GLD side-story: A tragic hope

“Hey Pearl, it’s already late. Go to sleep.” A cold voice resounded from outside a little girl’s room.

The girl panicked and quickly sat up to blow onto the candle in her room before sitting back down on the bed.

Once the sound of footsteps disappeared from outside the door, she sat back up and reignited the candle. Placing it onto a candle holder, she strolled up to the door and peeked outside.

Seeing no trace of her father or anyone else, she gently opened the door and walked outside. Tiptoeing so she can make as little noise as possible, she made her way across the dark hallway.

Once she reached its end, she went up a circular flight of stairs. She barely reached halfway up the stairs when a kind-looking man appeared to block her path.

“Miss, you know it’s already past your bedtime. Master will punish you again if he catches you sneaking out.”

Pearl bit her lip and looked up with a pleading look: “Please, uncle Arthur. I just want to see the stars. I’ll go back before he notices.”

“Miss…”

“Please, uncle, please. Tomorrow I’m going to start my training and I won’t have time anymore.”

Arthur sighed and shook his head before turning around and walking up himself. Extending a hand towards the back, he said: “Alright, miss, but no word about this must reach master’s ears.”

Pearl’s face bloomed into a wide smile as she quickly grabbed the man’s hand and followed him up the stairs. When they reached the roof of the building, Pearl’s eyes widened as she stared at the endless, starry sky.

Arthur sighed at the girl’s excitement and led her to sit down. He spent the next few hours listening to Pearl give names to every star she could see.

He used to have a daughter as well, but she was killed in a bandit attack on his village. His wife and daughter were both killed, with only him getting saved by Royal Knight Sal Valdez.

He wanted to die and join his family, but Sal even took the time to help him pass through his grief. Ever since then, he’s been a loyal servant of the Valdez family, one of the many people the Valdez took in after their homes were destroyed or families killed.

Looking at the energetic little girl, he would always remember his lost daughter, making him want to spoil her even more.

“Uncle, uncle… are you listening?” asked Pearl once she noticed that Arthur's eyes were unfocused.

“Yes, miss. I’m listening…” said Arthur with a doting look in his eyes.

“You see that star? I called it Gleam, and it’s the brightest star tonight…” she continued speaking with the same excitement from before.

After Pearl had her share of gazing at the stars, Arthur led her back to her room.

She said that this was the last time she could do it since she started training, but the next evening, the same situation repeated itself. Arthur never had the heart to say no to the spoiled daughter of the Valdez family, so he joined her again.

Slowly, five years had passed and the young girl from before had grown into a beautiful young lady.

“Say, Arthur, what do you think the stars are?” asked Pearl as she was laying with her back against a wall, looking straight up. They were no longer on the rooftop but on the balcony of her room. She was already twenty years old and a lot of things had changed, but she still used to watch the stars from time to time with her servant, Albert.

“I do not know, miss. Maybe they are the souls of all the dead that had left this world.” Replied Arthur with a sigh, joining her in gazing upwards. The light of the night sky fell on his face, bringing into focus the signs the years had left on it.

Pearl smiled and said softly: “I think they are worlds, Arthur. Bright worlds just waiting there in the sky for us to visit them.”

Lifting one hand towards the sky, she muttered softly: “Will I have the chance to see them someday?”

“I’m sure you can do it. Miss is already quite strong for her age.”

Pearl chuckled and shook her head as she said: “The ascended of Oath might do it, but we… Maybe Iris, the one who attacked us all those years ago, had already seen them. Sometimes I wished I could have been born into Oath myself.”

The old man, Arthur, sighed, and both remained silent, staring at the night sky. Suddenly, a bright light coming from the ground in front of their mansion caught their attention.

They both looked down at the same time and spotted hundreds of torches in front of the mansion, stepping through its gates.

“Who…” before Pearl could finish her question, a pain came from the back of her neck and she passed out.

Arthur caught her petite body with one hand and looked at the torches with a frown.

“That stupid king really did it. Master was right.”

Focusing on the new group of people coming out of the house, his frown deepened as he muttered in a pained voice: “Master…”

A strong-looking man, dressed in shining white armor that reflected the light of the torches, looked up towards the second-floor balcony.

Arthur and the knight’s eyes met for a moment. The look in both their eyes said a lot more than any words could.

Doing his best to keep his tears from flowing out, Arthur nodded and picked up the little miss in his arms before running back inside the room. Making his way down the stairs until he reached the basement, he found ten servants already waiting for him there.

They were all servants of the Valdez family and were the people Sal Valdez trusted the most. Without a single word, Arthur nodded toward them and rushed into a dark tunnel built inside the dungeon. Nine of the servants quickly followed after him and Pearl.

One servant was left behind and he covered the tunnel from the outside to buy them more time.

There were more servants inside the mansion, but these nine were the ones who received some training from the Valdez family, while Arthur was the one Sal trusted the most.

They rushed through the dark tunnel for an entire hour until they reached a forest just outside the city. Pushing away the branches covering the exit, all nine servants walked out.

Looking at the sleeping Pearl’s face under the moonlight, Arthur sighed and quickly mounted a horse tied nearby. The other servants also had a horse each. This was all set up by Sal Valdez once he started suspecting the new king might look to turn against him.

Arthur, Pearl, and two other servants started riding straight towards the border with Oath, while the others went towards the north and the south, where the Loss and Blood kingdoms were. They needed a distraction as well so that the king wouldn’t know where exactly they were going.

He knew none of the key members of the family could leave without attracting the attention of the royals, but his daughter was not knighted yet and she might get further away before they noticed anything was wrong.

In a few hours, Pearl opened her eyes and noticed that she was atop a horse and riding through a dense forest under the cover of the night. She started panicking, but once she saw Albert behind her, she relaxed somewhat and asked: “Arthur, where are we going? What happened?”

Arthur couldn’t hold in his tears anymore and whispered through sobs: “I’m sorry miss, but the king has turned against miss’s family.”

Pearl’s expression turned serious, and she was about to jump off the horse when Arthur caught her and said: “Please wait, Miss. Let me finish. This is all master’s plan.”

Hearing the mention of her father, Pearl stopped struggling but still didn’t look convinced as she said in a commanding tone: “Tell me what is going on.”

Arthur nodded and slowly explained everything. How her father had supported the losing brother in his claim for the throne, how the new king was planning to get rid of the Valdez family, how Sal had heard the news of this and set up an escape plan for her, and so on.

Pearl was also crying by the end as she said: “Please Arthur, let’s go back. I can’t let mother and father alone. My brothers. Please.”

Arthur sighed and brought Pearl closer in his arms to calm her down as she said: “Miss, if your father and brothers couldn’t deal with them, what help would you and I be? The king will not kill them for a long time to prevent the citizens from turning against him, so miss must use this time to gain strength and save them.”

“But how? How can I save them?”, asked Pearl, hope appearing in her teary eyes.

“Hasn’t miss always wanted to become an ascended? We’re going to the Oath kingdom so that miss can register with the academy.”

This was something Arthur came with on the spot, hoping to give Pearl some hope. Sal only told him to take her into Oath and settle down there, where she could hide from the reaches of the Wrath Kingdom.

Pearl bit her lower lip and nodded before turning to look forward again. She didn’t know the academy doesn’t allow people from other kingdoms inside, so a slight trace of hope rekindled in her heart.

The journey to the border took a long time. After the first month, they had finished all the food they had taken from the capital and had to eat all kinds of edible fruits from the forests and even hunt some wild animals if they were lucky.

It took one more month until they finally reached the border, and they had even eaten one horse on the way. They would have arrived earlier, but they were careful to avoid any other patrol they might encounter.

“By now, the king has probably captured the others and must know we’ll attempt to pass into Oath.” Said Arthur as he looked at the increased number of soldiers on the front.

“What do we do?” asked one of the other servants from the side.

Arthur closed his eyes for a long time before saying with a sigh: “We can’t hope to pass by so many soldiers. We wait.”

“For what?” asked the other servant.

“Anything. Kill one more horse for food. We won’t need two anymore.”

The servants went further away from the border and killed the weaker horse before making a fire and cooking as much meat as possible.

Arthur and Pearl remained on the hill, looking at the battlefield. Once the servants returned, everyone ate as much as they could because the food would go bad anyway. This way, they could hold on for a while longer.

After half a week, when Arthur was considering killing the other horse as well, a change finally arrived. He could see the armies of the two kingdoms engaging in one of their occasional skirmishes.

“This is our only chance.”, said Arthur before taking a deep breath. Turning towards the two other servants, he said: “They are definitely still keeping an eye out for us. You two take the remaining horse and rush around the north of the battlefield. Draw as many soldiers’ attention as possible.”

The two nodded, understanding Arthur’s plan, but so did Pearl. She was about to say something when she noticed the two servants looking at her with wide smiles on their faces.

“Miss, your father saved our lives and treated us as family, even if we were just commoners. We’re paying back what was long due.”, said one of them, the shorter one, as he pulled a cloak over his head.

“You be careful miss and we wish you good luck.”, said the other one before turning around and climbing with the short one on a horse’s back.

Seeing that Pearl was about to cry again, Arthur placed a hand on her shoulder and said: “Miss, there will be a time to grieve, but now is not that time. We can’t let their sacrifice be in vain.”

Pearl nodded silently, and they both started walking toward the battlefield. Their plan worked and a large part of the soldiers in the back started chasing after the two servants, not noticing Pearl and Arthur sneaking on the south side.

As they reached closer to the fighting zone, Arthur and Pearl even crawled to not attract too much attention. The chaos of the battlefield served as a secondary distraction and they camouflaged between the dead bodies on the ground and entered the Oath’s side of the battlefield.

A small platoon that was covering the south noticed them but didn’t attack as one would expect. Seeing that it was only a young girl and an old man, the platoon leader approached them with a smile on his face.

Arthur heaved a sigh of relief and walked with the confused Pearl forward after standing straight again.

“The captain told us to expect you, but you are late. We were afraid you didn’t make it.”, said the leader of the platoon with the same smile. “This must be miss Pearl Valdez.”

Arthur pulled Pearl slightly behind him and said: “Our master has already made a deal to provide asylum inside your kingdom for his daughter.”

“Of course he did. He even paid quite a hefty sum for it.”, said the leader, already having arrived in front of Arthur.

“And we’ll take great care of her.” He added as he swiftly plunged his sword through Arthur’s chest while fixing his perverted smile on Pearl.