Border patrols sucked.

Arwen had decided that weeks ago, but in this particularly gruesome day, where the heat was just unbearable and the forest’s denizens would not just shut up with their squeaking and croaking, the Princess truly felt the effects.

At least she had been sleeping well. The boredom had allowed her to process her feelings, and the routine was oddly comforting, even if it was truly mind-numbing. Helvetia was just too pre-occupied with their war against the vampires, and even if they planned to set their sights on Cyfoeth once the Keep fell, what good would poking the bear do? Better to reinforce and try to weather the storm, though Arwen knew the full force of their enemies would be almost impossible to repel.

The more she thought about it, the more the Princess had been growing concerned over the fate of her country. It may not even last long enough for her to see Queendom. Surely, her father could hash out a peace deal with that maniac King, right? And, perhaps, he’d maybe die fighting the vampires or something…

But her father’s harsher personality and his constant look of lethargy spoke in its own words, and although King Blayney never, ever said it… Arwen knew the outlook was grim.

“This is lame,” Cai complained for the thousandth time. “Resigned to border patrol… ugh!”

Arwen’s retainers had somewhat warmed up to the Princess after the events in Cyfoeth Port, and Cai had been quick to forgive her for her outburst at the castle all those weeks ago, but the Princess still maintained her distance, despite their attempts to include her. She doubted their companionship would ever be genuine, doubted it was in the first place.

“It’s our duty,” Gwyn was very zen-like of late. “I find it relaxing.”

Owen, on the contrary, was fidgety and nervous. “It’s not fun.”

Arwen had her dagger, though her father had allowed her to leave the Light Gem at the castle this time, a concession she was very thankful for. Gwyn had his trusty lance, though curiously, also had a sword sheathed to his hip. Owen was equipped with the same recurve bow he always slugged around, whilst Cai’s sword was held loosely in his right hand.

They continued walking. Just two more hours until they would swap with the other set of guards. Just two more… but Arwen’s longing thoughts were interrupted by a snapping noise from the nearby forest’s edge snapped the four to attention, and they all exchanged glances. “Must have been the wind?” Cai joked awkwardly.

“Shut up,” Gwyn’s words were without heat. “It’s just a deer or something.”

“You know, I highly doubt the Helvetians are going to choose here of all places to invade,” Cai had an annoying tendency to babble when on missions he deemed himself too good for. “Unless they want to see those creepy ass frogs in the west.”

“At least we’re not having our body parts rearranged by a crazy artifice in some random village,” Owen muttered, pretty much to himself.

Could an artifice re-arrange body parts? Arwen’s bored mind considered the possibility, but she knew too little of the Dark God’s tools to make an educated guess, so she let the thought slip.

“Do you… see that?” Owen froze and pointed northwards, towards what Arwen saw as a random patch of moss by a tree.

“Ha ha,” Cai laughed. “Nice one, Owen, but we won’t fall for it.”

“No, no,” Owen jabbed his finger once more for effect. “I’m being serious.”

Arwen peered suspiciously at where he was pointing.

“I don’t see shit,” Gwyn said. “Where exactly are you pointing?”

“By the tree!” Owen insisted. “Doesn’t it look like someone’s trying to hide behind it?”

Does it? It looked utterly normal to Arwen. Apparently, Cai had also reached the same conclusion. “It is just moss, man.”

“No, I’m being serious. Right there!”

“Are you having a stroke?” Arwen could see Cai really try to squint to see what he was on about. He took a step forward. “I don’t see a thing.”

“No! Don’t move!” Owen warned.

Gwyn scowled at the archer. “Owen, you’re behaving really weird, here. What’s going on?”

“I swear to you,” Owen really emphasised his words. “Something. Is. There.”

Arwen thought something strange was going on with the man, but she decided to opt for compassion, remembering how she had felt back in Cyfoeth Port when no one had believed her about Gareth. “If Owen says something is there, then some…”

The Princess’s words trailed off as a shadow moved in the corner of her eye.

Before she could even move, an arm wrapped around her head, a hand clamping down on her scream before it could leave her lips. Next to her, she saw Gwyn struggling against three men restraining his arms and legs, whilst Cai’s sword was wrenched from his grasp and thrown onto the ground, before he was brutally kicked onto the ground and held.

Arwen tried to kick and scream. She tried flinging herself out of her captor’s grasp, and even attempting to scratch at him from behind with her nails, but she was powerless. One hand was wrapped around her neck, the other placed over her mouth, and the way she was forced to lean backwards suggested whoever had captured her had the foresight to make some distance from her so that she couldn’t try to escape.

The Princess’s heart was lodged in her throat as a burning fear so intense it physically hurt wracked at her chest. Her breathing came shallow and fast. She felt she couldn’t get enough air through the gaps of her captor’s fingers. Another pair of hands grabbed her wrists and she felt thick metal chain wrap around them, trapping her hands together.

It had been an ambush! Whoever these people were, they must have snuck up on them either from the nearby forest or from behind whilst they were distracted by whatever Owen had seen.

A scuffle ensued next to the Princess as Cai tried to stand, only to get pushed back onto the floor.

“Look!” Arwen’s captor hissed in Iekean, forcing her to turn to better face the radiant knight as he tried to reach for his nearby sword. “Look!”

Two men in Helvetian uniforms taunted and jeered Cai, watching sadistically as he tried to reach for his sword to defend himself. “Oh, you want your weapon?” one of them said. “Too bad!”

A boot came crashing down on Cai’s arm. Once, twice, three times, causing him to cry out in pain as the other Helvetian laughed and kicked him in the side for good measure. Arwen tried to speak through her captor’s hand, but he tightened his hold on her throat in warning. “Don’t you dare try to speak. Just watch.”

“What do you want from us?!” Gwyn screamed as he desperately tried to break free from the three men holding him. He thrashed and kicked to no avail. “What are you trying to do?!”

Cai was still trying to resist, but the arm where he had been stomped on was clearly broken, and it was obvious he was in pain. To put an end to any threat he may pose, one of the Helvetians lay a brutal kick to his face, instantly breaking his nose in a gush of blood and sending the knight’s head rocking back. He was then grabbed by the hair and slammed into the dirt, before a punch to the side of his head knocked him out cold.

“Nghhh!” Arwen writhed and thrashed against her Helvetian captor, but he held her too tightly. “No!”

Cai’s face was a mess of blood and bruised skin. One eye was swollen beyond recognition and a misplaced bone was forcing the skin on his right arm to distort in an unnatural manner. “He’s out.” One of the Helvetians called.

It was then that Arwen noticed him. The one who, despite being part of the group, had been left utterly untouched by the Helvetians. The man who now did not seem so anxious, and instead looked calmer and more troubled. The man who, despite snitching to her father, had seen it fit to offer once last betrayal for the Princess.

Arwen screamed at him, but the sound was muffled out by the meaty hand covering her mouth. Her captor laughed, clearly enjoying her reaction to the unexpected betrayal. “Have something to say, hmm?” he removed his hand from her mouth and clamped it on the top of her head. “Say it quickly, then!”

“You monster!” Arwen screeched, trying to fling herself towards her traitorous retainer. “You fucking bastard!”

“Owen?!” Gwyn all but roared, even as he was forced to his knees. “What the fuck is happening?”

Owen didn’t answer, and instead strode behind Arwen. A second later, he felt his hand against her ankle, retrieving her dagger from its sheath strapped around her leg. “I’ll be taking this back,” he quipped as he made his way back into Arwen’s line of sight. He sighed. “You always reminded me of a cat, Princess. Always so stuck-up and self-important. Believed you were all that mattered in the world. But you were always useless. Just a pretty face to look at, and nothing more. Just like a little cat.”

“I’ll kill you!” Arwen wailed at him. “I’ll end you so painfully you’ll wish you weren’t ever fucking born!”

Owen almost seemed hurt by her words. “You…” he hesitated briefly. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at the man holding onto the Princess. “Now do it quick,” his voice lost all of its confidence as he turned away and started to walk. “I can’t bear to watch this for long.”

The hand replaced itself over Arwen’s mouth as the man’s disgusting breath assaulted her left ear as he whispered to her. “I don’t intend to be quick. After you killed Biorn and his men, I vowed to make you suffer.”

Arwen had no idea who Biorn was, but a vision of the horseback Commander who had previously attacked them in Coed’s Forest flashed into mind. Another fragment of the past. Another instance of it hurting her. Could she ever escape her own history?! She tried to speak again, but the man forced his fingers into her mouth and her words were cut off as she involuntarily retched. Before her teeth could clamp down on his fingers, though, he removed them and clamped them back onto her face, marring her cheek with her own saliva. “Try that again and I’ll have my friend here remove a finger, one for each transgression.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He then forced her to face Cai once more and gave his order. “Wake up the Light Mage, then kill him.”

Tears flowed from Arwen’s eyes as she watched one of the Helvetians slap Cai awake. They wanted to ensure he was aware of his own death. “Let go of him, you assholes!” Gwyn yelled, but was then kneed so hard in the jaw that Arwen was certain it was dislocated on the spot.

It took a few seconds, but Cai finally awoke as Arwen’s heart dropped. She had hoped that, in his final moments, the knight would refuse to wake. At least then he’d have a somewhat peaceful end.

Still dazed and confused, Cai barely put up a fight as they grabbed his arms and forced him to kneel directly in front of Arwen. The Helvetians stood behind him, swords in hand, and grinned wickedly.

It was at that point that Arwen decided these men were pure evil, sent by the Dark God himself.

Cai’s brown eyes joined Arwen’s, and the two shared a brief moment of silence while Gwyn kicked and screamed in the background. The radiant knight appeared to know what was coming, and Arwen could do nothing about it. With her hands bound together, her magic was useless. She couldn’t yet channel her lightning to anywhere other than her fingers, and what good would her lightning sight be? She was useless. She always was, and always will be. Her retainer’s ruined face shifted. He was trying to speak. Arwen cried as his confident smile flashed in her mind. She still remembered the first time they met, and how much they had hated each other and argued. She had never forgotten about his sister, and while she never said a word, had found it so admirable that Cai had moved on from her death as well as he did. She couldn’t do that with Bran. She wasn’t strong enough.

“Arwen…” Cai managed to grind out, his voice hoarse and weak. “I’m…”

The tip of a sword exploded from his chest, showering Arwen in blood as she watched the pain burst behind his eyes. He had been skewered from behind. No escape from that. No living. Even if he somehow were to survive, they were too far away from anyone who could lend help. He was dead. Gone. Gone.

Arwen’s muffled screams scratched her throat raw as she watched her friend die a mere metre in front of her. And just when she didn’t think it could get any worse, the sword was pulled carelessly from his back and then thrust directly through him again, this time in the stomach. Cai’s choked cry of agony would forever haunt the Princess. She watched a trickle of blood pour from his mouth.

And then, just like that, the light dimmed from his eyes and he slumped forward, the top of his head landing mere inches from Arwen’s knees.

The Helvetians laughed and kicked at the body. Arwen’s captor chucked menacingly behind her and once again whispered into her ear. “Was that fun? I bet it was pretty bad watching your friend die, just like Biorn did with his friends when you slaughtered them all. But don’t worry, after we’re done making you watch your second friend die, we’ll kill you way slower than them.”

Arwen wanted to be sick. Her body was soaked in sweat and was shaking violently with fear and adrenaline. Gwyn’s eyes were wide, his skin clammy, and for the first time ever since Arwen had met him, genuine terror entered his face when his three captors begun to drag him to her as Cai’s body was unceremoniously rolled out of the way.

When Gwyn was thrown down in front of the Princess, soaking his legs in Cai’s blood, Arwen was allowed to speak once more. “Gwyn!” she cried once the disgusting Helvetian’s hand was gone from her lips. “I’m so sorry!”

It looked as though Gwyn couldn’t speak, but despite the horror he had witnessed and the fear in his eyes, he seemed calm… accepting. He simply nodded at her, trying to convey a wordless message with his eyes while Arwen stared into them for the last time.

No. She had to do something! Arwen immediately called upon her magic, filling her hands with as much power as she dared muster, but when she tried to force it outwards and into her captor, it simply flung itself into her chain bindings and she completely lost control. Less than a second later, it jolted through her entire body, up her arms and down through her torso and legs into the ground below, electrocuting her and her captor at the same time.

Gwyn’s eyes widened as Arwen started convulsing and the man holding onto her suddenly let go, allowing her to crash paralysed onto the ground. “Fuck!” he roared, flicking his hand in the air. “That fucking hurt! Little bitch packs a punch!”

The pain was intense and all-consuming. It eclipsed all rationale thought and locked the muscles in her body so tightly that they ached even after finally relaxing. By the time Arwen had recovered her senses enough to act, another Helvetian had grabbed her by the hair and yanked her upwards, sending a deep burning pain racing through her scalp. Arwen cried out in agony.

She could now see the man who had previously been holding onto her. He was a beefy brute of a man, with a buzzcut and strange markings on his neck. His narrow brown eyes were filled with rage as he stepped menacingly closer and lashed out with his hand, slapping her so hard across the cheek that she bit her tongue as she was slammed onto the ground, the side of her head smacking into the floor with a harsh crack. “You want to try that again?!” he screamed in her face as she was yanked back into a kneeling position. “Bitch!”

“Her hands are still bound,” her new captor reported. “But shall we break her legs in case she tries to escape again?”

“No,” the buzzcut Helvetian shook his head, nursing his arm. Arwen would’ve normally felt a slight satisfaction at his pain, but she was in too much agony to care. “If she wants to jolt herself again, let her.”

“You pig!” Arwen spat up at him.

A fist instantly crashed into her face, filling her mouth with blood as her vision temporarily flashed a static white. Arwen’s head rocked back, but she was vaguely aware of her captor supporting her back so she wouldn’t fall. “You got something to say?” the Helvetian warned her. “No more speaking. Every word from your pretty little mouth will mean your friend here gets to lose a new limb. Got it?”

Arwen didn’t answer and instead re-focused her attention on Gwyn, who shook his head ever so slightly at her. Was he telling her to listen? Or expressing disapproval? The Princess supposed she would never know.

And then, the time came. “Kill him,” buzzcut-Helvetian licked his lips predatorily. “I want to get straight on to her.”

Noooo! Arwen inwardly screamed. But there was nothing she could do. A sword wrapped its way around Gwyn’s head and was sliced across his throat, spraying Arwen with yet another torrent of blood. She felt it, warm and sticky, splatter across her face before she cringed back as it flew into her eyes. She squeezed them shut, but it couldn’t block out the sound of Gwyn’s desperate gasps for air as he gargled and wheezed in an attempt to draw breath. “Rub out her eyes!” a voice commanded. “I want her to see him. Quickly!”

Two fingers forced Arwen’s eyelids open, and a splash of water gushed into her eye, washing away the blood. Her other eye was next, and Arwen was finally able to see, though her vision was blurry and she kept having to blink to clear the feeling of something foreign on her eyeballs. “Look!” the Helvetian roughly shoved her head to the side. “Look!”

And she did. Gwyn was on the floor, both hands clutched against his throat and his eyes squeezed shut as blood pooled endlessly from between his fingers. A giant circle of dark blood had formed around him, matting his hair and staining his uniform. Arwen could tell the hero was trying not to show his pain, trying not to give these murderers the satisfaction of watching him suffer, but as his legs kicked out and his dying gasps faltered, the smiles on their sadistic fucking faces told her all she needed to know.

It happened mercifully quickly. Gwyn’s struggling slowed, and then just… stopped. His body lay there in his own blood, twitching and jolting in post-mortem. The smell was so horrific that Arwen could almost taste the iron in the air. Or was that her own blood from when she had bit her tongue?

“Alright!” buzzcut cheered, facing Arwen. “Your turn.”

“No!” Arwen tried to thrash against her captor in one last desperate attempt to break free, but it was too late. A pair of hands pushed her onto her back with a crash, and another set of hands immediately grabbed her legs to stop her from kicking out. Her bound hands burned intensely in their twisted position between her back and the hard ground below. “Get off of me!”

The buzzcut Helvetian slowly pulled a dagger from his calf. Its blade glinted in the sunlight as he examined it, twisting the blade in his fingers to inspect both sides. He was enjoying the horrified look in her eyes. It was thrilling to him.

“Now comes the best part,” he knelt down and straddled Arwen on her stomach. He gently traced the knife up her chest, careful not to draw any blood as she twisted and writhed underneath his weight, he drew it past her neck and chin, past her lips, and up between her eyes where he pulled it back. “Which part of you should I remove first?”

Arwen so was scared, she couldn’t breathe. Her chest heaved up and down in almost perfect synchrony with her racing heart and she found herself unable to wrench her gaze from the knife’s blade. “Please!” she begged. “Don’t do this!”

Buzzcut suddenly leaned over her, running his hand possessively over her cheek. “Such a sultry voice you have,” he purred. “Shall I get rid of your tongue, first?”

“Please…” tears fell in rivers down the sides of Arwen’s head.

“How about your eyes?!” Buzzcut smiled wickedly. “What a good idea.”

He positioned the tip of the knife just above her heavily-dilated pupil. “How about the right one first?”

Then, without warning, he pushed it deep.

“Arrghhh!” Arwen screamed herself raw in pain as the blade tip slowly pierced her eye, instantly blinding her entire right periphery and sending such an intense ache through her skull that all of her other pains disappeared entirely. The white-hot agony only intensified as the knife slowly dug deeper and deeper, until it touched the back of her eye socket. Arwen writhed and thrashed, but she was held down too tightly, and it only shifted the knife in her eye, sending nauseating waves of pain radiating from her ruined socket. Hot blood spilled down her face, mixing into the viscera and ruined pulp that was now her right eye and trickling down her head, into her mouth, around her nose. In her pain-filled thrashing, the back of her head slammed against the ground, but the Princess hardly felt it. The pain was so unbelievably strong. She couldn’t think of anything else. She couldn’t even hear her own screams, which were no doubt as constant as the agony she was in.

“You like that, you fucking bitch?!” Buzzcut yelled into her face. He twisted the knife in her eye, and Arwen could feel the tip of the blade grating against the thin bone. Somehow, that was even worse than the blinding pain she was in. Her agony and desperation caused a stirring in her body. Completely unbidden, her lightning magic manifested inside her, building and building in her chest so powerfully that it started to hurt. Arwen couldn’t pay it any mind, however, for the pain she was in was so great that she was unable to focus.

Yet eventually it reached a boiling point, and it threatened to spill over. Acting out of utter desperation and sheer panic, Arwen tried to direct it to her torturer, and to her pain-filled surprise, it worked. She felt her magic rush up the right side of her face and into the knife, its metal blade acting as a natural conduit and sending the burst of pure energy directly into the buzzcut Helvetian. The outcome was immediate. A bright flash temporarily blinded Arwen’s working eye. A loud pop was accompanied by a buzzing sound unlike anything she had ever heard before, and she felt the Helvetian straddling her get blown away by the pure force. The putrid smell of burnt flesh assaulted her nostrils.

“Princess!” she was vaguely aware of Deinian voices calling from somewhere behind her, but Arwen barely registered it. What she once thought was the worst pain ever felt was now a mercy compared to the burning sensation spreading across the right side of her face. It felt like she was on fire. Her screams grew even more tortured and shrill as her own magic eviscerated the nerves on the right half of her face where the lightning had travelled through, cooking her own skin and sending her muscles into an uncontrollable spasm, as if she were having a seizure. Her vision swam, images flashed in her head and her thoughts scattered irreversibly, but she hardly even bothered to note it. The absolute agony was nothing the Princess would ever wish on the worst, most evil, horrible man in Loel, and what was somehow scarier was the frighteningly numb sensation spreading across the right half of her face.

Sounds of clashing swords and injured cries filled her ears, but Arwen was focused solely on herself. She was almost delirious in pain, but managed to roll herself onto her side, sending a hot pool of blood down the feeling left half of her face. Her working eye caught sights of shuffling boots and fallen bodies, but what she truly focused on was Gwyn’s dead face, staring unerringly back at her.

Arwen violently threw up, expelling a sickeningly watery mixture of bile and chunks of earlier breakfast out onto the floor and dribbling down her mouth. The vile stench immediately accosted her nose, burning her nostrils as another forceful heave ejected more of her stomach out onto the floor. “Urghhh!” Arwen momentarily choked on her own sick, before coughing spittle out onto the ground. Her throat was completely raw and caught her cries of pain painfully in her neck before allowing them to escape her lips. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Her entire world was pain. Her head swam, her eye hurt so much. She just wanted it to end- the pain to stop. She just wanted to go home.

And then, lying in a puddle of her own viscera, blood, and sick, Arwen Blayney’s world went black.

THE END

Of the Prologue Story.