"Drag her out."
Her arm hurt as her wrist was pulled, forcing her out of her throne room. She had been sitting, expecting one of her maids or perhaps Sir Gareth, the First Knight of the House of Ashford, to present the day's reports. Instead, a man in a dark suit, accompanied by four other silhouettes in darker uniforms, marched into the throne room. They did not bow. They simply made her comply.
Princess Elara thought of struggling, of using the basic fate conjuring lessons she had learned. But then the man in black spoke, his voice flat as he listed what they had done to reach the throne room. The names of guards, servants, and knights who had stood in their way, all subdued or slain. All hope shattered. It would be in her best interest, and the people's, to comply.
She complied.
Rough hands gripped her soft, tender arms in an abrupt motion, carrying her forward.
"You have committed a grave mistake," she said, her voice trembling but clear. "My father will not forgive this."
The man in black shot her a glare that held no emotion. "Forgiveness is a privilege preached by the strong."
With that, they carried her, dragging her, her feet sliding and stumbling on the wet, cold cobblestone, muddying her silk blue dress. It was dark outside. It was raining. It was ugly.
"Stop struggling!" one of them yelled.
"Drag her by the hair!"
She struggled a little, a instinctive jerk of protest, and was met with a sharp kick to her side. She yelped in pain. It hurt. One of them fisted a hand in her scalp and pulled. She was royalty. A princess. Someone of high caliber, revered amongst many.
What shocked her the most were the people in the palace. Maids, butlers, aides, they lined the halls, watching. Their hands were clasped, their eyes downcast. Many of them had spent their lives in this palace. Now they watched in silence, betraying her with their inaction.
She looked at the man leading the two figures that held her. He looked like death incarnate. His hair was dark, slicked back. His skin was a deadly pale, and his pupils were an unusually deep, abyssal black that seemed to suck in the light around them. He was terrifying. She could sense he was Awakened. As a princess, she too was Awakened, having met the prerequisites long ago. But she could not fight this person. This being. She would have to wait. She would have to bide her time. She would have to wait for *him*. Her shield. The man who held her oath.
'Sir Frederick...' she thought grimly.
"We have arrived."
They had crossed the institute grounds of the Vex Academy. As they came forward into a cleared field, her eyes immediately shot wide in disbelief.
"No," she whispered. Then, louder, "No! Do not do this!" She was shaking now, uncontrollably.
"What is the matter, your highness?" the man in black asked, his voice calm and chillingly neutral.
She looked in front of her. A rift. The Epsilon Rift. She couldn't enter it. No matter what.
"Oh... so you know why you are here," the man said, a hint of something like scholarly interest in his tone. "As a princess, a lot of people have set their faith in you. You know... faith. Fate essence. The core substances of an Illuminated, or an Enlightened, you might say. The fate essence is the threads of fate inhabiting your body, tying you to this world... Faith is the substance powering those threads. We have learned from our experiments..."
"Mother Alisia is indeed merciful as they say..." He muttered under his breath.
Princess Elara shook her head, tears now streaming freely down her face, mixing with the rain. Her soft hair was drenched and tangled. Her dress was soaked. She was a picture of pure sorrow.
She swallowed hard. "Please... you do not have to do this..."
The man in black met her gaze, then crouched down with a strange formality. He took her hand, enveloping it with both of his. His hands were warm and vital, a stark contrast to her cold, trembling state of her hands. "Your Highness," he said softly, almost kindly. "A princess cannot apologize so freely to her subjects."
He shot her an uncanny smile. A smile so hideously out of place that she turned back desperately, trying to run.
He let out a breathless laugh. "Now, what would happen if such a figure... a vessel of such profound, public faith... were to enter an Epsilon-class rift? A rift not meant to hold this much concentrated Faith?"
He laughed again, a dry, clinical sound. "Throw her in."
He clapped his hands together.
"I am sure the House of Fenshore are hard at work inside. Let's see how their 'rescue' mission contribute to a fundamental paradox."
"That also reminds of house Valerius.... gosh we were close but alas... we have another sacrificial lamb for our goal."
She cried out. She clawed against the two figures holding her as they marched her toward the swirling, burning orange maw of the rift. She looked for guards, for anyone. But there were none. They had been slaughtered. This was dark. It was grim. How had the First Knight of Vex vanished and been dealt with so easily? It made no sense.
She felt the pull of the rift. It was so close her skin prickled with its chaotic reverberation. It felt wrong, hungry for the stability she represented.
She screamed.
"Help—"
The word was swallowed, descending into the chaotic orange roar as they threw her into the Epsilon Rift.
***
Lucid woke up lying across one of the endless white shelves. He had passed out. How? The last thing he remembered was pain, clawing, punching desperately at something... someone. He remembered clearly why he was here. Who he had just fought. He braced himself, clutching the ground, and looked up.
Frederick was sitting nearby, cleaning his sword with a cloth, inspecting the blade. He noticed Lucid's sudden movement.
"Ah. You're awake, partner." Frederick's voice was calm, almost casual. "Relax. I won't kill you. If I wanted to, I would have finished the job earlier."
Lucid stood up, his body aching but whole. "Yeah. Whatever." He brushed himself off and started to walk away. He remembered he had something to do. He needed to find his teammates. Mary, Brian, and Garfield. He needed to see if they were okay and get out of this rift using the artifact he'd bought, the rift seed.
'Ah, that's right. The rift seed.'
He patted his pocket. His hand brushed empty cloth. Nothing. He had lost it.
'Fucking... shit!' he yelled internally.
He looked back at Frederick, who was now standing.
"You!" Lucid took hasty steps toward the young knight. "Yeah, that's right. You stole it!" He grabbed Frederick by the collar.
"Stole what? What are you talking about?" Frederick replied, his voice still calm, though his posture tensed.
"Where is the rift seed!"
"What rift seed?" Frederick asked, his confusion seeming genuine.
Alice's voice spoke in his mind. "Calm down, Lucid..."
A soft green glow flared around him, a soothing warmth that tried to push back the frustration. "Shhh..." Alice cooed inside him, a sound like a lullaby.
It didn't calm him. It made him even more frustrated, but the sensation was surprisingly... effective, like a weight pushing down on his anger. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
Frederick, noticing Lucid's internal conflict, asked, "Are you searching for your party members? The second-years. Mary, Brian, and the son of the House of Ashford, Garfield?"
"Yeah... wait, how do you know?" Lucid asked, his grip loosening slightly.
"I told you, Lucid. You are on probation. Someone had to monitor you," Frederick replied with a patient, if tired, smile.
Lucid exhaled, a sharp sound of exasperation. "Whatever." He turned and continued walking into the maze of shelves.
Frederick caught up to him with a light jog, falling into step beside him. "I heard a noise earlier. I do not know what it was, but the earth shook. I could hear fire blasts and see purple light somewhere close by."
Lucid listened, though he pretended not to care.
"From my experience," Frederick continued, "those are signs of an encounter with a powerful Unfaithful. It could be Mary. She is a Latent now, correct? From the reports I have read..."
'He knows everything,' Lucid thought, a fresh wave of unease rolling through him.
"Come. Let's go there. We may find them," Frederick said.
Before Lucid could answer, the earth shook again. This time, it wasn't a localized tremor. It was a deep, monumental groan that vibrated through the very shelves and the grey sky above. A familiar, monotonous voice spoke, not in his head, but as a spectral, whispering shadow that manifested in the air in front of him. He felt a slight, sharp pain in his chest—not his own pain, but Alice's, a sympathetic flinch.
***
Enlightened.
The properties of a Beta-class rift have been met.
Recalibrating ambient fate essence and scenario...
Recalibrating primary objective...
Scenario: The Scorched Archives of Celestia.
Primary Objective: Slay the Princess.
***
The words hung in the air, cold and absolute. The voice faded, but the command echoed in the sudden, heavy silence. The rift had just changed. The rules had been rewritten.
Lucid stood frozen, staring at the space where the words had been. Frederick had gone very still beside him, his hand drifting back to the hilt of his newly cleaned sword. The mission was no longer about survival, or exploration, or gathering memory fragments.
'How did he see it... It can't be right he is an unawakened'
Alice spoke, "he could hear it."
It was now an assassination. And the target was the one person in Vex Frederick had sworn an oath to protect.
Things have taken for the worse.
A change of plans.