Thank you all so much for 50 Power Stones! As promised, here's a Mass Release of two chapters: 34 and 35.

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Mass Release 2: 100 Power Stones

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"Where to?"

Reynard had a little think before he pulled out a scrunched up piece of paper from his pant's pocket.

"I prepared some locations, just in case," he said, holding the paper up for me to see and giving me a smirk. "Not that I thought we'd get this far."

I grabbed the paper from his hand and against his several protests, started to read it.

"Wait..." I said slowly, peering at the first option. "I've been to this place before. Isn't that the inn the guy who smokes the smelly stuff runs?"

Reynard looked at me wide-eyed. "You know Uncle Franke? When did you meet him?"

"That day at the pond," I said smugly. "So he's your uncle?"

"Not my biological uncle, he's not," Reynard responded nonchalantly as he folded his arms behind his head. "He's just an old friend of my Father's. Apparently, Uncle Franke used to babysit him or something."

"Woah," I laughed, reading off the rest of the locations on the list, none of which I recognized and then folded the paper. "So you think your Uncle Franke won't object to me staying?"

He looked at me incredulously. "Of course he will. He's a chill uncle but he's not game when it comes to going against the law. He'd rather give up selling ducks at his inn than doing what the imperial law forbids."

I scowled and grimly handed him back the paper. "So how do we get a room?"

Reynard took it from me and put it in his pocket. "Let's start off by changing your hair."

I unconsciously touched my head. "My hair?"

"Yeah..." he mumbled, observing it. "Even in the dark it looks so... purple!"

"Lilac, you dummy!"

He laughed. "But before we can do anything about that, we need to get you some shelter. Your powers are about to bloom."

"Reynard, now that we are on the topic of powers," I said as I pulled my hair away from my neck, "I'm starting to feel sick."

It was true. Since the tower, I had been silently aware of the sudden churning in my head and abdomen. I hadn't said anything about it as of yet, dismissing it as signs of period sickness or just normal indications of extreme nervousness. But now that we were well away and my mind had started to clear up a bit, the pain had started to sink in.

"Sick? As in, you're hurting somewhere?" he asked.

I nodded, staggering under the weight of the ascending pain.

"Where does it hurt?" Reynard asked worriedly, stopping in his tracks and turning around. "Hey, tell me, what's hurting?"

I groaned as I held my head.

"You need to tell me something or else I won't be able to help you."

This weirdly felt like deja vu, as if someone had asked me that before. But who was that someone, I couldn't point my finger on it….

"Your Highness, talk to me!" Reynard cried desperately as I slumped down on the pavement.

If I had any strength to speak, I would have. I would've told him that my whole body hurt like crazy, that I felt miserable. I would've told him that it felt as if I was dying.

As my consciousness started to fade, I only caught a few snippets of Reynard's speech as he yelled at me to wake up, constantly patting my sweaty face.

"I guess it's time," was one of the last things I heard him mumble before I drifted into a vast void of dark nothingness.

✿

When my eyelids finally opened again, which seemed like a long, long time after I had fainted, I was greeted by a soft, golden glow of light.

"You're up!"

I tilted my head slightly and squinted to see who said that. All I saw were a pair of knees.

It seemed as if I was lying down on a bed. This mattress didn't feel as soft and plushy as the one I had been accustomed to lately. But a mattress at all was better than none.

I looked around the room. It appeared as if Reynard had brought me to a cabin of some sort, with wooden planks covering every inch of the small, equal-sided room.

Reynard bent down in a fashion so that I could see more than his knees. His face bore down over me, blocking all light and for a moment I thought he was mad. Or maybe it was just because his face had been shadowed over. Then he broke out in a smile.

"Doing good, Your Highness?" he asked as his hand reached down to my forehead.

"Good, I'd say," I replied, taking in the coolness of his palm. "Care to tell me where we are?"

He removed his hand and turned away "We're at Lennard's."

I sat up on the support of my elbow which dug into the flimsy white sheet underneath.

"Who's Lennard?" I asked.

Reynard looked up from whatever he was doing by a small table on the far end of the wall, his back to me.

"He's one of my buds whom I went to academy with several years ago. Nice guy," he said as he turned around and brought a small finger-sized bottle over to me. "Here, drink this."

I took the bottle from his hand and gulped down a bitter fluid and shook my head right after. That had certainly woken me up. "What even was that?"

He took the empty bottle from me. "Lennard's mum got you some herbal medicine. Good for fevers, she said. I hope it wasn't too bitter, though."

I dismissed his concern by a subtle shake of my head.

My eyes followed Reynard as he walked over to the door and disposed of the bottle in a small basket set right by. "So this Lennard guy, how did he let us in so easily? Why would he do that?"

He looked up with humor in his eyes but a grim line of a mouth. "I told him you were my girlfriend."

"WHAT!?" I shook the sheets off, flailing my arms and legs in the air and sat up properly, wincing from the pain it caused. "You told him what?"

"Oh c'mon," Reynard smirked, "what else could I have said? That you were my sister? My friend? Lennard would've never believed that. And the major reason they let us in was because you were a fainted piece of flesh in my arms and I was looking like a worried mother. So deal with it."

He opened the door and shut it behind him with a satisfying thud. That foolish guy.

"Stupid..." I muttered at the innocent door.

Sighing, I tried to regather my scrabbled thoughts. Finally, I was alone so I could look around the room all I wanted. It was a square-shaped room like I said before, with each inch of the walls covered with wooden planks, except for the little rectangle of a window on one wall. I'd call it a pretty bare room as there was none but the bed, a table paired with a chair and the basket by the door. No picture frames, no carpet, nothing else.

This reminded me of my room back home, though I never even had a proper bed.

On the far table I could see a tray of food, and I was starving so I tried to stand up but my legs started wobbling not much to my own control and I fell back down on the bed with a thump. I looked down and saw that I was still in Zoie's uniform and honestly, it had started to irritate my skin very much.

My hair had been tied up in a bun and had been hidden under the bonnet, making it impossible for an outsider to determine whether I was the princess or not. Good work on Reynard's side. I waited for him to come back and when he did, he was carrying a glass of water.

He took the plate of food from the table and brought both things over to me.

"Here, eat something," he said soberly. "When was the last time you ate?"

I tried to remember as I picked up a tearable bun from the plate and started nibbling on it. "Breakfast, probably. I was bursting with nerves so I forwent lunch. Martha told me to eat several times but I refused as I was afraid that I'd throw it up or something."

Reynard watched me dip my bun in the gravy on the plate and chew on it hungrily, with both hands on his hips.

When he had made sure that I'd gobbled up every morsel of food served to me, he picked the plate and the empty glass of water up and went straight back outside the door. From outside I heard several clinking of plates and distant chatter which I wasn't able to hear very well.

When I thought everything was tranquil and my eyelids had started to flutter again, Reynard burst through the door with his palms massaging his temples.

"They want to meet you," he stressed every word. "Lennard just went out to get some foodstuffs so his mum thinks it's the best time she could talk to you. She asks if she can come in, since you aren't in great condition to get up. Should I…."

"I'll be fine," I said reassuringly. "Just give me an alias to go by. And a backstory that we could both match. Like how we met."

"Right..." he mumbled as he raked a hand through his hair. "Okay so your name's Sarah, yeah that works."

I gave him the most disgusted expression ever.

"What?" he said defensively. "You come up with something better. Come on, do it."

There had been one name I really liked in Korea which one of my foreign classmates had.

"Can I go by Ashley?" I asked slowly, thinking over my choice.

"Ashli?" he pronounced weirdly. "Fine, that's okay. For your surname, you've got to go with Rivers because I told Lennard's mum that you were Miss Rivers when we arrived."

My eyebrows snapped together. Though it was uncreative, I didn't especially dislike the sound of it. "Why that?"

He was distracted as he peeked out of the door. "First thing that came to mind. Now stop asking questions, Ashli Rivers, Mrs. Dryden is about to step in."

"But the backstory-"

"Shh!" he shushed me quickly.

Sighing, I made sure that not even a single strand of my hair was visible outside the bonnet by quickly doing a double check and beckoned to Reynard to let her in. He nodded and opened the door which creaked slowly till it was sticking against the wall.

"Aunty, come on in." he invited with a sudden change of tone.. "Ashli is well enough to meet you now."