A letter ca...
A letter ca!?
Irene was woken up with a start, worrying that it was the half-open shutters that had been keeping her cool through the night. Perhaps a storm rolled in, and in her sleeping state, she imagined what she had heard.
However, she realized that her hearing about a letter was the truth. A ssenger had co bringing letters to the Litharions. Her father was the most trusted noble outside of the war, after all.
The entire ti the battle had raged on, he had been sending a constant stream of supplies to the front lines. Regardless of weather, regardless of danger, he ensured that they would never starve or freeze to death at the very least.
Even if he was forbidden from leaving his lands, it was the least he could do.
Irene stood up quickly, minding her leg as she did. She pulled on pants and a tunic. Even a belt and her sword were pulled onto herself. She then rushed to the basin where a mirror was as well as water and a brush.
It was so strange seeing herself as she was.
Her hair had grown out. She no longer wore a tight chemise but a supportive bodice underneath a boy’s tunic—proper undergarnts of a woman in those days. It gave her a womanly figure rather than what she was used to. Despite all of her mother’s convincing her to try it out, she surprisingly found it more comfortable than the tight clothing she was used to.
She would allow herself to live in that comfort until she returned.
Then what would she do? Was she presenting herself as a teenage girl now?
It was so uncomfortable to perceive herself as sothing feminine. Yet that seed to happen every single ti she looked into the mirror.
No ti!
She rushed to brush through her hair and pull on her boots before she ran out the door.
As she sped forward and practically dove down the stairs, her father, who was at the front door, turned around quickly and held out his hands.
"Careful, careful!" he shouted. "There’s no need to rush. It’s still early in the day, after all."
"Father, is there one for ?"
It would have been the first she had received since she sent off the two to Sir Gunnar and Felix.
"How do you know there is one addressed to you when I am the lord of this estate?" Arthur asked to test her.
"You are the lord, but I am the only one active in the knighthood since you sent away all the knights and apprentices from this region," she insisted. "Unlike Earl Auden, who instead kept his knights there to ensure that his lands wouldn’t be taken over. How different."
"Irene..." Arthur spoke in a shocked yet warning tone.
"But I am not lying, father," she persisted.
Arthur scrutinized his daughter for a few monts.
He knew he should treat her as old as she behaved. Especially after she returned ho, she acted far more serious than he had ever experienced from her before. It made him want to try all the harder to ensure she stayed a child.
Unfortunately, he knew that her trajectory was up. It always had been.
He responded in a way that assuaged both sides of his aching heart by ruffling her hair while also handing her the letter she so sought. He had a feeling that the urgency with which they were delivered ant that the information in both of their letters was important to them.
Irene couldn’t wait any longer. She ran to the front sitting room with a chair closest to her, and she tore into the letter.
From the first line, her hand went over her mouth.
"Irene,
The information you provided us proved to be most useful in turning the tide of this war..."
["I Want To Be a Romance Novel’s Love Interest" spoilers ahead! This summarizes Chapters 61-64]
It wasn’t until the Knights of Hydrogia themselves saw one of the goblins take a leather skin to their lips and inhale the black poison that they started to believe the northern knights’ paranoia that the magic was certainly doing more than harming humans. It was livening up the goblins. The strange evolutions that were happening before their eyes were due entirely to the black poison.
That was when the mages also beca more willing to seek help from the mages of Nickron. They brought with them penned letters from Commander Lothian, Commander Antoine, and Sir Gunnar, as well as Stanley, who could vouch for the humans he had been living amongst for such a long ti. It had beco sothing far more serious than they themselves thought that they could handle.
lla and Siverly went far to et the magicians in the slowly thawing winter to bring them all the way back to the encampnt that stood the test of all seasons and battle at the bottom of the ancient wall segnt.
However, it was a letter coming from the northeast that caused quite a bit of pause as they pieced together what they were to do next. And that was Irene’s letter that detailed the possibility of more tunnels leading away from the Duke’s Tower. Even though all she had was her own unconfird experience, it still directed them to look closer at the ground when the goblins were starting to stir.
That led them to the discovery of tunnels that led off in different directions from the Duke’s Tower, buried by ti but not that much ti, surprisingly. Things that were right under their noses that they had no idea about.
Things that Sir Gunnar and his band of apprentices and knights led them in the right direction, but always seed to go into a dead end. Footprints that disappeared in the center of the fields and frustrated them to no end.
Irene rembered it all.
By that point, morale was low. Understandably, it was hard for them to find volunteers willing to go back into the tunnels, but with a magical shield that Siverly had ford, lla’s guiding light, as well as her knowledge of breaking necromancer spells, at least a few knights were convinced.
Along with the two mages, Commander Lothian went into the tunnels with the apprentice nad Henry, as well as his second in command, Sir Williamson. Yet only Siverly, Commander Lothian, and Henry returned from the journey inside.
This was a turning point in the war because there they broke the spell that controlled a corpse continuously making poison using the sacrifices of weaker goblins. The spell continued the clanking of her massive spoon along the edge of a deep, tal cauldron. Her hands had been permanently tied to the spoon when she was a corpse. What was left had practically molded into the spoon.
When she was no longer moving, the poison stopped being produced.
After that, the entire army of knights, apprentices, mages, and squires could breathe a sigh of relief. The final wave of monsters, no longer fueled by poison, was far easier to handle.
Victory, they called it. Complete and total victory. New war heroes nad.
A peasant from Hydrogia, to everyone’s surprise. Henry the war hero.
However, what stood out to Irene the most was the last couple of lines in the letter.
"...And that is why your contribution, as well as the contribution of the apprentices who fought alongside you, has earned all of you the honorable title of knight. Details of the ceremonies to be announced.
Your Equal,
Gunnar"
She felt she wasn’t supposed to collapse to the floor in tears at this news because knights were ant to be the epito of strength, but she couldn’t help herself.
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