They left the castle early in the morning and headed towards the mountains. Ed was riding on one of the cloudhorses, with Katya and Lucy sharing the other and Ingrid riding on her own winged horse. The flight towards the mountains went peacefully, but as they got into the foothills, the winds began to intensify and before long the party found that they had to land and continue on the ground. A couple of hours into the mountains themselves, the sound of galloping hoofbeats from behind caused the party to stop and prepare for battle.

The rider, an armored knight riding a cloudhorse, stopped in front of the battle ready delvers and held their hands up to indicate they were unarmed, before removing their helmet and revealing the face of Princess Neféli.

“Your Highness?” Ed asked in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m coming with you,” the princess answered.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“I am not the young girl you met the last time you’ve been to our kingdom, Sir Fergusson. I am a fully trained battlemage, and it is my duty as a member of the royal family and a knight of the kingdom to protect my people.”

Ed looked at the princess’s determined gaze, and bowed in his saddle.

“Very well, Your Highness. But I must insist that you follow my leadership while we’re out on this mission.”

The princess took a deep breath while Ed was talking, clearly intending to argue her case further, then deflated as she heard Ed’s answer.

“Just like that?” she asked in a bewildered voice. “I was sure I’d have to listen to a whole lecture about how princesses shouldn’t be risking their lives, and then to argue about why I should still come with you.”

“We’re firm believers in a person’s right to decide their own path where I come from. Wouldn’t dream of telling an adult woman what she should or shouldn’t do.”

“Besides,” Katya added, “Ingrid here is practically princess herself. Never let it stop her from doing the stupid things.”

“Hey!” Ingrid cried in mock anger. “You’re as much a princess as I am, Miss Petrova.”

“Bupkis. Babushka is not part of stupid resolution, so I am not princess.”

“And yet she can probably raise more followers than any two of the Five.” Katya opened her mouth to answer, but Ingrid wasn’t finished yet. “And your accent is slipping. ‘Bupkis’ isn’t Russian.”

Katya muttered something under her breath that Ed wasn’t really sad he couldn’t hear, he turned his attention back to the now even more bewildered Neféli.

“How can they be so…”

“Silly?” Ed supplied.

“Light hearted,” she answered. “We’re riding into battle against giants, and they’re cracking jokes at each other?”

“Have you ever been in battle before, Your Highness?” Ed asked gently.

“Not… really. I’ve been training since the day you brought my Aella back, but Father never let me join when the knights engaged the various enemies and monsters.”

“And I bet he doesn’t know you’re here with us now, right?”

The princess turned her eyes away in shame, refusing to answer.

“That’s between you and your father, and not my business,” Ed answered eventually. “But to answer your question, battle is stressful to the mind as well as the body. Humor is just one way of dealing with that stress, both before and after the fighting. There are other ways to cope, but most of them aren’t things we can do on the road.”

“I see…” she answered hesitantly “I did see that some of the knights would often joke before battle, but I never managed to get a straight answer from any of them.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Your Highness? This is going to be dangerous, and my abilities won’t shield you the way they do my companions.”

“I’m sure,” Neféli’s gaze firmed up. “I need to do this, for myself and my people.”

“Very well,” Ed said and signaled to the rest of the party that it was time to continue.

“And…” The princess began, and Ed turned back to listen to her. “Call me Neféli, please. I’m not a princess out here, just a knight working with you to protect my kingdom.”

“I can do that,” Ed answered with a smile. “Let’s move on, Neféli.”

Katya moved her horse closer to Ed’s when they were back on the way.

“You are hopeless, Ed. That was perfect moment for ‘as you wish’.”

“Yeah, well. Excuse me, Princess.”

Lucy, who was still riding behind Katya, giggled. “You walked into that one, Katya.”

“Philistine,” the drab replied. “Nyet kulturni.”

“On a more serious note,” Lucy sobered up, “Are you sure this is a good idea? It’s bound to get us in trouble with the king, and it looks like this place is going to be more important to us than we suspected.”

“Am I sure? No. But I’d rather not get into a serious argument with her when we’re in the Labyrinth and in what is obviously a Questshard mission. We’re bound to bring the cyclopes down on ourselves if we do.”

“We will not be able to convince her to go back anyway,” Katya added. “Girl is deep in rebellious princess trope, and may well have gone into mountains on her own if we decided to not let her come with us.”

“That may be,” Lucy countered, “but most current theories are the Labyrinth dwellers are fully conscious beings. She’s not just a computer program following a trope.”

“Maybe so, but Labyrinth is still built around human stories, and that one is recurrent theme in stories, and is probably important part of character.”

Ed turned his horse away from the cat-kin and drake, letting them continue their debate in peace.