Valeria stared in confusion at the sight around her. Just a moment before, she’d been walking through the forest with Leon and the others, and another moment, she was in a dark room with wooden, but organically-shaped walls all around her. What little light there was in the room came from a few thin branches high above her with a few small translucent leaves glowing a gentle blue.

“Leon!” she called out as her heart leaped into her throat. Her glaive was already out and her armor donned, so she crouched down into a defensive posture.

It was obvious she’d been teleported, but unlike the other teleportations that had taken place during this expedition, she hadn’t been dropped out somewhere else in the forest. She didn’t even know where she was, or if she was even still in the Prota Forest anymore.

She guessed that she was, but for all she knew, she could’ve been teleported halfway across the plane.

At the sixth-tier, her magic senses didn’t hold a candle to Leon’s range, but she could at least fill the room. Moments after doing so, she sighed in frustration; the room lacked any obvious doors or exits. Even the ceiling above the ethereal leaves was blocked. There would be no other way out other than going through the walls.

So, Valeria approached one of the walls, choosing the one right in front of her for the sole reason that it was the closest.

The wooden walls were filled with magic power—earth, light, and water, as far as she could tell, the three elemental components of nature magic. They were flowing in patterns that were barely discernable. She could tell they were some kind of enchantment, but her skill in the art, despite advancing by leaps and bounds through working alongside Leon for this past decade, was still inadequate to parsing what her senses were telling her.

To put it more simply: she wasn’t going to get out of this place by subverting wards. Since there were no other options available, that left pure brute force.

Her heart beat hard with concern for her companions, and especially for Leon, though she trusted in everyone’s power and discretion to see them through whatever this was. However, that didn’t mean she could relax—it was actually the opposite, as she considered herself at least partially responsible for everyone given her status in Leon’s retinue.

She called upon her magic power and her physical strength, and replaced her glaive with a hatchet she kept in her soul realm. It was hardly a match for Alcander’s war ax, but it was meant to chop wood. Given her circumstances, that made it quite possibly more valuable.

With a few mighty swings, Valeria struck the wooden wall, barely making anything more than a dent. Her hatcher, despite being backed by her sixth-tier strength, had bounced off the walls like they were made of metal, not timber.

‘Probably to do with the magic in the walls,’ she reasoned. Had she the ability to, she would’ve tried to cut off the flow of magic to the enchantments in the walls, but she didn’t have that ability. Even the water magic in the walls was beyond her ability to control, though that didn’t stop her from trying, at least.

She gritted her teeth and prepared to use her magic power, hoping that her water and ice magic would be enough to get her through the walls and to whatever was outside. Then, hopefully, to the rest of the retinue.

‘And Cassandra and her people. I suppose. If I must.’

Valeria fought to keep the smile off her normally-stoic face at the idea of genuinely forgetting Cassandra here. She’d give a mountain of silver to see the Princess’ face if she were to be left behind. Valeria’s professionalism precluded that, of course, but it was fun to daydream.

Valeria rained blows upon the wall in front of her, while conjuring water to flow over the wall at the same time, searching for any possible cracks. Even a few microcracks might be enough for her purposes.

It took nearly three dozen blows before her hatcher finally started to chip away at the wall, and when she noticed it, she immediately stopped, letting the hatchet fall to her side.

She examined the chip in the wall, noting that there were a few tiny cracks at the edge, where the hatchet had first chopped into the wall. With a wide grin, Valeria conjured a few drops of water and filled the crack as much as possible. Her strength as a sixth-tier mage was great, but her magic power was much greater; she hoped it would prove enough. When the crack was filled, she immediately froze the water, and was gratified to see the crack widen ever so slightly. She then melted the ice, and then filled the now-slightly bigger crack with more water and froze it again. Again, the crack widened ever so slightly.

Valeria stepped back and began to use her power in earnest, covering the crack in water and manipulating it like a shovel: digging into the crack in the wall, then freezing it when she couldn’t dig in anymore. Soon enough, the crack started growing big enough to see with a mortal eye, and then even bigger.

Eventually, she found some kind of natural fault line within the wood, and with a loud crack, a huge crack was opened after one particularly brutal freeze.

Her grin widened at seeing her progress. She didn’t know big the hole had to be to lead her out of this room, but she fully intended to find out.

However, it wound up that she didn’t need her power to break through, for not even thirty seconds after the bigger crack loudly opened, a bright white blade of light sliced into the wall, and Valeria instinctively threw herself back. Fortunately, the blade came in at such an angle that it wouldn’t have posed much threat to her even if she’d stood still—only if she’d been pressing her face right up against the wall. More fortunately—or, perhaps less so—she recognized this particular blade of light as being the enchantment placed upon Sunlight.

The blade started slowly cutting through the wood, and in a matter of a dozen seconds, a hole had been carved into the wall, now showing itself to be more than six feet thick. As the piece of wood in the center of the hole was pulled outward, Cassandra’s smug countenance was revealed.

“Look at you, Val,” she said, her voice dripping with condescending triumph, “I was seriously worried that you might’ve been rendered helpless. I’m so glad to see that you’re all right.”

Valeria bit back on a venomous reply. This wasn’t the time for it.

“Have you run into anyone else?” she asked as she approached the hole, cooled its smoldering edges with a quick shower of water, and then hauled herself through.

Cassandra, looking a little nonplussed at her refusal to rise to her bait, still replied with Imperial poise, “No. I’ve only just gotten out of my cell a couple of minutes ago, and almost left before I heard some noise coming from here. Good thing I stopped to check, isn’t it? You might’ve not gotten out…”

As Valeria straightened up on the other side of the hole, she glanced to her right and left. She and Cassandra stood in a fairly narrow hallway just wide enough for them to comfortably walk side-by-side. Much like her ‘cell’, as Cassandra called it, the walls were dark wood and completely unadorned, though filled with magic power, while the matching ceiling was obscured by glowing translucent leaves. There wasn’t much light emitted by those leaves, but that hardly mattered to one of Valeria’s power.

Finally turning back to the Princess, Valeria politely said, “Thank you.” She’d debated undercutting her gratitude in several ways, but decided in the end to just keep it simple. This wasn’t the time to get into a pissing match with the Princess over a little rudeness.

For her part, Cassandra seemed to accept her thanks, giving her a simple nod, then asking, “Any idea where we are?”

“Inside of a tree, maybe?” Valeria wondered aloud. “I’d figure you and your people would be the experts here.”

Cassandra shrugged. “I’m not that great at nature magic, honestly…”

Valeria stifled an exasperated sigh and went back to evaluating their surroundings. Judging by how the magic flowed, the power source for the enchantments in the walls was above them, and the hallway was long enough that there could be other cells further down on either side.

When Valeria mentioned this, Cassandra’s eyes widened as if she hadn’t thought that far, and before Valeria could so much as utter a word of warning, the Princess started cutting into the walls with little rhyme or reason.

“What are you doing?!” Valeria shouted, shouting uncharacteristically as Cassandra plunged Sunlight into the wall.

“Looking for the others,” Cassandra replied as she began to saw another hole in the wall.

“You could kill someone doing that!” Valeria responded.

“They might die waiting,” Cassandra countered.

The rough circle she’d made was quickly finished, but when she tried to pull the chunk of wood out of the wall, it refused to come. From what Valeria could tell, it was still attached in the back, showing that there was no cell behind it, only more wood.

“Maybe… just stop to think for a little while?” Valeria asked. “You could hear it when I cracked my wall, so it stands to reason we should be able to communicated with anyone who’s been imprisoned.”

Cassandra lightly frowned and didn’t respond, which Valeria considered about the strongest admission the Princess was capable of making that she in the wrong.

“Come on,” Valeria said. “I’m a water mage and you’re a light mage. If nothing else, we should be able to track the water and light magic in the walls and see where they’re being directed. That should lead us somewhere, at least, even if not to the rest of the expedition.”

Cassandra sighed, but didn’t argue, and when Valeria pressed a hand against the wall, Cassandra did likewise.

If Valeria’s theory was any indication, then there weren’t any more people imprisoned in this hallway. She could vaguely sense the magic surrounding her cell to be stronger than what was in the wall, but only then did she realize that she didn’t see any other holes in the wall indicating where Cassandra came out. When she asked the Princess about this, Cassandra replied that she’d come from further down to the left of Valeria’s cell, which curved out of view.

So, when they decided to move, they went right, and Valeria, just to make sure, quickly used her truth ring. Nothing changed, showing that there weren’t any illusions active around her at the moment.

“Hmm,” Cassandra hummed as they reached an intersection in the long wooden hallway. They’d followed the hall for several minutes and hadn’t found anything else, but since the hall was curved, Valeria estimated that they’d already turned at least ninety degrees. If they kept going, they might even reach their cells again.

As Valeria quietly tried to evaluate the directions, she noticed that the hall to their left, the direction opposite the curve of the hall, seemed to be much more magically active.

Without even consulting with Valeria, Cassandra turned left and kept going. “Let’s go this way,” she said with a wide smile on her face.

Again, Valeria was momentarily annoyed, but she didn’t say anything this time, simply following the Princess and trying to keep an eye on their surroundings.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Valeria said as they continue down the quiet halls.

“This is fun, isn’t it?” Cassandra gleefully replied. “Such a place, I can’t wait to see what lies at the end! There’s so much power here, it has to be good!”

“Maybe a little more caution is warranted? We don’t want to go rushing into anything unprepared…”

“Eh, we’ll be fine,” Cassandra replied with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“A few of the people you’ve brought to this forest are already dead,” Valeria reminded her.

“Hardly my fault,” Cassandra petulantly responded. “They fought well, but were still brought down—”

“They’re your people,” Valeria insisted, cutting the Princess off. “They’re your responsibility. If they don’t come home, then that’s on you. And three are already lost forever.”

Valeria bit her tongue to keep from going off, but she was frustrated with the Princess. She had all of Leon’s recklessness, but with none of the guilt that kept him from taking things too far with his own people. She felt like she could’ve ranted for quite a while at the Princess, but she tried to keep in mind their current situation, which wasn’t conducive to heated disagreements. But still, she didn’t want the Princess to lead them to their deaths.

“Listen, Valeria,” Cassandra said just as Valeria was about to suggest they keep going, “people make mistakes. I can’t prevent people from making mistakes. I do what I can for my people, but if they screw up, then that’s their problem, not mine. I may be their Princess, but that doesn’t mean that they—or you—can foist their own responsibility to themselves, onto me. Besides, I am their Princess, so they have responsibilities to me that they need to fulfill, too.”

Valeria bitterly smiled and briefly wondered how Leon would handle this.

‘Probably just glare and remain silent,’ she thought with some consternation.

Out loud, she merely said, “To die for another person is a choice, not a responsibility. I’ll not speak to the sense of duty that might’ve led those warriors of yours to lay down their lives, but I’ll tell you right now that you haven’t done a thing to convince me to die for you. And that’s what people have done for you. All I can say is that if I were in your position, I would try to do something that would make their deaths worth it.”

“What do you think I’m doing? If we turn around, then their sacrifices will be meaningless! At least if we continue, then we might find something at the end that’ll make this worthwhile!”

“A gamble, and one that conveniently lets you do what you wanted to do in the beginning. What will you do if we end this expedition empty-handed? Three people are dead already, and we don’t know where everyone else is—they could be dead, too, for all we know.”

Cassandra smiled thinly. “Having fun, judging me?” she asked. “Second-guessing a Princess is cheap from a distance. I wonder what you’d do in my situation? Turn tail and run away at the slightest sign of danger? I didn’t think you quite so soft-hearted…”

Valeria returned the thin smile and replied, “Leon’s retinue followed him out of loyalty—loyalty that he’s done his best to earn. Your people followed you because you requisitioned them, like new gear. Out of duty, not loyalty.”

“You must have gotten to know my people well over these past few days,” Cassandra responded sarcastically, her smile turning more challenging than angry. “You say ‘duty’ like it’s something terrible. You say that my people are only acting out of duty, but do you really know that? Those who I chose to act as my escort are pulled directly from the Imperial Guard, they aren’t slaves or conscripts. This is what they signed up for, and the option to quit is always on the table.”

“So they signed up to serve their Empire, and found their service rewarded by being assigned to a brat who led at least some of them to their deaths? They placed their lives in your hands, and you’re wasting their blood and sweat.”

“I’m their Princess!” Cassandra shouted.

“You’re their Princess because they, and others like them, have decided that they’re willing to die for you. Personally, I would consider that a heavy responsibility, not a privilege to use to fulfill my own desires to adventure.”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed in fury. “You don’t know the first thing about me,” she growled.

“I’ve spent long enough in your company to have formed an impression,” Valeria coolly replied. “And I have to say, while I can respect your skills in the ring, I haven’t seen many redeeming qualities in you. You’re an entitled Princess who has little concern for the well-being of others. And if you don’t try and have a little respect for your own people, you’re only going to get more of them killed.”

For just a moment, killing intent laced Cassandra’s aura, but as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

“We’re just talking past each other,” she declared. “We can set this aside for the moment. Right now, our priority is getting out of here.”

“I’d say that our first priority is to find our companions,” Valeria countered.

“Yes, and that,” Cassandra spat. “That was implied. The idea that I would leave anyone behind is ludicrous!”

“When it comes to you, I think it needs to be said,” Valeria pressed. “An implication won’t cut it.”

“Maybe you should try listening and comprehending what someone is saying rather than getting bogged down in semantics,” Cassandra vehemently said, and without waiting for Valeria to continue, resumed walking down the hall.

Valeria followed, but didn’t feel very good about their whole exchange. She supposed it really wasn’t her place to be pointing out what she thought were flaws in others, and Cassandra did have a point in that she didn’t know what the Evergolden escorts might be thinking, or why they were here. She was making her own assumptions, too…

While she considered this issue, Cassandra suddenly stopped in front of her, almost causing Valeria to walk right into her from behind.

“Hear that?” Cassandra asked, and once she pulled herself out of her thoughts, Valeria heard heavily muted, indistinct shouting. “It’s coming from over here,” Cassandra said, walking a few more paces down the hall and rapping on the wall to her right.

Without much hesitation, Cassandra raised Sunlight and once more cut into the wall, though Valeria noted that she took a few more fractions of a second to aim her strike and make sure that her blade wasn’t going to emerge very fast, or at a dangerous height on the other side.

Still, Valeria began hammering on the wall with the meat of her palm. “You could’ve tried warning them,” she stated.

Cassandra spared her a glare before she began cutting the wall open again.

This time, it really was a cell they’d found, and once a hole was cut, Alcander poked his head out of the cell.

“Val?” he said in amazement. When Cassandra loudly cleared her throat, he added, “And… Your Highness… Ah, thanks for that, I was starting to think I was never going to get out of here!”

A quick glance into his cell showed Valeria that he’d been trying to burn his way out, and had probably started shouting in frustration or perhaps was trying to get someone’s attention. Regardless, it had worked, and now their ranks had swelled to three.

Now, they just had to find everyone else, and then figure out how to get the hells out of this place.