Meanwhile, in a nearby outpost town...

If one were to leave Nathas, the capital city of the Dark Kingdoms, following a south-bound road that cuts through the coniferous forest of Nath, one would find themselves in a small outpost town named Logalis. This town is small and settled within and around a military fort integral to Nathas’ defense in case of an invasion. As it has been centuries since any army was foolish enough to attack the Dark Kingdoms directly, Logalis has basically become a glorified waystation as one continues on to other major towns farther south and to the east.

Within Logalis there is a tavern called the Knife and Knuckle and it is the only suitable place for travelers to rest their tired legs for the evening. Among this seedy tavern’s rowdy and raucous patronage is someone who stands out like a sore thumb. She is a dignified half-elf whose well-crafted and enchanted mithral armor, clearly of high elven make due to its relative skimpiness, marks her as someone who is a Syldonite. She is Lady Vivienne Luvanesca Des’Cantier and she is woefully far from home, being part of the envoy sent to escort Princess Aria to the Dark King’s castle.

“That all went surprisingly well,” a man seated across from her said, taking a drink of his ale. She knew the man, as well she should, he was the one in charge of the transfer. He was Sir Archald, a middle-aged knight past his prime. In truth, they were both the same age, and they had even been comrades in the same battles on numerous occasions, but fifty years hit humans harder than half-elves.

“Well, this was supposed to be a gesture of peace, wasn’t it?” another man, Sir Edroth, commented. He was a much younger knight, fresh out of the academy. Unfortunately, this meant he was far less experienced than his two peers and had an air of candor about him.

The world has yet to show him just how cruel and unfair it truly is, Vivienne thought to herself, solemnly.

“Right, but this the heart of the Dark Kingdoms, lad, never forget. Grudges from ages past aren’t going to vanish in an instant like that.” Sir Archald replied, in a hushed tone.

Sir Edroth nodded enthusiastically, but Vivienne could tell that these words had passed in one ear and out of the other. His eyes shined with a hopefulness that only the youth could truly manage. The half-elf herself had lost that hopeful optimism long ago, and the events of today had only driven the final nail in the coffin. Though she would never openly admit it to her peers, she had long ago abandoned the light of Anterose, having grown weary of her teachings.

“You okay, Lady Vivienne? You’ve hardly touched your wine,” Edroth pointed to her mug.

“I refuse to celebrate this defeat,” Vivienne replied coldly, “there aren’t even any fallen to toast to.”

“Defeat? We just secured peace between our empires,” Edroth said.

“At what cost?” Vivienne retorted. Her vivid green eyes were staring daggers at the younger knight, “Just our princess, a sacred symbol of our kingdom? We traded the heart of Syldon for this peace. This is not a victory.”

Vivienne couldn’t stand another second of this. She stood up from her seat.

“Leaving?” Archald asked.

“We have a long road ahead. Goodnight.” Vivienne left a few coins on the table and then walked away. Her enhanced senses, thanks to her elven heritage, could hear the whispered conversation of the other two as she walked away, despite their efforts to be hushed. Vivienne had never failed to be amused by how rarely humans seemed to internalize just how much better elven hearing was than their own, no matter how often they acknowledged it. But even this thought was no comfort to the mithral-clad knight tonight.

“That was insensitive, you fool,” Archald scolded the younger knight, “Lady Vivienne was Her Highness’ personal guard and retainer. She was very near and dear to her.”

“Oh,” was all Edroth could say in reply. In truth, Vivienne did not fault him for his honest mistake. She held far more contempt for the king, who had bartered away his own daughter to a tyrant. What’s more, the young Edroth reminded her of Sir Fate, a knight who had been her student.

She thought of Fate as the ascended the stairs to her room at the inn. He’d shown promise, but he threw it all away one day when he left the capital to slay the Dark King in a gesture that was heroic but ultimately foolish. Vivienne had tried to assuage him from his journey, but her warnings about the danger had fallen on deaf ears.

She collapsed onto the bed in her room and stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. She had considered stopping Fate by ****, and she could have done it easily, but she didn’t. In the final moments of their encounter, she realized why he was so determined. He had fallen in love with Princess Aria. That knowledge alone prevented her from stopping him because the proud and noble half-elf realized she had no right to try. She, too, had loved Aria.

But what did that say about her, right here, right now? What did it say that Fate had left the capital to pursue the King of Darkness in order to win the affections of Her Highness? He had been willing to sacrifice everything, and he did in all likelihood. But Vivienne was such a coward that she couldn’t even bring herself to stop this vile transaction from taking place. Even if his mission was doomed to failure, the acclaimed Lady Vivienne Luvanesca of the noble house Des’Cantier, heroine of the battle of Askaid, once offered—yet declined—the esteemed position of knight-commander in the king’s armies, was not even half the knight Fate was. And this fact tore at her conscience to no end.

She had every opportunity to free the princess along the way here, as well, and she passed every single one of them by. Even at the end, when the Dark King himself wasn’t present to receive Her Highness was the perfect time to strike back and liberate her from this cruel fate. Vivienne couldn’t even stand to think of what that insane monster was doing to her dearest Aria right now.

But there had been a strange air about the castle that gave Vivienne pause. Even the woman claiming to be the Dark King’s daughter seemed distracted about something. She had even been oddly hesitant about accepting Her Highness. Perhaps the Dark King was no more, and that woman had taken his place? Would that have been much better? Vivienne didn’t know, she couldn’t get a good read on the woman, though she admittedly had been slightly distracted by how little she’d been wearing at the time.

The half-elven knight did not wear a lot, but that was thanks to her enchanted armor and was a show of solidarity with her elven heritage. Nudity was sacred among her mother’s kind, and though she had grown up in the care of humans, she had always felt close to her other kin. But the woman in the castle wore only a pair of underwear, and she had been quite beautiful in a haunting and dark way. She did not hold a candle to Her Highness, of course, but it had managed to distract Vivienne a little in the moment. Perhaps that was the point.

She continued to stare at the ceiling, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier by the second. Whatever the case may have been, the deed was done. It would take time for Vivienne to truly mourn for the fate of her beloved princess, but one thing was for certain. This was it. When she returned to the capital, she was laying down her sword. She would no longer be a knight in service to Syldon, a kingdom that had betrayed such an innocent and life-loving princess.

Perhaps I shall go to the elves in the west, I’m sure my mother would be happy to see me, this thought was the last she had before sleep took her in its exhausting hold.

It was not her instincts as a knight, nor as a soldier, that awakened Vivienne from her slumber. It was the reflexes instilled in her by her late mentor, the swordsman from the Eastern Kingdoms who taught her everything she knew. She could practically hear the phantom of his voice telling her that a true warrior knows when to be on guard even when they are their most ****.

Thankfully, though the old man had long since passed away, his teachings did not, and Vivienne’s eyes shot open just in time to see a figure looming over her, the moonlight gleaming from a blade held in his hand.

The man immediately cursed in dark elven before swiftly bringing his arm down with all his might. Vivienne couldn’t do much, and truthfully, if she hadn’t fallen asleep wearing her armor by mistake, she would have been done for. Instead, she managed to shimmy herself so that the knife blade glanced off one of her breast-pieces.

The armor’s enchantment meant that this move wasn’t strictly necessary, as an ordinary knife would have glanced off her skin just as pointlessly, but another of her old mentor’s teachings essentially boiled down to the old human adage of “better safe than sorry”. After all, she didn’t know for certain that the blade wasn’t enchanted to negate such magic.

Vivienne countered this attack quickly and without any hesitation, reaching up and grabbing the assailant’s forearm with one arm and then bringing her other fist crashing right into the man’s elbow. She heard the sickening crack of the joint being dislocated, and the knife fell to the side uselessly as his fingers became instantly limp.

He cried out in pain, but Vivienne wouldn’t give him the opportunity to recover. With a swift movement she kicked out with her leg, knocking him backward into the wall. Using the momentum from the attack, she brought herself up quickly to her feet, and grabbed her weapon leaning against the wall at her bedside. The blade was incredibly long, so it wouldn’t exactly be possible to unsheathe it in this situation, but she partially pulled the scabbard away to reveal a gleaming mithral blade, forged by her old master specifically for her. She pressed the edge of this weapon against the dark elf’s neck, drawing blood but keeping the wound shallow.

“Who sent you?” Vivienne immediately asked.

The man only laughed in response, “You may as well kill me, half-blood. If I talk, I’d suffer a much worse fate than anything a knight of Syldon can conjure.”

An emerald-green spark erupted from her blade, shocking the man’s cheek and making him recoil, but Vivienne only dug the edge of the blade deeper into his neck, “I’m having an identity crisis tonight. I kind of want you to make me try.”

He only laughed again.

More sparks erupted; this time arcs of verdant electricity licked the man all over while a loud buzzing sound emanated from the sword. He shrieked with pain as his body spasmed, and the room was filled with bright green light. When at last he managed to open his eyes again, he saw that the half-elf’s own irises had begun to glow the same color.

“I can do that as many times as it takes, and by the way, I can make sure it doesn’t fry your brain.”

“If this is all you can manage you better call it quits while you’re ahead,” he panted, “they’d never let me say a word anyw—” his response was cut immediately short as he fell completely limp.

Vivienne removed the blade from his neck and cursed under her breath. Whoever sent him seemed to have means of killing him remotely. She glanced around her room, as if that would do any good. Everything was exactly as she left it. She examined the knife the man had nearly taken her life with. It wasn’t magical after all.

This also meant Vivienne wasn’t specifically their target. Anyone looking to target her would be smart enough to know her armor could easily deflect something like this, though she supposed they may not have expected her to be wearing it to bed. She thought the previous explanation more likely in any case, however. An assassin sent specifically to kill her would have been better prepared for retaliation, she had a reputation, after all. But of course, that only left one explanation.

Her eyes immediately darted to the direction of the other rooms owned by her comrades. She burst out into the hall to find the door to their shared room already open. She went inside and managed to convince herself for one fleeting second that Archald and Edroth were simply sound asleep. But she knew better. There was blood pooling in their sheets.

She approached them hesitantly, but with rising anger welling up within her. If they wanted these two dead as well, their goal was just to kill off everyone who had delivered the princess. Everything began to make sense for her in a dark and twisted way. The hesitancy of that woman, the hesitancy with which they accepted Her Highness, then the convenient assassin right as they were about to leave and had dropped their guard. It was the Dark King’s doing. He had planned to take the princess and then do away with her good-faith escorts. He had no intention to honor a peace treaty with his most hated foe.

How could His Majesty not have seen this coming? Moreover, how had Vivienne herself not seen this coming? It was in this fit of self-loathing that she understood what had to be done now. The deal was off, and if the deal was off, the Princess was in danger. Vivienne didn’t care what would happen to her when she returned to Syldon, she would not allow Aria to be in the hands of the wretched beast of a Dark King.

Lady Vivienne Luvanesca from the noble house of Des’Cantier would take a page from Sir Fate Darkbane’s book. Even if she was too late, she had enough of a sense of honor within her to do her duty for the princess. She would be brave, and she would take her back, no matter the cost.

She left the inn in the dead of night, retrieved her horse from the stables, and as she began riding up the cobblestone road back to the castle, a storm began to gather in the dead of night, bringing with it a distant rumbling thunder. That the man she sought to emulate in this moment of weakness was now the Dark King had not occurred to her. Nor did the thought that whoever sent the assassin may have wanted her to believe exactly what she did. If she had thought of either of these things, Nathas may not have known her fury and sorrow that night.