Quest of the Bounty Hunter: Kidnapped

Grace

"Here's your food, witch." The jailkeeper said tossing her a few scraps of bread and sliding a glass of dirty water through the food slot at the bottom of the door. "Enjoy." He scowled at her and stalked away.

Grace sighed as she glanced down at her only sustenance. Life was so unfair. She knew she didn't deserve to be in this jail cell. Yes, in a way she was a witch, she did deserve that, but she was not a traitor to the crown.

It all began shortly after King Ewill supposedly fell ill and Grace was blamed for poisoning his wine. At the time, just over a year ago, she had been a kitchen hand in the castle's kitchen. No one had paid her much mind until one day she had accidentally changed into a wolf right in front of them. Grace had still been trying to control her newly found shapeshifter powers, and outbursts like that happened occasionally. But they had never happened in public view before.

Only a few other kitchen hands had seen her change, but once they gotten over their shock and fright, they had attacked her and called her a freakish witch. After that, no one wanted to be around her and though she was lonely, she had not lost her job.

Not until the king's sickness and an accusation that she was guilty.

Grace was thrown into jail immediately without even a proper trial.

Magic was looked down upon in the Royal Lands because people believed that it messed with fate. In Meldest it was not only looked down upon, but illegal and punishable with death. Grace had gotten lucky with a lifetime in jail.

Cursing her despicable luck, Grace gnawed at the bread and drank the disgusting water. To pass the time, she shapeshifted. She could control her powers now, because she had had a year to practice in this small, dirty cell.

Standing, Grace pictured a beetle in her head. Instantly, she transformed into a small, black bug. Sometimes at night, she would sneak out through the food slot and explore the prison, as boring as it was, but she always came back before the jailkeeper knew she had left.

Grace wished she could just transform into a bird and fly out the window but something magical was surrounding the whole prison and fencing her in. She couldn't escape using magic; she'd already tried. The only way in and out of this prison was walking as a human out the door.

As a beetle, Grace scuttled out of her cell and down the dusty hallway that led to the regular prison cells. Hers was in its own section, reserved for magical beings, away from everyone else. But some of the people in the jail didn't mind talking with her. They didn't care that the rest of the world shunned her; they were too bored to mind.

One of her best friends in the jail was a man named Emerald after the color of his eyes, who was only a year older than her and who kept her company by playing mind games. It kept both of them sharp; not dulled from the endless nothingness of prison.

Grace scampered under the bars of his cell and transformed back into a human.

"Good evening, Emerald." Grace said cheerfully.

Emerald, who by now had gotten used to her sudden appearances, looked up with a dazzling smile.
"Grace. I was beginning to think you weren't coming tonight."

"The jailkeeper was late with my food." Grace explained.

Then as an after thought she added, "If you could call it that."

Emerald laughed. "Oh man, yes, That stuff is disgusting. Are you ready for tonight's topic?"

"And what's that?" Grace asked sitting down across from Emerald.

"Codes. Ciphers. Important messages hidden behind random symbols. Well, not so random if you can figure out the pattern." Emerald said with a polite chuckle.

"I love codes!" Grace said enthusiastically. "Though I've never really understood them very well."

"Glad your eager. And don't worry, I'm here to help you. We'll start with the easy letter substitution codes." Emerald said while beginning to trace the alphabet in the dust of the jail cell floor.

"Reverse alphabet is easy. Numbers are easy. We don't need to go over those, but an easy thing to tap into when you first see a code is the repeating letters. Common repeating letters are e as in steep, t as in little, and s as in glass. If you can notice the repeating letters or symbols in a code it can help you determine the correct corresponding letter a lot faster." Emerald's finger traced a long series of letters in seemingly no pattern onto the ground while he said this.

With he flourish of his finger, Emerald finished and looked up at her, "Decipher this."

Grace paused and examined the code etched in the floor.

GM TAGC ET CGCRAUY

"Well, there are no repeating letters in a row, but there are two C's in the last word and the first, second and fourth word both have a G in them. Also the second and fourth word have an A in them." Grace said rubbing her forehead. "Hmmm. Your name has two of the same letter in it. E. And Emerald is seven letters. I think that has to be it. So if C is E. The second word ends in an E. That also means that G is M. And A is A. Those are the only letters that appear elsewhere in the cipher. This is what I have."

Grace sketched the following into the dirt:
M_ _AME __ EMERALD.

"Oh! I've got it. My name is Emerald." Grace said with a snap of her fingers. "How did I not get that sooner?"

Emerald laughed. "That was a replacement cipher, or substitution cipher as I called it earlier. Basically the key is the alphabet, but you take the first and last letters. A and Z. Then the next two first and last letters. B and Y. And so on on after that."

"That is so simple. Why didn't I get that?" Grace said with a laugh and sigh.

"It's not actually that easy. You caught on quick with the word Emerald, but that was only because I wrote the code and you knew my name was Emerald. What if you intercepted a random message from the enemy? What if they used little symbols instead of simple letters? What then?" Emerald asked folding his arms and leaning back against the cell wall.

Grace paused for a second, frowning. "I don't know."

"Exactly. That's the art of ciphers." Emerald said with a sneaky smile. "Let's try another one. A little harder this time."

Let me know if you guys think I should keep writing this!
- Raylin