Hunt

Finley Cai Aies Hall: April 15th, 20XX

My stomach tossed and turned as I flew. A projectile whizzed past my ear and ruined my balance as I belatedly tried to dodge it.

I felt my wings stiffen and drop me into a free fall. I choked back a scream and instead focused on regaining control of them. While this wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it was still scary.

Cambridge slightly held off on attacking me with the projectiles as I regained my balance but resumed the barrage as soon as I stabilized.

My hands tightened around the wooden staff I’d turned my wand into, and I tried to synchronize my eyes with my body. Training with Theodulus helped me become familiar with what I could do and how to do it, but adding my wings into the mix complicated things.

“Excellent, your majesty! I’m going to increase the difficulty!”

It was my fault for asking Cambridge to teach me some self-defense. After I’d cleared the training course with Theodulus last night, I’d gotten too confident.

Theodulus focused on building up my overall strength and teaching me how to fight back. But Cambridge went in the opposite direction.

She hadn’t wanted to teach me any combat things, but she’d given in pretty quickly when I asked again. I hadn’t told her about Theodulus or even about how my transporter would occasionally act up, so I wasn’t sure why she had suddenly changed her mind.

Then again, there had yet to be anything I’d wanted from her that I couldn’t get by asking more than once. The feeling of being spoiled wasn’t unpleasant, but I tried not to take advantage of it more than necessary.

Cambridge had agreed to teach me ‘combat training,’ but her style mainly depended on teaching me how to run away and escape dangerous situations.

“Trust in your wings a bit more, your highness! As a royal, there is no reason for you to get hit by any of these.”

Never mind that I’d only gotten these wings less than a month ago and had only learned how to use them about a week before today.

The way both Theodulus and Cambridge would pile these unrealistic expectations on me was annoying. Cambridge did it because I was a royal, and Theodulus did it because I was my father’s child. Not only was it annoying, but it getting compared to a standard I hadn’t even known about until recently was frustrating.

She fired off three more orbs at me and flew around me to do the same from another direction.

I dodged four out of six at them, but I smashed one of them down with my staff and kicked the last away. It was inferior magic. The particles’ slightly dull luster made that clear, so I wasn’t worried about getting hurt.

Cambridge would take off two points from the overall hundred, but we’d already been at this for hours. I was getting bored and frustrated.

I debated telling her about the bubble I’d successfully created the other day. Its current state wasn’t that useful, but it could work as a shield with some improvement. I didn’t know about physical blows, but at least it would be a great defense against magic.

Almost as soon as I finished the idea, I decided against it. While I somewhat trusted Cambridge wouldn’t try to hurt me, I didn’t want her to know how much I’d learned from the diary.

She spent a lot of time out of the castle on missions, so she would share all of my ‘progress’ notes with Esmeralda. It made sense that she would do that since Esmeralda was principal in educating me on whatever I needed to know.

Esmeralda seemed to feel a sense of pride in being the only source of information I had, and I was okay with that since I could get away with a lot by claiming I didn’t know. Learning from her took a lot more time because I always had to double-check everything she told me, but that just meant I was learning everything much faster.

Her learning about the diary and what it could do would only make things difficult for me.

As I returned to the field’s starting position and prepared to try ‘escaping’ Cambridge again, a messenger bird with a scale and a pelican’s beak flew toward Cambridge and opened its beak wide, waiting for Cambridge to take out the letter.

I was curious about what the letter said, but this was one of many she regularly received. I hadn’t gotten an answer for any of the others I’d asked about, so I preemptively gave up on hearing anything about this one.

“Your highness, wait!”

A foul expression blossomed on her face as she called me back. She rose to the altitude I was at and stopped a few feet away from me.

“You said you wanted to learn how to defend yourself. Come a bit closer and hold up your staff.”

I didn’t know what had caused the sudden 180 in her attitude, but bets were on that letter she’d just received.

I followed her instructions and held the staff across my body like Theodulus had shown me before.

“Hmm, not bad, but that too aggressive.”

Her wings created a weak wind as she closed the distance between us and adjusted my hands further away from each other and towards the ends of the staff’s body.

“There. Now try to block my attacks and push me away. Then as much as you can, try to escape. I’ll go easy on you but remember that the goal is to run away.”

She fixed my posture one more time before shortening her staff into a sword. The tip looked way too sharp for my wooden staff to do anything against it, but then again, I had to remember that this wasn’t regular wood.

“You have a longer reach with the staff than I do with the sword, so that means that I’ll want to keep you as close as possible. Do you remember the orbs I was throwing at you before?”

It was hard not to remember something that had been trying its best to knock you out of the air.

“Good, try to replicate that and throw it at me.”

As far as she knew, the only conscious magic I could use was in growing flowers, so it made sense that she didn’t worry about getting hurt, despite my being a Royal.

I adjusted the amount of magic I used and tried my best to make it as weak as possible.

As a Royal, the diary had said that I could use many times more magic than other fairies could, but even if I didn’t, the magic I used would show itself to its absolute capacity. Even using half the amount of magic she’d used, I couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t hurt her.

Despite my attempts to make the orb as underwhelming as possible, Cambridge’s eyes still widened in shock.

“Impressive, your highness! I didn’t even tell you the spell yet!”

Ah, I forgot about that part. But it was only a matter of creating a smaller version of the bubble I made around myself and filling it up with magic. Since I tried my best to purify the magic in the air as often as possible, it had all but became second nature to me.

“Oh. You said I should throw it at you?”

I kept my reaction minimal and brushed past the topic as quickly as I could. There was no way she wouldn’t share this with Esmeralda. But I’d have to take that minor loss.

She held up the sword and backpedalled a few feet before nodding. I could tell that the orb I held still distracted her, but her gaze soon sharpened, and she looked at me with aggression I wasn’t familiar with from her.

” I’m going to hunt you down now, your highness. Please try your best not to get caught.”