"Sleep well, child," he says before quietly closing the door. A moment later, you hear a faint click from it.
You frown: had he just… locked you in? Not that it mattered, of course, since you were leaving by flying, but it was still weird.
Bit of a red flag that the countess put Ryza in a "guest room" that locks from the outside, no?
Then again, this is the first human room Ryza's slept in, so it's hardly surprising that her instincts are duller than usual.
The first thing you notice is the fact that, while this window also has glass, there does not appear to be a way to open it.
The second thing you noticed is the heavy iron mesh preventing anyone from even touching the glass from the inside.
The third thing you notice is Artemis, sitting on the bed in the corner.
You're about to congratulate yourself on how easy this was, but then you take a closer look at her. She's curled up, hugging her legs and pressing her face to her knees; her shoulders shaking slightly.
...I'd say this is also a red flag, but that seems like an understatement. Is there a color more danger-ey than red?
Artemis, meanwhile, continues talking. "Her daughter… they have her daughter, and I'm apparently the key to getting her back."
Well, at least she's not selling us out for cash or something. But either the countess is super reckless with her daughter or there's something up with these "bandits". They feel more like an
army than a bunch of robbers, but an army that never seems to worry about things like logistics or national borders...
I will like all the escalation ideas here I think. Going dragon though sounds the easiest option to pursue.
Reminder that "easiest" and "best" are rarely synonymous.
It would be very cool for a little girl to take the countess hostage out of nowhere and get everything we want. However, I have doubts on how to implement it. Hostage situations are extremely difficult to do well, worse with improvisation, and even worse with our toolkit. We are either a glass cannon little girl protected by ignorance of our strength or an impulsive deadly dragon, and that plan would imply threatening an unsuspecting countess in her castle. Either the little girl threaten the countess and it will be hard to be taken seriously or avoid guards playing heroes at the first occasion, or we turn dragon, paralyze everyone with terror from an almost out of context problem and we will have to clearly negotiate while keeping an eye on everything in an unfamiliar castle with no room to maneuver in an unfamiliar body.
Or we turn dragon and everyone starts trying to murder the monster before it can eat the countess (or open hostage negotiations). So yeah, I don't see that working great without support.
Or going full JRPG heroes by offering to save the countess's daughter after foiling her plot.
This idea seems like a pretty workable one, aside from step 1.
Ahh, this isn't a feudal relationship. So what the Countess has done is an act of war, not high treason.
Given that Artemis' father can crush her militarily, that's nearly as bad. She's handed the Duke all the excuse he needs to kill her, her family, and her loyalists, then take her lands.
Assuming, of course, that the Duke finds out. If everything goes as planned, it'll look like the bandits that killed 90% of Artemis's entourage caught up with and recaptured her and the other 10%. And how would he find out? The only people in the castle inclined to tell him are the prisoner, her three mundane bodyguards, and a preteen girl with a mysterious backstory and magical powers.
"By doing that to someone else's daughter? You call yourself noble but if capitulating when courage is called for and betraying at a blink is what passes for noble then the realm has a lot more peers than I thought. You teaching your daughter about how to act, not just by what you do for her but what you do to others."
It would be out of character for Ryza to recognize this, but the whole institution of nobility is pretty ignoble from an ethical perspective.
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] "No! There's got to be another way I'm not going to leave you here! I'll think of something…"
I wish someone had written a write-in that articulated "Plan Save the Countess's Daughter," but I guess I can do that.
[X] Write-in: "Wait. If we save the countess's daughter, she won't want to give you to the bandits any more!"
And also upvote the next closest thing, because approval voting.
[X] Write-In "She just wants her daughter back, right? So after they give her back they won't be able to take you, because they'll be surprised by a dragon!"
Plan Grab And Go seems to be in the lead, followed by Plan Hulk Out, but I hope the winds shift so we decide on something that doesn't basically abandon our non-Artemis friends to the countess's mercy and/or future plans.