Road to Ruisea

❆ ❆ LVII. JAE ❆ ❆

Jae's been upset ever since he came to.

Mostly upset that he hadn't been more careful... He jokes about trouble being his middle name but he seriously hadn't wanted this — he hadn't wanted any of this at all.

But now he's all alone, and Kumari and Chiro are who knows where... Well, he knows the name of where — someplace called the crystal caverns — but still. And nevermind where they are, who knows what's happening to them?

They could be hurt. Or worse... But Jae doesn't like to think about that.

Doesn't like thinking about his best friends being in trouble, when he's too far away to save them...

He got himself in trouble. He got his friends in trouble. He got his princess in trouble.

Jae hates all of that.

But not nearly so much as he hates the man who stands above him right now. After so much luck with the royals on the way here, Jae finally found one that's actually worse than Kumari's father, which is saying something. Jae had been right, yeah, but he hated that too.

Korol is stroking his sword with his free hand, as he muses over a tale that Jae hates he's so desperate to hear.

"A Cevalonian princess, yes, not unlike yours. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she was a direct relative of the one that caused us so much trouble, all those years ago... There is certainly a family resemblance, wouldn't you say, Jaejae?"

"Don't call me that," Jae snarls. "Only Kumari can call me that."

"Oh, I'm sure," and the king brings the sword down to Jae's face sharply, and Jae squeezes his eyes closed.

Only to open them slowly and see the king's already gone back to playing with it.

"Mi-chin-nom!"

"I don't know what that means. I'll assume it's profanity in your native tongue, that warbling gibberish you call a language."

"Say that to my face," Jae snaps. "I don't care if I'm tied down to this table. I'll bite your nose off."

"What an angry little animal you are," the king sighs. "Enough small-talk. Let me speak, yes? Or I'll do something similar to what you suggested — how about... Cutting your tongue out?"

Jae lets out a low growl but says nothing.

"There's a good boy. Now, where was I... Oh yes, the princess. See, back then — Cevalon and Ruisea were wonderful friends! All the relations between the kingdoms were good, of course, not unlike your little troupe of trouble makers. But nothing compared to how close these kingdoms were... Though they were the furthest apart. Strange, isn't it?"

"So what happened?"

"I'm getting there, aren't I? Yes... The best of allies. But there was no Ocean train, not that many years ago... Getting from Ruisea to Cevalon or vice versa was a challenge, when limited by boats and trains that remain within borders. So it was very rare for them to correspond outside of messenger eagles. And Qiluca's new telegram system — that was a thing that was being invented at the time, I do believe.

"But like all diplomats, it was sort of a requirement to meet in person now and then — trade, business, communication, all these things had to be kept up, no? So every, ya ne znayu, exactly... Let's say, every few decades, there'd be a trip organized by one of the royal families to visit the other. That year, it was Cevalon's turn to travel across three kingdoms and three oceans to Ruisea.

"So they went... The King, the Queen, their seven daughters, and other assorted dukes and duchesses, şahs and şahzadəs, a few sailors and merchants, all on their way to Ruisea. It took a month, maybe two, but they did make it safe and sound. They had a little meet-and-greet with the Ruisean royals, threw a few balls for the commoners, and so on and so forth. Everything was wonderful.