When Your Feathers Flutter Down to Me

Chapter Four: The Princess And Insults

Taking quick strides, the man, a kind of lizardman by the looks of it, approached Elisia. "Hang on... ah," Hanen said. While he didn't want to guard Elisia, he had been charged to do so by Gorose, so he would do as he was told. However, he was still carrying the spear with the bent spearhead, meaning he had no weapon other than his fists. "Man," he thought. "I don't wanna get in a fist fight with this guy, especially over this stupid princess."

The lizardman reached Elisia and at the same time, pulled back a fist. On his knuckles seemed to be sharp-looking spines that extended about half an inch off his hand. Swinging it down, Elisia dodged as best she could, but having dedicated little to no time to martial arts, she was quite slow. The fist ended up grazing her cheek, creating three small scratch marks.

Feeling her face, Elisia brought her hand in front of her and saw the blood on her fingertips. "...You'll pay for that," Elisia said. "You'll pay with your life!" Readying a spell, she formed a small icicle in her hand. Ice magic wasn't particularly her speciality, but she was versed in it well enough to know basic spells like this one. Plus, because water (and by extension, ice) magic drew from the moisture in the user's surroundings, even somewhat large spells made little impact on the mana of the world.

Holding the icicle like a kitchen knife, Elisia lunged at the lizardman. Truth be told, she had never really fought anyone before outside of training. Most of the time, she made other people do the fighting for her, but there had been a time or two in the past when she had needed to defend herself. "I'll show this ingrate his place!" she thought angrily.

But, before she could reach the man, she felt a hand grab her arm. Then, before she knew what was happening, she was flipping through the air, eventually landing flat on her back with a bit of force.

"Ack...!" she let out on impact, coughing. Looking up, she spotted Hanen staring down at her. "Some guard you are," Elisia spat. "You're supposed to protect me, and instead, you attack me and even let me get attacked."

"There's no way I could beat this guy without a weapon," Hanen said. "And I wasn't about to let you stab one of my friends."

"You know she wouldn't have hit me, right?" the lizardman said like it was obvious.

"Hey, I just wanted to make sure," Hanen said with a shrug. Meanwhile, the former princess was lying on the ground, being completely ignored. At first, she had at least expected to be helped up, but as the conversation went on, it became clear that no one had any intention of doing that. So, standing up herself, Elisia yet again brushed herself off a bit before starting to walk off.

"Ah, hey!" Hanen called out. "You can't just go wandering around on your own!"

"And why not? It's not as if you've really been of any help," Elisia shot back. "Perhaps I'll go tell that turtle man about what you've been doing today. I'm sure he'll be happy to know that one of his villagers isn't carrying out his duty to the fullest."

Hearing that, Hanen stiffened. To him, not helping Elisia and playing the role of guard were mutually exclusive, but, now that he thought about it, Gorose probably didn't see it that way. "'Human or not, we have to show them our best,' he'd probably say," Hanen guessed. Deciding to try to be of better use, Hanen went over to Elisia.

"Alright," he said with an irritated sigh. "If someone tries to attack you again, I'll try to stop them. No promises though."

"You ought to say you'd lay down your life," Elisia said with a huff.

"Don't be so full of yourself," Hanen said. "Who'd wanna die for you?"

With that said, Hanen began to walk away, but Elisia simply stood in place. "Great..." Hanen thought. "She's probably gonna yell at me again or something." However, his expectation turned out to be wrong. Elisia looked up at him, and for the first time, it wasn't with hate in her eyes. If anything, it seemed to be sorrow.