Floor 33 – Chapter 1: Kings and Queens
"Ahh!"
"Ooff!"
Jet wondered what it said about him that he was almost getting bored of being manhandled by the guards of various nasty regimes across Aincrad – this was the fifth time in about two months now that he had been literally picked up by the guards… though admittedly, this was the first time he'd been literally thrown into a cell.
He'd always assumed that was a bit of a cliché that simply didn't happen in anything other than comedies… apparently, he was wrong.
Still though, how the hell had they found themselves in this situation? He'd taken Koharu out for a date in the picturesque orchards that surrounded the castle as a way of decompressing after a hectic few days, just the pair of them being a couple for once; something that he had to admit, he'd found a lot more difficult now the Concord had grown from the five of them to include Asuna, Kizmel, Mary, Seven, and with the time he spent helping to train up the "new" members of the Frontliners, he hadn't spent all that much time with Koharu… and what little time he did spend with her was either out in the field…
Or in their bedroom.
That wasn't exactly a reason to hurl them in a jail cell though! It wasn't like they'd been caught doing anything outside, they had literally been sitting on a rug, eating sandwiches when a load of armoured guards turned up, picked both of them up and carried them over their shoulders as if they were sacks…
"You okay Ko?"
"I've been better…" She admitted, picking herself from the floor and dusting herself off. "What did we even do to get thrown in here though? I've never known anywhere with laws against picnicking…"
"There's always one joyless hellhole around, I suppose…" He answered, removing the bindings off his wrists, before he looked around the cell they found themselves in.
It really was a joyless hellhole they had found themselves in; even the glimmer of sunlight bathing in through the gaping hole of a window was disrupted by the iron bars on the window, that light feeling like an oppressive reminder of the fact you were supposed to rot in here for as long as your existence continued. The stone walls, no doubt centuries old, were scuffed, cracked and chipped, probably the desperate attempts of past prisoners to escape… or to keep track of how long they had been in here, and even the scurrying of the rats seemed a little more lethargic than usual, as if they were just as depressed as the other inhabitants of the cell…
The young girl sat across from them probably didn't help matters either. The girl looked to be around Rain's age, though he couldn't tell that for certain, as she did look on the younger side with her hair tied in small pigtails on the side of her head, and her eyes were a very pretty shade of blue, though they looked more lifeless in this moment – not that he'd blame her, given their current situation.
"Oh, sorry! Didn't realise we weren't alone in here!"
"It's understandable. This place saps your energy away, after all." She told them, and he found himself wondering what she had done to find herself in Aincrad's equivalent of the Tower of London in the first place. Her clothing looked to be relatively well made, something he would've expected to see on a person in higher society of the time…
Mind you, if they were anything to go, she'd probably crossed a street without using a pedestrian crossing, and they'd chucked her in here for that horrible crime…
"Um, sorry, we didn't get your name? I'm Koharu and this is Jet." Koharu asked, offering the girl a hopeful smile, whilst he just gave her a wave as he scanned the door. Hopefully the wood was that rotten that it wouldn't take much force to break through, he'd thought, but no such luck. The wood was still very solid…
"Lady Arabel, but my friends call me Ronie. Well, they did, I suppose…" The girl – sorry, Ronie – stated sadly. "You two are adventurers, are you not?" She spoke with poise, further adding to his theory that she was from a well-off family – she had to be if she had even called herself "lady", rather than using her own first name… either that or her name was Lady.
"Yep, we are. How did you know?" Koharu asked in surprise.
"The clothes are a giveaway. King William does not like travellers or adventurers, so I imagine it was that which got you imprisoned, rather than a picnic. I don't believe he has made that illegal… though he may well be that petty." Ronie explained, and the situation made a little bit more sense now, even if it still seemed to be a massive overreaction.
The way she spoke of the king threw off his previous hypothesis that she might have been the daughter of an important noble, and gave him a new, and less pleasant hypothesis – she was related to the king in some way. She looked a little too young to be his daughter, but then he supposed he could talk about that given his family. There was almost a quarter of a century between his oldest sister, and his youngest sister, after all…
"Charming man he is then."
"When a man has that much power, charm does not factor into it. Loyalty means more, but even that has its limits…" He hadn't noticed it in the direct light, but now he looked over Ronie's face, he spotted something on her face – a shining black eye around her left eye.
Koharu, always the more tactful of the pair, addressed the elephant in the room. "Did… he do that to you?" She asked.
Her silence on the matter was deafening, and Jet found himself discovering a growing hatred towards the monarch.
"So, why are you in here?" He asked.
"His highness believes that I was unfaithful, and so, with the gods as his witnesses, I shall be executed."
Okay, so she wasn't the king's daughter, but rather the king's wife. There were some things that they had witnessed in Aincrad that were messed up in a way that he'd never really be able to explain to anyone who wasn't there, but this?
This was messed up in an unfortunately realistic way; the kind of things that unchecked power mixed with the old saying that "history is a different place" creates.
A child bride, married to someone far older than herself, and probably somewhat conditioned to assume that wasn't just completely fucked up.
"Unfaithful? But that means you're…" Koharu must have come to the same realisation as he had, and judging by the look of mild disgust on her face, she was equally disturbed by it too…
"A traitorous and evil witch, yes, I have had that made abundantly clear to me." She sighed, and Koharu sat down next to her.
He'd never really seen her look quite so conflicted before, even when she was torn between chewing him out for another insane plan, and going along with it willingly because it was their only option, the conflict brewing up as she was torn between her disgust at the girl for cheating, and seeing her as young and still able to change; not something she should be executed for!
"No, you aren't. Umm, how old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"16, and I fear I shall not see my next birthday." She answered sadly. "Or worse, that I may. If you don't mind, can I recall my story? You two are the only people willing to listen to me, and…"
"Go ahead." Koharu gave her a sympathetic smile.
"I was summoned to the court by his highness when I turned 15. I believed this was to repent for my father's crimes, but to my surprise I was told that my uncle had arranged for me to become a Lady in Waiting. At first, I thought it would be the best thing for my family, that I would be able to regain our grace in his eyes, that we would never go without again… how naïve I was. The king could not stand his wife, and after he divorced her, he selected a new wife… myself."
He thought about her story, and why it sounded so familiar, before the monkeys in his mind found a folder marked under T – T for Tudor England, and the story of Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Cardinal must have made its own version of the story, and sanitised it a little bit…
The fact that the poor girl had died in 1542, probably not even out of her teens, because of the insane paranoia of a fat, gout-ridden oaf of a man, seemed heartless even by Henry VIII's standards – but not out of character, sadly.
Jet had opinions on that man, and woe betide anyone who asked for them… as his GCSE history teacher had found out the hard way.
But still, that was history, and he couldn't change history after all… but maybe this was Aincrad giving them a chance to right a past wrong, and to prevent it from being written as history in the first place, and the first step to that plan was escaping this bloody cell!
"One of the king's courtiers offered a hand in friendship, and we eventually became close. Of course, I never made any overtures to him, but the same could not be said the other way, and… well, I suppose that is how we are all here now."
Neither of them missed the implications of what she had gone through, even though they went unsaid, and a very vocal silence fell over the room. Even the squeaking mice seemed to fall silent briefly, as if even they were disgusted…
"Umm, your majesty? Permission to give you a hug?" Koharu asked, much to the confusion of the former monarch.
"Granted?" She answered, before being pulled into what he imagined was the first bit of kindness she'd felt in quite a while. Given what he knew of court life back in this era, even a single dispute with the wrong person could easily land our head on a spike on London Bridge, and poor Ronie had seemingly won the lottery for shit luck, as if everything that could have gone wrong for the girl, had indeed gone wrong and in the messiest possible way too…
"You didn't deserve any of that, your majesty…"
"I feel like you two are the only… kind people I have met in my life. That aren't judging me like everyone else does. Thank you for that, truly."
"Jet? You seem… well, quiet?" Koharu asked, probably a little bit concerned for him.
"Been trying to think of a way out of here. Two ideas so far." He answered, thinking aloud. "One involves getting the guards to come in here, so we can knock them out and sneak out that way. The other involves breaking out of that window."
"That window is tiny, so I think we can rule that one out." Koharu pointed out. "How do we distract them then?"
He paused for a few moments as he tried to think of an excuse. Medical emergency? Nope, they'd just let you die in here, save the costs of executing you.
His thinking was interrupted by Ronie though, who did have an idea… "One of the guards has had his eyes on me since I arrived. If he were to be distracted, then you could steal his keys and escape, could you not?"
"No." Koharu flatly refused.
"Sorry, but no way in hell are we leaving you to your fate, your majesty." He told her bluntly, before his mind went to a place that even he was concerned by. Perhaps they could use that guard's wandering eyes to their advantage – to bring him into the room and take him out of the picture when he entered. No one (except the guard) had to get hurt that way… "But we might be able to get him in here that way."
Now it was his turn to be in the receiving end of a withering stare from Koharu, and normally, he'd have been glaring at himself for even suggesting it… but desperate times called for desperate measures, after all. "You can't be serious, what if he actually does something to her!?" Koharu asked him angrily.
"Trust me, he won't get that chance if we overpower him when he gets in here." Koharu sighed, a sign she agreed with the sentiment, but disagreed with him on principle. "I don't like it either, but it's the best of a lot of bad options, Ko."
Probably sensing the tension between them, Ronie spoke up. "If we agree on the plan, then I shall rely on you two. Sir Jet, Lady Koharu…"
As the two of them hid in the darkened area behind the door, he could sense there was going to be a conversation later about means and ends once all of this was over, but that could wait for now. Right now, the priority was on escaping, and to do that meant trusting that Ronie could be convincing enough to drag the guard in here…
Or the guard was just a massive creep anyway.
There was something deeply unsettling watching as Ronie seduced the guard with an almost effortless ease – something that probably came down to knowing what the girl had been through, mixed in with her young age, he reckoned – and based on the grimace on Koharu's face, he could tell she found it just as unsettling too.
He found himself wondering that, if that was just what she had told two almost complete strangers who'd shown her the most basic of kindness to just listen to what she had to say, then he dare not ask what the rest of her life had been like, given she seemed to be more experienced at this whole thing than the two actual adults here…
He'd quickly decided that he also didn't want to ask that question, lest he actually get answers that were somehow more disturbing than the ones in his mind.
Still, that was put to the back of his mind as the guard walked in, beginning to remove his armour… and quickly found himself with an arm wrapped tightly around his unarmoured neck. "Now, be a good chap and take the armour off. You wouldn't want me to have to hurt you, would you?" He told him in the most menacing tone he could manage and thanked his mother for the elocution lessons – a Received Pronunciation voice, speaking slowly, was somehow one of the most terrifying tones out there… especially when the person could throttle you without a second thought.
He'd been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt, after all.
Given the guard was quickly down to his underclothes, Jet reckoned it had worked extremely well. "Good. Now hand us the keys, and we shall be on our way."
Clearly fed up with being bossed about by the prisoners he was guarding, the guard decided to pick now to stand up for himself. A brave decision when he was stood there in his underclothes, and his armour was strewn across the cell floor, Jet thought to himself. "No, I shan't let-CLANG."
Unfortunately for him, Ronie had other ideas, and the guard soon found his helmet reapplied to his cranium with a considerable force, and the guard slipped to the floor, unconscious.
"I can't believe that worked!" Ronie stated cheerfully, as if she wasn't concerned by the fact she had just bludgeoned a man with his own helmet…
"Well, that teaches him for thinking with his head, I suppose." Jet quipped.
Koharu simply rolled her eyes at that one, and Ronie just looked confused by the one liner. He wasn't sure what kind of joke they were expecting from him; it was hard to think up the one liners in the best of circumstances, let alone when they were under pressure not to be caught by other guards…
/-/
After a bit of fiddling with the lock (and no small amount of cursing that Philia wasn't here to help pick the lock instead of the whole palaver with the guard), he'd managed to get them out of the cell, and into the equally bleak looking tower.
The walls were covered in carvings, probably of the tower's previous residents… or the bored guards passing time whilst guarding them, and the only light was provided by a few torches mounted on the walls. Not a glimmer of natural light made it into the corridors, the windows all being inside the cells, and the screams of those imprisoned made him seriously consider whether freeing everyone was a good idea…
Of course, he knew it wasn't. After all, the Tower of London had been used for those who were genuinely dangerous – killers, lunatics and anyone the King didn't like – so freeing everyone in this was probably a very bad idea, even by his standards…
Thankfully though, he'd discovered that their inventories had started working again now they were out of the cell, meaning they were both able to equip their weapons again, should they run into any more guards… as well as equipping torches that he had made from Light Crystals.
"You've got that look on your face – the "I know what's happening here, but I wish I didn't" one." Koharu pointed out, breaking the silence between them.
"That's a thing?" He asked in surprise, consciously trying to adjust his expression to look more neutral, but probably getting "mildly constipated" instead.
"Yep, you look all pouty like something's annoying you, but no one's said anything." She told with a smile that soon morphed into a smirk. "So, what's the situation, Sherlock?"
He teased her back. "Well, Watson, you know who Henry the Eighth was, right?" He remembered her comforting him by quoting Henry V to him and explaining it to him later that her mom was a bit of an anglophile.
"King of England in the Tudor times, had six wives. I remember the rhyme: Divorced, Beheaded, Died. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived." She answered proudly.
He gave her a nod and smile of approval. "Yup, well his fifth wife was a girl named Catherine Howard. No one's quite sure how old she was when she married Henry, but it was probably in her teens."
"How old was he? Twenties or…"
"49."
Koharu grimaced in disgust, and he didn't blame her. It was a grim reality that history was littered with events like this, but it didn't mean they had to like it. "Eww… wait, late teens right, not… she wasn't a child, was she?"
"Depends. Probably not, but history isn't clear on her age at any time. Just that she was Henry VIII's wife between 1540 and 1542, when she died."
"Poor girl, even history forgot about her." Koharu answered sadly.
"The fate of all those who fall from favour; all that shall be remembered is their name and their demise, never who they were. Doomed to be lost to history… and musicals." He mused, not noticing the look on Koharu's face – somewhere between surprise and amusement.
"What's that from?" She asked.
"My head." He told her, before realising he'd said all of that aloud. "Dear god, I'm turning into Lueur…"
Koharu smirked knowingly. "I thought it was pretty eloquent, you know. I always said you had a bit of a smart mouth…" She teased.
"You weren't complaining last night." He shrugged, as if he wasn't internally proud at that comeback, and watched as Koharu realised what had been said, and went bright red in response. Honestly, sometimes it was almost too easy to get a rise out of her…
"You two are lovers then, I take it?"
Engrossed in his discussion with Koharu, he had almost completely forgot why they were sneaking through a prison tower in the first place, that being to break the young queen out of here and save her from the wrath of the king and his executioner!
"Yeah, it's kind of hard to explain, but… I guess we've been partners since we arrived here, but… oh, what's the word?" Koharu asked herself, trying to explain their relationship to the young queen. It was understandable in that he felt as if what they had almost transcended words.
It was a bond that was forged in the fires of battle and tempered in the moments of peace they shared. An understanding of the sides of each other they both tried not to show to anyone else. All in all, it was something beyond love, he thought to himself, as he remembered what they had said on the Eighth Floor after he had passed out – "the fractured, but whole" – both of them were broken in a way that the other person fixed up, and he would never give her up as long as he breathed…
"Life partners?" He answered.
"Yeah, life partners. As… silly as he can get, and as reckless as he is, there isn't anyone I trust more than him, and I know you feel the same way about me." She smiled, and he picked up that she was talking to him, not Ronie now.
"Yeah, I'd fight the world for her if I had to." He smiled back and held out a hand to her. One she accepted, and the pair let out a small laugh, as if to shrug off everything that had come before this moment.
"For a love like that…" Ronie mused wistfully. "It must be a splendid thing."
For once, he did actually feel more than a little bit guilty about being lovey-dovey in front of someone. Ronie had been dealt the worst possible hand in life, and here they were, almost taunting her with what they had, something so special that they even struggled to put it into words…
"Umm, sorry about that, your majesty. Kind of forgot how insensitive that must have looked to you…" He answered, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
"No, I would rather it than what I see at the court. A sign that there is more out there than just love for the sake of politics, and the games of the heart of courtship…" Ronie replied, a look of sadness on her face, somehow intermingled with one of optimism, a stark contrast if ever he'd seen one…
"I promise that not everyone in life is out to manipulate you, you know?" Koharu reassured her. "You're still young, who knows, the right person might be right around this corner!"
As if the universe had decided on that moment to develop a sense of irony, Jet looked around the corner to come face to face with what he assumed was the barracks… a barracks full of guards, all of whom looked equally surprised to see him, as he was them…
Pulling his head back from around the corner before any of them could grab their weapons, he explained the situation… "Doubt it, Ko. There's about ten guards waiting around it instead."
"It was a figure of speech!" Koharu exclaimed in annoyance at the universe's ability to completely disprove her point. He wondered if it was bad that he was thinking about how much it made a change that it wasn't doing it to him for once… "Ronie, get behind us, this is what we do best!"
She was right though – giving the universe a giant middle finger was indeed what they did best, he thought as he retrieved Caledfwlch…
/-/
Whilst they fought off constant frontal attacks from the guards, Jet had to thank the architect of the building for making the corridors so narrow; a lot of the risk from flanking was completely removed as the corridor was just about wide enough for himself and Koharu to fit side by side, if a little uncomfortably.
Two men in bulky armour though? No chance.
Incidentally, that was also the chance the guards stood against the couple fighting them as it turned out. None whatsoever, as the last of them had soon found out when Koharu managed to stagger him, just in time for Jet to land a knockout blow on the guard, Caledfwlch tearing the guy's armour clean open before he fell back.
"Well, that was a nice workout." Koharu laughed a little between catching her breath.
"They… they were the elite guards." Ronie stated, almost in disbelief. "They should've killed us all… you two are, well there is no other word for it, but… incredible. You could fight an opposing army with nary a scratch!"
"Eh heh, we're not quite that good, Ronie." Koharu answered her sheepishly.
"Yeah, we had help there. The architect of this place evidently wasn't expecting a mass brawl in here, so they couldn't really exploit their advantage, whereas we can."
"I know this is a request too far perhaps, but… I wish to confront my husband. Would you escort me to the throne room?" That sounded rather less… human than she had sounded previously, and more befitting of a quest NPC. He supposed it made sense that Ronie would be the key quest NPC here, there was certainly more attention paid to her design, and even in incarceration, she still looked the part of royalty…
Still though, they'd be walking straight into the lion's den, and with no back up, so to speak, something he wasn't too thrilled at. He spared a glance at Koharu, who seemed to be thinking the same thing, and almost wordlessly, the couple began to communicate with each other through gestures and body language alone…
In the end though, they settled on accepting her request, and headed off towards the throne room under the young queen's guidance…
It was hard not to think that they had overlooked something very obvious in accepting it, and had the couple taken more than a split-second glance at their Quest Log, they might have been rather more wary about accepting Ronie's request… especially given the name of the quest:
The Queen's Gambit
{Author's Comments}
Apologies for missing a month; I was trying my best to catch up with Looking Glass and ACES, and so this fell a little by the wayside. I also wasn't too sure where I wanted to go after Floor 27, and so there's three versions of this chapter in my notes - one set in a desert town, one broadly similar to Floor 35 in Integral Factor and this one.
In the end, I preferred this one, so... who knows, the others may still appear at some point.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this so far, and if you did, a comment or a review is always helpful, as well as following and favouriting it, and if you want to talk to me about this fic or any of my others, the SAO Fanfiction Discord is probably the best place to find me: https: double slash discord dot gg / SrsdNgJPVR