We take a short break from Alfred and Arthur's troubles to delve into the past.

My father became convinced that I was going to be a great champion when I was very young. He would take me aside while I was playing with all the other children and tell me that I was destined to hold a sword. I would spend hours with him among the high garden shrubs, sparring with chunky wooden swords until dusk became night. He seemed only happy when I was stabbing something, and this drew out my more violent side. I became quick to act and none too swift with the mind. My father would nod at me over dinner and say: "tomorrow we'll move on to the next lesson."

No matter how many lessons I completed and mastered, my father would always have five more waiting for me. He would stroke his stubble as he watched me struggle with a new technique. He'd growl in his thick mountain accent. "Elizabeta!" It came out louder than all of his other words. "This is no champion! Do better than this, you're holding back!"

But I never was holding back.

It was only when I was alone would I contemplate my life. The more lessons I completed the more cut-off I would be from the other children. I sat at the edge of my bed many a night and wondered if I cherished the clang of the sword more than the laugh of a child.

My father never did let me bask in childhood too long.

However, there was a boy who lived only a manor away. He was the son of a lord, and he was very good at fighting. Farther would let me practice with him on special occasions, and under my utter insistence, he eventually let me simply hang around him. That didn't mean that I liked him, or could even stand him. But my father had raised me to be a warrior, and like a warrior I knew to keep my enemies close.

The boy's name was Gilbert and his eyes were as red as his passion for beating me. His hair was a pristine white, and I often teased him, saying that he already looked like a dead man.

Though as I look back, I cannot think of a time I did not smile with Gilbert around. He was a witty, clever boy. I did not have wit. My father only saw light in brute strength, but Gilbert was a different kind of fighter. He would sit back and stare at you with those piercing eyes, analyzing how you moved, how strong you were, and then he pounced.

If Gilbert taught me anything, it was how to be sly.

I don't know when I started thinking of Gilbert as my friend. I suppose one day someone asked me for a friends name, and I realized that Gilbert's was the only one I could say. He was my only escape from fighting, even if it was only a short switch from physical to verbal.

It wasn't until we were awkward teens burning for blood that it hit me. I was in love with my only friend. It was so beyond me, romantic feelings, that I hadn't realized it until it was too late. My father had always warned me of love. He told awful tales of how it could destroy a warrior's career in a second. He spoke of my late mother like a curse.

But I felt love as a frightening new fight. It was a fight against my father, something I had been longing for. He was a cruel, cold, horrid man who only cared about what I was to be and not who I am. So I took my affections for Gilbert in full stride, and to my greatest delight, he did as well.

We began the awkward dance that was courting. We did all of the things I read in books, because we didn't know any better. We stole out into the night and kissed among the trees. We swam together in the cold secluded creeks, we tip-toed around my father like a one legged man on a tight rope. But it was all in vain, because one day my father pulled me out of my happy lull.

"Elizabeta," he snarled, using his nose instead of his mouth, "You've become too accustomed to life in the valley. Your training has suffered, you need a change to challenge you."

I was absolutely appalled by the suggestion. Going out of the valley meant not only leaving the home I grew up in, but all proper civilization. The mountains that surrounded Clubs was both a blessing and a curse. No one could get in, but almost no one could get out. Staying on the mountains meant fighting for pure life.

I, though a gran warrior, was used to the easy ways of a lord's daughter. If I wanted food it was there for me, if my clothes needed to be washed I would find they had already been dried.

No servant would live on the mountains. It would be my father and...me. I cried for a week after he told me. When I told Gilbert, he insisted that we run away together like in my books. I hung my head.

"Gilbert," I whispered. "The books...they are not like us. I am not a damsel in distress and you are not a prince. We are just two people, damned to the tournament by our fathers."

That was the last thing I got to say to him before I left to the mountains. I went from an awkward teen to a brutish woman on those rocky cliffs, nearly loosing my life so many times I don't have enough fingers to keep track. When I returned to the manor for the tournament at age eighteen, I had lost my longing for red eyes and pale skin. Memories would only help blind me from today, and if I could not see the edge of a cliff I would surely walk off it.

Gilbert came to see me the day of my return. He had grown into a fine man himself. He took me into his arms and onto the dance floor arranged for my welcome-home party. There he brushed away my experiences on the mountains until we were teenagers in love again. The moment we stopped, I was back on survival mode. I found that unless I was with Gilbert, I was on a constant edge. So when he took my hand and led me into our old private spot in the woods, I did not fight his obviously muscled arms. And then he kissed me, and I found myself kissing back.

There under a willow tree in the woods we both lost our virginity, and I found that my worries were washed away.

We saw each other much after that, but constantly hiding from my ever suspicious father. A month later, I came down with a horrible illness, but then just like that it vanished. Three months in and my armor felt tight. I knew what was happening, and I was completely terrified.

I was pregnant, and the tournament was but a week away. I rushed to Gilbert and he insisted I not fight. I wanted to, oh did I want to give up. But my father would have both of our heads if he found out. So I trained, every day more grueling than the last. I would go to bed with a cloth in my mouth to stifle the screams of pain.

Then it was the day of the tournament. My father pushed me around harder than usual, but I assumed it was jitters. He strapped on my armor silently. He waited with me under the arena without a single word of encouragement. Then he left. Ten minutes later, the gates opened and hundreds of young men and women marched out in gleaming armor. My eyes searched the crowd for Gilbert. There he stood, armor gleaming and sword sharpened.

But there was something wrong. His shoulders were slumped and his eyes were dull. I said nothing.

Just an hour into the competitions (constructed of sword-fights and other challenges) something went wrong. I heard the crowds complete silence, and then I saw it. A few fights away from me, Gilbert lay on the field, dying. He was red. Too red.

Death was simply not part of the tournaments. It was inexcusable to permanently injure some of your own countrymen, especially those who may be the next Royal. I rushed over, grabbed his hands, shook him. His red eyes stared at me. They were loosing color, while the rest of him was gaining it. I will never forget his last words.

"I never really loved you."

And then, Gilbert closed his eyes, and he never woke up.

…

Gilbert was waiting for the tournament to begin, when Elizabeta's father walked in. "You," he screeched, pining Gilbert to the wall of his secluded room. "You are the one that has been courting my daughter!"

Gilbert's heart froze up, and he began to apologize profusely, beg for forgiveness, but to no avail. Eliza's father pinned him harsher to the wall with one huge meaty hand, and held a knife to his side, just through the cracks of his armor, with the other. "Love," he whispered, a gleaming look in his eyes "love is the devil, love shall perish. I will not have love!"With a twisted, mad giggle, he drove the knife into Gilbert's side.

The white-haired man screamed as he was blinded by pain. "And," a voice whispered in his ear, "you must tell her that love doesn't exist, or I will kill her too."

Eliza's father taped up his wound and then shoved him half-dead onto the battle field. It only took one loose blow to open the wound and send him reeling.

Gilbert fulfilled Eliza's father's request with tears in his eyes. Pain overwhelmed him. Everything was white. Then, there was a voice.

It was like no other. It spoke no language or reason. It sung and yet it had no sound at all. "Choose," is said. "You may choose."

All Gilbert could think of was Elizabeta.

"You have chosen."

With that, there was a pain that ripped up through his body. It was pure a powerful pain, worse than dying. It was emotional and physical, it ripped through him. He felt like he was burning on the inside. Then he was thrown, and his head felt like it was going to explode. He saw everything. He saw the world start, he saw it end. He felt a knife being driven into him a thousand times in a thousand places, he lived the lives of every lady and lord. He scoured for scraps on the street. He experienced everything.

When he opened his eyes, he felt nothing.

Sorry that this is so rushed! It was only a quick snippet explaining a bit about Elizabeta's past. I'd love to go into further detail—but that's for another story. The end was Gilbert becoming a joker.

I realize this is probably going to be confusing, so please ask any questions! I will always answer!

I apologize for the mistakes. I'm sick, tired, and I broke my toe.

-Mallory