The train ride came to an end, and I disembarked as quickly as I could. Reemerging from the subway, I found myself on the other side of Valport. The atmosphere in that part of the city was much more high class. Bright, multicolored lights blinded as far as the eye could see, and dozens of advertisements for plays and movies flashed on electronic screens. Most of those promos were for movies starring some actress named Raven Blackwell.

I pushed through the crowds of people, taking care to hold the box tightly against my body. The last thing I needed was for someone to swipe the damn thing when I’d already made it so far.

Once I was through the congestion of the subway exodus, my pace quickened. It was about one in the morning, and I was beyond ready for bed at that point. Thankfully, the closer I got to the destination, the more the streets emptied of both vehicles and people.

 In a short time, I found myself at the apartment complex of the delivery recipient. I made short work of the stairs despite my tired legs and knocked twice, not expecting an answer at the ungodly hour. To my surprise, the door opened instantly, and a pair of hands snatched the box into the unit, slamming the door shut in my face before I could say a word, let alone process what just happened.

“O…kay?”

Whatever, the job is done, and I pulled out my phone to text my parents as much.

Great job, sweetie! Now, get home already! Your father and I will wait up for you. Be careful, I love you very much, my mother replied.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and descended the steps, finding that the streets were indeed quite vacant at that point. Most people would probably be creeped out by the emptiness, but it was music to my ears. I’d be dealing with incessant crowds once I reached the subway again, so I decided to savor every moment of the quiet I currently had.

City air was never quite “fresh”, but the absence of smothering swarms of people and an overabundance of automobiles had provided me with a few clear breaths for the first time since I left home. To be honest, if the entire way home stayed that calm, I would’ve walked the whole way across Valport rather than take the train.

But just as I was truly beginning to enjoy my moment alone, the low hum of an approaching car became audible behind me. I glanced back to get a view of the only vehicle I’d seen in minutes, and my eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

The vehicle driving down the road was all black with all its windows fully tinted. The design of the car was regal, with a midnight blue trim extending around the length of its form. Antennas on the roof formed a “crown” that was, in actuality, the nodes for the vehicle’s magical shield. On the hood of the car, an unmistakable coat of arms sat proudly branded for all to see. In short, this was a car I’d seen many times before; one I’d recognize anywhere in the world.

This car belonged to the royal family.

What are the odds? I thought, as the fancy car slowly passed me. I couldn’t see inside due to the darkened windows, but I felt as though eyes glanced over me in the moment.

The happening was nothing special to me, of course. I couldn’t give any less of a care about anything pertaining to the royal family, but upon seeing the car, the first thing that entered my mind was the confounding, wild excitement my parents would have when I told them about what I witnessed. With that in mind, I pulled out my phone again and began to record the car as it pulled ahead of me. I knew mom and dad would get more excitement out of the moment by living vicariously through me than I would ever get from it myself.

Suddenly, a deafening screech rang out from the far-left side of the street. The sound of a roaring engine not only followed soon after, but it also drew nearer at disarming speed until something appeared from behind a building that was obstructing my view. It was another car—another familiar one. I immediately identified it as the getaway vehicle belonging to the thieves I had seen on the news. The car was barreling forward at breakneck speed with no signs of slowing down. Both the driver and the passenger in the front seats were looking over their shoulders through the rear window of the vehicle, not caring at all about what was in their path: the royal family’s car.

I sucked in a breath as the inevitable happened. The ghastly, thunderous sound of metal-on-metal screamed into the air as the thieves’ car violently T-boned the royal family’s vehicle. I had expected the magical shield to deploy, but to my surprise, it didn’t. Instead, due to the frightening speed at which the thieves’ vehicle had been traveling, the royal car began to flip and tumble, rolling over the sidewalk and bouncing horribly off the front of a nearby building.

The two thieves whipped forward but were saved from being ejected from the vehicle by their seatbelts. Their car, however, was completely crushed in the front, and the two men were left visibly stunned by the collision. Meanwhile, the royal car lied flipped over on its top like a turtle on its back.

The blares of a dozen sirens manifested from down the same street the thieves came from. Sure enough, a fleet of police cars appeared from the same direction and rapidly approached the scene of the accident.

“Crap, we have to go!” one of the thieves urged, smacking his surely concussed partner in the face. “Wake up and grab the cash!”

“Unh… right!” the other one groaned.

The pair of injured dimwits grabbed the sack of money out of the backseat of their wrecked car and hopped out of their chairs. As the police closed in, I tried to flag them down, but the useless morons ignored me completely. Instead, they rounded the corner after the robbers who took off running down an alleyway as fast as they could with their cash haul and newfound limps. Just as quickly as both the thieves and the police had appeared, they were all gone, leaving me alone with deafening silence and a disgusting car wreck. 

Before I could even think of what to do next, a strange sound emitted from the antennas that were now pinned below the roof of the upside-down car. The magic shield, which had failed to deploy during the collision, appeared to try to activate itself. It failed once again, but this time it shorted out and erupted into flames.

“Shit!” I shouted, breaking into a sprint towards the wreck.

There was no time to call for help. No one had emerged from the car since the accident. If whoever was in there was unconscious or trapped inside, they’d surely burn to death unless I did something immediately.

Damn it all.

I rounded the scene, looking for access to the inside of the car as the flames spread quickly. One of the backseat windows seemed to have shattered when the car bounced off the building, providing me an entrance inside.

I dropped to my hands and knees and peered inside the broken window. Just in front of me, a girl anyone in the world would recognize sat upside-down and unconscious, confined to her chair by her seatbelt. Her golden hair and snow-white arms dangled limply, dragged downward by gravity. Her face was cut and bleeding in several places where the ruptured glass sliced her skin. Her once immaculate white and pink dress was collecting droplets of blood from above.

“Of course, it’s the princess,” I whined. “Why couldn’t it have been some random guards?!”

I winced, cutting myself on broken glass as I crawled into the vehicle. Once inside, I tried to unbuckle the princess, but the mechanism refused to release. I took a moment to glance forward into the car and identify any other passengers. Thankfully, there was only one other person: the driver. Unfortunately, he was also fully unconscious, because of course he was.

My hand retrieved my pocketknife from my right pants pocket and flicked it open. I positioned my body the best I could underneath the princess and quickly began cutting through her seatbelt. It wasn’t the most elegant job, and even though I tried my best to bring her down gently, her body fell hard on mine the second I slice through the belt.

There was no time to worry about that, though. The flames outside were starting to burn hotter atop the vehicle and I was beginning to sweat. Putting that unpleasant fact out of my mind, I dragged the princess outside the window and a good distance away from the flaming wreck. When I was satisfied with her proximity away from the car, I returned to the car and crawled back inside.

I’m not the biggest guy, horizontally or vertically. So, getting the huge man out of the front seat was not something I was looking forward to doing, but what other choice did I have?

“Sorry about this, man,” I said, cutting the driver loose and letting him plunge downward, sloppily.

I cringed at both the sight and sound his body made falling down like that, but he seemed pretty okay. His tall stature ensured that he didn’t fall very far, thankfully. And he was still breathing.

I hooked my arms around his shoulders and pulled with all my might. His dead weight was overwhelming, but I was able inch him out of the front area more and more with each heave. In other words, it was bowling shoe ugly, but it was working. So long as this guy paid for my inevitable hernia surgery, we were all good, I guess.

After much effort, I freed the driver from what was quickly becoming an inferno. I knew the car could blow any second, so I didn’t dare slow down. I kept dragging him until I got him beside the princess.

“Finally!” I groaned.

I dropped to my knees next to the princess and leaned over her. The sound of an engine in the sky rapidly approached as I checked on the still unconscious girl. A bright spotlight rained down from above and engulfed the three of us. Instantly, I was blinded to hell by what I only briefly identified as a news airship, presumably broadcasting my ordeal.

I wasn’t even allowed to process that, because the very next second, an armada of black cars rushed up to the scene, coming from absolutely nowhere. Dozens of doors opened, deploying tons of men and women in black suits and dark sunglasses. They calmly spoke to one another about something, but the airship’s obnoxious engine deafened me to the specifics of their chatter.

A man and woman approached me. The man said, “I’ll take it from here,” while the woman roughly yanked me to my feet.

“Are you the one who saved them?” she asked, sternly.

“Y-Yes,” I stuttered, startled by her abrasiveness.

“Okay, don’t move.”

The woman began to speak into her earpiece while more men and woman appeared. Four of them lifted the princess and the driver into two of the many cars surrounding the area, while about eight of them began casting some kind of magic on the burning vehicle that extinguished the flames. It didn’t take much analysis to tell that these people were the Steylia royal guard. I’d like to say I was impressed by how smoothly and quickly they worked, but I was too busy wondering why the hell they didn’t get there at least ten minutes earlier.

I checked the time on my phone to find it was already after two in the morning, and I decided I’d had enough for one night.

“Look,” I started, “I’m going home now. Good luck with the rest of this.”

The woman grabbed a tight hold of my arm and barked, “not so fast, kid. You’re wanted at the castle.”

“I’m what!?”

So much for an easy delivery.