Dema sat in the tavern, and she looked both excited and wary at the same time. She gave anxious looks left and right, sitting across a light skinned man in his twenties with ashen hair, whom she'd come to know as ‘Leo’.

“Make sure to keep this all a secret,” Dema whispered, slowly. “Not gonna lie, I’ll be in trouble when it gets out.”

“Of course. No, of course. This is terrible,” he replied. “I mean, she sounds like a tyrant. She kidnapped you. Is holding you hostage, on a tight leash. And she says she’s going to kill you. Look, I know some demons can be bad, but… damn.”

“It’s fine,” Dema responded, biting her lip. “She doesn’t know any better. That’s the kinda stuff heroes do, after all.” Then, a small smile curled her lip. “But, no need to pity her, because I’m gonna betray her, badly. She ain’t even gonna see it coming.”

Leo winced ever so slightly at her smile, but caught himself quickly. “But you said she’s ridiculously strong. Look, I’m willing to help, but I’m only a Level 20 [Baker]. I can’t watch injustice like this, but…” He hesitated for just a moment, before shaking his head, ashen hair jiggling at the sides of his face. “I mean, you said she even complained about you bossing her around?”

Dema looked onto the table with a sad gaze. “Yeah. It may be hard to believe, but she did do that.”

“Even though she essentially has complete control over you and your fate,” he said, head still shaking, making fists on the table. “It’s horrifying. She has no concept of — of decency.”

Dema shrugged. “It’s true… she really doesn’t…”

A few moments went by, Leo visibly trying to restrain his anger. Eventually, he took a breath, steeled himself, and said, “Okay. So, you can’t fight her. Do you know what kinds of abilities she has? Do you have any Skills to counter her, maybe? Perhaps it’s best if we can come up with a way to get you out without fighting.”

Dema fell into thought for a moment. “Well… Her abilities are one hell of a mystery to me. Big question mark. My [Appraise] doesn’t even work on her.” She eyed the ceiling for a second. “Why, I hear someone apparently saw her fly at night.”

“Damn, flight?” Leo said with a gasp. “That’s— pretty big stuff. Let’s hope for your sake it was an item, and not a Skill, since an item’s gonna time out. Though… if she’s really that strong, she might have a big stash…”

Dema nodded, looking slightly worried. “As for me, my stuff is mostly deception themed. I’m good at lying, and tricking people. I have some offensive capabilities too, my main affinities are [Blood] and [Earth] magic, but they probably pale in relation to whatever it is that she can do.”

“This is not going to be easy,” Leo agreed, scratching his well-shaved cheeks. “You’ll probably need to run away instead of fighting, but… you don’t even know if she can track you! And the issue is, the moment she suspects that you might be plotting something, that could be lights-out.”

“Yeah!” Dema cried out, pointing her hand at him in deep catharsis. “Exactly!” She acted like the first time in her life, someone truly understood her.

“I wonder if she already suspects anything,” he said. “She apparently does leave you alone for at least a little bit, so it seems like she’s totally oblivious.”

“She does leave me some room, but that’s only because she has better things to do. Doesn’t even properly take care of me. Hasn’t given me any food, either.” She stared into the distance with a resigned shake of her head. Then, she added, “As to whether she suspects something, I think we can just ask?”

“What?” he blurted at Dema’s suggestion, and watched her turn to the woman who was sitting next to her.

“Hey there, little rabbit!” she playfully yelled in an accusatory tone. “Out with it. What do you know?!”

Theora was sitting bent over the table in deep exhaustion, head lying on the wood, hugged by her own arms. Her eyes were open, but she just stared into a fixed point somewhere on a different table with a blank expression.

Theora desperately wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t. Not before the System was reinstated. She’d been awake for almost sixty hours by now. Running on pure power of will. Ignoring the fog on her mind, the dull pain in her head, the heaviness of her limbs.

In front of her was a glass, filled to the very brink with apple juice. Every time Theora took a sip, Dema immediately filled it back up with the big jug in the middle of the table.

“Looks like she ain’t listening,” Dema shrugged.

“I am listening.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s true! You’re half-asleep!”

“I cannot afford to sleep.”

“Wait a second, this can’t be real,” Leo interrupted, mouth agape. “I thought this was a random girl you picked up. It’s her?!”

“Yeah. Tight leash and all. Can’t even conspire in peace,” Dema claimed, and wiped a tear out of her eye.

“That’s not what you—,” he started, but then caught himself in a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god. You were messing with me. Sheesh. And I believed you! I was actually ready to like, I don’t know. Take up arms for you. Oh my god. It’s not even that time of a year. Don’t go around doing stuff like that, you’re going to cause a catastrophe one day.”

Dema just shrugged and grinned. “I did tell you I was good at deception! Everything I told you is true, though. Probably.”

“Yeah, right. You think your captor would just sit by idly while you betray her? That’s ridiculous.”

He glanced at Theora, whose empty gaze switched to meet his, and suddenly, his demeanour changed. He looked her over. Her frilled and well-embellished clothes, the apparently magical sword leaning next to the bench she was sitting on. The unsettlingly calm look in her brown and unyielding eyes.

And it dawned on him.

“Oh my god,” he blurted, and swallowed, sweat breaking from his head. “How the hell — How the hell?!” Dema laughed out loud. He was genuinely stumped, and mortified. “Please,” he begged, looking back at Theora, “don’t kill me for getting along with her. I was just—” A flash of genuine worry flickered over his face.

“All in good fun!” Dema hummed, busy trying to get another drop into Theora’s glass without it spilling over.

Leo’s gaze wandered between the two of them, and eventually, rested on Theora. It took him a few minutes before he was ready to speak again, but then he said, “Okay, but, for real. Aren’t you the slightest bit worried? What if she’s putting on an act with all this?” He gestured at Dema, who was still concentrating with a scrunched up face on pouring the smallest amount possible, intent on not messing up. “What if she's just out to kill you off the moment she gets the chance? Knowing the exact behaviour you are weak to? How can you be so confident to just ignore it all? She could just be pretending to be approachable and cute.”

Pretending to be flustered at being called cute, Dema raised her brows and drew her hand before her mouth, while ‘accidentally’ spilling a gush from the jug all over the table.

Meanwhile, Theora just turned her gaze back to a random fixed point somewhere in the tavern. “Confident,” she murmured. “That word again.”

It had nothing to do with confidence. Dema could conspire as much as she wanted, in secret or in the open, and none of it would matter. She’d be killed by Theora; it was simply the truth of the world. A truth Theora could do nothing about.

Oh, how much she wanted to sleep.