Lost Princess

The match continues… White Queen to a4.

It was the summer of the second year after the failed attack on the capital Facility, and Alice was hurriedly getting dressed. That morning would be the last she would spend living at her house.

She was almost at the door when Shane, still buttoning up his shirt, called out from inside her room. “Alice! Your cloak!”

“Oh, thanks!”

“Sheesh, you’re hurrying too much. Are you even going to have breakfast?”

The 16-year-old girl sprinted back to her bedroom and snatched up the last piece of her mage uniform, bolting to the front door. “Yeah, I’ll have Vicky feed me, probably. You, remember you need to help Rick and the children move the last few of their belongings into the house. Once that’s done, the house is yours.”

Before Shane could open his mouth to respond, Alice was out the door and on her way to the Lady’s Quarters, where she would be living from then on. Using the secret passageways she’d committed to memory, it was easy to access the once off-limits Quarters. The first person she saw upon entering was her sister, sitting absentmindedly on the sofa.

“Hey Gretchen!” she greeted, giving the woman a hug. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

The taller one pointed towards the kitchen and let her little sister go. Victoria Winterway looked, uncharacteristically enough, disheveled and weary, still in her sleepwear with her hair pulled up in a bun. The cup of coffee in her hand was tangible evidence that she hadn’t slept much, if at all.

“Good morning, Alice… I admire your youthful enthusiasm.”

“This… might be my fault. After we arrested that other immortal two years ago, they kept continuously beating her up so she wouldn’t escape, but a couple days ago I convinced them to stop… and then she escaped. She still has that stab wound I gave her, so that will complicate things for her, but… Um, what happened? You normally wait until nighttime to be tired.”

Victoria sighed. “Gretchen was rowdy last night.”

“Ah. Why though? Isn’t she usually sleepy at night?”

“Unlike when she is lucid, yes… It was because of me. In this state, she synchronizes herself with those around her, in this case me, and I stayed up attempting to deal with internal affairs.”

“The rumors about me?”

“Indeed. It seems you have replaced your sister in the rumors about me playing favorites. The only problem with that is now the Free Press is trying to accuse me of being attracted to children…”

“No way, you’re too much of a doormat,” the younger one would’ve continued, but cut herself off when she saw the glare her companion was giving her, swiftly changing the topic. “How’s your injury?”

The immortal showed Alice a stab wound on the side of her stomach, properly bandaged and looked after, albeit clearly still there.

Alice’s brows furrowed, showcasing concern. “That’s not good. Hasn’t it been a week already? You heal faster than that. You always do.”

“The others are in worse condition. None of the injuries we sustained during that fight are healing at their usual speed. I know my skills are not as sharp as they were when we first established the Facilities, however…”

“Then those people might have been telling the truth.”

“Which is extremely alarming, Alice. I hope you are not here to request they be released from their cells.”

“Seeing this, no, I don’t think I’ll ever ask for that. But if they were being honest, how did they make weapons that could kill an immortal? Where did they even come from?”

“Our immortality is imperfect… except mine, according to the last study I participated in. This should heal eventually, at least for me,” the Lady sighed. “The scouts they followed had returned from the nuclear wastes close to the Core. If we talk factions, they could come from either of the other two, or they could be in exile. According to their physical characteristics, I would not bet on the Yokai Federation. They evolved much differently.”

“That thing about each faction’s humans having evolved differently is still crazy to me.”

Victoria crossed her arms. “We are fundamentally different, Alice. The ones who look most like humans used to are those that live in the Federation, their kingdom being at the very heart of the territory for the sake of protection. They are completely isolated from the dangers that lie on the borders of all factions, where monsters thrive, and their diets have remained the same. Humans from the Federation have only changed on the inside, their bodies did not rapidly mutate. The Zerzurans have been consuming whatever edibles they can get from the monsters they hunt for millennia, and creating materials from the rest, so they quickly got… considerably tougher than they should, and larger. In contrast, I have to admit our own people are rather scrawny and small. That is why, I believe our new prisoners might have come from the empire.”

“Zerzura? But aren’t they too honorable to attack us like this?”

“Yes. I would have to ask the empress to be sure, although considering the way they fought, she might have banished them.”

“Maaaaybe they come from your brother?”

Victoria chuckled mirthlessly. “Despite the fact we split paths a long time ago, I know my brother well. He would never allow the development of weapons that could threaten his superiority over mortals. That, and he has been remarkably quiet since we defeated the last army he sent for us. If I had to guess, I would say he is scheming something new, and we will not hear a tweet from him in a decently long time. If I’m lucky, you won’t be around when he makes his next move. Urgh, but her blood… she’ll probably live well into her hundreds… Not to mention, the feather. I don’t even want to think about the feather, if possible I would like to erase the image of it from my mind altogether.”

“Huh. Okay, so our current theory is they come from Zerzura. Why would a Zerzuran be banished from their lands?”

The red-eyed woman finished her coffee and went to her room to get changed, Alice in tow. “Something like high treason, or serious dishonor. It was no petty lie if it got them kicked out of the land they swore their lives to.”

“… yeah, dishonor is a big candidate. I think we should talk to the empress.”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

“Simply no. Mel has been… iffy, as of late.”

“What the fuck do you mean by iffy?”

Victoria sighed, now dressed in a more decent yet still comfortable dark red dress, and took out a stack of letters from one of her drawers. “Melisende is a hot-headed person, and she is aggressive toward us by nature, but for the past two years, I have noticed her getting more and more impatient, violent in her correspondence. I even received a few non-scheduled letters from her first wife. Catherine is technically not allowed to contact me, by order of the empress, so instead, they write the letters together, so that Mel won’t… overdo it and accidentally cause a war.”

“You make it sound like it’s happened before.”

“It… actually has. The wars between the Zerzuran Empire and the Yokai Federation will be forever remembered for their ferocity, even if, for the record, it first started because of Melisende’s terrible communication skills when it comes to foreigners. She has a tendency to declare wars on impulse and regret it immediately,” Victoria sighed again. “Overall not as bad as the 49 civil wars the yokai have made me witness.”

“You told me the empress had a short fuse, but is it really so bad? Also, she forbade her wife from contacting you?” Alice tilted her head to see what the letters in the other’s hands said. “Are all faction leaders similarly on the very border of toxicity?”

“She is a highly authoritarian woman, and there is much mistrust between our factions. I assume she believes it’s a way to ‘protect’ her from the enemy. Which is stupid, because we both know Catherine could fend for herself no matter what you did to her. The other two consorts cannot contact me either. Here, read the letters yourself. Do not count the amount of death threats, nor the war threats. You will run out of fingers.”

“You don’t seem very worried about those war threats.”

“If she truly wanted to hit us where it hurts, she could simply terminate all trade agreements. They can survive without the commodities we provide; our Facilities are not sustainable without the products we import from them. Everything from food to base building materials comes from them.”

“That is a huge faction death flag you just triggered, I hope you know that.”

Alice took the letters Victoria had handed to her and started skimming through them, concern growing by the minute.

“Do you see it now? The letters from the empress are delivered through soldiers, one after each significant conquest within my territory, while the ones from her first wife are delivered by bird, indicating Mel does not know her wife has been attempting to establish contact with me. She asked me not to respond to her letters, though that just leaves me at a loss, not knowing what to do.”

“Wait. We’ve been losing territory!?”

“Yes, for about two years. We lost every piece of land we held in South America, and a good part of the northern lands. Their soldiers will be at the capital’s gate in little time, and we are essentially surrounded. Our only option by now is to retreat closer to the Core. The floating islands would be a smart choice if not for the radiation.”

“What!? Did we just up and lose everything!? You make it sound like it’s only Central Europe left!”

“… Well… Not exactly, but almost. We have reliable control over Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the entirety of mainland Russia, for now. North America is… likely compromised at this point, even if our breeders are putting up a fight. I can tell they will be captured soon, and with them, the majority of the creatures we brought back through breeding centers. All the knowledge in their libraries, too… On top of that, we can count any and all island territories we previously held completely out of the equation, possibly even every last stretch of coast.”

“Were you hiding this from me!?”

“More or less, yes.”

Alice wanted to slap her, she really did, but instead she chose to take a deep breath and calm herself. “Okay, okay… We have to talk to them.”

“That will not work.”

“How much does the empress listen to her wife?”

“To Catherine, quite a lot. The empress’ first wife is the one in charge of diplomacy, and the one I usually meet up with for the global assembly. As far as I can see, her letters are filled with regret, apologies and concern. Other than Catherine, the second wife is the high general of the ground forces, so she is unlikely to be home to discuss this with the empress, but if you believe it to be relevant, she tends to be opposed to unnecessary wars. As for the third wife, she takes care of any and all civilian affairs, war reparations, integration programs, territory assimilation processes, citizen archives, that kind of thing. None of them are threatening towards me like Melisende is.”

“Then write a letter to them, ask for a diplomatic meeting.”

“That is not as easy as you may think. Here in the Facilities, we have our network, and that network stretches out throughout the continental SRP. However, the Outside does not have anything like that, if we do not count magic. That means information travels slowly, especially between factions, since envoys must be careful when crossing the border, daring the Outlands, and dealing with a foreign nation. The Federation’s kings and I tried embassies once. It did not go well. But at least with Zerzura, we fortunately do not run the risk of them shooting the messenger, so long as said messenger is trained to avoid doing or saying something dishonorable.”

“We don’t actually have a choice, Vicky,” Alice chastised, rolling her eyes. “It’s talking or we die. According to you, there’s no way we can beat them.”

Victoria nodded. “The Empire of Zerzura’s military might is something else entirely. I never thought they would attack unprovoked, they are certainly mightier than I had expected…”

“Are you sure they acted unprovoked? Try to remember if maybe you did something to offend them. You said they invaded two years ago, right? Did you do something prior to that invasion that could’ve aggravated the tensions you already had with them?”

The immortal thought back. “… perhaps… Their last official peaceful letter asked for a meeting. Melisende told me her scouts had found something off with the southern tribes, and not too long after that, I received a message from Catherine saying something was wrong with Mel, urging me to meet up with them because she would not be able to stop her wife from declaring war on me if I didn’t.”

“… what tribes?”

“From what I know, Mel’s empire used to be a kingdom, in the Sahara Desert, down in Africa. That continent was not as affected by the Core as Europe and the general northern hemisphere, but it still was. The humans there and the survivors who fled to the south joined into tribes. They fought among themselves often. When she took the throne, Melisende drove the unaffiliated tribes farther south, gaining more territory for herself and her subjects to populate. We call the remainder of those groups of humans ‘the southern tribes’, who control certain lands she did not bother to conquer. Either way, to make sure they are not up to anything troublesome, the empress sends spies to infiltrate the tribes every few years. According to her letter, her spies and her scouts had all been killed, except for one, and that one had a message for her. As reported by Catherine in her letters to me, Melisende was challenged to a duel against their new leader, the one who united all tribes. And… she lost.”

“What? Isn’t she the undefeated empress?”

“That is exactly why I did not believe her at first. That, and in Mel’s letter, she claims the tribes’ lands are fertile again, their water supplies were replenished, and the monsters had been exterminated. In line with what I have heard, however, the last few plagues that ravaged our world should have left them barren and uninhabitable. She said strange things were happening at the Borderlands, and that the tribes were clearly a threat to both of us. She even sent a delegation to the Federation all the way in the east and invited me to the palace.”

“Aren’t they an entire continent away from us?”

“Yes, that is one of my reasons for not responding to their plea. If it is anything of importance, I thought, it will be discussed at the next world summit. I am now not so sure I will have a faction to speak for at that summit…”

“Vicky, we need to send them a letter! This is clearly happening because you didn’t reply to their request for a diplomatic meeting! Sit down and write, right now!”

“… should I really? We can probably pull ourselves together and defend Central Europe at least, if I recall all our troops and all of my siblings,” Victoria suggested, trying to avoid contacting outsiders at all costs. “We do have our engineers working on those blueprints I dug up… Not sure nuking the Zerzuran capital is the best choice, it may or may not trigger Mel’s inner demon, and that would not be a good thing. We’ve seen what unleashed demons can do before… I don’t want to see it again. Not to mention I do not even want to try and conceive what Catherine’s ‘ultimate defense plan’ entails. Nope, not touching the capital, at least not with a nuke. Winning is not worth it if it’ll get Catherine of all people to retaliate.”

“No, we need to talk, and I can only hope they’re willing after two years of ignoring them,” the teen growled. “Sit and write.”

“Alice, they are not going to listen-”

Alice unsheathed a dagger. “Do it or I’ll stab myself.”

“…”

“In the heart.”

“Alright, alright, calm down,” Victoria sighed and sat down at her desk, taking out a sheet of paper and a pen to write with. “What exactly do you think I should say in this letter, then?”

“Ask them to talk, I guess? Negotiations would probably go better in person, and faster. You said the empress invited you to her palace in the last peaceful letter she sent you, right? Will it work if we lie and say we never got it?”

“It will not.”

“Are you just saying that, or is there a reason?”

“There is in fact a reason. Any other plans?”

“We can… Say sorry and ask for a meeting again? I mean, if you explain your reasoning, I’m sure they’ll understand, right?”

“I would not be so quick to assume that. The other three can all make decisions, and they are all in charge of a specific area of government, but the empress ultimately has the final say.”

Alice took a deep breath. “If causing disruptions in a happy marriage is what it takes, then so be it. Also, I hope you’re aware that I’m gonna go with you if they say yes.”

“I had very little hope that you would stay here and be a good kid for once.”

The teen huffed, offended. “I am an adult.”

“Legally, yes. That means nothing. Will you at least behave yourself?” Victoria pleaded, beginning to write the fateful request.

“No promises, but if you answer all of my questions along the way, I’ll try not to pester you too much~”