After years of thinking he could defeat anyone and any number of soldiers, Lancelot was finally realizing he wasn't really strong enough to defeat every empire there was as he trudged through the unfamiliar path in the woods, just determined to get away from the people he challenged and had somehow lost.

He was having regret and self-shame as he hurtled through the thick woods, his lungs gasping desperately for air despite how painful it felt every time it compressed. This was far from the lands they used to travel upon going to war. He was lost.

And what was worse, he could not run any longer. His head was spinning because of the loss of blood from his head injury, his sword arm was numb and slightly dislocated, and his feet were sore from combat and running.

It was bad. He was starting to lose his vision, and it was starting to get harder to breathe.

Defeatedly, he let himself collapse into one of the poplar trees of the forest, his feet getting relieved from running.

But he grunted as he leaned against the tree. There must have been a couple of broken ribs inside him.

He started to think that his time has come sooner than he expected.

He would die in the woods alone and suffering, with his family unaware of his death.

He seemed to be so deep in the woods that he would not be found by their soldiers. By the time anyone would come, his body had probably rotten and worms would have probably feasted on them.

Before he could close his eyes and surrender to the excruciating pain he was feeling, he saw a lady.

A lady looking so dazzling and gentle that his suffering heart even bothered to throb.

She had this innocent almond eyes that went wide as soon as she saw him. Her hair was neatly held back by a vouole of braids at the side, eevealing her full small face. She hurried towards him with a certain grace that even his sister could not have, and his sister was known to be over all perfect.

"You are badly hurt. What happened?" She asked. Her voice was just as lovely as her face, like melody in a peaceful afternoon. She bent by her knees and held him by the shoulder.

Lancelot coughed even before he could speak. "I'm...sorry..to have presented myself at such an ugly circumstances..."

"You need not apologize. Or talk. I shall bring you to the castle." She attempted to pull him up by the shoulder only to stop as he grunted loudly, his broken ribs causing searing pain in his sides, his vision blurring.

He got nervous when she stood back up and walked away.

The last thing he remembered was watching her go into a certain direction and vanished from his sight before his eyes closed despite how hard he tried to keep it open.

He panicked.

She had left him there to die on his own.

Guinevere ran, leaving mental perception magic along her trail to lose the guards after her. At the moment, she was certain they were all following a three dimensional image of her running to the opposite direction of where she was heading.

And by the time they would realize they had been fooled by the lady, she would have gotten out of the Castle's perimeter and into the woods.

Her anti-gravity magic had come in handy, as usual, as she escaped and took the path of the dark and untamed woods.

She had to get away. It was the only way she could think of right now.

Guinevere was devastated at the news of her brother's disappearance.

In fact, the whole week had been so mind-boggling for her.

She had just gotten out of Ursula Academy of Magic after spending years of schooling, and was already met by the announcement of his father on their first family dinner after a long time that he got her engaged with another magical family.

She had never saw her father look so certain and willing that she grew anxious. She felt like she was gonna be married off soon.

But she loathed the idea of marriage, especially to someone she did not know.

She found it quite pointless for her parents to send her to Magic School only to be married off right after graduation. What use would her top skills would be if she would be carrying babies and checking if her husband was in condition to go to war.

She had to think of a way to stop this engagement.

And now her brother Lancelot had disappeared, right when she really needed him.

He was the pride of their father, being the next in line to keep their family's world-famous fencing skills running.

So his father might reconsider the engagement once he hear Lancelot's thoughts about it. And of course, she was confident that her brother would back him up on this.

But she did not know where the hell he was, and it had almost been a week! She had to find him first, and then they'll think of a way to break off this marriage.

The sun had already set when Guinevere had crossed the woodlands at the east of Castle Gorge, where the Baroque Family line had lived for ages, and arrived in a village.

People there had started to retreat for the night, and she had nowhere else to go. What was worse, she was starving from all the running and spellcasting she did.

She took the almost empty main road and realized people were throwing looks at her.

Though she was used to getting stared at, especially now that she was wearing her violet dress and black-heeled shoes among people in tattered off-white clothes and holed slippers, she was sensing some stares were not looks of astonishment but alarm.

A couple of seconds later, she found out the meaning of those looks as a couple dozen of guards in blue armors and combat helmets came running towards her from different direction.

She bent in a stance, ready to cast her spells, trying to figure out how the guards had arrived earlier than her and why they were wearing blue metal armours instead of golden brown.

"Sieze the Lady Guinevere!" The one in front of the troupe she was facing yelled and everyone else obliged.

She instantly casted a spell, leaving her own illusioned form as she blinked into the side of the road in a blur.

The guards grabbed the three-dimensional image she left and she could not help but glance over her shoulder with a smirk at the sight of their confused faces as the illusion popped and exploded before it fell to the ground.

The ones near it took the hit, but the ones st the back saw her and started chasing her again.

She sprinted through the village's alleys, trying to confuse them, but there were just clever ones who managed to escape her spells.

She came at the corner of the village, where, to her annoyance, more guards were waiting.

"There is no escape, Lady Guinevere!" The one who looked like the commander, told her. "Surrender yourself. Your father, and the Paxley family, is worried about you."

Guinevere frowned as she straightened from her defensive stance. "The Paxley family?" She repeated. "So you are from the Paxley's troupes."

"Yes. Your father had immediately asked for the Paxley's help the moment they realize you were gone."

She scoffed. "This engagement is proving to be even harder to break by the minute."

"Both families just want you safe and sound, Lady Guinevere."

"I decide where I will be safe and sound, and this time, it isn't in Castle Gorge or that damn Paxley's!"

In a split second, Guinevere threw her arms wide at her side and released all the magic she had left. It levitated her off the ground as she yelled her spell.

In an instant, all Paxley guards surrounding her got knocked up in the air more than six times before sending them all hitting their butts against the ground.

Most of them got knocked out and laid fault on the ground, the remaining few were too busy waiting for their heads to stop spinning, giving Guinevere enough time to run away.

She used her anti-gravity magic to jump towards the balcony in the second storey of a wooden house just three houses away from the main road, where she planted a palm against the wall for support as she waited for her nausea to pass.

"So you're the one causing all the uproar outside." A male voice suddenly said.

She lifted her gaze and stiffened, ready to fend herself for any attack.

She followed the voice and saw a boy, peeking from behind a cabinet, his magical blades glistening blue and floating just around his shoulders, ready to pierce her if she makes any advancement.

"You." She said, more sternly than she intended it to sound. "What are you doing here?"

"Running away. Same as you."

Gusion Paxley had just ran away from the Paxley house right after his right of passage.

Just when he thought his magical family would finally accept his style of combat magic, they gave him an ultimatum of either dropping down the use of blades or leaving the family.

He left. He knew right then and there that he could never imagine fighting without his magical blades, and his family just wouldn't acknowledge the use of swords in combat. They had prejudice about it of being weak.

But he knew there was so much more to discover about combining the use of blades and magical energy. He just couldn't give it up.

So that brought him there, inside a wooden house of one of the villages of the Moniyan Empire, peering at the Lady Guinevere of the Baroque Family behind a cabinet.

He knew her, alright, as they attended the same school. He had seen her from a distance and heard her reputation of being top 1 on all her attending years.

But he never really felt how intimidating she was until she was standing there in her signature violet belled out dress that had a slit right in the middle, revealing a part of her long, slender legs. 

And a whiff of Violet scent hit his sense of smell as the air rushed inside the room.

A smile tugged on one side of her lips as she crossed her arms in her chest. "I guess I wasn't the only one having a bad post-graduation after all."

That reminded him of why he was there, and somehow it irritated him. "Easy for you to say. You weren't outcasted by your family."

He caught the crease forming in the middle of her brows before he grabbed his bag from the bed and completely turned his back on her to head towards the door.

She scoffed. "Of course not. Just married off. But isn't that quite the same?" She argued, following him towards the door.

He stopped at the first step of the staircase and looked at her over his shoulder.

Being married off had been any families' traditions when it came to daughters, and it would have been the girls' honor to do it for their family. But judging from Guinevere's strong and straightforward character, he knew it wasn't at the top of the girl's to-do list.

"Isn't that hundreds of generation's tradition in this land?" He crossed, despite knowing it would earn him another crease at the girl's forehead.

"Oh what would I expect from men! Ugh!" She rolled her eyes skyward.

"Sure. Now let a man give you a place to stay for the night." He said and started descending the stairs when she spoke again.

"This house has no one?"

"Paid the family to give me that room. But you can have it." He stared at her reaction for a while.

She blinked a couple of times, clearly flustered at the sudden offer. She glanced at him and then looked away when she realized a shadow of a triumphant smirk was on his face, her lips pursed as she tried to keep a straight face.

"Well then, have a good night, Lady Guinevere." He did a slight bow of the head and then completely descended the stairs.

Only when he reached the bottom did he hear the door upstairs slam close.

Then he settled at the wooden chair that was too hard even to sit and lied there for the night.

As he layed at the hard wood which was totally an alien experience for him, he felt bitterness and bias.

His brothers were all tucked in their beds by now, soundly sleeping, while he was here with no pillow under his head or even a cloth to cover himself from mosquitoes.

But he promised to make himself better, no, the best in magical combat by which no one could ever copy. And he would make his family realize what they had missed.

Until then, he had to dress up as the townspeople and live as the townspeople do.

Gusion had just drifted off to sleep when he got conscious of someone else's presence in the room he was in.

He opened his eyes, still half-asleep, and was alerted by the silhouette of unmistakenly the Lady Guinevere's, bent by her knees next to the low table next to the seat he was sleeping in.

She was so focused on rummaging through his bag that she didn't notice him awake.

"Are you seriously committing theft?" He asked, propping an elbow against his makeshift bed to lift his upper body up.

She gasped and jumped back, falling on her butt as she planted her hands against the floor.

She flicked her fingers and instantly, a floating orb of bluish-violet appeared right between them, helping both of them see each other in the dark.

Her eyes were still wide in surprise as he sat up and swang his feet down to the floor.

"What are you doing?" He asked, glancing at his bag which was lying widely open at the table between them.

Guinevere hastily composed herself and got to her feet, her eyes merely glancing at him every now and then.

"The rumbling of my stomach is preventing me from falling asleep since it had been about ten hours since I last ate."

"So that's why you resort to theft? On your fellow runaway?" He asked in mocked disappointment and betrayal.

She merely cleared her throat and suddenly grew interest at the cobwebs overhead.

Gusion sighed, knowing all too well that the girl had too high of a pride to apologize. But he grabbed his bag and took out the remaining piece of bread he had.

Then he handed it to her.

She looked surprise but took what she was offered anyway.

"Thank you." She said and headed towards the stairs again. But before she ascended, she turned to him. "I'm sorry, but may I know your name?"

He glared at her this time. They went to the same school, he offered her a bed to sleep and food to eat only to find out she still didn't know his name?

And he bit his tongue to stop an argument. She didn't look quite sorry at all.

"Gusion."

She nodded. "From what family?"

His teeth clenched at the question. "I prefer not to mention it for now. Not until they acknowledge me again."

"Well, whatever suits you...Gusion. Thank you again. I shall repay you the moment I find my brother, get back to the Baroque house, and cancel this marriage." Then she ascended the stairs without waiting for a reply.

"She sure has a lot to do." He muttered as he lied down again.

Sooner, he was drifted off to sleep again, with Lady Guinevere's Violet scent hovering just around his dreams.