The Convoy armor wasn’t made for stealth, but I tried my best to quietly follow behind Toadwart and the others. A heavy wooden door with iron straps and a small inset window blocked the bottom of the stairs. Lena and Toadwart slunk up to the door, putting their ears against the wood.

I upped my auditory input and could just make out the sounds of soldiers on the other side grumbling about being put on prisoner duty. It was hard to know which faction they were supporting or if we should proceed normally or attack; though one could guess they might be marquis soldiers if another group was coming down behind us. I caught one of them complain that others were having all the fun of hunting down loyalists and wishing that they could see the look on Prince Milliardo’s face when he got tortured by the Marquis. Another soldier corrected him that he’d have to start calling Rau LeCreuset Emperor now.

Well, that guy just signed his own death notice. Lena stood up and knocked confidently on the door, releasing one of her ice charges into the door handle. From the other side, we could hear someone yell at someone else to get the door, that another loyalist commander was probably captured, and that maybe they would be lucky and could have some fun with this one. Then we heard a mechanism in the door clunk and the small inset door swung inward to reveal the bright red face of a reptilian.

Like a flash, Lena’s remaining ice charged hand was through the small door and clamped onto the face of the reptilian. There was a brief moment of screaming followed by some cracking sounds and the soldier went limp. She held onto the dead soldier as others beyond the door scrambled for weapons. With a swift kick to the frozen door lock, the wood around it shattered and the door swung open.

Toadwart shot through the opening like he’d been launched from a cannon, punching his sword into the gut of a demon woman in heavy black armor. Before she could fall back, he was already pulling the blade free and swinging around with the other to separate her head from her shoulders. Lena was in full attack mode, smashing soldiers with her bare fists, cracking skulls and breaking bones with each strike.

Where Toadwart flowed like an acrobat, dodging and spinning around with his blades, Lena was distinctly a brute, taking as many hits as she was giving. Of course her Automata frame saved her from actually taking much by way of damage and her Automata strength leveled anyone that went against her. It was hard to believe that I was looking at a Princess. Not exactly what my preconceived notion of a Princess might be, but she’d been through a lot so I’d cut her some slack.

Dash was having a tough time trying to swing her spear in the confined room with one hand, her other arm still bandaged and in a sling from the dragon’s attack. Whenever she could, she’d rear up on her hind legs and kick with her fore hooves. A heavily armored troll smashed a spiked fist into the side of her head, sending her reeling. She crumpled to the ground, stunned, and tried gently shaking her head as blood freely flowed down her face.

The troll wound up for another blow but was caught off guard when his attacking arm went sailing through the air. I converted one of my blade arms back to hand mode and grabbed the troll by the back of his armor, jerking him off his feet. I spun with the troll and flung him into the wall, which cracked, shaking dust from the ceiling.

He fumbled to get back up with blood gushing from the stump only to slip and fall back down again. He managed to push up onto his knees and turn to face us just in time for Dash to smash one of her hooves across his face, knocking several teeth free. She then pushed back and brought her full weight down with both hooves down into the troll’s chest.

He gasped and made feeble sucking sounds until she shoved the blade of her spear into his throat. A final gurgle and a bit of weak thrashing under her hooves and he went still. She pulled her spear blade free and flung the blood off.

I looked down at my own blade to see it splattered with the troll’s blood. I knew it couldn’t be helped, but I didn’t feel great about helping to kill this guy. I turned to see Toadwart wiping his blades off on the tunic of a dead soldier and Lena looking confused at her blood coated hands. Pris stood motionless at the entrance door. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking at this scene.

As if a switch had been flipped, she gingerly stepped around bodies and dodged various sticky messes until she reached a side counter with a wash basin. She touched a stone on the counter and water flowed from a small trough jutting out of the wall and into the metal bowl.

She looked around like she was a bit lost then examined the tunic of a fallen soldier before discarding it. She then removed her own apron and draped it over an arm as she took the basin over to the Princess.

Lena looked like this was the most normal and expected thing in the world and washed her hands off in the basin, then used Pris’s apron to dry her hands off. When she was finished, she crumpled up the apron and tossed it into the basin full of blood and water.

“Ah that’s better,” Lena sighed. “I can’t abide dirty hands.”

I folded my arms and put my hand over my face.

“What?” she demanded. “You expect me to continue on with filthy hands?”

I held my hands parallel to each other and rotated them from up, to pointing at Lena.

“You put her clean apron, that she offered to dry your hands, into a bowl full of dirt and blood...”

She looked at the apron floating in the bowl then back at me with a look of absolute confusion. I shook my head and turned to the far exit, stepping over the dead troll and leaving the guard station.

Lena chased after me and pulled on one of Convoy’s back panels to stop me before I got to the holding cells. I stopped and looked down at her.

“What Prime, what is it? Why are you angry, I don’t understand,” she said, looking concerned.

I glanced back at the guard station to see Toadwart applying first aid to Dash’s face as Pris tried to rinse her apron clean.

“I’m not angry. I’m just... disappointed. Because of how casual you are with me, I forget that you’re a Princess. I’m just not a fan of people that treat others as inferior.”

“Inferior? What are you talking about?” she said, looking more confused.

“If I handed you my cloak to dry your face after you washed it, would you then throw it into the mud when you were done?”

“Of course not, that cloak was expensive.”

“And if it wasn’t expensive?”

“Well, no. That’d be rude to you.”

“Yet that’s exactly what you did to Pris, right?”

“Look Prime, I don’t care if she’s a maid or her station, but I’m not about to care about courtesy when it comes to the woman who helped murder my father and attempted to murder my swain,” she said defiantly.

Swain? I could infer she was talking about me but I still made a mental note to look the word up when I got a chance.

“Yeah, I get it. Sorry for being judgy. You’ve been through far more than any normal teenage girl should have to deal with.”

I placed a hand on her shoulder to show I wasn’t angry but she took it and put it to the side of her face; her eyes steadily turning pink.

“You know, Prime... I used up a lot of my mana in that fight... Maybe you could remove the armor for just a moment?” she said, squirming a bit.

I slid my hand from her cheek to her forehead and gently clamped over her eyes, pushing some mana into her. I kept tabs on her levels by [Inspect]ing her and pulled my hand back as soon as she was full. She looked suddenly disappointed, but I could only chuckle to myself as I resumed walking past the holding cells.

The Princess quickly recovered her royal demeanor as we ripped the cell doors off of their hinges when we found captured royal guard commanders and their soldiers. The soldiers praised her, renewing oaths of loyalty to her highness for freeing them. I left her to deal with all of the soldiers and continued on. I saw a few people behind bars that looked like they could have been there for years. The temptation was to free them all, but I had no idea if some of these people were here legitimately or not. They all called out to me, begging for freedom and claiming innocence though.

Finally, I saw several cells containing the artificary students and Professor Rechts. I ripped the doors off of their hinges and tossed them aside before unequipping my Convoy armor.

“Prime! It’s Master Prime!” they shouted.

They swarmed me, many of them crying. They were so scared, they wanted to go home, they wanted their parents, they were going to die. It all came out like a flood. I hugged and touched each of them as the relief gave way to all the pent up emotions and fear.

“As touching as this is,” Lena said, leaning against a support beam, “we still need to figure out how to get all of these people out of the palace.”

“I... I might be able to help with that, your highness,” a woman’s voice wearily croaked from the direction of the guard station.

I looked over to see Commander Rook leaning heavily on Toadwart. I was ashamed to think that I’d forgotten she was being dragged down right behind us. It would seem that Toadwart took care of the situation though. He was a reliable guy, it was easy to see how he got his Lieutenant commission.

“Your highness,” Rook continued, “there is a hidden passage that leads into the catacombs under the palace near here. We can get out that way.”

Lena rushed over to the avian Commander and took her hand, gently touching Rook’s broken beak and smoothing bloody feathers. She had probably grown up under the watch of the raven woman.

“Lady Rook, do you know what news of my brother?”

Rook lowered an eye, the other swollen shut, and nodded.

“His majesty was taken prisoner after Antilles was killed. I think I heard them say that he was taken to the north tower. LeCreuset plans on publicly executing him in a duel of rights at dawn.”

I brought the Professor over and introduced him and myself to the Commander.

“Commander, take some of these soldiers, the Professor, and all these kids out of the palace and get to my workshop downtown. Professor, Ram and Rom are there. They’ll help you guys to get through the cave system and out of the city. Once you’re out we’ll figure out what to do from there. Lena, let’s go save Milli.”