Not much happened since they left the borders of dwarven citadel, the temperature continued to drop as they ventured further in Londrian territory, with the occasional low visibility due to storms that passed by, however thanks to Phoebe’s navigational skills they were able to more or less keep going in the right direction through the vast white expanse without much trouble.

Days, weeks flew by however the knight was still unconscious and unresponsive to any physical stimuli, Leona still took great care of him with the little rations that were given to them, she kept him hydrated throughout the journey. But she couldn’t take it off her mind that his state was a result of her own foolishness.

Nevertheless it was almost the sixteenth day of travel and they were still somewhat far from Londria, the castle’s spire visible from the borders between the two kingdoms was now more clear, spiking through the darkened clouds like a spear aimed upon the heavens beyond the mountains to the north.

“We are already running low on supplies…”

Leona muttered while checking the box of supplies given to them in the beginning of the journey, unfortunately, even with the knight not partaking in the consumption of the rudimentary canned food, it was only a matter of days before they ran empty on food.

“Princess! There are some people up ahead!”

The high elf’s voice prompted Leona to turn around. She noticed between the gap of her fingers and squinted eye, a group of around three people just a little beyond the peak of the hill alongside a crashed carriage.

“Let’s stop by them, maybe we can help and get some supplies in return!”

She yelled back and the high elf started to gently pull the brakes. A deafening screech echoed from the wheels behind the vehicle as they started to slow down. However due to the vehicle being a massive chunk of metal, the moment it approached the group of two men and one woman were startled by the unusual machine.

All of them wore clothes suited for the harsh Londrian weather with thick fur coats, pants, high leather boots and fluffy hats that covered the side of the head, but the carriage’s back wheel was broken and there were many tracks alongside the crash site.

“What in the world is this thing?!”

The woman took a few steps back while the other two went for the longswords in their sheathes.

“Calm down! This is just our ride.”

Phoebe started to say with both of her hands out as if trying to calm them down. Leona also stepped out of the vehicle while looking around, seemingly searching for something.

“This blasphemy?! How do you even ride that thing without an animal?!”

The woman kept pointing at the snow sledge.

“I could say the same to you.”

Leona’s tone surprised Phoebe. Her statement made tension’s rise as everyone caught on where she was leading the conversation to, with both men having their hands inching towards the blade at their hips, unbeknownst to them, both Phoebe and the young lady were more than capable to take them on.

While hiding her left hand from the trio behind her own back, Leona continued with a loud and clear voice.

“At first I thought you three to be merchants but seeing how you’re missing an animal to pull your carriage, you’re not merchants are you?”

When words left her mouth, time seemed to slow down for a few seconds as both males pulled out the longswords, as they did, Phoebe drew both of her daggers and Leona took a single step back, revealing her left hand to be encased slightly in ice. She winded her left arm across her chest and swung it outward, shooting out a barrage of thin sharp icicles in a cone in front of her.

At the same time, the high elf chucked the dagger on her left hand towards the man on the left side, hitting his forehead and knocking him off balance.

The man on the right was pierced by the five shards of ice, two in the chest, one in the right bicep and another in the forearm while the last hit the left leg thigh.

As everything happened, the woman was scrambling on the ground for something around her waist.

“Gah! Dammit!”

The man pierced by the icicles was still alive and shouted full of anger as he tried to raise the blade over his head to strike Leona, but the handle escaped from his grasp and fell between him and the young lady.

Noticing an opening, she rushed forward before he could pick up the blade and with a swing of her right hand she created a powerful impact of wind against the man’s chest, sinking the rest of the exposed icicle in his chest deeper into the wound while knocking him off his feet as the fur hat and longsword went flying away from the blast.

Seeing Leona out of danger, Phoebe focused on barely dodging the longsword coming for her chest with a left sidestep and stabbing the man’s throat as she passed by running towards the woman now armed with what seemed to be a matchlock pistol.

“Die!”

She yelled when pulling the trigger but Phoebe already knew what kind of weapon that was and dodged the shot effortlessly to the right while also picking up the dagger she had thrown.

The high elf closed the gap and slashed her opponent’s wrist before she could make another move. The woman dropped the weapon and screamed in agony as the warm blood painted the snow red.

Leona approached after taking a good look around, she asked.

“Where are the people who owned this carriage?”

“Hah? Why would I spill it out to a brat like you?”

Phoebe suddenly put the sharp blade of her dagger right against the woman’s throat as a faint trickle of blood started to accumulate over the steel’s edge.

“A cave! In the foot of the mountain to the north, it’s hidden with an illusion spell, it shouldn’t be hard to find, just look for a boulder with the shape of a knot!”

Leona took a deep breath and after closing her eyes for a second she turned to the high elf before heading back to the snow sledge.

“Alright. Grab all of their things we can use, let’s go.”

“Wait, you're just going to leave me here in the cold?!”

The woman tried to talk her way out but Phoebe punched the side of her chin, knocking her out cold. Leona was about to reach the sledge when she dropped on her knees as she raised both hands towards her mouth to try to stop the impending urge to vomit but it was futile. Smeared all over the snow, there was mostly gastric acid and remains of the food she had eaten earlier in the day.

Her legs felt weak, even though she knew she had to kill in order to stay alive, it just felt surreal to take another human’s life in a heartbeat and unlike many days ago she knew he died by her hands alone. She grasped the snow between each hand as she coughed the last acid taste off her mouth.

‘This… this is the dreadful path I’ll have to walk from now on, isn’t it?’

She thought to reassure herself. It had to be done, if it wasn’t now, it would surely happen eventually and she wouldn’t have the luxury to hesitate when it came.

“Are you alright Princess?”

Phoebe came to aid her after noticing the poor lass throwing up, but Leona simply raised her right palm while shaking her head, replying.

“It’s just a minor reaction, I’m not quite used to this yet. So don’t worry about me.”

It was possible to see the high elf’s expression frown under the cloth around her face, it was simply regret, regret of allowing someone to bloody their hands for the first time because she knew better than anyone, the first time is never the last in that line of work.

Leona slammed her fist against the snow and tried to stand up, only to stumble forward and catch herself against the edge of the snow sledge. The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming, but the moment she laid eyes upon the knight resting defenselessly against the edge of the middle seat, she found some solace knowing that she had protected him for the first time.

Upon gathering strength, she pulled herself over the edge of the vehicle and sat sloppily on the backseat. She held her head with both hands by squeezing her nose ridge firmly with the index fingers while frowning her brow.

She needed to loot the corpses of those bandits but the mere thought of touching the body of someone she had killed was enough to make her feel queasy again. Thankfully Phoebe made short work of their belongings as well as clothing as she was seen wearing a fur coat over her shinobi armor and a fluffy hat covering almost all the side of her neck. She approached the left side of where Leona was sitting and reported.

“Princess, I got everything I could off them and there was nothing useful inside the carriage. What should we do now?”

“We go to this cave that woman was talking about. We need shelter for Krieg to rest-”

The thought of having to kill more people made her stop mid-sentence which caused Phoebe to lean sideways to look at her face and ask.

“Are you certain you want to do this? It’s not too late to set up camp here.”

“No, we must move forward. Each second we pass without moving forward means delaying the end of this grueling campaign.”

“But you need to consider the state that you are in right now Princess. Are you certain you can do this? There might be more than just three people in there considering how confident they were in ambushing travelers all the way out here.”

“I know. But still, we need shelter and they have it in the middle of this frigid place, there’ll be a storm soon and I don’t want Krieg to be out in the forest once it hits.”

With a few seconds of silence, the high elf nodded once before reaching for the equipment she had gathered from the bandits behind her.

“Here, at least take this with you. It’s not much but from what I remember you know how to use it.”

She handed over the sheathed longsword to her. The scabbard had dark red stains all over the leather near the guard and the blade itself had some dents but it was a serviceable weapon. Leona silently took the sheathed sword and strapped it to her belt.

When before all of this happened she had a feeling of wonder when handling arms, now there was a hint of anxiety in her expression. Nevertheless she had to wield it, if not for her, for the loyal knight that has always been protecting her.

“Let’s go Phoebe.”

She said without looking at the high elf, who simply nodded and climbed up the vehicle, sitting in the driver’s seat. After checking the handlebar, break and putting on the protection goggles she turned around slightly to tell Leona.

“All ready here.”

“Firing it, in three, two, one… fire.”

She let out a small blue spark from between her hands into the chamber, powering up the vehicle which started to puff out gasses from the exhaust pipe. The spiked wheels made short work of the snow beneath them, carving a way through the soft snow and as they went forward.

Leona noticed the protective eyewear she was supposed to use on the floor near the engine, she grabbed it and wore it properly even though the wind wasn’t directly against her face, if she needed to turn around at least there wasn’t a risk of something blinding her. After that she leaned slightly to the side to take a look at the knight who was still asleep.

“Krieg… I hope you are alright.”

She muttered with a hint of sadness in her voice. Ever since he was assigned to be her personal knight, she never saw him falter. His utmost devotion to her safety was what kept her alive for so long until now and she knew that if he was any less of a fighter than what her father assured her he was, she wouldn’t be there to begin with.

But there was nothing else she could do for him if not finding shelter, even though she has a vast knowledge of elemental magic, she had no idea how to treat people’s wounds or injuries. Mulling over something she couldn’t do was pointless, so instead she focused on what she could do to help, even if it meant tainting her hands red.

“Phoebe, can I speed things up?!”

She shouted from behind the vehicle and upon hearing it the high elf simply gave her a thumbs up without taking her eyes off the path they were taking.

Leona closed her eyes, she needed a compact flame strong enough to make the engine work properly without overstraining it, but at the same time one that could last for minutes. Inside her mind she visualized a pulsing orb of fire that released its energy periodically instead of instantly like most fire spells worked.

‘Delayed Fire Blast should work if I make some changes to it.’

First, she approached both hands against each other with all fingers spaced out from one another, many thin strings of light blue mana gathered from her fingers towards the point in the center between both hands. As the strings gathered, the mass started to take the shape of an orb, heating up quickly turning from light blue to orange and slowly changing to a darker blue tone as she used the same strings to rotate plenty of air around the fire.

She then started to force her hands together, compressing the orb of fire in a way that made the blue flames become much more intense. It started to hurt her eyes when staring directly at it. After reducing it to almost a quarter of the original size, she started to work on dividing the spell into layers, while feeding it more mana between each one as she kept the constant flow of air to keep the spell alive.

When her muscles were almost exhausted from holding down the spell, she released it inside the firing chamber which at first didn’t seem to do anything, until the first explosion happened. The spell she had released was much more potent as the snow sledge yanked forward without much warning, prompting the high elf to make adjustments to not let the vehicle topple with the increased speed. Leona on the other hand roughly knew for how long the spell would last, affording her a few minutes of rest as she leaned her head back on the knight’s shoulder.

“Why am I so pathetic…?”

She muttered as she closed her eyes, thinking back how she ended the life of another human being with a simple motion of her arm made her feel guilty for using the knowledge her mother had given her in order to kill.

“This isn’t what my mother wanted from me. If I knew how to handle magic better then maybe…”

There was no other way she could have solved it, even if she had aimed the ice or the wind towards the man’s legs he could still have wounded her or Phoebe and even if he didn’t, he would’ve died to the cold or wild animals anyway. Her mind struggled to accept it as the right choice, the duality of killing to protect, she wondered if Krieg ever faced the same dilemma when taking a foe’s life.

Nevertheless she needed to recover the mana she had spent so she grabbed the edges of the uniform which thankfully was warm enough to keep her comfortable and slowly closed her eyes. Though even with the thoughts plaguing her mind from what she had done, she managed to rest.

Meanwhile Phoebe found herself in a dire situation, while she acquired the necessary clothing to not rely on the Princess’ heating magic anymore, the extra size from the fur coat over the shinobi armor made it somewhat uncomfortable to move in, but at the same time she didn’t want to part with it since it was a rather warm garment.

It had been almost six months since she departed from the east nation in order to find Krieg, but even now she still wondered how one man without any remarkable talent beside fighting could save the Queen. After all, the continuous battle against the death angel horde was nothing like fighting other humans or demons, they never feel fatigued, pain only makes them stronger and sleep was something unnecessary for the beasts making it an ever uphill fight against such a foe.

While she still had the responsibility to learn more about where they came from, she still had her own revenge in mind, but the fact her sister was on the new king’s side made things more complicated. Knowing just how powerful she was as a magic caster coupled with the might of the Arcadian army made her former plan of assassinating her go down the drain, at the same time she hadn't learned anything useful up until now so her mind wasn’t exactly at peace.

“That being said, Londria is supposed to hold more knowledge on magical beasts. Maybe if I manage to sneak into one of their laboratories… but then again I would be risking putting them in danger.”

It was an impasse, even if her top priority was to take him to the east, she wanted to at least make some progress in learning about her enemy, as it stood the divine menace was still her sister’s responsibility in her eyes.

“Dammit. I’m not getting anywhere with this.”

She focused on driving the snow sledge, judging from how long they’ve been traveling she knew it would take time for the sun to come back and that meant there would be no way for her to check if they were really going north besides the stars.

By looking up, she expected the find the shiny star known as Red Comet that is used to find the way north with more ease but the former clear sky was already covered with clouds, they were at the edge of the snow storm, with fine white particles pelting Phoebe in the face she was forced to lower her face slightly and pull the fur cap in front of her forehead as a thankful thought came to her mind.

‘We were lucky these past couple of days, who knew a storm would catch us out here in the open.’ Through little of what she could see, she noticed the path they took started to incline up ever so slightly. ‘Wait a minute…’

She started to gently pull the breaks, slowing the vehicle with a high pitched screech as she looked around. With a small window between the gusts of wind carrying snow, she noticed the beginning of the foot of a mountain not too far from them, to the very far right, darkened rocks broke the flat surface of the snow.

As she started to approach the mountain formation, she noticed a strange looking jagged rock in the shape of a knot. She used the incline coupled with a gentle turn of the handlebar and a well timed pull of the break to park the snow sledge against the foot of the mountain, looking around it was possible to see some footprints on the snow which varied in size.

Phoebe got off the vehicle, strapped her longbow to the quiver and held out one dagger in each hand as she inspected the footprints. From the difference in size and depth of each footprint it was possible to deduce there were at least six people inside, with two of them being lighter on their feet.

“Hmm…”

She hugged the far wall of the mountain and carefully inspected where the illusion began by tapping the rocks gently with the tip of the blade. Eventually when she approached the knot rock again, about two meters before it, her dagger suddenly sank through the wall as if it was made of sand, she quickly retracted her blade and noticed part of the wall regenerating back the part she had just broken.

‘Earth magic huh? Interesting…’

Carefully, she backed away towards the vehicle. At that time, Leona was waking up, yawning and rubbing the corner of her eyes to clean out the accumulated gunk. The high elf approached her side and reported to her while keeping tabs on her back to see if no one came to the entrance while they were there.

“Princess, we’ve reached the cave, I inspected the entrance and found out that said illusion is made from constructing a wall to look like the rest of the mountain with earth magic.”

After blinking a few times, she was somewhat awake, still a bit groggy from having just woken up before she leaned forward to look past her.

“Is that all?”

“I looked around, according to the footprints in the snow, there are at least six people with two of them being lighter.”

“Do you think they might be prisoners?”

Even under the cover of her mask, Leona could tell she was frowning her brows.

“I don’t think so. I can’t think of one person driving a carriage alone through this harsh environment.”

“That does make sense… well then, we’ll head in carefully, clear the place out then bring Krieg inside.”

“Understood.”

With a short nod, Phoebe made her way back to the side of the entrance with both daggers at hand. Leona carefully threaded through the snow against the opposite side near the knot rock and unsheathed the longsword slowly in order to avoid its distinguishable drawing sound.

“On three.”

The young lady whispered as she tightened the grip around the blade’s handle. She felt an uncomfortable sensation in her gut as cold sweat started dripping from her forehead. She knew what she had to do once battle breaks out, but it didn’t make it any easier. With her fingers signaling the countdown, she began whispering.

“Three-”

Phoebe swallowed dry as she breathed slowly and deeply.

“Two-”

Leona took one last glance towards Krieg before her eyes turned back again to look at the high elf across her.

“One-”

Both of them crossed the illusory wall of earth, entering the cave barely illuminated by the moon peeking through the clouds that gathered, a storm was coming.