Acacia sits there on the sofa with her arms crossed, her finger tapping against her bicep as she watches out of the corner of her eyes as guardsmen patrol the room — donned in full, regal armor that they wear day and night as they patrol every room of the manor at all conceivable times. With swords at their hips, one of them moves out of the door on the far end of the room, only for a new one to come into the room that exact second from the distant end as they run a never-ending loop of the manner to make sure every nook and cranny is watched at all times.
They’re always like this. Her entire childhood, she never had a room to herself for more than a rare minute. There was always a nanny, a guard, a lecturer, and a sibling. The one thing she’s come to enjoy most about her new life is the fact that, sometimes, she can just be alone in a dark basement closet by herself for a week — it’s an experience that, for some, would be a terror. But for her, a royal princess, this is an exclusive luxury that none of her siblings have ever known.
However, the guards are more on edge than usual. She can tell by watching them as they move. Unlike in the palace, where they patrol in a more relaxed state, here each and every one of them is walking with a hand resting on the hilt of their sword. It’s like they’re expecting a threat out here, this far from the capital.
Looking away, she turns her eyes toward the large windows of the manor, rising up higher than the rooftop of the adventurers’ guild she lives beneath. The glass is cut through in places by bars of strong metal that act as framing. Morning sunlight slowly shines in through the panes, revealing the massive, green meadow of a garden that lies just outside of it — all of the refilled holes, where the corpses were dug out, have begun to regrow grass over their tops as if nothing had ever happened.
There, only in the far reaches near the tree line, she sees a group of silhouettes moving from one side of the garden to the other, where they can’t be seen. Gardeners and maids, who had come here before anyone else ever arrived, were to clean the entire estate in secret and remove the layers of dust that had come to settle in here in the absence of the prior owner, Baron Ersteig, and his staff. Now that the work is done, they’re being led away in secret, so that the eyes of a royal princess won’t have to land on something as unsightly as a servant. The joke is that these people are nobles themselves. They are of lesser ranking, of course, being the cousins and extended arms of noble families who don’t hold or claim titles of their own other than their own blood. But for the normal people of this world, even these noble-blooded servants may as well be kings, yet for the royal family, this servant class of nobles is so far lesser in status that to even know they exist is seen as an affront to the honor of the title. This is why they are led around in secret, always aware of the positions of the members of the royal family, so that they can do their work in their shadow and never in their presence.
Acacia’s finger taps against her arm, doing her best not to look at the woman sitting across from her on another sofa, sipping tea from a delicate, gold-trimmed porcelain cup that she is fascinated by, looking at it in confusion every now and then as if it were a primitive relic from a bygone era.
“This was so fun, Acacia!” says her older sister, the third princess, Manchineel. “Just look at this,” she says, holding out the cup. “It’s just like when we used to pretend to play as village farmers when we were girls!”
Acacia turns her head, looking at the cup. “That single cup is worth at least ten thousand Obols, Manchineel,” she explains. “A rural farmer wouldn’t make that much in a decade.”
“Of course I don’t think we can tell our siblings about this,” says Manchineel, ignoring what she just said as she sets the cup down onto a saucer. “Can you imagine the looks on their faces?” she asks, waving with a hand idly and laughing. “If they found out we were living it up like a pair of urchins in the streets?” She looks up toward the ceiling for a moment. “I was so sad when Brother made you leave,” she explains. “But I’m going to make him let you stay again. I won’t have it any other way!” affirms the older princess.
“They found over a hundred corpses in the garden here,” remarks Acacia dryly, looking toward the graves of the Baron’s victims. She can’t help but notice that on many of those dirt mounds, the grass is greener than in other places. The servants had taken grass from the forest and planted it over the patches of dirt to hide those blemishes on the world’s surface. “Men, women, children,” she notes, her arms crossing tighter as she looks at her sister. “And still, this estate is probably worth more than the entire city combined.”
“Let’s finish up our tea and get going,” says Manchineel, looking at her set-down outdated porcelain with a pondering expression, as if questioning herself if she could manage to follow through on such a brave and primitive proposition. “You know. I bet the tea was made by witches too, in a place like this…” she says, almost worried for a moment.
“Sister. ENOUGH!” barks Acacia, her hands finally unfolding as she hits the table with both of her palms. “The tea is a Vildt import. One kettle costs a soldier’s yearly salary,” she explains, as the royal guardsman walks idly past them without losing pace toward the door. As he loops through the room, a new one comes in through the other door in perfect rotation.
Manchineel stares blankly, almost through her, as she seems to be lost inside her own head. Acacia feels like she can see her reprimanding words floating in through one of the Manchineel’s ears, drifting just behind her glazed over eyes, and then pushing straight out of the other side of her head.
“I can’t wait for us to go home,” says Manchineel, rising to her feet. Her hand lifts itself up, tapping her own chin as she thinks for an idle second. “I wonder if I can say goodbye to my new friend from the parade… the boy… uh…”
— The patrolling knight, in opulent armor, bows next to them with a hand over his chest. “Fenchel, my lady.”
“That’s right! Fenchel!” says Manchineel excitedly, hitting her fist into her palm as she remembers the boy's name from the parade. “Thank you!” she says, relieved, clasping her hands together in delight as she looks at the knight.
“Forgive me, my lady, but it will not be possible,” he starts. By the second, Acacia can see Manchineel’s eyes begin to lose their shine as she retreats away into her own mind at the utterance of someone saying something that doesn’t align with her every wish and desire for the world. But the guards know her well. “Inspired by your radiance, young Fenchel immediately joined the service after the parade. He now aspires to become one of your nation’s protectors,” explains the knight. Manchineel begins to pull back into reality, blinking again. “He promised to work hard to be worthy of your friendship.”
Manchineel glows, smiling. “What a great young person he is!” she says excitedly, her tone indicating that she really is thrilled about the story. “Imagine, me, friends with one of the citizenry!” she unfolds her hands, laughing into the back of them. “Sister and brother will have their time to make fun of me if they ever hear about this.” Manchineel lifts her hands and shrugs, shaking her head. “But I’ll have the last laugh with my new knight at my side.” She stops. “Speaking of…”
Acacia looks at the knight, who rises back up and continues his patrol at a faster pace to not break the pattern now that the next man is coming into the room. She looks back at Manchineel. “That boy is dead, Manchineel,” says Acacia. She doesn’t know why they would lie to her, but you’d have to be a real reality-avoidant sap to buy that comfortable, almost fairy-tale story. The only thing she can think of is that the truth would be worse than the protecting lie, and that leaves only this as an option.
“Where is your knight, Acacia?” asks Manchineel, looking at her and completely ignoring every word she said. No. She’s not ignoring it. That last statement simply never even arrived in her senses. Acacia can tell, because her older sister’s face is still glowing with the same shine it had gotten when she heard the ‘good news’ about her friend. She’s fully lost in her own head-space and fully untouchable there. “So many people have been speaking of your mysterious protector…” says her sister, tapping her chin as she gazes around the room. “But I don’t see him anywhere.” She frowns. “How irresponsible.” Manchineel grabs Acacia’s hands, holding them as she smiles. “But we’re going back to safety now. Together. So don’t worry, Acacia,” she assures. Manchineel kneels down in front of her. “Your big sister is always going to look out for you,” she promises, nodding as her face glows in what can really only be described as true honesty and happiness.
She really means it too.
“My ladies, the carriage is ready to take you home," he says the next time, entering the room as he bows his head.
Acacia closes her eyes, exhaling slowly, feeling a tingling in her chest as the illness scratches at her lungs. She’s sure that she has scarring inside of herself already because the tickling becomes stronger with the years.
Two hands gently squeeze hers. “Are you ready to finally come back to where you belong, Acacia?” asks Manchineel warmly.
Acacia pulls her hands free from Manchineel’s grip. With one palm, Acacia lightly holds the side of Manchineel’s head and places a kiss on the top of her crown. “I am cursed with the burden of my sister’s love,” says Acacia, standing up and rising to her feet. Looking down at her older sister, Acacia takes her stance. “The sun has risen, Manchineel,” she explains in a low tone. “Get into your carriage and leave my city. Do not come back. I have no more time to waste on your games.”
Manchineel jumps up to her feet. “I love you too, sister!” she replies excitedly, not even processing the rest of the statement. “Let’s go home!”
Acacia turns her head, looking at the knight standing next to her. Another one stands at each door.
There’s no point in trying to order them around. Manchineel has seniority over her, being older than her, so they won’t do a thing she says if it contradicts the third princess’ desires.
This is the way it has to be. The youngest princess closes her eyes for a moment.
She always knew that the road to the throne wouldn’t be simple; how could it be? Of course, it was never going to be a clean and easy path, and of course, the way toward it wouldn’t be without the scars of conflict. Each member of her family is… difficult, in some manner or another. It turns out that royal blood is a two-sided sword. One is blessed with unimaginable opulence and status. However, this comes at a cost, as can be seen in Manchineel’s personality, in her own illness, in the mannerisms of the second princess, and in the haunting obsessions of her oldest brother — the king.
— A metal gauntlet places itself on Acacia’s shoulder from the side.
She opens her eyes again, finding herself staring once again into the sisterly gaze of a monster that she can’t quite define.
Glass shatters, metal, and prismatic shards fly out in all directions toward the garden garden,he fragments of a hail storm. The crystals catch the shine of the morning sunlight, shimmering in the air as they launch toward the grounds. A royal guardsman in full armor spirals wildly as he careens toward the gates. He screams as he rolls across the grounds, a waving smolder trailing after him as if the air around him were rushing in to fill the seams of a tear in reality that he leaves in his wake as he flies — like water pressing in to fill the gaps left through the trudging of a body moving through it.
Acacia stands there in the room by the sofa, the wind rushing in through the broken cathedral-windows of the courtyard, pressing into the house and billowing her hair and clothes.
— From the doors comes a rush of movement.
Black sparks shine around her fingers, crackling loudly for a flash of a second like static electricity. The room around them shakes, the foundations of the mansion rumbling as a heavy quake presses out from her. The ground around them cracks, the marbled flooring breaking apart as if struck by cannon-fire, the walls buckling inward as the armored bodies of two more knights are sent flying against them. Light fixtures fall from the walls and ceilings, the escaping flames trailing over snakes of liquid oil that creep along the foundation, pressing into the broken gaps of the structure. All around the manor, a legion of soldiers falls into readiness, a great flow of metal and swords moving through every hallway and room in an instant as they converge for what they have been prepared for — resistance.
Acacia stares at the blank-faced woman standing a meter across from her, looking as if she were staring at a boring painting and not moving at all. Guards stream into the room, moving over the broken bodies of the first who had tried, rushing toward Acacia as she lifts her hand.
A screaming fills the air, born not of the stumbling, panicked voices of the legion, who begins to lose their footing as a black sphere rises into the air above their heads. Rather, the air itself screams as everything starts to pull toward the emptiness floating above her head. A black, consuming void sucks in everything. Furniture, broken wood and porcelain, glass, and everything else begin to pull toward the hole in reality. Air shrieks like a banshee as it’s pulled into the gap as Acacia looks around the room, watching as the walls break apart and dissipate. The ceiling breaks apart and dissipates. The entire section of the manner — walls, facades, floors — even the garden outside the broken window — is carved and ripped away as it's torn into the emptiness. Through the broken walls, she looks at row after row of soldiers standing there at the ready, with one massive tower shield being positioned after the other as they begin to create a defensive formation.
No. It’s a containing formation.
They’re boxing her in.
“My name is Acacia Odofredus Krone,” says Acacia, raising her voice to talk over the destruction as a beam of metal rips out of the ground, smashing against a soldier and sending them crashing against a group of others before being pulled into the consuming circle. Acacia grips her fingers together, the spell pulsing in and out as more and more debris flies into it. “By the power of my decree, I am the rightful queen of this nation,” she explains, her eyes looking around the space into the visors of many golden helmets. The manor has fully been ripped apart, as if a titan’s hand had reached from above and tore out a fistful of it. The morning sky is now freely visible above their heads, and all around her are a hundred strong royal guardsmen who stand positioned and ready. Just behind the defensive barrier many of them are making with a row of tower shields, sorcerers, wizards, and priests are preparing an array of incapacitating spells to launch her way as soon as the void she has created dissipates. Royal guards are powerful and trained to the most elite standards of the nation. But when it comes to something like protecting against the magic of a royal-blooded person, even they are cautious and defensive. “I command you to serve my reclamation of my throne,” orders Acacia, knowing that her words are falling on deaf ears. “Those who are traitors to my cause will be put to their end,” she warns.
Saying you want to have the crown is one thing. Dreaming of wanting the crown is another. But to get there, to ascend, requires a path on which one can rise. For some, this bath is clearly laid out through steps of blood and time. But for her, the path upward can only be climbed through one path alone. For the girl who has her powers because of the touch of the monster that came before all monsters — perhaps she never really had any choice but to become at least a little like it. Her dreams of becoming a good queen, of becoming the ruler of a nation in which people can live in untold prosperity and joy, can only be achieved if she fights for them by climbing up the only thing she has to get there.
The void begins to dissipate, and the air becomes quieter and quieter again as the massive sphere — the size of a house — begins to shrink and shrink until it is only the size of a single marble, floating in the sky. Seeing this, the royal soldiers — having no choice forward except this, the same as her — move. An array of magic blasts out in an instant, aimed precisely toward her.
— The only path she has to her throne is by climbing a staircase of bodies and rubble.
In that second, as a thousand colors streak toward her, Acacia closes her eyes and snaps a finger.
The shrinking void spell above her head hadn’t been dissipating; it hadn’t been growing weaker and fading away like they thought it was.
It was compressing — pressing itself and everything inside of it together with incredible density. Thousands and thousands of kilograms of rubble, metal, glass, and people — shoved together into a space the size of a dice — erupts into all directions.
Faster than the flash of an eye, everything that is either a person or immaterial is pierced. Needle-like streaks of dense matter eject in all directions with such force that they cut through rows of armor, ten men dense, and still burrow through to the soil and stone behind them. The light around them warps and distorts as great heat cuts through the air, spontaneous fire erupting everywhere the projectiles pass because of the speed of their movements. The mansion — whatever was left of it around the room they were in — breaks apart in a blast so violent that bricks and metal are sent flying through the sky all the way to the city and beyond its borders as they fly like a star-shower.
Everything is faded into black and white, as if the color of the world itself had been washed away by the force of the blast, the echo of which carries on and rolls endless kilometers toward the edges of the continent — the strike of the hammer of her intent making itself well heard by every deafened ear within the region. Acacia’s gaze opens, watching as a line of black and white silhouettes dances around her in the superheated glow as, one after the other, some hundred odd people are hooked by the piercing lances of what may well be the barbed teeth of a monster with no name and are swallowed by the void.
And as the shine dies down, as the spell breaks away, the only thing that is left by the time the morning sunshine returns to the world and the echo of the attack fades toward the horizon is a broken remnant of a stone foundation that a grand house was once on, and two people. Acacia’s hair and cloak flutter in the wind, as now, after that chaotic instant, everything becomes silent again.
With her hair in disarray, her dress shredded, and cuts from debris all over her body, Manchineel still stands exactly where she stood, just within reach of Acacia. Her eyes are exactly as glazed over as they were, as if she hadn’t seen anything or known anything in defiance of her wishes. There’s not a hint of a reaction anywhere on her.
Acacia slowly lowers her arm, staring at her frozen sister for a moment, as an empty metal helmet clunks back down to the ground around her. Having nothing more to say, she turns, walking away through the jagged metal frame of what was once a window, which is now crooked and bent over like the gateway offering entry into a witch’s garden.
This is what it’s going to take if she’s serious about her wishes.
Of course, taking the throne had always implied that she would need to do what needed to be done to get there. It was never going to be a matter of diplomacy. The black knight isn’t known for his demeanor at the table, and neither should his master be.
“We have to go home,” says a voice from behind her.
Acacia stops, standing on a patch of clawed and ripped dirt, listening to the woman talking from behind her. “Come on, Acacia. Let’s go to the carriage,” says Manchineel, as if she were entirely oblivious to the fact of what just happened a second ago. As the last soul of her entire host, she stands there in the rubble of the manor. “Everyone’s waiting for us!”
Acacia keeps on walking, the broken, bent grass crunching beneath her boots as she flattens it on her way across the grounds.
— A hand grabs her shoulder.
“Acacia. We have to go,” says Manchineel, tugging on her shoulder and also on the last string Acacia has left, tying herself together.
A sharp crack shatters the air, Acacia’s arm is held up in the sky.
Manchineel’s face is turned away, a clear red mark staining her cheek where she had been struck by a hand swinging as hard as it could in what may be the first real time the perfect princess has ever been touched in a way like this.
Slowly, she turns her head back toward Acacia, looking at her younger sister in the eyes. “Acacia. We’re going to be late. Come on,” she says, as if nothing had happened. “I can’t wait for us to get back home together!”
“WHY WON’T YOU WAKE UP?!” screams Acaci at her, having lost the last of her control. Her hand reaches down, pulling out the rapier from her belt, the metal glinting. Acacia lifts the sword, pressing its tip against Manchineel’s chest. “Do you want me to kill you?!” she yells at her sister. “WAKE! UP!” she screams as loudly as she can, clenching her eyes to stop herself from crying as she presses the tip of the blade in past the barrier of her skin. A trickle of blood runs down her older sister’s chest.
The two of them stand there in silence for a time, with only the slowly returning birdsong of the morning filling the air now that the anarchy of the situation has dissipated. A rattling fills the air as the rapier clatters, pressed against the bone of Manchineel’s ribs.
“You’re the one who’s dreaming, Acacia,” says her older sister’s calm voice. Acacia’s eyes open wide. A hand clutches the end of the rapier, and blood from a palm sliding along the razor’s edge trickles down toward the hilt. She lifts her head, looking into her older sister’s eyes, which stare not with glassy lifelessness but rather toward her like someone pitying a sad puppy. “You’re a manic, delusional, sick runt of the litter, and you’re driven to madness because, at the end of the day, there’s nothing else that could become of such a weak, dying, jealous little creature,” says Manchineel, her blood running down the sword that she’s holding onto the end of. A red trickle runs down Acacia’s fingers. “You live in a make-believe world of your own every single day now, just like you did when we were girls.”
“…You’re joking, right…?” asks Acacia, her voice shaking. Her mind can’t believe the hypocritical words that she’s hearing right now. She stands upright, finding her balance despite her shaking legs.
“Are you?” asks Manchineel. “You can’t dethrone our brother. He’s family. Besides -”
“- You all threw me out to die!” interrupts Acacia, the emotion in her eyes clear to see as she stares with rage into Manchineel’s empty gaze.
“We threw you out to save the nation,” says Manchineel plainly, clapping the back of her fingers into her open palm. “We needed the black-knight to come to save us from the enemy, and you were the only way to make that happen, Acacia.” Manchineel gestures around herself at the destroyed emptiness present all across the destroyed garden, in which they are the only two. “And where is he? Huh?” asks the older princess. “Where is your so-called ‘protector’?” She looks at her. “We only needed one thing from you your entire life, and you can’t even deliver on that because of your endless selfishness and incompetence. You’re worthless.”
“This is between us, Manchineel,” hisses Acacia. “He’s not involved.”
“Everything you do fails, Acacia,” accuses Manchineel. “Ever since we were girls, everything you try fails, and everything you want to become will fail too,” she explains, stepping forward, letting the tip of the blade push in a little deeper into her body as she tests Acacia’s resolve. “Because you are a failure,” states the oldest princess plainly, clapping the back of her fingers into her palm with every word as she makes her own understanding of Acacia’s position clear. “And yet, as your sister, I am cursed with the burden of loving you,” explains the woman, taking Acacia’s words from her. “We’re going home. Now.” She yanks the sword by its blade out of Acacia’s grip, throwing it across the grass with indifference to the deep slice down her palm that runs to the bones of her fingers. The red rapier falls to the grass, and the ruby reflections show an arm reaching out to grab Acacia’s collar.
The youngest princess pulls back, swiping her sister’s grip away. Acacia’s hand begins to crackle, glowing with an inverse, unnatural light as sparks of uncontrolled magic twitch around her fingers. “No.” She holds out her hand toward the sword lying in the grass. A pulse of void energy launches the handle toward her, and she catches it in the same second as an aura radiates around her older sister.
Manchineel’s arm glows, a shine traveling down it like the flowing golden aura of a morning that never ends toward the tips of her fingers, where they grow and collect into a long, rigid shape.
This is Manchineel’s specialty — conjuration. She has the ability to temporarily create new things, but, as is of course typical for her, only things of the finest golds and silvers, embedded with stones and gems and engravings that would have taken masters of the craft of smithing the fullness of their lives’ ends to make.
The two of them stand there, the bloodied rapier and the golden longsword pointed past each other. “You don’t even know how to fight,” says Acacia.
“Do you?” asks Manchineel.
— Something grabs Acacia’s leg. She only twists to the side just in time, the edge of the golden sword cutting her skin as it presses just past her ribs as Manchineel lunges.
Acacia weaves behind her sister, pressing an elbow into her back and kicking her to the side, sending her rolling through the grass. Looking down, she looks at her leg at the golden shackle that has tied itself around her ankle, a golden chain digging down into the dirt and binding her there. Looking at her sister, who gets up, dusting herself off, Acacia sees the same exact bind tying her down as well.
“What do you think I’ve been doing out here this whole time?” replies Acacia, studying the binds.
Manchineel has trapped both of them here, within arms’ and swords’ reach of each other, each locked within a stepping distance of only a meter or so.
Manchineel points the sword back at her, preparing for a new bout. “You could never be queen, Acacia,” she says, shaking her head. The woman pushes forward, the golden chain around her ankles rattling as she moves all the way to its end. Acacia’s rapier blocks the longsword, the weapon, being a stabbing weapon in design and not meant for this sword of combat, bends and dulls as the much heavier longsword presses against its side. With her second arm, Acacia braces her weight against the end of the blade’s dull side to stop it from bending and shattering as her sister presses her weight down onto her sword.
Acacia narrows her eyes. She slides the blade along the length of the longsword, sparks flying through the air as she throws her older sister off balance and shoves her away.
Hissing, she stabs the blade down between the links of the golden chain around her ankle, starting to try and pry it apart. The conjured metal rattles, holding firmly.
“You don’t have what it takes,” says her sister. Acacia looks back up just in time to see a massive wall of golden metal flying straight her way. The world spins, her head ringing. The next thing she knows, after a brief blur of color and blackness, is that Acacia finds herself staring at the sky. Disoriented, she gets back up, looking at Manchineel, who is standing exactly where she left her at a distance away.
— A burst of movement comes from her side.
Acacia ducks, a golden fist of a conjured statue swinging out a second time from just next to where she is. Manchineel must have summoned it behind her when they locked swords a second ago. Her palm presses against it, the statue crumpling and folding in on itself like metal foil as it is drawn into a void emitting from her hand. “You knew me, Manchineel,” starts Acacia, standing upright and pointing the rapier back at her sister. “But you don’t know me now. I’ve changed.” Acacia’s free hand drops down to her waist, and an instant later, the golden chain around her ankles crumples and breaks the same way as the pressure of her spell shatters it into a thousand golden splinters that are drawn in and away into the abyss that she generates for a second.
“Not everyone changes for the best as they age,” remarks Manchineel, shaking her head, first holding her sword toward Acacia and then away and up toward the sky. She gives the golden longsword a light twirl. “But okay, Your Majesty,” says her older sister in a mocking tone. “Do you finally want to be a big-girl now, like your sister?” she asks. “Then let’s play big-girl games.”
Manchineel presses the sword down into the ground.
— The world begins to shake, with tremors moving through the soil in a dull, repeated vibration. Acacia stumbles forward, catching her balance as the ground below her moves and shifts. The torn up grass and mud rip apart as brickwork made entirely of gold and silver forces its way out from below, like the rising of a lost city of legend. One after the other, walls of solid gold brickwork erupt out of the dirt. Spiraling staircases and towers — made out of nothing but raw, magical force — begin to grow like mushrooms sprouting from a grave as they press toward the sky.
Acacia runs, her boots pressing over the changing world as she hurries toward Manchineel, her sword at the ready.
— The path she’s on bursts to the side, sending Acacia flying through the air.
Her hand stretches out as Acacia casts the same spell as before, creating a vortex between herself and the platform. The gravity of the black-hole pulls her back, breaking the momentum that had catapulted her away, and a second later she catches herself, landing on a rising tower, pressing up further and further toward the sky.
Brick by brick, wall by wall, a full castle emerges from the ground made of blindingly lustrous gold that glints and glimmers in the daylight.
And one after the other, statues begin to press out of the golden walls — knights and soldiers made of nothing but the same. Archers made out of solid gold with metal bows and arrows take aim toward Acacia as she leaps down before the tower carries her all the way to heaven, landing down on a wall and then down on another as arrows strike all around her, dozens of them being pulled into the spell.
Time slows down as Acacia runs forward, ducking and weaving through an array of arrows that hang there as if suspended underwater — the color of the world having been stolen and inverted within the bubble she’s standing inside of until she reaches the other side of the barrier, jumping out and pressing a fist against a golden suit of armor, blasting it apart with a burst of crushing void magic.
Her eyes look up toward Manchineel, who is standing there in the middle of the creation she’s made, swinging and weaving the golden sword around as if chasing butterflies with it in one of her daydreams, conjuring more and more of the endless labyrinth by the second.
This is the power of a royal, and it isn’t even a fraction of what Manchineel could really do — Acacia knows as much. One after the other, a dozen conjured knights become a hundred, and soon the walls of the castle crawl with a host of a thousand golden and silvered men in armor, aiming crossbows down her way. The glint of an endless number of crossbow bolts shines in the light, making themselves impossible to not notice.
“Do you need any help?” asks a familiar voice, more out of protocol than out of need, knowing already the answer it will get from her. Sir Knight’s words ring out from within her reach.
Yes. She does need his help, actually.
But she doesn’t want it.
“This is personal, Sir Knight,” replies Acacia, looking up at her sister, who sits on a golden spire connected to a series of staircases. More and more of the labyrinth grows in all directions. Stairs wind upside-down and walls turn and curve at impossible angles as the golden fortress becomes an abomination. “Stay out of it.”
Manchineel swings her sword down in a cutting motion.
— In the flash of a second, a full army empties its ammunition toward Acacia, who has only one last trick up her sleeve — or more aptly, in her cloak.
Grabbing the fabric of the cloak draped around her neck, Acacia swishes it over herself, disappearing into the void nested inside the back of the fabric.
Everything goes black as those arrows strike nothing but gold, clattering and ricocheting wildly in all directions.
“That’s one of my tricks,” says a voice from inside her lungs as Acacia falls endlessly, flying through the endless space that lies within the nothingness she’s pulled herself into. All around her float splinters of rubble from the mansion, debris, and people — all of whom she hurtles past toward a distant place on the other end of the abyss.
“I am your master, Sir Knight,” explains Acacia as her hair billows behind her as she falls. “Everything you do and know is mine,” she says, blasting out of the light on the other side.
An instant later, Acacia pops back out into firm reality, rolling as she lands and tumbles along a golden walkway. Catching herself, she sprints across the path, turning her head toward her older sister, who finds her again in her vision. The look on Manchineel’s face is something she hasn’t seen before. It’s like the cold amusement she can see in a cat when it’s playing with a mouse it has already captured.
“Look at you, Acacia!” calls Manchineel out excitedly from nearby, but not close enough to reach. “I guess you really have been playing pretend for a while now, huh?” asks her older sister. “I think the court jester has a funny parlor trick like that too!”
Acacia jumps across a gap, landing on the other side as she makes her way toward one of the staircases that leads up to the woman. “Good that you mention it,” she says, standing at the foot of the staircase. Acacia lifts her weapon, pointing it at her sister as she walks up toward her, step after step. One volley of arrows after the other flies toward her, but all of them are drawn into a series of black holes that she has dotted around the arena on her way here. “Maybe I’ll let you wear a funny hat and dance around my throne instead of killing you here,” she threatens. “Sisters have to look out for each other, after all,” says Acacia.
Manchineel claps her hands together. “You’re right, Acacia,” she says. “And that’s why I’m doing this.” She shakes her head. “It’s for your own good.”
“It’s over, Manchineel,” says Acacia, reaching the top. She swings out, cutting Manchineel’s arm, causing her to drop the sword. The golden longsword clatters against the castle pillar as a thousand golden knights aim their way.
“Remember when we were girls, Acacia?” asks Manchineel, lifting her dripping, bleeding arm up as she taps her face. The woman lifts her eyes, staring up at the sky as if she were losing herself in a dream. “We’d play for hours and hours together in the gardens.”
“Those days are long gone,” remarks Acacia. “I don’t play anymore, Manchineel. Surrender. We’re done. Bow your head, and then swear fealty to me as the new queen in the eyes of the public, and I’ll spare your life.” Acacia lifts the sword to Manchineel’s neck. “However, I will stand firm on the jester matter.” The pillar they’re on continues to rise and grow, pressing up higher past where the rooftops of the manor once were. Their tattered and cut clothes billow in the wind, together with their hair, as the ground becomes ever more distant.
“Huuuh?” asks Manchineel in a dozy tone, looking back down toward Acacia, the tip of the rapier scratching her neck — the girl perhaps really not having the resolve to press it the rest of the way through now that the second has come. Manchineel looks at her. “That’s sad, Acacia,” says the older princess. “I still play games all the time.” She smiles. “Life is supposed to fun, right?” asks Manchineel. “What good is being a princess if you can’t even have any fun?”
“I don’t have time for fun,” replies Acacia. “In case you forgot.”
“How could I?” sighs Manchineel, turning her head from side to side, as if letting the edge of the rapier cut her skin. She laughs as Acacia’s hand pulls back for only a fraction of a second. “I’m glad to see that you’re in good strength,” says Manchineel. “But this is for the best, Acacia,” she says. “Let’s have happy thoughts!” exclaims the older princess, holding her palms to her cheeks as she smiles an out of place look as if seeing a cute kitten for the first time.
A shadow looms over them.
Acacia turns her head, looking back around behind herself at the melting amalgamation of gold as the castle — having been warping and twisting this entire time around her — takes the shape of a giant; a melting golem rises up to a height beyond any tower or hill fortress. With an impossibly large fist raised up, dense and heavy enough to smash mountains to their foundations, it thunders out a single roar as its fist rises.
“ARE YOU STUPID?!” yells Acacia, looking back at her sister and seeing that she isn’t there anymore — at least not in spirit.
The woman stares there, dazing off into the distance as she looks through Acacia with a glazed over, empty look — the same that she always has when she retreats back into her thoughts of the perfect world that the perfect lives inside of. A shadow of a golden titan — large enough to terrify an army — looms over them as, in an instant,reality shakes and trembles as the construct’s fist smashes down onto the golden pillar the two of them were standing on, like a hammer driving a nail toward the core of the world.
So, really, right now is perhaps the time to ask — who is Acacia Odofredus Krone?
Is she the sickly girl who swore to become the queen of the nation at any cost, no matter how great, before she passes from her illness? Is she the black-princess, master of the black knight, who is the dread of the heart of all nations? Is she the human who bested the ancient monster that came before all monsters with the strength of her spirit alone? Or is she a timid, home-hearted girl who likes to live in a small, cozy rat’s hole with the people she has come to know, despite the fact that she knows she needs to spread her influence out into the world in order to reach that dream?
Maybe she’s all of these things?
But how do those so-different pieces fit together? How does this particular mess of a person that she is, made up out of so many separations and contradictions, exist as one whole entity who is not only fit to live her life but supposed to lead the lives of endless thousands as the queen?
The truth is that Acacia just doesn’t know.
The truth is that she’s just making it all up as she goes along, as if playing a great, big pretend game. So maybe what she told Manchineel just before was a lie? She does play games. She plays games every day — that’s how this all began, wasn’t it? It was a pretend-game that she had agreed to play with Sir Knight, which had spiraled to where she is now.
And this is why, after all of the talk, all of the threats, all of the promises, and destruction and fighting, Acacia finds herself plummeting down to the ground as the world above her roars in total destruction, as crushed gold walls and men flatten and break and shatter, holding onto her older sister — whom she hates — to protect her as they fall.
The thing about playing pretend for so long is that eventually, you don’t really know who you’re supposed to be at some point.
A shadow swallows them both in the instant before they strike the ground, and as they vanish, all that remains of the location that was once the mansion of the deceased Baron is a crater that looks like a tear from God has burned its way through the crust of the world.
Out in the heart of the nearby city, two princesses and a good hundred or so royal guards are spit back out of the eternal void — much to the confusion of the eyes of the public.
