To Serve and Protect (2)

Maelle blinked. She had never experienced such a strange premonition before.

“What the hell…? My neck…”

Reaching out for her nape, she cradled the second of her two Marks. It’s been here for years now, she thought to herself. Surely I’ve gotten used to it by now.

But her body disagreed with her assessment. That strange feeling moving through her veins was electricity—something she had never experienced before, and a phenomenon yet unnamed in this world. For someone so ostensibly grounded in logic, she could not help but bring up illogical comparisons to thunderstorms or bolts of lightning to make sense of this new sensation.

Nothing significant happened according to her memory. Nothing in the real world, at least. The only thing that could’ve been responsible was that oddly horrifying vision she had. But it made no sense that a vision would be able to bleed into reality—she had experienced hundreds, maybe thousands of these “dreams” before, and none of them had resulted in anything remotely close to pain before. Anxiety, yes, but definitely nothing physical.

Then, without warning, her Mark began to burn.

“Ouch!”

“Is something the matter, my lady? A bad vision?”

And burn it did. Burned so much she thought she might die. But rather than tell the truth, she grit her teeth.

“Nothing is going on. And come on, how many times do I have to tell you this? Even if I see anything interesting, I can’t tell you. Talking about the vision will cause the timeline to diverge—it’d make the act of having visions in the first place completely meaningless.”

Maelle’s delivery and tone would lead most people to believe she was telling the truth. And minus the part where she was in severe pain, she was—except for one tiny thing she’d decided to omit. She could not actually remember her dream.

She recalled something mythical, something demonic. A person from another world, surely, because no such mask or armour existed in the Higher Continent—a strange daemon slicing at someone with a blade of pure amethyst light. The level of his control must have been Archon… no, Justicar level. Then, pushing that said someone’s victim out of the way, who for some reason she felt compelled to save, the sword made contact with her Mark instead.

It’s just darkness after that.

Even then, parts of this conclusion were drawn mostly from inference. She could not be entirely certain it was her Mark that got cut, only harbouring vague ideas of the sort because it was hurting now. She was also unsure if the person she was saving was a man or a woman—she leaned towards woman, given how passive they seemed to be, and how Maelle could not see herself trying to save any man other than Soren (who wouldn’t have gotten into that situation in the first place). But these were all superficial reasons, and they definitely wouldn’t hold up in any of Elder Denzel’s Lessons on Philosophy.

In other words, irrational beliefs.

The bottom line was this: if a situation like that even were to occur, then all she had to do was not tank the blade. This obviously wasn’t anything worth worrying about.

Maelle was used to these visions of her impending death, anyway. It was how she managed to get the jump on her father’s scheme to capture her in the first place, and how she evaded many an assassin before the Court even realised she harboured the impossibility of two Marks. Even the attack on the carriage was something foretold. But not once had these visions ever been accompanied by such static, and her attendant easily saw through her false pretenses.

“Quanta burn,” he said. “That is indeed strange”

“I just told you—stop thinking about it. And it can’t be that. There’s no logical reason for it.”

“So you are in pain, I’m presuming?”

“N-no…”

For the record, this exchange happened not because Maelle’s acting was unconvincing. Had she not been a royal princess turned runaway or a bearer of ill omens, the prodigious teenager would have surely found herself a natural home in the performing arts—or perhaps just been on the path towards becoming a legendary conwoman. Her lie had been delivered with expert delivery and stone-faced precision, with enough skill to convince even the most paranoid of shut-ins. Had anyone else heard her, they would not only have believed her, but probably also gushed over her “majestic voice”.

So, was it because this man was an expert in perception? Not quite.

The attendant reading through her like a book was less of a servant and more of a father figure to this girl, despite how much they both insisted this was not the case. They had sat through diaper changing sessions, magic lessons, and even basic writing classes together despite the massive age gap, for he was illiterate when they first met, and Maelle Piquet had issues trusting anyone other than herself. His name was Soren Nielsen, and he, back in the day, was also a prodigy in his own right.

The second youngest Paladin to date, Soren—The Wrath of the North—was a legendary figure whose name struck awe into even the most jaded of Templars. The very first Templar from the tiny Stormhaven sect to cast an Imperial-tier Water spell, he and 99 other Templars were summoned as part of a process known as the Royal Gauntlet to determine who would serve as then-toddler Maelle Piquet’s bodyguard and magic tutor for the rest of her life. In a well-chronicled turn of events, it has been said by many a witness that the heir apparent, clad in diapers and a dress, wrestled her way out of Queen Esmerelda’s arms and waddled over to the man to hug him out of every single Templar, noble, attendant, and even close relative present.

This, in turn, caused the entire tournament to be cancelled, and Soren to be unilaterally declared her bodyguard with no contest by the King. There were betting lines on the event, and this is no exaggeration to say—but so many bookmakers went bankrupt, the entire burgher class banded together to reorganise the gambling industry to prevent such a calamity from happening again.

Of course, with so much anger and lost money going around, this outcome was met with cries of nepotism. Which was strange, for Soren Nielsen was born a slave on a fishing boat bought by Stormhaven sect solely due to his massive frame—the discovery of his talent came later—and King Philip was a just, religious man who was known to be stubbornly incorruptible. Now, with the overwhelming evidence of the pair’s inseparability and Maelle’s successful education, you’d have to be a political extremist to argue that the decision was unjust. It is beyond obvious that Soren Nielsen and Maelle Piquet are a match made in heaven, and that no other Templar could have possibly taken his place.

That is, until the narrative shifted again some months ago.

Now thirty-eight, Soren Nielsen could have been a Justicar, an Elder occupying one of the lofty seats of Sienne sect—also known as a Saint, or perhaps even became part of the aristocracy himself with a never-ending list of royal suitors eager to take his hand in marriage. Instead, he has spent his adulthood faithfully rejecting advances and maintaining the rank of Paladin so as to not risk being separated from the Crown Princess, and now finds himself a fugitive on the run after breaking her out of house arrest. A decision that he has never once regretted, not even subconsciously.

If it ever came down to it, he would die for her, and she would (begrudgingly) do the same—no questions asked. That was the strength of their bond.

Long story short: the two were inseparable, intertwined by fate. They knew each other better than they knew themselves.

“Come on,” Soren said. “Let me take a look.”

“No,” she replied, pulling up her hood. “I told you, this is imaginary. It’s just mental weakness. If we want to liberate Calice from the theocracy, we need to not get bogged down in wasteful thoughts”

“If you say so.”

“Anyway… I wonder how the two of them are doing. Do you think he’ll stop being an idiot? Maybe Anna will get to him first?”

Soren wanted to laugh. He found it endearing that Maelle could so quickly switch from enraged to worried. In his infinite wisdom, however, he knew better than to point out the contradictory nature of teenage whims.

“You know, my lady… The day you grow up, I will be truly sad.”

“W-Wha?” Maelle’s face cycled through a thousand different emotions before settling on annoyed. “Wh-what does that have to do with anything? I was just wondering if we were too harsh with that boy, that’s all… I mean, even if my vision told me to… tell you to… Anyway, this is so not relevant!”

Soren ignored her protests and placed his gauntlet on her head.

“You will be a great ruler. I know it.” He ruffled the hair beneath her hood, her flustered expression unknown to the knight owing to its magic. “You push your subjects to become their best versions of themselves. But when that inevitable day of your coronation comes, someone else will need to take my place, for I’ll be far too old and frail.”

“...”

Looking wistfully to the horizon, he continued. “A powerful knight worthy of guarding an Empress. I believe Sir Primot will eventually become that man.”

Maelle only grew more animated with the sudden onset of a non-consensual lecture; something jaded old men did, not magicians in their prime. “‘Empress’? ‘Grow up’? Don’t you think you’re thinking too many steps ahead, Soren? We don’t even know what’ll happen to the line of succession in Calice yet, let alone entertain talk about becoming a valid candidate for the next Holy Lands election cycle. Besides, now there’s an underground extremist group that hates our guts so much, they sent a suicide bomber after us,” she said. “Counting your chickens before they hatch. I taught you that phrase, did I not?”

Soren stayed silent. He found it endearing that Maelle still thought of them as a pair.

“Regardless, I don’t understand why you seem to have such a soft spot for this guy. Ugh. He’s… icky, like a horribly pretentious version of a drama mask, except an actual person. Flipping between tragedy and comedy on a whim as if nobody can see through it. Does he think I’m stupid? What does Anna even see in him? And honestly, before all of that… someone stronger than you? That person does not—and will not—ever exist, and it’s certainly not going to be some ugly, suicidal virgin boy.”

“That man,” Soren corrected, “is living proof that the world is vast and ever-changing. Until yesterday, you did not believe in the legend of Saint Alicia, and neither did you acknowledge the existence of Asmodeus.”

“But that’s… I mean, you told me that! You were the one who told me not to believe in that reincarnation nonsense when I was a kid,” she protested. “You said it was too much pressure for a child.”

“Well, I simply echo whatever sentiment it is my student needs to hear at the time to coax their potential. Not unlike how you concocted an entire scenario to slap the Quantum Mage.”

“...Hmph.”

“I’m sure you will invent things for him. In time, they will surely eclipse the armour and mask you have made for me—compared to that future, these prototypes might as well be child’s play.”

“...I’m not a child anymore. I’m fourteen.”

“Sure.”

Soren’s fatherly senses told him not to contest that statement. Instead, he began to ruffle her hood even more.

Maelle did not protest, despite how uncomfortable the gauntlet felt pressing against her scalp so roughly.

How long had it been since they were last able to talk so freely like this? This was not a rhetorical question—neither of them genuinely recalled the answer. All they knew was that this had to be at least four months ago, before King Philip sent out the royal decree to have his daughter hanged.

KrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrkKrk.

Their heartfelt conversation was interrupted by the sound of something ghoulish. An infernal cry, something you would expect from daemons and horrors of old, not the serene nature of the Calicean countryside in the present. Like an explosion of flesh and bone—wet, crunchy, grotesque, except also inanimate somehow.

The ground began to vibrate with a ferocious intensity. So much so that Soren immediately channeled a Lumen of Quanta in anticipation of combat, ready to conjure his visor, and Maelle pulled up her hood as if to drown out the noise.

But it was more than just sound that they would bear witness to.

A giant, black dome—made of pure darkness—spawned out of nowhere, blocking out the sun and eating up the sky. Its entrance was instantaneous and paradoxical, defying every known Lower Realm law of physics and even fantasy magic.

Where Soren and Maelle stood, it looked like nightfall had just set in.

“What… In the world is that?” she gasped.

“Hm.”

Soren had not yet put on his visor, and yet the dome was visible to him as well. Birds flew out from the forest and into the sky in droves, reacting to the stimuli.

That, to him, meant one thing definitively—that the dome was not a construct of Darkness quanta, but the effect of a spell. And if it was a spell, it was either a form of magic that he had never seen before, and one that shouldn’t have been possible to resolve under the rigorous Lumen theory of Quanta currently being perfected by Maelle Piquet… or something like the female cultist’s power from the day before.

Except, whatever this was, compared to the grunt from yesterday—this was a thousand times more sinister.

Maelle came to the same conclusion, detecting nothing out of the ordinary with her eyes… nothing except what everyone else could see. Albeit untrained, and nowhere near the precision of a true expert, the complete absence of colour made her skin crawl.

It was just… a dome of shadow. Not anything but an unexplainable absence of light.

“Anna,” she suddenly gasped.

“I’m already on it,” her attendant replied, his voice now dripping with distortion.

Gathering two Lumens of Quanta from the air around him, then feeding it through his Mark to convert it into Water, Soren channeled this energy into the mould of a creature and imagined that he would birth life from nothing. Pressing his gauntlet into the floor, and mentally tracing the form of the magic circle of the creature inscribed into his Codex with ease thanks to his visor, he called forth his animal companion.

“River Snapjaw,” he called out, to inform his retainer of the creature he was summoning. This was one of the universal basics of combat they taught Apprentices in every Templar Academy, to make sure the entire party stayed informed of each person’s actions.

In a burst of navy blue—although, to an average bystander, it would just have been nothing—a giant, saddled crocodile four times the size of its Lower Realm counterpart appeared beside him. Normally, this spell would have taken an immense amount of focus and fried even the veins of the most experienced magicians, but the act of gathering Lumens was made nearly automatic by his gauntlet, and Soren had probably the best quanta tolerance in the known world anyway. He mounted it with an indifference that suggested he’d done this a million times, and Maelle quickly followed suit, scaling the scaly side of the reptile.

“Let’s go!” she commanded.

“Grak,” replied the crocodile.

Before they could sprint off, however, there was a tiny turkey chick charging out of one of their tents. It cawed loudly enough to grab the attention of all three of the creature, knight, and princess, and seemed deathly insistent on following them.

“Caw!” It cawed.

“Ugh. Fine,” Maelle said.

Soren deftly scooped up the tiny bird with his sword, then deposited it on Maelle’s lap. Strength, dexterity, wisdom—there was nothing this man lacked except the unluckiness of a lowborn upbringing.

“Okay, but now we’re really going!”

Soren flicked the crocodile’s reins, and it sped off towards the direction of the dome at a breakneck pace unbefitting of an aquatic animal. He would not know this yet, but this would be the first of his very last moments with Maelle Piquet.