While Jessica did intend to rebel against her captors, this rebellion began after her bath. The water was already warm when she arrived but the temptation of unsupervised access to Harrow’s quarters proved too great and she decided to investigate while she had the chance.

  Harrow’s tent was really more like a canvas building with a central room and two divided rooms in the back. The main area was a war room of sorts, with space enough for a dozen people to crowd in and look over the maps and ledgers strewn about a table in the center. He was clearly not worried she might spy on him, leaving all of this out. She wasn’t sure whether that meant he thought she was harmless, or that she had no chance of escaping alive.

  The left of the two side-rooms was a living space, albeit a spartan one. There was one cot raised off the ground by a hammock frame as well as a desk, chair, and trunk with another of the same sophisticated locks she’d seen on the pit hatches. With the chest locked to her, the only thing worth checking out was the desk.

  Laid out in neat, orderly lines were a set of hand-drawn schematics. Of what, Jessica had no clue. Not because they were poorly drawn. In fact, the drafting was exceptionally well-rendered. She simply had no idea what she was looking at. Nothing was labeled. There wasn’t even a title on most pages. At most there were notes in the margins with equally impenetrable jargon like ‘recoil orifice resistance low (leak?)’ or ‘stress fractures 1a 2a 3a — 17Cr5Ni no good.’

  Jessica wanted to ask him what all this was, but that would mean admitting to snooping around his bedroom. She would rather have jumped back in the prison pit.

  The bath proved as relaxing and rejuvenating as she hoped. There was even soap to get the micro-demons off her. By the ten minute mark she was ready to take a nap right there in the tub. Not wanting to get dragged out by her ankles, however, she reluctantly got out, toweled off, and opened the curtains.

  To her surprise and discomfort, someone had grabbed her clothes while she was in the tub and replaced them with a pair of white pants and tunic, blue jacket, and red hat. Refusing to look the part of one of Harrow’s followers, she put on only the pants and tunic.

  “Dressed yet?” a woman’s voice called.

  A tall, middle-aged elven woman with yellowish skin entered with a bowl of stew cupped in her hands. Strangely, she wasn’t dressed in the red-white-and-blue uniform everyone else was. Her clothes consisted of a leafy green dress, thatch sandals, and a heavy load of beaded jewelry on her wrists and ankles. The elf smiled, wrinkles scrunching tastefully about her eyes.

  “The young master sent me to bring you some food,” she said.

  Jessica raised an eyebrow. “By ‘young master’ you mean Harrow?”

  The elven woman nodded serenely and set the bowl down on the table full of maps. She was tall. Well over six feet. Taller than both her and Harrow.

  “And your relation to Harrow is?” Jessica asked.

  The woman clasped her hands over her heart. “I am his dedicated follower and eternal servant, Arboria. I have lived over 1,000 years, but it is only these past 25 that I feel I have found my purpose in service to the young master.”

  He got isekai’d some time around 2020, Jessica calculated. Good to know.

  “So you’re in his harem?” Jessica asked.

  Arboria nodded. “I am indeed.”

  “I don’t suppose he rescued you from slavery?”

  Arboria giggled. Her laugh was smooth and matronly. “Goodness no! On the contrary I was once a famous huntress, quite capable of living independently. I give my servitude and admiration freely. Now, do you need anything else from me, dear?”

  Jessica shook her head.

  Alone once more, Jessica scarfed down the stew. They hadn’t starved her and John, but the food they gave them was bland and tasteless by comparison with this stew. Venison, hardy root vegetables, savory mushrooms, and exotic herbs. It reminded her of her dad’s doenjang-jjigae.

  Halfway through devouring it, John entered the tent and startled at the sight of her.

  “I-I’m sorry! I thought you were already done! I’ll— I’ll wait outside!”

  Jessica looked up, stew clinging to her cheeks. “I’m just eating, dude. You can come in.”

  “B-But— they sent me in to get a bath! I couldn’t—!”

  She jammed her thumb behind her. “There’s a curtain. I swear I won’t peek.”

  It took several rounds of convincing before a very red-faced John finally went into the bathroom. The next hurdle was his hang-up about using the same bath water.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Would you rather I step outside?” she asked, impatience leaking into her voice.

  A tiny voice behind the curtain squeaked out, “Yes…”

  She sighed and took the bowl of stew outside with her. It was chilly outside in just the pants and shirt. The jacket and hat would have made it bearable but Jessica refused to wear a uniform for a cause she hadn’t signed up for and was explicitly here to stop. Seeing the scope of the rebel camp, her task felt even more herculean than when she set out.

  “Really, Antrumia, I’m fine. I don’t need—”

  “Oh, young master, you don’t need to keep up appearances! Let us take care of you!”

  Jessica looked over to where Harrow was being swarmed by three tall, middle-aged elven women. Arboria was one, but there was also a dark elf with skin the color of loam and a pale elf who looked like she was made of porcelain down to the cobalt-blue tattoos covering her from head-to-toe.

  “It’s not that cold, I don’t need—”

  Working like a single machine, the three women forced a scarf, earmuffs, and mittens on Harrow against his protests. It was, in Jessica’s opinion, not nearly cold enough to justify them. It was maybe in the mid-50s at most.

  “There! Now you won’t catch a cold!” the dark elf said.

  “Ooh, don’t say that Antrumia! You’re making me want to nurse him back to health!” the pale elf said.

  “How wicked, Altea! You are being just as naughty as the young master!” Arboria said.

  This sent all three into a fit of giggles which visibly annoyed Harrow. The other rebels seemed to be actively ignoring the commotion. Jessica had no such plans. On the contrary, she put a smirk right up on her face and waited for him to turn and see it. A moment later, he did.

  “Jessica! I see you’re enjoying your huntress’ stew? You can thank Arboria for that. She’s a phenomenal cook and caught the deer herself. Are you ready for our discussion? Where’s the serf boy?” Harrow said as he power-walked over to her.

  Jessica snorted. “Oh no. You don’t get to pretend I didn’t just see all that.”

  “See what? The doting of my party members? It’s something to behold, isn’t it?” he said with a grin that dared her to make a bigger deal of it.

  “Quite an interesting harem you’ve got, ‘young master’,” she said.

  “Just Harrow is fine. Or ‘Commandent,’ if you insist on using a title. And yes, I do adore my harem. Thank you for noticing.”

  Jessica clucked her tongue and looked away. The tricky bastard cut off her avenue of attack right out the gate.

  “John’s still in the bath. He’ll be along in a bit,” she said.

  “We’ll meet in my tent once he’s finished. I suspect I’ll need to catch you two up on what’s happening before we start the war meeting.”

  Jessica shook her head. “I’m sorry, the what? I didn’t come here to—”

  “You came here to convince me to end my insurgency in exchange for the lives of a lamia named Nagakanya and a lizard animalar named Riza who are currently held prisoner by Mystiferia,” Harrow said, stepping out of Antrumia’s grasp and directly into Jessica’s personal space. “I’ll save you the trouble: That isn’t going to happen. Instead, you’re going to fight for me, Jessica Moon, you just don’t know it yet.”

  Jessica scoffed. “Congratulations on your very basic intel collection. But knowing my full name doesn’t add up to knowing about me or what I want.”

  “I know you better than you realize. But I’ll save that particular surprise for our info session. Enjoy your stew,” Harrow said, patting her on the shoulder and brushing past.

  His three party members looked at her with barely-disguised jealousy as they rushed past to keep up with him. The insinuation that there was anything to be jealous of was an insult itself.

  As the antics between Harrow and the elf ladies started up again Jessica walked back inside the tent in disgust. John was dressed when she entered. He elected to wear the full outfit, hat and all.

  “You know you don’t have to wear their uniform,” Jessica said.

  “Should I not?”

  She shrugged. “Do what you want. I’m not your boss.”

  John rubbed his neck. “Well, ya sort of are! I’m followin’ you after all.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Jessica herself had been the one to insist she was the grown adult looking after him.

  “Go ahead and take off the jacket and hat. We’re not signing up for a war,” she said and he complied.

  Harrow kept them waiting another fifteen minutes before showing up. In his shadow was the towering figure of Morkal with her usual look of grim disinterest.

  “Allow me to formally welcome you to my humble abode. I hope the bath and the hot meal have you feeling refreshed and ready to take in a lot of information in a short amount of time because we have a war meeting right after this and a siege not too long after that,” Harrow said as he threw his earmuffs and scarf on the table.

  Jessica folded her arms. “Why don’t you start by explaining why the hell you think we’re gonna cooperate?”

  “Very well,” he said, spinning a chair around and sitting down backwards in it, facing the two of them. “Jessica, you’re a smart cookie. You took APUSH, right?”

  If his goal was throwing her for a loop, he succeeded.

  “Uh… yeah? Almost a decade ago. Why?” she asked.

  “Do you remember that political cartoon with the chopped up snake?”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “Do you remember what it said?”

  Plumbing the dark depths of her time in APUSH, she eventually arrived at the answer.

  “Join or die? Is that supposed to be a threat?”

  “No,” Harrow said, leaning forward into the back of the chair, “it’s a promise. As in, I promise that if you return to Elsifeya right now, either one of the adventurers who trailed you to Fort Neusa will nab you and bring you to the Adventurer’s Guild, or Mystiferia will give you, John, Naga, and Riza an extremely slow, extremely painful death. Hence: Join, or die.”

  “We weren’t followed to Fort Neusa,” Jessica said.

  Harrow burst out laughing. “Oh yes you were! Where do you think Junfeng came from? You must have seen him during your brief visit to our lovely holding area?”

  Junfeng. That was the name she couldn’t come up with. The Chinese adventurer whose party Min-woo slaughtered. So he wasn’t here to find new harem members after all. He was here to…

  “So in case you forgot your options,” Harrow said, “they are, to wit: Join, or die.”