Light cast down on the glistening rooftops of castle Scáthach, glistening into the open bodies of lakewater around the castle. Rays of starshine crawling up the north tower, slowly bringing light to the princess’s chamber. Ella Rose sat up at her bedside with a soft yawn, the prinsessen’s appearance was akin to that of Kitsune from ancient legends, her flourished deep hazel hair, stern yet elegant stature and most showing, her fox-like ears atop her head. She was the adopted daughter of Queen Ebony Rose, current ruler of Dire’s expansive kingdom.

Heading to the castle’s hall for something to eat Ella passed the throne room, to which she was stopped by the shout of her mother.

“Ella, come here. I have someone for you to meet.” Ebony snapped at her, yet keeping her composure followed it up with a soft yet impatient “now.” with a sigh of dread, Ella stepped fourth into the throne room and gazed up at the queen.

“Who is it that you want me to accommodate? Mother.” Ella muttered back, a fake sweetness over her voice, it was probably just another one of her mother’s rich or royal acquaintances.

“Well, it’s your future husband of course!” Ella froze in place, her ears folding back atop her head.

“Sorry, say that again? I-, I don’t think I heard you properly” her voice trembling as she chuckled softly to try and mask her dismay.

“I noticed you hadn’t married yet so I decided to help you get it over with before it’s too late” she exclaimed as the prince stepped forward with a bow.

“I am Prince Richard of Seaforge, your lovely queen inquired that I could help with your problem, this kingdom does need an heir after all” the prince snarked. For the queen could not see it but his expression did not match his words.

“M-mother.. I-” she responded softly before trying to keep her composure. “Mo-.. your Highness” the queen nodded at Ella correcting her speech for the situation, “how can I marry someone I do not even know?”

“It’s quite simple dear. While I am at the Royal Summit during the months to follow, you and Prince Richard will rule the kingdom temporarily, a test of sorts to prove you’re ready to be queen. You will marry him on my night of leave so I may trust the kingdom with the two of you.” trying to hold back her hatred for what was occurring Ella nodded softly, knowing she wasn’t going to win this argument. “Splendid! I’ll have our peasant girls make you a gown.”

A blazing glow cleared its way through the window of a castle’s servants' quarters, awakening Miss Lucy Willows. Donning her colorful attire she made her way to the garden after finishing her morning routine. Lucy was the daughter of an infamous witch by the name of Amber Willows. At a young age, Amber left her daughter in the castle, leaving Lucy with the maids as she avoided her peril and fled the isles.

Lucy had grown up alongside the princess, Ella’s only real friend who wasn’t enforced by the queen. Lucy was the one who actually taught Ella about the real world and it’s ways, taking the closeted princess and sneaking her out to the woods where they spent a lot of their time together, at least they did until the day before Ella’s 16th birthday five years prior. The queen had sent a search party to follow Lucy into the woods and map out the girl’s hideout after finding evidence of the girl’s sneaking out together. Come the next day the queen was mortified stepping into the ruins of an old cabin to find her daughter kissing a girl, a peasant girl no less. To the queen, the only way this could have occurred is if the princess had been hypnotised.

“Witchcraft!” the queen screamed, startling the two girls, guards rushing into the ruins as Ebony pulled her daughter away from the terrified peasant girl though to the guards’s surprise, their target dove through an old crawlspace leading to the outside. Outraged, the queen declared Lucy was banished from the castle grounds and sentenced to execution for preforming the dark arts on royalty. 

Fleeing the guards that had accompanied the queen was no easy feat as she used everything she knew to evade capture, ending up with an arrow through her calf and covered in scrapes. though it was in vein as the knights cornered her on a cliffside overlooking the great waterfall flowing into the kingdom’s chasm, trembling and glaring, trying to stand her ground as they backed her to the edge. Able to remember the guard’s words oh so clearly

“You have gone against the code of the gods and will find punishment.” If anything, in that moment, Lucy began to laugh amidst her crying, she was so scared and in so much pain she couldn’t think properly, backing towards the edge. “Stand down, miss!” the soldiers yelled at her, but it had no effect. Lucy closed her eyes and fell backwards.

She awoke on the shorefront on the chasm’s great lake, soaked, injured and alone, but alive. Pulling herself up the beach she beckoned through the trees

“Anyone?” she weakly gasped out into the misty forest in the chasm’s basin but nobody came. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days. Eventually the pain in her leg subsided as she lost feeling in it. Biting a nearby twig to prevent herself from screaming as she tore the arrow from her calf, left in a whimpering mess she tried to wash her wound with the water in the basin to hopefully prevent infections.

Slowly she started to recover, constructing crutches from fallen branches and fibre from the reeds she tried her best at  heading back to the city. It took at least two days before she was able to make it to the kingdom she had called home for so long. To put a bounty on the head of a young girl was a choice of the queen that split the kingdom in two, those who agreed all witchcraft is punished by death and those that didn’t agree to the execution of a child even if she was a teen. Everyone knew Lucy, every shopkeep, every trader and every traveller had interacted with her at some point. Leaving her in a well of mistrust. Just a few days ago she’d never consider anyone in the castletown even dangerous, but now? She had no way of telling who’d sell her out or who would spare her.

Entering the crowded streets and dark avenues felt different than it did before, like life itself had been pulled from the roads she limped through the shadows, pulling a robe down from a drying rack to conceal herself further. Limping her way through the alleys and crevices until she was met with an old shack of a home. Making her way inside it was clear the place was abandoned and this could be a place of hide and rest. Pulling a chest from the underside of a ruined bed she was met with, a leg?! A mechanical one, strewn along with other miscellaneous bodyparts.

“I-..I can use this.”

The light cast down late evening against the aged yet still pristine walls of Ausmanthus Castle, the rooftops gleaming as shadows were cast forth. Light befalling one of the castle's servants, she had snuck out after curfew to explore the grounds when she was met with an unfamiliar sight. Seated upon her windowsill was the princess looking out over the courtyard, when suddenly she fell out from her window. Acting fast Lucy dove into the bushes to help cushion the fall for her princess. A loud thud erupted from the scene as they laid together on the grass, the princess wasn’t in perfect condition but it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed. It was at this time they finally got a good look at each other. Princess Ella Rose with her long flowing hair and formerly unripped velvet gown, Lucy in her jester’s garb with less of the bells and frills to make it smaller, their eyes locked for even a moment, faces running red with a deep blushed hue

“M-miss you saved me! Oh how could I ever repay you! Oh.. I-.. I’ve never gotten a good look at you before.” Ella remarked, her tone fading to curiosity as her ears perked up.

“W-why?! Is there uhm.. Something wrong?!” Lucy tried to throw the tone of her voice to make her seem different, looking away not so subtly to try to hide her identity from her old friend.

“O-oh no it’s nothing” Ella responded, a bit embarrassed now as Lucy helped her to her feet “thank you for saving me, I promise the debt will be repaid”

“Oh! There’s no need, I doubt the Queen would approve of giving a servant any extra pay.”

“The Queen? She’s gone at the moment! So i’m sure it’ll be fine”

“Gone?! What do you mean gone?! Who’s running the kingdom?!”

“Me.. and my husband, Prince Richard..”

“You.. you have a husband?” Lucy suddenly got dizzy, her heartbeat increasing as her leg stiffened up “i think i have to go do something..”

“O-oh okay!” the princess called out as lucy stumbled away.

Slamming the door to her quarters and collapsing on the bed where she started crying, she hadn’t broken down like this since the incident. This couldn’t be happening, all that time, all that effort just to get back here all for nothing. Just as the pain was beginning to set in she heard an interesting sound from outside her door, a passing conversation from whom she assumed to be the prince to a broken voice she did not recognize. 

“She’s finally dead, your liege?”

“No! A filthy servant girl saved her, that rancid pest. Now I have to kill the servant too! Not like I wouldn’t enjoy it I just, I don’t have the time.”

“Ah, that is most dreadful sire”

“I already had the Queen taken care of, why is this so much harder?!”

“M-my liege you shouldn’t be saying that so loud! What if the servants are in their rooms?”

“Torch the hall, at most we’ll lose some doors and flooring, easily replaced with the castle’s wealth. I need an excuse to get the princess into the safe room anyway. And remember, leave no one to tell a tale”

“Yes my liege”

Lucy couldn’t believe what she had just heard and pondered momentarily if she was just hearing things, but it didn’t take long before screams echoed through the hall and smoke began to seep in around the door.

Lucy screamed internally as she desperately looked for a way out, practically tearing apart her room until she happened to pull her bed out of the corner in the commotion, revealing a trapdoor. She pondered entering but by this point the room had mostly filled with smoke and she wasn’t gonna stay there. Diving down into the depths the room she fell into struck her as eerie, the room seemed to be a hallway into a main chamber. Following the path she stepped inside to see a bloodshot crystal dagger on it’s pedestal.

The prince frantically enters the safe room with the princess, at first he starts just to console her but it seemed beak, effortless, emotionless.

“Whats going on?! I heard screaming and I was escorted in here by the guard, and I’m, I’m just freaking out okay!?” Ella’s breathing was heavy, she couldn’t think properly, too much was happening too fast. She didn’t even see the Prince draw a sheathed blade. Ella left panicking as the vile Prince prepared to take a life on his own hands. A soft red mist started to enter the room as Lucy, or what looked like Lucy dragged herself in the room with her sharp and deep stare, her body movements were stiff and almost corpse like gripping the bloodshot blade in her hand as she approached the Prince.

“You know, Ella dear. It's rather unfortunate that you’re here right now”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I would have preferred if you were on the castle grounds at the foot of the tower. Where you were supposed to be”

“I don’t understand.”

“You never do- you never do..” he drove the blade towards his victim but was stopped dead in his tracks as his skin was met with an icy touch. Turning around he was met with the cold dead stare of the court’s jester.

Power overcomes her as her eyes flare red, driving the blade through his stone cold heart, yet as the red spilled rivers from the gaping cave in his chest, everything stopped. She turned her head to see the princess, backed into the corner, horrified, horrified of her. She fell to the ground as her own heart shattered, the world went dark. 

Upon waking, barely able to move her weakened form she opened her eyes to watch the floor run underneath her, she was being taken somewhere. Carried, dragged, she couldn’t tell but it didn’t matter in the end as she was positioned upright against a damaged wall, the decay looked familiar, she was back in the ruins she grew up in. but how? But why? So many questions flooded through her mind

Cloth tattered red with blood she glanced around the room to see the princess matted with mud, her elegant dress torn. Shakily holding a sword towards her

“You killed him.. You killed him in cold blood right before my eyes. How could you do such a thing, why would you do such a thing? What could he have ever done to you”

“Princess I-”

“No! None of that, formality will get you nowhere here, just explain yourself.”

“You don’t recognise me do you? Slowly standing caused the princess to more firmly grip her sword

“Don’t come any closer”

“I don’t need to” she pulled a small blade that was concealed inside her shoe, the princess raised her guard, she cut her pant leg before tearing it open, revealing the steamworks of gears that made up her leg

“You’re the maid girl that caught me, what does that have to do with-” she pulled up her pant leg further to reveal a cracked heart sigil. “L-Lucy?..” 

“Right on the money princess-” Lucy chuckled softly before coughing and stumbling to her knees-

To Be Continued…