Eventually I fell asleep as the exhaustion of the past days finally caught up to me, although it was an uneasy sleep. I don’t recall all the details, but I do recall that my fantasy went up and beyond the possible outcomes of the coming day, ranging from the beast I had run from suddenly attacking the town and the desperate townspeople turning to me for aid, up to being hung on the plaza for threatening some bigshot noble I haven’t even seen. Oh, and then I think there was another short episode, where the noble in question was one of those stunning ladies, desperate for some affection. Though I may just imagine having dreamed that, as I said, the details escape me. And of course none of these things actually happened. Especially not the last part.

Either way, when morning eventually came, one of the guards came in, causing a lot of ruckus, rustling everyone from their sleep violently. I swear to God that he had one heck of a sadistic smile on his face as he stood in front of my cell with his cronies. Unfortunately for me, I’m not a morning person to begin with and since the last days had been somewhat rough, my body refused to wake from the noise alone. Hence, he and his ‘friends’ helped me on my feet with a lot of yelling, pulling and some well aimed punches and kicks, where you wouldn’t see the bruises later. Come to think of it, I sure hope that no woman was dumb enough to marry that dude...but then again, he knew far too well where to hit me without having had some kind of practice. Aw crap, now I’m actually feeling anxious to having gotten out of there without teaching him a lesson about how to treat people right. But I’m once again getting ahead of myself.

They dragged me to the local ‘Hall of Justice’, where a distinctively bored looking elderly man was handling the little squabbles people saw themselves unable to resolve without help. And he was doing it quickly. During the two hours I waited for my turn, he handed down judgment on two thefts, three adulterers (the two men who had cheated on their wives got a slap on the wrist, while the woman, who had cheated on her (apparently important) husband, got dragged to the pillory) and five cases of ‘neighborhood squabbles’, mostly involving plants overgrowing to the neighboring garden and the fruits thereof. And it was easy to see the pattern in his decisions. ‘Men before women, nobles before peasants, wealth before poverty’. There was nothing ‘just’ about these procedures. I’m not even sure, if the ‘thefts’ actually happened the way the prosecutors claimed. Conveniently enough, there was not one ‘credible’ witness testifying for the accused, only a ‘bunch of no-good fools, who are likely in cahoots with the perpetrator’. In both cases, mind you.
So yeah, long story short, when they called up my case, I was just about ready to get my ass handed to me, despite having done nothing than climb a carriage that was not my own. I was a nobody with not a penny to my name and none to vouch for me. The only thing I’ve actually had going for me was my gender, but I highly doubted that this would help me any either.

So, the ‘honorable Master Titus’ picked up the report of the incident and said something like, “This here states, that out of nowhere you came charging in like a gone mad Robion (apparently some kind of bull as I learned later), charged into the guardians of the esteemed Lady Mesmera’s carriage, laying waste to their ranks, then climbed atop the carriage like a Moriat (apparently a local kind of monkey) and then perched atop it, peering into the distance as if you were a Troglobar (an exotic animal, akin to the Merkat. Yes I did visit a menagerie later to figure out what the heck he was comparing me with). What do you have to say in your defense?”
Now, I of course did see that question coming, but I’ve never been the most eloquent person in my real life and I sure as heck wasn’t one in this world either. But you’ve got to give me some credit for trying.
“Your honor, I wish to extend my deepest apologies for my reckless and disturbing behavior. I assure you that I’ve meant neither the brave guardsmen of the carriage, nor the people within any harm. You see, I was merely on the run from a dreadful beast I had encountered in a nearby cave. Thankfully it did not give chase, lest these brave warriors would have had to fend it off in my stead. I never would have forgiven myself, if they had actually gotten hurt, because of my cowardice.”

...is probably what I should have said. It’s what I prepared to say. I rehearsed it in my head so often, that I still know every word today. But as I said, I am not a very eloquent person and despite having had more than enough time to prepare my defense, I found myself unable to speak for multiple seconds, trying to collect my thoughts. A classical case of stage fright. Can you believe that?! I was standing on trial, my very fate hinging on my words and not a single sound escaped my lips.
In a movie I once watched, one of the characters said something I had known a long time before: ‘All your worries and fears will disappear once you actually start to sing.’
Ah yeah, I should probably mention this, seeing how you don’t know my past life, but I’ve been a rather decent singer in my time. Nothing spectacular, mind you, but good enough to turn some heads. Back then, I managed to brush my fears of failing and making a laughingstock of me aside, open my mouth and sing. And it is true. If you manage to hit the first tune, everything else works and all of a sudden, ‘failing’ is no longer an option. But this was just for entertaining others. Right now, there was actually something riding on my voice resounding through this room.

“Well, Mister?!” the judge reinforced his question, apparently quickly running thin on his patience.

What followed next, was one of the brave, and I dare you to spell ‘brave’ as ‘s-t-u-p-i-d’ I’ve done to this day.

I took a deep breath and unloaded all the crap I had witnessed ever since coming here, starting from waking up naked, getting decked in the face, getting lost because there’s no actual streets or signposts in this backwater wannabe country, falling down into a cave, getting chased and then getting arrested, because I was running for my life.
The real problem however was, that as if a plug had been removed from me, a bunch of words regarding this very ‘hall of justice’ and its proceeding flowed from me. Words I should rather not have said.
At the end of my speech, the judge, whom I had called a number of unflattering things (a biased, and corrupt double-standard bastard was among them I believe), looked like his head was getting ready to explode.

The guards tried to stop me, of course, but I had enough of being pushed around at that point and and sent three of them to the ground before they even realized what was going on. What was more, the people in the audience actually got involved in the scuffle. And it was not me whom they were fighting. On the contrary. They helped me, wrestling down the guards.

In the chaos I saw ‘the honorable Master Titus’ trying to make an exit stage left and some piece of reason still left aside within me told me to also get out of this. Because up to that point, it had only been unintentional assault. Now it was sparking a bloody revolution by accident.

I punched, ducked and tackled my way towards the grand gates, when all of a sudden someone screamed, “Fire!”

The following minutes escape my memory, but when the rush of adrenaline finally passed, the hall of justice was burning brightly, people were running all around me and at least two dozens of guards were trying to get the masses back under control.
To this day, I don’t know who actually caused the fire, but I sure know whom they pinned the blame on. In fact, I have the wanted poster with my description and my charges here with me. It’s a good thing that their proceedings are as sloppy as their justice system. They didn’t even bother to ask me for my name and, according to this poster, I’m a at least 2 meters tall hunk who supposedly took down ten grown men all by himself. Needless to say, they never caught me with this description.
Nevertheless, I left the town as soon as I asked someone for directions, this time making extra sure to ask for landmarks to look out for.