Jonathan was troubled. He understood their need to escape but these guys were reckless. They trusted the information they received from a man they met only a few hours ago, who himself had admitted to not knowing if the information was legitimate. They were either crazy or dumb, neither option bode well for his chance of survival.

They seemed to have no actual plan either, the plan Brandon pitched to the group was basically, ‘when we get outta here, figure out where we are and how to get out of here, after which we hit people and when I give the signal, we make a run for it.

This plan hinged on the groups’ ability to ignore the collars using their willpower. A trait they all shared, besides Jonathan of course. This meant that Jonathan couldn’t actively participate in the plan, something they seemingly forgot.

Brian might as well have not asked him to participate.

Jonathan called him out on the plan, or lack of one.

“Christ, man. That’s gonna get us killed.” he said.

Well, mostly me. He thought.

“Mostly you though. You got a better plan?” Brandon retorted.

Temporarily struck silent, Jonathan had no plan either, all of his escape plans had relied on Augus or whatever little influence Jonathan had had over him. This didn’t make Brandon’s plan any smarter.

“The plan still sucks though. How are we gonna figure out where we are? I mean, you can’t even speak their language.”

“What do you mean?” Brian asked.

“You people have no scars on your body, which means you weren’t implanted with a translator, which means you can’t understand their language, putting us at a disadvantage.”

“They speak English though.”

“To you guys’ maybe, but they speak Octavian to each other.”

“No, they spoke English all the time. To us and to each other”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re the one not making sense.”

That can’t be right, he thought to himself. It makes no sense.

“Let me try something.” Jonathan said. He had come up with a hypothesis he had to test. He looked again at the others. They probably don’t know any Zulu, so here we go.

“Nina niya hlanya. Nifun’ ukubaleka, kodwa iplan yenu ayihlaganipanga.”*

Brian shouted out. “Oi! Watch who you’re calling crazy, mate. And the plans’ not that bad.”

“You understood that?” Jonathan asked, taken aback by Brian’s response.

“We all did. You spoke it in English.” This time it was Gary who responded to Jonathan.

“Well shit.” Jonathan said. ”I said that in Zulu. You guys have a translation skill.”

“We do?” Brian asked, surprised before continuing;

“We didn’t see that under ‘skills’.”

“Really? Um, do you all share a title?”

“Yeah.” Brandon said. “We are all [Chosen].”

When he heard that spoken aloud, Jonathan felt like he was looking at a cult leader convincing the cult to commit suicide. Given the situation, Jonathan felt that that comparison was apt.

“So it looks like the title gave you universal translation abilities. A little unfair but useful, at least we’ll all know what they say.”

“So we stick to the plan?” Gary asked.

“The plan sucks and we’ll probably die…but we stick to the plan.” Jonathan felt like he had no choice but to accept, he didn’t trust them but he had nothing to gain by earning their distrust if it came of as him wanting to forego escape entirely. Especially since they seemingly had no care for his wellbeing, they were still his best chance of escaping.

If Eddie was here, Jonathan thought, he would call this the ‘grabbing the idiot ball’. This, he would explain, would be when a character who was supposed to be intelligent suddenly made an easily avoidable bad decision.

Jonathan frowned. Besides grabbing the idiot ball, he also had to figure out how to stay alive doing so. His day was going well.

Not long after the ‘plan’ was finalized, they all heard footsteps outside their door, first very faintly before they got louder. It sounded like a group of people had come to get them.

When the door opened, Jonathan decided to turn and face the wall with his hands behind his back; he had no intention of being knocked out again. The others wanted to try out their luck as soon as the door opened. They apparently got too excited to wait; they figured that they would just continue with the plan after they recovered if they were beat down.

Personally he had thought of that as dumb but wished them luck.

They all rushed the first man to enter the room, a well-built leather wearing man. They did their best to keep him from getting an advantage. They succeeded, until a second man, this one with decorated iron armour; entered the room. They all got beat down in quick succession. Brian was beat down last.

Jonathan had his hands shackled and he roughly led out of the room after the others were carried out by 5 armoured men out of a total 7. It seems they expected resistance. Jonathan tried not to feel nervous about the ‘plan’ that would be enacted as soon as they recovered before leaving the room, feeling proud of being able to do it under his own power.

Jonathan had no clue how one place was as big as the dimly lit damp stone corridors they walked were. If he had to describe it in one word, it would be ‘labyrinth’. It was impossible for him to remember which route they used to leave the room he was in to get to wherever they were going in the twist and turns of this place. It was obviously underground; there was no way an aboveground building was this huge. Jonathan hypothesized that they were in the sewers of the Octavian Empire.

The more they walked, they more Jonathan regretted his decision not to resist. If he had resisted and got knocked out, he would at least be carried to their destination.

Or I could have gotten permanent brain damage, he thought to himself. Head injuries aren’t usually as harmless as you see on TV.

Soon they came across a corridor that ended with stairs that led to light. When they got close to the stairs, Brian fell off the shoulders of the man carrying him. The others stirred. It looked like it was time for the plan.

Originally, Brian was supposed to ‘trip’ to signal the others, but sometimes one had to do what one had to do to.

When they saw his signal the others moved before the guides could figure out what had happened. Brandon was the first to react as he fell onto the floor, got up, and grabbed at the sword at of the man who was carrying him before using it to slash open the mans’ neck. The others were thrown to the floor as the guards tried to rush him.

Brian tripped one guard, causing him to fall into the path of the others. The 3 remaining [Chosen] then picked up a sword and hacked randomly in desperation at the guards bodies.

At first the corridor, resounded with the sound of metal hitting metal as they kept hacking at the guards’ armour. Soon though, it resounded with the sound of metal hacking at flesh, over and over and over again.

Thwack, Thwack, Thwack.

When they calmed down, the [Chosen] were all covered in blood and bile. The bile was their own. Brandon implied that they had all killed people before but they were all still very shaken up.

After they stopped vomiting, they realised that they had succeeded. This time it was Jonathan’s turn to vomit. He instantly regretted it, more so because the others followed his example and vomited again.

The guards armour was in ruins, Jonathan hoped that it would be salvageable, but he had had no such luck. Each of the seven guards’ armours was in tatters and was covered in liquids no man would wish to be covered in. They all chose a weapon from the corpse’s bodies. Jonathan got a short sword, or in other words, a large dagger, while the others kept the long swords they had gotten before deciding to continue on.

The walked up the stairs and were scared at what they saw;

An assembly of at least 100 chained slaves guarded by about 20 men in armour. They had not noticed the escapees yet.

Gary exclaimed;

“Oh god.”

As he did a notification popped up in front of [Chosen]’s eyes.

[Liberty awaits!] [Quest]

You, the [Chosen] have left the dungeons of the Empire. You now have to leave the Empire itself. Can you do it?

Current chance of success: 40%

Rewards: 4000 experience, increased reputation, a map of the region.

“At least that’s better than nothing.”

“Yeah, 40% is a pass right?”

“How about you, Johnnyboy? Did you get a message?”

Jonathan had in fact received a notification:

[Plaything of Fate] [Mandatory Quest]

Fate has decided to use you to amuse itself. Your life has gotten increasingly hard. The [Chosen] will have no effect on the outcome of this quest, their existence is too abnormal. Only you can control your fate.

Length of quest: Depends on how Fate feels.

Rewards: Your life.

Current chance of success: Varies from moment to moment. Currently 5%

Jonathan felt tears well up in his eyes as he spoke.

“Well, shit.”

*"You people are insane. You want to escape but your plan is dumb.