Chapter Text
A bustling scene outside the Yellowmoon domain’s manor, as two dozen soldiers and attendants prepare to travel. Carriages and provisions are being loaded for the journey to the Empire’s capital, Lunatear, under the watchful eye of the Yellowmoon butler.
Soldiers in gleaming Imperial armour and Tearmoon livery seriously confer on their plans for security, an unusually dark and charged energy within the group. Though the soldiers’ armour appears to be designed more for ornamentation than fighting, every one just spent a few extra sleepless hours poring over routes or preparing their weapons and horses as if for battle.
Two groups of foreign guards, in Sunkland and Remno colours, each attempt to shake off their exhaustion at having spent a hard few days’ riding, all to answer last-minute princely whims to attend a birthday party. Casual attempts at camaraderie with the Tearmoon soldiers, however, are answered with hostility. The foreign guards are given the bare minimum information to join the formation, leaving them rolling their eyes at the apparent self-importance of the proud Princess Guard.
The Princess Guard has no attention to spare for their feelings, and none of the nervousness you’d expect when carrying foreign royalty and a Duke’s daughter in addition to their regular charge. Instead, the palpable energy is an angry anticipation.
Are those bastards out there? Just let them try it. We’ll be more than ready.
Every one of them knows a guard’s worst nightmare is occurring; their mistress is under threat, a potential target of assassination. A select and loyal few have been told the full story, one that will haunt their dreams for years to come; one of a small and delicate girl, venturing alone into an enemy hideout, narrowly escaping death due to good fortune and a fast horse.
Into this charged atmosphere steps out Mia Luna Tearmoon, the first princess of the Tearmoon Empire, surrounded by her travelling companions, a blissful smile on her face and a hand on her stomach after the (two to three large portions of) breakfast she just enjoyed.
It’s obvious by the terse discussion between her Tearmoon attendants, Ludwig Hewitt and Dion Alaia, and the tension of the Sunkland and Remno princes that flank her, that they’re still feeling the weight of recent threats against them.
The princess, however, maintains a vacuous smile, her head apparently empty of thought. As she helps to load two giggling younger girls into a carriage, her most astute guards would note her fail to suppress a longing glance at the safety of the manor house and feel a hardening of their resolve to protect her, by any means necessary.
Ah, thinks Mia, sneaking one last look back as she climbed into her own carriage, the Duke really does have elite-level pastries. I was too nervous to ask for some packed up… Is it too late to send Anne?
Thus our story begins, our heroine firmly resting in epilogue mode, unaware that she’s to be faced with four terrifying interrogations by her closest allies!