the powerless girl of the other world. In your heart, you know this. I have every confidence that you’ll be fine.”

I definitely didn’t sniff, because I definitely wasn’t about to start crying. There were just onions in the food. Obviously. Don’t know why anyone would think differently.

“Fine. I see we have food, and drink. Pass it around, and tell me what happened downstairs. I wasn’t really paying attention to the present.”

“Understandable,” Fartooth chirped. “Well, you might have frozen up, but that aura thing you have didn’t stop, so the sisters were able to get off some spells that ended the fight before it could really start.”

“Our scaly friend neglects to mention how he drew the Inquisitor’s attention so that he couldn’t cast any spells of his own, of course,” Siora laughed. “But it is true enough. I managed to hold the others in place with a spell, and Vestele was able to kill him with a single spell, thanks to your aura. After that, it was a simple matter of cleaning things up.”

“Yes,” Vestele smiled. “We dumped the Inquisitor into that Bag of Devouring, along with all his gear, since all of his gear was too visibly marked with Inquisitorial symbols to be of any use to us. Even a fence would have trouble moving such things. So, we got rid of the evidence.”

Siora grinned at me. “And I cast a spell on the rest of his people, altering their memories. The spell is an incredibly subtle one, since I didn’t change much, so it is unlikely that they’ll discover it. Even if they do, they won’t be able to recover the true memories, so no one will know what the actual truth is.

“I decided to spin a quick tale about the Inquisitor being a demon in disguise. He tried to take advantage of you, but golden ice, like what our Elf Queen friend could do, sprouted up and attacked him, forcing him into his true form. The members of his retinue managed to force him to flee, and then set us free, before they ran off to spread the word about the demon.” She grinned, “The Inquisition will spend a great deal of time going back and forth, trying to figure out when their Inquisitor was replaced. The less evidence they find, the more they will suspect further traitors in their midst. I expect there will be a period of bloodletting in their ranks as they try and purify themselves and root out corruption.”

Fartooth chimed in, “They did stop long enough to inform the bartender about what happened, which is why he was there when we managed to snap you out of it. He’s fretting, since all of this was going on under his nose, in the inn he ran, even if he didn’t own it. So, he’ll be under suspicion as well. To say nothing of how this will ruin his business!”

Vestele nodded. “Even so, or rather, because of this, we should really not flaunt our presence more than necessary, and definitely not overstay our welcome. We’ll need to keep to our rooms as much as possible. No going down to the common room tonight.”

She looked at me, “Will you be able to leave in the morning? Or do you need some time to recover? We can do that, but we’d need to switch inns in the morning, to try and distance ourselves from all of this. Even so, we’d be getting more attention than we can really afford, at this point.”

I took a breath, and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’ll be fine, in the morning. So long as I don’t have to go down to the basement again. And I’d like to put as much distance between myself and this place as possible.”

Siora nodded. “That’s fine. I figured you’d say that, so I asked the guards, and they said that the city gates open at dawn. We can get an early start, leave before breakfast, and eat on the road, like we’ve done before. It is a three-day ride to the Timeless Wood, after all, but if we leave early the next couple days, and push it a little on the third, we should have time to make camp on the edge of the wood on the third night, and still have time to set up some defenses, if we wish.”

“That’s probably for the best,” I nodded. “I doubt the wolves will miss us showing up on the edge of their forest. And that’s assuming that there are no other threats in the area. Better to be safe, than sorry.”

“All right, enough of the sad and dreary stuff! We might not be able to go and entertain ourselves in the common room, but we’ve got some warm food here, and good wine to go with it!” Vestele grinned, as she tried to break the mood. “We’ll worry about the wolves when we come to them. For tonight, we’re just going to eat, drink, and recover from a very stressful day.”

Fartooth grinned, but then let his expression harden slightly. “Though, it wouldn’t hurt to come up with ideas on what to do, just in case more of those inquisitor-types show up, before we leave this plane. The Inquisitor was able to tell we were in disguise, even from across the room. Unless he had some kind of True Seeing item on, how would he have done that?”

“A class ability, perhaps?” Siora pondered. “That would explain how he so easily threw off my spell, despite standing next to Mel. If he had some kind of class ability that rendered him immune to illusions and other such spells, that would be totally in keeping for an Inquisitor, wouldn’t it?”

I considered that. “Then, after we take the werewolf’s head, we will need to make sure that we don’t attract the attention of any more Inquisitors. Especially since the city will be on alert, due to the loss of their repository, and the continued presence of the portal. And you can bet that someone will tell them about the Demon masquerading as a High Inquisitor. We may even need to consider more mundane methods of disguise.”