《The Petty Queen of Lull》Chapter 11
Advertisement
“Your majesty!” one of the men beside her shouted, seemingly as surprised as Casteddu, either they are very good at acting or she is truly a naive idiot, he thought.
Either way, he could not let his guard down, all his fellows depended on him, this is either a trap laid by them beforehand, to humiliate them further, or an empty gesture of a naive monarch, whose actions however sincere will only cause them trouble in the future.
He crossed his arms, “Why would you do this? Are we not more profitable to you as slaves?” he probed the other side, even though he expected a dishonest answer, the longer they talked the more he could discern.
“Truthfully, yes, it is in my economic interest to keep you as slaves.” She replied “However, I simply find the idea of slavery abhorrent. Up until now, I had left management to my ministers and only recently found out about your situation, thus I rode out here to remedy the situation immediately.”
Casteddu looked over the party, given the way her entourage had acted plus the relatively small size of the retinue guarding the queen, her story was plausible. An idealist ruler suddenly finding out about wrongdoings in her land and rushing out to deal with them while her exasperated servants must follow.
However, he remained wary, he decided it was time to simply be upfront to see how they would react, “Frankly, I do not believe you, you wish to win our trust to somehow put us in a worse situation.” The guards beside her immediately took offense to his words, but once again the queen stopped them, while also looking pensive.
“I truly give you very little reason to believe I'm sincere, and however precarious your situation already is, the risk of trusting me is a lot.” Even if she was naive, she could understand situations like this pretty well, at least.
Advertisement
“So, how about this?” She asked her guards to put their swords away and step back, which they reluctantly did after she threatened them.
Then, she simply walked forward.
This surprised everyone around, and the man that had been standing beside her immediately jumped into action, but she once again stopped him, “Do not move forward, Kavanagh, this is an order from your queen. Don't forget who is in charge.”
The man, to his merit, hesitated for only a second before moving ahead again. Royal guards should protect their liege at all costs, even against their own wishes.
“If you come any closer, I will strip you of your title of knight, I will fire all my other guards, and then I will come back here alone.” She looked at him with a totally serious expression, the previous levity in her words gone, she really meant it. “If you want my best chance of survival, then you will stand down now.”
With this ultimatum, he finally stopped, but refused to take a step back, she seemed satisfied with this much. She glanced at the others, to see if they would make a move, and finally turned and kept walking towards Casteddu.
Previously they had been a few feet apart, with her guards on either side of her, even if he desired to attack her, he would have been quickly parried and cut down. But now she stood directly in front of him, with all her guards far away.
Right below him, she stood and looked up at his eyes. The girl was only five feet four, while him with his neck extended easily cleared eight feet, his body mass was easily triple hers, and with a single strike from one of his hands he could break her body and toss it around like a ragdoll.
Advertisement
“What are you doing?” he asked, unsure how to react.
“I'm asking you to put your trust in me and believe, but that is far too risky for your people. So, to make this fair, it's only logical that there should be risk for me, too” She lifted her right arm towards him, with her hand open awaiting a handshake. “I have put my trust in you, so now I ask you to put yours on me, that's all.”
Casteddu looked at the minuscule, fragile woman. Physically, it was no contest, but she stared at his face, unwavering, without blinking, he was almost sure that behind her green irises he could see the faint outline of a raging fire.
He was taken aback, he almost felt like looking away from her penetrating gaze. He had seen eyes like that but a few times before, someone who thinks they can change the world. Among commoners, people like her would frequently go off to join an army or mercenary band in search of a greater purpose or some lofty goal, and then their enthusiasm would immediately get themselves killed in the first battle they took part of.
A fool.
And what is a person who follows a fool into battle, but a fool themselves? Allying with this girl, there will be nothing but tragedies for them in the future.
Yet, a fool’s enthusiasm is contagious, when someone feels so deeply about something it is hard to not get caught up in their wave. She really wants to help us, this idiot.
That much was true.
He looked down at her with a neutral expression, without betraying his internal thoughts. Whatever her body might look like, he understood she was stronger than most men he had met. Or, at the very least, far stupider.
He lifted his own right arm, and gently grasped hers; they shook hands while Eriu smiled.
Advertisement
This Isn't My World, And It Pisses Me Off
Everyone knows the Isekai genre. Everyone knows the tropes, the plots, the hooks. But, not everyone likes it. This is the story of Ikari Yasashi, someone who hates that genre. He ended up in a new world, and he's not particularily happy about it.
8 182Just a Simple Guy
Earth has been transformed, people can gain power previously imagined only in stories but what does this mean? One person is trying to figure it out while staying rather low profile but... Thats obviously not going to work out as this is a story about him. About the not so simple guy named Salim Douglas and his trip through the system that has taken over his world.
8 191FREE
FREE (Free Reality Engagement Engine) is a new virtual reality game engine that completely gets rid of the limitations that all previous VR games had to deal with. The company that made the engine announced the launch of the first game created on it simultaneously, called FREE World. Sandra Kiell is a computer science major at UCLA and was working as an intern for Breeze Entertainment (the creators of FREE) during the announcement and was able to pre-order the game before it went public as a result. Not a hardcore player shes more interested in the having fun in FW and just wants to enjoy the game how she want's, but will the game and the people in it let her?This will be the first story I've written so I appreciate any feedback you wish to give me (how to improve my writing, character development, ect.). Also if you have suggestions for where you think the story might go I promise to consider them if you wish to share, if i use the idea I will give credit where credit is do.Warning:The mature tag is not a joke read at your own discretion. There will be bad language, descriptions of gore/bloody content, possible drug/alcohol references and possible sexual content depending on where I decide to take the story.
8 103Fortuna Verto
A girl’s luck changes when her world changes upon itself, sending her back and forth between a world she knows and another that shouldn’t even exist. Working with her parallel self from that other world, the two must adjust to their alternate form when visiting the other’s world, as they search for a way to escape the chains of misfortune they are bound to. While this story is the conclusion of the trilogy, it is also fully capable of standing alone in its own light, as the world of Celese itself is no longer a place the characters will be journeying through. However, the events of the story are a spoiler for all previous books, in case that matters to anyone. This book has an additional chapter after the final chapter that represents the trilogy conclusion, and should not be read until all three books are read first. Fortuna Verto continues the events of Essentia Animus to advance society into a sci-fi interpretation of Celese, bringing events to a distant world of another star. At the same time, events interpret a real-world advancement into a similar sci-fi age of another planet that shares Earth’s galaxy, a planet that has also been linked by the Celesi Veil. English remains predominant in both worlds of the story, but the presence of both sides makes certain Aethyx terms stand out, while Earth-styled scientific terms will also stand in a powerful contrast. Instrumentation remains an important aspect of the Elemental Era, but the influence of the gift has grown distant after discovering the superiority of the elements. Harnessing the elements had eliminated some of the original limitations of instrumentation, allowing for a self-sustaining focal source that provides solutions to problems such as automation. This turns the development available from the previous modern-day sense of a fantasy to one that is deep-future. Finally, opening access to the passage across the veil will open this progress in comparison to a very similar deep-future parallel world without such fantasy elements, contrasting the laws of physics with the laws of elements in a convergence of time and space.
8 638HERO CHRONICLES:
The world's first VRMMO [ Fantasy Online] have just begun. All the people couldn't help but felt excited beyond belief, dreaming new adventures and becoming heroes that fight monsters. However, when the game goes live, the elation of these people quickly turns to horror as they discover that it was impossible to log-out. Though an eccentric, self-proclaimed hedonist, Hero Stein, became one of these players. Gave his all to survive and protect the people he wanted to protect but it seems the women of fate have something in store for him. Involved in the fight between gods! Can he create a new myth that transcends all other existing myths? Is the world they thought really was nothing but a bunch of data? A fictional world? Just what and who is the real Hero Stein...?!
8 232HEx #5
Logan Randall, a coma patient, is given the chance to live once more in a fully VR MMO. Things go awry and he has to find a way to live in his new sci-fi world.Deadly aliens, new planets, and the ever present problem that is other players, Logan needs to make sure to carve out his own place because it's his only way to live now.
8 84