At first, Amelia thought the secret passageway belonged to the hypogeum: The under belly of the Coliseum. Where workers would travel along twisting, vein-like tunnels to keep the amphitheatre’s lifeblood of food, supplies, and everything else pumping along. Yet as they advanced through the dimly lit, moss-covered underground path it became obvious Gregory Rutherford was carrying her along a far older and much deeper section of the Coliseum.

But with her body slung over Gregory’s shoulder, all Amelia could manage was a memorization of the increasingly daunting return to the surface.

Eventually, they came to a door. Guarded by a trio of men who exchanged surprised looks with each other before letting Gregory through, into the cavern in which flowed a narrow aqueduct just large enough for a ferry to float. Gregory placed Amelia down to meet those standing around the ferry. And soon the noises of a father and son arguing sprung over the distance.

Amelia sat alone in her thoughts. Too scared to try making a run for it despite enough time having passed for sensation to have returned to her body. Not when there were at least five other men loading the ferry with crates, while an unknown woman dressed as a Coliseum vendor, idled nearby like she was keeping watch.

Amelia found her options to be few. Her only plausible recourse appeared to be in striking a deal with the Marquess or his son. Whose argument had begun increasing in volume as they made their way towards Amelia. With Gregory now escorted ahead of his father by two of the ferry boat workers.

“How was I supposed to know it wasn’t today!” Gregory shouted, resisting the men who made sure he kept walking.

“By not being an idiot,” said the Marquess.

Amelia flinched as the noise of a crisp slap resounded.

“Get him out of here,” The Marquess of Rutherford ordered, holding his right arm while gingerly rolling his wrist.

The men slammed the entrance door to the cavern behind them as they left. Keeping deathly still, Amelia held her breath in the nerve-racking silence, wanting nothing more than to become lost and forgotten. Since it may very well be her turn on the chopping board next. A fear, which proved real when with another command the Marquess demanded a knife be brought to him as one of his men forced Amelia onto her feet and grabbed her head by her hair.

Her eyes tightly shut, Amelia offered a wordless prayer and waited. Until the grip holding her head slackened when the Marquess cut free a lock.

“Amelia Strightsworth… Do you know of the future?” The Marquess of Rutherford asked.

Terrified by her own imagination, Amelia shook her head no.

The Marquess slowly traced a line from her temple to her jaw with his knife. “Of course, you wouldn’t,” he said, with a pleased snicker, “No matter what lies your father might spin, no man may know of God’s will. It’s elementary, don’t you agree?”

Amelia nodded. Despite not understanding at all.

“Then, I’m glad,” The Marquess said, like a child whose understanding of life had been confirmed beyond doubt, “I’m glad you are aware that knowing of future events is a privilege reserved only for the divine and their blessed. Of which, your family is not.”

The Marquess looked over his shoulder, “Prepare the ferry, I’m leaving!” he shouted, before returning his attention to Amelia who wished he would not.

“This was meant to be a rehearsal,” The Marquess explained regrettably, while gesturing around himself at the cavern, “Today, an arranged Kingly summons to ensure a guard dog still knows how to listen. While Tomorrow? A sending for that your father would never think fake. Granting me just enough time…”

He waited for Amelia’s guess.

“T-To do what?” she eventually managed.

“To bring you here, of course,” The Marquess said, with a smile that made Amelia’s back shirk into contact with the working man holding her, who made sure she began shuffling forwards when his master turned and began walking towards the ferry.

At the aqueduct’s edge the Marquess spat into the dark water. “Though it wasn’t supposed to be today. God’s mercy, my planning was perfect. Your father would have received a lock of your hair on the day of the duel and shown his true colors to the public in a destructive search of the city. Leaving only the Duke of Winchester to discover a hand-written note, in which you would have admitted to having slunk home alone, unable to further bear the shame of having lied during our little joke of a hearing…”

The Marquess sighed with regret over what could have been. Giving Amelia a chance to use what bravery she had gathered to try and explain how crazy the Marquess’s plan sounded.

“My father —”

“Would elucidate things with the duke and postpone our duel to check his estate for you before discovering note was a lie. Yes, shut up, I know. You’re not smart.” Snapped the Marquess, “Do you think it’s pleasant having to explain a plan that’s been made useless? Or are you as air brained as my son and require the names of every immigrant I’ve had planted with enough kidnapping evidence to ensure your father’s wild Goose chase takes him all the way to the West’s Capital City?” A serene smile spread on his lips, “Giving me all the time in the world to ensure heaven’s ordained work can progress smoothly… Instead of the quick fix I’ll need to make now that our schedule’s been hastened.”

The Marquess of Rutherford gave Amelia a smug look. “Well, you don’t need to know about that. Now that you’ve been taken out of the game, I’m afraid from here on you’ll be serving a more… motivational role.”

Amelia shuddered as the Marquess bowed apologetically towards her.

The Caneo invasion, would it still happen despite her best efforts? Were there underground canals flowing throughout the kingdom, stretching all the way to the Ocean? The spot where Gregory had struck her on the head with a brick throbbed, making it hard to think. She didn’t know whether to tell the Marquess he would never get away with it, or ask him why he thought betraying the Velvetican Kingdom was the correct course of action.

Amelia simply didn’t know what to do.

In hindsight, since having found the Historian’s Novel, most of her successes had been achieved through either blind luck, or with the help of others. Very rarely could Amelia claim to know precisely what needed doing. So why had she ever tricked herself into going off on her own? Even now, her only hope in escaping the Marquess appeared to be in whether Grace or Martel might have noticed her absence and sounded the alarm.

Was that all she was? A damsel who needed saving?

“This could have gone so much easier,” The Marquess said, as he boarded the ferry, “Had you accepted my son’s proposal, by now you would have been on a ship heading towards a new life with a blessed child in belly. Instead, here we are.”

The fight in Amelia once extinguished, roused at the mention of children. The mere idea that the Marquess would scheme with the Alchemist Richter for not only her blood, but her own flesh as well…

“I would sooner kill myself then bear a child destined to be used and abused!” Amelia yelled, wanting to rush forwards and push the Marquess over the edge of his ferry and into the water. Only the man holding her by the arms kept her from trying.

“Scream if you must,” The Marquess said, unimpressed, “Nobody will hear you. Not this far underground. Certainly not with all the wards I’ve installed. Believe me, come night’s end, you will wish you had chosen differently.”

His choice of words gave Amelia a bad premonition. Enough to make her take count of those present for one final tally of her odds for escape. Six men who leered, closer than ever, and a woman whose demeanor showed she knew the situation was hopeless. Amelia’s eyes returned to the river where an unexpected choice made itself known. She wondered how long it would take to drown should she jump in and swallow.

As if prepared for such thoughts, the man holding Amelia let go, shifted his stance, and slipped an arm round her neck from behind in a one-armed headlock insistent enough to keep her interest in breathing alive.

“Shame, looks like you’ve caught on,” remarked the Marquess. “I suppose while you can’t see the future, you can at least predict it.” He added, as if telling a joke before he dropped all pretenses of being nice and said, “Time to end things.”

Amelia looked on in horror as the room’s only other woman approached her with a vial she could somehow recognize in hand. A vial the woman opened and held to Amelia’s tightly closed lips.

“N-No I don’t want to,” Amelia begged, as she twisted her face as far away as she could.

The man holding her grunted in annoyance. “Get it in her already,” he complained, ahead of plunging his free hand down the front of Amelia’s skirt. Eliciting a cry of shock from the mouth that was forced into drinking the flavorless substance.

“I believe you’re already acquainted with Richter’s creation?” asked the Marquess, who leaned on the ferry’s guardrail as his men worked on undoing the boat’s mooring lines.

Amelia sobbed as she felt the Alchemist’s drug slide down her throat, while her restrainer’s intruding digits explored deeper inside her. The quantity compared to what Gregory had spritzed her wine with was incomparable. It took seconds before the drug’s effects settled in her stomach and began spreading outwards.

Her knees growing weak, Amelia glared at the Marquess while she still could. “You don’t have to d-do this.”

“Of course I do,” gloated the Marquess, taking joy in her plight. “Do you even know your own family’s motto? Destroying your father’s reputation through you is practically poetic,” the Marquess added, as Amelia’s vision swam and she saw in his eyes the split pupils of a monster, “Look around you,” gestured the creature who wore the skin of a noble, and Amelia fell to the ground when the man holding her up suddenly let go. “There’s only one way to hurt the legacy of a so-called invincible dragon.”

Amelia took in the fact more men were deboarding the ferry. She inched away, hoping to disguise her escape for the water as an onset of panic.

They grabbed her before she could even crawl half the distance.

“H-Help me!” Amelia shouted, to the woman who had yet to look directly at her once, as she was dragged down and set upon by the men who began tearing her clothes from her body.

The Marquess of Rutherford giggled, “Not much of a witness, is she,” he said, which had the woman lower her head in shame even more, “But hey, it’s hard to find witnesses for elopement these days.”

“You’re… You’re insane!” Amelia accused, and the Marquess of Rutherford acknowledged her words viscerally. All decorum lost in shouting as his ferry departed.

“Insane? It’s the world I live in that’s mad! A world which will soon know the truth of a bitch who falsely accused a Marquess’s son, her false prophet of a father who supported her lies out of greed, and the Velvetican Kingdom that fell because it incited god’s wrath!"

Finished, he turned. Showing his back. Their conversation, over, the Marquess left Amelia to be leapt upon by his hounds.

 

***

 

Discovering The Historian’s novel had been a changing point in Amelia’s life. It had helped her get outside and meet Grace. It was a gift that had led to the resolution of a more than a decade long misunderstanding with her father, had changed the destiny of more than a few story-book characters, and still held in it the potential to be a veritable blessing for the Velvetican Kingdom, which had already outright avoided a Western invasion.

Each of these moments were changes in Amelia’s life that never failed to beg the question:

Who exactly was The Historian?

It was a question that had begun to feel pointless. Under the heavy bodies shaking her limp form with each thrust, there was now only the heat, sweat, and pain that came from being taken on a ground rough enough to scrape away at her exposed skin.

With the Marquess of Rutherford gone, she had tried to petition for mercy. But her pleas fell on indifferent ears. Her wants availing to nothing more than entertainment for the Marquess’s men who made it clear how much they enjoyed her pained wailing by increasing their pace.

She had even tried to call upon the magic she hoped must surely lay dormant within her. Only for those embers to smolder without catching flame. It was enough for her to wonder whether the role of ‘Amelia Strightsworth’ in the Historian’s novel would soon come to an end.

“Hurry it up,” spoke one of the men waiting his turn. “We’re running on a clock as it is, the next ferry will be here within an hour and I haven’t yet had my fill.”

“Fuck off, I’m not done yet,” answered the man who dripped sweat onto Amelia’s body, “This is a once in a life time chance to play with a noble, I’m not going to rush.”

“Means he’s got about a minute left in him,” another interjected, and they guffawed at the crass humor.

The one atop her seemed emboldened by the laughter of his peers. “C’mon girly,” he said, sticking a thumb deep into Amelia’s mouth, “Give us some more noise. It’s not fun if you lay there like a dead fish.”

In her drug induced haze, Amelia took in the world twisting into a smudged painting around her and blankly wondered whether the Historian this time around would even bother to include a mention of her name in their work.

She considered both the face leering down at her, and the words that began speaking inside of her head.

“Amelia, what did I say about eating with your mouth kept wide open?” asked a voice that blurred reality with advice from the past.

Amelia discovered the sugary treat in her mouth. Wrapping her lips around the strangely shaped candy, she gave it a lick.

“There we go!” said the man, whose jubilance turned into horror, when Amelia’s teeth found purchase and she made the decision to follow her mother’s advice and eat, with her mouth kept tightly closed.

“Fuck! My thumb!” shouted the man in pain, as Amelia started a listening streak by following the advice of a particular taunt recently used against her and made sure to properly swallow, filling her insides with a childish glee that revelled in having stolen something for the first time in her life.

The groping hands molesting every part of her body departed as the injured man screamed in rage, replaced with fists that began to violently beat her.

“Don’t kill her,” spoke the woman who raised her voice for the first time. Although she did nothing more to show she cared whether the Marquess’s orders were actually followed, so the beating continued. Until Amelia was flipped over onto her stomach, for an impossibly hot rod of flesh to press pass the folds of her entrance with reckless abandon.

Knocking, knocking, Amelia’s life away against the stone floor.

“I’ll take your other hole for that, whore,” the injured man spat, and he grabbed Amelia by the hair as if it were a bridle, forcing her to assume a kneeling, lopsided position for the prepared continuation of his sick twisted pleasure. When, with a click loud enough to interrupt, the door to the underground cavern began grinding open.

An unpleasant reminder for Amelia that there were still more of the Marquess’s men who might decide to join in.

“Couldn’t wait any longer?” the man taking Amelia rasped as he adjusted himself without looking. “Get in line like the rest. You’ll have your turn yet.”

His mockery was met with a noise that cut air. And while Amelia couldn’t see exactly what happened next, she most certainly felt what must have been nearly two hundred pounds of ‘person’ collapse fully upon her.

The smell of blood invaded her nostrils.

“No, I don’t think I will,” spoke a deep voice as a pair of steel plated legs entered Amelia’s vision. Moments before a great force impacted the headless man suffocating her, sending the corpse flying into the canal with inhuman might.

“D-Daddy?” Amelia called, towards the immense silhouette, which didn’t quite match what she remembered. “I-Is that you?”

“God no. I wish,” replied Stanton, who stepped out of the shadows to be between her and those who yet lived, with a look that could kill. And a flaming sword in his hand.