The horse cart came to a stop in front of what might been a broken section of an ancient stone wall once upon a time. Strange engravings carved on the stones were hidden behind a curtain of thick creepers and wildflowers that grew every which way along the structure. The stones had chipped away in certain parts, but the wall still stood solemnly in the middle of the wilderness that led towards the forest of Sandora.

That was the only remnant of Triciella’s mighty western outpost.

Niel jumped down the cart with a ‘Whoops!’ and neatly bumped his nose right into the base of the wall. Joe had to bite her lips to stifle a laugh. For a self-proclaimed ‘traveller’, the boy had a hilarious lack of awareness for his surroundings. Wicksie probably agreed, because he serenely stepped down with a mercifully neutral expression and patted the younger boy on his head.

“Aagh! I wadn’t lookingg broberlyyy!” Niel moaned in agony, handed clasped over his reddening nose. His older brother nodded along, eyes anything but sympathetic.

Surprisingly, Ted Hawkins refused any payment for his help. “I treated you all because I wanted to, and it wasn’t because of any noble obligation.” He said, shaking his head when Nero fished out a bag of coins from his pocket to pay for the medicine and the lift. “I have treated many a victims of the bandits in our village for free, and I’m not about to start charging money now. It might seem foolish to you, but I just don’t want anyone else to suffer like our parents did.”

Nero smiled warmly and clapped him on his back. “Of course not! You may not have the military experience like your older brother, but you are staying back fighting all the same in your own little ways, are you not?”

Joe saw a hint of abashed smile on Ted’s face, his eyes much clearer than it had been all night. “Who knows?” He chuckled. “Besides, I do know that elder Sis won’t let me off the hook if she knew that I charged you for the medicine.”

The girl thought back to the strangely strict, affectionate woman with her loud guffaws and sad eyes. “Is she going to be alright all alone in the house? It’s not even morning yet!”

“Oh, she’ll be fine.” Ted waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t underestimate her, Joey. Elder sis is more capable than that. She is the one that brought me up all on her own after our parents’ death. Older sisters are tougher than you think.”

Niel chose that moment to let out a loud sneeze. “Older sisters are scary.” He muttered with a shiver, rubbing his nose against his sleeve.

Joe made a noise of disgust in her throat.

They parted from Ted at the outpost and crossed the wall with slow cautious steps. Moss was covering most of the broken stone carvings that lay haphazardly around the place, as if shielding the ancient relics from the sun and the wind. Mud sloshed around against their shoes and left dark stains everywhere.

Joe rolled her trousers higher up, entirely uncaring if Wicksie or Nero saw anything or bothered commenting about it.

She eyed the tiny puddles distrustfully. As if the moss wasn't enough, they just had to tread over slippery mud in a place littered with precarious ruins and jagged stones. One lousy misstep and she would trip most pathetically and bash her skull against the stones. Joe would prefer a concussion-free journey over useless notions of modesty anytime, thank you very much.

Niel neither cared nor bothered to look back. He merrily skipped over the stones and puddles, and ran ahead through the field of tall grass, hollering some kind of song that was hilariously off-key. The scratchy voice was still nasal, courtesy of the nose-bashing incident, but the adolescent cared not. He sang like he was at the top of the world, twirling and dancing and hopping away to the beat his own mysterious rhythm.

Joe couldn’t help the smile that was forming on her lips. Then she realized what she was doing and slapped herself across the face. God forbid anyone saw her with a dumb, dopey grin like that!

“Milady?” Nero whispered near her ears, eyes narrowed in concern.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. No worries.” Joe murmured, refusing to meet his eyes. She hiked her skirt higher up with a groan and marched on ahead.

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“I suppose this is where we part ways.” Wicksie said. They were standing in a clearing that was strangely devoid of the wild grass. Farther west, Joe could see rows upon rows of what looked like maple trees swaying in the horizon. That might as well have been the entrance to the forest. The once inky blue sky was now lighting up with streaks of golden red, as if someone had elegantly painted them from the east with a single brush stroke. The wispy clouds were outlined with the colours of dawn.

The girl tore her eyes from the distracting sight and laid them upon the hooded pair. Nero stopped in his tracks and turned to Wicksie meaningfully. There was a knowing smile on his face. Joe would have at least tried to decipher it, if she already hadn’t given up on trying to read Nero’s layers of expressions long ago.

“Yes, I suppose so.” She nodded back. “Take care, Wicksie. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

They were headed towards the plains of Whitemare. Joe didn’t know much about the place, other than the fact that it was an endless expanse of white salt along the shore of the Fallian Sea. Whatever top ‘secret’ stuff that was hidden there innocuously (Niel’s words, not hers) was none of her bloody business.

There was a purposeful clearing of throat beside her, and Joe turned to find Niel staring at her face with sparkling, hopeful eyes. He was like a child in the body of an adolescent, too stupidly naïve and entirely too gullible for this weird world. The boy could give the video game heroine a run for her money, only if he toned down his tactlessness a little.

“It was a pleasure to meet you too, Niel.” Joe said with a small bow, even though it had mostly been a headache and annoyance. She figured that they should at least part with amiable terms, and not at each others’ throat. No, no. The boy should have that much sensibility.

“As it should be!” Niel winked in delight, the utter moron, obviously mistaking her politeness for praise. He was annoyingly easy to read. “Take care, Joey! Don’t stalk people! Whelp, even if you do, don’t get into too much trouble for it! Ahahaha!!”

‘Joey’ valiantly ignored the part of her that wanted to throttle him. Patience, woman. Patience. Where was the angel when she needed it? Joe wanted the creature to teach her the ways of physical restraint (and some anger management, while they were at it).

“Don’t go running your mouth too much, Niel.” She returned instead. Screw politeness. “You’ll find yourself with a black eye of these days. Not everyone is going to let your tactless stupidity slide, just because you happen to be a little brat –—”

“Hey —!”

“—So kindly don’t go around causing too much trouble for Wicksie, mm’kay?”

Wicksie sent a short bow in her direction. “Why, thank you miss Joey.” His eyes met hers and they solemnly nodded together with shared understanding.

“Don’t thank her!! Why are you agreeing with her, dammit?!” Niel yelled indignantly, this close to tearing his hair in frustration. “Y-You—!” He pointed at Joe, “D’you want to fight here, you stupid little –—”

Joe plastered a cold, menacing smile on her face, the kind she’d seen Nero make at the bandits. She’d learnt from the best after all. It was devastatingly effective, because the boy gulped and immediately snapped his mouth shut against his better judgement.

Nero chuckled at the sight. It was a relief to see the young girl back in her snarky element after the bloodshed of the treacherous night.

“Goodbye, Niel, Wicksie!” Joe grinned, waving at the pair as she turned to follow Nero towards the direction of the forest. Niel was sullenly muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “—I’ll get you next time, idiot…”, but she didn’t care. The boy was obnoxious and annoying, and Wicksie was a little strange altogether, but deep down, she was glad that she’d met them in this journey.

Joe wasn’t lying when she had said that.

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“Do you regret coming on this little journey, milady?” Nero broke the silence after they had walked for ten minutes through the wild grass, straight towards Sandora. The morning mist spread out thinly over the fields like fine muslin, rolling and parting over the horizon as far as eyes could see.

Joe concentrated on her steps; the ground was muddy in certain parts, and veeery likely to drag her down with a tiny slip of feet. “After all this time? No, I don’t think I do.”

The man raised a curious brow at her words.

“Y’know, Nero, I won’t deny that there was a point when I badly wanted to go back to the safety of the manor, back to that cozy bed. But now when I look back on it, I’m kind of glad that I came.”

“Even after the bandits, milady?”

“Especially after the bandits.” Joe chuckled. “If I had quietly stayed back in the manor, always, always waiting for the right moment, I wouldn’t have managed to learn about this world at all. There is more to Triciella than its kings and queens, nobilities and royalties. There’s death and destruction lurking in places I wouldn’t have cared to look for, and then there were people like Mister Nathan and Miss Mathilda and Mister Ted, whom I wouldn’t have ever met if it weren’t for this journey.”

The chilly night breeze was giving way to the warmth of an early summer dawn, they could hear the shrill cacophony of bubblebirds flying back to their nest in unison.

“I needed a real wake-up call from that carefree life, Nero. I saw the lives of people outside of the glittering halls of Winsten manor. The more I see, the more possibilities open up before me. I’ve met mysterious kids like Pierre, stupid brats like Niel and even lazy fellows with cute names like ‘Wicksie’ of all things!”

“…And all in a span of a single night.”

Nero’s sudden laughter startled her. Joe almost tripped on her feet. “Sorry to inform you, milady, but there’s nothing quite cute about ‘Wicksie’.” He shook his head in amusement, as if remember a particularly funny anecdote.

“Huh?!”

“He is Shawn Wicksman, milady Joanna. He is a prodigy in martial arts and swordsmanship, the youngest to ever join the first division of the Royal army of Triciella. That man fought in his first real war at the mere age of seventeen, and even made a name for himself in the battlefield.”

Whoa!! Who knew that the easygoing ‘Wicksie’ was a famous certain someone in this kingdom? More importantly, why did the younger brother of the genius swordsman happen to be such a colossal brat?!

Wait—! Were Niel and Wicksie actually siblings in the first place?

Joe stared curiously at Nero’s chesire grin face.

“You know him, Nero?” Who was she kidding? Her bodyguard seemed to know everyone and their grandmother’s pet penguin in Triciella. She was torn between feeling intimidated and a tad curious.

“Everyone in the Royal army knows of him, milady. He is the genius of his generation.” Nero smiled down at her, eyes alight with pride. “Perhaps the most skilled swordsman this kingdom has seen in centuries. Do you know what he known as in the battlefield, milady? They call him ‘Shawn, the Wicked’.”

“The best?!” Joe had a hard time imagining it. “Even better than you, Nero?”

“Nero is flattered that you hold me in such high regards.” The man giggled good-naturedly. “But yes, Nero would say that as far as skills are concerned, Shawn is better than me. The only one in his age who could match his skill in swordsmanship was Edwina Pellingway. The two of them were the brightest students of St. Clarence in their year. No one could come even close.”

Joe perked up at the name. She had a feeling that she’d heard it somewhere.

“Who?”

“Ah milady, you should have heard of her from your history lessons. The Pellingway family was famed for their prowess with weapons, but Edwina Pellingway was also a genius in her own right.” Nero shook in head, a hint of remorse creeping up in his voice.

“Was?” Joe frowned. “What happened to her now?”

There was a strange lull in the atmosphere, the kind that happened when you asked the asked the wrong thing in the wrong time.

“You should read the history of Triciella more thoroughly, milady.” Nero answered with a sigh. “Edwina was the sole survivor of the Pellingway family. It happened in her last year at St. Clarence, because even an ancient family of skilled warriors isn’t free from the strings of political machinations in Triciella. She’s gone missing since then, Lady Edwina. No one really knows where she is right now. No one knows if she’s dead or alive.”

Joe felt her heart almost leap up her throat. You didn’t need to be a genius to have a guess at what he meant by ‘it’. She wondered how many more ugly secrets were hidden underneath the magical world of Triciella.

The girl thought back to the lazy face of ‘Wicksie’, his carefree eyes and that serene voice full of haphazard melodies. She thought of Nero, the seemingly ‘harmless’ man who talked in third person speech and giggled like a schoolgirl, and the Nero who slaughtered his enemies with a demonic smile on his face. She thought of the lackadaisical Nathan, who was full of sharp grins and cunning words beneath his ordinary, bespectacled face.

She thought back to Ted and Mathilda Hawkins, the siblings who lived life through hardened smiles and tough words, who still harbored resentment and vulnerabilities in their fragile hearts, away from prying eyes of outsiders.

Joe had seen so much more of this world than she was prepared to face. The more she watched, the more imperfect the world seemed to be. It was as if someone had wrapped it up with fine glittery paper, desperately trying to hide the ugly patches rotting underneath.

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It had taken thirty more minutes since they’d parted ways from Niel and ‘Wicksie’ before the infamous forest loomed into view once again. Joe winced from the blisters in her feet; she’d hadn’t walked this much ever since she’d arrived in the game world. Figures, nothing good ever came out of endless royal pampering, even in the body of a thirteen years old villainess. Joe mentally added ‘daily exercise’ to the list of things she needed to do when she returned back.

‘If’ she returned back.

“Nero, Nero.” The girl huffed. She really didn’t want to complain, but the cuts in her feet and her arms were beginning to sting, despite Mathilda’s minty ointment. There was an acute ache in her knees and her calves, the kind Nero had warned her about after almost an hour long ride on horseback. It hurt like a bitch. The lack of sleep was taking its toll on her. The lanky body of a youngster had its fair share of weaknesses. “How much longer do we go?”

Nero stopped abruptly before a small patch of blue and violet wildflowers. The girl almost crashed right into him. “Why, it is right here, milady Joanna.”

“E-Eh?” She rubbed her smarting nose and ran her eyes over the field of wild grass around them. They’d reached already? Frigging when?!

A strange rustle spread out in the surroundings, and Joe looked up in alarm. The air was filled with a heady scent that left her reeling and breathless, the ground slithered and shifted beneath her legs like a living being. Branches shook lazily in the light of the breaking dawn, as if waking from their deep slumber. Wisps of orange filled her line of view, swirling up in a rhythmic dance, donning the colours of autumn smack in the middle of Triciellan summer.

The girl stood entranced by the sight of a world that looked like it had sprouted wings and flown straight out of a fairytale.

The western forest was coming alive before her eyes.

Nero’s amused voice brought her out of the reverie. “Welcome to the ever-autumnal forest of Sandora, milady.”