Then the balcony edge slips up, too far ahead for her to see the castle, her whole life here on Gelicost, anymore. The tears fall upwards as well, ripped from her cheeks by the cruel wind of her freefall. The ground stretches out below, rushing up to meet her once again. 

Idun rolls mid-fall, reaching up toward the sky above. 

Then a hand reaches back, and catches her forearm.

“Whoa, Blue! You really gotta stop jumping off of tall places, huh?” Scales jokes, pulling Idun up onto the back of a familiar oversize eagle. “You would’ve been in real trouble if we hadn’t been here to catch you. Good thing I went with my gut and grabbed backup, huh?” 

Lance tilts his wing to bring the group in a wiiide arc away from the palace, then twists his head around mid-flight to look back at Scales and Idun. “How’s it feel for the great Idun to need saving from the one and only Lance?” He scoffs proudly, clacking his beak in glee.

Idun turns away from her two saviors and scrubs furiously at her eyes. She looks behind at the palace, high in the stone of the mountain.

“Hey, uh, Blue? You good?” Scales asks. “What happened in there?”

Lance twists his head back around to look at her. His eyes take in her less-than-great condition. “What happened?”

Idun smiles bitterly. “It seems I’ve been exiled by the queen.”

“What?!! Why?”

“I think...she set our mission up to fail, from the very beginning.” Idun’s eyes narrow, as a thought strikes her. “Did you know about this? About everything?”     Lance snorted derisively, then sighed.

“I....she told me that if anything went wrong, I was supposed to pull back, and if you...if anything happened to you, to immediately return. She said...that since you weren’t a noble, you should be more than willing to lay down your life for your country. I...was only still in the country because I didn’t want to go back to face the queen alone.”

“That is fair, she can be intimidating when she chooses, can’t she?” Idun replied, as she touched her bleeding face.

“Idun, what will you do now?” Lance asked, as Teach and Scales looked on in shock at this turn of events.

“I…” Idun sighs, glancing back at the castle balconies, now mere lights fading into the distance. “I suppose we’ve done our duty now, haven’t we? There’s nothing more for me to do now.” She draws her lips into a thin line as she pulls at her shirt, torn and stained, but still with the flag of Gelicost embroidered clearly.

    Scales looked between the knight and the giant eagle, dumbstruck. “So that’s it? You’ve spent the last three months in prison, fought your way across my entire city, and now you’re giving up, just like that!?” She sits facing Idun. “C’mon Blue, what’s the new plan?” 

Idun looks back at her, then out at the streets of Gelicost.

“...I suppose I’ll head back to Threeneer. The emperor seemed honest, and someone needs to warn him that Gelicost might try to invade again. Besides,” She looks to met the eyes of the two people from Threeneer, who had followed her all this way. “It’s a country I’d like to see more of than some back roads and a jail cell.” Scales beams as Teach smiles.

“But what will you do, Lance? It could be dangerous for you here too...”

“Hah, for the first son of the high house of Cygnet? Even the queen wouldn’t dare touch me! No, I’ll stay and ensure Gelicost stays as noble as its always been,” Lance bragged, though he betrayed his bravado by clacking his beak as he circled an arc over the docks, readying for the long journey back the way they came.

-THE END-