Chapter 2: Taverns and Treason (Patreon)

[A/N: As a reminder, Sara's Second Isekai is a beta read. You're reading the rough draft of true literary crack. So enjoy it without too many expectations. XD]

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Ever since Sara declared she was protecting Daniel, he was clinging to her like a lost puppy to prevent backlash, and at present, that was very inconvenient for him. After all—

"What do you mean you’re going to practice with us?!" 

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Sara huffed, putting on a sword belt as if it were only natural. “Now, if you want to avoid practice with me, do it. Otherwise, attend it. This in-between is very obnoxious.”

He froze and looked at his scrawny body, now wrapped in oversized leather armor (he needed kid’s armor but was too tall). Then he looked at their classmates, watching them like hawks. “Have mercy.”

“I’m not your queen,” Sara replied. “And if I were, I’d make uncommittal whining illegal.”

Looking for another argument, Daniel skirted the issue. “Wait. How are you even going to leave? I doubt they’ll let one of us just leave.”

She shrugged and started walking away. “I’ll find a way.”

“At least tell me what you’re going to do!”

Sara stopped and turned to him with a listless expression. “I’m going to pick flowers.”

With those enigmatic words, she walked away, leaving Daniel with a wry smile. “Jason’s gonna kill me.”

2

Jason Newborn was a simple jock on the surface, but all it took was a well-placed philosophy quote to transform himself into a man of refined culture in the eyes of others. After all, they didn’t care about philosophy.

Indeed, the thing people loved about Jason was his face, something he was equally passionate about. But it wasn’t just his face—it was his image. His obsession with his reputation drove him to excel at school, practice sports, and look up quotes on Goodreads.

So when his girlfriend (he refused to believe she’d just dump him) humiliated him in front of his class, it hurt him deeply. It would anyone, right? Yeah, that was right! It was absolutely unreasonable and intentionally hurtful. Such behavior was unacceptable, and someone had to make sure Sara knew it—felt it.

And who else could do that but him? 

Sara Reece was a four-time USTA national tennis champion who would compete in the US Open next year. She was a straight-A student, had a stunning smile, and sported a banging body… yeah. Yeah, that’s why he chose her to be his girlfriend.

And it was also why she thought she could get away with hurting people.

Luckily, it wouldn’t be hard to set her back on straight. One practice is all it’d take to remind her that her options here were few, and the people who could compare to him, Jason Newborn, were nonexistent in either world. After that, she’d regret her decision. Oh, yes, she’d regret it.

And that’s when it’d happen. Sara would crawl back, as she always did, and he’d reject her in front of everyone. Then, once the situation sunk in, and she was truly sorry, feeling the same way he did, THAT was when he’d welcome her back. 

See, Jason didn’t want to reject Sara or make her feel the pain he felt. It was for her own good. She needed to learn what she did wrong. And luckily, he was there to teach her.

“Yo, where’s Sara?” A Hispanic jock who didn’t skip leg day walked up to the pondering teen.

“I don’t know. Probably switching out her pad,” Jason sneered. “What do you want, Raul? Did you just come here to mock me?”

“Mock you?” Raul scoffed. “Bro, wake up. We’re running fifteen minutes late because your girl’s missing. Stop acting like I’m Salt Bae-ing your wounds, and look around.”

Jason snorted and looked around. When he did, he found that she was indeed missing. That didn’t both her a moment ago. However, once he noticed it, it was like a sore on his jawline, inflaming every time he chewed. “I’m going to ask that freak.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he strode up to Daniel, who was already surrounded. “Yo! Where’s Sara?”

Daniel’s eyes widened in panic. “I-I don’t know.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘I don’t know?’” Jason seethed. “You were just with her.”

“I-I….” 

“Lady Reece will not be joining us for the next few days,” a commanding voice answered, capturing everyone’s attention. A man with salt and peppered hair walked up, his hands behind his back. “She requested a minor quest, and it was accepted. That’s all I can tell you.”

“What type of answer is that?!” Jason demanded. “Do you think it’s okay to take one of our classmates and not tell us where she went?”

“By Lady Reece’s request, I cannot tell you more about it,” the man elaborated. “Now, let’s begin. My name is Sycount Sullusberg, a member of the royal guards. I’ll be teaching you magic and sword play in preparation for the Golden Trial five days from now. While it’s a competition between peers, you should take it seriously. Sponsors who may fund your magical development with resources, spells, and artifacts will be watching. So this is likely the most critical time of your lives.”

“Wait! There are five days to teach us magic for the most critical time of our lives, and you let her go take a quest?” Jason scoffed in disbelief.

“Lord Newborn,” Sycount Sullusberg frowned, “If Lady Reece wasn’t qualified to take the trial, we wouldn’t have let her go. Now please refrain from interruption.”

A collective gasp rang out from the students, and a ripple of whispers spread through them.

“I’m also curious…. What if she doesn’t return?” Daniel gulped.

Sycount Sullsburg’s frown deepened. “If she doesn’t return for the trial, she’ll be punished. If she deserts Escara, we’ll strip her of her title and put her on trial. Such is the expectation for all deserters, regardless of their origins.”

As Ms. Shouts went off on a tirade, Jason clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. He was supposed to teach Sara—show her the errors of her ways. And now what? She went off on a quest? No… wait. That’s what it was. “She’s avoiding me,” he chuckled under his breath. “Unbelievable.”

Sara knew Jason would teach her, so she was avoiding him. How cowardly.

“It’s no matter. She’ll have to face me in five days,” Jason chuckled. “While she’s out avoiding me, I’ll master magic and sword fighting. Then I’ll remind her who I am.”

3

While Jason brooded during practice, Sara and her female sycount guard Aelia were riding mutated horses (as she still called them) toward the Quesca Mountains in the south. The range was impossible to miss. Once a person exited the capital’s walls, they could see the towering peaks piercing the skies.

While they were mountains, it was hard to believe that. Sara had once seen the Rocky Mountains from Boulder, Colorado, and she remembered being in awe. However, compared to the cloud-wreathed mountains before her, they looked like grains of sand.

This was the territory of the gods.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Aelia asked.

Sara gave the woman a mocking smile. “Earth teaches sword fighting classes, too.”

“Enough to beat a proctor?” 

“I didn’t beat the proctor,” Sara replied. That was true. Two days ago, she could’ve sliced the man’s sword in half and took half his upper half with it, but right now, she lacked the power and thousands of hours of muscle memory she had developed over a half-decade.

“But you would’ve if your body would’ve kept up,” Aelies insisted.

“Perhaps you’re right.” 

A deafening silence followed until Aelia’s frown knotted, and she looked over. “I’m not sure how you convinced the king to let you do this, but it’s a fool’s errand. This flower only blooms for an hour during the full moon. If a plant this potent were easy to acquire, this world would be a different place.”

Sara looked into the distance. “Indeed it would be….”

Seeing that Sara couldn’t be bought or reasoned with, Aelia kept quiet on the sixteen-hour journey through rocky planes and thickets until they happened upon a forest with golden leaves. It had just rained in the area, so it smelled fresh, the ground was soft and spongy, and the golden leaves glimmered like Eldorado. It was a truly surreal place.

“Let’s set up camp here,” Aelia said, reaching a patch of trees that were thin, allowing for great visibility. “Moonlit Grove is famous for its visibility at night time. If we have a chance to find it, it’ll be here.”

Sara developed a sharp smile and replied in her mind: ‘They don’t grow in clearings—that’s why they’re rare!’ She wanted to say that, but she had to be careful. While she had neither time nor patience to pretend to be the lost lamb (not like she could, anyway), she needed to prevent being accused of being a spy. So she bit her tongue and set up camp.

After a meal of seasoned iska fish and tilla berries, the two waited in silence until the massive red moon fully waxed, becoming the brightest of the moon cycle.

“I’m going to relieve myself before we set out,” Sara said, pointing to a stump.

Aelia's face stiffened until she saw the area was close. “Sure. Don’t dawdle.”

“You got it.” Sara walked behind the massive stump and knelt, closing her eyes. ‘I only get one shot at this. Please be enough….’

Without a mana core, she was relying just on the mana in her spirit veins—which wasn’t much for what she was about. Closing her eyes, she began mentally chanting.

‘Sferíki fosforésce, to spíti ton astraí, ilumináva tis enigma pleúres. Dante, péma stin ámichos órasi, éklausen stin êcho tou kósmou.'

A thin yet massive mana pulse abruptly spread out from her position, spreading out for miles. While it wouldn’t be picked up by most people, it wrapped Aelia in gooseflesh and sent her running with ghostly speed. “Sara!”

Sara ignored her, rapidly searching the landscape with something similar to radar mixed with infrared. The divination spell (spells that send, receive, or investigate information) spread a thin layer of mana for miles, allowing Sara to see magical signatures through a topical map.

Nothing on Earth could compare. 

“Sara!” Aelia reached her in an instant. Just as she was about to grab Sara, the teen's snapped open. “Aelia? What happened?” 

Aelia's eyes widened in confusion. “What happened? You don’t know?”

Sara shook her head. “No. It’s like… I had a dream. I have those sometimes, and it feels like they drain all my energy. They’re strange, and they often come true…."

“A profecty?!” Aelia exclaimed, shaking her. This was a time of peril that required a summoning of heroes. So this could change everything. “What did it say?!”

Sara pretended to be rattled. “The last one told me to look for the silvermoon bloom; this one says that it’s….” she gulped and looked around and then pointed. “That way.”

Aelia gulped. “I’m not sure….”

“That’s what we we came here to do, right?” Sara reasoned.

Aelia gave her a wry smile. “Fair point.”

Sara internally grinned as she led the sycount through the forest, looking around half-blindly despite knowing where it was. Then, to Aelia’s absolute shock, there, in a thicket of trees, under a single ray of moonlight, a silver flower radiated light as if it were radioactive.

“I can’t believe it….” Aelia said.

“Me either….” Sara said with awe, looking at her hands. “Wait, quick! Bottle it before it wilts! I saw that, too!” She pulled out her arm, holding a large glass bottle wrapped in silver arrays. 

Aelia quickly picked and bottled the flower, then cast a sealing spell. When she finished, she stared at the glowing flower in a daze. Then she sucked it into a spatial ring for safe keeping and handed it to Sara. “Tell me, Sara. Do you even know how much this is worth?”

“It’s priceless,” she replied without hesitation.

“That sounds like you’re not going to sell it.”

“I won’t.”

“Then what are you going to do with it?”

Sara gave her a complex smile. “I’m going to fulfill another one of my prophecies.”

4

After Sara’s enigmatic declaration, Aelia couldn’t sleep well, eerily feeling a presence stalking the campsite. However, nothing happened, and it felt like everything was going well—until Sara explained the second part of her prophecy the next morning.

“Absolutely not.” Aelia declared. “I'm not going to let you give this flower to anyone, least of all someone half a day's journey in the opposite direction. If you're late, you'll be stripped of your title and won't get sponsors."

Sara tilted her head back as if asking the gods for strength to endure. “You’ve reminded me every hour since we got here..” 

“Can’t this wait?” Aelia smiled wryly. 

“It’s a prophecy. So no, it can’t wait,” Sara huffed. “But getting sponsors can. No one cares if a bunch of useless kids can beat each other. They’re just looking for signs of talent; as long as I show up, I’ll get sponsors.”

After a long pause, the guard sighed. “You have half a day once we get to Helscope.”

“Thank~you,” Sara chimed, rather pleased with herself. 

With those words, the sycount sped her mutated horse up. “That said, we’re hurrying. So complain about your thighs later.”

Sara’s smile faded instantly, and she grumbled. However, she spurred the beast and set off through the forest to Helscope, an eight-hour ride east without breaks.

Due to Aelia’s obvious punishment, they made it there in eight hours—with breaks.

It was hellish.

And so, Sara, a woman who once slayed the demon lord but was reduced to a high schooler, could still know the meaning of the term chaffing. Thus, she was limping when she dismounted. “Sorry, Girl,” she whispered, patting the horse's bone-calcified muscles. “Thank you for putting up with her unreasonable demands.”

Aelia developed a twisted grin that threatened to end the teen but gave up. “We’re here. You have an hour.”

Sara quickly chuckled and walked out of the stables and into Helscope city streets. 

Like most cities, the town had perfectly leveled roads, compliments of earth mages who could rearrange the rock composition and soil. It also had fountains and plumbing, as water was plentiful in this world, courtesy of water mages. 

Countless little things like this, from using pocket-held scrying mirrors to “FaceTime” people to using mana lines to power street lamps, proved that worlds with magic didn’t stay medieval—they developed technology around magic.

Sara walked through the streets as if she owned the place. When she got to a restaurant called Alexbrook Tavern, she stopped. “You need to leave me be for my ‘one hour’ here,” she commanded. “The prophecy states that the person I must speak to will turn into an obsequious ass-kisser in the face of a royal guard.”

Aelia tried to retort, but she couldn’t. She was wearing distinctive, white-accented silver armor with a large crest that literally said she was a member of the king’s royal guard!

Still—

“Lady Reece,” she sighed. “Surely, letting you trade with an unknown person might raise questions of treason.”

Sara frowned and thought about it. “You can go in with a cloak and verify it's safe first. Then you can return and verify who I gave it to before we leave. Happy? Now hurry up. I need to pee."

Aelia watched the teen rub her thighs together with suspicion. “You're coming with me." She shoved a spare cloak from her into the teen's hand.

“Unbelievable.” Sara threw on the robe with the guard, and they walked it.

Without saying a word Aelia closed her eyes and used a low-level divination spell, sending a pulse of mana through the establishment.

The restaurant goers felt the air on their arms to stand straight up, taking ragged breaths.

Aelia frowned and walked out.

“Didn’t find anyone shady-looking?” Sara whispered.

“It’s not about shady. It’s that no one here has a core.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not when you're handing a mortal something that expensive."

“Look, Lady. That's a him problem not a you problem. Now, seriously. Are we done here? My bladder deeply resents you!" Sara hopped up and down. 

Aelia sighed. “You have thirty minutes. Make it count.”

Sara immediately booked it into the restaurant and looked at the owner. “Let me use the restroom, and I’ll give you the greatest reward of your life.”

The pudgy, balding man took one look at the abnormally beautiful teen and instantly felt inclined to help. “Ummm… it’s in the back.”

After leading her into the restroom, she pulled out the Silvermoon Bloom. The moment he saw it, he could tell it was special because of the way it glowed. “I’m going to the bathroom…. and it will take time. This is your gift. If anyone bothers me, I’ll take it back. Do you understand?”

He contemplated for half a second before turning to the cooks. “EVERYONE OUT!”

When they scuttled out, Sara opened and slammed the door.

Sitting on the toilet, she used a divination spell to check to make sure everyone was gone. Then she got up and silently cast a stealth spell that made her invisible and snuck out of the back door.

5

In a back alley of Helscope stood a quaint tavern with the name Hestiafern written bold calligraphy. It was a bit run down, but visitors came and went every ten minutes or so.

Inside, a young man wearing an apron stood in a room filled with hardwood tables filled with bold knots. They weren’t properly stained and varnished, but that’s because they’d just crack again during bar fights, and he’d have to replace them. 

“Oi! Barkeep. Give me another!”

The teen frowned at the scruffy man whose cheeks were flushed pink. He wanted to say no but couldn’t, so he grabbed another beer, brought it to the man, and bussed the table. Then, like clockwork, he heard the door’s bell jingle at 5 p.m. “Hey, Scarle,” he called out, not looking back. “We’re out of locks. Are you okay with graveh tonight?”

However, to his surprise, a man with a baritone voice didn’t answer him. Instead, a cool female voice called out. “I’m not Scarle, but I will take a a menu, Kyritus.”

“I apologize!” Kyritus sharply turned. Despite the gravity of the motion, the plates and bowls didn’t even tremble. However, when he saw the beautiful blonde, he almost dropped them. “Please seat yourself. I’ll be right with you!”

After rushing into the back, he returned with a menu and found her in the corner where Scarle sat. “E-Excuse me,” he said. “That’s for a regular.”

She looked at the clock and then made eye contact. “It’s not 5 p.m. Don’t worry. I’ll be gone before he arrives.”

Kyritus looked at the clock in a haze and confirmed that she was indeed right. “How do you….”

“That’s not important,” she said. “There isn’t much time, and I’m not good at this type of thing, so I’ll just come out and say it.”

He took a sharp breath, feeling the crushing weight of her gaze. “W-What?”

“Marry me.”