PENUMBRA // Tamaki Amajiki x Reader Royal AU

Chapter 33

I had begun to understand why Tamaki used to spend all his days staring out the window of his tower. It was quite peaceful, a relaxing break from the stress of war though I could have hardly seen myself doing that for my whole life. My first day of zero contact with anyone was slightly lonely but it was easier knowing Tamaki had been in my place before. I tried to imagine I was him sitting there.

By lunch time I was bored already so I decided to wait instead outside of district four where the initial attack was headed. This did not do much to quell my boredom but it was nice to listen to the buzz of the market in the distance.

It had not even been twenty four hours and I was already thinking of what Tamaki was doing at that moment. Although I had wanted to conserve my energy for the war effort, after spending basically the whole day before relaxing and scaring off the soldiers not taking anything out of me, I thought it could not hurt to at least take a peak at what Tamaki was doing.

Then the dread hit me. If I peered into his world, I could have found him dead on the ground. I did not know what I would do if I saw that, I did not know if I had it in me to keep protecting his kingdom if that happened.

After procrastinating for a while, nothing else was happening, I was not getting much done and I did not have much to do so I got over it and pulled up a sight of Tamaki.

Against my worries, he was alive and in the exact same condition I left him. Just like at home he was sat by the window. Letting out a sigh of relief I watched as a girl with bright auburn hair came into view. She must have been the youngest of Tamaki's cousins, the girl I had yet to see, only heard of in conversation.

"-but only as a last resort, you must promise me." She seemed earnest about something.

"I-I understand... but I can't promise that." Tamaki was extremely quiet and was acting how he did when I first met him.

"Seriously Tamaki this is a matter of-

"Guards, take her away!" A stern voice came from somewhere outside my view. Suddenly two armed guards appeared and grabbed the princess by her arms dragging her away.

"Get off me! Prince Ami- Tamaki, please think about what I have said." She put up a fight but did not fare well against those pulling her away.

Before the door was promptly shut, I heard a "I though you had learned your lesson, Kendo." from the same stern voice which I knew belonged to the Helios king.

Tamaki naturally appeared a little startled and it took him a few moments to get his bearings, then he bent over and started tugging at his hair in distress.

I wanted to do something or send him a message but it was not like there was a quill or parchment in the room. There was no message I could send that he would be able to comprehend or one that would not scare him away so with nothing I could do I was about to close the circle in the air but then he stopped.

He breathed and he stood up straight and his eyes grew focused. Outstretching a hand in front of him, thick vines grew from his fingertips and spread through the floorboards, when they reached the ends of the floorboards they spread through the wall. This continued until the entire room was covered top to bottom.

With absolutely no idea what he was doing, I continued watching until a panel fell from the ceiling and with it came a book. Using his vines, Tamaki placed the ceiling panel back and grabbed the book. All the vines retreated back to him and he sat on the chair by the window and started to read. I was unable to see what it was he was reading and it was a thick tome so it seemed he would be reading for a while.

Sighing, I closed of the sight of him and complied with asking him what in the world just happened the next time I saw him, whenever that would be. What were the chances I would stumble upon that scene? It did nothing to ease my worries, I wished I had chosen to peak later and only see him reading the book.

When I looked up from my worrying, I noticed it was almost time for my nightly scan of the kingdom, I was not expecting much since France already tried an attack that day.

But as soon as I was halfway to the top of the trees I knew something was wrong. In the dim light of dusk, I could just make out a line of smoke that did not seem to end as well as the outline of a blue flame in the distance. If I could see the flame that must have meant the fire was huge.

Quickly I rose to the canopy, ignoring the smoke, and rushed over to the fire. As I got closer however, I noticed that, like the smoke, it kept stretching on. I tried following it but there seemed to be no end and the heat was beginning to become unbearable so I instead opted to fly higher and get a bird's eye view of what was happening.

The higher I rose, the larger my range of sight yet the line of fire only seemed to keep going. It did not take me long to realise that the flames were creating some sort of circle and by the time I was high enough see the entire thing, I could no longer notice any of the details of the ground below.

What did not escape my notice though, was the fact that the fire made a perfect circle all the way around the kingdom. All paths were covered, there was no more getting in or out.

As I descended to the start of the trail, I ended up at the encampment of soldiers from that morning, except there were a lot more than fifty now. Marching through the remains of the trees which had finished burning were, what must have been thousands of soldiers, not just carrying rapiers.

There were bows and spears and even slingshots, as well as fancy, modern bayonet-fitted rifles carried by a select few of the troops. They carted around catapults and cannons through the smouldering forest with smoke still billowing from it.

The fire must have been burning for hours and I was too caught up in my own worries not to notice it. If I was not such a logical person I very well could have had one of Tamaki's episodes right there and then.

France had brought an army that could have the whole kingdom slaughtered within hours. Clearly they did war properly otherwise there was no need for that much manpower, they could only have sent their whole army to invade the kingdom - at least that was what I was hoping.

To be frank, although I was extremely powerful, this was starting to push my limits. I could only be one place a once and with the whole army soon to be surrounding the whole kingdom before daybreak, I was not so sure I could have handled anything more.

Without destroying the kingdom in the process, there was nothing I could do to stop the entire army. Thing were not looking good and I was not quite sure what to do, everything had been blown way out of proportion very quickly.

Trying to think things through logically, I analysed my options: The fire did not seem to be spreading so I did not need to worry about it and besides, putting it out would just create a path for the soldiers to get through quicker.

At the same time I could not keep the fire going because it was not my own. My fire would be completely controlled by sorcery so growing it the entire length of the path would take too long and spreading it too thinly like that would just allow the soldiers to pass through unharmed.

From the distance required I could not levitate every single soldier and even then they probably would not all be scared away.

Since I was not god, I could not regrow the dead trees and if I tried to put up some sort of wall, they had the weapons necessary to knock it down.

The future was not looking very bright and I was not left with much option. Either I would have to wait it out and watch them all night trying to analyse their movements, stopping individual groups if they tried to attack, or cover the fire that was already alight with an illusion to make it seem like it would never go out.

I went with the latter option. Of course they would not have gotten hurt but so long as I created an illusion which tricked them into feeling searing heat they would not try to move any further. This way I could retreat to the castle and get some respite, something I was going to need for the coming days.

Before I headed to the tower, I placed a protection charm over district four. All it would do was deter any attacks so attackers would feel inclined to move elsewhere just in case the army did get close. It was also something I could perform in my sleep so it was all I could offer.