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Leona wakes up the next day as a guard enters their cell. He grabs Milo and pins him to the bed. Another guard follows closely behind the first, Leona swiftly rises from the bed in her panic. Thanks to her training to move with haste, she is able to get up before the guard reaches her. Although she is fast, the man has the element of surprise, the guard grabs her by the wrists, slamming her against the slimy walls of the cell. With surprising strength she begins to fight against the guard, the fiery ball of heat building in her once more, she manages to pull one of her hands free, and she strikes him in the chest. The guard stumbles backwards, and with a look of rage he pulls his knife, ending the struggle.

“Don't you dare try anything else," he says drunkenly as he brings the knife to her throat, “I can kill you, and no one will care. In here, you have nothing. You are nothing, little elf. You are lucky to still be alive, it's probably only because of your beauty. " As he speaks, he slowly slides the tip of his knife down to the top of her shirt. He smiles wickedly as he slowly begins to press the knife down on the rough fabric. The blade's razor edge slowly cuts through the burlap cloth. Leona glares at him, a fire burning in her eyes. As he is about to slice her only pair of ragged clothes open, and Milo finally manages to get the drunk guard off of him, The Captain of The Guard storms in,

“What in the hell are you two doing?! Get out of this cell you idiots!" As the captain yells the two guards hurriedly rush out of the cell. He looks over to Leona and sighs. “I am sorry about that. Drunken fools from the night shift." His nonchalant tone bewilders Leona as she watches the man leave. Milo rushes over to Leona checking on her. She doesn't seem to hear Milo, as she stands there in shock. Her mind floods with anger at the guards, anger at this damned situation.

She sighs out a long hot breath and she pushes past Milo with a simple, “I am fine." Before she begins her usual routine of trying to clean the cell. Scraping away sludge and moss gives her time to think, and time to bring the ball of anger back to a manageable level. As she is cleaning the cell she slips, and the sudden ship tears the flimsy sandals. In a fit of rage she picks up the last good shoe she had, and hurls it out of the cell with a scream. She stomps over to her bed where she collapses, waiting for the guards to take them.

Just like every other day they are taken to the mine. Today she is assigned the task of working the Arcane-smelter, a special enchanted smelter that separates impurities from the crystals. It is swelteringly hot, made worse by it being in the enclosed cavern they force the prisoners to work in. It is hard, tiring, work shoveling crystals into the Arcane-smelter. Her hands, of course, begin to blister and burn, but that's not all. Her feet begin to blister and get cut, due to her lack of shoes. The smell of the place is no better, a mix of unwashed bodies, pulverized stone, and the faint scent of death.

Just like every other day, she listens as enforcers yell and cuss at slaves and prisoners alike. She listens to the loud snaps of the whips and the cracking of stone. Today she is lucky enough to have a strong minotaur by her side. Her heart aches as she catches glimpses of the remains of her horns. The undressed and jagged wounds clearly show that whatever was used was dull, and cut too close to the base, no care taken for the suffering of this woman.

The minotaur smiles warmly at Leona then, as she helps her with shoveling the geodes into the smelter, “Hey there, what's a cute thing like you doing in a place like this?" The minotaur says in a joking tone. Leona couldn't help but laugh at the abrupt sweetness of the woman next to her, she quickly brings an end to her laughter as a guard glares over at her.

“Probably the same reason as you." Leona answers back as the two share a glance. She is struck by the beauty of the minotaur's eyes, deep golden pools of warmth and kindness. The minotaur turns towards the carts being filled at the far end, and with a wink she heads off to bring another cart of crystal up to Leona.

As the massive minotaur brings forward another cart of crystal, Leona notices out of the corner of her eye that one of the guards is glaring at the brown furred woman working with her. Hate boiling hotter in his eyes than the smelter she is working at. She slows and watches the guard closely, something in her telling her that something was about to happen, an instinct or more…

Suddenly the minotaur slips and the guard smiles cruelly, he had been hoping for this. He raises his whip and swings it. There is a loud snap and then a deep cut appears across the minotaurs' shoulder. The prisoner turns towards the human, her eyes filled with an unimaginable rage. Something snaps in the minotaur then, she leaps at the enforcer, and with a mighty hand she grabs him by the throat. The guard's eyes go wide as he realizes his mistake much too late. She glares straight into the enforcer's eyes as she starts squeezing his neck with her large hands, until there is a sudden snapping sound. The enforcer crumples to the ground as other enforcers turn to see the commotion.

The minotaur quickly charges the confused guards, yelling loudly, “IF I DIE TODAY, THEN I DIE FREE!" Leona quickly moves out of the way as enforcers draw their blades and begin attacking the minotaur. She watches as the minotaur hurls a guard into another, she grabs his fallen blade, and strikes down another as the other guards begin striking at her. Leona's rage, and desire for freedom calls to her to take action, to go out from behind this cart and help, but something stops her. Something like a gentle hand on her shoulder, and a soft man's voice saying, “It is not time yet."

Archers on the upper walkways begin grabbing their bows, and lining up shots on the now bloody minotaur. She raises the head of a guard into the air and yells to the other prisoners, “TAKE YOUR FREEDOM!! IF WE ARE TO DIE HERE, THEN LET US DIE FREE!" The slaves begin gathering to the rallying cry of the minotaur. The sounds of battlecries, the clashing of weapons, and the hiss of arrows flying about, fill the cavern like a roar. Then out of the chaos appears Milo, his brightly colored fur a beacon against the mass of people.

“We need to grab weapons! Here is our chance to fight our way out of this hell hole!" Leona shakes her head quickly and grabs Milo's hand, “No! Fighting our way out of here won't work. We don't know where the way out is and the enforcers have too many archers. We need to hand ourselves over." Milo looks into her eyes, and he sees the convocation in her. He ponders what the point of giving in is. What is the point of living a few more days in slavery if that's all you can look forward to? He sighs and nods after a long moment, loyalty to his friend winning out against his desire to fight.

They quickly rush over to a nearby group of enforcers, their hands raised in surrender. They are quickly forced onto their knees and their hands cuffed. One of the guards slides a bag over her head, blinding her once more to her surroundings. She hears the enforcer cry out in pain as he is clobbered with something that sounds like stones. Her ears involuntarily twitch as she hears the place filled with screams of valor and pain, desperation, and hope. She trembles slightly and begins praying to any god that might hear her, hoping that she hadn't just wasted their best chance.

Milo watches as people he has worked with for the past months are being butchered around them. They never had a chance, did they? What was the point of going on? His eyes sweep around seeing all the hate in the eyes of his fellow man. How could they not see that their cruelty was wrong? He glares down at the ground angry that so many could be so ignorant, so wrong. He inhales sharply as a cloth bag is finally shoved over his head.

Leona and Milo are grabbed and forcibly dragged, and thrown into a carriage. The next thing she knows, she is being hurled back into her cell with Milo. They stare at each other for a few long moments, needing time to adjust to the sudden changes and the shock of what just happened. Eventually they both turn away and try to do their best to relax. Leona curls up on her bed. She closes her eyes and lets out a long shaky breath. What was the point of all this? Why did she even care if they lived a few more days? Maybe she would have had a chance if they had started fighting. No, she and he would have ended up dead like those people. Did she still fear death more than this horrible lifestyle? Or was it more?

Leona is drawn from her thoughts as the captain yells for the final meal to be brought to the inmates of jail cell 25, no doubt to start getting rid of any prisoners who witnessed the small rebellion today. Leona and Milo watch as a beautiful meal of roasted duck, bread, and fruit is brought to the inmates of 25. The four men in the cell lick their lips as they see the well-cooked meal, the slow starvation and desire for a warm meal driving them wild. The guards give them the food and watch as the inmates chow down. Leona licks her lips thinking of how good that food must taste, how wonderful it must feel to have warmth in your belly.

The first inmate that started eating suddenly slows. His face turns a sickly pale and he appears to begin choking. He looks up at the guards at the door looking terrified. The other inmates quickly follow. Their lips and tongues swell and turn a dead black, a putrid green foam begins pouring from their mouths and noses, and then one by one they fall over spasming violently. The guards laugh as the inmates slowly stop moving.

She is forced to look away from the terrible sight, as terror begins to grip her heart. She thinks about how the last group in 25 were executed. It wasn't like that just now. They were pinned and slowly crushed by large stones that the guards brought in. What horrible way was she going to die? Would it be poison like these men? Drowning? Being eaten alive by a pack of dogs? She closes her eyes tighter, her stomach doing flips as her mind races. She vaguely notices Milo shouting at the guards, his righteous anger driving him.

Milo sits back on his bed, his brow furrowed as he says, “If I ever get free of here I am going to kill these psychos. They treat us like we mean nothing. Living beings should have some amount of respect given to them. No one deserves to die like that! You don't deserve to be treated like some object they get to abuse!" Her eyes stay closed tightly shut as she imagines herself anywhere but here. Maybe it would have been better if she had died fighting down in the mines. At least then she would get to choose when she died instead of being forced to wait till someone else decided how and when.

Why didn't she start fighting down there? Does she still hold some hope of her name being cleared in time, or did something else deep down tell her that she wasn't going to die here? What a silly notion that would be. There is no way she could get out of here alive, not without a miracle.

Her attention is broken as they open her cell door. “Stand and prepare to be moved to cell 25!" She slowly rises like the dead and holds out her hands. They cuff her and Milo and move them into jail cell 25. The execution cell. Once the cuffs are removed Leona and Milo look each other in the eyes with an intense look of dread. Soon their time will be up and their stories will come to an end.