“So, to recap, me and Andy are gonna sneak in the room an hour after the night guard gets put on duty. That should be enough time for him to fall asleep and everybody to have left. We’ll try to do everything as quietly as possible, we don’t want to make a scene. Lana, you will stand guard outside. Andy, you’ll take the cell keys from the guard and open the door. I’ll cut the chains and get the girl. Then, we’ll get as far from here as possible.” I was practically shaking. It was only a half hour until the night guard’s duty.

“Wait, what’re we gonna do once we’ve gone? We can’t be on the run forever.” Lana brought up a good point. I had already thought about this, but to be honest, it was mostly fantasizing about living with Libby neighboring Lana and Andy. It could’ve been the dream life. But that was where the worlds collided. Libby wasn’t just Libby in that world. She was the heir to the throne of Amoria.

“I have an idea. If all goes well, it will solve all of our problems. We wait until the king dies, present the princess, she can take the throne, and can change the law. Change it for the better.”

“That’s assuming she has the same ideals as us,” Andy said skeptically.

“We’ll convince her,” I replied sternly. I couldn’t exactly tell them I was her best friend. “We leave in ten minutes. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” 

                                   -------------------------------

We approached the door as slowly and quietly as possible. I was in front, Andy in the middle, and Lana behind. I had my bow and Lana her sword. Andy had a shortsword as well but he wasn’t exactly proficient with it. I heard some low talking and opened the door slightly. Filled with rage, I immediately broke through and knocked the guard out with my conjoined fists. I glared at him, debating killing him, but I came to my senses, realized that even though his pants were half down, nothing technically happened. I noticed Libby was still unconscious, which made me stutter a little. I looked back to see how the other two reacted. They looked at me, a little surprised, but I believe they understood that in any case, it was wrong.

I put my gloves on, then took out my shears, which I had put over the fire in the lobby, and half cut half melted the shackles. She fell to the ground, but I caught her and lifted her up. “Let’s go,” I said to Andy, who relayed it to Lana while I came out of the cell.

I was walking behind them up the steps leading to the main gathering area when Lana stopped. Andy continued up, but stopped as well. I don’t like the look of this, I thought. I hadn’t peeked over the edge yet, and I crouched down halfway up the stairwell.

“Well, if it isn’t Lana West, and… you there.” Andy tensed up, and I knew he was pissed, but he kept it in. I recognized the voice as Desmond. “Now where is that Olsen? I know he’s with you.”

“He’s got his bow trained on you as we speak,” Lana replied, “You do happen to be a pretty easy target, standing exactly in the middle of the room with a group of ten or twenty idiots with no armor.” God, Lana, you’re the best, I thought. I put Libby down and knocked an arrow.

“Hmm, I don’t see him. Perhaps he chickened out. He never did manage to kill anything,” Desmond went on. That ends today, I thought. I went down another step or two to get the best angle. I knew I had to shoot extremely accurately and quickly, but I took a deep breath, and let it fly. I heard a kind of sploosh of it hitting its target, and started to barrage them with arrows. I saw Lana and Andy dodge to either side and disappear from where I could see.

I decided to leave Libby where she was, and I popped up from the stairway for some more precise shots. I saw Lana and Andy fighting back to back and a couple guys heading toward me. I swiftly unleashed four arrows, all of them hitting their mark. I didn’t see Desmond anywhere, so I provided Lana and Andy with covering fire. Before long, the room was cleared, bodies scattered about. Wow, I thought, things just got real. I hadn’t realized just how quickly this had turned from a simple rescue mission to a massacre. They weren’t bad people, they thought they were fighting for justice throughout the kingdom. This is how it is in war. Innocent people die all the time. Nobody wins in a civil war.

I picked Libby up and we walked out the door. Just like the other day, there was no light to be found. “They know what inn we stay at, we have to leave town altogether,” I whispered, “I know a place.”

I had lived my early years there with my mentor. It had been passed down to me after he died, but I had decided to go to the “big city”. I had not known anything beyond the little watering hole and the cottage. We took our horses from the back and headed off.

                                    -------------------------------

I couldn’t remember exactly how far we were from the cottage, but I knew we were headed in the right direction. I saw Lana drift over to me. “What’s your deal?” she asked in a low voice, so that Andy couldn’t hear.

“What?” I sincerely didn’t know what she was talking about.

“With the girl,” she said and nodded to Libby. She was sitting in front of me on my horse. Crap, I haven’t been acknowledging my boundaries for somebody I haven’t even spoken to, I thought.

“What do you mean?” I responded. I wanted to make it look as natural and not weird as possible.

“She’s been stuck with you the entire time I’ve been around her. It’s weird is all I’m saying.” She went back to where she was riding. Well the not weird part is down the drain.

We came upon two huge boulders that struck a chord in my memory. “We’re almost there,” I announced. Actually, this was probably only a couple miles from town. We had been riding in the forest, as I now remember it to be, where my mentor had me doing target practice. A break in the trees revealed it to be just as I had left it. A beautiful log cottage that, to my surprise, hadn’t deteriorated at all. “There’s a spring about a hundred yards that way,” I pointed to the side of the cabin where a little mountain-like rock formation peaked just above the treeline that we could see, “Lana, you can go first and if you don’t mind, take her with you.”

“Sure, but if I catch either of you there, you’ll lose your head.” I rolled my eyes and Andy and I started to unload all our stuff in the cottage. There were two rooms with two small cots each if I remember correctly, so there weren’t any issues there. Everything seemed to have worked out.