Somewhere in Iria, the city of books, there came a curious case of a missing girl from a lower middle-class household. The parents were shopkeepers, both busy during the day with their work. Their youngest, the missing girl in question, was the shy and delicate sort. She had an older brother who had a night shift as a guardsman, their relationship was fairly close. 

The brother filed a missing person's report with posters asking for anyone who was willing to help find Lizzy. Her parents were distraught, the family didn't know what to do. Lizzy disappeared one day without warning; her family returned home after work to find she was gone with no signs of a break in or forced entry. Her room was untouched, nothing was out of place. The only thing missing was Lizzy herself. The reward money for finding the family's daughter isn't much, but the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are troubling. About half a year ago a girl around her age went missing too, but since she didn't have family in the city no one really noticed until the landlady didn't receive rent as usual. People are becoming concerned that perhaps something terrible is afoot, and tensions are rising. There's only one way to solve this mystery: to find the truth.

"She was always a sweet girl." Mrs. Bartleby said, sniffing. The lady's eyes were red from crying, and her handkerchief was all bent out of shape. "Lizzy loved books, even as a child. While most girls her age wanted dolls and pretty dresses, she would always beg me or my husband to let her buy a big red-covered storybook full of nursery rhymes she saw in a window. Back then we'd just started our bakery, so money was scarce. We always told her maybe next year…" 

Mr. Bartleby was solemn, his thin face tired with a heavy heart. He comforted his wife as she dabbed her face, feeling just as confused and at a loss as her. "Once we had more regular customers, we'd give her a small allowance every month to buy what she wanted. New books aren't cheap, so she'd save up for months at a time once she had her eye on one. When she found a place that sold secondhand books, it was like she found buried treasure. With business booming, we didn't have a lot of time to spend with her or Marcus, so we were glad she liked reading." 

Then, a few weeks ago tragedy struck. Lizzy went missing without a trace, and nobody had seen hide nor hair of her. Where did she go? Who kidnapped her? Even her brother's attempts came with nothing. 

The mean streets. Streets where devils danced and angels feared to tread. Or something like that. Dala had been sitting on a bench of these streets, ready to dig into the sandwich she had been waiting all day for when she suddenly noticed a missing girl poster on the side of a bakery. Curiosity got the better of her as she put away her sandwich and stepped into the bakery, inquiring about the missing poster. Before she could ask further, a weeping Mrs. Bartleby began to blabber all of the details about Lizzy and her strange disappearance. The case was a difficult one, something beyond what the Irian guards could handle and there was only one person who could take up this case. Somebody who knew about magic! Hopefully, they would find somebody like that.

Dala was half tempted to head out and back out of this situation but she already had seen the desperation on the two's faces. She wasn't keen on raising their hopes but at the very least she would try to give it a shot. Dala asked a few more questions about Lizzy to see if her parents had any other details. Once they told her about her passion for reading, Dala began to wonder if Lizzy was lured off with promises of books or libraries. It would work on Dala.

"May I investigate her room for a moment? It might lead me to something." She said.

They agreed and led her up to Lizzy's bedroom. As expected, there wasn't much. The bedroom was simple and made for a family with humble beginnings. The bed was single and the room was tiny, with only a small window to overlook the streets. There was a dresser and an end table next to the bed with a book on it and a little handmade rag doll that Lizzy must have had since she was a child. The book looked normal. It was a rosy dark pink leatherbound book with gold lettering in cursive on the front and a bookmark attached at the top. Out of pure curiosity, Dala opened the book wondering what type of book Lizzy was reading. It would give her some insight into Lizzy's personality and be something interesting to pass the time.

At the end of their rope, the parents gladly let Dala have a look around. As Mrs Bartleby found it hard to look at their daughter's room, they left Dala on her own. As for potentially being robbed, that wasn't a concern since their precious daughter was already gone. The book's title read: 'A Rose by Another Name'. The way the book looked screamed 'romance novel', or something along the lines of it. There was a faint hint of magic from the book as it was picked up, but as soon as Dala opened it–a bright blinding light filled the room–and then everything went white. The book fell to the ground, landing with the title facing up. Dala however was nowhere to be seen.

You find yourself in a room. It is probably early afternoon or late morning, and strong sunlight is pouring in from the window. The room is decorated in fancy furnishings and the bed canopy has curtains of sheer silk. You don't know how you know this, but you're sure the price tag was very expensive. There are fluffy pillows on the bed and the blankets are absolutely amazing, like the kind where you'd want to sleep in forever. 

A woman dressed as a maid comes in and walks over in a rush, pushing up her glasses as she looks over your worriedly. "Oh thank heavens, you're finally awake Lady Melody! It's almost time for the tea party to start!"  A distinct feeling of déjà vu washes over you for some reason, but it only gets worse when you realized what she called you. Something is wrong here.

There was no sign of the pink book that she had opened earlier, and this definitely wasn't Lizzy's room. With how fancy even the maid's clothes looked, you'd think that this was some sort of fairy tale romance story where there were princes and princesses… "Now my lady, you need to pick out a dress. We mustn't keep Princess Amelia waiting. All the young ladies in the city will be there to congratulate her at her birthday party!" Speaking of which, the way this woman talked was very odd, almost like she was a walking mouthpiece of exposition.

The book itself seemed like a romance novel. Dala had seen more than enough of those from Simone's book fairs and events. But just as she opened the book, a bright light filled the room and everything went white. When she finally opened her eyes again, she first saw the fancy windows made of fine glass. Dala's eyes shot open in a panic as she sat up in the pile of expensive sheets. Her eyes went straight to the rest of the room with a look of confusion. Where the fucking hell was she? This wasn't Lizzy's room. Suddenly a maid with glasses ran into the room and shouted about some tea party or whatever. The pink book wasn't in sight and none of the room made any sense to her. Did she get teleported somewhere? The maid then talked about some person named Princess Whats her name and some birthday.

Dala pushed herself out of bed and walked over to the glass doors that lead to the balcony. She looked out at the landscape below. It was a vast garden filled with flowers and fresh green grass with a large fountain in the center of it all. Beyond that was a town filled to the brim with people. The maid was fussing about something but Dala chose to ignore her. A tea party wasn't important.

"Wait… what did you call me? Lady Mel something?" Dala asked with confusion.

The maid was a strange one. Like a fountain of exposition without an off switch. When Dala looked down at her clothes, she realized that they had been switched out with a nightgown instead of her usual trousers and tunic. The last thing she remembered was opening that book…. Well whatever was going on, she was determined to get the fuck out of here. Spotting a breakfast tray with a delicious meal, which included meat, she realized that the knife provided would be sharp enough. Dala dashed to the knife, snatched it, then cut one of the curtain cords down. It was extremely long and would provide well as a rope. Then she turned to the maid with a smirk.

"Nice to meet ya miss…. whatever your name is. But there's no way in hell you'll get me to a fucking tea party." She stated.

Dala tied the rope to one of the balcony rails, held the knife in her mouth, then climbed down the cord rope until she was able to jump the rest of the way. She landed on her feet with a huff then took her knife and ran off into the gardens. She needed to find out what the fuck was going on and put a stop to whatever bullshit was happening. First, she needed to figure out where in Revaliir she had been teleported to and why on earth that maid was calling her Lady Melody.

There was the sound of a maid screaming in panic as 'Lady Melody' went out the window, not that she was in any danger. Thankfully Dala's appearance was unchanged. Once she was out of the house, all hell broke loose as the hounds–er, servants were coming after her. They were shouting phrases of concern for her health, her sanity, and of course just wanting her to get dressed. The head butler heard the news that their dear lady had lost her marbles and was running in the gardens in her nightgown, which made him faint. How this poor man ever managed to not die an early death via aneurysm was anybody's guess. Servants on horses were coming after Dala, with maids in tow. There was a fancy carriage in front of the main gate, likely the ride they would have put her in once she was dressed up.

Estate guards turned their heads wondering what was the ruckus about. Dala was now faced with her first challenge: escape the mansion and avoid the guards. If she was caught, she'd be forced to attend the tea party full of people she didn't know or care about. Outside of the mansion estate where 'Lady Melody' lived, there were broad stone streets not unlike Adeluna's. The architecture wasn't the same though, so this was no Adeluna City. And of course, the streets were unnaturally clean. Between the main gate and the mansion was a series of rose hedges, because of course every noble's house had to have rose hedges. Fortunately they made an effective maze from the hired help since nobody thought to have a lookout from the second floor. 

There was the horses' stables a little ways off to the side from the main gate and the door was unlocked. Security was strangely lax despite this being a noble's house. But what the book failed in realism meant windows of opportunity for Dala, as nobody here seemed to operate on logic and common sense.

The young woman kept running as the shouts of maids and butlers barked off behind her like a pack of wild dogs. Up ahead was a fancy carriage in front of the main gate. She slid to a halt as she spotted the royal guards staring at their lady in a nightgown. After a desperate look around, she spotted a horses' stables and made a mad dash to the little building. The door broke down with a single kick and inside she found a series of perfectly combed and tamed horses. There was a single stableboy who was too shocked to actually do anything as Dala jumped onto the back of one of the horses and freed it from the stable. The guards, whoever they were, could have shot an arrow at her at any point. It was clear they would do nothing to harm her and the main gates were already open, just blocked by the guards and the carriage. With a wild smile, she urged the horse on and whispered in its ear.

"If you don't charge towards that gate, I'll kill you and eat you for fucking dinner." She said in a low voice.

The horse, terrified by her threat, ran towards the carriage and main gate at full speed ahead. The carriage and guards were just able to get out of the way as her horse made a mad dash into the city. The streets were oddly clean and the rest of the people were there but not really doing anything. The place should have been crowded with that many buildings and homes but there were only a handful of people wandering about. After weaving through several large alleyways and jumping around in the city, she managed to calm the horse down and climb from its back. Then she gave it a good wack and send it scampering off for home. If she got lucky, the weirdos at the manor would think she had died or something. It didn't matter.

What did matter was getting some actual clothes. The nightgown was inconvenient and would get her too many stares. So she ducked into the alleyway and waited for one of the townspeople with decent clothes to walk by. She found this young man around her size and yanked him into the alleyway. Pressing her knife against his throat, she demanded his clothes and everything in his pockets. Any money or any valuable item would be hers. Normally she would feel guilty but it was either her or them. In this situation, survival and avoiding tea parties were her highest priorities. The young man took off his clothes and gave her everything he had. He was a shriveling mess of tears and fear which surprised Dala, considering he was much taller than her. She pulled on the tunic and trousers along with the shoes. He also had a decent amount of cash, yet the money he had was not Revaliir money of any kind.

"What the actual hell." She said.

There wasn't any way she would find out more information here so she let the young man go and ran around the city until she found a library. The library was beautiful with elegant flowers and pretty green paint on the outside. Once she stepped in, she noted the thousands of books on the shelves. This would be the place for information. Or so she thought. When she went to the history section, all she could find was information on a single recent war. That was it. The rest of the books were empty or repeated the same information. Then she began searching through the rest of the books but could only find cheesy love poetry or the same story about one war that happened a while ago. Nothing of use.

"WHAT's WITH THIS STUPID LIBRARY?!" She shouted in frusteration.

By now it was clear that the way this world worked was broken in a sense. Guards for a noble house were too incompetent to keep their own 'lady' from escaping, people being too easy to coerce, even a horse that didn't try to buck her off wildly as first instinct. The library was the last nail in the coffin. Information shouldn't be this limited or…useless. But it did give a small bit of background on her situation. This was the kingdom of Cyrese, and there were three great noble houses: Voutonne, D'or, and Cours. Their coat of emblems were drawn in great detail, also they named the current king and queen. History on the houses and the royals was laid out, along with tales of their exploits. Basically useless exposition. Since the carriage's crest at the mansion wasn't any in these books, Dala could make a guess that Melody wasn't from these families.

Papers on the street held the latest gossip about fashion trends, talk of international diplomacy, and the upcoming ball which would be held by the Cyresian royals. Somebody wrote a little too much about the first prince and princess, which meant they were important in this book. And by descriptions, they practically spelled out how they looked so you couldn't miss them if you saw them on the street. Prince Percival was a blonde with green eyes and his sister Amelia had pink hair and purple eyes. Apparently common sense wasn't the only thing that had been thrown out the window, as was genetics. There was mention of some other men and women of famous families, which really didn't matter at the moment. What did matter was how colorful this city was. It was like everything had been whitewashed in sparkles, as if to emphasize the romantic atmosphere. In a strange book fantasy world with no way of knowing where Lizzy was, what was Dala to do? 

"Hey, did you hear about the rumors recently? I heard the guards found the daughter of a count had been stabbed in broad daylight!" "What?! That's crazy! Did they catch the culprit?" "No, they didn't. That's the weird part, they didn't see who it was–they arrived after the screaming and found Miss Marianne covered in blood!" There was talk about a string of serial stabbings going on, but no one had been caught so far. And the strangest thing was only nobles were being targeted. 

This place was a complete mess. The guards, the weird maid, and even the library all spelled out the truth in blinding lights. That strange novel that she opened must have had an illusion or hidden world inside of it. Perhaps a pocket dimension? Whatever it was, she needed to find some way to get out. Luckily the information she WAS able to find told her all about the important people of the novel. The king, queen, prince, and princess, and anybody else was in the books. She snatched a book with the most useful information for later then walked out of the library. There was sudden talk about stabbings in the court. THIS caught her attention. Dala disliked romance novels most of the time but what she did learn from Simone was that most romantic novels, unless they were extremely erotic, had little violence up until the end of the book. That meant whoever was causing the stabbings was changing the course of the book. And in order to find this mass stabber, she would have to go to a certain tea party.

"I hate everything." She gritted her teeth.

Dala walked back to the manor and managed to get to the gate. All of her servants were crying and worrying over her like a bunch of sappy old maids.

"Oh I am so dreadfully sorry!" She said in the sweetest voice she could manage while resisting the urge to bring out her hidden knife, "I had a hooooorible nightmare that made me think I was going to be killed. Could you ever forgive me?"

The excuse was lazy but so was the story of this book. Fortunately for her, everybody bought her little lie like it was the most obvious truth in the world. Somehow there was still time until the tea party and she was allowed to go. The maids acted like the morning's incident was completely forgotten and it likely was. Dala had acted outside of her character so it wasn't difficult to get these mindless npcs to forgive her for anything she did. Dala, or Lady Melody, was dressed in a frilly blue gown with white lace and had her hair curled. Now she had so much pity for those dressed-up cats that lived in the Adelunian noble houses. She suddenly understood their secret desire to kill everybody in the room while the world fawned and cooed over them. Luckily, she was able to stow away her kitchen knife in the pile of fabric called a dress. She left in the carriage to this tea party and couldn't wait to find this mass murderer. Perhaps they could team up at the very least.

Either way, she needed to be close to other nobles in order to find whoever this was.

It was a long and agonizing ride to the tea party, mostly because of the dress. There were other overdressed girls her age sitting at a table with pastries worth more than a man's monthly salary drinking tea from overpriced teacups. It was easy to see who was important here by the garishness, er–distinct coloring of their hair and eyes. The more normal looking they were, the less likely they were actually important to the plot. Speaking of which, what was the plot? There were many guards around as rumors of noble lady stabbings were hot news. This meant nothing to the actual culprit. Security had been doubled for the princess's birthday party, where people came and gave offerings to the second heir of royalty in hopes of establishing political and social relationships. 

It would appear as if everyone thought poor Princess Amelia was the next target. How wrong they were… The party started with musicians playing, rose garlands everywhere, servants at their beck and call. The gossip was boring and pointless for someone like Dala. Unfortunately Lizzy wasn't here either. The Bartlebys gave Dala a description of her before allowing her into their daughter's room. She had flaxen braids and freckles over her nose, with brown eyes. Nobody matched that description here. Even the guards were shiny with the fanciness of their uniforms. You could swear the swords were more of a decoration than for self-defense. When the time came, there was the obligatory presentation of gifts to Amelia. As the ladies of lesser noble houses approached to hand their wrapped boxes, Princess Pink Hair smiled and laughed like she didn't have a care in the world.

Then…a masked cloaked figure attacked. 

Charging onto the scene, a maid was knocked over as a person who originally was one of the servers threw off a wig and tore away the servant uniform to reveal light armor. With their lower half of the face obscured by a bandanna, they leaped into the air avoiding the guards. They landed onto the grass amidst the cries of pandemonium, and the musicians were playing tense music instead of actually fleeing. The figure looked around before locking onto a target–a girl with light green hair and gold eyes. Lunging at her, there was a scream as she was stabbed from the front. As the girl fell down, the figure seemed to pause for a few moments before muttering in dissatisfaction: "Curses, not this one either." 

"SEIZE THEM! PROTECT THE PRINCESS!" The guards were closing in, and the masked stabber was giving the area one last look in case their real target was nearby. They did a double take when their eyes landed on Dala, before breaking into a sprint to run away. Whatever was happening, this definitely wasn't according to the story's plan.

Everything in the room felt like it was designed by a commoner who knew nothing of actual nobility. The clothes were garish and everywhere she looked there was some pop of color. The materials in the room were all extremely expensive to the point that even REAL nobility would have a hard time paying for it. The guards surrounding them had shiny armor, always an indication of unused armor. She wondered if any of them had ever been in an actual battle. Perhaps if one of them had a scar they at least would have been in one. Yet all of them had pretty clean faces, even the other ladies in the room.

Dala wondered if this was hell. Did she die at some point and was now being tortured for her misdeeds of the past? Even so, this was extreme for just a few morally grey decisions. The worst she had ever done was almost kill a nobleman. The gossip surrounding her went in one ear and out the other as she forced a smile and pretended to belong in the crowd of nobles. Luckily for her, Lady Melody seemed to be little more than a side character or some background npc. Her blonde hair and brown eyes hardly made her stand out in the crowd, much to her relief. If she was the protagonist, she would go insane. She noticed how stupid the Princess appeared with her laughing and unending smiles. Either she was extremely clever or extremely dumb to behaving in such a way while other people were getting stabbed.

Suddenly, a server threw off a wig and tore away their uniform to reveal armor. Their face was covered by a bandanna and they were far faster and more agile than any of the guards. A genuine smile crept on Dala's face as she realized that THIS was the person she needed to find. She also noticed how the musicians switched to tense music instead of trying to flee or actually being helpful. This was why she hated romance novels. Dala quickly grabbed her hidden knife from her dress and cut off the bottom part of her gown for more movement. She then raced after the masked stabber, running much faster and behaving more intelligently than the guards. Instead of running into walls or doors, she took a shortcut to reach the masked murderer quicker.

Soon she was by the masked person's side, running with them.

"Heeeeeey, I love what you're doing." She said quickly, "Please let me come with you. I can't stand being in this place for one more moment!"

Better to get stabbed by a masked murderer than deal with another tea party.