Book 3: Chapter 44

Book 3: Chapter 44

“I’m not a princess.” Was the first thing Lydia Icerose said to Kay after they’d sat down together at a commandeered table some of the Blood Guard had “reclaimed” from a local tavern. At least, Kay thought it was a tavern of some kind; there was enough alcohol in it for it to be one. Although, the stereotypes of pirates did lean towards excessive drinking.

“Did you hear me talking to myself earlier?” Kay asked her. He hadn’t expected her to have heard him, they’d been far enough away, and Eleniah had been hugging her quite vigorously.

“No, Aunt Eleniah told me that that would be the first thing you thought about once you worked through the relationships. Her Majesty isn’t my mother, she’s one of my aunts, and I am not in the line of succession.”

Kay shot Eleniah a look, and she grinned back at him.

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Shut up.” He looked back at Lydia, then frowned as he realized something. “Wait, I thought she was your cousin? How are you both Lydia’s aunts?”

“Huh?” Lydia looked confused for a moment. “Oh, I’m not biologically Lydia’s aunt.” She threw her arm around the younger elf’s shoulder and played with her hair for a moment. “Technically, she’s my second cousin or something, but since I grew up with both my cousins like we were siblings anyways, all their kids call me ‘aunt’.” Eleniah glanced over at her ‘niece’. “And you are too in the line of succession.”

“No, I am not.” The ship captain shuddered. “I renounced it as soon as I could. I’m perfectly fine being captain of my ship and in charge of just my crew. Being in charge of a nation is too much.” She grimaced mildly at Kay. “No offense.”

“No, I get what you mean.” He shot a look at Eleniah, “When I got tossed into this world and ended up with my Class, I thought I’d end up being a fairly average adventurer, right? Do some jobs for the Guild, delve into some dungeons, all that stuff. Then I end up getting this maniac as my trainer,” He pointed at Eleniah with his thumb, “And next thing I know, I’m heading into the wilderness to found a city and start a new nation. It can be a total pain sometimes.”

Eleniah glared at him. “When are you going to stop complaining about that?” She demanded, “I didn’t force you to do anything!”

Kay couldn’t keep his face straight for more than a few seconds before he broke down, chuckling. “When you stop reacting to it, maybe?”

“Ass.” She huffed and rolled her eyes.

“In all seriousness,” He continued, “It’s a hard job. I’m still not totally used to it, but it turns out I’m not terrible at it, and I like the good parts of it. Seeing Avalon grow like it has been is really rewarding, and just imagining what we can grow into is really invigorating.” He glanced off into the distance with a grin before turning back to his audience of one. “In your case, if it’s something you don’t want to do, then obviously don’t.”

She nodded emphatically, “I saw enough of the burdens that come with that level of responsibility when I was younger.” She peeked next to her towards Eleniah with an old sadness in her eyes, which her aunt didn’t miss but also didn’t comment on. “Thankfully, Her Majesty isn’t all that focused on bloodlines or direct hereditary rule. The order of succession is determined mostly through merit, so it was easy enough to remove myself from the line.” She pushed Eleniah’s arm off her shoulder before she continued, “Anyway, I was wondering, why would it be a bad thing if I was a princess? Wouldn’t that be good for you? You’d get a lot of goodwill from the Isles.” She paused for a moment, then shrugged, “Not that my family doesn’t love me, but politically, saving one of my cousins from something like this would be quite a boon to you.”

Kay held up a hand and waved it back and forth. “Yes and no. Because of your lovely aunt here, your royal aunt isn’t all that pleased with me.”

“We don’t actually have any proof of that,” Eleniah interjected.

“Do you think she’s fine with what happened? Or is she probably pissed?”

“... She’s probably mad.”

“Right.” He turned back to Lydia, who looked between them with a confused expression. “I’m not going into all the details, but do you know about how she was sending Eleniah on various missions every once in a while?”

“Um, she talked about Aunt Eleniah doing a job for her once? I haven’t heard about anything else like that.” She frowned deeply. “Didn’t you leave because you got mad at her for using you like a pawn all the time? That’s what you told us before you left.”

“Right,” Eleniah nodded and shrugged, “She still managed to get under my skin and get me to do things for her, though.”

Kay rolled his eyes and was about to step away when he remembered something. “Oh, Lydia, you said something about a piece of jewelry that was taken from you, right? Eleniah got your necklace back.”

“Huh?” Lydia frowned as Eleniah pulled out the necklace marking her as being part of her family. “Oh! That isn’t what I was talking about. It’s nice to get back, but those are replaceable.”

“Well then, what are you looking for? I can tell some people to keep an eye out.”

Lydia blushed and pointedly looked away from her aunt. “... It’s an engagement band. It’s silver, with-”

The rest of the description was cut off as Eleniah grabbed her niece and spun her around, squealing with excitement.

Kay rolled his eyes again and walked off, following the runner. Eleniah could deal with finding it then.

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“Dammit!” The now former, once again, pirate captain cursed as she threw a rock into the dirt. “Where the fuck did the fucking Fist come from?” She whirled on her partner. “You told me she was on the other side of the bloody continent!”

“She was!” Her partner held his hands up and leaned away from her tirade from where he sat on top of his frog companion. “She was! No one said anything about her coming this direction.”

“Fuck!” She whirled and punted the rock into the ocean. “Now we have to start all over again!”

“It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

She whirled around to glare at him and took a full step towards him before she managed to think anything through the red haze over her vision. She stopped and took a deep breath. “You’re right. We have. It’s just another setback. We can deal with this.”

Her partner nodded. “It’ll only take a few days to head up north on Muckspite, maybe less if you can really get him going. We can get ourselves set up there. I still have some contacts on a few of the ships in that area.”

“Right.” She scowled again. “Where the fuck did the Fist get an army like that anyways? Didn’t she leave her bitch cousin’s court?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know. I thought she had too. That one guy with the blood armor had a bunch of weaker blood guys with him, though, didn’t that new town to the west of us that caused problems with the slave shipments have a blood guy in charge? Maybe she teamed up with them.”

“I guess.” She looked around for another rock to abuse but didn’t find any. “Whatever, let’s get a few more hours away before we set up camp; I want a good night’s rest before I spend all my mana boosting Muckspite.”

“Actually,” A strange voice cut in, “I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere.”

They whirled around, both of them clutching at their weapons.

A dark-skinned man seemed to fade into existence a few feet from them. He was tall, and his limbs seemed to stretch in strange directions as he paced closer. His clothing was fancy, fancier than anyone should be wearing in the complete wilderness they were in and looked immaculate. His skin was sold black of the people to the far north of the northern continent, but it was sallow and somehow pale even through its dark tone.

The pirates stared into his multi-colored, swirling eyes and instinctively took a step back. “Vampyr.”

“You see,” The monstrosity in a mostly human shape continued, ignoring the pirates’ fear, “My target seems to have quite the number of powerful friends with them, and you seem to be quite familiar with one of them. I’ll need you to answer some questions for me. And then...” He grinned, showing off his sharpened teeth and two protruding fangs. “Well, I’m still quite thirsty.”This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.