Chapter 1 - Where am I?

It's been a day since I've woken up in this prison. Since then any memories of how I got here have yet to return to me. Just a massive headache from a blow to the back of my head. The spot had already matted with dried blood. The last thing I remembered was being in my apartment on my bed... Upset because my webseries had just finished, and I'd hated what happened.

That didn't matter right now. My goal was only escape. Unlike other prisons, there was no active guards, and the prisoners weren't kept in cells. When I had woken up, I had already been captured by slavers and were held in a cell with no doors, huddled together in the dark. The other prisoners had explained to me the situation. We were all lowered in here after conviction with a bundle of food and the clothes on our backs. The area around the entrance has the highest concentration of other prisoners and therefore was the most dangerous place to be. People were jumped and killed for the food they brought in, or the shoes and clothes they wore. I needed to move further into the prison if I planned to survive.

It was at least easy to escape the slavers. You just had to show interest in one of them. -'Interest' if you know what I mean.- After that you punch them in the throat while their pants were down and run.

I hadn't spied any slavers, or other prisoners, for a while now so it was finally time to figure out what was happening. My hair, which was normally short and black was now long and blonde. When I finally found a puddle, an unfamiliar face reflected back at me. Blond hair, dirty and tangled framed a heart shaped face. She was beautiful, even disheveled and malnourished as she was now. It was hard to distinguish the green in her eyes with the dim light cast by the magic fueled torch fused in the wall a short distance away. -Who were you?- Ripples broke the image in the puddle from where I'd touched it. Whoever she was, I was in her place now.

Understanding dawned on me. My body isn't my own, I'm in a place I don't recognize with people speaking in a language I don't recognize, even though I understand it. -I'd been isekai'd.-

I stared at myself for a long while. Blank. I thought I'd be happy about something like this. What reader doesn't dream of wanting to be transported to another world. Yet here I was. This wasn't the grand adventure I'd signed up for. In fact, I hadn't signed up for anything like this.

My somber stupor broke the moment I heard a yell behind me. My bare feet stung from the rough cobblestones and sharp pieces of stone littering the ground. The slavers must've taken my shoes while I was unconscious so it would be harder to run.

Some of the halls were lit sparsely by the strange torches while others were pitch black. I had already run into several dead ends trying to navigate this maze. The voices were still behind me so, steeling my nerves, I ducked down an unlit hall using the walls as my guide forwards. It twisted twice before ending in a dead end. I weighed my options. If I went back now, they'd surely find me, so instead I shrank into a corner and waited for them to pass. The sounds echoing down the corridor soon grew louder. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and I'd never noticed just how loud my breathing was before. I tried to hold my breath waiting for them to pass. minutes passed and it grew quiet. I jumped when I heard them yell again and silently rejoiced when I'd realized how faint the sound was. Soon, I knew I was once again alone.

I sighed, "Why couldn't I have isekai'd into a beautiful counts daughter, or a dukes... Or a farmers daughter who is discovered by a Prince disguised as a knight... UGHH." I buried my head in my lap. Instead, I had the slave beginning. Experiencing hardships before being whisked away by some... "Haah." What Prince was going to find me down here? And there was no way I was just going to let these slavers catch me. Not while I could still fight at least.

Many of the web novels and stories I read had mentions of prisons but only one matched this one so well. Here, the prisoners were left to suffer in the dark, being reduced to animals to survive or be preyed upon. There was one well known 'exit' to the prison that was controlled by the slavers, though it was treacherous even for the experienced. Prisoners wishing to escape this hell often gladly gave themselves up to that future. Not me.

There was a second exit, though it was 'guarded by a monster.' A vampire imprisoned here a thousand years ago; Eclis Dumont the Grand Duke and war hero of the Rose Empire. He had united the various nonhuman peoples across both continents and with that army they took over Ganimede, forcing most of the humans to flee to Tyrra. If this was the world I was thinking, and if the novel had yet to start then Eclis was somewhere in this prison. The image of him chained to the wall flashed in my mind and a pang struck my heart. -I remember now.- Before I'd fallen asleep my deepest wish I'd ever had in my twenty five years of life was the chance to save him.

Surrounded by silence I stood up reaching around me to feel my way out of this dead end. -Strange, it was a dead end wasn't it?- The hall extended on both sides of me, the wall I had thought I'd been huddling against was no where to be found. Odd.

Not wanting to meet whatever I had narrowly escaped behind me, I continued down the dark passage. It twisted and turned and as I felt my way through and it frequently branched and forked. All I could do was guess. Eventually I stopped fretting at the fourth fork and picked without thought hoping I'd somehow find Eclis. There was no way of course. In the book it was said that prisoners often died of dehydration if they weren't captured by the slavers. Only one person ever found him, though they weren't named because they died quenching his thirst.

-Just keep moving foward.- Hours passed before a blue light flickered into view. This long hall was finally coming to an end! It was cooler down here; the air was damp and the walls became slick with mold and water. I found myself rubbing warmth into my arms. Finally, the never ending hallway opened into a small room. Inside was a single iron door in the middle of two blue magic torches. On the door was an insignia that struck me as awfully familiar... "No." -It can't be.- Despite myself, I grinned. Before me was the insignia of the house of Dumont.