Prisoner (part 1)

Ch. XVII - Prisoner (Elice)

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It's beautiful, isn't it?

The twists and turns that life gave you.

The unexpectedness… How beautiful.

One day, you were just celebrating your own birthday. Eating desserts with everybody else, as if nothing is going wrong the days after.

One day, you were just playing hide and seek with your stupid brothers. Hiding, cheating, and searching, playing without any worries of the future.

And then one day… you just lose everything.

The pitifulness, the pain, this blatant joke… It is all so beautiful.

And now, even dream is mocking me.

It showed me my memories of when I lived my seventeenth birthday. It showed me everyone's happy faces, my family's smiles, the tasty desserts I had. The gifts that everyone brought me.

It was such a beautiful dream… which is why it is so painful.

How different reality is… makes the dream so much more painful.

Give me nightmares instead, please… this is too sickening. I can't handle it anymore…

I can't… Mom, I can't…

The dream finally shows me my mom's beautiful face. Her sincere smile as she looks at me, her smooth soothing voice as she speaks, and her gentle touch.

The most beautiful person in the world. I can never be as beautiful as her, ever.

Before long, the dream came to an end. The view of my mother's face was being replaced by the darkness of my closed eyes. And slowly, I opened them.

I realized now that I am inside a moving carriage. The ground is shaking so badly, and I can hear the sound of the horse moving on the front.

I began lifting my body up, and I started studying my surroundings.

My condition is still the same as before, except my hands and legs have been cuffed. I am all alone inside of what seemed to be a jail cell, on a carriage. The cell is being closed off by a cloth, but some parts of it were opened.

I moved my tired and hungry body to that opening, and I began taking a look outside.

It seems that we are no longer in a town. We are in the middle of the road, right next to a large field that is the territory of the human kingdom.

The skies seemed to be dark, showing me that it is still midnight. Judging from the cold air, it seemed that the rain had already stopped.

It's… cold…

I'm… hungry…

I lifted my hand, and I touched my neck where my necklace is. Luckily it's still there, the knight who knocked me out didn't take it away.

I cried once again from the cruel reality, and I laid my body back down on the floor.

I can't do anything… Even if I get out of this carriage, what would happen then?

Judging from how he is taking me away instead of killing me, simply means that he never had intentions of killing me in the first place. The human knight only wanted to take me to someplace that he needed to take me to.

I am weak. I know nothing of self defense. All I can do is keep a glass shard with me, and even that failed when the human knight attacked.

The only thing I can do is… conserve energy.

And so, I closed my eyes again. I don't want to sleep, because I don't want another beautiful dream to haunt me again. So I simply closed my eyes, acting as if I was asleep. This also works as a way to save my energy, so that I can use it to run later if I needed to.

But after a long time, the carriage suddenly stopped.

I lifted my body up out of curiosity, and I peeked through the small opening below the cloth.

Where… is this?

"A package for the knight commander, huh…? Mind if I take a look?"

I can hear the humans conversing, and I immediately knew that they would go and check me out.

I quickly faked sleeping again on the floor, and thank god I did because they lifted the cloth almost immediately to look inside.

After finding me unconscious in the cage inside the carriage, they lowered the cloth again and continued conversing.

What would they do if they found me awake? I don't want to find out.

For now, I just need to act smartly. I must wait for an opportunity.

The carriage slowly started moving again, and finally entered what seemed to be a gate. I lifted my body up again, and found that the opening where I once peeked is still there.

And I can see… lights.

I hurriedly moved to that opening again to see, and I saw the scene on the outside.

It's… a city.

A very… very crowded city.

There are humans, walking and minding their businesses outside the carriage. Conversing, dealing with one another peacefully, as if no ethelen just moved past them.

This is a human city… a very crowded one.

Where am I…? What human city is this crowded?

There are plenty of human cities. I have studied all of them in the past, as one of the things that a crown princess must do. Even though I studied it lazily, I learned many things, including the list of human cities that should be extremely crowded.

On the top of the list is, obviously, the capital city. Ardjestyn.

No way… am I in Ardjestyn?

T-That makes it impossible for me to escape!!

How will I escape this!? There's humans everywhere! I should have escaped when the carriage was still moving. Now, it's borderline impossible for me to escape!

I looked around even more from the opening and found a really scary looking castle in the distance. The building is white, but it is shining as if the moonlight specifically went in that direction. 

Seeing all of these descriptions, my mind quickly returned to many years ago when I studied this kingdom. A certain name came to mind.

The White Cathedral.

I am 100% in Ardjestyn.

Shit… damn it.

The carriage has finally come to another halt again after the long trip, and more humans are arriving next to the carriage.

They kept on talking about a 'package' for the knight commander. It's safe to assume that I am the said package, but I have no idea who the knight commander is.

I only studied about who their king and queen are, but not their military people.

Where am I…?

All of the sudden, the cloth was lifted. I didn't realize that the people outside were already so prepared to open the cloth, that I also didn't realize they literally lifted the entire carriage open.

Multiple pairs of eyes surrounding the cart are now staring into the prison cage that I am in, studying my appearance and noticing that I am no longer asleep.

"Well, she does look fine for an ethelen."

"I know, right!? The commander is about to have fun with this one!"

The knights around the opened carriage kept on commenting, while the one who was behind me sneakily opened the cage from behind.

But, I noticed.

The cage door was opened silently, and I quickly used my leg to kick it open.

BAKK!!!

"Shit!!"

The knight who opened the cell's door got smacked by the iron bars. His face is covered in blood, but I didn't just stop there.

Using all my strength, I leaped out of the cell and immediately went for the bleeding guy. My hands arrived at his face, and I quickly hid myself behind him while the other knights were approaching us.

Once they knew what I am up to, they quickly stopped their move.

"Take a step further… and I'll break his neck."

I said coldly to them, and they all seemed to be abiding by it pretty well.

I have never… hurt a person before, let alone actually killing them. I have never imagined that I would do such a thing anyway, but that was me from before.

Now… I am more than willing to kill anyone to survive.

"I am not bluffing. I will actually kill--"

BZZTTT!!!!!

"AAAAKKKKKK!!!!"

All of a sudden, I lost all my strength. I felt pain coming from the back of my chest, and every single bit of energy that I had conserved during the trip disappeared so suddenly thanks to the pain.

Lightning magic… it completely shocks you and stunned you until you couldn't move.

Lightning… red lightning?

I am now on the ground, but my eyes are still slightly opened. With barely any energy, I turned it towards the person who just shocked me from behind. 

The person is there, slowly making his way towards me.

His hand was covered in red sparks.

So it was you…