The Frost Palace, the prison where only the worst of the worst criminals of the Dark Empire is held. It exists within a special Chaos Plain that keeps disappearing and reappearing in different locations of the world on fixed intervals.
The Chaos Plain has only one weather pattern year-round, blizzard. So, even if someone were to escape the Frost Palace, they would likely freeze to death soon after, but on the off chance they should make it out of the blizzard without dying, there is no telling where they would end up depending on when they leave the Chaos Plain. They could end up inside an active volcano, under the sea, or even another continent. For anyone not in the know of the plain's schedule, attempting to enter or leave the area safely is a game of chance you are likely to lose. However, this is all just speculation as hardly any prisoners have made it outside the Frost Palace's walls.
Deep below this prison is the cell of the worst of the worst to ever step foot here. A shining beacon of hope to many who had once given up hope in this dreary palace of tortured screams.
A person who destroyed half the Dark Empire, outsmarted the sages, and even brought the dark lord himself to his knees. Even just on her first day, she started a prison riot before escaping her restraints while the prison guards were distracted. She first raided the kitchen, then she used the food spiked with drugs to gain the loyalty of the prisoners sentenced to death by starvation, creating a cult-like following that worshipped her as the Flavor Savior. She then had them spread word of herself as a sort of messiah that would lead them all to freedom, occasionally drugging and feeding people to increase her following. Fortunately, the night where she was going to enact her plans, she was betrayed by a former commander Wang whom held a grudge against the Flavor Savior, and she was finally captured by the palace guards, and locked up in one of the most secure cells they had.
This messiah of the damned was of course none other than our very own Nox herself. She had been captured after accidentally teleporting into the Chaos Plain due to some spatial interference that occurred while using her spatial artifact. Unfortunately, her bounty was still in effect, so the moment her disguise was seen through, she was locked up with the other prisoners.
The Frost Palace has different sections dedicated to their own type of torture. You have the starvation sector where they keep you constantly on the verge of starving to death. The pain sector, where they will try to cause you as much physical pain as possible. They will skin you alive, light you on fire, and to poor salt in your wounds, which they also do, they say really mean things to you as they torture you. There is a room specifically for amputation, which more often than not is used to chop off genitals. There is also a sector where they deprive you of sleep and so on. Different crimes call for different punishments, and this palace is equipped to deal them out. However, there are some parts of the prison where the only sort of punishment would be the isolation, namely, solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement is a punishment only given to those too dangerous to be left anywhere else, whether it be because of them being unnaturally powerful or because they somehow managed to create a food cult in a week. They are held inside an enchanted vault made from only the strongest metals around, all while covered head to toe in personalized restraints, just for good measure.
"Hey, nice to meet you?" A guard said as he approached the two prison guards outside of Nox's cell door.
"You the new guy, right?" One of the prison guards said.
"Yes, sir! Officer Kaito reporting for duty!" The approaching guards said, while saluting.
"Hehe! I can just tell by looking that you came straight from the 'Red Palace'!" The other prison guard said.
"Yes, sir!"
"You can drop the saluting! Nobody cares about formality here!"
"Yes, si-! Uhm! I mean, Okay?"
"You're here to take over for me, *Yawn* right?" The sleepy senior guard said.
"Yes! My first assignment was to guard prisoner 0358 in solitary confinement!"
"Lucky you! Solitary guard duty is the easiest job we got, since nothing ever happens here! They must be worried a newbie might mess up now that the prisoners are in a tizzy!" The other senior guard said.
"Whatever! *Yawn* I'm going to bed! Have fun you two!" The sleepy guard said before he walked up the stairs.
"So, uhm!"
"You can drop the act now! Nobody can hear us down here!"
Just as the senior guard said that, the stiff newbie suddenly lost all the tension in his body as he flopped on his back.
"*Sigh* Finally! That was so exhausting!"
"You might not have been so tired had you followed the plan, Shadow 3!"
"I was just tired of eating that pig's feed they call rations! How was I supposed to know they kept a better eye on the palace lord's desserts than they do on sensitive information!"
"Because of your sugar tooth, you nearly compromised the mission, you dimwit!"
"Yeah, well! I paid the price and got held back a year! No big whoop!"
"If this was before they lost half their army, you would have lost your head for that cake!"
"It was chocolate cake! How was I supposed to resist!"
"Ugh! I forgot how nonsensical you are! I'll never understand what the guild leader sees in you!"
"Anyways! Where are the others!"
"Shadow 4 got sent to the Yellow Palace, and Shadow 2 was recently transferred to the Green Palace."
"I get why 4 might be sent to Yellow, but why was that hotheaded 2 sent to Green?"
"It was something about needing fire cultivators for an experiment! It doesn't really matter, since he will be back once they are done with him!"
"Cool! So, how far have you gotten here?"
"I've taken out most of the targets during last week's riots, but I still haven't located the rescue target! I suspect he might be somewhere down in solitary, but the cells are hard to approach without triggering the alarms!"
"So, we just have to get solitary watch and hope we get stationed at his cell! Great! At least this time I get to sleep in a proper bed while I freeze my ass off!"
"Just make sure you don't slip up! Solitary is probably the only place nobody's around to listen in on our conversations, and that is only because of the sudden shortage in manpower!"
"Now that you mention it, isn't the person behind this door the one who made that shortage! I heard he was also the guy behind the riots!" Shadow 3 asked, while looking at the large metal door.
"Yeah, and you'll never guess who it is?"
"Who?" Nox asked.
"It is …! HOLY SH-!"
*Swoosh*
While Shadow 1 was caught off guard by Nox suddenly appearing out of nowhere, Shadow 3 swiftly threw an enchanted kunai at her. However, Nox just grabbed it out of the air, deactivated the enchantments and handed it back to Shadow 3.
"Here you dropped this!"
"SOUND TH-!"
*Swoosh*
"Hush, little baby! Don't say a word! Or everyone will know your dirty little secrets!" Nox said as she covered Shadow 1's mouth before he could alert the guards up above.
"Oh, now I remember! Isn't this the mage that kicked your asses back on the 1st continent?"
"Hm? Wait a minute! Weren't you with that guy who blew up my horse?"
Shadow 1 just nervously shook his head, as Nox started giving off an eerie presence.
"So, what you want with us horse lady?" Shadow 3 said, interrupting Nox's staring contest with Shadow 1.
"Hm? Oh, right! Let's team up!"
"Huh?"
"What do you have in mind?" Shadow 1 replied, ignoring the confused looks Shadow 3 was giving them.
"Well, you guys need help breaking out my dumb-dumb neighbor and I need some lackies to go run some errands for me! So, let's help each other out!"
"You think you can get past the security?"
"I've been wandering in and out of here for like a week now, so you tell me, Mr. Assassin!" Nox said, as she threw a token at shadow 3.
"This should be in my room! How did you get this?!" Shadow 3 exclaimed.
"You left the guild token in your room? How could you be this careless! They search our belongings every other day, you would have been caught by the end of this shift!"
"Well, no harm no foul! So, what kind of errands do we need to run miss horse lady!"
"Nothing much! I just need you to deliver some packages, spread some gossip, and whatever menial tasks I can't be bothered with, all without ratting me out!"
"What kind of packages?"
"The kinds that go boom if you open them!"
"How can we trust you?"
"Because if you don't, you'll be promoted from prison guard to prisoner! So, do we have a deal!" Nox said as she reached out her hand.
"Okay, deal!" Shadow 3 said as he grabbed Nox's hand.
"WAIT SHADOW 3 STOP!!!" Shadow 1 shouted, noticing something was off, and tried to stop his colleague from shaking hands with Nox.
Unfortunately, it only made things worse as the blue chains covered all three of the figures holding hands in the dark basement of the Frost Palace.
"Sweet! A two for one sale!"
"What just happened?" Shadow 3 asked in astonishment.
"I told you to get away from her!" Shadow 1 said to 3, before turning to glare at Nox.
"Oh, don't worry slave 1! This is just a precaution!"
"What did you just-!"
"HEY, I HEARD SHOUTING! EVERYTHING ALRIGHT DOWN THERE!" A concerned prison guard shouted from the top of the stairs.
"…! Ugh! YEAH! SORRY! I JUST LOST A GAME OF CARDS IS ALL!" Shadow 3 shouted back
"OH, OKAY! I KNOW SOLITARY IS BORING, BUT TRY TO KEEP IT DOWN UNLESS ITS AN EMERGENCY!"
"WILL DO!" Shadow 3 said.
Once the concerned guard was gone shadow 3 turned to Nox.
"What did you do to me?"
"Oh, were you trying to rat me out just now slave 3! Well, that's too bad, cause the contract won't let you!"
"Contract?"
"In exchange for me getting that dumb-dumb out of jail, you two are basically my slaves!"
"WHAT?!"
"Keep it down slave 1 or you might get suspended!"
*muffled*
Upon hearing Nox's orders Shadow 1 unwillingly covered his own mouth.
"The deal was you become my lackies in exchange for me helping you free that guy you were looking for, which I already did by the way!"
"What?"
"You were hired through the assassin's guild to rescue an Arthur Artorius Davis, who got locked up here by the dark lord for being quote 'A pain'! Well, he broke into my escape tunnel two days ago!"
"How do you know all this? Even if you've been spying on us, I have not said a word of our mission since arriving here!" Shadow 1 asked.
"A dash of the supernatural, a pinch of context clues, and a whole evening spent flipping through your diary!" Nox said as she pulled out Shadow 1's diary.
"How did you?!"
"Now who's being careless!" Shadow 3 said as he looked over at Shadow 1.
"Shut up! I'm not the same as you! I hid that in a secure location!"
"Hey, boss! How long did it take you to figure out Shoji was an assassin?"
"Hey, don't tell her my real name idiot! And why are you suddenly calling her boss?! Are you betraying the guild?!"
"No, he's just being a better assassin then you! As for your question slave 3, I spotted him right away!"
"Hehe! I knew it!"
"Huh?"
"A common mistake amongst veteran stealth potatoes like you is that you tend to hide your presence without thinking about it, which is great for when you're sneaking around, and not so great when you're trying to blend in. It makes you stick out like a sore thumb! It's probably why your boss stuck you with this quote 'annoying dead weight who keeps getting into trouble'!" Nox said as she pointed towards slave 3 while reading out of the diary.
"Hey, that's not fair! When have I ever gotten into trouble!"
"Well, there was the Red Palace!"
"Aside from that!"
"Then there was the Water temple incident!"
"And that!"
"Then there was the time with the guild master!"
"…"
"Oh, and let's not forget the -!"
"Waah! Boss! Slave 1 is bullying me! Make him stop!" Shadow 3 started crying as he tried to throw himself at Nox.
*Thud*
Only for Nox to sidestep him and let him plant his snotty face into the wall.
"Well, the best sneaky boys can adapt to sudden changes in the environment on a dime. You know, like how slave 3 acted like a baby just now so he could get behind me! Isn't that right?" Nox said as she sidestepped the assassin trying to stab her in the back.
*Swoosh*
"Damn it! What the hell?!" Shadow 3 said as he dropped the knife.
"Yeah, I've dealt with way sneakier assassins than you sonny Jim, so you can forget about trying to kill me with a cheap trick like that! Now here are the map and the packages you need to deliver! Good luck!" Nox said, before walking through the illusion covered hole in the wall of her cell.