1

Considering her thirst for knowledge thoroughly sated and more, Yuliana bid the Colonel good night and left. The evening was still too young to go back to sleep, and so she decided to go look for Izumi instead.

The setting sun was already fully veiled by the treetops and the sky exhibited various tones of gold in the far west; deep sea blue in the east. The buildings' shadows were drawn long and black across the slope.

The sound of axes could be heard no more, only the dull banging of hammers in their stead. It seemed the materials needed to complete the wall were gathered. Looking at the brand-new palisade going behind the storage brought about an undeniable boost to the sense of security at Yuliana's heart. As brave as she tried to be on the outside, the truth remained that she was scared of the forest and all the unknown creatures that could lurk therein. A child of the city, there was no way she could be at ease in the heart of the untamed wilderness.

As Yuliana passed the third cabin on the way down towards the field kitchen, her feet were stopped by a voice.

“Yulia!” someone called her in a hushed tone.

The princess looked left and saw Brian Mallory crouched behind the corner of the cabin. He quickly beckoned her to come closer.

“Brian?” She was surprised to see him up and about so soon. “What are you doing? Shouldn't you be resting?”

“I'm fine,” he said. “There was never anything wrong with me. I feigned sick so that they'd let their guard down. As soon as the old man left, I took off. We need to get out of here.”

“Out?” Yuliana repeated in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Not here. Come.”

Peeking around the corner, to make sure no one was around, the knight led the princess behind the stables, where they were better protected from prying eyes.

“These people are out of their minds,” the man said. “Daemons? Spring of immortality? This isn't going to end well for anybody. Never mind the spring, I'm not going to let them take you back with them to the Empire. We both know you're not going to be the guest of honor there. We have to escape. Now, while we still can.”

“Escape?” Yuliana repeated, stunned. “But how would you even…?”

“I saw the knights put down two horses a short distance outside,” Brian explained. “Not all of them. The captain couldn't bring himself to kill the third. He let it run. But a beast that's lived its whole life near people isn't going to go far. If we can find it, we'll be halfway to Varnam by the time they even realize we're missing.”

“But there are soldiers everywhere,” Yuliana said. “We're not going to slip by them so easily.”

“See that cliff?” Brian nodded at the tall hill behind the outpost. “They're building the palisade there last. There's nobody on that side right now, minimum guards. We'll circle around the hill to the meadow. Then find the horse and ride the Hel out of here.”

“What about the river?”

“We'll look for a shallow spot downstream. Easy. Come on. It has to be now. We won’t get another golden opportunity like this.”

“Wait, I can't just...” Yuliana shook her head. “What about my friends? What will happen to them when the Imperials find us gone?”

“The horse can't carry more than two,” Brian said. “They’d slow us down. It’ll be all right. They will say they didn't know anything, which will be true.”

“I still don't think I can...”

“Yulia!” Brian seized her shoulder and shook the girl. “Remember who you are! You're not one of them. We need you. Your own people need you. You heard the Vizier, these assholes are going to start a war. We can't let them! The King has to be warned.”

“But I...”

“Come on. They'll spot us if we hang here for too long. It’s now or never.”

Crouched, the knight left running towards the hill.

I can't go—Yuliana wanted to say.

How could she turn her back on Izumi and Riswelze? Her mission to save the world? Would she betray the trust of Miragrave, her old friend? Were not the Imperials human beings equal to her own, with their own noble dreams? Surely they could be reasoned with. She could go to the Emperor and negotiate, perhaps stop the war before it would happen.

Remember who you are.

At the same time, self-doubt spread within the princess.

How many times had her good intentions failed her in the past week alone?

How many times had she been left powerless next to plotting politicians?

How many times had her naivety nearly cost her everything?

Save the world?

It was obviously impossible!

She would turn the Emperor's head, by herself? When she couldn't even convince simple brigands to change their ways? Absurd as a mere idea.

I have to look at reality.

What was she doing now? Was there any meaning in following the Imperials at this point? Wasn't every minute she spent co-operating with them an act of treason against her own kindred? What’s more, the risks were great. The danger of them all dying in Felorn was real. Who could measure the Divine Lord's wrath and tell where it ended? After a unicorn and basilisks, what would be next? To top things off, Yuliana hardly felt at home in a camp full of foreign men either. She hadn't forgotten about her treatment at Haywell villa.

I don't know…! What is the right thing for me to do...!?

Brian Mallory was her brother-in-arms. They had known for years. Who could she trust if not him? They'd escape, make it back home, and Yuliana would apologize to her father. She would warn him about the Empire's plans, of the Emperor's quest for the places of power. She had to warn them about the daemon too.

Who else could do this, if not her?

She'd be at home again and all would be well, this journey of endless fear and anxiety but a bad memory.

Thinking rationally, if a side had to be taken, then could there be any question of which one?

The day she was born as the princess of Langoria, that choice had been made for her—her own personal wishes had nothing to do with it.

Izumi could take care of herself. Riswelze too. They didn't need her. Wasn’t she only dead weight for the both of them, an obstacle to their respective dreams. No one here needed her. No one, while at the same time, her citizens and family were anxiously waiting for her return.

I'm sorry—I'm so sorry!

Biting her lip, Yuliana made up her mind and chased after Brian.

There was a gap in the shabby, old fence, next to the hill, with two Imperials posted to guard it. Under the heat of the sunny, uneventful day, they had removed their helmets, which they now used as seats while absorbed in a casual conversation.

The nonchalant air was deceitful. Both men remained mindful of their surroundings, giving a discreet glance down the slope every once in a while. If anything emerged from the woods, it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

But they probably weren't expecting an attack from the outpost behind them...

“What are we going to do?” Yuliana asked Brian, lying flat on her stomach in the tall grass next to him.

“Leave it to me,” Brian answered and lifted himself to move out.

“Don't kill them!” the girl stopped him by the arm and requested.

“...I'll see what I can do.”

Brian advanced in the cover of the grass, crawling closer towards the guards. The wind rustled the treetops, creating enough background noise to cover his movements. Once he had made it sufficiently close, he suddenly sprang up and dashed straight at the knights.

“Hey!” The first one to notice him was the knight sitting further back.

The second, alarmed by the astonished expression of his comrade, jumped up to his feet and turned around, grabbing his spear. But Brian was already too close. Picking up the man's helmet off the ground, he whacked the knight in the side of the head, knocking him out.

The second knight had more time, but the Langorian didn't waste the element of surprise. He threw the helmet at the man. The knight reflexively shielded himself, which allowed Brian to slip past him. Without armor himself, he had the advantage in mobility as well. He caught the Imperial in a chokehold, squeezing his windpipe. The knight struggled in vain. His oxygen supply efficiently cut, he blacked out in a matter of mere seconds.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The way was clear.

Quickly dragging the unconscious knights off the path, hiding them in the grass, Brian waved at Yuliana to follow.

“Let's go.”

“Well, someone's practiced,” the princess said.

“Special forces,” the man shrugged. “I didn't get sent after you just for my good looks, you know.”

The pair made it to the base of the hill undetected. All around the rocks grew smaller trees and thick bushes, providing natural and effective cover from view. There was a path going up the hillside clockwise, but they didn't follow it. Instead, the two started to slowly circle the hill the opposite way. Every now and then, they paused and waited in the undergrowth, listening, in case an outer patrol happened to pass them by. None did.

In a short while, they had made it around to the other side, with the high hill between them and the outpost and could sigh in relief. They had escaped the outpost and were free to head home.

“You all right?” Brian asked the princess.

“Yes, I'm fine,” Yuliana replied, forcing a smile to hide her regrets. “Why, Sir Mallory, I keep getting rescued by you at every turn. How many times is it now? It is a lot of favors to return.”

“I haven't kept count.” He shrugged. “Besides, you saved me from becoming barbecue at Varnam, so I'd say we're even.”

“And you saved me from the unicorn.”

“I think we owe that one mostly to your friend.”

“Ah, yes...” Yuliana's expression clouded.

“Who is she anyway? She looks like a housemaid, yet carries that huge sword around. Made short work of those basilisks.”

“...Just a mercenary,” the girl answered. “From some place afar.”

“Right,” Brian recognized it wasn't a topic worth pursuing, instead patting the princess on the back. “I'm sure she'll be fine. By what I've seen, she knows how to look after herself. Let's keep moving. We have to find the horse before nightfall.”

“Yes, you're right.”

“I saw it gallop this way,” the man said. “It's been a while, it'll probably come back the same way once it gets hungry. Come.”

“Look out!”

There was a little glade between the settlement and the edge of the forest. Glancing over the field, Yuliana noticed a patrol of three knights coming from the direction of the road. She quickly tackled Brian and both fell amid the grass, out of sight. The princess ended up laying on top of the soldier, faces awkwardly close, but neither dared to move so that the swaying of grass wouldn't have exposed them.

“Hey, did you see that?” they heard a voice speak in the distance.

“See what?” another responded.

“...I could swear there was someone standing there just a moment ago, near where that trench goes.”

“Oh, not you too! I've been hearing shit like that all day! It's starting to get on my nerves.”

“Shit like what?”

“People seeing things in one moment that are gone in the other. That's just your mind playing tricks on you. Who'd be standing there, in the middle of nowhere? Think. There are no people in these woods.”

“I didn’t imagine it!”

“You know, the human eye has this funny way of picking out familiar forms in otherwise meaningless patterns and textures. Some rocks and flowers might look like a sitting man in the corner of your vision, and when you look closer, there's nothing. See, mind tricks.”

“No, that's horse shit. Did you make that up on your own?”

“Reminds me of what Elrich was saying before. Claimed he saw a 'cute brown girl' walking near the shed earlier in the day. He even called out to her, but the girl disappeared around the corner without stopping. So the man went chasing after her and as he stepped around the corner—nothing there. He even climbed up to the roof and all, saw no trace of her. Disappeared right into thin air. He was pretty freaked out about it.”

“Haha, fantasizing about brown girls now, that guy...”

“Way too soon to be seeing visions!”

“Yeah. Like, remember that boot camp at Bastalt? Where folks didn't sleep for a week straight. A mate said he spoke with pink oliphants. They kept him awake at guard.”

“Hahaha, oh shit, that's bad!”

The voices remained still, engaged in the conversation.

“What are we going to do?” Yuliana asked. “There are three of them and we're unarmed.”

“He said something about a trench,” Brian remarked. “I think I saw one a few feet ahead of us. If it's deep enough, it'll hide us and lead us downhill.”

“Let's try it.”

The two crawled slowly on, bit by bit, trying to keep the hay from swaying too much.

Soon enough, Yuliana's arms sank through the soft bank of a little brook, perhaps one foot deep and not much wider. Still deep enough for a crawling person to hide in, with only a bit of water at the bottom. Doing her best to ignore the discomfort of getting wet and muddied, Yuliana bravely dragged herself along the shallow channel with her elbows, Brian a short distance behind her.

Foot by foot.

The patrol's voices gradually became faint.

We'll make it.

They were going to escape. Yuliana's heartbeat quickened at the realization. Leaving her friends behind was terrible, but as a princess, she had to look at the bigger picture. The Empire wouldn't be able to use her as a leverage in their campaign against Langoria. The information she had gained was invaluable to their defenses. Perhaps the entire war could be avoided by this minor change of conditions.

It was bitter. Yuliana was disgusted with herself for having to take such a cowardly path. But she reminded herself of the lives that would be saved as a result.

It wasn't only about her. Her family’s heads were on the line.

So long as the Emperor couldn't get his way—her shame had to be worth it.

But the princess of Langoria wasn't unerring.

“Ha——!”

At that moment, the strangest sensation overcame her. Yuliana felt a fierce, burning pain flare deep within her chest, as if she had swallowed molten iron. It quickly spread through her entire being, scorching her organs, or so it felt. There was naturally no way she had actually been injured in any way. Her bodily form remained perfectly intact, yet the pain was real. Gasping for air, she became immobilized, tensing all her muscles against the paralyzing, pulsating agony.

“Yulia?” she barely heard Brian's alarmed voice calling behind her.

“It...can't be…!”

In the world of Ortho, oaths had a special meaning.

An oath sworn with a sufficient stake could become a source of great strength and bravery, a type of magic in and of itself. And in some cases, oaths could become like curses upon their makers.

But it was after breaking a word that the true curse followed.

In the category of spiritual contracts, geases were on a level above the rest.

For whatever reason, one could enforce an absolute taboo on themselves, to ensure that where the flesh failed, the spirit would not. One week ago, at Haywell villa, Yuliana's oath of loyalty to the Emperor of Tratovia had been made into a geas by the power of the cirelo sorcerer.

The penalty for breaking such a pact was inescapable and irreversible, extending even to the afterlife.

However, such terrible oaths were not so easily broken to begin with.

The stakes were hideous—not even the Gods would wish a penalty of such magnitude upon anyone by pure accident. To earn oneself a curse in death and beyond, one had to possess the unwavering, adamant resolve to defile their own word, their honor, piety, and love for life itself.

Those who lacked this resolve received a reminder of the fragility of their spirit, whenever testing the limits of their loyalty, whether intentionally or not.

The boundary for Yuliana was drawn here.

Escaping the Imperials to return to Langoria meant defying the Emperor's direct representatives, as well as his majesty's explicitly expressed will to meet her. Yuliana's wavering sense of duty, riddled with doubt and regret, was nowhere near firm enough to overpower such a curse. Not only did it stop her, it outright robbed her of the freedom of will.

“Yulia! What are you doing?”

Unable to control herself, the princess stiffly crawled up to her feet and turned around, back to the outpost, raising her hands.

“Hey!”

It was too late for Brian to stop her. No matter how muddied, she still stood out like a flag waved against the dark woods. This time, the knights were certainly not imagining her appearance. Even if physically possible, escape had been rendered a distant dream for the two of them now. And Langoria would receive neither a princess nor a word of warning.

2

Although she was purely unaware of the existence of such features, Yuliana desperately wished for something akin to a fast-forward in her life, to avoid having to experience the aftermath of her little adventure. Or, at the very least permanently wipe it from memory. Of course, there was no way such convenient options existed. She could only consciously live through every waking moment, even if each brief instance of it now felt like a lifetime.

“We caught these two sneaking outside the camp. We also found Weller and Vigora, knocked out cold.”

What was the hardest part about the whole ordeal? Perhaps betraying her faithful companions in such a senseless way, and then having the fact revealed to them in such a disgraceful fashion?

Or perhaps it was simply sitting under the stares of dozens of confused knights together with her comrade, like a peasant maiden caught sneaking out with a boy from another village? However shameful it would've been for a common maiden, it was no doubt twice so for the girl who was both a knight and a princess and took great pride in both those titles.

No. They were all undeniably painful experiences and made Yuliana curse her terrible luck and the unlucky stars she had to have born under. She would have done anything, given up anything, even her royal privileges, to change reality and be spared from this ordeal.

But, as said, there were no such easy exits to be found, and neither were the aforementioned parts the worst of it all.

For Yuliana, the worst had to have been this—facing Colonel Miragrave, whose expression the report turned at once into a veritable cloud of storm, dark and with a gaze like lightning. Yuliana was unable to face that deeply reproachful look and only hung her head in shame.

“Have you perhaps thought of becoming a cook, Marafel?” Vizier Attiker remarked to the commander, unsurprised by the Langorians' position. Proving that irksome man right was another unbearable barb in the princess's side.

Not replying to him, the Colonel looked down at Yuliana. The princess would've preferred to have her head cut off on the spot, but the words that she was given instead slashed by far deeper.

“Yuliana. I am very disappointed in you.”