Your Princess is in this Castle

I think that that was the first time in my life that there was some series of chance circumstances that didn’t turn exactly against me. Before then, I had found that if you want even an opportunity for fun you have to make it for yourself. And I wasn’t that good at that.

I suppose I should trace it all from the beginning. A war breaking out between my land of Azuria and the neighboring kingdom of Ortor is not immediately to my advantage. In some ways it was a little annoying. Rationing, because all the food had to go to feed knights and soldiers as they stood fast against the orc forces. Good for them, I suppose, but why should they get all the food? I’m the one who’ll be alive to eat it.

So when did it start to work out for me? Well, it happened a few years into the war, as it became clearer and clearer that the orcs were going to overrun the capital city, the royal family was evacuated. Ss a precaution, they were evacuated so that at least some of them could get where they were going. Presumably, the king and the queen made it where they were going. But the orcs fell upon the princess like a swarm. And the knights protecting her were annihilated, while the princess and her maid escaped. Good for them, I suppose, but I can’t help but feel that lives could have been saved if they had just turned themselves in. And when it’s otherwise equal to me, I have a slight distaste for ****.

And so, she came to my town. And naturally everyone went crazy over having a princess. They went crazy over her, and then they decided that they had to get rid of her as quickly as possible before she brought destruction on the whole town. But rather than simply slit her throat and hang her body her body somewhere it would be visible, they thought of something a little bit more complicated. They decided to assemble a new party of people to accompany her to where she’s going. And get annihilated too, probably.

But then there was something of a problem. After years of war, the place had been emptied of sane, able-bodied men. And so, a party was assembled with what was left: sane, able-bodied women and me.
There were five women in the group: first was Angela, probably the only one who deserved to be there. She was the son of a hunter, and had been raised to be more dangerous than half of the men who had actually been chosen to go to war. Her personality also tended to spit out just about as much aggression as she wasn’t allowed to show to the enemy in battle. There was Rose. Rose absolutely didn’t deserve to be in this group. She was the daughter of a farmer. She had no fighting abilities whatsoever, except, perhaps, the intelligence of a brick and enough patriotism to drive her screaming off a cliff if her king asked it of her. Then there was Adlia. She was an elf, and so possessed with a weird sort of connection with nature that no one else quite gets. But despite that, she was rather feeble, and at best decent with the bow and arrow, supposedly the weapon of her species. Then there was Muriel. And she seemed great. After all, what could be better than having a wizard in a group? That would be true, if she had some specialization in offensive magic, but apparently she did divination, healing, and a few parlor tricks. Nothing special there. Then Jenna. She was a curious case. Her eyes and ways of moving suggested some kind of relation to a cat in addition to humanity. Somehow, the kind of mysterious playfulness and yet prim cleanliness came over into her personality. She was the only one whose company I enjoyed.

Finally we had the prince and her maid. The maid had no personality, or if she did she wasn’t allowed to show it. I suppose that made sense. The princess was everything you would expect in a spoiled brat raised in a palace all her life. She drove me nuts.

And of course, me. I was the only man, the strongest and most capable fighter, and yet also the one that no one really wanted on the team. Why? Because I’m a sociopath. I don’t know why. I just never really got why anyone would ever give a damn about other people. What’s the point? If I don’t gain from an action, there’s no sense in doing in. And for that, I ended up in prison. But for this expedition, I was required.

And now, after a storm and a rock slide, we had found ourselves trapped in an apparently abandoned castle. It had seemed like a good enough place to hole, and so that was what we done. An army might come eventually, and so we all had taken positions all over.

And the result? I was inside a closed environment with seven incredibly beautiful women of all different descriptions, all separated and ready to be plucked as I willed. I even had a few of the necessary materials for what I was going to do next. Circumstances in my favor. It was going to be one hell of a stay.