Break
Hello!
My name is Banner, and I tried to overthrow a king who was being tyrannical, but my attempt failed and I was then locked in the dungeons.
The dungeons were only a part of the punishment that was decreed though, because the king also scheduled a public execution for me, and so I had to hope and pray that I’d be rescued.
I met someone else who was imprisoned in the dungeons, and she told me that she had been imprisoned for refusing to put her hand on her heart while the tyrannical king had been walking past her with his goons.
“He sure is a sensitive guy, isn’t he?” I said, “I mean, you won’t signal that your heart belongs to him and then he gets all pouty about it… Are they going to let you out soon?”
“They say that I can leave once I agree to put my hand over my heart for him, and they say that if I won’t do it within a month then my arm will be chopped off.” she said; and I said, “Sounds like our terrible king, that’s for sure… And so are you gonna comply?…”
“I guess I don’t know for sure…” she said, “I mean, I hate to give into the king’s terror-tactics, but it is tempting to just metaphorically kiss the ring so that I can return to my old life…”
“Yeah, I’d be tempted to do that too if I were in your position,” I said, “though there’s no option like that for me… Nope… I’m just gonna either somehow escape or I’ll be publicly executed…”
“What exactly did you do?” she asked; and I said, “I conspired with some people who work at the palace to have the king declared unfit for the crown; but our attempt to overthrow the king in that way failed, my fellow conspirators were all killed, and now the plan is to kill me too…”
“Well, I’m glad that you tried;” she said, “but, yeah, overthrowing tyrants isn’t usually very easy, and so I guess it isn’t surprising that you failed.”
“Yeah,” I said in a depressed tone of voice, “and escaping from dungeons isn’t usually very easy either, which is why I’m not too hopeful about managing to avoid being executed.”
Then another person came up to us and said, “Hey Banner! Hey Billie! I’m Brax! And I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, and what would you say if I told you that escaping from this dungeon is something that the 3 of us are able to do if we want to!…”
“I’d say that I’m listening but skeptical…” I said; and Brax said, “That’s understandable! The only catch is that we would have to be indentured servants for a month to the person who would free us…
But wouldn’t that be worth it to show our tyrannical king a thing or 2!”
“And what would we have to do as servants?” Billie asked skeptically; and Brax said, “We’d have to help our rescuer overthrow the king!”
“And why would our “rescuer” think that we’d be able to succeed in helping to overthrow the king?” I asked, “I mean, I literally just failed at trying to do that exact same thing.”
“The person won’t tell me that part…” Brax admitted, “But isn’t it at least worth a try?…”
“I guess I’m down.” Billie said with a shrug; and I said, “I’m a bit nervous about this, but I’ll just be executed if I don’t get out of here and so I suppose that I may as well join you and Billie in agreeing to the terms of the person who can supposedly break us out of here…”
“Very good!” Brax said, “The person should be here to help us escape from these dungeons within an hour, and then the preparations for our attempt to overthrow the king can begin!…”
