The unthinkable

“Markwell fell? Gods help us, we’re doomed!” Tilly whimpered.

Adelaide’s devoted maiden half heartedly brushed the princess’s hair while fighting back tears. The princess watched her servant in the mirror. Tilly was a wire thin girl with deep brown eyes set in a pretty, friendly face cropped with neck length chestnut hair. Tilly and Adelaide were the same age, raised together from birth, servant and master. In some ways, Tilly felt more like a sister than Adelaide’s actual sisters, all of whom had been married off to other kingdoms.

“I tried to speak with Dudley, but he’s gone mad with power. It’s like he’s blind to the world around him. It’s absurd for him to be king just because he’s the only boy. I hate it!”

“Easy, princess. That is no way to speak about a king.”

The woman who said this was Tabitha Browne, a plump middle aged woman with tousled ginger hair. Tabitha was a kind but strict mother hen among the servant girls. She was a fierce woman, but with a kind heart.

“Haven’t there always been barbarians?” Asked Iggy.

Iggy was a chambermaid with a sweet personality, but a rather ugly face. Her teeth were a jumble, pale face splotchy with blemishes. She was as sickly as Adelaide, but without the blessings of royal blood.

“Not like this,” Adelaide said. “I fear we are in terrible danger and I don’t know what to do!”

The princess was close to sobbing.

“Relax, my Princess,” Tabitha said. “This is not your burden to carry.”

“But if I don’t carry it, who will?”

Tabitha hesitated. As much as she believed in the divine right of kings, her faith had been shaken as of late.

“Perhaps Dudley will rise to the occasion,” Maura, Tabitha’s daughter said. “Maybe once the coronation feast happens, he’ll start focusing on this problem.”

Maura, who looked like a younger version of her mother, was always the kind optimist. Whereas her mother was often a raging bonfire, she was a warm fire of the hearth, warming all souls around her.

“You didn’t see the look in his eyes. You didn’t hear what he said to me!” Adelaide choked up for several seconds. “If I don’t do something, no one will and we’ll all perish!”

The servant girls gave Adelaide many sympathetic looks that were of very little use or comfort.

That night, Adelaide tossed and turned in a fitful sleep. Her dreams were filled with **** smog of the battlefields. She watched as all the people she loved were mowed down. Tilly was beheaded, Tabitha impaled on a spear. Poor Iggy was burned alive. Over and over, Adelaide watched them die.

“Help us, princess! Please help us!” They sobbed.

Adelaide tried desperately to answer their pleas, but found herself completely impotent. After all, she was no king. Only the male heir could be king. She was nothing more than a body to marry off.

As the princess’s dreams reached their termination, she found herself running through endless black corridors looking for something to help her horrible situation. Just as she awoke, she reached a heavy black door with an eerie green glow emanating from behind it.

Adelaide awoke with a start and began to sob. She felt wretched. She was helpless to stop their inevitable doom, **** to watch her wicked brother destroy the kingdom, and for what? Some pathetic bylaw enforcing male rule.

“Please, oh Gods. I would do anything to save my kingdom. I don’t care what happens to me as long it is safe!”

Suddenly, the sorceress’s words fluttered into Adelaide’s mind.

“Unless you sprout a rod of flesh yourself…”

As quickly, the memory connected with another: the massive tank and its monstrous inhabitant.

Celine had spoken of orcish body parts fusing to humans. Perhaps it was nonsense. Perhaps not. The thing in the tank certainly had shown interest in Adelaide.

“Oh Gods, what am I thinking. I would never…it’s ridiculous…it’s…”

Adelaide’s dreams began to replay in her mind, but this time they were different. Before Tilly could be beheaded, Adelaide repelled the battle axe and charged into battle with her mighty army.

“It’s a horrible thought, but what other option do I have? If this…sacrifice means my kingdom is safe…”

Before she knew what she was doing, the princess was putting on a light nightgown, readying a candle and padding down the stairs towards the lower levels. Her heart beat with terror, but an inkling of hope filled her soul.