I left the bar while Eugene was in the middle of putting some sense into me. I did hear him finish his last sentence but I was in a hurry so I didn't react.
I looked around for Kael but didn't see him anywhere. "No point in crying over the spilled milk you know" A voice in my head said... It was Briggite's voice. I have been hearing her voice since I met her in the void and ignoring it because I'm not ready to acknowledge that yet and this has never happened before so I don't know how to respond to the voice without looking like a crazy person. "You know I can hear all your thoughts right? There's no point in ignoring me" She said again trying to get a reaction or response out of me. "Where could he possibly be?" I said to myself still not having caught a sight of him. "What are you going to do even if you do find him?" She asked again and I ignored her...again. "Let's see how long you can go on ignoring me" I could feel the pout in her voice but I didn't have time to deal with her right now. I will sort everything out with her once I'm alone in peace with myself at my room. My room..lord heavens I have been missing from the palace since morning what if someone finds out? "I don't think they'd notice since they have a whole war going on you know" Brigitte added reassuring me and it kind of worked.
"Shouldn't you be back at the palace by now?" I turned around to find Kael looking at me disapprovingly like he was about to scold me again. "Roaming around like that as the princess and member of the royal family while a war is going on is not the best move" He said scolding me with that disapproving look of his as I expected. I took his hand and made him follow me to a quiter place where I could give him a proper apology "I'm sorry" I said with regret and guilt in my tone. "You should be. Roaming around is dangerous for you right now and I can't be protecting you all the time" He said with a stern expression. "Not about that...about what I said earlier" I said looking down with shame. "I had no right to question your ways and the trust between your teammates, I crossed a line and I'm sorry" I finished my apology and didn't dare to look at him because I knew he must either be disappointed or amused that I had enough guts to admit I was wrong but to my surprise he had neither of those expressions as I looked up to him to see his reaction. He just had his usual indifferent expression masked on his face which for some reason annoyed me even more. "don't you just want to punch him once?" Brigitte added her own insight which did not help at all because she was right I did kind of want to punch him right now because who on earth reacts like that to a heartfelt apology.
"You were right" those were rhe first words he said after a few moments of silence. "Huh?" I asked in confusion again. " I don't tell them everything but they still follow me and trust me for some reason and I know I don't deserve their trust and loyalty. You just said the truth out loud, there's nothing to be sorry about " at first I thought he was just trying to guilt trip me more or said this so I could pity him or comfort him but looking at him closely I could tell he... genuinely believed what he said. He actually thought he didn't deserve their loyalty. "What? You're feeling bad for him now? Come on, you wanted to punch him a few seconds ago and now you melted over a few words? You're pathetic" Brigitte added her unnecessary insight again. "I can hear that you know" which I didn't care about and neither did I care if she could hear my thoughts. "Hey!" Brigitte exclaimed again and I ignored her.... again.
"There's nothing I can do if you truly believe that and I won't try to comfort or convince you otherwise because you will see how much they respect you with time regardless of what I say. As for me, I felt like I crossed a line so I apologized to clear my conscience so I'm just glad you heard me out" He looked at me with a strange expression as if he didn't expect such serious and mature response from me. "What? Just because I look like a young princess right now doesn't mean I'm not an old lady of 180 something years" I said proudly making him speechless again. "You should be getting back now. They can try to attack you again" He said looking around making sure there was no danger in the area. "Relax a little, the enemy hasn't completely infiltrated the borders yet. The soldiers are still fighting at the gates. The thing that happened in the morning won't happen again" I said trying to relax him and to my surprise what next happened was exactly the thing he was worried about.
"Dodge" He screamed and I turned around to see where the attack was coming from. I caught an arrow that was headed straight towards my head and examined it. I rolled my eyes "these poisonous arrows again? Can't they come up with something new?it's getting boring at this point" While I was blabbering to myself he took my hand and started running towards.... I don't know where but judging from the look of his face he didn't either. I guess he was just trying to get us to safety..... at least that's what I thought until we were in a completely secluded area and there were no public around. It was night and dark already but I could see people slowly appear in front of us. They looked as if they were finally eager to have caught us alone. "Wait weren't we going to safety- oh" I realised he wasn't trying to get us to safety but trying to get away from public so we could deal with these people alone. As expected of him. But can Brigitte's body fight this many people? There were around 20-25 enemy soldiers and somehow they kept sneaking in through our borders and always located me effortlessly and tried to attack me. That was definitely suspicious but I'll think about it later. For now I need a strategy if Brigitte's body can't fight this many people at same time. It's different from just dealing with a few thugs. "Hey don't underestimate me, I am a princess but a warrior too. I have been given same training as my brother since childhood" Brigitte stated defending herself. "We'll see how well trained you are" That was the first time I resoonded to Brigitte directly so far and she seemed to be astonished and didn't say anything for awhile. I heard another word a few moments later "let's show them shall we?" I could hear the smirk in her voice. "Attack at 1 2 3" Kael said and I attacked exactly at 3
I didn't have any weapons on me at that point so I was just using my fist and legs. There seemed to be some muscle memory of martial arts in Brigitte's body which seemed to be extremely helpfull considering I didn't have a weapon on me at that moment. "Told you" I could hear Brigitte's proud voice but I didn't have time to be distracted even for a second. I had dealt with 4 of the enemy soldiers so far and broken 2 of their swords, 3 of their legs, 2 of their hands and made sure in all of them that they can't have offsprings.
Kael was doing very well himself and had dealt with 6 of them. So far. A little bit of distraction and I almost got punched in the face but I caught the fist of the person and broke it with force singlehandedly. "Hey, you don't mess with my face" Brigitte shouted as if he could hear her. I made sure this one couldn't have an offspring either but as soon as I was about to move on to the next one, someone grabbed me from behind and tried to choke me with the forearms but unlucky for them, these petty tactics don't work on me. I got free from it and broke the person's hand and smashed them against the wall "who is helping you?" I asked the person and of course didn't expect them to answer immediately.
"Some of your soldiers snuck in during the day too and tried to attack me. it's not possible without an insider's help. So tell me who is helping you?" I twisted the person's hand again to get a response but the person was just screaming in pain. "I.... I don't know. We were just told we had to sneak in but before attacking any citizens we had to kill you so we were just following orders. I don't know who helped with the information or sneaking us in" The person groaned loudly in pain gain. I bashed their head against the wall knocking them out and turned to deal with more but there were none left. Apparently Kael already took care of them and was looking at me while breathing heavily. "He looks....rather delightful right now doesn't he?" Brigitte added in a dreamy kind of tone and I immediately made a disgusting expression out loud which I didn't mean to. "So you can hear the voice too huh?" He asked me with a serious expression.
"How.... How would you.... Oh wait you said you also experienced something like this right? So does that mean you too?" I asked with eyed expression even though it's not that shocking but what's shocking is this man also has a voice inside his head like mine and his expression never seemed to betray a thing "the voice he has inside him must be boring too just like him. This guy is a personality disaster but at least he's pleasing to the eye" Brigitte added her unnecessary insight again which I ignored and could hear her pout in anger.
"I do have a voice and it happened the same way as it happened to you" He cleared my doubts and as if he knew what I was thinking. He added "I don't know why it got stuck with me but it's been stuck in my head through every timeline I shift in even though he belonged to only one of the universes that I had been in so it's most likely that Brigitte's voice will follow you around in the other titimelines too" He finished explaining and that just did not make me feel any better. I can not handle this voice for the rest of my life and I didn't care if Brigitte could hear me. "That's rude" Brigitte added.
"I might as well just get admitted to a mental asylum" I said to him in tiredness and defeat. I stood against the wall but my legs were feeling weak from all the fighting so I slowly sank down and just sat there, to my surprise he came and sat next to me. "It'll be fine, we can achieve our goal and be at peace in our original timelines" He said in an attempt to comfort me. I listened to him but I didn't believe what he said.... not at all. "How can I be at peace when my mind is the issue not the place?" I said in a tired tone and felt like I could fall asleep any moment. He looked at me as if he understood exactly what I meant. "My own mind won't let me have peace anywhere so I don't know what I'm fighting so hard for" I said clarifying my statement so he could understand better but I knew there was no need of it. He understood exactly what I meant, I just said it out loud for myself to hear.
I was feeling extremely drowsy and couldn't hear what he said next. The last thing I saw before losing consciousness were stars.