If you asked Aidan one good thing about smugglers, he would reply that they were diligent. Not only they made a tunnel to last centuries, but they also made a frigging long tunnel. The two girls were already not only on their second day of tunnel-trekking but also at their wits' end.

There were some larger spaces along the snaking tunnel with abandoned and rotten barrels, crates and shelves. Some merchandise long past any utility were also lying around.

They found an abandoned hand-pulled cart the day before and now Aidan's body was resting over their luggage. With a rope strapped to the handle, Sora and Lumina could share the burden of pulling it. It was slighly easier because of course, the cart's metal parts were completely rusted.

And right now it broke.

"Gaaaa! Stupid tunnel!" Cursed Sora kicking the walls. It made some dust fall from the cobwebs overhead more from the air pressure than an actual shock through the wall but the girl kicked hard.

"At least the air here is less stale. We should be close to an exit." Aidan sighed and let Lumina's back hit the opposite wall, slowly sliding down until she sat down on the floor.

"Oi, what are you doing? You are going to tangle her Highness' royal hair if you brush it against the wall like that. By the gods, you suck at being a girl, Aidan."

"Why does Lumina even have this ridiculously long hair?" he bunched the princess' hair and brought it to the front. Lumina's hair was around a meter long.

"Because it is gorgeous and only a princess would bother growing hair that long. Makes all other girls envious. It is a symbol of status because it takes a royal amount of effort to keep it gorgeous. Like those hour-long brushing sessions, the maid used to give you. Not to mention the oil she used would feed a peasant family for a month."

Aidan stopped to think. He knew Sora would not agree to brush the princess' hair and he had no confidence in doing it right.

"What should I do?" He ran his fingers through the hair trying to untangle it but stopped after feeling several strands snapping.

"I don't know. You are the princess." Sora scoffed bitterly. This whole ordeal was getting under her skin.

"I guess I am now..." Aidan continued to untangle Lumina's hair himself. More broken hairs.

"Stop doing that, you are being too rough! You are going to split and ruin the princess' hair."

"Please help me."

Sora approached and checked the state Lumina's hair was in. It desperately needed washing. But there was nothing they could do in that tunnel. She wrapped the hair in a bun at the back of Lumina's head and bound it with a silk ribbon. The princess had an almost endless supply of ribbons, Sora noted.

"Thanks."

"You are welcome. Hair crisis averted, yay!" She tried to cheer up both of them. It didn't work. Her tone was everything but cheerful.

Sora sat next to Aidan and they rested silently for some time. After a light meal of water, bread, and jerky, their mood improved.

"Aidan. I was thinking, we should ditch the princess' stuff. It is too much to carry and we can always send someone back here to retrieve it later. We can cut it down to a bag and half if we take only the bare basics and the winter gear."

'We can ditch the winter gear but the shoes as well. I have enough mana to keep us warm. Maybe keep an extra blanket for my body."

While Sora went through the bags to reorganize their belongings Aidan checked the mana stored in Lumina's body. It was around an E-rank amount of mana but the problematic issue was that Lumina's body was not generating any mana, an anomaly. It was receiving mana from Aidan's body locked in an eternal mana exhaustion state.

Maybe it was trying to...

"Fill me up!" He blurted out of nowhere.

"Excuse me?" Sora took the phrase completely out of context and deadpanned.

"I figured out something! Sora, I need to fill me, Lumina's body, up with mana. I think something will happen when Lumina's body becomes full with my mana."

'But the conversion rate is abysmal. Or my magic was also damaged by the accident. It means I need to increase the contact time with my body. Or work to improve the conversion rate.' Aidan thought.

"And how exactly do we fill up the princess' body with Aidan's mana?"

At this point Aidan was full in scholar mode, droning about his theories. Sora was used to it.

"By touch. Everything improved when I began to spend time touching myself. Even more when I was able to spend the whole night."

"So you want to spend even more time, for the lack of a better expression, touching yourself." Sora mocked. She even patted her dress beneath the waist.

"Yes! It should work!" Aidan followed Sora's hand motion and punched the squirrel girl in the shoulder, "Not that way. Just skin to skin."

"Oh, yes. Of course," She averted her gaze, but a smirk caught in the corner of her mouth. "You do you," she mumbled.

"Let me help you finish sorting the luggage. We will rest in the next wide space, I want to test it."

They left behind a bag with most of the princess' fancy clothes, their academy uniforms and other assorted knickknacks. Some stuff Sora didn't even know why Claire has bothered bringing. Maybe they could sell it in the next settlement, but these things screamed aristocracy. They would be regarded as thieves at best, or draw a huge arrow for the bounty hunters to follow at worst.

Sora was pained to leave the cosmetics behind, but she had to. Finally, she cannibalized the cart for a makeshift stretcher to drag Aidan's body along. An hour later they reached the next open space. The tunnel was slowly sloping up. They could probably reach the next one before they needed to rest, but Aidan wanted to try his theory.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

They set a lit torch on a sconce and pried loose the wooden planks of some crates and removed a few long ones from the shelves. The wood was dry and brittle but would help insulate the bedrolls from the cold stone.

After laying the bedrolls and blankets over the wood, Sora watched as Lumina began to undress Aidan's body. Blushing.

"Hey, stop right there, princess." 'You have no right to blush like that undressing yourself'. She kept the last thought to herself.

"But!" Aidan's protest was interrupted by a raised hand.

"I do the boy side, you do the girl side. You want to see if a closer contact will improve the transfer rate, right? And not do something shameful using her Highness' body, I suppose."

Aidan nodded. He was too distressed by his situation and his slowly withering body to think of anything improper. But his face was burning.

"Maybe it is a natural reaction of the princess' body," he theorized.

"Yup, must've been that," Sora replied sarcastically.

She was slightly bothered by the idea of having Aidan and Lumina's naked bodies spending the night in close contact. But she was way more bothered by having to carry the comatose boy all over the place.

They placed Aidan underneath the blankets and Lumina slipped behind, spooning him. Aidan pressed the princess' breasts against his back and hugged his own body. Sora gulped and steeled herself before helping put a rolled up dress underneath their head to use as a pillow.

"Thanks, Sora. Good night." Aidan smiled at his companion.

"G'nite, Aidan. I hope it works." Sora made her way to her own bedroll.

Underneath the blankets, Aidan felt his own body. Almost no fat, the skin hung closely to the muscles. But some muscle mass was gone, used by the body as nutrients. All his work to build muscle lost.

"A whole year lost on a hospital bed." He whispered on his male body's ears. "Are you in there somewhere, Lumina?"

He hoped the princess' consciousness was somewhere in there. He wished to return to his own body. He wondered why girls' bodies were so soft. He fell asleep.

---------------------------------

Aidan opened his eyes and saw the back of his head. He was feeling the best in months. And then he realized he was naked in the princess' body-hugging himself under the blankets and froze. He looked down at the royal cleavage pressed against his back and moved the hand back to massage them. They were feeling kinda sore. Swollen.

He was about to sit up but the movement sucked a lump of cold air inside the blanket gave the princess goosebumps. He immediately returned to his previous position and kept massaging Lumina's breasts. It helped alleviate the soreness and pain.

"Having fun, your Highness?" He was startled by Sora's voice from behind. He made a sharp shrill and jumped up hiding the breasts with a crossed arm.

"Sora! Don't tease me!" He protested and puffed Lumina's cheeks, the cold was forgotten momentarily. He looked at the girl in heavy clothes and noticed something on her puffy squirrel tail. "Snow? Is that snow on your tail?"

Sora pulled the tail to look at it and patted the snow away. "Yup."

Aidan took in Sora's behavior and it had improved by leaps and bounds. She was happy, and with the snow, it could only mean one thing.

"Then you..."

"Yup." She smiled.

"Then we can..."

"Not naked, no." She pointed at Lumina and Aidan. "And not while making the princess grope herself, naughty Aidan." Her mischievous smile was almost illuminating the room.

Aidan sighed. "They are sore and swollen, is it normal?"

Sora reached for the princess' clothes and tossed them to Aidan. "Welcome to the club, girl. C'mon, I do the boy, you do you."

She dressed Aidan up in winter clothes while Aidan put on silk pumpkin panties and camisole, linen blouse and trousers and a heavy wool dress and cloak over everything. Sora was already done when he finished strapping everything.

"How far?"

"Just some minutes away. There was a heavy door blocking the cold and it was fairly stuck. I'm amazed you didn't wake up with all the noise I did opening it."

"Where are we then?"

"If I had to bet I'd say the western border of Rylund. Makes sense, Rylund was pretty wealthy two centuries ago. We are still at the edge of civilized land, there should not be any strong monsters or animals out there."

"But now it is a monster country. Even so it will be dangerous."

"Yup. How's your mana?"

Aidan closed his eyes to check Lumina's inner reserves of mana. It had grown significantly during the night.

"Still E-rank but on the top of the tier. One or two more days and it will be solid D-rank in amount." He declared. "But it is better if I don't spend as much mana and that I don't go too far away from my body."

"And it means I need to know how well your Highness can fight without magic." Sora tapped the sword slung around her waist.

"You wanna 'fight' me, girl?" Aidan imitated a character from a cloak & sword play they watched.

"Defend yourself, wretched villain. I have come to win the freedom of the one I love!" Sora took broad steps and delivered her line with a smile.

Lumina brought the back of her hand to the forehead. "Impudent fool! There is little worth in the words of a maiden in love here, where steel and strength speak supreme. Turn back now and you might spare your pretty face from some scars."

"We shall see! I will stay here and wait until you finish strapping the baldric around thy slender shoulders and set thy sword's scabbard on it."

Aidan stopped at the ad hoc line. He started the play without a sword. He went to the bag to retrieve the belt and the sword scabbard.

"The lady is too kind for her own good, I am afraid. Were I in your place, my enemy would be already shredded to ribbons." He improvised.

"Don't bunch me with such scum, vile one. I fight for love and honor."

In the end, Aidan decided to just draw the sword. Fiddling with the belt would take too long and he wanted to hear the sound of steel on steel.

"Have at you then!"

They clashed blades and in the fourth exchange, the sword in Lumina's hand was sent spinning down the tunnel.

"Sorry! My hand!" Lumina's grip strength was almost zero.

Sora sheathed her sword and went to retrieve the other one. In her excitement she used the same strength she would use if sparring with Aidan one year ago, but the difference between them was too different now. While the boy was slightly stronger than her beastkin strength, Lumina never had to lift a weight in her life before Aidan took over her body.

"That bad, huh?"

"Not really. I can't fight as I used to in this body. The balance is wrong, the strength is not there, I need to adjust. That is what I get for not thinking before. And the grip is too thick for Lumina. She would be better off using something lighter like a rapier."

He made a motion for Sora to hand over the sword.

"I think I can do it with a two-handed stance. Can we start slow?"

Sora smiled. She could see the determination of ye old Aidan in the princess' eyes.

"Of course."

Aidan held the longsword with two hands and adjusted his stance. Without turning to face Sora, he did some practice swings slowly. He went through basic motions adjusting his footing and stance to better suit Lumina's build. Sora chipped in and poked pushed and pulled the princess' body until Aidan was satisfied. After half an hour of practice, he was confident to put some strength behind his swing.

And then they bumped into another problem. Lumina had little stamina. Aidan felt as if her arms were clad in lead after that half hour. He handed the sword to Sora and sat on the bedroll next to his comatose body. He took his own hand and traced Lumina's fingers over the calluses. Sora came and lifted Aidan's head putting it over her lap. She caressed the boy's hair.

"At least you can brandish that blade and show that there's some skill behind these royal twigs. Should be enough to convince a foe you are not defenseless. But I doubt you could put enough strength to cut a wolf's hide."

Aidan released his hand and looked down. He was feeling like a burden to Sora. He could use magic in battle, he was confident he could cast two or three firebolts before Lumina ran out of mana, but it would set back his recovery by a couple of days at least. If his 'fill me up' theory was right.

Sora patted Lumina's head and pulled the other girl into an embrace, squeezing the boy between them.

"Say, what if we spend a day or two here? We have food for a week and we can wait until Skippy catches up with us. You could spend the whole day resting and gathering mana. We could also do some strength training to solve the problem of ye royal twigs."

"How far are we from the nearest settlement?"

"Three to four days at most. But we can forage and hunt for food. With Skippy, it would be easy."

Having the dragon with them would be a boon. Skippy was probably following Aidan's location through the familiar link and traveling on the surface above the tunnel. Soon enough the little critter would be with them.

"I'd like that."