Phantasia: The Princess Knight

After making it back to the camp Alicia climbed into her tent where Rose and Starla were also staying. She sat down on her sleeping bag and summoned out Frey and Clair. "Mother!" Frey quickly flew over and hugged Alicia's cheek.

Starla's eyes lit up seeing Frey: "Cutee! Alicia who is this!?"

"This is Frey, my adopted daughter. She is a little special and can not be seen by people I do not trust for now. As someone who comes from a knight's family and as my friend Starla, I hope you can keep Frey a secret." Alicia bowed her head towards Starla.

"Of course!" Starla drew her sword and knelt down on one knee as she said: "By the honor of my sword I swear to never reveal any of Alicia's or her family's secrets!" 

Alicia smiled as she stood up and helped Starla up. "Thank you, Starla, I know how special an oath of the sword is for a knight." This was true for the knights in this world. An oath on one's sword was a promise that can never be broken. This oath was something that knights did not give out very easily. It was basically swearing your loyalty to the other party. In this case, it was Starla swearing her loyalty to Alicia. 

Just seeing how quickly Starla was willing to make such an oath made Rose feel a lot better. She already had people look into Starla's background to make sure there was nothing amiss. They dug back almost ten generations of the Wymane family for any misconduct. Luckily it came back completely clean. The Wymane family has been a very loyal family to the king and the kingdom since the dawn of the kingdom itself. 

"Starla this here is Claire. She helps me take care of Frey when I need to do something that takes up a lot of time." Alicia said as she produced a ball of Magicule for Frey to eat. Frey happily took it and sat on Alicia's shoulder to begin eating.

"Miss Wymane, it is a pleasure to meet you." Claire gave a small bow to Starla.

"It is a pleasure to meet you as well Claire but enough with the "Miss Wymane" stuff. I get it enough at my house. Just Starla is fine.  Same goes for you as well, Rose. Just call me Starla from now on." Starla said with a smile. She always hated all the high society formalities. 

"Then I will do as you ask, Starla." Claire replied. Before turning back to Alicia. "Young Miss Loeri seems to have formed a cocoon around her body in the shape of a large egg." 

"It should be fine. She said she was going through a growth spurt. So I am guessing her forming a cocoon around her body is part of this growth. Just keep an eye on it and tell me if you find anything weird about it. There was not much in Berlin's library on younger dragons. So we can only assume that everything is as per normal." Alicia explained. She had read up on dragons in Berlin's library when she first brought Loeri home, just in case something happened to Loeri. But sadly she could not find much information that was worth mentioning.

"I will make sure to let you know if I find anything strange." Claire said.

"Wait what dragon? You have a dragon!?" Starla's eyes were wide with shock.

"Yes, I am contracted with Loeri, a young dragon I met in the Demonic Forest." Hearing Alicia, mention the Demonic Forest made Starla even more surprised. So many surprises all at once were making Starla's head spin. 

"I won't ask anymore, my mind can not take it." Starla said as she held her head. Alicia and the rest let out a laugh.

After talking a bit more everyone but Alicia laid down to sleep for the night. This was because Alicia was on first watch. Although the area they were in was safer than most. There were still times when demonic beasts or bandits would attack. So it was necessary to have a lookout. Alicia's plan was originally to go to bed but she drew the first watch when they were deciding on who would take watch. On this night it was Claire and Alicia. Alicia would keep watch for the first half of the night while Claire would take the other half. Since Claire was in charge of taking care of Frey. Frey would be hiding in Alicia's hair until Claire woke up.

Night passed and dawn rose. The morning dew drenched the ground underfoot.  Alicia woke up to Frey clinging on to her neck drooling which made Alicia lightly chuckle. She reached up and poked Frey causing Frey to groan and slowly open her sleepy eyes. "Mother?"

"I need you to get up for a bit and eat breakfast. You can go back to sleep after if you want. Later on, when Claire wakes up I will send you into the space so you can play okay." Alicia said softly.

"Okay..." Frey still half asleep moved to a sitting position on Alicia's shoulder while rubbing her little eyes.

---

Once everyone was ready they set off again. They were only a half a day out from the village and would arrive around noon time.

When the sun was highest in the sky they had finally reached the entrance of Brown Village. But what they saw when they arrived was utter destruction. The fields were completely dug up and even the fences and the village gate were smashed to bits. Alicia couldn't help but feel a bit of pity for these villagers as they all worked together to try to repair all the damage. 

The cart rolled through the broken main gate and made its way to the village center...

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