She rubs her wrists, and sort of... Hugs herself. She lets out a deep breath. She smiles.

He casts the command ward he promised her, then carefully counts out exactly one thousand three hundred thirty-four rings and offers them to her.

"The extra from what you've spent on me, I'm guessing?"

"I split the price evenly between us and then subtracted what I've spent on you from your share. It's a little late for you to find somewhere else tonight, you can rent my floor again for... let's say a hundred forty-four rings?"

"You know what? No. Thank you for freeing me, you were actually pretty nice about it all things considered - but you still tricked me with these stupid bracelets in the first place and I - need to calm down before I do much of anything involving you. I'm gonna buy food and run off to the woods. I know the laws about the woods. So, no."

"Come find me again if you want to do business with me."

"...Yeah. We'll see. Goodbye for now."

And out she goes. To the market, un-enslaved this time. Anyone want to buy these bracelets she doesn't need anymore?

An agerah offers a ring for them.

She's not stupid. They're worth more than one ring even if you have to redo the magic, surely. Someone had to spend time making them. At least fifty.

Unless she can get the command mage who first enchanted them to vouch for their reusability they're scrap metal. ...He can go up to two rings?

...Sigh. "Fine, two rings for scrap metal."

And at least this gets them out of her life hopefully forever.

She hunts around for a cheap bag to carry things, for cheap food that'll keep cold for a few days, and then walks towards the woods.

A belul is standing by the nearest entrance to the preserve that almost encircles the city and can let her in for twenty-eight rings, exit fees may apply if she harvests or damages anything, no permanent illusions or illusions larger than a five-foot radius allowed.

Yeah, she gets it, here's your rings.

(She just wants to be away. She's probably going to cry for a while once she magics up her shelter.)

Nobody else bothers her once she's in the forest.

It's a nice forest, open and airy, lots of chestnut and oak trees.

It's nice. And it's a nice day. She doesn't go too far from the city, so she can find her way back later.

She finds a place to sit and just... Think.

She's not a slave anymore, so the burning anxiety telling her to do something is largely gone. But this - other world - is still aggressively depressing. She has no idea how she got here, no idea how to get home. If 'home' even applies. The government allowing, mandating slavery is a totalitarian nightmare, but it seems to be... Competent. From what she's seen so far. Trying to eliminate slavery would be the biggest spanner in the works in history since the "endless war" from before it took over everything, and quite possibly cause another one of those. Though basing her political opinion entirely on a propagandized children's language-slash-history lesson is an incredibly bad idea.

With a little over a thousand rings, she can just exist for a little while. And Valanda...

...She'll think about Valanda tomorrow. She builds herself a construct-shelter and sleeps. (She should have gotten a bedroll or something. She needs a bath. She misses coffee. All of these are physical unpleasantness, and therefore fairly ignorable compared to the lingering pit of dread in her stomach from the last few days.)

She sleeps in soft glow of her own construct, feeling the afternoon breeze. She wanders, the next day - finding water is a little annoying, she almost goes back into the city but then finds a clean-looking stream. She doesn't want to go back yet. She filters it through sand and pebbles and a construct with tiny tiny holes and it and boils it, and this is a wildlife preserve so it probably isn't super polluted and if it has something infectious in it she'll just go see a death mage when she starts feeling bad.

She wanders, remembering to keep track of where she's going and leave herself signs.

She goes back, eventually. Presents herself at the gate and says she didn't harvest anything except river water.

"A ring if you'll tell us what you were using as a water filter," says one of the three hummingbirds on guard duty.

-Well Valanda sold a calculator, so it's not like she's a dire secret. And if she's going to make any money at all people need to know what she can do.

"It's called a construct. It's the kind of magic I can do."

Here's her ring.

"Another ring to know why we've never heard of your kind of magic?"

She laughs despite herself. "That one's worth more than a ring. Actually, I think I don't want to tell it at all."

The disappointed hummingbirds let her back into the city.

She's tempted to try and sell them something but it seems unlikely to work and nobody knowing what the hell constructs can do will get old fast, and overall it's better to go try and find Valanda again. She'll wander the market until... About the time when she thinks he'll be getting back from work. Maybe she can spot whoever bought her calculator.

He's out in the market doing some sort of magic to things people bring him. Doesn't look like it pays very well and he doesn't seem very busy.

Deep breaths. Valanda is not actually terrible, and might actually be not terrible. Don't let gut feelings overrule that.

"Hi, Valanda."

"Hi, Walta. Want to talk here or go to my apartment where there's no one listening in?"

"Listening in? Oh, knowledge mages. Probably a good idea actually, yes."