COMPASS OF TRUE LOVE - CHAPTER 17

Chapter 17: The Great Escape

-Marion-

Lady Demyr left sometime later muttering something about expressing condolences to the King. I thought about going to bed, but I still felt completely awake and my thoughts were occupied with the princess anyway. There was no way I would actually get any shuteye in this condition.

I kinda wanted to check up on Lorelei, though I still didn’t know where she was staying. There was the option of scrying on her. I was notoriously horrible at it though. Once more I had to think about Sephie. She was really good at that sort of stuff. I wished she was here right now.

Instead I grabbed the rest of my stuff and made my way over to Herb’s place. I figured I should probably meet back up with Gerden and somehow… explain all of this. I glanced down at my body again and couldn’t help grinning. My skin felt so good and smooth and my hair was so much softer and I had boobs. I was also different between my legs, but I didn’t explore that part of my body thoroughly yet. All in due time.

The city centre was still a complete mess. Guards were still patrolling the streets and I’ve been held up like half a dozen times before I made my way out of the stone gate.

The streets of the rest of the city weren’t much better but the patrols didn’t stop everyone and everything at least.

I had made it halfway down the promenade outside the city walls that Herb’s house was on when I promptly stopped in my tracks. I felt a trace of magic. It was recent, but more importantly, it was familiar. It was spectral magic. Specifically shadow magic. And the last time I felt it was when I was duelling Lorelei.

My heart jumped a little. She had to be nearby! I unbuckled my spellbook and looked for a magic detection spell. Once I found it, I quickly cast it and studied the area around me. There were a bunch of black whisps floating around one of the larger houses along the promenade. I made my way around what turned out to be a stable to find the entrance, but the whisps were actually travelling away from it, towards the main street.

Was she leaving the city this early? She was from Eletheo, that was all the way in the south, across the Southland’s desert. I didn’t think she’d be much in a hurry with a trek like that ahead of her. I could still catch her on the road though, I was sure. I mean yes, she probably had a horse, but I had some damn good wind magic.

Without wasting another second, I struck my wind glyph and flashed to and down the main street. I had to restrike the glyph a few times before I had left the city behind me. If I had the magic capacity for it, I could probably travel all the way to Omar within a day with this, but sadly I could only keep this up for an hour or two at most.

The road south was ghastly empty during the night. But that only meant I had no trouble at all following the black whisps in the air. I couldn’t help but wonder why she was using magic in the first place. I mean she did have a short-range teleport ability with her shadow magic, from what I’ve seen in the tournament, but that was even less effective for travel than my wind glyph and she had a horse on top of that.

Images of the spreading darkness around the palace flashed up in my mind, but I quickly shoved them away. She wouldn’t. She was kind and caring, not some kidnapper. Also, she was from Eletheo, not some dark elf realm. I chastised myself for even considering it in the first place.

I spent another half hour rushing down the road at the speed of a hurricane and I could tell I was getting closer and closer as the whisps of shadow grew stronger and stronger. I was slightly startled when I passed the crossroad to Sateau, I was already two thirds of the way to the Kingdom of Arang, the Karzakil Mountains were already towering across the horizon to the west. I should really do this more often…

It was another half hour later when I speeded past the monolithic borderstones and into the mountain pass of Ghis. My magic was getting pretty low at this point and I knew if I continued for another hour, I would collapse from magic exhaustion or worse. But on the other hand I was this fucking close right now. It was also obvious Lorelei was using some kind of speed enhancing magic, though I wasn’t aware of any shadow magic that could do that besides the teleport.

I decided to push on to the next settlement at most. There was a castle overlooking the mountain pass if I remembered correctly.

I really hoped I’d find her before then though. The shadowy whisps were so fresh at this point, she could only be minutes in front of me. I kept running down the gravelly road that snaked through the valley until the magic trail I was following was suddenly gone. I skidded to a stop and almost crashed into the mountainside.

Okay Marion, next time we remember that suddenly stopping when you’re really fast very bad for your health. Luckily, I was mostly fine. My legs felt like they were on fire, but that was probably because muscles weren’t meant for this sort of thing. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I said the same thing last morning and that day went by pretty much flawlessly. I mean look at me now!

Anyways, we’re getting off topic. Where were we? Oh right the magic was gone. Fuck the magic is gone. It’s fine. It’s okay. I’m probably super-duper close so finding her will be a piece of cake. Definitely. Probably. Maybe.

Was this a bad idea?

I spent about a minute or so looking around the area if there was any trace of magic or something but I couldn’t find any. I scanned the terrain around for any sign of movement, but all I could see were the soft torchlights of the castle in the distance.

Fine. This was a bad idea. I’d pretty much exhausted all of my magic, so I dispelled my magic sight and slowly climbed the passage up to the castle. Hopefully they’d still let people in this time of the night.

I’d only just started to move when I heard muffled voices from the fir trees on the left side of the path. I immediately stopped in my tracks and held my breath. Could this be her? Who would Lorelei be taking to though. Unless… I still couldn’t help but think that maybe Lorelei kidnapped the princess. Hers was the same kind of magic as the one at the palace and she was certainly powerful enough to pull it off. But that also meant that she lied to me and she didn’t seem like that kind of person.

I silently cast a wind spell on my feet that would muffle my step as I carefully approached the woods.

“Stop counterspelling me!” a familiar voice hissed.

“Stop enspelling me then!” a childlike voice hissed back.

“I just need you to sleep for heaven’s sake!”

“I don’t want to sleep!” A purple flash of magic flittered through the thicket.

“Stopit you twerp!” Lorelei hissed again.

“Then stop enspelling me you hag!” the girl bit back.

“HAG?! You have an awfully foul mouth for a princess! Have you never attended etiquette lessons?”

“Oh deary me, how dareth I insult the woman who kidnapped me,” the girl replied mockingly.

I slowly crept around the thicket and my eyes fell on a small clearing. A freshly lit campfire was softly illuminating the fir trees around. Lorelei was crouched down next to a girl with long blackish-blue hair and deep violet eyes. It wasn’t hard to guess who she was, even though I’ve never met princess Liana, her half elven features were pretty apparent, even from a few metres away.

“You are such a headache you know? Just let me put you to sleep already!” Lorelei sighed.

“I don’t want to sleep, though!” Liana pouted back. This time there was no magic being cast between the two of them.

“If I don’t put you to sleep, you’re just going to try and run away again.” Lorelei cast another spell and another purple flash zapped between the two of them.

“I’m NOT going to sleep!” Liana protested, after flawlessly counterspelling the elf again.

It was honestly pretty impressive. Lorelei’s spells were quite advanced and even I would have trouble counterspelling even the simplest ones. Otherwise I would have done so in the duel. But the young princess was seemingly unfazed after counterspelling Lorelei at least thrice.

Lorelei was about to challenge the girl again when the woods behind me suddenly began to rustle. I whipped by head around, only for a massive paw to knock me down into the ground. I felt a heavy weight on my chest and stared up at the behemoth of a wolf that was currently pinning me down. His glowing dark blue eyes were staring down at me and if his mouth wasn’t busy holding a massive rabbit, I would probably have peed myself.

“MARION?!” Lorelei turned to me with a look of utter confusion.

The princess squirmed free from her bedroll-shaped prison and hurried over to me. The wolf sat the rabbit down and I let out a slight whimper when I saw the dagger-sized teeth of the canine.

“Yaay your doggo found Rosie!” Liana squeaked before picking up the rabbit that was at least half as big as her. “Thanks doggo.” She have the monstrous wolf a pat on the head and hurried back over to the bedroll.

“Marion what are you doing here?!” Lorelei asked after the first moment of shock had passed.

I wanted to reply, but words were hard when there was a wolf pinning you down with a paw the size of your head.

Lorelei said something in a language I didn’t know, though some words sounded elvish and the massive wolf pulled his paw off my torso. I shakily sat myself up and looked back to Lorelei.

“I wanted to check up on you and happened to run into the trail your magic left behind. I didn’t think you were this far ahead though and by the time I realised this might take longer than expected I’d already committed to following you. Also you kidnapped the princess?!”

“See! Even your friend thinks you’re bad!” said princess stated smugly. She was back in her bedroll and cuddling the giant, white-furred rabbit.

“You… came to check up on me?” Lorelei muttered with even more confusion that before.

“Yea I was pretty badly wounded after the duel and the doctor told me you were fine, but I wanted to check for myself cuz whatever happened back that did a lot of damage and I wouldn’t forgive myself if I actually hurt you badly in any way or anything.”

Lorelei blinked a couple of times as she was trying to understand what I’d just rambled to her. “Okay, so, to answer your worries: I’m fine. I got a little bruised but I was mostly worried about you after the duel. I kind of copied a trick from your second fight and pulled up a wall of stone just before you impacted. Your spell backfired into you and you burned a hole into your chest. I checked up on you twice after the duel, but the doctor assured me you would make it.”

She looked back over to the bunny-girl-cuddle-pile, then added, “and yes, I kidnapped the princess. I’m not going to do anything bad to her though! I’m just taking her to a better home, I promise!”

Well I already knew that part… kind of. “So you’re headed to Eletheo, right?” I did think about travelling south, because people like me were a lot more welcome there, so if they were going the same direction as I maybe I could join them. Part of me really wanted to get to know Lorelei better and I felt like we barely had any time to do that before.

Lorelei frowned for a moment, before answering, “that’s the general direction, yes. Don’t tell me you’re actually completely unfazed that I kidnapped your princess?”

Liana looked up at that point and pouted a little, but she didn’t say anything. “I mean, I kind of knew what the plan with the princess was, don’t think I’m allowed to say how, though. If it wasn’t you, I might have tried to rescue her, but you’re cool so I don’t really mind,” I shrugged.

“Wow so much for loyalty,” Liana muttered to herself quietly. Probably wasn’t supposed to hear that.

“Either way,” I continued. “If you’re travelling south, could I join you? I was looking to travel to Rizishma anyways and you’re good company.”

“Are you sure?” Lorelei asked. “You seem pretty scared by Kamir. If you want to travel with us, you’ll have to get up on him as well.” Both of us glanced over to the massive wolf that was laying down by the fire, lazily wagging his tail back and forth.

It’s true that the wolf terrified me at first, but that was mostly because he was on top of me and I didn’t expect him. I turned back to Lorelei and replied, “I’m sure. As long as I’m on top of him and not the other way around I have nothing to fear. He actually looks kind of cute right now.”

We looked back to the danger doggo and he let out a gruff, though his tail wagged a little stronger than before. So cute.

After that we spent another hour or so sitting around the fire. Lorelei was mostly waiting for the princess to finally fall asleep, but that was seemingly not happening. The two of them continued to argue for another ten minutes about the whole sleeping situation until Lorelei threatened to cast spells again. Which obviously only escalated the argument even more.

“You’re such a stubborn little brat! You’ve got everything you need. Warm fire, cosy bedroll, you rabbit is back. Just go to sleep already!”

“I don’t want to! If you’re worried about me running off just let the dog guard me or something. I’m not sleeping!”

“Listen here princess, if- “Lorelei began, but I quickly cut her off before the two started threatening each other again.

“Liana, why don’t you want to go to sleep?” I asked softly.

The young princess looked down to her rabbit and started playing with its ears. “I get nightmares when I close my eyes,” she mumbled.

I scooched over to her and gently put and arm around her. “I’m so sorry you’re having nightmares Liana. I’m sure they scare you a lot. Do you want to talk about them? Maybe I can help.”

She frowned at me in thought for a while, before giving me a small nod. She pulled Rosie a little closer and started telling me a story.