Chapter. 2
The Rebellious Princess
Jaune followed Klein as the pair made their way through the halls of the floating abode of Castle Atlas.
While making their way through the halls, Jaune's social awkwardness reared it's ugly head. "So… what is her Majesty like?"
"Hmm? Oh, quite lovely." Klein answered. "Always has been, ever since she was as high as her fathers knees."
"Then… you've been the, uh, Head Butler long?"
"Head Butler? No, I've only been that for the last few years, but I've been in the employ of the Schnee family for quite some time, long before they went from an up and coming merchant aristocrat family to Royalty."
Before Jaune could shove his foot firmly in his mouth, the pair had arrived to the Queens consorts chamber. Klein opened the door, and Jaune had his breath violently taken from his lungs at a most violent speed.
For standing near the edge of a dark wood table with vibrate inlays of precious metals and gems, was Her Royal Majesty, Willow Schnee.
She stood at a height of five feet nine inches with an hourglass figure, heart shaped face, and generous curves. Her silky, silver, hair was tied in a low braid and draped over her shoulder, and her iceberg blue eyes held a tired, mournful, gaze that was kept from all but those who knew such pains themselves, like Jaune.
She wore a beautiful light purple dress that draped behind her and dragged just so lightly upon the ground. It was cinched about her waist with a built in corset, that did wonders for her already gorgeous form, with full length, cuffed sleeves - that showed the flared sleeves of her undershirt - and delicate white, elven silk gloves covering her hands, and a high collar that covered her neck, which itself was closed by a ruby brooch.
Jaune's eagle eyes, honed from his years in the war, noticed the strategically placed make-up that covered what looked to be a bruise upon her left cheek.
The Queen looked to Klein. "Klein, you didn't tell me our guest was a Vigil."
Jaune could smell the faint scent of wine upon her breath from across the room. "He probably thought it wouldn't matter, I can't exactly hide what I am, after all, the halo can't really be hidden."
The Queen laughed a pretty laugh. "No. I suppose you can't. Shall we discuss why you are here?"
Jaune sat in the offered chair and smiled. "Gladly."
"My daughter Weiss, the Heir apparent, needs a protector." Willow explains curtly. "Her older sister used to handle that role, but since she began leading the guard, her plate has been rather full."
"Seems easy enough." Replied Jaune, before nodding. "And I'd happily be her protector, i-if you'll have me, of course, your Majesty."
Willow let a small smile grace her lips. "Well… I see no reason why you shouldn't."
Jaune smiled as a blush lit up his cheeks. "T-Thank you, your Majesty."
"Well, it seems all is settled." Willow smiled. "Klein, would you please show Sir Jaune to his chambers, then have his personal maid show him to Weiss' chambers."
Klein bowed. "As you wish, your Majesty."
Jaune turned to Klein as they were leaving the room. "Did she say, "personal maid"?"
Willow gazed at the closed door with a queer gleam in her eye, before cupping her blushing cheeks and smiling a strange smile. Whatever her thoughts, they are best kept to the confines of her mind, and her mind alone.
-{O}-
Jaune's new chambers were a few minutes walk from the Queen's Consort Chamber.
It was a modest thing, by royalty standard anyway, that was filled to the brim with only the most expensive colors and other such things that drive the royalty wild, with a rope suspended bed surrounded by a garish blue silk canape.
Standing in the middle of the room in a slight bow, was Jaune's new personal maid.
She was a fair skinned Lepus Faunus who stood five and a half feet tall – not including her almost foot long Lepus ears – with a sylphlike build, modest curves, and a heart shaped face. Her long brown hair was tied back in a tight bun and her wide, brown doe eyes looked up at Jaune with hesitation.
She was dressed in the typical ankle length black dress – that revealed her Lepus feet and a bit of her legs – of her profession, with a starched white apron and cap that sat between her two Lepus ears.
"H-Hello…. M-Master, h-how c-can I s-serve you to-today?"
Jaune opened his mouth, but before he could even think of saying anything, a woman dressed in guards attire burst through his door.
"The Princess is missing!"
The chocolate skinned woman, an odd sight for the people of Atlas, stood five foot five in height, with an athletic build and angular face. Her dark teal hair was just shy of her shoulders, with her left bang hanging loose, and her right tucked behind her ear. Her gorgeous sky blue were currently wide with panic. She also has a gold marking in the center of her forehead, consisting of an oval shape surrounded by four smaller circles.
She wears the standard garb of the Atlasian Guard, that being dark breeches with black leather shotgun chaps and single breasted jacket with heavy dark boots, with gleaming steel greaves covering her shins and a heavy breastplate – that was shaped to resemble the feminine form – covering her upper torso with full length arm armor, with a yellow sash worn around the waist and over her left shoulder.
Jaune holds the hysterical guard by her shoulders. "Take a breath." He waited until the woman calmed some. "Now tell me what happened."
"I… I went to check on the Princess, b-but when I checked on her, s-she was gone!"
"It's going to be alright." Jaune soothed. "Show me her room, I'll track her from there."
The woman frantically nods and rushes Jaune toward the Princess' room.
In less than two minutes, Jaune is looking through the Princess' room – which is much like his, only posher.
"It seems she's gone out the window." Jaune mused out-loud, before looking to the female guard. "When did you check up on her Miss…?"
"Soleil, Ciel Soleil, Sir." Ciel answered. "And it was precisely five minutes before I retrieved you, Sir."
"Than she has roughly a ten minute lead, meaning she could've gotten off the island by now." Jaune muse once more. "Thank you, Ciel, I'll take it from here."
Ciel clicks her heels together and presses her right fist to her heart, in what Jaune understood to be the Atlasian salute. "Sir!" Before doing an about face and leaving the room.
"Whelp, time to earn you paycheck, Jaune."
With that final sigh, Jaune leaves Castle Atlas and makes his was for Mantle.
-{O}-
Tracking the Princess was surprisingly easy – as the denizens of Mantle had not only seen her, but even knew where she was going! As it turns out, this was not the first time the Princess has run away.
Jaune waded through the shin high, freshly fallen snow, in search of his wayward ward. As his heavy boots crunched to snow under-foot, Jaune pulled his fur-lined cloak ever tighter.
"Of all the places I chose to start anew, it just had to be a Gods Damned cold one!" Jaune thought bitterly.
Jaune continued his slow march through the snow, until the hairs on the back of his neck raised up in warning. Trusting his war honed survival instincts, Jaune wheeled around, drawing his blade just in time to deflect an arrow in flight – a feat only accomplished thanks to his inhuman nature.
Turning to face his would-be attacker, Jaune is faced with one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent of blank, a race of sentinels known as the Alceskin.
Standing atop four, long and gangly, hooven legs, the half-moose, half-woman squares her shoulders as she lifts her head – which itself bears large, wicked looking antlers – to her full height of almost ten feet. Her alces body bears a short, thick, coat of dark fur – with additional fur ridding up the sides and back of the torso of her human form, leaving the pale flesh of her toned belly and enormous breast free of fur.
Her head and face are largely that of a human's, with only a broad, jutting, fur covered forehead from where her forward curving antlers sprout, and a broad, flat nose that, like the sides of her head, is covered in the same dark fur as her body and connects with the fur on her forehead. Flowing out from behind her antlers, is a mane of braided, chocolate colored hair that reached the lower back of her human half.
Her delicate and undeniably feminine face and curves, contrast almost harshly with her broad and powerful physique, who' muscles Jaune can tell are honed for combat. She was built like that of an ancient oak, standing ever the vigilant guardian, over it's place of peaceful meadow – with large, powerful, arms, and broad, muscular shoulders connected to a flat and toned stomach.
Upon both sides of her human waist lies two quivers of arrows, each as large as a javelin, with a great bow held in her out stretched hand, which itself makes even the greatest of human longbows look like little more than a child's plaything.
The Alceskin glares at Jaune through two dark brown eyes. "Why do you trespass upon our land, Fahti'cú!"
Jaune slowly, and deliberately, sheaths his sword, before holding up his now empty hands. "I apologize for any offense my ignorance has caused." He waits for the woman's reaction before continuing, when she lowers her bow he continues. "I come in search of my ward, and who as a Vigil, I am sworn to protect with my life, she had fled her home through the misguided anger of adolescence, and I only wish to bring her home – nothing more, nothing less."
The woman's eyes flash in a brilliant golden light, before returning to her normal mesmerizing brown. "You speak the truth, rare for Fahti'chu." She nods and turns. "Come, I bring you to her."
"But how-?"
"The Princess is the only one too impatient to wait for a storm to end before trying to make her escape." The woman chuckles. "That, and this is far from the first time she has done such foolishness."
Jaune is silent for quite some time. "… I've made a horribly decision, haven't I?"
The hybrid woman lets out a deep, rich laugh. "Most certainly!" She glances back with a peculiar look in her eye. "Come, mount my back, it will be a far shorter journey where I not slowed down by your slow steps."
Jaune, too cold to care about social decorum, mounts the alces back on the woman, and holds on for dear life as she takes off like a bat outta hell, further into the blizzard.
In truth, most of the journey is a blur of dark – and surprisingly soft – fur for Jaune. But when the woman finally slows to a canter, Jaune dislodges himself from the womans back and looks upon a hidden oasis in stupefied wonderment.
For all around him is a verdant green forest, all but untouched by either frost or human hands.
"Beautiful, is it not?" The womans smoky voice lures Jaune from his revelry.
"No…" Jaune spoke absentminded. "It's breath taking!"
The woman let out another rich, smokey laugh. "I'm glad you like my glade so much, I so rarely find Fahti'chu worthy enough to so it to."
Jaune wanted to smack himself for forgetting his manner. "I am called Jaune of Arc, and it would please me greatly if you would allow me the pleasure of knowing your name."
Once more a heady laugh flowed through the woman's mouth, like honey. "It would please me greatly to tell you, though I doubt you could pronounce it."
"My name is Co'fastu'Co'falden Adel'ifna."
"You right, I can't." Admitted Jaune, getting yet another laugh in response. "Would you mind if I simply called you Coco?"
"Coco?" The woman rolled the word in her mouth, before smiling. "I like it, so yes, you may refer to me as 'Coco'."
Coco lead Jaune through her wondrous glade, leading him to a small rocky alcove where a small figure cloaked in furs huddled around a petite campfire.
The figure looked to them as they approached, revealing a familiar shaped face that bore equally familiar colored eyes and hair. All in all, the young Princess Weiss looked every bit the younger version of her mother – though lacking both her height and curves, which Jaune was sure would come with age and diet.
The Princess stood to her full, daunting, height of four foot eleven and walked with surprising poise upon her dainty feet, shedding her furs along the way. Covering her slender, sylphlike build were the ruined remains of a gorgeous silk gown the color of the clear blue sky, and of a make similar to her mothers.
The diminutive Princess glared up to the giant of a man in front of her, as if he were the one almost several feet shorter.
"So…" The Princess started in a surprisingly shrill voice. "You are to be my new Guardian?" She looked him up and down, giving away nothing with her icy gaze, before scoffing. "My last "Guardian", couldn't last a week, I doubt you shall fare any better."
"Yup." Jaune thought tiredly. "I might have made a terrible decision, but… a Vigil never breaks their word, especially when it regards to their Wards."
~~{}~~
"Coco" is the Head Sentinel of the Silent Conclave, an Elder Coven of Alceskin who swore an Oath to protect the land of Blank, with their very lives if need be.
Though her duties prevent her from coming int frequent contact with the races of Man, Coco never the less sports a, for now, healthy fascination of the peculiar creatures who reside in their forests of cut stone.
Sorry for the wait, I have trouble concentrating on one thing for very long, that and I'm constantly rewriting and tweaking chapters and stories, trying to find something I'm satisfied with.
Anyway, thank you all for reading this chapter and I hope you enjoyed it.
Oh, I also changed Jaune's race from human to a Vigil, as is explained in the first chapter – this is for the readers that read the first chapter before the change.