"Your highness! Your highness!"
Kion turned to hear the panting voice of Penelope as she made her way to where he stood.
Immediately she came close, she bowed down to the ground.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you when the mercenaries attacked. I was incapacitated, master. Please forgive me."
Kion rolled his eyes.
"Please get up." He said as he picked her up from the floor by her elbows.
"But sire—" she cut in.
"You are not my knight." Kion interrupted. "You need not protect me. I'm fully capable of handling that myself. Besides, you've seen firsthand what happened when another maid tried to protect her master."
Penelope kept her head low as he spoke. Her master was very strange indeed. Instead of berating her, he made her feel as though she didn't matter to him. As though he had not much need of her service. This should have naturally pushed anyone away, but oddly enough, it made her want to serve him even more.
"I fully understand, my lord."
"Where have you been?" Kion finally asked.
"I was out scouting for a good place for you to spend the night, my lord. Styria is not a safe place at night for the shelterless."
"That won't be necessary. My brother and I here have no need for rest. At least not yet."
"What do you mean have no need for rest?" Kai interrupted. "Do I look like a machine to you? We just took a huge blow and you're saying that we shouldn't recover?"
"I'm saying that we have more pressing issues at hand. We can recuperate later."
"And what is that if I may painfully ask?"
Kion stretched both hands and laid them on the shoulders of Kai, who flinched ever slightly at his touch.
"Do you want to get within father's favours?"
"Oh get in with it!" Kai removed the arms placed on his shoulder. "What do you want?" He asked.
Kion looked him dead in the eye.
"I want to recover what has been stolen from us."
***
"We can't expect to recover everything." Kai exclaimed.
"Not everything." Kion cut in. "Just the important things, like your signet ring and our scrolls and storm pills."
Kai looked at him with a confused expression.
"So you stole some storm pills from Shaman's workshop?"
"You talk as though you didn't." Kion replied, to which Kai looked even more confused before getting himself back together.
"Alright fine, let's go. But what's your plan?" He asked.
"I'll get to you on that. Let me just ensure our accommodation for the night is secured." Kion responded as he turned back to Oenelope, whose head was looked down and body hadn't moved an inch from its original position.
"Hey, I told you to look at me when I speak to you. Eye to eye." Kion raised her chin with the tip of his finger till her eyes met his.
"I'm sor—"
Kion raised a hand. "You'd apologise for your own breathing too if I took offense of it."
"Oh, I'm sorry if that's the case—"
Kion raised an eyebrow, and Penelope's eyes widened briefly befor opening her mouth to say something again and covering them with her hands.
Kion would've laughed at her remorseful dilemma if not for their situation being so dire.
"So what's the status of our lodge for the night." He asked after allowing Penelope collect herself.
"Oh I haven't been able to book one yet. The innkeepers in town refused to believe my word to them that the princes of Stormholt are still within this city. They believe that you both are far gone, and that i'm a scammer willing to con them out of their money under the guise of a royal servant."
"Except that you are what you say you are, and you're story is true."
"Precisely my lord."
Kion thought for a moment. The only way an innkeeper would believe that their presence was still within Styria would be if they saw it for themselves somehow.
He turned to Kai who still packed the very few things he had in his possession, which was his broadsword and some rations. As he moved about, his red velvet-textured robes billowed in the night breeze.
Kion stretched out and ripped a piece of the rich fabric.
"And what do you think you're doing?" Kai asked after realising what had just happened.
"Securing our accommodation for the night." Kion replied.
"And you couldn't use a piece of your own clothes."
"Well, a piece of my simple poncho doesn't exactly cut it when trying to convince our mysterious innkeeper over here that two highly esteemed nobles of the second highest status in the kingdom are in Styria as we speak, does it?"
Kai glared a him for some more seconds, before getting back to what he was doing.
Kion turned back to Penelope.
"Take this piece of material and tell the innkeeper that this is his proof. If he has a good eye, he'd sniff out the rich nobility in the nature of this fabric and immediately believe you. If he does not, well then you can carry this on to someplace else where they would believe you."
Penelope looked at the fabric hesitantly before taking it from his hands.
"Yes, my lord. I'll be on my way then."
After Penelope left, Kai walked up to his brother.
"There goes our last line of defense." He remarked.
"You want a woman to protect you? Where is your honour?"
"Excuse me," Kai returned, "but I have no knight, or soldiers, and you want me to head to god-knows-where to deal with those merry band of thieves. Besides, how do you even intend on tracking them?"
"With a little perk I picked up before we started our journey." Kion said as he activated the new skill he had learned under his fire domain ability. An {Uncommon-Level} tracking skill known as [Smoke Trail].