I looked out through the bars from where I sat on the bed, trying to catch a glimpse of the newcomer. “Whoa… This place is incredible!” the stranger said in a bubbly, yet clearly masculine, voice, his tone similar to that of an excited kid on a field trip. “Indeed,” the warden said evenly, before seeming to continue a conversation she’d been having with the stranger outside, “as the external access to the storeroom is unneeded for this shipment, I would have you bring in the cargo through the main entrance and leave it here in the central room.” The clicks of her heels silenced as she came into view. She stopped at the edge of the lounge’s carpet, then turned to face the stranger. The stranger followed her, his head swiveling around with wide-eyed interest as he took in Stone Lock’s main room. My attention locked onto him with intrigue equal to his curiosity in the strange prison. Tall and lean, the stranger had a youthful face and a head of pure white hair he wore short and ti

I’d lost track of time sitting silently with the warden, but after a while my thoughts had started to align and the warden slid off of me, seemingly satisfied I’d returned to my usual state of mind. Between the couch and the table, the warden stood over me. “Come, Bryan.” She ran her fingers through my hair as she rounded the couch and walked towards the crates. I rose and went after her, coming to a stop beside her next to the cargo the stranger had unloaded. There were four stacks of crates, with each stack being only two wood boxes high. However, next to those stacks was a lone open crate; the one the warden had been digging around in when I’d woken up after getting a boot to my head. “After our guest left and I was forced to subdue you, I noticed that the lid of this crate was slightly askew. And upon closer inspection, I found it to be loose enough to open without the use of tools,” the warden said, simmering anger rising in her voice. “I suspected this crate to be purposeful

“The actual act of etching a rune is rather simple,” she said as she flexed her hand into a fist and crushed the flame crystalized spirit. The falling shards of the crystal disintegrated into the nothingness before hitting the lounge carpet. But the glowing red vapor that’d been within the crystalized spirit remained in her fist as wisps of energy leaked from between her fingers. I stared unblinkingly at her fist, transfixed by the process. “Once you’ve broken its crystalline form to release the spirit contained within, all you need to do is will the spirit into the rune stylus before the spirit fades away…” She opened her hand, and the luminescent red mist flowed into the metal rod held in her other hand. As it did, the tip of the stylus started to glow red hot. “Once the stylus is primed, you will have a few minutes to use the spirit you’ve channeled into it before it dissipates… which is as simple as…” She leaned towards the bullet and scrawled a small symbol into the casing. “.

In the dining room, the warden and I sat side-by-side at the long table. The light of the sun shard hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier illuminated the room in a warm glow. Our plates were mostly empty, while our cups of juice were still half full. And through infinitely smooth conversational navigation, I’d managed to turn the topic of conversation towards something I had mentally filed away the day I arrived at Stone Lock: The degenerate reputation outworlders have made for themselves in Thaessa. “I mean… it can’t be that bad, right?” I grinned at the warden, elbow atop table and my face resting against my knuckles. “I suppose it’s not any one thing, but more about how almost all outworlders are slaves to their baser urges,” the warden said through a quiet, chiming laugh. “Go on…” I said, half-jokingly playing into the outworlder stereotype by leering openly at her pushed up cleavage. She still hadn’t put on her coat, meaning she still only wore the black sports bra, tight

As I fully wrapped my mind around the implications of what ‘variety’ looked like on her side of things, an undercurrent of annoyance buzzed in my core at the idea of the warden being with other men.I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair as I let out an exasperated groan. The question was so obvious, and the answer to it so thoroughly ingrained into me, that it didn’t even cross my mind to consider it. I’m an idiot… This definitely shifts it back towards being a harem… but it also makes it basically impossible to morally justify because there’d be a double standard. “I wouldn’t be alright with other men joining…” I admitted.“So, it would seem this is more closely aligned with a harem, no? As there would be a rule to ensure that you would be the only man the women in the harem would be permitted to be intimate with or form a romantic connection with?”“Yeah, I guess that does make it more like a harem, seeing how it’s a double standard… but it’s not something I can budge on,