Elyre was locked in a small carriage with no windows. She wasn't sure where exactly she was going, though she'd heard they would imprison her. She was too tired and couldn't think clearly. So many people had been chasing after her until they finally caught her...
How had she ended up here?
After the Queen's refusal to stop gathering digeniche or to lower the amounts of gathered herb, the sylvan dwellers wanted to protest. Instead, Elyre had suggested ambushing the digeniche caravans in order to take the herb and use magic to plant it back.
The plan, however, had gone wrong and Elyre had been caught.
She hadn't seen anyone else being caught, so she hoped her sister was fine.
In the carriage there was another girl. Elyre didn't know her. She didn't seem to be from Wild Wood or to have participated in the ambush. Elyre thought the girl was sleeping, until suddenly,
"NO-O!!!" the girl screamed, her eyes wide open.
Elyre got startled and observed her. The girl was touching the surface of the carriage as if she didn't know where she was.
"No, no, no..." she kept repeating.
"Calm down," Elyre said.
"…The Queen interrogated me again... She fears someone will dethrone her. She… Do you know where they're taking us? The Dungeon of the Lost!!" The girl spoke.
"...Maybe you've had a nightmare," Elyre answered. Or maybe the girl was mad. But she didn't look dangerous.
A nightmare? In fact, Lyssandria would want it to be a nightmare; she would wish it from the bottom of her heart; but, unfortunately, this was her real life. She frowned at Elyre on realizing she couldn't understand her.
Lyssandria's brutal destiny was to be a captive in the Dungeon of the Lost. The most dreaded dungeon that had ever existed in the Allyrian lands, with five levels under the ground; the ceiling of the last one so low that people were forced to crawl. If hell existed, they said, it was there. The worst in these catacombs, however, was a curse upon dreams – they always turned into most terrible nightmares. This was a curse cast by Archmage Aristhaeus himself.
Lyssandria did not want to return into the Dungeon. But she did not have a choice. She wondered whether life was lost there. Her nightmares had a better chance to kill her than loneliness. She couldn't run or chase them away. She realized what her biggest fear was. It was an awful image of a woman, hidden in a web of mists, with eyes empty gray, which seemed to eat the colors of the world. That was the Queen.
After a while, she decided Elyre must be an important prisoner to be locked here together with her.
Meanwhile, Elyre stared at her, probably because she was a vampire, an "outer race" that could rarely be seen in Allyria. The outer races usually had a shorter lifespan, which was one of the reasons why some Allyrians didn't respect them.
"Could they really be leading us to the Dungeon of the Lost?!" Elyre thought. Her "crimes" were not so serious after all!
"The Dungeon of the Lost is full of innocent people," Lyssandria declared, as if responding to Elyre's thoughts, "And it is impossible to escape. Aristhaeus's magic!.. But what scares me most is that my biggest nightmare there is Queen Lyneanne."
"You seem to be so well informed about the Dungeon," Elyre noticed. "Have you been there before?"
Lyssandria just nodded. She was not in mood to tell her story. Elyre found it strange that an outlander would be kept in the Dungeon, then released and returned back into the Dungeon... After all, vampires were not even a magical race; they were not so dangerous when compared to the magic of Allyrians.
"How about you? Why are you here?" Lyssandria wondered.
Elyre was quiet for a second, not sure if she had to share details with a complete stranger.
Lyssandria added, "...Huh, I've been in jail for so long, anyway, I will probably not understand your explanation. I may have lost connection to the rest of the world already..."
"The Dungeon of the Lost is quite far away," Elyre said. "If they're leading us there, then we will have plenty of time to talk. What's your name?"
"...Lyssandria..."
"Lyssandria?..." Elyre wondered. "It does not sound like a vampire name." In fact, Lyssandria also did not look like a vampire; apart from her sharp teeth, that is. She had fair hair and skin, which was unusual.
"...It sounds aristocratic, doesn't it? It's a pseudonym. I invented it," she replied. "I've used it for a very long time. And you are?"
"Fierce Wind," Elyre said.
Lyssandria raised an eyebrow, "Huh?"
Elyre smiled, "But you can call me... Elyre. ...Do you think we could escape from here?" Elyre wondered.
"You wish! There are at least ten guards outside. It's impossible."
Elyre was thinking about the forest. She unintentionally recalled the last few hours. The pale face of the mage who caught her – he had white skin, like nothing she had ever seen before… And with his red eyes, she could swear he seemed to be more of a vampire than Lyssandria herself, although she had barely caught a glimpse of him in the darkness. His name? ...Mage Ademon. She still couldn't believe what had happened, but she hoped her friends were fine. And, she hoped they had succeeded in getting digeniche from the caravans and planting it back.