The Kingdom of Laric

She couldn't breathe.

There was fighting and chaos all around her, tears threatening her eyes. Occasionally, the carriage would rock from the fighting, and she could hear the horses whinny in fear. She wished her father were here to comfort her, but then he would be put in danger, and she'd rather have him alive than dead in her arms.

Mary Gabrielle, was suddenly lost in thought, trying to figure a way out of the carriage, but there was none, as those men were everywhere. On top of the carriage, on every side, and behind it. She was trapped...

Then, the door to the carriage was forced down, and she was drug out by those men. "HE-" She had a hand clasp over her mouth, and was silent, tears running down her face. It hurt the way they bound her wrists together behind her back.


She'd give anything to be safe in the castle right now.

Just then, the one in front is hit in the back by one of the guards and his halberd. As the man falls over, the guard sees his opportunity and shoves the princess back into the carriage with his foot, just before getting grabbed by one of the revolutionaries involved with 'helping' the princess and stabbed between the breastplate and helmet by the other.
But, just before they can go back to doing what they were going to do before, a loud thud is heard on top of the carriage and then, with a crack of the reigns, it begins to take off, away from the guards and revolutionaries.
This is not good. Which is driving the carriage? Is it a revolutionary? A guardsman?
Within a minute, the carriage stops in front of another group of guards. But, instead of hearing the probably expected sound of relief, the guards point, or draw, their weapons at the carriage.
"HALT, BOY!"
The, apparently young, man at the reigns sounds a little surprised.
"H-huh?! No-wait!" But his plea is ignored and the carriage shakes a little as he is pulled from it and thrown down to the street.
"Shackle the bloody kid so I can deal with him later.."

"OOFF!" She squeaks as she is forced back in the carriage. Without much knowledge of what the heck is happening she hears grunts from fighting, and tears roll down her rosy cheeks. Her usual bright blue eyes were dull and watery. Suddenly the carriage moved, and she hoped for the best, her hopes rising as it was stopped. Suddenly she heard the guard tell a boy to stop. The boy replies but is then shackled. The princess starts to make a commotion. "Lé- boy al-" you couldn't make out what she was saying, but you knew se was trying to stand up for the boy.

The highest ranking guard steps closer to the carriage's open door. "It's alright, Your Highness. We'll get you back to the palace safe, and unharmed." As the guard steps back to close the door again, the boy comes back into view. He is looking at her with a calm, but serious expression. It is clear to see that he was heavily armed and had clothing fit for nothing beyond a peasant. This makes it likely that he was a revolutionary. As he was stealing the princess and her carriage, he had just happened to run into a group of guards, and nothing more.
...Perhaps...

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It is late in the evening. Night has cast its shadow upon the capital for a few hours now. Once Mary had reached safety, the king learned of the problems and her daughter's safety and was relieved. But now, she is forbidden from leaving the inner walls of the palace, leading to the rest of the city's districts.
The presence of sleep lays thick in the princess's room...
...Until a thud is heard from down below.
...Then another...
...Then another...
Finally, with one final thud, there is an accompanied sharp *CRACK!* and cheers follow with it...

Princess Mary was almost asleep when she heard a loud crack and cheering. Wondering if it was safe or not, she slipped on her robe, and hid in her armoire. It was big to hold all of her dresses, which were big enough to cover her as she laid in a holllowed out part in the back, made especially for her if something drastic happened. She laid there silently, wrapped up in a blanket she'd had since she was young, and started to drift off again.

Suddenly, a small tinkering noise can be heard while more yelling and smashing echoes underneath. But, it is not from the main door...it is from the door to the princess's balcony.
After a few minutes, a click sounds and the tinkering stops; replaced by the sound of the door opening...
Still with only sounds to go by, it seems as if Mary's bed coverings are lifted and tossed back down.
"Ah jeez, where is she?" The voice sounds like a very frustrated and unamused man.
But then, the walking around stops for a second...and begins coming closer to her position...

Mary freezes as she listens, biting her finger as he comes closer. She prayed he wasn't there to kill her.

The door opens...to reveal a black silhouette of someone who, clearly, is not a guard...
"Ugh, there you are!" The silhouette reaches down toward Mary.

Hmph!" She groaned and was pulled out. "Ah! Let go of me!" She squealed.

"Yeah? Alrigh', fine. Get burned alive by an angry mob.-Doesn' bother me!"
But then the silhouette looks down at the shadow encompassing his entire front side. "Oh! Oh? Well, tha's jus' rich." His voice sounds a lot more soft, now that he is in a little less of a high-stress moment.
Instead of pulling his arm back, he reaches down and pulls up the girl by her arm before pulling her back out into her room. "I'm not here for the same reason they are." When he turns back around, the moonlight reveals the man to be, not a man, but a boy. And, not a normal boy, but the peasant from before.

"But you're.. A commoner. I thought the townspeople hated us. " she rubbed her arm, and looked at him. "They why are you here, boy?"

In the true, smart-alec style, the boy answers in a matter-of-fact way despite him talking to royalty.
"They usually do, but I'm here to save y'arse!" He slightly leans over and cocks his head to his left. "G'rly."
Without even bothering to explain anything, the boy tugs toward the room's door to the rest of the palace.

"Fool." She snapped. "That's the direction the noises are coming from. " she hopped in her closet, quickly changing into her only pants outfit, which she used often to sneak out. (I'll have a pic up later.) "isn't it common knowledge to go the other way?" She felt as if she needed to step up her game around assholes like hin.

Thinking she is just hiding again, the boy walks up to the closet.
*Muffled* "And that's the direction-" He opens the door to the closet..."that you'll be cau-HELLO!"-and then immediately shuts it again after realizing that the princess isn't exactly hiding. *Muffled* "Uuuuh...Eh-eem..." The boy stumbles for words after the previous sight of the girl he is trying to protect.
"I-It would be common knowledge-I actually came in that way. But, seeing as I have you with me, the floor beneath us has an easier spot to the roof. I already developed our route for escape from that route."

After changing she sighs and comes out, fully dressed. "Alright, let's go." She sighed.

The boy breathes a sigh of relief. She took that mishap rather well...
"Stay behind me and stick close." He makes his way to the door before opening it a crack and inspecting all the opening reveals.
"...We're clear.." The boy opens the door enough to walk through and heads across the hall before quietly hurrying down to the staircase on the end. Down the stone steps of the spiral staircase to the immediate floor below and another hallway. Once more, the peasant boy hugs the wall and moves as fast as quietness allows...but his movement changes when the sound of footsteps can be heard from around the corner at the end of the hallway. He veers away from the wall enough to get enough space to move more freely and lowers his posture, the way a big cat or bird of prey might. And then...
It happens within the blink of an eye. Just as the person comes around the corner and reveals himself to be a revolutionary, a knife seems to almost appear, stuck in his left side. The man stumbles and almost falls backward but catches himself.
...Just in time for the peasant boy to sprint closer, leap into the air, and use both feet to kick the revolutionary in the face, putting him into the wall behind him. The boy lands on his side but gets up and returns to the princess's side in preparation for him to get back up. Instead, the revolutionary just sits there, slumped over and knocked clean out.
"Alright..." The peasant walks up to the foe and removes his knife, before wiping it on the knocked out man's pants. "He is going to have one hell of a pain in his...well...everywhere when he wakes. Come on, lets go."
The boy steps up on the window sill next to the revolutionary and hops out onto the middle of the rooftop of a floor below. When ready, he turns around and calls back up into the window. "It's okay! Jump! I'll catch you!"

In this moment, she put all trust in him on a whim that she could die if he didn't catch her. She jumped, and closed her eyes. The wind blew through her hair, before her making an "umph!" As she landed in his arms. "Th-thanks.. " she stuttered standing up quickly.

"Here, keep moving ahead of me." The young lad walks around to behind the girl and then leans into her ear.
"And a word of advice: don't fall." The boy looks down at the edge of the rooftop. "Because, I'm not exactly certain of when you'd stop..."
The incline of the rooftop is indeed low enough to walk on but it is still steep enough to make it hard to, say, stop yourself from rolling off if you fall. With this in mind, the peasant lightly places his hands on Mary's shoulders.

NAry nodded quickly, and focused on getting off. She took quick, careful steps, and made sure she didn't lose the boy either.

(Sorry if it's short. I don't really know how to describe this, but whatever.)

[It's cool, I don't blame you for it. XP]

Fire begins to burn in the courtyard to the right below. Fire, screaming, and fighting. The smell of war pollutes the peace-time air. At least it does one thing well in the night sky...
It practically makes the two kids moving on the rooftop invisible. The two young adults look like they could be either revolutionaries or workers at the palace. Possibly guards, for someone with poor vision. This practically makes the two kids incognito among the carnage. The two near the other end by a small stone tower, but now what? Where do they go?
"Come around here, but be careful on that slope." The boy moves out from around Mary and disappears around the corner of the stone wall on the shadowy, opposite side from the courtyard. Around the corner, the peasant boy pulls down on a rope, connected to a grappling hook, grabbing hold of a wooden post jutting from the tower. The boy looks back at the princess.
"Oh...uuuh, yeah-don't freak out...but this is part of the route I set up..."

She nearly loses her consciousness at the sight going down. She lets out a breath, before grabbing hold of the rope, and carefully climbing down to him. After getting to him, she lets go, and grabs his arm, holding a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. She hated heights. Heights would be the death of her, she just knew.

The boy slowly starts to descend and looks up to make sure the princess follows and is safe about it. She probably did not know it but he made sure to stay close to her on the rope so he could catch her if anything went wrong. The two lower down, down, down the wall, down into what feels like the smallest row boat in the world. A recreational fisherman would not buy one of these, for fear that it might tip under the weight of the first fish he caught...
The burn from the rope is strong but the peasant boy breathes a sigh of relief upon his touchdown. He breathes it too early though, as Princess Mary makes her way down and nearly tips the boat from her lunge upon the boy.
"Uuah!-WHOA!" Just before the two flip upside down and into the moat, the peasant slaps his hand against the little bit of horizontal surface he can get from the little bit of weeded land the boat was tied down to. "...Thank you so much...", breathes the boy in a whisper to the tiny bit of dirt and weeds. The boy lets go of the land and uses the same hand to comfort the girl against his arm, simply making movements which suggest her to find a new life jacket. "Move to the other side for me, okay? I need to use the oars." As almost a side note, he adds, "and careful, the boat isn't exactly the most stable but it's all I could get..."

Elizabeth noticed the peasant boy kept a close eye on her. She felt safer with him, and glad he saved her. Although, would he want something in the end? Gold, riches, and jewels, or a place in the kingdom? There was only one way to find out, and that was to survive this odd journey she seemed to be taking place in. After the boy spoke she stayed silent, and did what she was told. Nodding, she sighed. "I guess it could be worse... I could be dead." She thought in her head, silently.

The boy takes the oars and sets one down on each side of the little boat before steadying himself and beginning the subtle dance of pull and push, grab and glide. With it, the boat responds in quiet movement. Through the dark, beneath the shadows of adjacent buildings, down the river they go. It would be a given that they are going to disembark and hide within one of the buildings until the two can escape but they just keep growing closer and closer to the wall. What lies there but the grate, allowing only water to pass? Pretty soon the grate is upon the two kids and it becomes evident that this is their destination...but why?
"This will just take a moment." The boy, oddly seems confident as he takes out...one of his knives...
Maneuvering the boat to turn so the side faces the grate as it approaches, the boy leans toward the metal and begins to push down with the knife. "Hold on..." He readjusts the knife after looking closer at the part he was touching and makes a deep scratch with it. Then he does so again with the bar below the first, then the next, then the top and the other side before sheathing the blade again.
What could a knife do to this water grate? What is the point? Still confident, the boy calmly mutters to himself, "Here we go...", as he lifts one of the boats oars and then thrusts it against the metal grate. And...
Nothing. Nothing. What was the point of even trying the knife?
The boy draws back the oar and sharply exhales as he thrusts it again. Once more, it does not budge, so he draws it back again and thrusts it once more. This time, though...a high-pitched creak sounds from the metal. Another thrust and the grate actually comes down. "Eeh! There we go!" The boy puts the oar back in the water and starts to move the boat once more, taking it through the gap in the metal part of the wall.
"Pre-cut the grate on the other side earlier with a saw. All she needed was a good-ol' push..." The boy looks around as the two exit out from under the large stone wall. "You're my sister", the boy says as he peers around at the world....


"If anyone asks, you're my sister, Darri, and I'm taking you on an early morning ride in my first boat. I finally saved up enough coin to get myself my first boat and I'm giving you a ride to show it off." It was a long pause between the sort of command and explanation. The possible meaning behind it turn the few seconds of pause into a few minutes.
"I am your lovable idiot of a brother, Fredrik."