Time passed with relative calm. Just as Callen promised, he didn't bother the young ones again while they explored the village's surroundings. After about an hour, they met up with Alice at the inn.
"So, your brother is here, and he knows we're here," Alice said, sitting on a bed in a room.
On the floor in front of her, Derek and Zara were kneeling with their heads down and their fists on their knees.
"We're done for," the woman brought her hands to her face.
"No, well, I hope we're not," Derek began to say. "The prince promised he wouldn't take Zara."
"And you really believe him?"
"I believe him," the princess assured with seriousness. "My brother isn't someone who breaks his word."
Alice sighed before standing up and beginning to pace around the room, arms crossed.
"This isn't just any situation. He must have some plan—something he didn't tell you."
"But as long as we can get rid of the mark, does it really matter?" Derek said, lifting his head.
Alice brought one of her hands to her back, where the slave mark rested. She gripped the fabric tightly and frowned.
"No, it doesn't," she responded before beginning to rummage through her bag.
Derek and Zara looked over her shoulder at what she was doing with curious eyes. The woman pulled out a small bag that jingled with movement, revealing it was full of coins.
"Did you manage to sell the horse?" Derek asked.
"Not at all. This bag of gold was given to me out of charity," Alice responded sarcastically.
"I must assume we won't be staying here much longer, then," Zara added.
"You assume correctly, though it remains to be seen who will agree to take us to Tarzovia."
The woman slung the bag over her shoulder.
"Come on, let's go to the port. We have work to do," the woman said.
The three headed to the port with a clear objective: find some navigator, fisherman, or merchant who would take them to northern Tarzovia. Of course, the two kingdoms were at war, so it would be somewhat complicated to achieve—but Alice never imagined it would be this much.
"Two hundred gold coins, or there's no deal," said a man.
"Two hundred!?" Alice repeated, indignant. "The trip will last a day at most! It can't be that expensive!"
"Get lost then, woman. I'm not interested."
A few meters away, Derek accompanied Zara, sitting on some crates to patiently wait for Alice to find some transport.
"How many has it been?" the princess asked, her face pressed against a wall.
"Seven," the mage responded, kicking a small stone nearby.
"I don't think people want to take us to Tarzovia."
"No kidding."
"Is it that you want to fight, is that it!?" Alice shouted at the man she was talking to.
Derek stood up to approach her, leaving the princess alone. A good plan from his perspective—they couldn't start a fight at the port.
They had already been searching for someone to take them for quite a while. Few are those who accept passengers on their vessels, and it seemed even fewer were those who wanted to approach the coasts of Tarzovia.
"Excuse me, ma'am."
The princess called out to a woman passing near her. Though she seemed surprised at first, she approached her.
"What's wrong, dear? Are you lost?" she said softly.
I feel like she's treating me like a child, Zara thought.
"No, I just have a question," she began to say, feigning innocence. "Has anything happened here regarding the war?"
The woman sighed slowly.
"You're not from this village?"
"No, I came with them."
She pointed with her head at Alice and Derek. Luckily, it seemed the fight hadn't escalated to anything more serious.
"It's on everyone's lips. The Tarzovians tried to cause a rebellion to attack by surprise from here," the woman said.
Ah, so that's it. These people must have their hatred for Tarzovia at its maximum right now, the princess thought.
"Thanks to the Goddess, Prince Callen discovered them and stopped them. Without him, I don't know what would have become of us." The woman lifted and kissed a small crescent moon pendant she wore.
"Thanks to the Goddess," Zara accompanied her.
The woman said goodbye, waving her hand before continuing on her way. Shortly after, Alice and Derek approached the princess again.
"There won't be luck with any of them," Zara said. "Listen..."
The princess told both of them what the woman had said.
"Idiots. If they were going to do something like that, at least they should have done it right," Alice said, frowning.
"Hey, we're talking about innocent people."
"It's a war, princess. Unfortunately, innocent people die," the woman began to walk. "More than should."
Derek followed her closely with a somber face. Zara didn't understand what happened to her suddenly, but she also chose to follow her.
"This will cost some money, but it should be able to give us a faster answer than going person by person," she said while heading back to the inn.
"You plan to buy information?" Zara asked, raising an eyebrow. "I thought that kind of thing only happened in stories."
"You'd be surprised how many things someone can do for a handful of coins," Derek responded.
The princess sighed. The day was feeling long to her. After the small chase in the morning, it seemed tedious to her to go walking from one place to another without any apparent result.
She then remembered one of the last pages she had read from "Chronicles of Fargus." Fargus hadn't yet abandoned Fisherman's Rest, since he wanted to explore something that caught his attention before leaving. Ruins—more specifically, ruins of the Illuminated.
In her classes, she read about them. An ancient civilization believed to have been made up of humans, with knowledge far superior regarding the use of the spirit. Though some kind of catastrophe destroyed their civilization. Apparently, modern humans are descendants of those who survived it.
"Hey, Derek, let's let your sister handle the transport and go somewhere else," the princess trotted to catch up with the mage.
"I don't know, Zara. We shouldn't..."
"I know where there are some ruins of the Illuminated."
"When do we leave?"
"Come back to the inn before nightfall," Alice told them from a little further ahead.
The young ones nodded. Immediately after, Zara grabbed Derek by the arm to guide him in the direction they should follow.
They walked quite a bit—half an hour, perhaps a little less. Fisherman's Rest looked somewhat more distant from them. The infinite blue of the ocean reflected the sunlight, and dozens of ships sailed the nearby waters.
"Much further, Zara?" Derek asked, out of breath.
"It shouldn't be much further," Zara turned for a moment. "You look tired. Spiritual strain?"
"That demon ability—launching flames from my feet is more tiring than I thought," he said while stopping to recover.
"Isn't it the same as, I don't know, launching them from your hands?"
"Initially I thought so, but since it's a new ability, my spirit doesn't handle it well."
The princess approached to support him.
"Even so, you look very tired—more than usual."
"It's this slope. When the path stops going uphill, I'll recover."
The young ones climbed the path up to a cliff. At the top, the change was almost immediate. The entire ground of the surroundings became white rock, with some small black segments.
"Whoa, we made it. Finally," Derek sighed.
From that place, the view was even more beautiful. Now the birds had also been added—seagulls that flew and squawked all over the place. There were also some in the village, but the crowd made it hard to notice they were there, unless you looked at the sky.
"Do you think there's anything interesting around here?" Derek asked.
"There shouldn't be. As far as I understand, these ruins are nothing more than reflections of a past era," the princess responded.
"Then why did we come?"
"For the experience, dear Derek, and for the adventure."
"Weren't there monsters or things like that in these ruins?"
"Monsters?" Zara asked, amused. "Are you afraid of shadows, Derek?"
"Death is death. A person who has died shouldn't walk this earth again. It's not natural."
"If it weren't natural, then spiritualists wouldn't be able to bring spirits back," Zara reproached him.
As they talked, they kept walking. They stopped right at the entrance of the ruins—some stairs that descended into the earth into darkness.
"I'll light the way," Derek said.
"But your spirit."
"I won't die from a small flame."
The young ones went down the stairs with Derek's flame lighting them faintly. Zara couldn't help but wonder what Fargus had found down here, or if he was still here. She hadn't continued reading, so she didn't know.
Both stopped when suddenly Derek's flame went out, still on the stairs.
"How strange," the mage said. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
"What's happening?"
"My ability—it stopped working. I can't use it no matter how hard I try."
"About-face, and let's get out."
"Are you sure?" Derek kept trying to generate fire without results. "We're not that far from the end."
"Derek, I'm useless in combat, and without magic, you're not much better."
"Ouch."
The young ones began to climb again. Upon reaching the top, they found an unexpected scene. There were people—not one, not three, there were at least twelve.
They all wore black tunics, contrasting quite a bit with the whole place. They wore hoods and open masks with the shape of an inverted crescent moon in the eye area.
As soon as they poked their heads out, everyone drew bows and aimed directly at them.
More imperial mages? They dressed differently from the last one—very differently. Well, there's not much of a problem. Derek will get us both out of here since they won't attack carelessly. That was what the princess thought.
They launched the arrows. For Zara, it was as if the world was moving slower—this was because she had realized something too late. They weren't aiming at Derek. They were aiming at her.
"Watch out, Zara!" Derek pushed Zara closer to him. He wasn't fast enough.
He raised a wall of fire, managing to burn most of the arrows. Except two—one embedded itself in the mage's leg, the other in Zara's shoulder.
From the impact, both were thrown down the stairs. Derek hugged Zara, absorbing most of the impact a they rolled down the stairs.
Once they reached the bottom, Zara rolled a little further, moving away from Derek. Her shoulder hurt like hell. She could feel it bleeding and how tears began to form in her eyes from the pain.
"Derek!" she managed to say in a broken voice.
She got no response.
The girl crawled to what she thought were the stairs, looking at the light at the top. Light that in an instant was covered by the figures of the masked ones.
"Derek, Derek!" she kept calling as best she could, until she bumped into him.
The young man wasn't responding. The princess, frightened, checked that he was still breathing. Luckily, he was.
She moved him away from the stairs with her healthy arm, ignoring as much as she could the pain of the other. Seconds later, she felt the impact of the arrows on the ground where they had been before.
Who were those people? Why did they shoot at her? Why did they want to kill her? Wasn't the plan to rescue her?
She had too many questions at that moment and wasn't in any condition to answer them. If those people decided to come down, they would find them. They couldn't come down. They had to stay outside, somehow.
Derek couldn't fight. Only she was left.
Damn it, she thought. Damn it!
She placed both hands on the ground.
If there really is some God up there—Moon or Sun, doesn't matter, any of them—if they really exist...!
"Divine spirit detected," the princess heard an echo—metallic, almost ghostly.
Then the ground lit up. The illumination began to expand to the walls and the ceiling. The hallway, once dark as night, now gave off as much light as day itself. This was worse—much worse.
She saw a door that she hadn't been able to see before, not far from them. The door of pale rock and golden lights opened, revealing a room behind it. She had to hold on for at least a few more seconds.
She grabbed Derek and began to drag him in the direction of the door. She could hear the footsteps of those people further up. They were getting closer.
Faster. She had to move faster. Faster.
She quickened her pace as much as she could. Upon passing the door, the people appeared in her vision at the end of the hallway. They drew their bows again.
Zara struck a plate on the wall, purely by instinct, and the enormous door began to close—fast enough to act as a shield against the arrows.
She began to breathe faster, then to sweat. She fell to her knees while tears fell down her face.
Her shoulder burned. The blows she received in the fall made her whole body ache. Never in her entire life had she felt so much pain at once. Even so, she managed to get to safety—both herself and Derek.
"Zara...?" Derek began to move very slowly.
"We're still alive..." The princess began to laugh, ignoring the pain. "We're not dead!"
The mage, also in pain, began to recover. But he was petrified upon seeing Zara, with her eyes wide open just like her mouth.
"Zara, what happened to you?" the mage asked, amazed.
"Me?" The princess tilted her head, confused.
The princess also froze in place upon seeing her reflection in the door. Her hair glowed golden, just like the walls, just like her eyes. Added to this, it seemed as if she were burning.
"What...?"
The princess had no time to digest what had happened to her. Suddenly, an enormous exhaustion hit her, adding to the pain she felt from the arrow wound and the blows. The adrenaline she felt came to an end. Shortly after, she lost consciousness.