A scream cut the night, echoing down the hallways of the ancient castle like a ghost trying to escape.

The princess stirred in her bed, her long, platinum hair falling about her shoulders as she sat up. She opened her eyes and blinked blearily, trying to process what she had heard.

She pulled off her covers and took a few steps forward, but something stopped her from opening the door.

A creak of a floorboard echoed from the next room, accompanied by the shuffling of feet.

A chill crept over her and she retreated back under the eaves of her four-poster bed.

Slowly, the handle of her door turned, gently opening to reveal three men, their silvered swords gleaming even in the lightless room.

The heraldry on their tunics and shields marked them as serving the royal house of Ester, but they were not her guards.

Seeing she was awake and up, the three eyed her wearily, silently spreading out to surround her. The first to enter, a grizzled man with eyes of stone, took a hesitant step towards her, his cold, grey gaze locked with her shining, sapphire eyes.

She took another step backwards, touching her back to the stone statue of a winged, angelic knight that stood watch over her bed.

With nowhere left for her to go, the men closed the gap, their shields firmly posed between them and the delicately figured girl.

She silently cursed that she kept her sword in her sitting room.

The soldier in front of her slashed down on her with his sword.

Reflexively, she stuck her arm up to meet the blow and screamed in pain as the sword bit into her forearm, slicing down into bone and driving her to her knees with pain. Her blood splashed everywhere, covering her white satin sheets, her clothes, the face of the soldier attacking her... and the statue of the winged knight behind her.

Emboldened by the sight of her injury, the other two men dove forwards, stabbing at her with their swords.

The statue drew its swords in a blur, slashing them down to meet the oncoming strikes, deflecting them away. It then spread its wings, beating them once to leap over the princess and interpose itself between her and harm’s way.

The men reeled back in fear, stumbling over themselves to get away from the new threat, however, they did not move fast enough. It decapitated the man in front with a swift flick of its blade and kicked another to the ground, snapping his iron banded shield in half.

"Father..." the princess breathed, eyeing the animated statue with horror.

To the remaining soldier's credit, while the statue turned to finish off the downed man, he made it through the doorway, but once the statue had stamped on the prone man's head, flattening his helm to the point of it being a viable plate, it leapt after him. The statue's frame was too big to fit through the doorway, so it simply smashed through it, leaving a two-meter-wide hole in the wall. With another slicing of its swords the fleeing man's head was separated from his body.

The princess rose to her feet, her wound and assailants forgotten, she jumped over the debris of the wall that divided her bedchamber from her sitting room and ran to the display of her weapons. She strapped on her sword belt, hefted her shield with her left arm and took a spear twice her height in her right hand.

Readied, she burst through her chamber doors and into the corridor.

The thick, red carpeting and her bare feet silenced her movements, so the oncoming group of four soldiers didn't hear her approach until she was but a few feet away.

She grimaced and threw her spear overhand like a javelin. It shot forward, faster than an arrow from a bow, tearing open the soldier's plate armor, impaling him against the wall so that he hung on it like a scarecrow.

She drew her sword and dove towards the remaining two, ducking under their instinctive jabs and slicing through the knees of the closer one, separating his lower legs from the rest of his body. He barely had time to scream as she slashed upwards to meet his falling form, cutting his throat open.

The remaining soldier turned to run, but she wrenched her spear out of the body and stonework and impaled him with it.

She retrieved her spear a second time and kept running towards her father's chambers.

Her run led her through a nightmarish hellscape, bodies of servants and guards littered the corridors, filling the air with the sickly stench of blood, forcing her to stop in several places to prevent herself from retching.

As she approached the final corridor, she heard cursing and painful moaning coming from around the corner.

She stopped and carefully poked her head out beyond the wall, spying perhaps 25 soldiers standing or sitting, and 40 more lying dead or dying, on the floor of the King's private audience chamber. Each of them was covered in a mixture of marble dust and blood.

Her father's rooms were through that door. She had to get in there. She had to save him.

Then a figure dressed in blue satin robes over full knightly plate armor stepped out of the door to her father's rooms. She gasped as she recognized him. Short, neatly trimmed, platinum hair, bright, sapphire eyes and wielding a sword of height and width exceeding his own. Destrian Kalashunilir Ester. Her uncle.

"Whew," Destrian said, patting off the marble dust covering him, "Finally done! Those statues really do pack a punch. And why are there SO many of them? It’s amazing, you go in and out of that place all the time, but you never realize that the ceiling has a dragon carved onto it until it’s trying to eat you. Simply amazing."

The men around him groaned and flopped down onto the floor, exhausted.

"Now, I do hope that my niece has been taken care of. I really do not want to have to go through this again. Six was enough, right?"

He turned to look at the men around him, who all just shrugged.

"You think I should have sent more?"

Again, shrugs and groans.

"We should probably go check, the King did die sooner than expected... If she inherited the blood pact she could have escaped."

The princess snarled and shifted the grip on her spear.

"She must be dead, my lord," a particularly well decorated soldier said, "Those were six of our best."

"Ah!" Destrian cut him off, "THREE of our best, and three rank and file. At her age I could take that much."

"But she's a fourteen-year-old girl..."

Destrian put a finger to his lips and walked over to a statue, put his finger to a cut on his face and then placed the bloody finger on a statue.

It didn't animate.

"EVERYONE ON YOUR FEET!" he shouted, "WE AREN'T DONE! I WANT THAT BLOOD PACT!"

Groans resounded around the room as men started to pull themselves to their feet.

The princess took a final breath, and jumped out from around the corner, shoving the point of her spear into the chest of the nearest soldier, then spinning it around, slicing it across the necks of the three men behind him.

"KILL HER BEFORE SHE TOUCHES A STATUE!" screamed Destrian and the room was suddenly moving much more urgently.

As a group rushed her, she threw her spear, passing cleanly through the chests of three of them before embedding itself firmly in the stomach of the fourth.

Leaping up to meet their charge, she slammed her shield into them, knocking them down with the force of the impact and landing on top of the middle-most one. She quickly drew her sword and with a few deft downward stabs, ended them.

But then her uncle was upon her, his meter and a half long sword swinging for her head faster than any other person could swing a regular sized sword.

She barely had time to put her shield up to block the blow. The hundreds of intricately drawn runes engraved on the bronze bands reinforcing it glowed, there was a slight hiss, and one of them melted away.

She slashed upwards with her sword. She was fast, but Destrian's movements defied even the eyes, blurring out of the way of the strike before slamming his sword around for another strike.

Again, her shield held, burning away one of its runes.

A soldier tried to flank her and with her hands occupied by Destrian, she lashed out with a kick, snapping the oncoming man's leg, inverting his knee completely and causing him to crumple to the floor, howling.

Destrian glared at her, hatred and fear and bloodlust all mixed together. He took a hand off his sword, gripped the edge of her shield and, with a vicious kick to her stomach, ripped the shield off her arm.

She staggered back, rolling away from a group that tried to grab her and gripping her sword in two hands.

Destrian swung his massive blade again and this time she was forced to meet him with her own blade.

There was a screeching of metal and his sword sliced straight through hers, sending its tip spinning across the room. The arc continued and the sword bit into her shoulder with such force that if it had not been reduced by her attempt at a block it would have likely cut her in half.

She staggered backwards, right into the hands of ten soldiers who grabbed her and pulled her down, bringing their full bodyweight down against her, driving her to the floor.

She struggled and tried to bite at them. With a flick of her unwounded shoulder, she created just enough space to get an arm free and was about to try and throw the others off her when Destrian's plated boot came slamming down onto her chest, finally ending her struggles.

"I am sorry, little Katrina, but destiny has chosen me to rule Esteria," he said, and raised his sword to deal the killing blow.

The blade stabbed at her head, but instead it rebounded off the air in front of her, the force of the recoil unbalancing Destrian and almost causing him to drop the sword.

Destrian quickly righted himself and began looking about until his eyes finally came to rest on a figure walking towards him from the other entrance of the audience hall.

Destrian ran a finger across his furrowed brow.

"Jaran? HOW? There are nearly a thousand men down there. Please... Please tell me that you didn't kill a THOUSAND of my men! Do you have any idea how long it takes to train a good soldier?"

The figure came into the Princess' restricted field of view. He was a man perhaps fifty years old, but his ashen grey hair was the only real sign of his age. He was still wearing his night clothes, but somehow he still looked like the most regal person in the room. He carried no weapon, only a book in his left hand and a burning piece of paper in his right. His golden eyes met Destrian's calmly.

He did not reply, only raised an eyebrow and let the hint of a smug smile touch the side of his lips.

"Please Jaran, my old friend, just let me kill her."

There was a pause before Jaran replied in a silky, floating tone, "I always knew you would turn out bad."

Destrian blinked, visibly shocked.

"Can you believe that?" he turned to a soldier on his left, gesturing at Jaran, "Very well, just know I shall weep for you after I kill you."

"You are welcome to try."

Destrian rolled his eyes, flicked a sword up from the ground with his toe into his hand and threw it at Jaran, all in one fluid motion.

The projectile hit another invisible barrier and stopped.

Jaran opened his book, flicked over a few pages then ripped one out.

"Risenta," he said and a ball of fire shot out of the piece of paper towards Destrian.

Destrian jerked violently to the side, dodging the oncoming attack neatly. The soldier behind him was not so lucky, instantly catching fire and burning to death before he hit the floor.

Jaran flicked the now burning piece of paper away and flicked over to the next page of his book.

Destrian chuckled, "Well, if that is all you have left in your little book of spells, then this will be over quickly, old man."

It was close to being true, the book Jaran was reading from had over half its pages already torn out. Nevertheless, he shrugged, and tore out another one.

"Senem," he said, again the paper disintegrated in a plume of flame and a wind stirred in the room, getting stronger and stronger until it tore at the clothes of everyone in the room, even pushing some of the soldiers to the ground.

"You think a mild breeze will stop me?" Destrian said, grinning maliciously and taking a labored step towards Jaran.

"It is not you I intend to stop."

Destrian frowned then looked back at the men pinning the princess down just in time to see them all be cast aside by the combined strength of the wind and the princess.

"No!" Destrian shouted and made to leap towards her, but black chains leapt out from Jaran, fastening Destrian to the floor.

"Princess!" Jaran shouted, "The fountain!"

The princess had been in the process of running towards her spear, but stopped in her tracks, giving Jaran a frustrated look.

"GO!" shouted Jaran.

She paused for a second, then abandoned her spear to run out of the room.

"Stop this madness Jaran," shouted Destrian over the wind, "Old friend, don't make me kill you."

Jaran twitched, "I swore an oath, Destrian, unlike you, honor and loyalty mean something to me."

"Pompous, idiotic, old mage!" he screamed, straining with all his might against the chains.

"That's archmage to you, sadistic brat."

He tore out another page and sparks flew around him, crackling against the floor, then a beam of lightning wider than any of the marble columns shot from him, completely engulfing Destrian.

For thirty seconds the beam tore at him, boiling the stone floor underneath him, until the chains loudly snapped and flew across the room in a cloud of metal shards.

Destrian leapt the fifty feet between them in an instant, sliced the archmage's hand clean off and the beam stopped, revealing Destrian once again, his bright blue eyes maddened with rage.

Jaran cried out with pain and Destrian seized him by the throat, lifting him up so their eyes were only a foot apart.

Destrian's hair was completely gone, scorched away by the lightning, but the rest of his face was completely unharmed. His armor, half melted, dripped off him into pools on the floor.

He flicked his left gauntlet off and ran his hand over his newly shaved head.

"My... hair. You took my hair from me. For thousands of years the man who sat on that throne has had platinum hair. You took that from me!"

He squeezed tighter on Jaran's throat.

"How could you?"

Jaran spluttered.

"HOW COULD YOU! ANSWER ME!"

But Jaran couldn't, his vision blurring and he felt his life fading.

"ANSWER ME!" Destrian screamed.

Then the floor erupted as a granite knight riding a marble dragon burst through the floor, throwing the two men apart.

Destrian howled with fury and grabbed a hold of the ceiling before he could fall through the floor.

Jaran, on the other hand, fell straight down.

The princess jumped over the remains of the fountain and caught him out of the air.

"My... tower..." wheezed Jaran into her ear, "Go."

She shifted the mage onto her shoulder and began running for the easternmost tower, deftly placing her feet on the stone between the bodies of the hundreds of soldiers that Jaran had laid waste to.

They got halfway across the great courtyard when they heard the sound of the dragon rider crashing into the floor of the palace. The princess risked a look back over her free shoulder to see Destrian, his sword discarded or broken, had resorted to beating the dragon to death with his bare hands.

The inner wall of the keep separated them for the mage's tower. She twisted her body so that she protected the mage and charged through it. Ten foot of stone wall exploding outward in a shower of dust and rubble, causing Jaran to start coughing uncontrollably.

The princess finally reached the tower, kicked down the door, sending it spinning twenty feet across the room and headed for the spiral staircase in the middle of the room.

"No!" croaked Jaran, "The basement..."

"But your books, your tablets! We need to kill him!" the princess cried.

"We can't, take me to the basement, we must escape."

She cursed him, but when she heard the dragon cry out and go silent she picked him up again and headed for the trap door he pointed to.

"I didn't even know you had a basement."

Not wishing to search for a key to the lock, she pulled on the wooden door, but it wouldn't budge.

"It is magically sealed... the key is behind..."

With a great heave, the princess pulled on the door again, grunting with pain until finally a fifteen foot section of floor ripped away, revealing the basement below.

She picked up the mage once more and dropped down into the basement, finding themselves standing in front of several crates of very expensive red wine and a stone archway covered in runes.

"Put me down."

She put him down and he managed to stay on his feet, albeit shakily.

"Indarashi... Mon Steri... Kana Shen..." he chanted and the runes on the archway glowed blue.

As he finished his incantation the archway flickered and they looked through it onto a grassy hillside.

A startled sheep looked back at them, bleated belligerently and ran off.

"No!" Destrian shouted, looking down at them from the lip of the hole in the floor.

Jaran shoved the princess through the portal before she could even think about turning to fight him and then collapsed after her.

Destrian glanced about, spied a crystal ball, grabbed it and threw it at them.

It shattered as he threw it, turning into a mass of glass shards that shot through the portal after them, piercing the back of Jaran in a hundred different places.

He gasped and fell forward just as the portal closed.

The princess turned back in a panic, grabbed Jaran's hands and pulled his body through. But she wasn't quite quick enough.

Destrian dropped down into the basement. The archway, smoldering with heat, cracked and fell apart, smashing to dust as it hit the floor.

He was left, seething, looking at the archmage's legs, severed at the knee.

He howled in rage, kicked the wall, and the tower collapsed around him.