Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 3] Ch. 10 Phantom's Keeper

A/N

Ahoy Crew, 

Happy sappy heart day once again. I'll spare you the long speech since I'm overworked and tired. But I actually wrote this whole chapter last night when I only meant to write a short scene. This one felt better. It also gives the forward momentum for the story that I've been looking for. This is kind of a cute/fuuny scene that wasn't technically supposed to be revealed until later, but the more I considered it, the more it felt right. Please enjoy it and the rest of your day. 

So, go tell someone you care. Mom, Dad, grandma, that girl with that cute booty. You know how it goes. 

I love you guys, and may the winds of fortune ever fill your sails.

-The Captain

*

Sebas

9 years old (Flashback)

"Red eyes." I remarked at the two glowing orbs of killing intent staring back at me from a ledge in the torchlight.

*

In the dark cave I felt the darkness creep around me. Normally I'm not afraid of the dark. I can't say that I'm afraid of this dark, I only feel the weight of it. The weight of my responsibility and mistakes. Taking requests from the Adventurer's guild in disguise, I've been able to blow off steam but tonight... tonight was different. It's been a week since my humiliating defeat at the hands of Flint.

We tore up an entire beach, and in the end, he stood above me with the sore face of disappointment.

-

"Your fangs have dulled, and your eyes show only your weak conviction. You're better than this. Challenge me again when your sails can once again hold the winds of your destiny. Until then, the spoils are mine." Flint groused as he took the elven knife that Zorlo gave me.

-

Since that miserable defeat I realized that I was missing something. And it wasn't the knife... it was my way. I took this quest because it was supposed to be simple. There was a monster in a nearby cave that had been terrorizing a remote town. They'd gotten desperate enough to request help from the Adventurer's guilds of other nearby Cities. It had been a pretty passive monster and only 'fed' once a month, so it had been mostly overlooked since there were far more dangerous monsters coming from dungeons that were constantly sprouting up as soon as others were disappearing. It was as if there always had to be the same amount of dungeons, no matter what. I'm still working on theory for that one.

I've been in a few dungeons they would have be more fun if I had time to really explore them. But they had this potency in the magical feeling. Their boss monsters were always spawned first and either facilitated the growth of shallow dungeons into deep ones, or others were born deep dungeons with many monsters and the boss happened to be the most powerful one.

This dungeon was the first, a shallow dungeon. For now, it only had a weak boss and a pointlessly small dungeon core, one small enough that most were content wait for it to grow a little larger. Entering it, I found small mounds lining the walls. Each had a large stick planted in it. Graves.

The townspeople... well from my modern sensibilities they weren't smart. So once a month for the last year and a half, they've been 'sacrificing' one of the village girls to appease the 'monster'/dungeon boss. It was partially because when they started offering willing sacrifices of young maidens there were times when the girls would be returned to the village. Displaying signs of Anemia, but alive.