Exile

“Teenagers leaving on the grounds of Adventuring? May I please see your credentials?”

“Tomas, come on…” Py Pir whined.

The guard snickered. “I know, I know. I’m just too used to seeing you all going out to either cut wood or pick berries!”

The fact we were on the edge of East Gate and we were finally legally making our way out of East Gate was utterly surreal. There was one thing that confused me, though.

“You know about passing our exam?” I asked.

“Who doesn’t in East Gate? Carrier pigeons came near immediately!”

Till this day, I am still shocked at how fast news travels here. Being part of a late-stage fantasy world tended to do that, I guess.

“You are our hometown heroes!” Tomas continued. “And who can forget the utter travesty of a manufactured scandal. It is too obvious not to be one!”

“Not to the folks in the capital.”

“Eurghhh. Well, at least your credentials can’t be taken away from you. However, that doesn’t mean I can just let you go. My Duke is cute and ditzy… but he is wise.”

Shit.

But Daisy was far more of a quick thinker than me. Despite her quiet opposition to my decision-making thus far, she never fails to make herself useful. “The Adventurer’s Guild is a globally recognized organisation. If what you are implying was that East Gate is above the Adventurer’s—”

“No, of course not.”

“It’d sandwich East Gate in between an already angry Sunlight Capital and the previously supportive Guild, yes.”

“Aren’t we your hometown heroes, Tomas?” Py Pir added. “We can handle ourselves.”

…

He looked so badly like he wanted to disagree.

\\

Soon, we left town.

Let me say: the views were just as pretty if not more gorgeous as I remembered it to be.

For this is spring, and the rolling hills once covered in white were now dotted with colors of the entire spectra.

“I vote that we lay down for a picnic soon!” Py Pir beamed. “It’s been hoursss… And… gods, these healing poultices and graphic novels sure do have a heft to them!”

As part of my daring plan, I had Py Pir haul a bundle of stock from East Gate’s businesses as part of our brooch . If anyone caught us, at least we could pass as glorified delivery kids.

“We are nearing Engel’s home! Just hold a little longer!” I called.

“I mean, surely we can’t get closer,” Piper muttered. “We’re already pretty close as it is. They’re going to notice us.”

I concede. That was true.

“No,” Engel said firmly. Her nerves were still there, but I was glad—compared to two years ago, she was finally learning to push through them. “W-we’re advanced, but not that advanced. A picnic, though… wouldn’t go awry…”

And just like that, we trudged up the incline toward the hills.

Engel gave us coordinates. They pointed to… a random tree, leaning against the crest of the hill.

“This seems rather, uh…”

“Conspicuous, right?” Engel said.

“I was hoping for, like, a grand entrance hidden deep in a cave,” Py Pir admitted.

Engel placed her tiny bronze hand against the bark. The tree shuddered, and then glowed bright blue.

“Not so.”

A door shimmered into existence, then yawned open, revealing a spiral staircase burrowing deep into the earth.

“Come in!”

Inside was a different world.

Polished steel and smooth bronze lined the walls. Cables ran like vines overhead, glowing faintly with arcane current. Stations with sockets, and strange not-quite LCD monitors filled alcoves along the corridor—tech so alien to East Gate it may as well have been sorcery.

“The tree’s a design of my mother’s,” Engel explained softly. “One of many Fusche outposts, meant to watch the outside world.”

Her eyes dimmed. “It’s strange. I remember the outside world so vividly, yet I don’t remember… how I got kicked out. I miss mommy so much.”

Piper, meanwhile, made herself home. Perhaps too much. I saw her sprawled on the couch.

“Ahhhhhh~” she sighed. “Nothing like the comforts of a quality furnishing. Endo, come have a sit with your future queen!”

“I don’t like what that implies.”

“A little expansionism never hurt anyone~”

Before I could answer, the room trembled.

“What’s happening, Engel?”

“My people…” Engel’s head snapped up, her pupils shrinking. “I can feel it. I’m a… sort of beacon? I don’t know the proper layman term.”

“A homing device,” I paled.

“And even then, that sort of thing was only a work of fiction. That should’ve been decades from completion, not even our best engineers could hack it! How—?”

The door into the hideout creaked open. We immediately went into our defensive positions.

Light spilled in.

“EEEK!” Engel cried.

A short, blonde-haired elf in a frilly traveling dress stepped inside, braids pristine, cape spotless—way too spotless for East Gate. A ringed locator spun madly in her grip, its runes gasping for breath.

“We have come to cleanse the surface world of its savagery. Please do not resist~!”

“I thought you said they were isolationist, Engel!” I cried.

“Not a-anymore, apparently!”

Her eyes landed on the tiny bronze figure peeking from behind Piper.

“You won’t lie a finger on her—” Piper started.

The figure seemed to ignore her threat entirely. In fact, the unknown elf woman gasped. “LITTLE SIS!!!”

She practically flew across the floor and scooped Engel up. The golem squeaked, going stiff as metal could.

“Ohmigosh—are you hurt?! Running diagnostic check now!” The manic elf’s eye pulsed. “Pulse: good! Aura: steady! Absolutely scandalized—obviously! Who let you walk on dirt?!”

“W-wait! How did you detect me? You made a beeline straight for my location!”

“Are you kidding?! I built a homing device while you were gone that could approximate within five centimeters of your heartbeat, of course!”

Engel’s bronze face flushed darker. “…A creep and a genius-prodigy… that’s Big Sis alright.”

“I-It’s just—I missed you so much!” Tears already brimmed in her sister’s eyes. “I… I… Waaaahhhh!”

“Please don’t cry in front of my friends,” Engel groaned. “You’re making a bad impression.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Take as much time as you need.”

The blonde elf finally noticed us. Straightening, she struck a royal pose, a smile that could sour milk plastered across her face.

“Oh my God. Savages. Is it true you people smell bad?”

Piper blinked. “We bathe.”

The girl’s lashes fluttered. “How brave of you!”

“Th-they’re allies, Lys. They helped me,” Engel stammered.

“Fufufu! Of course they did.” I got the distinct feeling she didn’t mean a word she said. “But you sent a sovereign ping, little comet! What else was I to do? Sit in that mausoleum while the Council gossiped, let you suffer alone?”

“I wasn’t suffering,” Engel muttered.

“Good. Fuf—” She coughed, fixing her poise. “Ahem. Very good.”

She soon stepped off what looked like a pair of power armored boots.

She shrunk like five inches in length.

“You are currently in the presence of the Great Lysandra of the von Maximoff family line! Bask in my glory and despair!!”

“Eh…” Daisy cracked. “One upping Yuree-El’s brattiness is no small feat…”

“Now Engel,” Lysandra continued. “I have waited six years to ask you this, so here goes. Where’s Mommy?”

Even Engel was shocked. Shocked as the rest of us. “Y-you’re asking me? I’ve been waiting six years to see her myself!”

Her sister’s face froze.

“What do you mean?”

Engel’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me mommy has fallen ill? Then I must visit the Mausoleum right away!”

“Engel…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “…She went with you into exile.”

…

“...What?”