25. Alessia
While real-life experience is great and all, I don’t think I grasped the real part of the experience before I went into this.
Now, I’m hanging upside-down by my ankles in a tree, and it’s entirely my fault.
“Looking heroic, Alessia!” Aurelio laughs.
I glower at him. “Get me down!”
“No can do! You said you wanted real-life experience, and here it is,” he says, gesturing to my predicament. “You got yourself into this bind, and so you can get yourself out of it. I can wait around all day if need be.”
“Oh, screw you, you high and mighty royal pain in my—!”
All of a sudden, the branch creaks and groans. My stomach clenches as my branch starts to break away from the trunk, fiber by fiber.
“Please don’t break,” I whimper.
My protests do nothing to stop the branch. Instead, it heaves, groans again, and with a massive SNAP! it shatters. I plummet to the ground and land in a heap, my back protesting the impact. Rubbing my shoulders, I sit up, glaring at the ropes around my feet.
“Stupid trap!” I grumble.
“See? You didn’t need my help at all,” Aurelio says.
“Don’t rub it in,” I huff. “I know you enjoyed that thoroughly.”
“Oh, I absolutely enjoyed the show.”
I sigh, setting to work untying the ropes from my feet. I can’t believe I walked right into my own rope trap. I’d been hoping to catch dinner with a classic hunting scheme, but instead, I managed to catch myself when I went to investigate the trap after waiting around all day. Now, I’m not only hungry, but sore, too.
“This sucks. I didn’t expect hunting to be so hard,” I remark.
“Well, you were spoiled by Daelia the whole trip to Krasta and back,” Aurelio reminds me. “And even when I hunted around for food, I got lucky every time I caught something. Daelia did most of the work.”
“Well, I can’t be a proper queen if I rely on my sister for everything, now, can I?” I snap. “I should be able to do this on my own. Hunting is nothing compared to the intricacies of international politics.”
“That may be so, but no one ever said hunting was easy.”
I shake off the ropes and stand up, glancing at the clearing around us. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll catch something with my bare hands, if I have to.”
“Alright. I’ll head back to the camp and get the fire going, then,” Aurelio offers.
The leaves and sticks crunch under his boots as he walks away. I march further into the trees, running hot from embarrassment. I can find my way through the forest in the dark on a new moon, and I can mastermind ten-year financial plans for the military, but I can’t manage to catch my own dinner while out adventuring in the woods. This is ridiculous. How hard can it be to catch a simple hare? Daelia can do it without so much as breaking a sweat, and I can do anything she does. She and I are the same.
No. We are not the same.
I frown. Who am I kidding? Daelia and I have been different from the day we were born; she was the Hero, and I the Queen. We walk totally different paths in life. Where she pursues justice and protects the people, I walk the thin, icy line between what is right and what is good for the nation. I am entrusted to make impossible decisions, whereas Daelia is free to nod her head, follow orders, and never consider the consequences of her decisions. She is free to demand justice without ever considering the repercussions of asking me to pursue it.
I am stronger than her, smarter than her, and more courageous than her. She is stuck in the mind of a child, believing all the world is black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. She cannot think outside the box she’s so carefully constructed for herself. Her fragile perception of reality, once shattered, would shatter her along with it.
I, however, understand that reality is only what we perceive from the information presented to us. I construct my own reality while altering the perception of others’ reality. What is right and what is good are not the same, and beyond that, they are malleable, intangible concepts. There will never be a choice I make that pleases everyone; such is the reality of being queen. The only thing I can do is stick to my intuition, improve my nation, and improve myself, to the very best of my ability.
So, here I am, after improving my intellect, my instincts, and my judgment all my life, finally tending to the one thing Daelia can do better than me: play the unstoppable, courageous hero. I’ve failed miserably so far, but I cannot afford to lose this gamble. If I cannot out-hunt, endure more, and out-perform my sister, my people may one day view me the way Daelia views me now.
I will be the hero my nation deserves. And that starts with catching dinner with my own two hands.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. My head snaps to my left, and there, standing prone, is a young buck. His doleful black eyes widen when he makes eye contact with me. His legs tremble, and his tail flies straight up, the white of his fur standing on end.
Dinner is served.
The moment I move my hands, the buck flees, bounding as fast as his legs can carry him, but it’s too late—my magic fills the air, dark clouds race to gather overhead, and thunder rumbles through the sky. My hair stands on end as the electricity gathers in the air, then, all of a sudden, lightning crackles through the air, arcs to the ground, and strikes with a heart-stopping BOOM that shakes the boughs of the trees above. The site of the explosion catches fire just as the deer drops to the ground. Putting my hands on my hips, I gaze at the scene, satisfied.
“Ha! Take that, Daelia!”
Just then, there are footfalls behind me. I turn around, and Aurelio is running my way, his face ghostly white.
“Alessia! Are you alright? I heard an explosion!” he yells.
“I’m fine!” I call back, waving my hand.
Aurelio pants slightly as he catches up to me. His eyes are wide as he stares at the crater in the ground a small distance away. He glances at me, then back at the crater, then back at me, and finally sighs.
“Alessia?”
“Yes?” I say, grinning.
“Did you do this?”
“I sure did.”
“Did you summon lightning magic?”
“Yup.”
“Don’t you think it was a little…overboard?” he says, gesturing at the flaming trees.
“Nope! I even pre-heated the meat for you,” I say, pointing to the slightly charred deer carcass. “I didn’t ruin the meat with an arrow or a sword at all! It’s perfectly untouched.”
“Alessia…never mind, you’re a lost cause,” Aurelio sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just put out the fires, please.”
“No problem!”
I catch the thunderclouds I’d summoned, pull in some more clouds from the sky, and bundle them all together until they’re heavy enough for rain to fall. I stand there, beaming proudly, as it pours buckets all around us. Aurelio deadpans at me as the water drips from his hair.
“Alessia? Was this necessary?”
“Well, yeah. The fires are going out, see? And we won’t have to bathe in the river later.”
Aurelio drags his hands down his face. “This is turning out to be so much more work than I signed up for.”
“Actually, you didn’t sign up for anything,” I point out.
“That makes it worse!”
“Oh, quit whining, you big baby,” I say, grabbing the deer carcass. “Let’s get this back to camp.”
I drag the deer behind me as we return to camp, following the path markers we made along the way, which are simple etches in the larger tree trunks we’ve passed. The rain stops within a few minutes, and by the time we get halfway there, the sun comes out again. Our camp, we find, is completely dry, having been outside of the range of the storm, which is lucky, since I really didn’t feel like drying out all our wood.
We’ve only been traveling for a few days, but already, our tent is gathering weather stains. The canvas that was once bright white is now gray, even dark brown in places where dirt has stained it. We’ve gathered a couple rocks and placed them around a makeshift fire pit, which is simply a shallow hole in the ground where we’ve gathered dry wood, but that’s about the extent of our camp. We kill and eat our food in one go rather than storing it and carrying the extra weight around.
This deer, however, may have to be eaten over the next few days. It’s a bit large for one meal, even for me. I’m still not sure how I’m going to store the rest of the meat, but I’ll figure it out.
I set down the deer by the firepit and wait for Aurelio to grab his knife from the tent. I sit there for a little longer than expected, and I’m starting to get concerned by the time he reemerges. Apparently, I was right to be concerned, because the panicked look on his face can be spotted from a mile away.
“My knife is gone,” he says. “Both our swords are gone, too.”
I jump to my feet. “Do you think someone stole it?”
“There’s only one way to find out. Check for footprints.”
I use magic to enhance my vision and check for footprints around the campsite. Sure enough, I find not only one, but four pairs of footprints trailing from our tent, through our campsite, and away into the forest. I crouch down by a footprint, studying it carefully.
“There’s four of them, and none of them are wearing shoes,” I determine. “Also, they don’t seem to be human.”
Aurelio frowns. “Not human?”
“Take a look. What human do you know that has four toes and daggers for toenails?”
Aurelio crouches beside me, then says, “None. These are monsters.”
“Goblins, I’d presume,” I sigh. “That was one of our quests, wasn’t it?”
Aurelio pulls out our quest papers from his back pocket, unfolding them to read their contents. “Yes, we accepted a quest for goblin extermination in this area, alright. I can’t believe they’re this close to the village, though.”
I shudder. “To think, they’re this close to where children sleep peacefully…let’s kill them, Aurelio.”
“Gladly.”
We follow the trail of footprints, taking care to be as silent as possible. It’s impossible to be completely silent, as the forest is full of fallen leaves and twigs that insist on crunching in the loudest manner possible. I glance overhead, noting the position of the sun, then continue onward, recognizing the terrain as transitioning to the rolling hills of the Queen’s Meadow, a vast, grassy area just on the other side of the eastern stretch of the Wendigo Forest. This area is notorious for being the most fertile ground in the entire country, so there are many farming villages out here.
This area is also notorious for goblin attacks.
Goblins adore large hills, as they dig their disgusting nests right into the hillside. They can hole up in there for months, slowly attacking villagers in the night, until they’ve had their fill of human flesh. There can be as many as fifty goblins in one nest, and every one of them is as vicious as a wendigo, just with a much smaller, less capable body.
I smell the nest before we see it: the stench of blood and decomposition hangs heavy in the air around their home. I hold my hand over my nose as Aurelio and I peek over a hill on the very edge of the forest, and before me is the dark, cavernous entrance to the goblin’s nest. They’ve reinforced it with sticks and stones, but it doesn’t make it any less crude of a construction. Goblins are crafty enough to learn, but not smart enough to be capable of independent thinking. They’re comparable to extremely dumb dogs.
One of the horrible creatures emerges from the goblin nest as I look on. My stomach curdles in disgust at the sight of him. He wears nothing but a torn piece of loincloth around his middle, exposing the rest of his three-foot hairy, dirty frame. He is spindly and hardly muscular, and his skin is the color of molding bread. His nose is pointed, his teeth sharp and crooked, and his eyes a jet black. He scratches his back, stretches in the sunlight, then walks back into his cave, mumbling a gibberish that must be the goblins’ rudimentary language.
“The footprints lead all the way into the nest,” Aurelio whispers. “Good. We can kill two birds with one stone.”
“With what sword?” I tease, smirking.
Aurelio opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, his face going pink. “Alright, fine. You can kill two birds with one stone. Please get my sword back, Alessia.”
“Of course, Prince Moonbreaker,” I say patronizingly, patting his head.
Aurelio glares at me. I can only stifle a laugh. I have to admit, it feels good, charging into my first goblin quest all by myself—and Aurelio will be waiting for me at the end of it.
I check that there are no goblins, then crest the hill, slowly approaching the nest’s entrance. Using magic to enhance my hearing, I double-check that the goblins haven’t set any more traps for me, then proceed, transitioning my magic into a pair of fires resting in my palms. The cave seems to absorb the light of the fires as I proceed, as if the cave itself is an all-consuming darkness. My heart pounds harder and harder in my chest the deeper I go; I must be six feet underground by now, and still, the nest is sloping steadily downward, right into the heart of the lair.
Unable to take it anymore, I throw one of the fires from my hand, launching it the length of the cave. It soars downward, and downward, and downward, until suddenly, it smacks into an object. That object shrieks as the fire engulfs its entire body, running around like a crazed wild animal as it slams itself against the walls in desperation. I suck in a breath as twenty or so pairs of eyes look to glare at me.
“Uh-oh.”
Summoning a constant stream of magic, I start launching fireball after fireball, hearing the shrill squeals of the goblins as my attacks find their marks. Still, the growling and screeching of angry, uninjured goblins as they run my way is getting closer and closer. I won’t be able to fend them all off this way, and if I miss, I risk collapsing their nest.
“They never said adventuring was easy,” I sigh.
I will my magic to the surface of my skin, and slowly but surely, I convert the water from my body into a layer of ice across my skin. When the first layer is complete, I punch my fist into the wall, and I absorb the water out of the soil by the gallon, increasing my armor until my whole body is encased like a frozen fortress. The goblins are nearly upon me now. I smirk to myself as I enhance my vision with the last of my magic reserves.
“Let’s dance, you stupid earth gremlins.”
I punch the first goblin in the face, sweep his buddy’s feet out from under him, and pick them both up by the back of their necks, throwing them into the rest of the goblins. They tumble over like a line of wine bottles bowled over by a toy ball. Seizing the opportunity, I slam my fist into temples, cave in thoracic cavities with a heel to the chest, and crush spinal cords with squeezes to the neck. The screech of goblins rings in my ears, and the tang of blood grows thick in the atmosphere.
“Alright, I’m bored,” I say.
Gathering up the bit of magic I replenished during the fight, I toss it all into my hands and force it out in a single blast. Fire erupts into the space before me, and the goblins I’ve gathered into a pile go up in flames. Their screams are abruptly cut off as they fall to the fire. Those that don’t fall simply run around like headless chickens until they, too, fall to the fire. I shrug.
“That was easier than I thought it would be.”
I proceed into the depths of the cave, following the metallic glint further along the tunnel. Our blades gleam orange in the glow of the flames as I seize them in my hands. I replace my sword into its sheath with a content sigh.
“Finally, back where you belong.”
With the blades secured, I search for the leader of this goblin nest—the biggest brute of the bunch, naturally—and find him closest to the entrance, conveniently. I drag him out by the ear, refusing to touch any other part of his disgusting corpse. I’m blinded by the sunlight near the entrance and take a few minutes to adjust before leaving.
The moment I’m outside, there’s a shout that rattles my bones.
“ALESSIA!”
I see Aurelio right before he crashes into me, his arms wrapping around me in an instant. I stand there for a moment, blinking stupidly.
“Uh…Aurelio? What’s up?”
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” he apologizes. Detaching himself from me, he holds me by the shoulders and searches my eyes. “I couldn’t stand waiting and listening to all the shrieking. I could never tell if that shrieking was you.”
I roll my eyes. “Aurelio, do you really think I’m so weak that I’d fall into a nest of goblins?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then quit worrying,” I say, holding up my prize. “I completed our quest and got our swords back. It’s a good day.”
Aurelio”s eyes shine brilliantly as he gazes at me, his proud smile lighting up his face even more. “Yes, you’re right. It has been a good day.”
He takes my free hand in his, and together, we walk hand-in-hand back to our camp, my heart swelling with pride. I completed my first quest all by myself, and I got my praise at the end of it. It really has been a good day.