“Another, another!” Alvin exclaimed, as he and Cressia completed their 13th dance together on the royal ballroom floor. Most of their contemporaries had given up half a dozen dances or so in, and the only couples left were those who’d been in love for decades, and mastered the art of pacing themselves when running through the gauntlet of a royal ball’s music.
“I’ve had enough Alvin.” Cressia whispered half heartedly. She wanted to continue on too, but her partner had put her through so many twirls she felt she would collapse from the dizziness she felt. She needed a place to rest, away from overly loud dance music and Alvin’s excitable mood.
That, in her weary mind, made him feel irritable, and she did not like it at all when Alvin felt irritable to her. Especially considering it was her who pursued him for an evening of mischief like this.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine Alvin." Of course she'd be fine, she was Cressia Caravania after all. It was not like an arrow had been lodged into her shoulder or anything like that. Alvin nodded, and started to lead her down to a free seat near the staircase, devoid of the gossipers or hanger-ons who were known to shape up a life threatening rumour or two.
"Are you thirsty, do you need anything to drink?" His hands trailed near her forehead, which was warm but not so warm for him to call upon the royal doctors who lingered in the shadows.
"I'm OK, but-"
"But?"
"I could do with some more sausage rolls." She smiled, and Alvin, startled, began to wince. He thought sausage rolls were delicious too, but he did not like the title that was conferred upon it, sausage rolls. It was like gibberish, the sort of thing a commoner would come up with after inventing it before being pulled elsewhere during tavern peak hours. Of course, it was Zantzar cuisine, but not the refined cuisine that would prove to be more popular to those who came today.
Alvin turned, and even from their distance he could see that the cuisine corner was mobbed by ransacking nobles. Most of them were deeply hungry, and whatever disparaging remarks the other nobility had said about Zantzar cuisine now dissipated once their stomachs started to growl. The head chef, who'd been in service to Alvin as long as Weria or Ms Hastings, merely shook his head and did a throat slitting sign to him. The kitchen was to remained closed for the rest of the evening."
"You'll have to wait until morning, unfortunately."
"Hmmph!" Cressia huffed, folding her arms like a petulant child. Through Alvin, she'd always gotten what she'd wanted, but now he and the chefs couldn't pull their weight when it mattered most?
If she'd been as crazed as her mother, she would've called for a 20km run tomorrow as punishment, but she was not like her mother. She was far too sympathetic to this human prince and this strange world he was sometimes caught up in.
"I have an idea."
"What?"
"You look like you need some air instead."
“I know you’re trying to ease my pain, but I’m not in the mood for that.”
This was apart of her informal grammar lessons she'd taught him between ballads on the ballroom floor. In elvish, Aeryas doubled as both an advanced dance move and as a sweet and sour dish sourced from rice and rhubarb - it was popular in the Conclave, but not so popular that it would make it's way across to the royal Zantzar kitchen.
"No," Alvin explained with much frustration, "air."
"Air air?"
"Yes, air air." He tugged ever so slightly at her hand once she'd settled down again in that free spirited way of hers he'd so admired. "I want to show you something, come with me." "Like what?” Cressia said with the refined annoyance expected of a prince’s dancing partner. “I hope it’s not another one of your foxtrots, my legs can barely carry me as it is!”
Alvin could only grin, and then found himself dragging her along through the sea of people just as she had done with him when they first begun. They moved away from all the noise and buffoonery and bubbles that were to burst as champagne corks rippled through the air, and Cressia, for the first time, began to feel very womanly around him. She could sense that their initial gender roles were beginning to unravel between them too. She pretended she did not like it, this newly feminine part of her.
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Up the grand staircase they went, passing clusters of old nobles who stood admiring the self-portraits of borough children lining the walls. Higher and higher, they ascended, stepping into the dark blue vastness of the sky as they reached the southwestern balcony—a place that overlooked the entire peninsula of Zantzar City.
A stool sat nearby, and Cressia gladly collapsed onto it, easing the lingering dizzy spell that still clung to her.
She had never made it here before.
For one reason or another, despite knowing it was only a stone’s throw from her room, she had never set foot on this balcony until now. And yet, here she was, alongside Alvin, both of them draped in the finest silks the Zantzar fabricators had to offer, a little dizzy, a little tipsy from the night’s merrymaking.
With him.
"It’s beautiful, Alvin," she murmured.
A sudden gust of cold air swept over them, and Cressia huddled closer, her arms wrapping around herself. "It's cold, you know," she admitted, her voice quieter now. "I wish there was something I could do... something that could make it feel like I wasn’t—"
She trailed off.
She was acutely aware that he was pressed against the right side pillar, waiting patiently, like a swordsman's apprentice, on her call so they could head back into the real world and face the trials, tribulations and gossip they would encounter together.
Together. It was happening again, she was beginning to envision a future with Alvin once more. How strange a simple word like that seemed now, and how odd it made her feel, and how quickly she began pushing down the feelings that were just as ripe to bubble up now as they were when they began their playful waltz under the guidance of Mariwen.
Then, just as felt fortunate, when life hadn't stung her with lemons in some time, was smiling at her, as it always did, Cressia heard a soft quiver release, an arrow whizz by, and a sickening, swift blow as it dug deep into Alvin's left shoulder.
"Alvin!" Cressia screamed, panic lacing her voice as she lunged toward him, and then she felt it, a long dark shadow fallen over her and the pristine marble floor.
Alvin didn’t sense them, he saw them. And for a brief, harrowing moment, the pale Mylean moon vanished, blotted out by a tsunami of projectiles.
He didn’t hesitate, he could never hesitate when it came to Cressia. He shoved her aside, sending her crashing to the other end of the entrance just as the ground where she had stood was buried beneath a storm of jagged, shoddily made orc arrows.
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The Zantzar-Orc war had finally abandoned the last gentlemanly rules that had once governed Mylean conflicts. The entire Zantzar palace was now under attack.
Weria was trying to bring some much-needed law and order in to control the stampede of Mylean nobles desperate to escape their death trap. Weria then bolted up the stairs, checking in on his favourite Human-Elf heterosexual fencing partners. By the Goddesses, he looked dishevelled—smeared in lipstick, his white blouse hanging open, buttons undone by one partner or another.
“Get the nobles out of here!” Alvin commanded, his voice carrying the same authority as the military brass Cressia had once served under. “We’ll figure something out on our end!”
Arrows poured down in the faint nightlight, cutting through the space between them in the southern hall. Cressia’s side—unfortunate as it was to discover now—was a dead end. She was effectively trapped until the Orcs grew tired of their hunt or until they found a way to get her across to Alvin.
“It’s never-ending!” he shouted over to her. The arrowhead was still lodged in his shoulder blade, faint crimson trickling down. But whatever pain Alvin felt could wait—getting Cressia back to his side was the only thing that mattered.
“Do you have any ideas?” she called from across the hall.
“Not with this barrage coming through, no.” Alvin winced as another broken shaft grazed his legs. “Do you?”
She nodded, glancing down at the ends of her now-tattered dress. She had always known this might be a possibility, but she hadn't expected to act on it after all the merrymaking with Alvin and the nobles.
“Alvin?”
“Yes?”
“Be a good little prince and look away, would you?”
“Oh—yes, well, alright.” He flustered, scooting back and clasping his eyes shut with his jewellery-adorned hands.
Had he peeked, he would have been vindicated in his long-held suspicion—Cressia was never one to stay away from a blade for too long. With Ms. Hastings’ help, her dress had a hidden compartment at the thighs: a compact sabre strapped to one leg and a collection of kunai blades tucked into the other.
Cressia was hopeless with bows and arrows, but throwing knives? That was a different story. During her summer travels, she had developed a fascination with kunai blades. The Venadians she dueled in a peculiar crisscross between fencing and samurai swordplay would always end the night with a game of kunai throwing, practicing against fire-lit targets after dinner.
Her aim was competent enough, but from this distance, even the biggest-headed Orc was safe from her blades. No—she had a more ingenious idea. Something she owed to the big brain she’d inherited from her mother.
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“Alvin?”
“Yes?” he answered, still blindfolding himself with his hands.
Between the distant shots of arrows volleying in, he could hear her working—stitching and threading something together.
“I’m going to throw over some—well, not rope, but something similar, okay?”
“…Okay?”
“And when you get it, I need you to leap up and jam it into the ceiling.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“There are a few kunai attached. They’ll serve as anchors.”
“What the hell is a kunai?”
“THROWING KNIVES!” Cressia snapped. “It’s the only way I can get to the other side.”
Alvin was confused. Perplexed. A little bit befuddled. But somehow, he could visualize it—the structure, the absurdity of it—it was just so Cressia.
“I’m not allowed to open my eyes while doing this, am I?”
“No, you’re not.”
Cressia would rather die a death of a thousand arrows than let Alvin see how immodestly dressed she was now. The fabric from her dress hadn’t been enough—she’d had to rip strips from her waist and sleeves too. By now, she was left in a dark, artisan tank top and mismatched polka-dot briefs. It was hardly the most dignified look.
“Are you ready?”
Alvin nodded absentmindedly. Cressia cast the makeshift rope over like a deckhand throwing a mooring line to a pier. Alvin barely caught the tail end, and the two of them leapt in tandem, driving the kunai deep into the delicately carved Zantzar ceiling.
Cressia wasted no time. She started climbing, moving with the precision of a fencer executing a perfect maneuver.
She had just enough cover in the gap between the ceiling and the doorframe—barely. Arrows rained down heavier now, their sudden movement drawing the Orcs' attention. Dangling over the granite arrowheads below, she felt a prickling awareness of how much like a booby-trapped pit the floor had become.
Relax. Look around. Make a call.
The words of Supreme Swordmistress Helena, her old mentor, echoed in her mind. Cressia had done this before—under worse circumstances, even. She wasn’t about to let a pack of Orcs with flimsy slingshots get the best of her now.
Thank you, Helena, she murmured. Wherever you are.
Inch by inch, she climbed. A strong gust of wind shot up from below. She clenched her eyes shut, heart stuttering in her chest. Not now. She pressed forward. She still had a prince to train and a country that needed leading.
By the time she reached the other side, she dangled precariously over Alvin’s head. His crown—his physical crown, not the one he would inherit—was polished to such a shine that she could see her reflection staring back at her.
She let go.
With a neat somersault off the rope, she landed—somewhat adequately—on the floor beside him. Without hesitation, she yanked the makeshift rope free and set about fixing her attire.
“You may now open your eyes.”
Alvin turned, blinking at her. Cressia had re-threaded the fabric into something almost passable. Her dress now had a wholly different cut—short-sleeved, the hem twisted into a practical, improvised style. The kunai blades held everything together in a makeshift belt fastening. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.
“How did you come up with—”
“Don’t ask,” she cut him off.
Alvin, tactless as ever, couldn’t help but notice that Cressia now resembled the Venadian wildwomen from the adventure stories he had read as a child—her outfit torn into something fierce and functional, her sabre gleaming as she polished it with the last scrap of fabric she had left.
“You’re right,” he sighed. “I don’t want to know.”
“Good.”
“Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
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The ballroom from which they'd emerged was now a glittering cornucopia of flames, the slim bright embers moving to the tune of it’s own conductor, the large bonfire in the centre. It was Orc magic of course, what with it's primitive design and lack of thinking that seemed to radiant in through the hallways.
Cressia had seen this trick before, both during her youth in the Conclave, as well as her days spent in the Zantzar Armed Forces. An orc archer would dabble an arrowhead in flames, before a slave priestess came along, speaking in tongue as she reluctantly mumbled through some of the most vile, salacious passages every jotted down in the history of magic.
Reluctance was key to letting this kind of magic fester into the world, as no sane Magi, Witch, Wizard, Keeper or even Necromancer would willingly speak the putrid stuff the Orcs dreamed up after a feast of the flesh.
A young priestess, who might've been a proud warrior in the Armed Forces or a witch in training at the Yan Bon Mor university, would suddenly find herself reciting it when her handler's halberd hung over her neck, the promise of a slow, agonising death waiting in the wings if she didn’t purse her lips and started the spell from the Great Orc Codex that was always on hand.
Cressia had come across too many orcs who dabbled in the practice to give them the time honoured benefit of that doubt that she always did when on her travels. Was there a young woman outside the palace right now, her hands etched in silent prayer, hoping her overlord might find a new priestess to toy with, and give her freedom? Or, as the Orcs cruelty had been proven over time and time again, have her life quickly snuffed out once they’d gotten their use from her?
There were even more darker fates than a sudden death like that, ones that turned someone delirious by the time they’d escaped, ones that were not worth discussing, a lifetime spent of darkened monologues and shields ready to be pressed forward to not let anyone pry in.
Cressia shook her head, and decided she needed another worry to nip at her that wasn’t as gruesome as the fate of a reluctant priestess. The Orc ember trick would do as they moved around together in the great hall, Looking for one way or another to escape this inferno mess.
It was like a slave masters whip, letting it’s flame suddenly appear and block off any opening they might get through. Yet, as Cressia fundamentally understood, it was not going to give either her or Alvin a quick death. Rather it would slowly drain the life out of them as they succumbed to the fumes and flames around them, a slow cruel death from a race who took pride in their low born antics of cutting the throats of world weary travellers, or selling off farm girls as slaves.
"Any more cunning ideas?" Alvin said, chipping through her trance induced state. She was still the only one with a weapon in hand, which meant he comShe was still the only one with the detached sabre in her hand, which meant he could comfortably wag his tail and follow behind his dear leader while saving face.
"We have to strike the centre of that bonfire, it’s the only way we can put it out.”
“Like dabbing out a candle?”
The two broke apart when suddenly a trombone came hurtling towards them with near velocity speed. It made a dreadful noise as it crashed against the melting creams walls, and Cressia had never wished as much in her to not have been born with such long, sensitive ears. The bonfire had thrown it, it was now turning into a restless mess after not being able to take them as fast as it had wanted.
“We could play strike it down with a kunai, if you’re so willing,” Alvin said from across the room, nestled where himself among the leftover kitchen and culinary that had been plastered on the ground. “Are you willing?”
She did not like that, his sudden teasing as the two of them faced imminent death through underhanded Orc tactics. She wanted to strike him down with a kunai, a playful way of saying, yes Cressia, I know you’re still better at me then fencing, but I will always be better than you at archery, and so, it follows, I will beat you to this Kunai match we’re going to have right now.
“Yes, I’m willing,” Cressia said, counting out whatever it was that she still had left. 10 kunai in total, a nice round number, and 5 for both of them, a nice evenly split. Not nearly enough.
But there was no other choice, a part of her hoped too that Alvin’s skill with a bow had some hard, transferable skills that could be brought to kunai throwing.
Taking some dark, velvet leftover fabric, she nicely bundled Alvin’s share before she cast it over to him as his newest present. So many quirks and habits that had been instilled into by the Conclave’s brainwashing, and yet the art of neatly tying a pacakge was the one she felt was more important to be kept.
Alvin caught the gifts in his hands like a former, rugged professional pitcher, and quietly placed two into the palms of his hands, and left the other three sheathed alongside his belt for a quick grasp. There was no words spoken, but they knew the plan that was in store - Cressia would bait and poke and straddle the bonfire into her playing her game, while Alvin tried to strike it with three, ideally two of his kunai.
They nodded, and slowly Alvin began to steadily move away from the catering corner, only galloping into a full force sprint when Cressia cast her first two kunai to play distract. It howled out a cry of sulphur and smoke in response, but it was not, to Cressia’s big ears, a sign of pain. Instead it felt like a deep gulp of pleasure, almost as though her blades were a brief bout of release from the temperance of eternal flame it was forced to live through in it’s brief life. A life, Cressia sadly ruminated as she cast out her fourth blade, that she too might’ve once become it if weren’t for fencing.
She’d spent most of her life serving under one power or another, gradually being sharpened under a whetstone to serve a distant king or some distant elven ideology, and yet she’d never turned into that, a mindless monster whose only purpose
Others, friends and comrades, had not quite been so lucky. She found most of them in Zantzar taverns, their senses dulled as they spent their days after military life clamouring under a bar tap, always promising that this evening of drink and merry go round would be their last, and they’d never set foot again among a collection of drunken louts and directionless peasants.
She’d worked hard to avoid that, to not feel like she gave into anguish, to craft a place for her own where she was not dragged through the trauma and anger and hate that had befallen so many veterans after their service. And yet, all that attempts at preventing such a fate had led her to a likely death walking through flames with her princely apprentice.
Alvin’s attempts at striking down the fiery creautre hadn’t fared much better than Cressia’s. In fact, as she saw the quartet of kunai that had dug deep into the creature’s back, she realised she had the better aim, and the stories of crossover benefits from shooting arrows to kunai throwing were all but a myth.
Alvin was turning the far left corner, his arms stretched behind his back in an embarassing attempt to copy the Venadian ninja running form, when a pillar of flame struck him across the chest. It was not at all like the mindless whip they’d first encountered, it really felt to Cressia that a large pillar of fire had just jammed itself straight into Alvin’s stomach, his body growing limp as he cascaded near the window. Cressia wanted to leap out of her skin in fright as she watched, but then she saw the brief shattered window glass above him, large enough to fit both
She wasted no time, quickly running the same route her apprentice had done to play catch up as the bonfire hurtled another pillar at her instead. She quickly leaped up over it, grateful that she’d pushed aside Ms Hasting suggestion of wearing heels to stick with the time honoured elven tradition of skipping footwear for festivities, and quickly took hold of Alvin’s other remaining kunai.
She was not going to throw them, she was going to throw down with them! She ducked and she dodged and sidestepped any slender flame whip that came her way as she pressed deep into the centre of the bonfire, much like she’d pass through the unsubtle social taboo of an elf dancing with a human prince. Just like she’d damned the not so nice pleasantries, so was she going to damn this infernal creature into it’s own oblivion.
She leaped in the air, feeling like so many of the awesome heroines her mother had read to her as a child, and drove the pair of kunai into what she felt might’ve been the bonfires eyelids. It screamed again, not in pain, but once again pleasure, a sordid pleasure that was thankful it’s last few moments of life were simply pleasurable enough to not be overridden by the abject terror for the oblivion that was to come, and soon the flames around Cressia began to dissolve, like ancient vines that suddenly withered away when time had decided to catch up with them.
The bonfire began to recede, further and further, until it was just a red little that Cressia found difficult to find under the mess of grey, old ash that the ballroom had morphed into. She was turning away, reaching to grab Alvin by the scruff of the neck to carry him out, when the red little dot began to blow up to the size of a soft
She didn’t wait to squeeze through the glass, she merely jumped right through the window with an unconscious Alvin slung over her shoulders as the red dot blew apart, covering the ballroom under a new thick coat of crumbling ash as it exploded into another round of a cornucopia of flames.
Her mind flickered between the redness of the fire above, and the soft blue water the two of them had crashed into, before her world slowly drifted into a brief, but endless, darkness.