Announcement
Hello, author here, this is a small announcement. I wanted to inform you, the reader, that I have changed the tags. I have added the "Strong Language" content warning tag since this chapter does use some explicit language. I have also removed the "Tomboyish Female Lead" tag since I have realized that Violet won't fit that role probably until she is an adult, and that won't be for a couple dozen chapters, and may not be included in this listing, as that would be in my outline for book 2. Anyway, I apologise if this has upset you. Onto the story!
Chapter 1 - Princess Violet
Princess Violet was holding back tears as she chased after the other children. She was never as fast as they were; she didn't know why she even agreed to playing tag with them in the first place. It always ends up with them picking on her for being slow.
A nobleman’s daughter tripped and fell, and Violet pounced on the chance to tag her.
“Tag you’re it, no tagbacks 5 seconds,” she said, sprinting away. When the girl stood back up, she immediately started chasing her.
“Get back here Princess,” she shouted. Just as she was about to catch her, all the kids stopped running as they heard the booming of a canon, and the crumpling of a watchtower. Then the alarm of the primary watchtower started ringing.
The palace guard in the courtyard shouted out to the kids, “get inside!”
Violet started running to the doors, and running towards her room. She bumped into General Gabtree.
“Violet, follow me!” Gabtree said. He was an older Solar Elf, He was wearing plate armor with golden trim, and he already had drawn his broadsword. “We have to get you to a safe place.”
Gabtree lead Violet to his bedroom, and opened his wardrobe. “Hide in here until I return,” he ordered. “I need to find your brother.”
Violet nodded and climbed into the wardrobe. Gabtree shut the doors to the wardrobe leaving her in the dark. She was in that wardrobe for what seemed like hours.
She heard soldiers running outside the bedroom. She then heard shouting from some of the soldiers, and fighting. She recognized the sound of swords hitting each other and heard cries out in pain as she could only imagine some men were cut down.
She heard doors being kicked in down the hall from the room, and cries for help as the intruders killed the inhabitants of the rooms. Servants, Nobles, it did not matter. They killed them all, and she knew this because the cries went silent abruptly.
Then someone kicked down the door to General Gabtree’s room. Violet tried not to cry out, but she let out a surprised yelp. She clapped her hands to her mouth as she privately berated herself for making a sound, but it was too late. The doors to the wardrobe were thrown open, Violet squinted her eyes at the sudden light too terrified to scream, and could only make out the silhouette of a human.
“Looks like I found a kid, could you be the Princess?” The man spoke, though she barely understood him as she wasn’t fully fluent in the human common tongue. The human grabbed her, pulling her up and holding her tight.
“Let me go!” Violet demanded fearfully as she was physically lifted onto the man’s shoulder. She resisted but the man was strong and her resistance was futile.
“I have no idea what you said, you can call out for help all you want, but no one will come!” He replied. He then started walking out of the palace and to the harbor.
As they moved through the city. There were humans everywhere attacking the solar elves. The sun had already set. Solar elves are physically weaker at night, and had a tougher time resisting, or escaping. These humans knew what they were doing. There was a cry for help from a woman and Violet turned her head to see two men on top of her, claiming their spoils of war. Violet looked away.
They arrived at the harbor, and in the middle of it was a double masted Galleon. The Kings Pride Castronald was painted onto the side of the ship, however this ship didn’t have more than five gun ports on either side, but upon the deck were ten mortars. Four of them were massive, and could probably fit a whole man into them, while the other six were smaller, but not by much.
The flag that was flying on the mast of the Castronald was of the Kingdom of Astral. The Astrans were a nation of human supremacists, and while the Isle of Sun never had any conflict with them directly, they were hated for being non-human.
Violet was carried aboard the Castronald by the man, and dropped onto the deck. “Don’t think about running, we will shoot you before you even get off the gangplank,” the man warned, indicating the presence of archers on board. “Commodore! I think I captured the princess!”
A man, who was obviously an officer of the ship, came up to them. The officer looked at Violet and smiled. The smile sent a shiver down her spine. “Ensil!” The officer barked.
“Yes commodore?” Another sailor ran up answering the commodore’s summons.
“Perform the royalty check on this Elf,” he spat the last word in disgust.
“Aye Sir!” The sailor then started an incantation, pricking Violet’s hand with a needle. A drop of blood beaded on her skin, and started glowing blue. “I can confirm, this is a member of royalty commodore.”
“Excellent,” the commodore replied, then turned his gaze toward Violet again, getting an ominous look in his eye. “I’m going to have fun with you. Tie her to the mast! Let her watch the city burn.”
Violet was tied to the mast, facing the city, as she watched her world around her literally go up in flames. She shut her eyes as hard as she could, but it was no use as she could still hear the sounds of the pillaging, tears streaming down her cheeks.
It was almost dawn when the flames started dying down, by then most of the raiders had returned to the ship. A sailor came up the gangplank holding King Cesile’s head.
“I have slain the king, queen, and the prince!”
The commodore came out at that announcement. “WHAT!?” He demanded. “I thought I ordered you to capture the prince!”
“I’m sorry sir, but as soon as I killed the queen, the prince started running. He was able to run fast, and I wasn’t able to catch up to him. He almost made it to the tree line, and I would have lost him, so I shot him. He went down, and I double checked, the wound was fatal. I then slit his throat to make sure he died.”
“Oh well, at least we have the princess.”
Upon seeing her father’s head, and hearing of her mother and brother dying, Violet started crying once again.
The commodore ordered his crew to take Violet down to the metal room. The metal room was a room that was covered in iron and had a large brazier in the middle of it.
“Can you guess why I brought you here your highness?” The commodore asked, saying the last two words in a sneer. “I brought you here to break your spirit.”
He then snapped his fingers and a sailor presented him with a case. The commodore opened it and took out a long metal rod.
“Do you know what this is?”
Violet just stared at it in disbelief.
“Answer me bitch!” The commodore demanded as he took the iron rod and struck Violet across the face with it.
Violet cried out from the sudden shock of being struck, then replied in human common, “Yes I know what that is!”
“Good, now do you know the purpose for this is?”
She nodded.
“This is a branding rod for those your king has deemed traitors to your kind. I am going to brand you a traitor, so even if you somehow escape servitude, you can never come back. Now strip her of her shirt” The commodore ordered his sailors.
Violet immediately started struggling against her restraints as the commodore stuck the iron into the fire. He ordered his crew to Violet in place. He took the iron out of the fire and ensured it was white hot. The entire ship knew when Violet was branded.
*----*
Later in the morning they set sail. They didn’t even wait until the brand had healed before putting Violet to work. Over the next two weeks, during the day she was forced to do manual labor. She learned quickly that if she refused to work or if she complained, or really talked at all, it would be met with a swift beating. The commodore only needed her alive as a gift to his liege, he didn’t care if the child was battered and broken. Things she was made to do included scrubbing out the mortars, swabbing the deck, peeling potatoes, and scrubbing the toilets that all 600 raiding crew used.
At night she was forced to attend to the commodore’s nightly deeds. Every passing day, Violet was feeling more and more hopeless.
One morning after waking up and fed her miniscule rations for the day, she reported to Ensil for her task for the day.
“Today we are going to have you scrape barnacles off the side of the ship.” Ensil said. Ensil turned out to be the Commodore’s first mate, he was a mage who specialized in blood magic. Ensil handed Violet a chisel. “Alright, now let’s get you tied up so you can go down the side of the ship.”
Ensil left Violet to a couple of sailors as they tied her into a rope harness, they were not gentle. They led her to the edge of the ship. “See those? Use the chisel to scrape them off the ship!”
Violet knew better to respond at this point, and just climbed over the side. Once she lowered herself low enough to reach the barnacles, she started to chip them off. Seeing how sharp the chisel is, a plan formed in her head. She wasn’t going to keep living like this, she would rather die than go through this torture. She hid the chisel in her pocket, then climbed back up the rope and called a sailor over. She got down on her hands and knees and put her head onto the deck.
“Please forgive me, but I have accidentally dropped the chisel into the water.”
“You idiot!” the sailor shouted infuriated. He then drew his sword and slapped Violet hard on the back using the flat of his blade. She cried out in agony. The sailor then got another chisel and handed it to her. “You better not lose this one too, or else the Commodore will be furious.”
Violet nodded, then went back to work. As the sun was setting, she climbed back up, and returned the chisel to the sailor who was supervising her. She then went back to the commodore’s quarters and waited.
The commodore came in after drinking with his crew and tried to force himself onto Violet again, but this time, he was met with a chisel to the throat. In disbelief the commodore tried to strike out against Violet, but his strength faded fast and soon he bled out. Violet, not knowing how she survived, went to the farthest corner in the room from the body and just cried until she passed out in the fetal position.
The next morning, after the commodore didn’t come out for breakfast, Ensil went to go check on him. When he entered the cabin, the first thing he smelled was the heavy iron scent of blood. He saw the commodore’s body, then found the cowering form of Violet in the corner.
“You bitch!” Ensil cried out in both anger and horror. “How dare you murder him!” Ensil raced for Violet, grabbing her by the throat and holding her up, choking her. Violet tried to pry his hand loose, and Ensil just threw her across the room. She landed hard on the floor and started gasping for breath.
“No, I will not grant you a swift death. I will have you walk the plank for this.” Ensil then grabbed her arm and started dragging her to the main deck. She quickly hurried to her feet and started stumbling not wanting to be physically dragged across the rough deck. Ensil spotted a sailor. “You, go grab a plank, this brat is going to walk it!”
“Aye Sir!”
Violet started struggling against being dragged to the edge of the ship. The Sailor brought a board. By this time, the commotion they caused had gathered a crowd of sailors wondering what was going on. Ensil understood that they wanted a show, so he decided to give them one. “This brat, who was once of royal blood, has murdered the commodore.” Upon that statement most of the crew acted in a shocked manner, but it was quickly replaced with anger. “I am sentencing her to walk the plank for this misdeed! She will be fish food within the hour!”
Violet was frozen, terrified of the ocean. It’s not that she wasn’t taught how to swim, no she knew how. She just knew the dangers of the ocean having almost been pulled out to sea by a riptide the previous summer. She was shoved, but her feet didn’t move.
“I said walk!” Ensil demanded, shoving her again. But Violet still didn’t budge, frozen with fear. Infuriated, Ensil physically picked her up and threw her overboard. As she was falling through the air, she reached out and barely grabbed the plank. The sudden and unexpected force of a falling child on the edge of the plank caused the two sailors holding it to drop it, and it went overboard with her.
When she crashed into the water, Violet immediately threw herself over the plank, and used it to float on the surface of the water.
“Sir, should we shoot her before she gets out of range?” A sailor asked Ensil, notching an arrow to his bow.
“No!” Ensil sneered. “That plank will only prolong her demise. Leave her to the harsh sun.”
