Liam awoke to the smell of mildew and the oppressive atmosphere of hot, humid air. He slowly opened his eyes. What was he doing before he fell asleep? His head was pounding as if he had a hangover.

He seemed to be laying on an extremely crude bed, probably similar to what he’d experienced in the barracks when he first officially joined the Gevilian army. His eyes were struggling to adjust to the light.

“Ugh…” Liam finally made his first audible noise since waking up.

Then, he heard a shuffling nearby and immediately bolted up as if he had never been tired in the first place. He instantly jumped to his feet on the bed, gripping the hilt of his sword at his waist– except there was nothing there.

“Wh– Where’s my–?”

“Holy shit, man, chill out! You’re not about to die or something.” A voice replied from his left side.

He immediately dodged away, hopping off the bed and adopting a defensive stance more appropriate for hand-to-hand combat. At this point, he realized he was completely unarmed.

He stared intensely in the direction that the voice came from and heard a drawn-out sight.

“Dude. What is your problem? It feels like you’re going to stab a hole in me with that look alone! What do you want from me, a contract to sign so I can prove I don’t mean you harm? Not that I have any paper… whatever, that joke was stupid anyway. Can you just-”

Liam had been staring at him, trying his hardest to grasp the situation.

He wasn’t listening to a word the person said. He spent the entire duration that the other person spoke to watch for any sudden moves while he pieced together what had just happened.

As the muffled sounds of the irritating voice went in one ear and out the other, Liam gathered his thoughts and memories.

He had just reached Tabre. He was going to discuss what he knew about the threats from beyond The Palisade, and his memories abruptly stopped there. He was likely knocked out somehow and taken to the city jail.

The question remained; why? He felt that he had done everything in his power to develop that he was trustworthy in the brief interaction he had with the guards. They seemed rather receptive…

Suddenly, it struck him.

He completely forgot that Tabre was a city in Sangrea.

He approached them wearing a Gevilian knight’s armor. Regardless of how dire the situation may be, of course they weren’t going to simply accommodate a knight of the kingdom which had declared war on them only a few months prior. He was foolish to assume that the fall of The Palisade was enough to overcome the sheer power of the human grudge.

Now, Liam understood his mistake. He forgot what it meant to be a human. Next on his agenda; identify the person in front of him. He knew now that he couldn’t trust anyone, nor take anything anyone said at face value.

“Identify yourself.” Liam unknowingly and uncaringly interrupted the other mid-sentence.

He had no intent to humor whatever they were just rambling about. He carefully examined the appearance of the person before him. It was a rather short, blonde person of indeterminate gender. They had a pair of rather worn spectacles upon their nose, and a pair of dark blue eyes behind them.

Their hair was wavy, reaching to about shoulder length. It appeared that they usually combed their hair back, but obviously no longer had access to one in their present circumstances, so it had become rather filthy.

Their body was very lithe and curvy, contributing heavily to their androgyny. They wore a rather ragged button-up shirt, which seemed abnormally well-kept for such a rural region, though Liam figured it wasn’t especially outlandish to assume they came from somewhere further away, much like himself.

Upon closer examination, their complexion and genetics seemed strangely akin to how he had had the Ingrans described to him…

“I swear on my mother…” They mumbled under their breath briefly, before answering the question.

“Hey. I’m Xerxes. Yeah, I know my name is weird, don’t ask.” The person, apparently named Xerxes, answered in an extremely dry and matter-of-fact tone.

Liam narrowed his eyes at the vague answer. There was a brief, yet excruciating few moments of silence between the two before Xerxes spoke up to break it.

“Look, dude-who-shall-not-be-named, if this is how our conversations are going to go from now on, I’m not sure we’re going to get along very well. Can you like… introduce yourself or something? I’m not very good at carrying conversations.”

Xerxes snarked up a storm. Liam let out the second dramatic sigh of the conversation.

“Fine. I guess I don’t have much better to do. My name is Liam. Liam Broderick. I’m–” Liam tried to introduce himself only to be interrupted immediately.

“Wooooww! Two names. Fancy.”

Xerxes looked at Liam with a shit eating grin. Liam furrowed his brow and frowned.

“Hey, you interrupted me once, I just got you back. Now we’re square!”

Xerxes abruptly switched to a smile so friendly that Liam didn’t know what to do with it. Liam wasn’t sure how to respond, so he just continued his sentence.

“I’m a knight of the Gevilian Kingdom. I came here seeking refuge after my city fell to those barbaric sharp-ears from beyond The Palisade. Needless to say, the ‘refuge’ part hasn’t been going too well. We don’t see many people who look like you around here. Are you perhaps from Ingram? Has there already been an invasion in the North as well?”

The notion that all three human nations were already under siege put a visible worry in Liam’s eyes.

“Oh! Uh… yeah. I am. I wouldn’t know what's going on up there at the moment, as I’m just a traveler who happened to be near here at the time. I left uh… Ingram quite a while ago.”

“Ah, I see. I suppose that is good news. Though, how long is ‘quite a while ago’? You hardly look any more than a day over twenty.”

Liam pried a little bit.

“Yeah, and you hardly look a day over sixty. Not everyone is as old as they look, uh… Liam was it?”

“That’s right.”

Xerxes’ joke put a slight smile on Liam’s face; his first smile in several days now.

“There we go! You look a lot better with a smile on your face.”

Xerxes seemed to wink, though Liam wasn’t really paying attention.

“So, how’d you end up in a place as remote as Tabre if you’re only a traveler? As far as I know, knowledge of this place doesn’t spread very far beyond nobles and strategists. Was wherever you were staying also attacked by those sharp-ears?”

A slight grimace formed on Xerxes face as Liam posed the question.

“Oh, I apologize. I'm well aware it can be a sore subject, so you are under no obligation to–”

Liam attempted to apologize, but Xerxes closed their eyes and interrupted, their face having become a bit more solemn. If anything, they interrupted so that the apology wouldn’t drag on forever.

“It’s… It’s fine. Yeah, it’s something like that. Obviously it probably wasn’t as bad for me as it was for you because I’m more of a drifter. I figure that as a knight you were probably a lot more attached to your city than I would’ve been.”

Xerxes seemed a bit sullen, or possibly anxious. Liam recalled his city that had been laid to waste by the sharp-ears.

“More than you could ever know. I’ll be haunted as long as I live by the faces of the civilians and comrades I couldn’t save. I… I still feel like it’s somehow my fault for being too weak to protect them. I’ll never forgive them… those savage fucking bastards. I’ll kill every last one of them.”

Liam tried to suppress the seething rage behind his words. Though the formerly consistently disinterested Xerxes had a rather uncharacteristic response.

“Trust me. I know. I know how you feel.” Xerxes spoke it very slowly.

Liam had been looking down because he assumed it wouldn’t mean to them what it did to him, but he could hear the same hatred burning behind the (seemingly) younger person’s response. Liam looked up, a bit surprised.

He saw Xerxes staring through him, as if he could see something off in the distance through the walls. The stranger had a flame burning behind their eyes like nothing Liam had ever seen before. He decided it would be best to change the subject; this probably wasn’t any of his business.

Liam suddenly fake-coughed in an attempt to break the tense atmosphere.

“So, why have you been thrown into jail? It is pretty clear why they jailed me, but you obviously can’t be here for the same reason. Additionally, you don’t seem to me like much of a rapscallion.”

Xerxes mood switched at lightspeed. They giggled a little before replying.

“Who says ‘rapscallion’ nowadays? Maybe you really are sixty!”

They stuck their tongue out at Liam, who was substantially less amused.

“Are you gonna answer the question?”

“Oh, fiiine~. Why’ve you gotta' be so uptight? Anyways, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but they seem to be taking in just about everyone who attempts to enter the city. I saw the guards actually let someone in when I first arrived at the gate, but it looked like she already knew the guard, so I figured she was a citizen who had left on some business.”

Liam’s eyes lit up. This information definitely threw a wrench in his prior assumption.

“Wait, they are detaining literally everyone? I assumed they threw me in here because I’m a Gevilian Knight!”

“Hahaha, it’d be nice if the answer were that obvious, wouldn’t it! Either way, I doubt it. They’re just jailing everyone who shows up at the gates. ISN’T THAT RIGHT GUYS?!” After they shouted the last question, a chorus of approval echoed from the cells to their right.

Xerxes snickered a little bit.

“Oh, I seea. Well, do you have any idea for what reason they're doing such a thing?”

“Sure! So you know how this place is well known for being obsessive about the outside? In case you’re wondering, I only know that because one of the other guys told me.”

“Yes. What of it?”

Liam tilted his head a bit, clearly not getting the point.

“Well, my running theory is that they’re wary of shapeshifters! I heard one of the guards say something like that to his friend when he was leaving. I don’t think he realized I was listening, though.”

Xerxes seemed pretty sure of their theory.

“What is a 'shapeshifter'?” Liam sounded even more confused than before.

“Wait, are you serious? I thought the name was kind of self-explanatory… Well, whatever. They’re like… creatures that can change shape and look like other creatures, or maybe whatever they want? I don’t really know an awful lot about it, but that's what I gathered anyway. It seems like this city has some kind of standing record of the outside.”

Liam narrowed his eyes. When he thought about it, it definitely did make a lot of sense, but could such a creature even exist in the first place? He realized in this moment just how horrifying the outside must truly be.

“Wow… I never imagined such a terrifying creature could exist. So, is the idea that they are concerned that these shape-shifters are masquerading as humans and attempting to infiltrate the city? How frightening.”

Xerxes grimaced again. Clearly, the thought was still rather distressing to the young person before him, despite how excitedly they had explained it. They answered promptly.

“Yeah, that’s the idea, I think. Still, it’s a pretty shitty reason to lock up so many innocent people.”

“Yes, I would be inclined to agree.”

Liam and Xerxes had at this point grown much friendlier.

They continued conversing and exchanging ideas for a few hours following this. Many lines of thought were traded between them, and the experience was generally rather enlightening for both. After a couple hours, though, Xerxes looked up at the small barred window on the wall opposite of the entrance to the cell with an anxious look on their face.

“Liam, I just realized something. Ordinarily they would’ve delivered a meal a few minutes ago.”

“Yes? What of it?” Liam tilted his head in his trademark fashion.

Though, the meaning of the question became rather apparent as they heard the sound of swords clashing and men shouting somewhere in the distance. The two both adopted a rather anxious expression.

“Is that uhh… normal?” Liam asked nervously.

“No. It’s not.”

<==>