The Misadventures of Lady Fortune

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley.”

His deep, accented voice penetrates through Isabel Yaci’s thoughts like a shiv – sharp and swift enough to have her drop the very book that was titled ‘Dragon in the Valley’ to the ground.

It only takes a second. It is that one-second startlement of where the book falls and she turn towards the voice, her dark eyes flashing to his dark gaze down towards where his feet should have been and-

Something rough-spun and scratchy gets thrown over her head. Darkness steals over a brief gaze of a deep green, scaly-clawed foot and she panics. The heaviness of something wide and long lands over her head, and then over her body – and then dropping over her favorite pair of black boots-

“Wha-? NO!” Her voice muffles. Isabel tries to break free, jerking herself far enough backwards to hit the shelves full of worn-out, overused books at the outdoor Sande’s Bookshop on Denver Street where she calls home.

Her home. Her place. Her sanctuary.

Is she being kidnapped by monsters? Right here, out in the open on a warm summer night, and in a live city full of active people? In one of the most metropolitan cities in Northern Amerin?

No, there must be a mistake. Kidnappings were only heard about on newstreams where young children’s faces ended up being shown on repeat to garner the attention of the country. It was heard about with teenage runaways that left their homes and never came back, and where young and nubile women were touring other countries that weren’t under the UAUPN – the United Alliance Union of Protected Nations, only to end up taken and sold to the highest royal bidder. Those were the ones that never came back without a trace. While Isabel did see herself as attractive at a 5’4” height, blemish-free dusky skin, curvy frame with narrow brown eyes, a wide killer smile and a hair halo full of brown curls, she thought she was hardly noticeable in a city filled with vibrant, exotic-looking transplants from all over. At least, that was what her mother always told her growing up.

A second pair of large hands has since joined the first pair, and together they jerk her body away from the bookshelf with such force that it knocks the breath from her lungs. This voice that next spoke to her was different. It was rougher.

“Shut. Up,” the man with the rougher tone says. This one yanks her up, up, upwards before she could retort—

-- and Isabel finds herself landing over one of their shoulders, stuffed in a rough-spun sack like a sack of potatoes, and then they were on their way. She was on her way, moving away from everything that she has known and loved.

After all, it was a Saturday night in New Wales city-by-the-sea, the Jewel of Northeastern Amerin, and to her, this was a sweet-topping ironic ending to a week full of nothing but misfortunes.

It first started with her dog, Pixie, a small white Pomeranian, escaping the apartment she rents in an old-fashioned three-story brick building in the Elscade suburban district. She was struggling with bringing in a heavy box through the front door when Pixie slipped on out and made a dash into the street. In her effort to catch the little dog, she dropped the box right on her left foot while Pixie made her run to freedom. Her left foot still spikes with pain whenever she puts weight on it to this day.

Then, she lost her job on the next day.

She had worked at the local library and art gallery combo in the city’s posh business district for the last three years, where she had to commute by taking the underground Met-train from home. The Met-train had its notorious issues of delays and drama with its commuters, and it was those things that always lent to Isabel showing up at work just a little late. While the previous library director was flexible with her commuting situation, and the average person owning any kind of hovercar in this era was gone into the long, long past, the new director wasn’t so impressed. Fights had broken out one morning on the Met-train, and it caused a delay that had her running into the library 15 minutes late. Her archival senior manager had promised her a letter of recommendation to a library outside of New Wales that had an open position for someone of Isabel’s skillsets.

Her personal possessions were already boxed and waiting for her by the time the meeting was over.

So, Isabel took her box and made it back to the Met-train, fighting back tears. She was on her way back to her apartment when she was passing by her favorite solace – Sande’s outdoor bookshop – when she looked towards the line of shops across the street and spotted two familiar people walking together. Close together.

The couple were laughing together with such careless light that she could even make out their voices through the din of street chatter. It was her boyfriend of six months, Alex…. with her best friend of four years, Lianna. Seeing them had immediately lifted her spirits, and Isabel was about to call out to them—

But then, their eyes met, and the smiles had dropped from their faces upon seeing her. It didn’t take her too long to realize why when her gaze dropped down to see them holding hands.

The pipes in her kitchen sink had burst next. Her parents had called from Ithaca about her brother, Camden, needing to go back to rehab for alcohol. Her rent was due in the next week. She had gotten into separate fights with her former best friend and former boyfriend in the same day. A neighbor found Pixie days later, filthy and sporting a broken leg.

By Saturday, Isabel Yaci was tired, angry, almost fully broke and utterly alone.

She couldn’t really think about the next day or the next week, so she didn’t. All she could think about on a Saturday night was a quick bite at Lennard’s café on the corner of Denver Street, and to lose herself in a few good, cheap, used books at Sande’s bookshop before she retired home. After the week she’s had, a quiet and uneventful night would have been the perfect balm to her injured soul.

If she and Lianna were talking right now, Lianna would have called the whole week the best swear word she could find in the modern global dictionary.

But here she is, out on a Saturday night after a lousy week of bad luck, being kidnapped by strange men with scaly green feet in public. Isabel couldn’t see where they were taking her – for she was certain that the one carrying her over his shoulder was not alone – and he had already cuffed her in the head when she tried to scream again, so all she had to rely on was her other senses.

There are the familiar sounds of a lively, active New Wales city by-the-sea: groups of people talking and laughing together; the sizzling sound of meat grilling in those side street carts to be sold, its scents always tantalizing; the faint sounds of upbeat, snappy dance music playing somewhere above their heads, likely carried on a breeze from an open window; the heavy smell of hovercar exhaust from the busy streetways as she was being bumped along in motion. The horns that she would easily ignore before were blaring loudly now in passing as she could feel them crossing the street. She wasn’t sure if she was going towards the Met-trains or deeper into the city, but eventually, the distinctive sounds and smells of the busiest districts were started to melt away. Where were they taking her?

The wind kicks up now, and Isabel could hear her kidnappers talking. Faintly, she hears the crashing of the ocean against the rocks, and her mind is reeling. It was almost a two hour’s drive from the center of the city to the edge where the beaches were. She couldn’t believe that they had somehow traveled from the very center of New Wales to the edges of the city meeting the Ilantic Sea, and in only 15 minutes by foot as if by magic. She starts wriggling in the sack again, but this time she wasn’t clubbed to cease.

The breeze kicks up again, this time stronger, and then it was like the ocean’s waves were only inches from her body. Even with her covered face to the man’s chest, the saltiness of the air is unmistakable. She could feel the dampness of the waves and of the salty spray coming from the rocks, even from within the bag.

It was only a half of a breath before they jumped.

The sensation of being weightless lasts but a moment – and it was a sharp, shocking moment for Isabel – before she crashes into the water. The impact takes her breath away, and she struggles helplessly as she starts to sink further below the surface. She vaguely notices that she is still attached to the two kidnappers, and they are dragging her down – down, further down while the darkening sea shapes her prison to her body. She fights through the filtered light of a full moon, and then darkness and silence collide to bring on the waiting slumber of death. She can’t breathe, and her lungs are filling up by the second. Her last thoughts were that she was drowning – that she was dying, and the last image that comes to her mind was of the family she hasn’t visited in years before she finally surrenders.

And then, there’s Sunlight.

It is abrupt. Sudden. Isabel comes to and finds herself still tied up in a bag and draped over something warm, breathing, and moving at a fast pace.

Her mind is having a hard time piecing together the jumps of the last few hours. Has it been hours? Was she dreaming? Where was she? She only remembers the sensations of drowning in the Ilantic sea, the saltwater filling her throat and nose and lungs and—

But the bag she was tied in wasn’t damp, and the air around her, while it feels and tastes different, it is still breathable. The new air is heavier and harder to take in, so Isabel was coming to with rapid bouts of coughing and gagging as her lungs try to reject it. As they continue to travel further away from everything she knows, she was sensing that she is not in the old Kansas anymore, as the old saying goes.

By the time she is fully herself and her lungs were starting to acclimate, it was evening with the loud sounds of nature all around her. The speed of urgency has come to a stop, and she feel hands carrying her down to the steady ground. They didn’t uncover her, nor offer her any sustenance; she felt the heat of campfire and the smells of something hearty cooking nearby as evidence.

Her scaly kidnappers talk less urgently now, and this time she could make out that they were speaking in a language that was completely guttural and foreign to her. She couldn’t see them through the bag, but she can hear them as they set upon their meals. They didn’t seem to have remembered that she was even there once they were away from her.

Isabel estimates that the break had been a little over an hour before she feels herself being lifted back onto the unseen animal. Once secured, she feels the wind pushing at her face once more as they continue to ride. They are riding straight with fewer turns, and whatever road they were following was a rocky one.

The sensations of the wind resisting against her body, the heat of the animal below and the sun above, and the jostling of going over rocks starts to lull her into an uneasy nap…

…a nap filled with uneasy images and recent memories…

…to waking up with her whole body being slammed down to a hard-pact ground, suddenly free from the bag that imprisoned her and into a muddled heap at the manicured feet of one tall, statuesque and gorgeous woman.

Instinct has Isabel trying to quickly get to her feet, but one look behind her is met with two men pointing long, sharp, wooden spears in her direction. While the top half of them were human in every way she could see, their legs and feet were scaled in a metallic deep green color that terminated with two large claws sharp enough to pierce the floor. It was enough to pause her in her tracks as well, now that she could see where she has arrived – a sumptuous grand bedroom draped in rich reds and plush velvets and ornate gilded furniture – Isabel is certain that she has stepped inside one of the fantasy stories that she likes to read.

It was like the Grand Estate Hotel back in the city. Like the presidential suites that Amerin’s politicians frequented on the glasscreens when they make their important announcements to the world. It was brocade and golds and velvets and an indulgence that only the average person where Isabel lived would be lucky to glimpse once in their lifetime.

And then there is the woman that stands before her – lithe and tall with an almost alien quality of beauty that emanates from her pores in waves. The robe she wears is large and ornate with a grand sash that tied to her back. It was as red as the room, and it made her alabaster skin stand out proudly. Long, slender neck, artistically painted dark lips, vibrantly green eyes and hair kissed by strawberries. She has on a crown of pink roses. She is the perfect image of a princess.

Isabel is feeling like she has a rank smell and is underdressed in comparison, and the scrutiny she is under by all three surrounding her didn’t make matters any better. The point still at hand to her, however, is the fact that she had been taken hostage far from her home, and it was a point that she going to make and demand right now.

While still on the ground, she draws herself up with all the dignity that she has left and fills her dark eyes with the glare of modern injustice. Her lips part, preparing to inquire-

“If you want to return home,” the mystery princess beats Isabel to it with a crisp, feminine, accented voice, “then there’s something you can do for us.”

Whatever Isabel was to say, dies at the emphasis directed at her as the princess certainly didn’t sound like one in that moment.

The pause isn’t long, but it is long enough to find the redheaded woman suddenly towering over her.

What is said next has the former librarian, Isabel Yaci, falling back from the redhead in barely contained shock.

“We need you to kill…” and she pauses to give Isabel a killer smile to rival her own.

“You.”