The curtains pulled back and a man walked up on stage, speaking with a surprisingly deep and rich voice that filled the chamber. He was dressed in a really nice suit-like set of clothing worn as a robe but the black over white and the bowtie brought to mind a tuxedo.

The man spoke. “The story begins in the land of Artor and follows the life of a kind and just princess by the name of Imaziri. We hope you enjoy the tale we tell and the adventure we are about to depart on.” The man bowed and exited the stage.

The next people to walk on stage were Reina wearing a noble’s dress and a handful of other actors dressed in full plate armour, none of them wearing helmets. The scene focused around the princess as she walked through the commons and interacted with various common people. She was kind and willing to listen and help with their problems. The scene changed and the decorations now reflected the palace in which she lived, where the princess lamented the need to marry another member of the nobility and how dreary and self-possessed they all were.

A few smaller dialogue scenes came after that showed how much she cared for her parents and how they loved her, then there were a few shadowy parts where a viscount, the nephew of the current king, was planning a coup in the black of night. Various soldiers and assassins assaulted the castle and killed all those loyal to the crown. The personal royal guard escort of the princess had been staying up late and noticed the commotion. As their loyalty demanded, they rushed to the princess and fought to secure her escape out of the besieged castle. Wonder of wonders the knights actually managed to make it out alive, although each of them was wounded.

One of the knights was of lowborn origins and knew of a nearby swamp where they would be able to hide and lose the tracking assailants. He led them through the swamp where they fought monsters and exhaustion till nothing but sheer willpower kept them awake. Eventually even their immense willpower came to an end and they collapsed from the trials of the past two days. The knights, even in their state of weakness, made sure to collapse around the princess, whose lovely noble dress was torn and shredded and muddied.

Then they were found by a young man with a bow, a scruffy hunter from a nearby village who had been following them in secret for the last hour and was impressed with their force of personality and the knight’s unwavering loyalty. He used a totem to call some people from the village and they dragged the unconscious party into some kayaks and took them down river where they had their settlement. The young hunter brought the unconscious warriors and their charge to his mother, the village shaman. She used remedies made from the swamps' rich variety of creatures and plants to heal their injuries and treat the symptoms of their exhaustion.

When the knights woke up they immediately scrambled for their weapons and searched for the princess. When they found her lying on a bed covered in bandages they rushed to her in worry before relaxing when they saw they had been treated and they were not held prisoner or surrounded by enemies.

The lowborn young knight told the rest of his companions how the village had been hidden deep in the swamp for centuries and how few people knew of its existence, how old shamanic magic and protective rituals kept it hidden from the rest of the country. How the mist was thick and protected the people who were hidden from the surroundings. The shaman who was both wise and kind and the village people who were well versed in travelling the swamp and navigating its many dangers. How very few people ever left the village and how the occasional wanderer came across it and decided to stay.

He himself had been born in the village and had left to explore the world, before coming across a knight who had become sick from unwittingly eating an animal who had been exposed to a powerful poison. How that same knight had offered him a squireship after he had been nursed back to health. How the knight had promised him a life of honour and travel where he would be able to see the many wonders of the land.

The young knight had smiled and told them his mentor had been truthful and he had seen much of the land, but eventually when he was knighted he had need for a purpose. Then he had seen a little girl in a rich dress kneeled in the mud to pick up a wounded puppy and how she had headed to a healer and demanded help. How he had seen in her his path in life and had asked to join her personal guard.

The rest of the knights told their own heartwarming past meetings with the princess and why they joined her guard. Unknowing that they were being listened to by the young hunter and the shaman and the princess herself who pretended to still be asleep because she was flattered by their stories and deeply troubled by the likely state of her country and the fate of her parents. Eventually when their stories came to an end the princess woke and turned to her knights. She bowed deeply and thanked them for their fidelity and their quick actions to save her life.

One of the older knights got on his knees and begged her forgiveness, for he had rushed to secure the king and queen but had been too late. Their own guards had been slain by traitors within their very ranks. Both her elder brother and younger sister had also been found dead, murdered in their beds by the minions of the traiterous viscount. The princess‘s eyes welled with tears as she lamented the loss of her family and so many of the castle’s people that she knew and loved.

Eerie silence spread throughout the hut as the knights knew not how to console their heartbroken charge. The hunter and the shaman chose this moment to enter and ask after their injuries. Thanked by the knights and the sniffling princess for treating their injuries and taking them to safety instead of handing them over to the viscount. The hunter eyed the group and told them he had sent scouts to the edge of the swamp to search for answers and gather information on the action of the viscount and his troops.

The country had fallen into a civil war, the viscount had attempted to take multiple well-placed castles by killing their owners with his own group of allies, while he had succeeded with some of them others had proven far more difficult to capture and they had risen together in outrage and formed their own alliance of mutual defence. The biggest problem was that the loyalists were scattered because the viscount had focused most of his troops on strategic crosses that seperated the lands of those who were the most dangerous for his ambition.

While armies of loyalists and traitors clashed in various places in the country a single duke and his daughter had rallied a large portion of the land to themselves. They had reportedly one last member of the royal family with them and were defending her to the last man - reports of who this member was were shifty, only a few days had passed since the coup and information was scarce and the country in chaos.

The princess had perked up at the mention of another living member and the knights had cautioned her. Stating that although they believed in the loyalty of the duke they had thought it likely he had merely heard of her survival and chosen to attract attention to himself as though he were hosting the surviving member of her family so she could travel unnoticed. She had both been happy by the show of loyalty and saddened by the likelihood that none of her family remained.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The shaman and the hunter questioned her intentions now, inviting her to stay in the village and hide from the world in safety. She refused, stating that her people needed her and they did not deserve to live under a disloyal and cruel man such as the viscount. She would need to rally the remaining pockets of loyalists and reclaim her country. The knights had discussed their options and told her how they would need more men if they wanted to reclaim anything. Even the smallest pocket of resistance and those assaulting him outnumbered the princess’s guard by a numerous amount.

So the princess turned to her new and unlikely saviours, the people of the swamp. The village of hunters and foragers, while they numbered more than any other village she had ever seen, they were by no means a trained army. She attempted to recruit the villagers one by one, but all of them refused. Stating how they were loyal to the village and their own people first and how the troubles of the lands outside had no bearing on their own prosperity or health. They were secluded and they preferred life that way. The princess begged and argued but nothing helped persuade them.

She had sagged defeated beneath one of the larger trees in the swamp and had cried to herself. Lamenting the loss of all she cared for and her uselessness and inability to provide any aid to those who were loyal to her. The young hunter found her in her distraught state and walked over to her and attempted to console her, she told him about her failure to recruit anyone from the village for aid. She sniffed as she confessed her inability to gather even a single person to her cause. How she was unworthy of the loyalty of her people.

The hunter had simply sat beside her and smiled, “You may have asked many people. But you have not asked me.”

The princess had sniffled at his words and had mumbled a sarcastic and joking response asking him to join her people. The young hunter had smiled at her and said that for one as beautiful as her he would be willing to fight and even bleed if necessary. Although he confessed he rather hoped to survive the fighting in the future.

She had sniffed away her tears and tackled him in a hug, crying into his shoulder while the young hunter blushed and awkwardly patted her back. He had advised her on how normal fighting and charging the enemy line was suicidal with how outnumbered she was so he took her to his mother, the shaman. He told her of the abilities his mother had and how she might be able to use them to fight for her people.

The princess’s eyes had twinkled with anticipation as she saw how she could be useful in battle and become something beside the burden she was to her knights. So she started studying with the shaman. She studied hard and failed repeatedly but kept gathering her courage and continuing on. Learning more and more and eventually learning to summon and control mist. As her powers grew she became closer with the hunter and the shaman, with the hunter especially spending a lot of time in private with her, telling her of the wonders of the swamps and the beauty that could be found in even the most damp places.

He showed her those wonders and the scenes became increasingly romantic. The hunter and the princess growing closer than was strictly suitable. The knights in the meantime had taken to learning from the eldest hunter of the village: They learned how to hide and how to stalk their prey, they dampened their armour and silenced the clanking it caused, and they became something new, knight-hunters. They learned how to swiftly travel the swamp and how to take down their opponents from the shadows in silence. They learned how to use bows and how to walk unheard on both grass and mud.

While the princess learned the shamanic ways and the knights became something never seen before, the young hunter had steadily fallen in love with the princess, entranced by her determination, her kindness and her sheer force of will. He started spending more and more time with her and secretly convincing other villagers to join her when they would set out to help the loyalists. Information had kept trickling in and a stalemate had been formed. The viscount had been stabilising in the areas most important to him while the duke and the loyalists had captured a few smaller and less important areas.

For now there was an odd sort of peace that had fallen. The quiet before the storm as both parties made plans to overtake the other. The princess had meanwhile mastered the mist, while other shamanic rituals and abilities refused to show themselves to her, the mist felt natural to her. It called to her and she showed prodigious ability to control it, the amount she could summon was beyond what the older shaman had thought possible. The young hunter and the princess had started dating in secret.

Months had passed since their arrival to the village and the princess had changed. Where before she had been covered in riches and a fancy dress even though it had been torn and muddied, now she wore a commoner's clothes. She even wore trousers and she kept her feet bare, to better feel nature beneath it. The relationship between the princess and her paramour deepened over the months as did her relationship with the natural forces and the mist.

Then the young hunter did the unthinkable, he asked for her hand in marriage. The commoner had asked for a lifelong partnership with royalty, the princess should have been shocked, she should have refused the offer. The knights should have been insulted by the gesture and have risen up in protest. Instead the knights had cheered on the young hunter and the princess had blushed but accepted the offer with pure happiness.

The wedding was planned a few weeks later, and while the princess and the knights continued their training the villagers had slowly come to love the princess and her guards as their own. They had secretly been preparing for war, crafting leathers and bows, learning how to scout and hunt in small groups, and take down their opponents with synchronised shots. The shaman who had come to see the princess as her own daughter had been preparing a garment in secret. She had been using old shamanic magic and rituals of ancient power to enchant the dress with something never seen before.

The weeks passed and the day of the wedding came at hand, the hunter stood at the altar nervously, wringing his hands and trying to keep still as happy anticipation reared its head.

The knights had cleaned and polished their armour for the occasion and stood at either side of the runway, the rest of the guests had taken their seats and the only ones missing were the princess and the shaman. The back of the stage was filled with mist and the shaman appeared from it and headed towards the altar, back straight with pride and a small smile of accomplishment adorning her face.

Gasps from the wedding guests and the theatre guests sounded throughout the chamber as the princess appeared. At first instinct, you would have thought she was naked as she walked through the mist with her bare shoulders and straight back. Then the mist seemed to linger and cloy around her body. It trailed behind her as a cloud of white and light grey, following her and accentuating her every moment, at her beck and call like a loyal hound. The princess’s eyes were of a steely silver and her hair a pale blue that had melded with the mist. It clung to her body and she radiated an intensity Aeric had never seen before, shocking him out of the story as he admired the effect of his dress and how well Reina wore it.

“Definitely not a waste of time…” He whispered.

Aliami shook her head, “I have never seen a piece such as that before, you have truly outdone yourself.”

“You made that?!” The young man who had first joined them on their balcony whisper-shouted. “What quality is it?”

“How much I would give for such a dress…” His partner whispered as she stared at the stage in awe, marvelling at how the mist even now followed Reina around.

“It’s a masterpiece.” Xii told him with a grin.

Aeric straightened his back in pride as he looked down at the audience and saw how entranced they were by the dress. He saw several slack jaws and white-knuckled fists as women and men alike stared in awe at the form. His heart swelled and he couldn’t stop the grin from appearing on his face, he kept trying to fight it back and failed. He had never been as proud of something he had accomplished before in his life.

This was a work of art and he was so very proud to have made it and he couldn’t help but wonder what he would be capable of in the future. A masterpiece, he could truly consider himself a master tailor now.