TUW 1: Bonds in the Dark

10 | Chaos

The wind picked up, and Elred felt the magic laced around it. An air sprite. Unbelievable. They even managed to bring one down here? True enough, the thick flap of feathered wings soared over the battlefield, toting a fairy with it. Wavy blond locks, feathers as white as snow...

It's the High Queen. Or at least an incarnate of her. The Crown Princess, perhaps? A curse slipped out of Elred's lips. What was that sheltered brat doing here? She could only watch as the Crown Princess—April, was it?—lunge and tackle ice sprites to the ground and do her worst to them. The next High Queen was violent. Elred had to make sure she got on the good side.

Assuming she made it out here alive, of course.

She slunk deeper into the battlefield, ducking behind chunks of ice which stung her skin if she stayed pressed against them for longer than a second. Then, the earth shook. It's not the regular quakes in Helinfirth. This one was able to rattle even her insides. She looked down to find a beam of light through the near-opaque veil of ice. The air turned electric, magic raging past the trail dimension and overloading the ambiance. What's going on?

To her left, a mismatched group emerged from the lower floors. Alarm colored their faces. Had the cold drained the blood off their skin or was it something else? None of them noticed Elred as they tore off each other to run around the cavern's perimeter. She peeled away from her hiding place and attempted to intercept one of them. What had caused that earthquake? Why were they warning the ice sprites to head towards the exits? Weren't they going to defend their home?

The fighting continued, but the ice sprites were now focused on retreating. Why was that?

"Anahel, in here!" a female brownie called, her voice tearing a crease in Elred's attention. What's the Queen doing here? She turned to the source of the voice to find two brownies, a lanky nature fairy, and true enough, her mother rushing towards the way Elred had come. They're going back to the tunnels. To do what? Find Cyrdel and the others, maybe?

Something the Entobern clans said speared back to memory. The Queen had been preparing for a trip. This was that trip? It looked like Elred wasn't the only one with secrets to keep.

From Elred's right, a Synketrian soldier rushed past the retreating line of ice sprites, propping a rifle on her shoulders. It's aimed towards the Queen and her friends. The safety clicked. A finger hooked against the trigger. Elred whipped out from behind her hiding place and tackled the soldier just as the shot went off.

The bullet went wide, trailing the stench of odian with it. A jagged remnant of the ceiling of the floor above creaked before raining over the Helinfirthian queen. Elred climbed off the soldier but not without giving her a quick kick to the neck. The soldier crumpled without a fight.

Elred snatched the rifle and, remembering the meager training she'd had with the ones the Sovereign had stolen from the Heiress, checked the hatch. Two more shots. She propped the stock under an arm and aimed at two other soldiers who noticed her. She clicked the trigger. Two more enemies down.

She threw the empty armament away, letting it sail and smack against another incoming soldier, on her way to catch up to her mother. Answers. That's all she wanted to get. "Mother," she greeted, earning a quick look from the Queen.

The brownies, who seemed to have multiplied to two more, gave Elred one glance before bidding their goodbyes to her mother. The nature fairy, in his unmistakable green robes and light-colored hair which seemed familiar, slunk away without another word. "Why are you here?" Elred demanded as she followed her mother towards the tunnels' entrance.

"I can ask the same thing of you, Elred," the Queen answered, summoning a glass sword to her hands. With how brittle it looked, she concluded her mother's magic was somehow drained. And almost nothing could drain a Valkalin. Much more, the freaking Queen. "We must be away now. The Virtakios can't wait any longer."