Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight
By Eric 'Erico' Lawson
One: And He Protected Her
The Below
Euros, Granpeal Province
Banali City
The Below wasn't like Atlantis. The weather wasn't controlled down here, and the first thunderstorm he experienced in his life lashed against their tiny one bedroom home and made the thin wooden walls rattle a week after they'd arrived. His mother had held him tight as he whimpered through it, stroking his hair and his back and shushing him as one concussive boom after another made him clench his jaw tight.
There was a school, but it wasn't like the one he'd gone to when they lived up on the floating continent. It was crowded and they had even fewer supplies to learn with. There wasn't an auraboard, just a slate with chalk of all things. They drew on stone with softer stone, and wiped it away when they needed to keep going.
There was medical care, but there wasn't. Everything at the doctor's was years out of date, the walls needed fresh paint, and they didn't have the medicines that he used to get when he was sick up on Atlantis. He'd gotten the flu when he'd been younger and it had taken him a few days to get over it up there. Down here, in the Below, he got it again on his second week of school, and he didn't go back to school until two weeks more had passed by.
They lived in Banali City in Granpeal Province, on the continent of Euros. It was ruled over, 'Protected' by a noblemage called Duke Filitas. They were forced to stand up at the start of every school day and bow to the picture of the duke, a fat man with an unamused expression, before they turned to the portrait of the Mage King of Atlantis to recite the pledge of gratitude.
We pledge our gratitude to our protectors, to Atlantis. We give thanks for our lives and our freedom. We offer our service to our guardians.
He had never had to say it when he lived on Atlantis. Down here, everyone said it, like it was expected, but nobody meant it. The boy could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice. They said it because they had to, and nothing else.
His mother worked as a supervisor at a 'processing plant.' That meant, as she tried to explain it to him, they refined stone and metal from mines that were around them and changed them so they could be useful up on Atlantis, and for construction down in the Below.
There was food, but it wasn't like the food he was used to. He saw vegetables, and grains, and they usually had meat every second day. But he didn't see fruits anymore, or nuts, and he definitely didn't see desserts and candies. When he had been seven, his mother had gotten them a small cake the size of his hands put together and they'd split it. It had been delicious.
He was ten now, and cake was a distant memory.
Don't get angry over the things you can't change, precious one.
The other kids looked down on him because he hadn't been born down here; There was even a group of bullies whose parents worked at his mom's plant that took to harassing him. They beat him up once, and afterwards, he always made sure that he kept by an adult at school.
After school, he got better at running...and when he couldn't do that, he learned how to fight. He still came home scraped up with bruises, and sometimes in blood.
His mother didn't smile as much anymore, but the times that he wasn't able to clean himself up in time, she took to wiping away the dirt and the blood and using what little magic she had to make his bruises hurt less. Then she would hug him tight, tell him that things would get better, and that she loved him. Even that much of a comfort always made him feel better.
He learned that, for as rough as things were for him, that others had it even rougher. On one of the days that he didn't have school and she didn't have to work, she dragged him out of their house and went into an even rougher part of Banali City. He spent the rest of the day standing behind a table and handing out sandwiches and ladling out soup for a line of hungry, emaciated people that never seemed to end. He had whined and complained to his mother when they'd gotten there that he didn't want to do it, that they should go have some fun.
By the end of that day, as they were sitting down themselves in the back of the kitchen at the shelter and having their own meal, his mother with gray-blue eyes undaunted by life looked at him. "We will be judged by the state we leave the world in when we leave it." She said, in the tone that he knew meant she was talking about something important and he needed to pay attention to it. "I want you to remember that, my precious one. Remember that people are more important than things."
And he had nodded, and tried to remember it as well as all of her other lessons. She had so many.
But it was hard remembering them when that first, most important lesson about not becoming angry kept slipping to the wayside. Especially when a week after they'd helped out in that soup kitchen, she had taken him to an art festival on the other side of the city. They had needed special passes to get past the guards and the gates that separated them, passes that he'd never seen before, and which the guards had warned his mother only allowed them access up to curfew in the evening and no longer. If they tarried past that, they could be arrested.
He remembered her fake smile as she nodded to the stern guard dressed in armor, and thanked him for his concern. They had brought their own lunches on that trip, and he realized why as soon as they passed food vendors past the gates and goggled at the prices.
Past those gates, everything was clean and beautiful and it was almost like being back in Atlantis again. Aside from being half-starved and living far away from everything. Which they still were, he realized. It was just now they were Below.
Atlantis was lost to them.
The buildings were made of sturdier materials, made to last instead of just to be affordable. They walked past all of them and went to one which had windows that made up entire walls, and inside the doors there was a massive water fountain that spun and spiraled with water and magical lights. They looked at paintings done by people his mother had heard of and he could care less about. They looked at statues of the great heroes of Atlantis from years before, from its founding and from battles past.
But it was one exhibit, placed in the museum almost as an afterthought, that his mother insisted on stopping at.
"It's a traveling exhibit." She explained. "It goes from province to province down here. It's only here for this week, that's why we're here today." It was set up in a smaller lobby with lots of benches around it to sit on, and they sat down and ate their sandwiches and vegetable sticks and drank their water. Others in finer clothes than theirs came by as well to examine it, and most of them ignored him and his mother. At least, they were ignored after one good sneer or upturned nose. His mother sighed as he started to glare back, touched his arm.
"Don't let them see them getting to you." She told him, another one of her lessons. One about finding pride in yourself when nobody else offered it. So he sighed and let go of that puff of anger, and stowed the rest down inside of him. He felt it burn for a few seconds before it disappeared, and he focused on the exhibit again.
It wasn't a statue. It wasn't a painting. It was a thing of glass and metal, and the pieces of it hovered above a glowing pedestal base, slowly rotating around each other in a complicated pattern he couldn't figure out.
It was magical, of course. It would be hard to miss that, the air fairly sang with it. But it was magic without a purpose. So the pieces floated. Why? The pieces twirled and rotated. Why?
He didn't quite get it, but his mother prodded at him. "Go ahead. Take a closer look at it." She urged him. "There's a sign on the pedestal that will tell you what it's named. It'll give you a better idea of what you're looking at."
He really didn't want to, but one thing that the boy had learned by paying attention today was just how much his mother had arranged just for them to get this chance. She had felt it was important for him to come here. To see this piece of art. No matter how humiliating it was for them with everyone looking at them like they didn't belong. No matter how much it must have cost her to make this happen.
So he finished up his lunch, gave the wrappings to his mother to be disposed of, and pushed off of the bench. He went over to the artifact of spinning, hovering metal and glass and stared at the base, and read the message there.
Ducks On a Pond- Animated Artifact
Enspelled by Princess Bezel Lantea (Age 9)
He blinked and stared at it again. And then again, wondering if the name would change.
It didn't.
Princess Bezel had made this? But she was just a girl! And younger than he was! Sure, it was just a year's difference, but…
And then he felt his mother come up behind him and rest a hand on her shoulder. "Try looking at the artifact again, dear heart." She urged him.
So he did, looking with fresh eyes now that he knew who had made it. He squinted at the shards of glass and metal, blinking as he realized that the glass was colored, and the metal was reflective on every side, and…
And when it moved, from the distance at the right angle, in the right light…
He saw a picture of a boy and a girl beside a pond, throwing bread to a flock of ducks floating close by.
She remembered.
She remembered him.
He'd eventually told his mother about everything that the princess had done that last afternoon before they moved away from Atlantis. He told the story, and after the telling, began to doubt himself. Doubted that it had happened the way he'd remembered it. Why would a princess care about a boy she had only known for an hour?
But she remembered. And it…
He…
For her to work magic into glass and steel...
He didn't realize he was crying until his mother pulled him into a hug and wiped his tears away with a napkin.
"Don't let anyone ever tell you that you're not important. That you don't matter." She whispered fiercely into his ear. "Maybe the world will never know your name, or care that you lived. It doesn't matter what the world thinks about, or cares about. You mattered to her. So you keep going, my precious one. You keep going, and you find the people who do care about you. And you never stop caring about them in return."
"I promise, momma." He whispered, and hugged her tighter for giving him the chance.
They went home afterwards, passed through the gates again an hour before curfew, and when he was in his room, the boy took graphite to paper and tried to draw a rough copy of what the princess had made. It looked horrible, but his mother still laughed and hung it up next to the foodbox. He eventually forgot the bad parts about that day at the art museum, started to only remember the good parts. Lunch with his mother, looking at the artifact and wondering if Bezel really remembered him, or just recalled an afternoon in the park with a commoner.
And then, six months after they arrived Below, all of Banali City was suddenly full of nervous energy and people preparing for a parade and a festival.
Members of the Atlantean royal family were coming to visit for Unification Day.
The parade was to be held on the Midway, the long stretch of road between the Upper and Lower sections of the city. It was the traditional route for ceremonies, his mother told him when they walked with collapsible chairs to get seats for the parade four hours before it was set to start.
But the boy knew better. He was eleven now, had just passed that mark a few weeks before. His time Below had opened his eyes. He knew why they used this road; it was meant to divide them.
Those from the lower castes weren't allowed to cross the street to the upper caste side of the road, even though there were so many of them that they crowded the poor side and there were wide open spaces just across from them. Mage constables patrolled the line, but most of them were on the poor side, as if to keep them back.
Because of his mother's foresight, they'd been able to get a spot along the parade route close to the provincial Duke's box. Not directly across, but twenty yards down the way was close enough as the crowds kept filling in and the warmth of the morning increased. He nibbled on one of the snacks that they had brought with them and kept staring at the Duke's box, where Duke Filitas and all of his royal guests would be sitting.
Once they arrived, that was. He added it to the reasons to seethe that it stayed empty for so long, even as the appointed hour of the start of the parade approached, and felt that boiling pit of rage inside of his chest bloom a little bit higher before he shoved it back down. There were guards stationed all around the empty box, and his mother snickered a little before letting him in on the joke. They were protecting nothing but air, after all. One had to find the humor in that.
With only ten minutes to spare before the start of the parade, the 'guests of honor' finally arrived, accompanied by a triumphal fanfare from brass horns that stilled conversations. The Duke appeared first, waving at the top of the steps before moving to the side and bowing slightly as another figure appeared. Close by, a herald announced off every member of the Duke's Box as they appeared and came on.
Duke Filitas, naturally, then Prince Greeve Lantea, the Mage King's brother and fourth-in-line for the throne after the Mage King's two sons. There was Duchess Flora Vanwell, Prince Greeve's wife, and their son Nereas. Apparently, they were attending in place of the Mage King himself, who had been extended the original invitation.
But it was the next two attendees, or specifically, the younger of the two that made the boy startle and stare. Walking hand in hand with Duchess Filitas was the Princess Bezel, resplendent in a dress that probably cost more than his mother earned in a year. She'd changed how her hair was plaited, but he still remembered her face, and even at a distance, he could see that her hair still glowed like fire, and her eyes sparkled like wet grass.
No. Like something more precious.
His mother must have caught him staring, because she nudged him in the shoulder and chuckled, and he blushed and looked away. He kept looking at Bezel, but he made sure that he wasn't staring. Furtive side glances worked just as well. He paid no attention to the rest of the attendees in the Duke's Box: Local administrators and factory managers well beyond his mother's pay grade, and other officials of middling rank who had sucked up enough to the Duke for the honor of attending in his personal stand.
The parade started up in earnest, and soon bands of musicians and local representatives of the guilds and the factories came strolling by, bearing instruments and banners. Unification Day had begun as a celebration of Atlantis taking to the skies and Terra being protected at last from the threat of outsiders, but over time it had taken on a decidedly less serious air. Children screamed and went running for tiny sweets that were tossed out haphazardly by people on the larger floats, and then were forced to scatter as the impressive hovering spell-transports used by the local police and mage garrisons drove by. His mother crowded over him and protected him from flailing limbs as one float came by and started lobbing entire loaves of bread into the crowd, setting off a near frenzy.
Bread and Circuses, his mother had once scoffed derisively, explaining it as a mechanism to distract. Funny that it took almost being trampled on for him to understand what she meant by it. They didn't really care about the people they were handing out food and pocket change to; they scattered it to the winds and laughed as people fought over it. He saw it all and felt that burning sensation in his chest deepen.
Only one thing stopped it from burning out of control; Bezel. While the rest of her extended family sat either laughing and jeering at the sight of everyone across from them fighting over scraps, she shifted in her seat uncomfortably, looking like she wanted to be anywhere else but here, watching it. Being a participant in it.
Surely she knew that this was what happened? Or had she been so sheltered about the world that when suddenly exposed to how things really were, it left her squeamish?
That discomfort, that look of growing alarm and pain and…
Anger. She was angry that this was happening.
It poured over him like a balm, quenching his own fire. She was different. She wasn't like the others.
She had made a statue because of a single afternoon's joy. He held onto that thought and wished that he could ask her what she was thinking.
Ask her if she remembered him at all, months later. But she never looked that closely at the crowd, never saw his face. Or if she did, she looked past him and didn't see him for who he was.
He didn't have time to think about it, unfortunately. Because it wasn't long after the bread float that another one came rolling down the street, bearing a flag of the local miner's guild.
And then the entire float exploded into magical fire and shrapnel, and his world filled with screams.
He had been far enough away to survive the blast, but his arm still stung where a splinter of burning lumber had embedded itself. All around him were the screams of the dying, the silence of the dead, and the bellowing terror of those fleeing from the scene. The Duke's Box was ruined, the protective wards were cracked and barely hanging on, were, in fact, shattered in places with injured people there as well. And into the chaos came a wave of over a dozen men armed with knives and sledges and makeshift shields, all of them burning with magic. There were red auras and orange ones, and even one man with a sword who glowed yellow.
"Death to the Duke! Death to the Royals!" Came their shout, and bolt after bolt of mana slammed into the already crumbling wards, blasting them apart. And when the wards fell, the people who had been inside of them struggled to defend themselves…
And they failed, with the guards falling first, and then it all…
The boy saw it even as his ears kept ringing. He started running as soon as the first shouts from those men echoed in his ears like he was underwater and they were speaking in long, slow words. He felt something grab his arm, hold it tight, and he whirled about to see his mother bleeding from her scalp but still alive, still standing, and worried out of her mind screaming at him.
He couldn't hear her, but he knew that she was begging him to run, to get away.
The boy couldn't. He shook his head and pulled his arm away from her, leaving her stunned. He tried to talk to her, but he couldn't hear himself. He screamed instead, and that, he barely heard.
"I can't let them hurt her!" It was enough to shock his mother from grabbing at him again, and he turned around and ran as fast as he could, hoping, praying…
None of the men slaughtering the people in the stands paid any attention to a boy that ran towards the danger instead of away from it. He didn't dare charge up into the stands, into the middle of it all. Spells and wild blasts were flying everywhere, as the few people able to defend themselves tried desperately through concussions and their injuries to do so. He looked up into the stands, and…
And he couldn't see Bezel there any longer. He saw the Duke, gutted and choking on a dagger shoved through his throat, and his wife lying in a heap on the stands, her head bashed in. But he couldn't see Bezel, who had been by the Duke's wife's side…
In a flash of insight, he ran around the side of the Duke's Box and ducked underneath.
She was huddled on the ground, her face shock white and a hand clamped over her mouth. It was what kept her from shrieking out as she spun around to look at him, her dress spattered in blood and dirt. None of it was her own, though, he could see that from one look.
The boy held out a hand towards her. "Come on!" He whispered, and prayed that he wasn't shouting it. She stared at him, locked in fear, and…
Princess Bezel blinked. She got up and stared at him even closer, and reached a hand out towards him.
Did she remember him? No, the boy shook the thought off and grabbed her hand. She didn't remember him. She was just scared out of her mind and taking any help she could get.
His hearing was slowly starting to come back as he pulled her out from underneath the bleachers, and scouted a course away from the massacre that kept them out of sight as much as possible. He got them a block away and around a corner before someone caught up to them, and he almost started flailing before the smell of his mother's arms calmed him down.
His mother was here, and she hugged them both tightly. "You're alive, thank mana you're both still alive…" She cried softly.
Bezel still hadn't said a word, and when his mother released him, the boy looked at her.
She was crying. She needed to cry, what had happened, what was still happening was horrible.
But she reached a hand up towards him, and he froze. She traced the side of his face with her fingers.
"I remember you." She whispered tearfully. "What are you doing down here?"
"...We moved." The boy answered. And then her arms were around him, and her face was buried into his chest and she was crying.
He stood there, not sure whether to push her off or hold her back. His mind swirled.
She remembered him.
As the screams of the crowd began to diminish, the shouts of the attackers grew louder. "The Princess got away! Find Her! Find her and kill her!"
His mother grabbed their hands, the terror back on her bleeding face. "We have to run. We have to run. I need you both to be brave, and be quiet, and run. Can you do that?"
The boy nodded. He knew how dangerous this was. Life Below had prepared him better than most, and while he was afraid, he could move.
He looked to Bezel and saw her still struggling to not freeze in terror. But she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight, and managed to nod.
He squeezed her hand back. If she could stay with him…
If he kept her close, they would be okay.
They made it another five blocks and another ten minutes before one of the killers found them. It must have been Bezel's red hair that did it, or her fancy clothes. She stood out too much in the lower quarter. They ran anyways, but all of them were flagging. His mother must have been exhausted, and Bezel was stumbling, kept up on her feet only by the boy's arm constantly pulling her along.
One of the men caught up to them just as they turned a corner, and he must have been a local, because he cut off their retreat with a wild swing of a scythe meant to cut at the winter wheat that grew outside of the city. Both he and the princess screamed and tumbled clear, but his mother didn't dodge in time, and it gashed a wicked slice out of her leg. Somehow she stumbled clear and put herself between the man and her son and the Princess, and then…
He had never seen his mother conjure up magic for anything more elaborate than a minor healing cantrip. He had figured she lacked the ability.
But in that moment, with death staring at them, she conjured up two handfuls of bright orange mana in her fists and threw it, and the man with the scythe burned and screamed.
It wasn't enough, not for a quick kill. Somehow, the man struggled one step at a time as his clothes burned, as his flesh burned, as the fire melted down to his bones and managed one last swing, aiming for her neck. She tried to dodge, and failed.
He buried it into her spine instead, and they both fell to the ground; him dead, and her, dying. And the boy screamed for her and raced to her side.
"Mama." The boy whispered, running his hands over her face. Why wasn't she moving? Why wasn't she getting back up? Why couldn't she even lift up a hand to touch him?!
"It'll...it'll be all right...my precious one." Her eyes were so full of pain, and tears, but she held on. "You're okay. You're both okay."
He held her tight, wanting to cry, but his throat closed up on him, denying him the chance.
"You're so brave." She whispered, somehow still smiling. "Don't ever stop being brave."
"Don't go." He begged her, and felt Bezel come up beside him, kneel down. The princess of all the world reached a trembling hand out and stroked it over his mother's forehead.
"I'm sorry." Bezel whispered.
"It's all right." His mother shushed her. Her breathing was shallower now. Her eyes were duller. "It's...right." Her eyes moved between them. "Together." She wheezed out. "Stay...together."
She died on the streets of Banali City, with only her son and a princess to bear witness to her end. Bezel started to cry.
The boy screamed inside his heart. He screamed, and he felt it burn, and this time, he couldn't stop it. Somehow, he stood up and took Bezel by the hand, and didn't cry.
"We have to go." He heard himself saying, but it didn't sound like him. Not exactly.
"But...your mom…"
He tugged her hand hard and started running, forcing her to keep up. Behind them, he heard the shouts of at least two more of the killers.
It hurt. It all hurt too much. He wanted his mother, but she was dead. The Princess remembered him, half a year after one afternoon together, but she was being hunted. And he was pulling her away from it all, trying to escape, when his legs felt like lead and his head was still swimming from the pain of it all. He wanted to scream. He wanted to burn it all.
But then he felt Bezel's hand squeeze his, and the rage in his heart banked just enough to keep him going. But they were still kids, and they were both exhausted and hurt, and she had never run this much in her entire life. And the adults were stronger, faster, and they knew the terrain. He'd lived here for six months and only seen spots.
The last two killers who'd been able to keep pace with them caught up ten blocks later, and trapped them in an alley.
"No way out, princess." The first of them, a fellow with two long daggers, leered. The other brandished a thick hammer that would break bones with even a glancing hit.
Hammer man's eyes fixated on the princess for a long time, and then he finally stared at the boy. "Shove off, kid. You can't save her. You shouldn't have even tried."
Bezel whimpered and squeezed his hand tighter, and the boy felt her bury her face into his back.
The boy could have shouted a hundred different things then. He could have asked them why. Why they were doing this. Why his mother had to die. He could have told them to back off. He should have told Bezel to let go of him, to run. But she couldn't run any longer, he could feel it.
There was nowhere else to go. Nobody else to turn to. And he had nothing now. No mother, no home. Not even a name, because nobody else ever cared enough to remember it.
He felt the weight of a princess pressed into his back, shaking, crying. Expecting the end.
No more.
She was the only person left who still cared enough to remember him.
No more.
That burning rage inside of him swelled up, and the boy knew what it was, even though he had never been able to reach for it before.
No. More!
They would kill her, the last bit of life and warmth in his life. They would kill a princess who got angry at the unfairness of the world and remembered a boy from one afternoon playing together.
NO MORE!
And he felt the magic explode around him, a boiling nimbus of green light that made him feel invincible.
Bezel pulled back from him with a wild gasp, and he chuckled darkly when both of the men took a step back and went pale at the sight of him.
"A green? He's a Green?!" The man with the daggers got out.
"Shut up, he's just a kid!" The other killer snarled, and charged for him while the other hesitated.
He tried to remember what his mother had done. She'd called up her power, and...and she had thrown it. Hers had been a wave of fire that clung and stuck to the man who had killed her, burning him slowly.
The boy's attack came as a concentrated pulse, a blast. He aimed dead center at the man with the hammer, whose eyes went wide as he tried to dodge out of the way, and dodged too late.
It took off his arm at the shoulder, and the rest of his shoulder with it, and the hammer fell to the ground beside the killer as he screamed and screamed.
Then the boy stumbled back a step, feeling an impact in his stomach. He looked past the wounded dying killer to the second man, who held one dagger back and who had one arm stretched out towards him, shaking in terror. Had he tried to fire magic back at him?
The boy's rage increased when he heard Bezel scream behind him. That man had hurt her.
He had HURT Bezel!
And the boy howled, and unleashed it all; all of his rage, all of his fire, and it flew down the alley as a wave of burning force, and both men were reduced to charred corpses. The screaming, armless killer didn't even have time to turn away from it.
In the wake of that last attack, all was silent. No other killers came. The boy stumbled on his feet, feeling so tired, so drained…
So dizzy. He…
He must have fallen down, because he was looking up at the sky. And now he could feel pain in his stomach. He reached a hand to it and froze when his fingertips touched…
Oh. That was where the man's other dagger went. He hadn't hit Bezel.
Bezel.
And there she was, leaning over him, her green eyes full of tears.
"No. Don't go." She sobbed, and he felt her hands shaking his chest. "Please! Don't go!"
Everything hurt. He smiled anyways. "You're okay." He said, grimacing. Speaking loudly hurt too much. "You're...okay." He repeated, whispering it this time. And that didn't hurt.
Her hair had come unbraided in their flight from death, and wild red strands the color of fire hung over him like a curtain. It hid them from the rest of the world.
Made it seem like it was just him and her. And he…
"You remembered me." He said, and pulled the hand away from his stomach to touch her face. He didn't realize until after she recoiled and brought a hand to her face and came back with blood on her fingertips just how badly he was hurt.
The world started to slip away then, going dark at the edges. She screamed at him again, and then he heard footsteps coming near, shouting her name in fear.
More killers? No, she wasn't terrified. She was still afraid, but not of them.
"Help!" She screamed, her young voice cracking. "He's hurt! Help him!"
You're so brave. Don't ever stop being brave.
The boy heard his mother's voice, and closed his eyes.
Bezel's sobbing was the last thing he heard before peace finally came for him.
He woke up, and wondered for a few seconds why he was still breathing. Why he was still alive.
He shifted and winced and wondered why he was lying in a bed that was so soft. He'd never had a bed this soft. The boy took in a breath, and wondered why everything smelled so clean. He heard a soft beeping, some kind of machine close by, but not right next to him.
None of it felt right. None of it seemed like it was real, and he didn't dare open his eyes.
He didn't have a choice after a low chuckle. "Finally back in the land of the living, boy?"
The boy's eyes cracked open. He was in a healing room, but so much nicer and cleaner than any he'd ever been at in his life. There were pads on his right arm, which seemed to be sending a signal to the machine that beeped.
Sitting across from him, in one of the chairs left there for visitors was a man dressed in armor reading something on a handheld manaboard. The armor of a Mage Knight.
"It's a miracle you pulled through." The man went on, helmet lying beside him. He set the manaboard down and ran a gloved hand through his pepper-gray beard. "Stabbed through the stomach like that, and...and you still managed an incineration wave. Untrained."
The boy opened his mouth to speak, coughed and felt tears form in his eyes. The soldier got up from the chair and came over. "Easy, kid. Easy. Here. You're probably parched dry." He grabbed a cup of water from somewhere nearby and held it up for the boy to drink. The boy coughed at first, but finally got a few mouthfuls down. Enough to lubricate his throat. Enough that he could talk.
"Where am I?"
"You're on Atlantis." The soldier said. "At the Royal Medical Center. The Princess insisted on it."
The boy slumped back against his pillow. "She's okay?" He asked weakly.
The soldier's face twitched a little bit at that. "She's safe. She was the only survivor out of that whole fucking mess. The king's brother, the Duke, their families, the other delegates...She was a little scraped up, plenty scared, but she's alive, and healthy, because of you."
The boy just breathed at that.
"I'm Knight Commander Alastair Sloane, by the way." The soldier went on. "My unit was the one that found you and the Princess. You were touch and go for way too long. She never left your side. Not once, not until we got here, and...And her father…"
The soldier closed his eyes, and the boy wondered what had him so upset he had to stop talking. Whatever it was finally passed, and the Knight Commander sighed and let it go.
The boy filled the silence. "Who were they?"
"The rebels? Malcontents. Just dirt-grubbing Below-ers. Angry at having to pay their due for living protected lives. They thought they could strike a blow at the royal family. Well. That won't be happening again. The city's under Martial Law. We'll weed out all of the traitors." There was heat in Sloane's voice at that, and the boy winced.
"My...my mother, she...did you…" He asked the Knight Commander, who schooled his face into a blank mask again and shook his head.
"The Princess told us about her. I'm sorry, we couldn't recover her body, not in the time we had."
The boy shut his eyes and thought of his mother's body still lying there in the streets of a city on fire, and screamed inside of his head again.
Don't get angry over the things you can't change, my precious one.
"Do you have anybody else? Any other family?" The Knight Commander asked him.
I have no one. The boy wanted to say, but it stuck in his throat. Sloane saw it anyways.
"Can I stay with Bezel?" The boy finally asked, his voice full of pain.
"You're not royalty. And you have the Crown's gratitude for saving the Princess, but...no. It wouldn't go that far. We could restore your citizenship, though. Make you a ward of the state."
An orphanage, the Knight Commander meant. The boy had heard and seen enough of those to go screaming in the other direction.
"What else?" He asked Sloane, who drew in a long breath and then let it out just as slowly.
"The Mage Knights serve the Crown." Sloane declared. "And with your mana, your instinctive command of battle magic...The Order wouldn't turn down your application. Not with my recommendation."
"Would I be with her?"
"With her how?" Sloane asked in a suddenly icy, pointed tone, and the boy flinched and wondered why he was angry. "Don't get ideas, boy. Even as a Knight, you'd still be leagues beneath her caste. If you're sweet on her, then get rid of those dreams right this second. They'll never happen."
But the boy had nothing else left to him, no family, no home, nothing else but the dream of Bezel. The dream of a princess who saw him as a friend.
He opened his eyes and stared back at the man. "I will serve her."
Knight Commander Sloane stepped away and sighed. "You're not going to have an easy go of it, kid."
"Life isn't easy." The boy countered. He refused to look away. He refused to blink. He just kept staring until Sloane finally broke.
"Miracles don't happen, kid." He said, but after a pause, added, "At least they didn't before you lived." And it was as close to a concession of maybe as he was going to get. So the boy nodded.
"I'll join up." He said, and Sloane nodded.
There came a knock on the door, and shortly after, a healer came in with a medical manaboard tucked under one arm. The woman looked through thin wireframe glasses between the Knight Commander and the boy in the bed and smiled. "So, up at last are we, young man? You had everyone worried."
He shifted in the bed, realizing that he was dressed in a thin shift meant for ease of access to his body by the healers. "Who cares about me?" He mumbled.
The healer's eyes crinkled up at the hollowness in his question. "Princess Bezel, for one. And because she cares...the rest of us do." She came over and leaned over the machine to take the readings, then came over and kissed his forehead. "You saved her life. On behalf of all of us...thank you. You're a hero."
I'm nobody, he almost said. He blinked back the tears. He didn't dare cry here. Not around all of these adults.
The healer brushed his hair back anyways. "You are. And if anyone tells you differently while you're here, you tell me. And I'll scream at them until they apologize." She waited, and he finally nodded to let her see he'd heard her. "Your readings are all improving, but we'll want to keep you for another day or two yet. Make sure that you're well and truly on the mend. Gut wounds are notoriously problematic for complications." She stepped back away and nodded to Sloane. "Knight Commander. I wasn't aware that you'd been stationed as a guard for the boy."
"I'm off-duty." The older man supplied calmly. "And it's still visiting hours. Didn't have anywhere else better to be." The woman glared at him, and he met her anger with cool indifference. "I was just having a chat with the boy."
"Any questions you might have pertaining to your investigation can wait until after he's fully recovered. He's not a suspect, the last I heard."
Sloane chuckled. "He's anything but a suspect. He's a recruit now. Just volunteered."
The healer's face went pale and looked back at the boy in horror. "You didn't. Why? You didn't have to...You don't have to do that!"
He didn't understand why the healer would care what he did with his life. He had nothing now. Nothing but…
He shut his eyes. He didn't even have Bezel. She was a Princess, and he was...He was only…
"He's a Green." Knight Commander Sloane declared, bringing the weight of his authority to bear. "The Crown could use him. Especially now. The Mage King's brother, his wife, his son, are dead. The line of succession has been damaged. If it hadn't been for him, Princess Bezel Lantea would be dead right now. There is no better place for this boy than the Order. For the Royal Family...and for him as well."
The healer's face fell further, and she came back to the boy, kneeled down to look at him on his level. "If he's forcing you into this...if you're being coerced, tell me. I can protect you."
She was a nice woman. Nicer than most he'd known in his painful life, and she worried, but she didn't get it.
It was the only way he would ever get close to Princess Bezel ever again.
"It's my choice." He said, and left it at that. The healer didn't like it, but she stood back up and removed her glasses to wipe at her eyes.
"I see. But you aren't going until you're fully healed. And that will be as long as I say it is."
"Whatever he needs." Sloane chuckled. "I won't argue that point."
"Now, then." The healer said, slipping her glasses back on. "Do you feel well enough for a visitor, mister hero?"
The boy blinked. "A visitor?" He wasn't sure who the healer meant, but he nodded hesitantly. The healer smiled and ruffled his hair, then went for the door and stuck her head out, saying something softly.
Seconds later, Princess Bezel herself came racing in, followed at a more sedate pace by an exhausted looking woman that the boy vaguely remembered...her Nanny?
Bezel let out a happy cry at the sight of him awake and sitting up in his bed, and charged at full speed to grab him tightly around the ribs. He grunted slightly in pain, but the healer must not have been too concerned, because all she did was laugh.
"Bezel?" The boy whispered, when he could breathe again. The princess let out a happy noise and squeezed him tighter still, burying her face into his shoulder. "What are you doing here?"
"That's PrincessBezel to you, young man." The Nanny snapped, and both the boy and Sloane sat up a little straighter afterwards. But all Bezel did was pull back out of the hug and glare at the old woman.
"I would like to speak with my rescuer, if you wouldn't mind." She declared, suddenly sounding formal and stuffy as any member of the higher castes that the boy had ever seen. She wore a simple dress of blue and silver, made of high quality fabric, but lacking the adornments and frills of the dress she'd been wearing at the parade. Her shoes were flat-soled and functional, not like the ridiculous shoes that he'd seen others wearing at the art museum in Banali City. Her hair was plaited in a different weave this time, a simple knot more than halfway down the length of it that left a clear sign of its full body behind her head. She folded her arms in front of her in a motion too practiced to be natural, and held herself as tall as a nine...maybe ten year old girl could.
Sloane and the nanny and the healer all shifted and looked at one another, and Bezel's placid mask shifted into a scowl. "In private." And to make the point clear, she lifted a hand and pointed to the door.
The healer laughed and went first. "As you wish, your highness."
Sloane cleared his throat and went for his helmet, sliding it back on. "Well. I'll leave you to it then, boy. But remember what we talked about. Do your best in training. I'll try to keep a spot open for you once you graduate." And before the nanny could protest or try to stay, the Knight Commander grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out as she squawked the entire way. The door clicked shut behind them, and when Bezel looked back to the boy, the mask disappeared. She bit her lip.
"What did he say? About training?"
The boy stared down into his lap. "I'm...signing up."
Bezel rocked back and forth for a bit more, then started to climb up onto the bed. "Move." She said, and he snorted as he did so.
"Bossy." The boy complained. She ignored it and settled for staring at him, poking and prodding him and nibbling on her lip. "What's wrong with you?"
"...You almost died." She whispered, and he realized that she was trying not to cry. "Why?"
"I got stabbed." He said, answering what he thought was her question, and winced when she smacked him in the shoulder with an angry hiss. Then he sighed as she leaned into him and hugged him as tight as she dared, trying to steer clear of his still healing injury.
"Why did you do that?" Bezel clarified, softer than before. "Why would you...For me?"
He felt the tears prickle at his eyes. His hand moved on its own, going around her shoulders. "I...I saw your duck pond statue. You remembered me. Nobody ever remembered me before. I'm not important."
She squeezed him tighter then. "You're important to me." His throat closed up on him again at that, and his mother's voice rang in his head.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that you're not important. That you don't matter.
"Why are you signing up?" She whispered. "You don't have to. I can...You can go anywhere. And I'll find a way to visit. We can be friends anywhere."
She was trying to talk him out of it. She almost succeeded. But the boy shut his eyes and leaned the side of his head down against hers, and rubbed his cheek against her hair. It was as soft as he'd dreamed, and it smelled like strawberries. It was a pretty little lie, but it was still a lie. Just a fancy dream from a little girl who didn't know any better.
"It's the only way I can protect you." He answered, and tried not to feel the hurt that built up inside of himself again.
Princess Bezel Lantea sniffed once, twice. Nuzzled his shoulder, and just held him, like he might float away from her. Like he almost had.
"I'm so sorry about your mom." She said, croaking on the words. "She was so beautiful. She...She loved you."
The boy swallowed down the hurt, and didn't stop the tears. Couldn't.
"She loved you too." He cracked, and slumped against her as he finally cried it all out.
And she held him the entire time.
