Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

"Thank the Goddess that the rest of you are all right," Rosslyn said slowly, looking over everyone who had emerged from the cave.

They looked far from all right. That was the indelicate thing she had to discipline her tongue to keep from saying.

Carolien's limp was worse than ever, and she seemed to have lost her sword cane in the cave.

Once Adon rescues Samson from that being, I should go and bring it out for her, Rosslyn thought.

Frederick was covered in cuts, shallow but still bleeding profusely. Goldie was barely holding herself together, despite being apparently uninjured. Having her son in danger was harder for the spider, naturally, than being hurt herself.

Physically speaking, however, William was the worst off. He was bleeding like a stuck pig, and Rosslyn turned her attention to him first.

Her hands glowed with green healing magic as she attended to his wounds, beginning with his neck and wrists. Those cuts bled the most heavily.

"Am I still alive?" William asked. He sat, knees pulled up almost to his chest, watching Rosslyn work.

"You are not hurt so badly that you need an answer to that question," Rosslyn snapped, more harshly than she meant to.

The strange feeling she had felt from within the cave was growing weaker. That meant either Adon was loosing that entity's hold over Samson, or the spider himself was weakening. It was impossible to know which.

William acting so dramatically when one of their comrades might well be dying just twenty yards or so away felt inappropriate.

"Are you angry with me, Princess?" he asked dryly.

"She is Queen now," Carolien said before Rosslyn could reply.

Oh… right, Rosslyn thought. It is true, then. Father is gone.

She hadn't allowed herself to believe it, not fully. He was as robust as any man in the world. Nothing should have been able to kill her father.

Or maybe that was how he seemed to you all your life, a little voice in her head said. Perhaps he was just as mortal as any other man, and you should have seen this coming long ago.

It felt like a horrendous shock either way. Perhaps it was a shock she should have seen coming, though.

"I am not angry with you," Rosslyn made herself say. She wasn't sure if she felt anything at all towards William at this point. Recent events had left her almost numb.

Her and Adon's victory in the dungeon felt almost entirely hollow after what had befallen her father and their Kingdom.

All she was doing now was going through the motions. Doing what seemed to make sense at a surface level. That was all she could do.

It was hard to think properly about anything.

The sun was still up in the sky, the ground was still steady beneath her feet, the griffins were still flying, but none of that felt like it should still be working. The world was broken.

My city fell, and I did nothing about it. My people… at least my father died fighting for them, I feel certain. Yes, Adon said something about a duel.

She looked down at William, who she now realized had been gazing up at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to say something more.

I suppose he feels guilty about leaving me and Adon behind in the dungeon, she thought. It was for the best in the end, though. We were able to defeat the Dungeon Core alone, and if the others had been there, I doubt we all could have escaped the strange and sudden collapse it triggered.

That was abnormal, so it was not something that William and Frederick could have factored into their decisionmaking. Still, Rosslyn was not inclined to hold a grudge.

"William, do you know what happened to my father?" she asked. "Would you—" she swallowed and tried to keep her voice under control—"would you tell me about it?"

"I can tell you," he said softly. He seemed to catch the way her emotions were inclined, that she was just a few steps away from despair. "He died nobly, heroically. It was a death worthy of his reputation."

As Rosslyn continued healing the young lord's wounds, William explained what had happened, how Alistair had defeated the Empire's representative in a duel but then experienced a cataclysmic worsening of health, and how when he was in the process of returning to establish proof of life, Goldie had given him a stimulant to keep him going.

But the trip from the palace to the Demon Empire's camp, the wound from the duel, the accumulated effects of repeated poisonings, and the stimulant had all combined, and her father's heart had finally succumbed.

The people who had been trying to kill King Alistair for months—perhaps years—had done it at last.

Celeste, you got what you wanted, Rosslyn thought bitterly. I hope the Empire will reward your damned family for your aid…

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The world seemed to be unraveling around Rosslyn.

Everything hit her all at once: the fall of the city, the danger that she and the others were still in, her father's death.

The sky and land spun.

"Rosslyn?" a voice called. "Rosslyn?"

She felt hands catch her, and she shook her head.

Damn. I…

"Are you well, Princess?"

It was William's voice. She recognized it now.

Those were his hands grasping hers, and another set of hands around her waist, and one hand on her shoulder, and another under an armpit.

She blinked, and the light hurt her eyes.

My head is killing me, she thought. There was a pulsating pounding inside her skull.

"Are you well, Princess?" William repeated.

She pulled her hands free from his and looked from side to side. Frederick's hands were on her waist, she realized, and Carolien had her by one shoulder and under one armpit.

"I am all right," Rosslyn said aloud, telling herself as much as them. "I just—I forgot that this morning—" Was it morning?—"I already expended all my mana and actually lost consciousness. I have not had enough time to replenish it." She looked at William. He still bled, but his cuts and gashes were looking much shallower and less severe now. "I apologize that I could not finish the job."

"That—um, you have nothing to apologize for, Princess," he said awkwardly. "I mean, Queen Rosslyn. You have nothing to be sorry for, Your Majesty."

She looked at him, and as if a blindfold had been removed from her eyes, she saw him and the situation with him for what it was. She had to begin acting appropriately to the situation, not let herself fumble blindly or move on instinct alone. Their lives were in danger, and that danger would only intensify if she did not act the part of a leader.

I am Queen now, she reminded herself. I must bear the burden with care and act thoughtfully.

"William, you are still worried that I might be holding a grudge over what happened in the dungeon," Rosslyn said bluntly.

He looked stricken.

"Please stop worrying about it," she continued in an almost formal tone. "If you are thinking that I am the type to take umbrage at small slights and to hold a grudge, then you are correct." She smiled. "We have known each other since childhood, and it is good that you know that much about me. But I think I am at least equipped intellectually to identify whom to form a grudge against. I blame the Empire and its agents for the disasters of the day. You and your brother have ever been good friends to my people and to me. Your decision to accompany my party into the dungeon in the first place was incredibly generous and unexpected, and undoubtedly, we could not have gone as far as we did without you. Thanks to the combined sacrifices of your men and ours, Adon and I were placed in a position to challenge the Dungeon Core directly, and despite the efforts of its final defenders, it was defeated and destroyed. If anything, I should be grateful to you and your bodyguards." A realization hit her. "Wait, were your bodyguards…?" Her voice trailed off, and she looked back at the cave.

"No, Majesty," Frederick said from behind her, pulling his hands from Rosslyn's waist. "Our last instruction to them was to don their formal Dessian parade uniforms, displaying our colors and sigil, and to wait in the guest chamber where my brother and I slept while we were in your care. We gave them the idea that we were going to have a sort of inspection, to keep them on their toes."

"A strange final order," Rosslyn observed.

"Not entirely unheard of for Dessian rulers," William replied with a rueful smile. "We can be a bit eccentric… and more than a little exacting in our demands on our knights."

"As a way of… making amends… for what we had decided in the dungeon, my brother and I decided to accompany your stepmother and the Royal Family in their escape," Frederick said. "But we could not justly ask our bodyguards to do it. It was a personal matter of honor, not a matter of Dessian national interest, you understand?"

Rosslyn nodded. She understood what Frederick was dancing around. If anything, a deployment of Dessian troops assisting in the escape of the Claustrian Royal Family might smell like an act of war to the Empire. Once they had subsumed the rest of Claustria, the next countries that the demons would border would be Galton, Dessia, and Parmonia.

If the Dessians seemed to be helping the Claustrians with the small, elite unit that Frederick and William had come with, the Emperor would know his next target immediately.

"I appreciate that you do not hold a grudge, Your Majesty," William said carefully, dipping his head. "Even if you say that, my brother and I still wish that we had done more for you. Your father—"

Rosslyn interrupted. "You did a great deal. If anything, I fear… I fear that you are doing too much for us now. You must have already thought about how the Empire will treat you if you are caught aiding in our escape from the capital."

"We are just taking a walk with our friends," Frederick said firmly.

"Neither of you is even in shape to fight anymore," Rosslyn replied, her mouth set in a line. "The value that you bring to my family's defense at this point is questionable at best."

"Direct as ever, Rosslyn," William said with a smile.

"I just—I only intend to say, if you wished to help us, you have done it. You have the wounds to show for it. You should go and stay with one of our retainers. Find someone who lives in this valley, and stay here, licking your wounds, until you can return home. Or even turn yourselves over to the Empire. Explain that you were caught in the crossfire, and you are the Duke's heirs who were here on a diplomatic mission. That might seem extreme, but they will certainly return you to your father's safekeeping. I doubt there is anyone left alive who can speak to either of you doing anything aggressive against the Empire's personnel. The alternative is a long, difficult journey from here to Dessia."

"Why are you trying to scare us out of accompanying you on the remainder of your path, Ros—" William stopped midsentence, let out a groan, and winced. He had tried to sit up as he was speaking, and most of his wounds were almost closed up, but evidently, they still pained him enough to make him pause.

"That is another reason for the two of you to leave our side at this point," Carolien said quietly. "You are probably suffering the effects of the Empire's poison as well as the actual physical wounds you endured. Loss of flesh, loss of function, general deterioration. There may be indignities for the two of you to look forward to, even assuming that the amount of poison administered via those blades was not enough to kill. Rosslyn and I know about that. As did Alistair."

William looked as if he had some response he wanted to make, but the last words stopped him in his track. Perhaps he was going to say something about how confident he was in his fortitude. But Rosslyn's father had been a stronger man, once, than both of the Dessians combined. Now his body lay somewhere in the streets of Wayn.

Goldie broke the silence.

Adon is back, she sent telepathically, in a toneless, empty sort of voice. Rosslyn realized she had not heard the spider say anything in some time, and that long of a silence seemed unnatural from Goldie.

"That is good, is it not?" Rosslyn asked. She looked to where Goldie's eyes were pointed, the darkness of the cave. Squinting, the un-coronated Queen could just barely see the butterfly's wings.

He's alone, Goldie replied. I don't sense anyone with him. At least, there's no one alive.