“What’s the politics like, then? You guys who want to spread the Blessed Isles’ glory, and the ones who want to… stay and improve? Or just stay?”

"Thresh is better at this stuff than us, you should ask him."

“Okay,” she sighs.

Walking! So boring. Whee.

The walking takes a while longer, but when they get to their destination it's... pretty organised, actually.

There are more undead at the settlement, including spirits and ambiguous cases, and they all look like they're pretty stable. The sun still isn't there, and they're building their buildings using material that insists on occasionally starting to randomly float rather than stay and be a wall, but overall they seem pretty determined to make it work.

Thresh is already there, and has probably already explained the situation with their ?prisoner? to the others, as they don't seem surprised. When they get to the village, they lead her to a small jail, properly enchanted to not permit her to escape via shenanigans.

Thaaaaat could actually hold her. The amulet her, not the basically-an-enchantment body her. So, the real, actual her. She hesitates, instead of placidly going where she's led, like she'd been doing.

"... do I get bathroom breaks...?" she attempts, slowing.

"'Course, we're not savages," says fourth person. "—we have indoor plumbing, not sure if that made it there, so that helps."

"Oh so the bathroom is inside the prison cell? That sounds like it might be a health hazard. Actually, will I have proper privacy if I need to change, and how often are mealtimes...?"

Operation: be as annoying as possible, and prepare to snap her amulet off of its chain at the slightest provocation. It can stay outside, 'she' can go inside, and this still gives her an exit even though it plausibly might lead to her body cutting out at an inappropriate time.

    "There are separate rooms for changing and necessities, obviously."

"Is that how holding cells are elsewhere?" wonders Perrak. "Do they want prisoners to suffer?"

    "Don't think Thresh wants to hold you that long there," they continue. "Just wants to make sure you're not gonna run away screaming before you hear him out."

"Have I run away screaming yet? Look, fine, you've caught me, I'm making dumb excuses, I'm—I'm claustrophobic, can I hear him out while outside of the small enclosed space? Feel free to add more bindings, I'm fine with bondage, just, um, look it'd be really embarrassing to have a panic attack in front of all of you nice people."

"We can keep you in the external cell if it helps?" suggests #3.

Damn it, stop being reasonable, you're making it very hard to plausibly lose an amulet without it being very obvious that's what she's doing! Ugh, this isn't working. They're clearly not going to do any kind of manhandling. Can she trip and call it good enough? She'll have to, it's about the only plausible opening she's got.

"That would be so much better," she agrees, sounding relieved and looking excited, "which way is it, is it over—"

It's pretty easy to trip, when one's feet are tied together. She can just pretend to be too excited to take a step and then: whoops! Down she goes, with a little yelp. And off goes the amulet, into the dirt.

One of them helps her up—gently, no manhandling at all—and then they lead her to the external cell, which is just a shaded area with a comfortable-looking couch, a desk with some paper, ink, and quills, a bookshelf with... two rotted books... a chest for personal belongings, and a little attached house with an indoor privy and shower.

Also, the whole area is enchanted to prevent escape, naturally.

Yeah, she figured. But the important part of her is outside, so! In she goes.

They get rid of the ropes, then, and off they go.

A couple of minutes later Thresh shows up and tosses her amulet to her. "Nice try."

"Wait—" she tries to halt the amulet's trajectory before it's inside, but actually she was taken by surprise, one minute she was being ignored in the dirt, the next she was scooped up and being thrown, and, and.

Her reflexes aren't good enough to manage it. Especially with how she'd been playing all innocent and nonmagical. Mana is a force to be steered and channeled, not a switch that’s flipped on or off. Into the cell goes the important part of her.

"Shit."

"You're funny. Now stay there and I'll be right back."

And off he goes.

"Not like I have a choice now, is it!" she yells after him.

Then she huffs a sigh and picks, well, herself off of the ground, and returns her amulet to its chain. It's easy enough to repair, and if anything, making a single link as conjured as her body is means that she can attempt to pull something like this trick in the future more easily. If she ever gets out of here. Because she's now definitely trapped. Yay.

And then she sits down on her comfortable couch and pouts.

When he's back, he's made his face into something—less scary. The rest of his body still looks the same, though. "So," he says, his voice now more like the others', "you're not really just an outsider, are you."

"I mean, I definitely am an outsider. Just also maybe the only one that wouldn't literally die or get corrupted from being here. Not that I know I'll last forever, mind, which was why I wanted to keep an exit. I was going to hear you out regardless!" Huff.

"And I'm gonna let you go regardless, especially now that it's clear you're not particularly a threat nor one of my dear husband's traps to try to draw me out."

“Trouble in paradise?” she wonders, dryly. “Why is your husband trying to draw you out, can’t you just talk about your problems like normal people.”

"Because our beautiful King is the one who wishes to hoard all of our treasures and knowledge and progress to these isles, and not spread it out at all. Even though people are killed and lost by the minute, out there.

"...well, the treasures and knowledge and progress we could rebuild, here, from ages past. But we have forever, don't we?"

“And people in here are suffering right now, caught in torturous memory loops. Surely you’ve heard the screams. You want to bring that to the rest of the world? Trap them in this living death, too?”

"Of course not. But the thing the outside has which we don't is—infrastructure. And as you have doubtlessly seen, infrastructure is exactly what keeps us sane." Pause. "Saneish. Mostly sane. I suspect more people and more infrastructure improves this. I have perhaps decided to not enlighten these people about the fact that their memories are centuries old because most people who notice they are walking dead and that their world isn't a paradise succumb to despair and we cannot have that, now, can we?"

"Or you could, I don't know. Build the infrastructure in here, instead of trying to steal it and killing who knows how many people in the process. Make it so that you don't have to lie to everyone about their world not sucking. You've had decades, centuries, why is this tiny pathetic camp all you have?"