Ch. 8: Finding Sydney

"Come on. We'll use the passages, just like you planned." They entered the passages through the bath. Rosy knew the passages really well, and took them through many new parts of the castle towards the entrance to the sewers, where they knew Sydney was waiting.

"Why is Sydney in danger?" He asked. She glanced back at him.

"Because… It's complicated." She failed to explain.

"Fine. Can you at least tell me why you didn't help us escape?" He wondered.

"I opened the gate, and distracted the guard. Does that not count as helping you escape?"

"But you easily could have let us go yourself instead of making us jump through all of those hoops. What if your plans hadn't worked" He didn't miss her right hand finding its way to the handle of her sword, even though her posture stayed relaxed.

"I honestly can't say that I would have cared." She admitted.

"If you don't care. Why are you risking so much to help us?"

"I never said that I don't care. I said that I wouldn't have cared if you and your sister had been caught and killed. I am a vampire." Adrian really didn't understand what the difference was, and his hand drifted to his sword, the idea of trusting a sociopath like this not sitting very well with him. Rosy noticed his unease and rolled her eyes, acting annoyed.

"You don't understand anything, do you?" She asked.

"I understand enough, in my opinion." He told her.

"You think i'm  a human psychopath."

"Sociopath." He corrected. Psychopaths felt nothing, while sociopaths just didn't strongly care.

"I'm not human. In fact, most people in this world aren't human. I, specifically, am a vampire, and that means that I have strong, predator's instincts. Us vampires don't do care very well." She explained.

"Which brings us back to the question of why are you helping me if you don't care?"

"I'm not insane. Some things are stronger than instincts, and I cannot allow my father to finish his plans." She found the door between the passageways and sewers and opened it, the stench causing them both to gag, but hitting Rosy's vampire senses so hard that she stumbled and fell to one knee for a second before she was able to stand.

"Are you okay?" Adrian asked. Rosy shook her head, as if that could stop the smell.

"I'm better than her." She was talking about Sydney, who was unconscious near  the door. He knelt beside her, trying to shake her awake.

"Sydney, come on, stay with me!"

"She's probably in extreme pain right now. It's probably for the best that she stays unconscious." Rosy grabbed Sydney's arm and put it around her own neck.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"She's dying. We need to get her out of here if you want to have a sister for much longer." That prompted him to grab her other arm and help carry her.

"Where are we taking her? Not like we can just walk her home." He asked, struggling under his sister's weight.

"It doesn't really matter, so  long as we get her away from the castle. Now, hurry up, we don't have very long before she bites it."

"If you can carry her so easily, why aren't you just carrying her by yourself, then?" He asked. Rosy met his gaze. Her eyes were cloudy, unfocused. She was about to pass out from the smell. Vampire senses must really be something.

They carried an unconscious Sydney for what felt like miles before Rosy half-collapsed, dropping Sydney with her.

"This should be good enough." She decided. She drew her sword.

"What are you doing?" He half drew his own sword.

"I thought that you were going to trust me."

"It makes me nervous that you drew your sword."

Rosy smirked sarcastically, like she tended to do, and then turned her attention to Sydney, who was mumbling something along the lines of "Stone? Sto-one!" In her sleep.

"She's delirious. We need to put her out of her misery." She raised her sword, readying for a strike, but Adrian blocked her sword with his own.

"You're not going to kill my sister." He struggled against Rosy's overwhelming strength. Had she not been weakened by the smells, she would have immediately overpowered him.

"Get out of my way." She warned.

"Absolutely not."

She gritted her teeth, "I warned you." With a single maneuver, she slammed him into the floor.

"Don't do it!" He begged.

"Don't worry. Once we get the Kingstone, you'll join her." She swiped her sword at Sydney, but she was too far away for a killing blow. The sword barely clipped her stomach, but the moment Rosy finished her cut, Sydney disappeared.

"No! What did you do to my sister?" He stood and lunged at Rosy. This time, she was too irritated to let him threaten her with a sword to the throat, so she grabbed his wrist with one hand, forcing him to let go off the sword, which she caught, flipped, and put back into its sheath with one fluid motion. Once he was disarmed, she pulled hos arm around behind him and put him in a stranglehold with her other arm.

"Are you finally done doing that?" She whispered into his ear. He nodded, so she let go of him.

"What did you do to my sister?" He asked, calmer.

"The only way they could kidnap you two was to magically anchor you to your world. The anchor was magically straining her mind beyond its' threshold. My sword uses void magic to make other magic stronger, so…" She explained. He visibly relaxed.

"So you just sent her home?" He asked. She nodded. "I'm sorry, you just make everything seem worse than it is." He realized.

...

When Sydney woke up, she screamed, sat bolt upright, yelped in pain, and them laid back down, head throbbing.

"Take it easy, Princess." She heard. She looked around for the source of the voice and saw elder Crun sitting at her bedside.

"What happened?" She asked.

"According to reports, you disappeared from your carriage in Sennil with the prince, That was two days ago. Roughly ten hours ago, a city worker found you alone in the sewers beneath Ortain. You had severe magical fatigue, a small concussion, cut up feet, and a single, inch-long incision directly above your belly button." He explained to her.

"She didn't kill me?" She wondered.

"Who did this to you?"

"I'm still alive?"

"TThe doctor who operated on you said that whoever made the cut on your stomach was either a surgeon or a highly trained assassin, giving you a warning. Less than an inch off from where they cut you and you would have bled out in seconds. That is how close it was to an artery." Crun explained. Sydney touched the cut. There wasn't even any blood anymore.

"I-I remember. It was a  forced teleportation. We were held prisoner, but we escaped. I collapsed, but…" She trailed off, remembering her last few semi-conscious moments in the other world.

"Adrian! He's in trouble!"

"You can't do anything for him right now. Just tell me everything that you remember." Crun told her. She explained everything that she could remember about their captivity. Some time during her story, Jasper quietly entered and pulled up a chair. 

"Then she old him that he would join me after she got the Kingstone. I think she wanted him to think that she killed me." She explained.

"So, you believe that this princess is going to use Adrian to get the Kingstone for herself, then kill him and disappear with it?" Crun asked.

"That would make no sense." Jasper wondered aloud, "Why would someone steal the Stone, give it away, and then prioritize getting it back over the leverage that comes with the lives of two Urian Royals? Wouldn't you two be worth way more than a rock."

Crun shook his head, annoyed for some reason. "It's not about money. It's about power." He explained.

"I'm sorry?" Sydney asked.

"He isn't talking about political power." Jasper paused for a moment, having grasped what Crun was trying to say. He thought about the best way to explain it to Sydney, "You know how magic needs to be channeled through something to work, right? A person, object, or even the air can affect the outcome of a spell. Gems are strong channels, but that doesn't explain why one  would be worth more than the beautiful princess of Uriah."

She nodded, "I already knew that. The gem in the hilt is how Adrian's sword nullifies magic."

"Exactly. Everything about a gem can factor into how it affects magic channeled through it, and the Kingstone is the perfect channel. With it, that girl could decide the fate of worlds, in theory." Crun told them.