Criminal

The lever pulled with a chunk and the floor disappeared beneath my feet. Two bodies fell, and I heard the sickening crunch of their necks snapping. The crowd shrieked and pushed against the guards. They yelled foul things and pointed accusing fingers at the king. They were not happy with him.

Wait.... How am I seeing all this? I'm still standing exactly where the guards had left me, but now I was slightly translucent. I looked over at Idril, and saw her in the same state.

"Are we... Spirits?" She asked, tears forming in her eyes. She didn't want to be doomed to roam this world forever; a silent spectator. Which I understand. It would suck to watch everyone I once knew grow old and die.

But this was different I felt a tug in my chest. It begged me to head east.

"Do you feel that?" I asked, some how I was able to tune out the crowd, as if they weren't even there.

"That pull?" She responded and pointed east. "In that direction?"

"Yeah, that..." I trailed off and stared off into the horizon. "I wonder what's over there."

"Your bodies." A new voice sounded. I turned around to see the guard that looked familiar passed out on the ground and his spirit hovering before us.

"H-how do you know that?" Idril backed away from him and ran into my arms. I held her close and gave the man a threatening look.

"You don't recognize me?" He sounded hurt. "Here, maybe this will help." His form began to shimmer and wiggle. His dark hair became longer and his overall form shrank considerably... and became curvier. Until the girl became recognizable.

"Corinth!" Idril shouted and ran to embrace her.

"I'm all for reunions but we need to get back to our bodies as quickly as possible. This does take magik." She sighed. "Not that you two are short magik." She snorted, then started leading the way.

"Hey." Idril said defensively and blushed. "What else are you supposed to when you're in a nicely furnished dungeon for three months?"

"Uh, I don't know. Talk?" She said obviously.

"We did that." I spoke up. "For four days, we did nothing but talk. I know everything about her, and she knows everything about me."

"Everything?"

"Everything." I said with finality in my tone.

Corinth giggled and looked over at Idril. "Did he tell you when his pet weasel..." she trailed off, leaving it open ended.

"Crawled up his pants and attacked him. And how now he has an adorable phobia of all small weasel like animals?" She finished. Corinth agreed and they both burst out laughing.

"They're vicious, okay?" I said defensively. "I have a scar." They continued to mock me and I pouted and mumbled something about trusting Idril not to tell anyone. I then began the task of trying to distance myself from them.

"How did you do this." I heard Idril ask and began to slow, so I could hear the answer.

"Well it took quite a lot of practice and deception." Corinth started. "I knew I couldn't just walk you out of the castle, so I had to be stealthy; devious. I knew you two were capable of spiritual projection so I started planing around that when I found a very helpful scroll. Did you know you can project your spirit into someone else, and they start to look like you? It takes a few days, and I didn't want you two to know what I was doing, so it became more complicated. I knew that I had to look completely different, probably even have to find some way to look male, so I started practicing the art of shape shifting. I became quite good, and then I created the character you saw, Brutis."

The name wrung a bell. "The guards outside our door were always talking about a Brutis. How, even though he was human, he was a great guy." I said.

"Well, I had to get in cozy with the guards to become head executioner. Once I mentioned wanted to work for the king, my guard 'friends' jumped all over the opportunity to spend more time with me, and get me a job...I may have also thrown in a sob story about dying parents and bills to pay but that's besides the point. The king gladly hired me, especially when I said I was looking forward to executing you two special cases. Because treason is highly looked down upon in the human kingdom. Then I began operation: drug the prisoners. I offered to help the kitchen boy bring down your meals, until I convinced him to go spend time with this girlfriend while I did his job, and gave him the money, of course. Then I started slipping potions in your food. Nothing too bad. Just basic sedatives and potions that help your soul separate from your body more easily. Then I bought the guards by your door a round of bear, to make their day a little bit better.. Or that's what they thought."

"You drugged their beer." Idril interrupted with a sigh.

"Yes, and with them out cold, and you two pumped full of enough sleeping potions to keep a dragon down, I began the excruciating task of switching your bodies... Well it wasn't that bad... I just told you two to push your souls into the two bodies I brought you and bam. All good."

"But didn't you say it would take a while for the new bodies to look like us?" I asked. If we had guards checking on us everyday, that seemed like a bad plan.

"Yes, that's why I took the guards jobs and did all of that while the king was on leave to the Dwarven Kingdom. No one saw you during that period but me. Anyway, then I had another inside man take your bodies to where mine is, until we returned to them. And as long as you to kept doing that thing your magik suggests you do, you would have enough magik to keep yourself in that body until you were killed, by me. And then tada, here were are, heading back to our bodies."

"I'm impressed." I complimented her.

"Impressed..." She sounded angry. "Only impressed? Not even one bit thankful that I saved your asses? I might die when I get back to my body because of all the magik I've had to use and all you say is 'I'm impressed'!?" Her face turned bright red and I swear I saw steam begin rolling out of her ears.

"He is thankful." Idril butted in, putting a gentle hand on Corinth's shoulder. "And so am I. I get to have a live now, a real one, and we may get to save Peltumbe!" Idril was so hopeful that this second chance would go better than the first and I couldn't help but smile.

Wait... Wasn't the whole crowd killed by the dragon in our first attempted? I remember the look on Idril's face when she thought Corinth had died, and I couldn't help but ask Corinth what happened.

"How did you escape the dragon? I thought everyone was killed." I questioned.

"When did you hear that?" She looked baffled. "Only two men died, and we slew the dragon. The militia you two put together has been freeing cities all around Peltumbe."

"Freeing cities... What do you mean?" Idril asked.

"Wow, they really did keep all information from you two, huh?" Corinth's eyes darted back and forth between Idril and me, trying to figure out if we were kidding. Once she realized we weren't she continued. "When word traveled you two had been canceled and were to be executed for saving that town from a dragon people became outraged. There were riots everywhere, so the king locked every city down, with no less the 50 guards per town. The only cities left under the control of the king are, well the castle and East Briar." That makes sense, East Briar is right outside of the castle walls, it should be one of the last to go.

"The kings bright idea to stop all this was to execute you two, but he didn't anticipate it inspiring more people to fight. Or you two living..." Corinth smiled at herself. She's done well, we couldn't have asked for anyone else to be our friend and life saver.

I was about to ask another question when Corinth cut me off. "Ah, we're here."I looked around at our surroundings, we here in a well lit and nicely decorated room. The wood floor and pastel blue walls were vaguely familiar, but before I could begin to connect dots, Corinth spoke again:

"All you have to do to get back into your bodies is to touch them. And don't worry about me, I have already made plans to have my magik restored and I won't die, even though I will look pretty dead for a while. Just, tell her when you wake up." She started moving towards her body.

"Her? Who is this 'her'? Who are we supposed to tell?" I yelled, but it was too late, she was already back into her body. Idril looked at me in terror but moved closer to her body.

"We couldn't stop her and get her to tell us, and we definitely can't wait out here forever, we'll just tell the first girl we see." She said, I nodded and we both hopped back into our bodies. I gasped for breath and sat up. The moments just before I entered my body felt almost dream like.

"Now who are we supposed to see about Corinth?" Idril asked.

"Ma'am, I hear voices. They're awake." I heard a man call from down the hallway.

"I'm assuming, we're supposed to inform 'ma'am'." Idril giggled and I headed toward the doorway, towards the sound of shoes smacking the wood floor. I round the corner and ran into a concrete wall of surprise so strong it nearly knocked me out.

"Mom?!"