Day 26 of the Fourth Month, Year 1016 – after midnight

Crimson Corps’ Base, Nave Province

DEV frowned when he heard noises from the direction of the dungeon entrance. The Princess had commanded him to help reorganizing the Crimson Corps’ soldiers so they would be battle-ready by the time they arrived in Dustor. It took him a few hours, so he had no idea what had been happening.

He pulled one of the soldiers who came from the dungeon. “What is it?”

“The captive is gone!” The soldier exclaimed with a frown.

General Harvey walked towards him with a strange expression. “Major. This is not good.”

“I agree,” Dev nodded in agreement. “The prisoner is gone.”

“What?” Harvey widened his eyes. “How come? We posted many sentries!”

“They are all dead,” said the soldier whom Dev had pulled before. “We are currently searching the base as per regulation, General, sir.”

“Okay,” Harvey said, with a calm that was expected from an elite leader like him. “This is not good. The Princess disappeared as well.”

Dev widened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Harvey moved a bit, uncomfortable. “I thought she would be with you. Last time a soldier saw her entered her room and never came out.”

That wasn’t good. Did the prisoner kidnap her? “Any guards around her room died?”

Harvey shook his head. “Just unconscious.”

Dev put down his hanging heart a little bit. There was only one explanation. The Princess… ran away again. He gritted his teeth. He had just thought that she was responsible, but no, she was being reckless again. “She probably left on her own,” Dev said with a frown. “What happened before? With the prisoner?”

Harvey’s face turned in sudden realization. “Ah. The prisoner said that Lieutenant Nile and some other Sergeant was taken away…”

Dev closed his eyes. Of course. Knowing her temperament, when she found out her closest people were taken by the enemy, she would go to them. “To where? Did the prisoner say?”

“Sinjar Town.” Harvey looked at him. “Do you need backup, Major?”

“Give me one or two of your elite soldiers, General, sir,” he replied. “You should continue the plan to the south. The war cannot wait. I’ll make a distraction so the troops can pass easily.”

“Of course. We’ll go through another entrance.” Harvey nodded and turned to walk away.

Dev clenched his fists. What was Victoria thinking? She probably wasn’t thinking. But he still needed to continue his plan on drawing the enemy away.

Fire would do the trick. It was cruel, but they needed to hurry—both Victoria and the situation down south. Again, how did the Princess sneak out without drawing the attention of the soldiers?

The elite soldiers who were sent to help him was called Rowan and Julie. Both of them were young, seemingly new recruits, but they answered to him readily after accepting command from General Harvey. They were indeed elite. Even his own soldiers, at first, were reluctant to take orders from him.

“We will set fire on a few spots,” he said, pointing on the map given to him. He had been studying it these past hours, to reorganize the marching route for the Crimson Corps. The information from the scouts came in handily as they could pinpoint the enemy camp with certainty—elite soldiers’ pride and surety that he believed in. The Princess wouldn’t get out a useless trump card. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Major,” both Rowan and Julie replied unquestioningly.

“Afterwards, we will go to Sinjar,” he continued. “Julie, prepare the horses. Rowan, you go prepare the oil and wood.” He tried to held in his worry. “We will end their presumptuousness tonight.”

He just hoped he wasn’t too late.

Day 26 of the Fourth Month, Year 1016 - dawn

Sinjar Town, Nave Province

Victoria arrived in Sinjar Town by dawn.

She sneaked away and even stole a horse from the military compound. She didn’t tell anyone in the barracks—well, no one would approve her risking her neck like this. But she needed to do this. She couldn’t let them die, not again!

When she arrived in this town, though, she found that the whole place was a ghost town. Frowning, she walked forward, feeling more and more unsure the longer she did. Had she been too reckless?

But this wasn’t the time to hesitate. Her friends, they had her friends! She kept walking forward, and arrived in the square of the empty, haunted town. The fact that the sky was dark didn’t help, causing her to shiver a bit.

She saw a source of light up front and quickened her pace.

There was a dry fountain in the middle of the square, with a torch upon its peak. Tied to it were the two people she was searching for, unconscious. Widening her eyes, she ran towards them, but before she could, someone stood in front of them, obstructing her view.

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Her run came to a sharp stop. “You!” She widened her eyes—it was the same prisoner from earlier. “How… how did you get out?”

The prisoner stood there, a whip on his hip, but without any expression on his face. Before, he was sneeringly contrary, but now, he just stared at her. “So, you are not leaving them to die.”

Victoria gasped.

She now recognized this person, without his dirty hair covering or his sneer twisting his face. He was one of the new trainees in Dustor… under Dev, no less. What was his name?

“…Trainee Martin,” she frowned. “You…”

Martin snorted; his face now contorted into the previous hatred. “Don’t you remember what happened a decade ago, Your Highness? There was a similar fountain.” He gestured behind him. “A young girl and a young boy were tied to them, screaming and crying, but no one responded.” He looked at her viciously. “Not even the one who abandoned them.”

Victoria staggered backwards.

“They were tortured,” he said with a hiss. “Their mother saw it, watched it with her own eyes, her children’s faces contorted in pain under the whips. If only the princess showed up, their pain would cease, but no… No, your selfishness caused them to die under those whips.”

“No…” Victoria whispered, falling to the ground.

“You were hidden nearby, weren’t you? Did you watch them? Did you watch them die before your eyes?” His voice was shrill by the end of his sentence.

“No…” Their bloody faces. ‘Run, Victa, run!’

She had run.

“You know what happened to their mother afterwards?” He still wasn’t finished. “Seeing her children died for you, she ran to those people and was whipped under she was near death. You didn’t saw it, did you? No, you ran away,” he spat. “I saw it. My brother and my sister died for you. My mother died because of you. They were all dead, because of you!” Martin shouted loudly, walking nearer and nearer towards her.

Victoria’s whole body trembled. Her two friends had told her to run. She did. Her guard pulled her and she followed to run away.

She did leave them behind.

She did leave them to die.

Because she was the princess and she should stay alive. Because she was apparently more important, and they were easier to discard.

Because when the enemy army tied them and tortured them so she would come out, her injured guard held her trembling and scared body tightly to keep her in her hiding place. But she didn’t blame Captain Lewis, she was just doing her job. The truth was she didn’t have the strength to move… She had abandoned them.

A single tear came out of her eye.

Martin used the handle of his whip to lift her chin. “You left them behind, but you aren’t willing to leave these people?” He looked back towards the two people tied to the fountain.

“…Let them off,” she said softly. “They had nothing to do with this.”

Martin sneered. “Trying to be a saint now? Why didn’t you come out back then?” The whip in his hand slashed through her armor, wounding right shoulder.

Victoria bit down her scream. It was painful, but it was no more painful than what happened to her friends.

“Why did you leave them to die?” Another slash on her left shoulder.

Her tears fell down. It was burning, but she welcomed the pain… As if it absolved her pain and her guilt, one that she held deep in her heart for years upon years...

“Why did you hide? Why? They were crying, they were screaming! These legs, what’s the use of them?” He whipped through her legs. The pain should absolve her, shouldn’t it? But the pain in her heart grew…

Victoria couldn’t hold back her sob. “I’m sorry!”

“You’re sorry?” Martin laughed. “Sorry doesn’t bring them back to life! Why are you alive while my whole family died!”

The last slash was aiming for her chest.

Victoria closed her eyes. She had wondered about that in her darkest days. When the nights grew cold and she was all alone, when the memories stifled her that she couldn’t help her tears, she wondered… Why was she alive? Maybe dying would be better… Maybe dying would let her pay. A life for the lives lost a decade ago, all because of her.

On the last second, though, she felt someone’s hands around her hips, dragging her behind. “Are you stupid? Do you want to die?!”

The whip hit the ground instead.

Opening her eyes, she found the young Major Dev, still dragging her. His hands felt like fire and earth at once—a burning, tight grasp like how Captain Lewis pulled her back then. “Why didn’t you avoid it?”

Victoria didn’t reply, and instead gazed at him blankly. Her eyes felt hot and she knew they were wet with tears. She turned her gaze to her two friends… Dev was here, he pulled her away, then what about her friends? But her eyes were too blurry and it was too dark—she couldn’t see anything. No, she should go save them… She couldn’t let it happen again! But the grasp on her was too tight...

Dev sighed as he looked at her, though his sword readily pointed at Martin. “Who are you?”

Martin laughed. “Even now, people are willing to die for you!”

Wind blew and the torch flickered. Dev’s breath caught, as if realizing something. “You… Aren’t you, Martin Cisco? Why are you here?”

Martin snorted. “Stupid.” He gestured something to his right. “Go, kill them all!”

Out of the dark side of the night, many people circled them. They wore black and could barely be distinguished, especially for Victoria through her blurry eyes. They couldn’t possibly win, only the two of them.

Many more people would die because of her. The despair filled her.

“Snap out of it!” Dev whispered harshly in her ears. “Don’t you remember what I said? You have to be alive because that is your responsibility!”

Victoria shuddered. “I…”

There was no time for her to talk. The people in black were attacking them. Strangely, only a half of them did so. The other half stayed behind in hesitation.

“What are you waiting for?” Martin screamed.

Dev fought off those people alone. This was not the first time Victoria watched him fight—however, she started to realize that he was a powerful fighter. There was only a single blade in his hand, yet he was able to fend off a dozen attackers, even protecting her in the process.

Suddenly, two other people joined, fighting off the attackers for her. Victoria didn’t recognize them—not that she could see well right now—but she noticed their red leather armors. Crimson Corps elite soldiers…

Victoria was then startled to realize that Nile and Alize weren’t tied to the fountain anymore. Were they saved and brought elsewhere?

That was good…

But she couldn’t die yet. There were three other people here, fighting for her. She couldn’t abandon them like she did the twins back then...

They couldn’t possibly win against dozens of attackers, not to mention Martin’s wide-ranged whip. Victoria could barely stand straight or even held a weapon. His whip was too fierce that it went through her flesh and even hurt her bones. So far Dev and the two elite soldiers managed to fend them off, but that wouldn’t be the case once the other half of their enemy joined the fight.

Between the sounds of the blades hitting each other, Victoria could hear the conversation. “Master, you know they want the Princess alive!”

“Just kill!” Martin roared, and all of sudden, his whip started to fling towards them.

Widened her eyes, Victoria pushed Dev away, turning him away from the trajectory of the whip. Unfortunately, the whip slashed through her back instead. It hurt… It hurt, yet she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest. She had saved her friend now…

The imaginary rock must had been heavier than she thought, because Victoria staggered to stand straight. She was pretty sure blood was pouring down her back—and her whole body.

“Are you stupid?!” Dev screamed in her ears. He tightened his hold on her, around her, protecting her from the weapons of their attackers.

Victoria could barely maintain her consciousness, but she saw something behind their dozens of attackers and smiled. It’s okay now, she tried to whisper.

And then she lost her consciousness. []