INTERLUDE: ANIKA’S JOURNAL

I returned home two weeks ago. Before my memory starts to fade, I want to write down a few things in my journal. Which is to say, my official Princess Nekosama Diary with Pen, which Ned bought me on our last shopping trip.

There are a lot of fascinating things on ‘Urth’ that I want to write about, but today I want to write about Ned.

Ned was my savior. He saved my life and gave me everything. Everything I needed or asked for. He went through immense pain multiple times (some of those times even voluntarily) and never complained. Without him, I would have died. With my own magic power completely gone, I took Ned’s life force as my own. Even now, I can sense a small amount of his energy within my soul.

Ned fed me, gave me a place to stay, and bought me clothes to wear. He talked to me, played music for me, and did my laundry. He truly cared for me and asked nothing in return.

And in the end, that’s what I gave him. Nothing.

Well, almost nothing. I did give him someone to talk to (although I mostly couldn't understand what he was saying). We sat together and watched anime (Princess Nekosama!) and went for walks together on sunny days. It was almost like we were a couple.

The funniest moment was when I did that impromptu fashion show. Just for the record, I know I’m attractive. It’s part of the princess package. Royalty is generally the culmination of a long-term breeding program. The powerful get to choose the best partners - most beautiful, smartest, strongest - and thus strengthen their bloodline.

Anyway, so I’m giving Ned a fashion show and he was doing his best to be the perfect gentleman. I, of course, was doing my best to get him to look at my body. His eyes were roving everywhere to try to keep from checking out my assets.

But he couldn’t always resist. I caught him looking more than once! By the way, he’s a total leg man.

But he remained the perfect gentleman. I was fortunate indeed that I dropped out of his ceiling and not some other man’s. He never laid so much as a finger on me.

We were only together for about four weeks. But now that I’m back home, I miss him.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I’m pregnant.

TAKEN AWAY IN CHAINS

Ned received a package in the mail on a Tuesday, almost a month after Marthelion left. Something difficult to find which ultimately he had to get from overseas.

Marthelion had become addicted to Princess Nekosama. She’d watched all of the DVDs, and collected as much merchandise as she could find. She had even learned to read basic English from the manga. She read them over and over to practice her skills.

One manga series was hard to get, though. They were out of print and Ned spent a good deal of time doing a search online and was finally able to order the fourth and final volume for her.

Admittedly a little strange that he would order it for her now. Maybe the obsessive-compulsive behavior of the true collector? Or more likely the wishful thinking of a lonely man who is missing a friend.

He gives a sigh with a little smile as he disposes of the packing material and stuffs the little book into the cargo pocket of his pants for the walk home from the post office.

A quick stop at the store for a few items, and head out of town. He’s just about at the gate to his front yard when it happens.

Shimmery shiny circles appear in the sky all around him, about three meters off the ground. Each circle births a person. A person wearing…plate armor? People carrying weapons, wearing helmets, shouting in a strange language.

Or maybe robots, he thinks. He does recognize a few words of the language Marthelion taught him. Maybe she’s coming back for a visit? he thinks for a moment.

Until they turn the weapons on him. Before he knows it, he is struck from behind and falls. He becomes disoriented, feels disconnected, as rough hands grab him and cuff his hands and feet. There is no gentleness here. He is struck many times by gauntleted fists. A booted foot or two, too.

At some point Ned passes out, whether because of a blow to the head or because of sensory overload, he doesn’t know. New magic circles open up and the armored invaders disappear in twos and threes, taking Ned with them.

A few groceries are scattered across the dirt lane. The torn bag is picked up by a playful breeze and blown away. No one saw anything. It will be some time before questions are asked, and there will be no answers.

THE EMPEROR: BROODING

The Emperor is not happy. Nor is he amused. The fact of his unwed daughter’s pregnancy has been leaked. While a discreet affair can be overlooked, a pregnancy cannot be denied. Even an abortion will not settle the matter now that the news has been leaked.

His daughter Anika has lost most of her value for a political marriage. At least until she reaches middle age. Likewise, he can no longer dispatch her to the front lines to command troops. Not until the child is born, anyway.

The scandal will even impact her birthright. Just that morning, he had bowed to the inevitable and signed a document demoting her from third in line of succession to twelfth. Truly a blow to his power, as she is otherwise one of his most competent children.

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The people around the Emperor are edgy, scared. An unhappy Emperor means an unhappy Court. He has just finished with the public dressing down of his wayward daughter. With a frustrated wave of his hand, he dismisses everyone and retreats to his office to brood.

ANIKA: TOUGH CHOICES

Anika stalks down the hallway in a silent fury. Dressed in her black Knight-Commander uniform, the metal plates on her boot heels generate appropriately angry sparks with each step. Her white cape billows out behind her in the wind generated by her passage.

Reaching her office, she throws the cape to the floor and slams herself down into the chair behind her desk.

“Bring me some tea. Tell the others that I don’t want to be disturbed for half an hour.,” she orders her personal maid.

The maid rushes to comply, scooping the cape off the floor as she heads out of the office. Anika takes a deep breath and lets her anger go. Logically speaking, she knows that everything that has happened was inevitable.

The pregnancy itself came as a shock to her. Her body had been warded against it with a foolproof spell which would stop the development of any fertilized eggs. Almost foolproof.

It had taken her awhile to reason out the bizarre chain of circumstances. First, she had had sex. For the first and only time in her life; the night before the assassination attempt. This resulted in a fertilized egg (or actually two, a fact which only she knows).

Second had come the attack, the desperate fight and the last ditch escape which all together had drained her of her magic completely. Thus the ward had stopped working for a brief while.

Finally, there was Ned. Or rather his life force, which turned out to be far more powerful than anyone had reason to expect it to be. Had he been born to her world, he would no doubt be a powerful healing mage by now. Maybe even a Saint. That powerful life force healed her. Incidentally also strengthening the fertilized eggs and completely burning out the pregnancy ward.

Subsequent applications of Ned’s healing force in the process of curing her wounds and eliminating the poison further strengthened and accelerated the growth of the fetuses. Right now, she doubted she could stop the pregnancy even if she wanted to. Not without killing herself as well.

And she didn’t want to. Anika was a mage and a good one. Her mana senses were telling her that the children now growing within her had absorbed some of Ned’s power. This, along with some of her own power, would stay with them throughout their lives and form the foundations of their own magic.

In other words, these children would start with an advantage that few others had ever had. Their powers would almost certainly outstrip her own. These children are too valuable to end them now. They are too valuable to deny their existence and foster them out to another family.

And she wants to raise them. She wants to share her life with these precious children. No doubt she would have to fight tooth and nail to keep them, but she would see them raised properly.

She would make sure they are loved.

NED: A LIFE OF TORTURE

Ned lays on his damp, smelly straw mattress and reflects on literature. His dismal little cell has little light, no furniture, an odiferous bucket as a toilet and, oddly, no tv or internet. He has little else to do to take his mind off of the pain.

His current reflections focus on the concept of rewards. In the literature he has read, there are generally two types of reward for rescuing a princess. The first type, tentatively labeled as ‘optimistic’, provides a reward of wealth, power, and connections. The second type, tentatively labeled as ‘pessimistic’, provides a reward of suspicion, torture, and pain.

The literature is split on the topic, with the ‘optimistic’ side having a slight edge in Ned’s experience. So much for literature.

Real life experience is strongly in support of pessimism. Very strongly. It is enough to make a man want to pace the floor in an agitated manner. Want being a key word, as Ned is currently disinclined to move due to the overwhelming pain he is experiencing. He is also suffering from lack of sleep (hard to sleep through intense pain), and extreme hunger. Not to mention thirst.

In fairness to his tormentors, Ned does receive meals. After approximately every third torture session, he is given a tray with a watery bowl of vegetable soup and a hard piece of bread. Once the soup even included a small piece of mystery meat! Coarse fare but welcome.

Ned has yet to figure out why they are torturing him. They have no language in common, so their questions and statements are beyond comprehension. No matter how loud they yell or how slow they speak (funny how the non-linguist’s response to a language barrier is similar across cultures and worlds).

Ned does recognize a few words. This is definitely the language that Marthelion speaks. Ned has tentatively designated this language as ‘Imperial’ just to have a hook to hang it on.

Nonetheless, he can’t understand their questions so he can’t determine what they want. Needless to say this language barrier is a source of frustration for his captors and, thusly, a source of pain for Ned.

On the positive side, they seem to want to keep him alive for some reason. Every once in awhile, just when Ned is thinking he might just get lucky and die, they bring in someone to heal his wounds. Not a full cure; just enough to keep his body from failing. Magic, by the way, is a very real sort of thing here.

Lately, though, the torturers have been showing signs of becoming bored with the proceedings. They are asking questions less and dealing out pain more. This has Ned worried.

There is no way to tell time, but Ned estimates that he has been here at least two weeks. But no more than four. That seems to Ned to be around the outer limit for a small group of amateurs to maintain interest in a fruitless task. He wonders if this will end in death or something worse. Grim choices but optimism has been thoroughly beaten out of him.

As if cued up by these grim thoughts, Ned hears footsteps approaching. His door opens and he raises a hand to shield his eyes from the light of the lantern carried by one of the four men who enter.

Rough hands grab him and he is pulled to his feet to stand before the shortest of the four. With a vicious tone, the man makes a long statement: A condemnation? A sentencing? A last rite?

The man holds his hand out and the lantern-holder places the handle of a heavy maul into his grasp. The other two men tighten their hold as Ned starts to struggle.

With a short angry thrust, the man drives the head of the hammer into Ned’s gut, causing him to bend forward, retching. Then, while Ned is distracted, he swiftly swings the hammer in a vicious arc straight into his kneecap, shattering it completely.

Ned drops to the ground, screaming in pain. The two men let him go for a moment, then one of them drops down and places his knee on the back of Ned’s neck. His weight is unbearable as Ned feels his face and throat being ground into the rough stone floor.

Someone grabs Ned’s left arm and stretches it out before him, then a heavy weight settles on the wrist. With a horrible, sodden crunching noise, the hammer is brought down on his hand once, twice, three times, utterly crushing the bones and ligaments of his hand and fingers.

He hardly notices as the pressure is lifted from his neck. By the time the laughing voices of his tormentors pass beyond hearing down the hallway, he has passed out from the pain.