Skylar's face flushed with blood as the votes came in; are you sorbnek kidding me? Oh my drotz the things I have to do for clicks. His stomach immediately revolted at the very idea, but he forced it down grimly; he'd probably have to do worse than this to survive in this new world. "Sure thing, sugar," he managed through choking gasps as the smell of the fat man's body and mouth threatened to kill him outright. He contemplated, for the briefest of moments, trying to entice the fat man in some way, but quickly decided against it -- whoever put me in this situation made sure of what was going to happen, and set everything up specifically to humiliate me. I don't have to do any extra work on their behalf. Instead, he simply let himself fall over, then lay there like a boneless slug; we'll see how this plays out.

  "Ah, you like being on bottom," the fat man leered; he clamped his flabby, meaty paws on either side of Skylar's face and straddled his trussed-up body. His pasty white tongue, covered with a thick film and reeking of bacterial decay, darted between his slobbery lips and caressed Skylar's cheek; Skylar managed not to wince, but only just. I am going to throw up. I am going to vomit the entire contents of my stomach and aspirate it, and I am going to die, again. This is not going to end well.

  Then, abruptly, something changed; there was a loud clang from somewhere nearby, and the fat man jerked back, then hastily scrambled up and off Skylar's prone form, his fat flipper-like hands pawing and shoving into Skylar's organs painfully. "Always when I'm about to score," he whined to nobody in particular; Skylar just lay there and stared into space.

  After a moment, Levan came into view, red eyes bobbing up and down with the motion of his strides like crimson candles in the dark; approaching Skylar's cell, he started to speak, stopped, and looked at Skylar in confusion, then noticed the fat man. "Oh. Uh... is this not a good time? Should I come back after the date?" Belatedly, Skylar noticed he was accompanied by a guard who looked very ill-at-ease.

  "He didn't even buy me dinner, actually," Skylar deadpanned, and the corner of Levan's mouth quirked up at one corner.

  "Everybody knows you eat afterwards," protested the fat man to whoever was listening. "Otherwise you might be tired or something!"

  "Right." Levan crossed his arms and looked bored. "Well, if we're all done with the relationship advice..." He looked at the guard meaningfully.

  "Uh. Right, sure thing." The guard turned a key in the large cell door, then swung the heavy iron construction open. "Your time's up; you're free to go, sir."

  Already? Skylar blinked; then, with a scowl, he realized they weren't talking to him. Oh, these graks.

  The fat man's squinty, lustful eyes flickered back towards Skylar's prone form, then back to the guard reluctantly. "Can't I get some extra time for bad behavior?" he complained.

  "This is your third offense, Gregon," the guard warned him. "After this it's summary execution. Buy your whores with money like everybody else." Roughly, he pulled the fat man out of the cell and began to frog-march him down the corridor; with a last, longing look at Skylar, he disappeared into the darkness.

  "Don't worry, I'm sure he'll write," Levan quipped; Skylar rolled his eyes and sighed. "Anyway, you have about three days until your trial; you slept pretty good after Reine put you down."

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  "Let me guess, I was the only one culty enough to get preemptively stop-resisting'ed?" Skylar hazarded. "Or are you still under suspicion of being a cultist too?"

  "Nah, I had my trial when we first got to the city," the Loathborn disagreed with a smug expression. "A little truth magic, a couple of questions, a little light racism, and bada-bing bada-boom, I'm a free man. But I figured I'd at least try to get you a cell by yourself."

  Skylar raised an eyebrow. "What, so you got that guy released? How's that work?"

  "Apparently, he was supposed to be released a couple days ago, but I think Reine had the guards 'conveniently forget' he was due for release, to teach you something vaguely lesson-shaped," Levan opined. "Judging from how you were getting along, though, I don't think it woulda worked out."

  "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," Skylar lamented, struggling up into a sitting position. "So, what now? I sit here tied into a pretzel for three days?"

  "Tied into a what...?" the ex-soldier looked down, noticing Skylar's bonds, and his mouth hardened into a flat line. "Skek, that's going too far. You want me to cut you loose?"

  Skylar thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Just my feet. I don't want them getting ideas that I want to try to escape, or anything." Basic misdirection.

  Nodding, Levan looked both ways for witnesses, then knelt down to unknot the ropes on Skylar's ankles; Skylar could not suppress a sigh of relief when they came loose. "Best I can do. I'll testify for you at your trial, but I'll warn ya -- they aren't likely to listen to me too heavily. Bein' a Loathborn is about one step up from 'untrustworthy cultist', so I hope you got some legal training or somethin'."

  Skylar shook his head, his mouth drooping down into an expression of woe. "Nope -- I'm just a poor wastelands boy, sorry to say. Maybe the blessed Lucians will have mercy on me when they find out I'm not a cultist." A little appeal to pathos. "Unless it's post-mortem, that is."

  Levan blinked, then looked at him carefully, but Skylar kept his expression guileless; after a moment, the Loathborn stalked away, muttering something dire. Skylar watched him go, hearing the door beyond the corridor clang shut, and waited an additional full minute before daring to move. Okay. Having successfully attempted to seduce my cellmate before striking out due to circumstances beyond my control, I will now attempt to escape. First stop on the Great Escape-Train: find out where the drotz I am.

  A glance around the cell proved to be dull and uninteresting; a bed made of straw, a bucket for bodily wastes, a couple of dark gray flea-infested wool blankets, and a gate of black pig-iron Skylar could think of three different ways to open. There was also a window that led out into some faintly glowing space beyond; carefully, he shuffled his hands back and forth until the rope loosened, then carefully slipped one wrist past the other and extracted the bonds with the knot still intact, then slipped the whole assembly into his pocket. This way, I can slip it back on and pretend I'm still bound if that becomes advantageous. Alternatively, I can tie somebody else up with it really fast.

  His hands now freed, he reached up to grab the window and haul himself up; it was easy with his light, strong acrobat's body. The window was a little over a foot high and about two-thirds of that across, and there was a stout pig-iron bar driven vertically through it, which was so poorly anchored that he had it free in less than a minute. I can only really fit my head through, but that'll be enough if I can wrangle myself appropriately. Topology 3, Fantasy Realm 0. But first I need to know where this goes. He lifted himself a little bit higher, getting his eyeline over the windowsill.

  Below was a fantastical, glittering landscape; it was like being inside of a geode, with points and sparkles of multicolored light in every direction. He hung there, awed, for a few seconds before realizing two things: the first was that he could apparently do a muscle-up with almost no effort at all and hold it for practically indefinitely, and the second was that he was inside the shining mountain he'd glimpsed from the air over Garlan's Fork. It's an underground city inside a hollowed-out mountain, with lights and dwellings all built into the walls. Wild.

  Hoisting himself up even higher, he could see directly below the window; there was a long drop of nearly twenty feet before terminating in a murky reservoir, but the stone along the outside was rough and in poor repair, easily scalable. On the other side of the water, he could glimpse streetways and bridges cris-crossing the empty space around the hollow mountain's circumference, making tiered districts and allowing for travel between the different portions of the city through switchbacks and cloverleafs that spanned dozens of feet in height at each interchange. Cool. Post-apocalyptic civil engineering.

  He pondered leaving his coat behind to possibly fool guards into thinking he was still here, but decided against it; I might not get to come back here, and it's not worth losing my one good possession on a maybe. Plus, I might be blind without it in the wrong circumstances. He settled instead for very carefully dunking one of the blankets in the sewage bucket, then shaping it over some artfully-arranged straw while gagging in disgust before slipping the other blanket over that. There. Now it'll mostly look like I'm still here, and hopefully the smell will keep them from looking too close. Taking one last look around the cell, he jumped up, grabbed the edge of the window, and began his escape attempt.

  Immediately, he ran into difficulty; he could get one shoulder through, then his head, then his other shoulder, but his trenchcoat was just too thick to allow him to shove his upper body and a leg through the small window simultaneously. He had to extract himself, get down, roll the thing up and tie it to his wrist with one of the straps, then shove it out first and carefully contort his way through while it dangled from one wrist; but eventually, with only a few scrapes, he was on the outside of the jail cell and clinging to a wall above a brackish moat.

  Nonchalantly, he replaced the bar he'd pulled out, free-climbed down and put his coat back on, then made his way over to the stone wall at one edge of the reservoir; and then, so easily he couldn't believe it, he strolled along the edge until it met a nearby service ladder, climbed up it unhurriedly, and emerged into a dark alley which smelled vaguely of rust and mildew. There didn't seem to be anyone around, and nobody was calling for guards or anything; it was entirely possible he had escaped completely undetected.

  Okay, so I'm free. Question is, what now?

  WHAT TO DO ON THE LAM IN GAVISPAR