Kidnapped Daughter
Charlotte’s white clothes and the flying horse stood out against the dark night sky through the flung-open window, and I watched them shrink into the distance with wide-open eyes. In an instant, anger coursed through my body, and I could feel the mana exploding in my veins. It was so hot that it felt as though my blood was on fire, but my mind was calm with an icy disposition.
“How dare they touch my cute little sister... How dare they!”
Crushing the attacker would have been an ideal move, but he was too far away, and the Crushing required eye contact to work. Determined to get Charlotte back at once, I allowed my anger to consume me. I sat back in my seat, gripped the steering wheel tight, and practically started flooding Lessy with my mana.
Unforgivable! I don’t care what anyone says; I’m going to make them pay!
“Wait, master of my master!”
“Lady Rozemyne! I will accompany you! Excuse me!”
I blinked in surprise as Stenluke the Magic Blade called out in Ferdinand’s voice—something that I still wasn’t used to. Then, half a second later, something struck Lessy’s roof, shaking my one-person Pandabus. Two hands reached out and gripped the side windows from above, at which point I realized Angelica had leapt on top. My eyes widened at her completely unexpected maneuver.
“Angelica! That’s dangerous!”
“I don’t want to waste mana on my own highbeast,” she shot back. “This is fine! Hurry!”
“Get a move on, else they will escape!”
Urged on by Angelica’s sharp voice and Stenluke’s Ferdinand-esque warning, I reflexively slammed down the accelerator as far as it would go, causing Lessy to lurch forward in a mad dash for the window.
“Stop! You’re being reckless, you two!” Cornelius cried as he ran after us from behind, but it was too late. In my fury, I had poured a torrent of mana into my Pandabus, and we had already leapt into the night sky to chase the shrinking highbeast.
Lessy beelined through the chilly night air with Angelica still clinging to the roof. The brightly shining moon made our targets shine with a radiant white light.
“Give Charlotte back!”
“Sister?!”
Charlotte, still caught in her kidnapper’s arms, turned to see my Pandabus. She reached out a desperate hand toward me, her face stiff and her indigo eyes wet with tears.
How dare you make my dear Charlotte cry!
I needed to reach her hand. I was going to save my little sister no matter what. My eyes fixed on the white horse, I poured even more mana into Lessy.
The black-clad kidnapper turned around. His face was almost entirely covered, but his eyes revealed a sickening sneer, as though he was mocking Charlotte’s cries for help. But upon seeing me, he jerked in surprise.
“Wh-What in the...?! That wingless grun, flying?! But how?!” he yelled, the panic clear in his voice. The confident sneer from just moments ago had now been replaced with pure shock.
It seemed that he hadn’t known my Pandabus could fly just like a normal highbeast. Whether this was because he had only ever seen me using it in the castle halls, or because he had received his information from the castle scholars, I wasn’t sure. But either way, this was a sure sign that he didn’t have much to do with the archducal family retainers who spent time in the northern building.
“You’ll suffer for this!” I shouted in a rage, blasting Lessy ever forward. The man tried to speed up his highbeast as much as possible to escape me, so I sped up as well. I was getting closer and closer.
“Sister! Help me!”
The man looked back to check where I was, his eyes now overcome with fear. He turned his head again and again, looking between me and Charlotte as I rapidly closed the distance.
But before I could catch up, he clicked his tongue. After quickly adjusting his grip on Charlotte, he tossed her to the side and into the air, before turning slightly and shooting away in the opposite direction.
Charlotte’s indigo eyes widened in shock, her white clothes fluttering as she sailed through the air. It had happened to me so many times now that I knew exactly what she was feeling—the unusual sensation of weightlessness, and the suddenly overwhelming fear. I immediately turned Lessy’s steering wheel, aiming straight for her.
“Charlotte!”
Rescuing her was my priority. The black-clad man would get away, but that didn’t matter; capturing him was a job for the knights. I darted at full speed toward my little sister, only for Stenluke to cry out a warning.
“No, master of my master! You will crash into her!”
“Bwuh?!”
I hurriedly slammed my foot down on the brake upon realizing that Stenluke was right. Lessy’s fur shot up as he came to an abrupt halt, the entire Pandabus lurching forward from the sudden stop. An instant later, Angelica leapt from the roof.
“Wha?! Angelica?!”
“Don’t worry! I’m using physical enhancement right now!”
She twisted her body, tackling Charlotte in midair and hugging her tightly. Charlotte immediately wrapped her arms around her savior’s back, desperately clinging to her.
“Target secured!” Angelica cried.
The relief of not having slammed my highbeast into Charlotte, the joy of my little sister having been safely rescued, and my gratitude for Angelica’s expert moves all stirred within my heart like a maelstrom.
“Angelica! That was incredible!” I yelled, waving both my hands in gratitude. But before my very eyes, the two of them continued with the same momentum, moving away from me and toward the trees below.
“What is the plan, master?” Stenluke asked Angelica. “As we are now, we will fall to the ground with the young woman.”
“I don’t know!” she responded.
And there went my joy. The blood drained from my face in an instant.
“You didn’t plan ahead, Angelica?!” I cried.
“Not at all!” came her lively response as she continued to plummet. It seemed that her only thought had been to secure Charlotte’s person.
“Um... I... Someone, help!”
I leaned out the window to see how far they had fallen, ready to dive down in Lessy to try and grab them. But before I could, a wolf-like highbeast sped right beneath me.
“I’ll make it!” Cornelius cried as he shot past, having caught up to us on his highbeast. He charged straight toward the rapidly falling Angelica and Charlotte.
“Cornelius! You can do it!”
I watched with sweaty palms as he quickly caught up to them at max speed. He flew next to them, grabbing Angelica by the cape and swinging her and Charlotte onto his highbeast. Having stopped their fall, he then made sure they were both sitting securely behind him.
“Aah! Cornelius! You’re so cool!”
Abruptly stopping in the middle of such a rapid descent would have been dangerous, so Cornelius kept moving toward the ground while gradually shifting his highbeast about. He then made a big loop before rising back up and heading my way. His flying appeared to have stabilized, which meant that everyone was finally safe.
“Yes! Yes! Amazing!”
I clapped my hands in joy, when Lessy suddenly lurched forward again. I wasn’t touching the steering wheel, nor had I pushed down on the accelerator, but he nonetheless started to tilt backward.
“What...?”
I was knocked back into my seat, having no idea what was going on. It was like my Pandabus was being dragged down by something. I blinked in confusion and grabbed the steering wheel, stepping on the accelerator in an attempt to get Lessy back to normal.
“What? Hello? What’s happening?!”
His feet started to move, but then they abruptly stopped again as though something had wrapped around them. We were being pulled down and away against our will.
“Wait, wait, what?! We’re going down! Eeeeeek!”
“Rozemyne!” Cornelius yelled in surprise as he saw my Pandabus start plummeting toward the forest surrounding the castle. Charlotte and Angelica were screaming behind him.
I screamed too, desperately clutching the steering wheel. But just before I reached the forest, the moon illuminated a thin net of light that was covering my highbeast. Goosebumps rose on my skin the second I realized that this wasn’t my Pandabus breaking down—a malicious actor had captured me.
Looking around in a panic, I saw someone in the shadows of the trees pulling the mana net. It was one of the kidnapper’s allies. I couldn’t quite make him out, but his dark hands were visible thanks to the illuminated web.
I have to escape, I thought. But at that moment, the net was pulled even harder than before, jerking both Lessy and me down hard. We smacked into a bunch of trees before finally slamming into the ground with a huge crash.
“Ow...”
The impact was weaker than I thought, but I was launched up into the air and thrown all over the inside of my Pandabus. I really should have fastened my seatbelt, and I was starting to realize just how much I would need to invest in an airbag. But those thoughts only distracted me from the pain for a brief moment.
I pulled myself up to stand inside Lessy, who had fallen on his side, which naturally meant that my upper half stuck up out of the window.
“Eep?!”
The moment I was on my feet, bands of light shot out and wrapped around me. I could trace them back to another black-clad man, this one wielding a schtappe. Thoughts of when Ferdinand had used similar bands to restrain Bezewanst and to grab me during the schnesturm hunt flashed through my mind, and in an instant, my assailant yanked me to him like a snagged fish.
He pulled so violently that I practically flew through the air. I could see Lessy return to a feystone out of the corner of my eye, either due to my focus and mana connection with him having broken, or these bands being made from someone else’s mana.
“Ngh!”
The man didn’t catch me like Ferdinand would have, instead just allowing me to slam against the solid ground. I bounced, then slid across the dirt.
“Finally caught you. An apprentice shrine maiden being adopted by the archduke brought shame to our whole duchy. But I know someone who’ll be very glad to have you in her possession.”
The black-clad man looked down at me, his merciless gray eyes narrowed. While they were the only part of his face that I could see, they were enough for me to understand—he viewed me as an object, not caring how I thought or felt in the slightest. His was the gaze of a noble looking at a commoner.
I was used to that look, though it had been an entire year since I saw it last. Thoughts of all the dangerous nobles I had encountered ran through my mind—Bezewanst, Shikza, Count Bindewald... I didn’t have any good memories with people who wore that expression.
A shiver ran down my spine as I frantically poured mana into my ring...
“O Goddess of Wind Schutzaria, prote— Guh!”
But the moment I started to chant, the man stomped on my stomach. I wiggled about, trying to escape the agonizing pressure, but he just leaned forward and put more weight on me.
“Ah yes, I do remember the Saint of Ehrenfest being able to use blessings...” he said with a sneer before pulling out a potion bottle and popping it open. I couldn’t imagine its contents were anything less than terrible. “How about you just drink this?”
I struggled desperately, but with his foot still pressing into my abdomen, I was as helpless as a mouse stuck beneath a cat’s paw. He grabbed my jaw and forced the potion into my mouth, the bitter liquid overwhelming my senses. I tried blocking it with my tongue and coughing it out, but the man noticed my struggling and pinched my nose. When I ran out of oxygen and started gasping for breath, it finally went down my throat, pouring straight into my lungs.
“Ngh! Gh— Gah!”
“Shut it,” the man said curtly, holding my mouth shut as I started to choke and looking around cautiously.
I started to lose all feeling everywhere the potion had touched. I was unable to move my lips and tongue, the sensation similar to the numbing before a dental procedure. I shuddered in fear, desperately trying to move my arms and legs.
“Rozemyne! Rozemyne!”
Cornelius had descended into the forest and was searching for me, but his shouts were echoing from some distance away. I wanted to scream to him, but I had now lost the ability to move my mouth or speak at all. It was almost certainly the potion. The only noise I could make was a weak exhalation, and my blood went cold with dread as I realized that I could neither cry for help nor pray for a shield of Wind. My limbs were getting increasingly heavy too, such that I couldn’t move them properly anymore.
“Seems like the potion’s working...”
The man removed the bands of light with what I could only assume was a grin, but my body was already so numb that I couldn’t move. I tried to at least Crush him, given that I could see his face, but my terror must have been surpassing my anger, as I was struggling to move my mana about.
I’m scared...
The black-clad man took me over to two men waiting by two horses, instructed them to transport me to a carriage, then disappeared into the shadows of the trees. The two men were dressed somewhat like servants, and since they weren’t clad in black, I looked them all over in an attempt to memorize as much of their appearances as possible. But they soon put me in a bag as though I were luggage, blocking my vision with a layer of cloth.
So scared...
I could feel someone pick me up and then tie me into place. They must have laid me over one of the horses, and an instant later, it started galloping away. My body shook, each bounce causing me to land hard on my stomach. But due to the numbing potion, the impacts didn’t hurt at all; they just felt kind of weird. My senses being this messed up only made me even more terrified.
So, so scared...
“Rozemyne!”
I heard Cornelius rushing this way, probably having heard the galloping of the horses, but it wasn’t easy to use a highbeast with wings in a place with so many trees. I could hear his panicked cries growing increasingly distant.
Help me! Cornelius. Angelica. Damuel. Brigitte. Ferdinand. Father. Sylvester. Dad. Lutz...
Their faces ran through my mind, and I cried out in a silent voice.
Someone, help me!
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