CHAPTER TWO: THE PRINCESS' TALE

In the Second Dimension, there was once a princess, the story starts, but she was not like other girls. They never are. And once the story starts it will take us to many different dimensions and intersecting fates, and is the story of much more than one lost princess who returned after much travail, but here is as good a place to start as any.

Princess Amandine Aurora Sparx ThunderZoar was the fourth child and only daughter of the beautiful Queen Hazel, who was very happy to have a girl, though her husband King Ivor did not agree. Though her father insisted she be called Amandine, after an ancient great-aunt with three flabby chins and wrinkled hands dripping with jewels, and Aurora, in honour of the chief deity of the land, Hazel got her way with the child's third name, which would set Sparx apart from all the other spoilt princesses she knew.

The Princess Amandine, fourth child with three brothers, was never expected to do anything other than marry someone of great wealth and importance. A weak way to finish off the family, King Ivor thought, but he was wrong.

When her daughter was three years old, Queen Hazel fell pregnant again, at great risk to herself, though the King insisted that the child had to survive, for he was sure it would be a boy. Throughout the Queen's difficult pregnancy the Lord Angus, son of the famed soldier Duke William the Bearded, was constantly by her side, her only comfort and solace.

Several days after the princess' fourth birthday, her mother died in childbirth after extracting a promise from her husband to keep the baby and look after it well. The baby was a boy, but after the difficult birth the midwives doubted it would last so much as a week. Yet last a week it did, and far longer than that. The child was always sickly however, and at six months it was discovered that the baby was blind.

Shamed by the presence of such weakness in his family, Ivor ordered the baby's existence kept secret from birth, spreading the rumour that it died with his mother. Even his three older sons believed this. Only the young Princess, whom the king thought could do no damage, and a few nurses were aware of the baby's existence.

The baby's name was Ivory, less for his father than for his pale skin and eyes.

Amandine—for so her father insisted she be called , though she preferred her mother's name for her—grew close to her bed-ridden youngest brother, for they were both largely ignored by their father and older brothers. Keeping his promise, the King gave Ivory the best medical assistance possible, and gave the youngest Prince anything he wanted, except for the presence of his father. From a young age, Ivory developed a talent for sculpture, his sense of touch greatly enhanced through his lack of sight, and his sister let him shape her face in clay as often as he liked.

While her brother rested, Amandine left him in order to watch her three older brothers training to become fine swordsmen and fighters, preferring this pastime to practicing her writing and needlework. Ignored by her family, she grew to become a wild child.

One day, Amandine slid down the railing of the main staircase, covered in clay from Ivory's latest sculpture, and collided with her father. King Ivor decide that immediate action had to be taken, for surely nobody would be foolish enough to marry this ragamuffin. He hired a governess to turn the Princess into a young lady, and the first thing he insisted on her learning was discipline.

Five years before this, a man known as Master Remus had been driven from his home dimension. He was a man old before his years, clad in the enveloping brown cloak of the Atmos, carrying nothing but a simple wooden staff. His home had been the First Dimension, until the land of the Atmos had been colonised by the forces of one Lord Reinhard, plundering the soil for valuable minerals. Master Remus was reputed to be the greatest martial artist of his dimension, and due to the recommendation of the governess was brought to King Ivor's capital with his wife and son to teach the Princess Amandine discipline through his arts. She took to it as a duck to water, and Master Remus visited the palace every day as Amandine was not allowed out until her governess had washed her face with lemon juice, to get rid of her freckles. Not only did Amandine learn martial arts, but some of the traditional Atmos gifts as well, the power to manipulate the very air itself. She never attained the skill of a pure-born Atmos, but it was a skill which would greatly help her in the future.

Amandine was fourteen when her father announced her betrothal, to Lord Reinhard, a cold and calculating man, old enough to be her grandfather. It was rumoured that he had killed his wife, because she had not produced an heir and was past childbearing age. King Ivor believed that Reinhard would die soon, leaving his daughter a wealthy and independent woman, but Amandine was frightened by the ancient Lord and left the palace one night, accompanied and helped by Master Remus, who had come to regard her as a daughter.

The lost princess lived quietly and in hiding with Master Remus, his wife Zarah, and their son Zalik, whose gentle nature reminded Amandine—now called Sparx—of her brother Ivory.

When Sparx was fifteen, her adopted family attempted to return to the First Dimension and their home, but the ongoing struggle between the Atmos and Lord Reinhard caused the death of Mother Zarah, and Master Remus swore that if he ever came face to face with Lord Reinhard, the man would die.

The family was forced to flee to the Sixth Dimension, and there lived quietly for a year, until one night Zalik was late returning home and his family went to search for him…