I hope Telesta and Freya are alright. I hope they made it back from the second floor, I thought to myself, staring deeply into the rising embers. The worry for my friends lingered like a heavy weight in my chest. Wiping away the last remnants of my tears, I adjusted my ranger vest and looked up across the crackling timber logs.
"Thank you for the rescue earlier," I said, forcing my clumsy sylvan tongue to deliver the flat, earnest appreciation directly to Fadwin.
Fadwin paused, a look of quiet surprise softening his handsome elven features. But before he could offer a response, a sharp SNAP echoed through the dark cedar perimeter. It was the distinct sound of a heavy boot stepping straight onto a dry twig.
Retar immediately bared his teeth, his hand gripping his iron battleaxe as he locked his single yellow optic onto the shadows.
Stepping directly out of the foggy brush and into our warm campfire glare was a creature unlike anything I had ever seen. He was a humanoid rooster merchant, standing upright like a man but possessing the unmistakable traits of a large bird. His head was shaped like a rooster's, yet it held a vaguely human contour beneath a pristine, black silk top hat. A short, sharp beak protruded from his face, capped with an ornate golden plate from which a fleshy red wattle hung loosely. His entire head and throat were covered in rich, copper-colored feathers tipped with deep black accents, framing two small, bead-like black eyes that glinted with sharp intellect.
He was dressed in an impeccably tailored, slightly weathered Victorian-style suit that buttoned tightly over his feathered chest. His lower legs tapered off into scaley yellow chicken feet that clutched the mossy earth, and his arms were magnificent, fingered wings that moved with fluid, human-like dexterity as he raised his top hat in a polite greeting.
"Greetings, folks! May I join your hearth for a brief spell?" the rooster merchant chimed, his voice carrying a strange, trilling cadence. He gestured toward the deep forest canopy behind him, his black eyes shifting nervously down the dark pathway. "I can give you a discount on two rare spell scrolls I recently came by. It is simply not safe for a lone merchant to be traveling the wilderness roads on their own, and I would hate to spend the night in these dark woods by myself."
Fadwin’s emerald green eyes narrowed as he gave the feathered traveler a long, calculating look, crossing his silver-armored arms tightly over his chest plate.
"Greetings, stranger," Fadwin responded, his voice cautious but steady as he stepped slightly in front of the wagons to assert our perimeter line. "But why are you traveling by yourself? It seems highly unusual for a merchant to be moving down these wilderness roads without a proper caravan or a line of hired guards."
The rooster merchant let out a low, mournful trill, his red wattle shaking as he lowered his black top hat back onto his copper-feathered head. He shifted his weight nervously from one scaly yellow foot to the other, his beady black eyes reflecting the orange glow of our campfire embers.
"Ah, you see, I was brutally attacked by goblin raiders along the road just after midday," the merchant explained, his feathered fingers twitching against the fabric of his Victorian suit. "The wicked little bastards ambushed us from the high brush. I lost absolutely everything but what was tucked safely inside my coat pockets. Unfortunately, every single one of my guards was killed in the fray, and I barely managed to escape into the thick cedar fog with my own life."
Hearing the words goblin raiders, my mind froze with absolute terror.
The image of my original head lying vacantly in the mud flashed across my brain with blinding, suffocating intensity. There are more of those goblin bandits out there, I realized, my chest tightening as my hands instinctively gripped the edges of my green ranger vest to hide their violent shaking. We will have to do something about this. We cannot let them keep butchering travelers on these roads.
Fadwin must have caught the subtle tightening of my jaw, because his posture immediately shifted, his hand moving to rest protectively on the hilt of his weapon as he addressed the feathered traveler.
"You can stay at our fire," Fadwin said, his voice dropping into a hard, cold rumble that asserted our complete tactical dominance. "Just know that if you try anything, my guards will skewer you right where you sit."
"Very well, I mean no harm, and thank you," the merchant replied smoothly, bowing his top hat with impeccable, unbothered Victorian grace. His beady black eyes glinted in the firelight as they shifted from Fadwin straight back to me. "You are Princess Kirra Fay Befredon, are you not? And you are Second Prince Fadwin Fay Arcaneya."
Before either of us could ask how a stranded wilderness peddler knew our royal identities, his feathered, winged fingers reached deep into his coat pocket and slid out two heavy parchment scrolls wrapped in glittering silver twine. He extended them toward my companion.
"Prince Fadwin, here are the two scrolls," the merchant trilled softly. "They will make a wonderful gift."
But before Fadwin could grasp the silver-wrapped parchments, the rooster merchant abruptly turned his head toward me. The casual, polite tone vanished from his copper-feathered face, replaced by an ancient, heavy solemnity that locked my crystal-blue eyes straight to his beak.
"I will tell you two things, Princess," he spoke, his voice suddenly echoing with a deep, unnatural resonance that seemed to shake the very roots of the campfire timber. "The Stone of Destiny lies at the absolute bottom of Mount Ranei, deep within the frozen wastes north of here. And to acquire the Conqueror Queen's Lament, you must speak your true name and title directly to the Queen, then bring the twelve decaying divine orbs to the Altar of Truth located at the absolute bottom of the thirteenth labyrinth."
The words struck my consciousness like a physical blow, snapping directly into the secret mandates of my unawakened core. Before my deadpan lips could even part to demand where he had unraveled such hidden knowledge, the rooster merchant’s body dissolved into a blinding, instantaneous explosion of deep sapphire light.
With a soft POOF, he completely vanished into a thick cloud of swirling blue mist, leaving nothing behind but the faint scent of copper and the two ancient scrolls clattering softly into the dirt right at Fadwin's boots.
The vanishing merchant left us all completely frozen in shock.
For several long heartbeats, the only sound in the clearing was the faint rustle of the blue mist settling over the damp grass. My crystal-blue eyes remained fixed on the empty space by the fire where the bird-man had stood just moments before. The sheer weight of his final words hung over the camp like a suffocating shroud, locking my mind onto the impossible coordinates of Mount Ranei and the thirteen labyrinths.
"Shields up! Secure the perimeter!" the lead vanguard knight roared, his voice violently breaking the silence.
The twelve high-elf guards immediately sprang into motion, their heavy silver plate armor clinking loudly as they rushed to call an immediate check of the defensive boundaries of the camp. They fanned out into the dark treeline with drawn swords, casting anxious glances into the thick cedar fog, terrified that another magical entity might breach our clearing. Retar gripped the handle of his iron battleaxe, his single yellow optic darting across the shadows as he stood guard right beside our supply wagons.
Fadwin slowly knelt down into the dirt, his silver gauntlet reaching out to pick up the two silver-wrapped spell scrolls left behind in the mud. He unrolled the thick parchment, squinting through the shifting firelight to scan the ancient elven scripts scrawled across the surface.
"Fadwin, what spells did he give you?" I asked, my voice snapping back into its flat, deadpan delivery as I leaned slightly forward over my knees.
Fadwin finished reading, and a slow, wide gash of a grin gradually spread across his handsome high-elf face. He rolled the parchments back up with a crisp snap of his wrist, sliding them securely behind the silver crest of his breastplate.
"It's a surprise for later," he replied smoothly, his punk-rock confidence flaring right back into his emerald green eyes. He shook his head, looking back out at the dark treeline where the residual blue smoke was slowly dissolving into the canopy. "Anyway... just who was that guy?"
"I don't know who he was," I murmured flatly, my crystal-blue eyes dropping from the empty space by the fire straight onto Fadwin's gleaming silver boots. "But you and I need to talk."
I stood up from the timber logs with quiet, precise grace, making sure little Amy was settled safely beneath a heavy travel blanket before I stepped toward the shadow of our supply wagons. The crackle of the campfire grew faint as I walked, the thick forest air pressing down hard on my shoulders.
I glanced over my shoulder, watching the twelve high-elf guards move through the dense brush with torches. "I'm glad the guards are out checking the perimeter," I said softly, my voice dropped to a low, intense whisper that wouldn't carry past the wagon wheels.
Turning back to face him, I locked my unblinking gaze directly onto his emerald green eyes. I shed every ounce of my royal posture, abandoning the elven etiquette I had spent forty years maintaining in this realm.
"I'll just come out and say it," I spoke, my tone dropping into a sharp, deadpan clarity that belonged entirely to a different world. "You're a reincarnation from Earth, aren't you?"
Fadwin froze instantly. His leather-gloved hand, which had been casually resting on the silver crest of his breastplate, went entirely rigid. The cocky, punk-rock grin vanished from his face in a fraction of a second, leaving his sharp elven features completely pale in the dim moonlight as my question hung in the quiet fog between us.
"How'd you know?" he responded, his voice cracking slightly as his hands dropped limply to his sides, the grand high-elf prince composure completely evaporating in the damp night air.
"Well, when you go blasting rock from Earth it makes it kinda obvious," I replied smoothly, crossing my arms over my green ranger vest and fixing him with a flat, completely unimpressed stare.
Fadwin opened his mouth to reply, a frantic question clearly forming behind his emerald green eyes, but I didn't give him the chance to pitch an excuse.
"I'm a reincarnation too," I added deadpan.
The silence that followed was absolute. Fadwin stared at me as if my white-fuzzed owl ears had just turned neon pink, his jaw slightly slack as his brain tried to rapidly process the information.
I kept my expression entirely flat, my arms crossed firmly over my green ranger vest. I had no intention of filling in the rest of the story for him. Back on Earth, I was a thirty-five-year-old male corporate executive. Out here, I was a forty-year-old female elven princess, and as far as Fadwin or anyone else in this realm was concerned, that was the only identity that mattered. Revealing my past masculine perspective wasn't a necessary point for this alliance, so I left that specific detail completely sealed away behind my own walls. Let him assume whatever he wanted about the girl standing in front of him.
"You're... from Earth?" Fadwin finally stammered, his punk-rock confidence completely shattered as he looked at my unblinking, crystal-blue eyes. "No way. You talk like a living, breathing rulebook. What were you, an accountant? A lawyer?"
Before I could fire back with a dry, snarky piece of wit, a small shadow stirred near the rear wheels.
"This isn't Earth?" Amy said, shock and horror painting her tiny face as she stepped straight out from behind the heavy wagon wood.
My crystal-blue eyes snapped down to her small, fragile frame. In our intense, whispered exchange, neither Fadwin nor I had noticed that the five-year-old Roanoke colonist had crawled out from beneath her travel blankets. She stood completely frozen in the dim moonlight, her pale face wide with absolute confusion as she stared up at us. Her long, vibrant orange hair hung messy over her ears, and her dirt-caked fingers were clutching the coarse lace of her colonial gown so hard the fabric began to tear.
"What... what do you mean, Earth?" Amy sobbed, her rapid 16th-century cadence cracking with a raw, agonizing confusion. "You... you talk like the old elders, Mommy... but you said you're a princess from here. Is Albion on Earth? Is my home gone? Where are we?!"
The trauma of her displacement detonated all over again right in front of our campfire embers. To a child pulled straight out of a 1500s American settlement, the word 'Earth' wasn't a modern cosmic fact; it was the name of the dirt she had left behind when the dark portal tore her away from her family. Hearing us casually discuss it like a distant memory completely shattered the tiny shell of safety she had built around my knees.
Fadwin’s jaw completely dropped, his emerald green eyes widening in absolute panic as he looked from the crying human child back to my deadpan face.
I went completely rigid, my snarky wit vaporizing instantly. Moving on pure biological instinct, I dropped heavily to his knees in the mud, completely ignoring the plates of my armor as I reached out to pull the trembling, orange-haired girl straight into my arms to anchor her spinning world.
I held her tightly against my leather ranger vest, feeling the violent, ragged shudders of her small frame as she sobbed into my shoulder. I gently pulled her back just enough to look directly into her tear-filled eyes, my expression softening from its usual deadpan mask into something earnest and protective.
"We're on Ranoka," I told her, my voice dropping into a low, completely serious rumble to anchor her racing mind. "And don't worry, Amy. We will find your family. Until then, you can stay with me in the palace."
Amy sniffled, her tiny, dirt-caked fingers loosening their frantic grip on my gown as she looked up at my snow-white owl ears. The raw terror in her face slowly gave way to a fragile, wide-eyed curiosity.
"You will love my city," I continued smoothly, offering her a true glimpse of the metropolis waiting for us down the southern road. "Everything there is grown from trees instead of built. The houses, the taverns, the streetlamps, and even the castle itself—they all grow naturally right out of the living wood of the central World Tree."
"Grown... from the trees?" Amy whispered, her rapid colonial cadence slowing down as she tried to picture a fantasy city made of living greenery. A faint, watery smile cracked through her freckled face, her intense panic finally dissolving into the warm campfire light.
"Yes," I mumbled flatly, reaching up to gently brush a stray lock of vibrant orange hair out of her eyes. "No axes, no severed timber, and no bricklaying. It's a masterpiece of ancient druidic craft. You'll be perfectly safe there."
Fadwin let out a long, heavy breath, leaning back against the supply wagon as the sheer panic drained from his emerald green eyes. He slid his hands into his pockets, watching us in quiet admiration as I stabilized the child's world without using a single shred of sterile logic.
Behind us, the heavy rustle of cedar branches signaled the final return of our perimeter guards. Between the horrific loss of Captain Kristorf, the chilling mystery of the rooster merchant, and the constant threat of more goblin raiders lurking along the road, the entire camp remained on a knife-edge. I don't think a single soul got any sleep that night.