(46) The Time Is Near

Redra stepped softly around the bend, carefully rolling her feet from heel to toe. As a princess, she was never required to step lightly about the palace, but princesses also drew attention, and that was something she did not want.

The swish of her long dress dragging behind had her constantly on edge, but it was a necessary concession. Her etiquette instructors would have words for her, should they find her roaming the public portion of the palace in flats. The dress would hide them, and the noise it made was much softer than the clacking of heels.

Still, she glanced around and, finding no one nearby, hiked her dress up, quickening her pace.

She pushed the door at the end of the hall open quietly, slithering through it.

“Gods, it’s just you,” Morwynn sighed, relaxing her stance.

“You look like you were prepared to fight whoever walked through this door if it wasn’t me,” Redra mused.

Morwynn’s cheeks colored, and she clasped her hands behind her back.

“I would not. It is simply my knightly instinct to take a defensive stance when surprised,” she justified.

“Is it your knightly instinct to be surprised by the only door in the room opening when you were already expecting me to enter it?” Redra teased.

Morwynn stared silently for a few moments before coughing into her hand.

“Were you successful?” she asked.

Redra smiled, presenting the parchment, excited enough to go along with Morwynn’s obvious change of subject.

“By order of the king,” she read, “Princess Redra Sardvar, accompanied by her Knight Attendant, Morwynn Gestalt, shall journey across the sea on a diplomatic mission to Promise City of Ashreach. There, she will present to Marquis Douglas and facilitate relations between the Royal Family of the Sardvend Kingdom and the Marquisate of Radaar.”

Morwynn smiled slightly as she listened to the missive.

“A complete success, then?” she asked.

“Well, mostly…” Redra hinted, wrinkling her nose as she carefully rolled the parchment.

“What went wrong? It sounds exactly like what we wanted,” Morwynn said.

“What went wrong is—” Redra started, but the door behind her suddenly opened with a loud bang!

“What went wrong is that I’m comin’ too,” Esmerelda bellowed jovially, entering the room as if she owned it and slapping a hand on Redra’s back.

“Archmage Esmerelda! It is a pleasure to see you. Might I inquire—” Morwynn started, her posture rigid and proper.

“Ah, drop the formalities, kid. We’re about to spend weeks travelin’ together. I’ll go insane if I have to listen to court-talk the whole way. Just call me Esme.

“And to answer your question, I’m here because squirt—” she said, patting Redra once again on the shoulder, “couldn’t get her trip sanctioned without leaning on Big Brother Rodward’s authority, and he wasn’t content sending his only sister to Ashreach with only a sixteen-year-old knight for protection.

“Fortunately, yours truly just happened to be nearby,” she finished with a satisfied smile.

“You were following me and eavesdropping,” Redra grumbled, shaking Esme’s hand off her shoulder.

“Semantics. If I were a formal bodyguard, you’d have no ground for those accusations. As it stands, I’m in charge of your magic training, and when you shirk it, it’s my job to find out why,” Esme explained, waving a hand dismissively.

“It will be an honor to have you accompanying us, Archmage Esme,” Morwynn said, bowing slightly.

“…it’s gonna take a while for you, huh?” Esme asked with a sigh, deflating.

Redra was mildly annoyed. Dealing with a ‘guardian’ was not in her plans, but she could not deny that Esme would be her pick if she were forced to have one.

Normally, a member of the royal family would travel with a legion of soldiers in a train dozens of carts long. Being that she aimed to travel stealthily, such a thing was unacceptable. It is true that having a powerhouse like Esme fulfill the role instead was ideal, even if Redra would have preferred to go alone.

Besides that, everything had gone according to plan, so she really had nothing to complain about.

“Make sure you pack for everything, kiddos. I’ve only been to Ashreach once, but you can find every climate in the world there, and if you’re wipin’ sweat off your face or shivering, you aren’t watching for threats. Anything can kill you in Ashreach, from the land itself to the flora and, especially, the fauna,” Esme lectured.

“Yes, yes. We have read much on the subject,” Redra assured, ushering the woman out.

It was going to be a long trip, but this was an opportunity for her in more ways than one, and she aimed to capitalize on every one of them.

————————————————————

A man entered the shop, not glancing at either the patrons or staff as he slid behind the counter. His hood was raised, his face obscured.

He moved through the storage room to the back, weaving around crates and barrels and sacks of all sorts. The general store catered to all, and its stock reflected as much.

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A brick house of a man nodded at him as he reached the door in the back, made of thick wood and strengthened with steel struts. The man-house opened it for him, and he began the long descent down the stone steps, spiraling around for what must have been hundreds of feet of elevation.

Eventually, he reached the bottom and stood before a solid wall of stone bricks, as if the tunnel simply ended. He held his hand out before him, opening it and revealing a hexagonal prism about the size of his thumb. It was made of dull silver steel, yet as he held it aloft, blue tracings began to glow across its surface.

With a flash, the tracings glowed brightly enough to illuminate the room, igniting a similarly intricate pattern along the wall, which glowed a subtle blue in sympathy with the prism. They both darkened after only a moment, and what appeared to be a wall of stone began to open inward, splitting down the middle.

The man pocketed the prism and strode through the stone wall-gate, which closed silently behind him, the bricks seeming to lock together, as if pulled by a magnet.

He strode to a wooden railing and leaned against it, staring out over a cavernous expanse that seemed half-natural and half-constructed. A rushing waterfall poured across the rocks on the left side of the chamber, pooling into a river that raced through a hole with a steel grate covering it.

The moisture made the air humid, though not uncomfortable. The chamber was large enough that the water served only to counterbalance the myriad braziers and torches illuminating the chamber’s right side.