Chapter 1: When a princess gets bored with being a princess on her sixteenth birthday, or Royal Pains.

The kingdom of Ivywall was an orderly, prosperous kingdom on the shores of Jewel Lake and to the west of the Glass Mountains. It was named Ivywall because the city was filled with beautiful ivy vines which wove themselves up the walls of the buildings and gave the whole place a rather pleasant feeling. Rival kingdoms were rather jealous of the beauty of the kingdom and usually suggested that the King must have given one of his sons to a dryad or a witch in return for the ivy. They would be very disappointed to learn that it was a very rare, but also very natural occurrence.

The royal family currently consisted of King Alvin, a tall and powerfully built man who had slain many a dragon in his time and was loved by his people, Queen Dawn, whom King Alvin (Way back when he was Prince Alvin) had awoken from a evil sorcerers spell in the Evertall Magical Forest, and their twelve children. Six handsome dashing princes and six perfectly lovely princesses. Twelve at the time was a very fashionable number, it was nice and even and considered lucky by the Dancing Forestmoon Fairies, who were loved by everybody. The king and Queen were very sure that their children would grow up in the usual manner, the Princes raised to be heroes so that they could go off and gain kingdoms of their own by rescuing princesses, and the Princesses to be kidnapped by dragons, giants and any other assortment of strange and nasty creatures and then be rescued by handsome and charming Princes so they could be married off.

Nobody in the entire kingdom ever expected a thirteenth child, for unlike twelve, thirteen was frowned upon for various reasons. The thirteenth child in question was named Aurora, and like the other princesses she was lovely as a newly blooming rose, but unlike the other princesses, whom were all blondes and brunettes respectively, Aurora’s hair was a deep rich blue and her eyes a forest green. The King and Queen were distraught and called upon a large number of Oracles, Seers, Fairies, Witches, Wizards, Sorcerers, Magicians, Diviners etc. to determine what the fate of the kingdom would be now that a thirteenth child was born to the royal family. The varied magical talents all attempted to find some reason for the unusual thirteenth princess. After several days and nights of strange rituals and even stranger divinations the assembled magical experts could discover absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The entire kingdom breathed a collective sigh of relief and it seemed that Princess Aurora, thirteenth child of King Alvin and Queen Dawn would live a long and ordinary, well as ordinary as things got in Ivywall, life. That was, until she turned sixteen.

The preparations were in full swing as the flowers of summer where just beginning to appear. Servants wandered the gray stone halls decorating them with bright streamers and colorful balloons. The palace chef had started preparing the massive cake that would commemorate the occasion. It was a large, layered vanilla mountain covered with blue and green icing and decorated with little sugarspun roses. The knights had been polishing their armor and swords for days and the court magician had practiced all his best tricks to impress the royal family. And as usual, Princess Aurora, who was to turn sixteen tomorrow, was skipping her daily embroidery and etiquette lessons in favor of something far more interesting, Magic.

Ever since she had first seen the court magician perform his amazing tricks in front of her older siblings, she had wanted to learn these things for herself, of course her father had immediately forbidden it.

“Magic is for old men, not young princesses” He would always tell her, but she would remain enthralled by the quick gestures and mutterings that would then cause an explosion of light and color.

When she turned twelve she began to sneak out of the palace to visit an aged wizard in the city outside the castle. The old man was a retired wizard named Mygas, who dressed in long blue robes and a pointy hat, he had a failing memory and carried around a talking spell-book to remind him of his spells, he made his living selling assorted wares he had collected through his years as an adventurer. Mygas had agreed to teach her magic after she showed her incessant interest in the subject. At first he had only shown her a few parlor tricks that any street-side illusionist could manage, but much to his surprise Aurora quickly mastered these tricks and urged him to teach her more. Mygas quickly realized that the young and eager princess had amazing talent, especially towards the element of fire, which seemed to hold a strange allure to the young girl. Every few days for the next four years she would sneak down into the village and he would teach her more about the Mystic arts and the practice of Magery. Today, however, she was here for a different reason.

“It’s all so stupid!” She shouted, pacing around Mygas’s small shop at a frantic pace.

“What is child?” Mygas asked in a soft voice, trying to calm the fuming princess.

“This whole silly celebration!” Aurora yelled, waving her hands up in the air, “All these dancing lessons and dress making appointments and and oooooo I’m ready to barbecue the next frilly noble who makes one more comment about tradition!”

“Princess, proper things these are for a young lady of your standing to learn,” The small leather bound spell-book that lay on Mygas’s desk replied, the face engraved on the cover moved it’s lips in time with the books speech.

“Oh shush!” Aurora said, sitting down so quickly in a rickety wooden chair so that she nearly broke it.

“It’s not that bad Aurora,” Mygas said placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Oh it is THAT bad Mygas, look at the blasted guest list, father has invited every halfwit prince in the surrounding kingdoms to my birthday party!” She fumed, standing up again and resuming her pacing.

“And what could that have to do with anything?” Mygas asked, lighting a pipe that had suddenly appeared in his mouth. Mygas had a habit of doing things like that, using magic without even realizing that he was doing it.

“It’s fully obvious what father intends, he wants to arrange my marriage to one of those idiots, get me a block of wood, I feel the sudden urge to destroy something!” Aurora explained, looking around for something flammable.

“Now, Now, Aurora this isn’t as bad as it seems, all girls should get married eventually, didn’t your sister Petunia get married last month to a prince who freed her from that silly sleeping enchantment?” Mygas asked, creating a small block of wood and passing it to Aurora.

“She was only asleep for a month, and I’ll get married when I feel like it, and it won’t be to some idiot prince that my father takes a shine to!” Aurora shouted, tossing a small fireball that incinerated the wooden block.
“Right she is you know,” The spell book responded.

“Yes I realize that,” Mygas said, removing the pipe from his lips as it vanished in a puff of smoke.

“Can you think of any way I can get out of this,” Aurora said, looking at Mygas, a pleading expression in her green eyes.

“Go and get kidnapped you always could,” The book suggested.

“No, too obvious, that would give every prince and knight in the area the perfect chance to rescue me and claim my hand in marriage, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” Aurora replied.

“I really don’t see that you have many options,” Mygas stated.

“I know, lord only knows how well I know,” Aurora said.

“We all have our destinies Aroura, yours may very well be to marry one of those princes, or it may not, in the end there is really nothing you can do,” Mygas said taking a look at his watch, “and if you don’t want your parents suspecting something you should go back to the palace for dinner,”

“Oh my your right, good bye then Mygas, wish me luck,” With a wave of her hand and a quick flash of magic, Aurora had vanished.

“Happen tomorrow important things will,” The book noted.

“Yes I know, let us only hope that our princess can manage them,” Mygas said, again lighting the mysterious pipe that appeared and disappeared at will.

Aurora managed to teleport into the palace grounds without being noticed, getting back to her room was slightly more difficult but nothing that she couldn’t handle, the hard part came when she had to explain to her parents why she was late for dinner.  In the end she managed to tackle that problem, but it was always an annoyance that she preferred to avoid. When she went back to her room later that evening she sat on her large bed and contemplated a strategy to get out of her predicament.

“What am I going to do?” She said to no one in particular, staring out her window into the vast starry skies.

The next morning she awoke early, took a nice long bath, then selected a purple velvet gown that she would wear down to breakfast. Although Aurora rather liked brightly colored dresses made of soft, shiny fabric, she hated jewelry and almost never wore anything more than her plain gold earrings and golden circlet. This was very distressing to the local jeweler who had depended upon her sisters to fill his revenues. For her party her parents would insist that she dress a little more extravagantly, Aurora guessed that the dressmakers, make-up artists and hairstylists would arrive a short time after lunch so that she might have sufficient time to prepare for her grand entrance.



She arrived for lunch on time, which amazed her parents and upon completion of her meal she was immediately rushed into the waiting arms of the villages best dressmakers, hairstylists, jewelers etc. She hated this most of all, for nearly three hours they poked and prodded at her forcing her to model the most gaudy ornaments and garments coupled with horrendously inappropriate hairstyles. Lastly she was forced to attend a portrait session, which would take at least an hour, even through the imps took only a few minutes to paint the pictures, they were compulsive perfectionists that would insist she do at least three takes for each picture. On the bright side however, it made her unavailable to greet the arriving guests however that was only a delay, she would be expected to talk with each and every one of them that evening at her party. In her mind, this was getting worse and worse and if she didn’t do something soon, she might just burn someone.

By the time six o’clock rolled around, she was sick and tired and wanted to go to bed and never wake up, or possibly light fires using the assorted prince’s garments. She was sitting in her room, waiting for her father to arrive so that she could make her “grand” entrance. She heard a knock on the large oaken door, the handle turned and her father entered dressed in his best royal robe and his massive crown, which looked rather silly on him in Aurora’s opinion.

“Well, Aurora it’s time,” Her father said, holding out his hand, “You look beautiful,”

“I’d rather be a hag,” Aurora snorted, crossing her arms in a rather childlike expression.

“Now, now, that’s hardly proper behavior for a princess,” King Alvin said, in his best kindly father voice, which usually meant “no more arguing!” so Aurora decided to keep her mouth shut.

He father led her out into the stone hallway his elbow firmly linked with hers as if to ensure that she wouldn’t escape. They walked through the endless halls of Ivywall palace, the halls were now lit only by tiny magical jewels placed in tiny glass containers near the roof of each passageway. As they neared the banquet hall where the celebration was being held, Aurora could hear the murmurs of several hundred guests, half of them potential suitors. She wanted to die, but of course that wasn’t really an option was it? As she and her father entered the chamber at the top of the grand staircase the dull roar of speech died down and all eyes turned to her standing atop the staircase. Aurora knew she looked ravishing, and knew that her beauty would only attract more empty headed morons to her. She and her father descended the staircase and headed through a narrow avenue of guests up to the podium that had been erected in front of the great stained glass window depicting her father in his most heroic pose atop a black horse. Her father led her up the stairs to the podium where the royal family sat, all twelve of her siblings were there, they were watching her too, every eye was on her. Her father quietly asked the court wizard to amplify his voice, and stood at the podium.

“Good neighbors, today we stand in the great hall of Ivywall castle to celebrate my youngest daughters Sixteenth birthday, this is a joyous occasion….,” the speech was very longwinded and very eloquent, but all Aurora heard in the end was more pointless dribble and flattery. Her father neared the end of his speech so she quickly straightened up and pretended that she had been listening the whole time.

“And so, without further delay, I present to you my daughter, thirteenth princess of the House of Ivywall, Aurora,” Her father finished, the crowd cheered, and Aurora nearly wretched.

She was then led down into the teeming throngs nobles. They all complimented her, said how beautiful and radiant she was, how her blue hair must be a treasure to possess. Aurora was getting more and more angry and vindictive by the minute. After several minutes of being passed around to various nobles to receive more flattery than she could handle her father pulled her aside.

“Aurora, there’s a young man I’d like you to meet, Allow me to introduce Prince Van of Canyonholme” Her father led her to  haughty looking young man with long black hair and blue eyes. Aurora could make plenty of assumptions just by looking at him, his upturned nose and arrogant attitude told her that he was most likely a narcissist and would always be more interested in himself than anyone else.

“Greetings fair lady, it is a privilege to gaze upon your radiant beauty,” The prince exclaimed with mock surprise as he bent to kiss her hand. It took a great deal of restraint to hold Aurora back from breaking his nose.

“I’m am glad to have made his highness acquaintance,” Aurora replied, imitating a response she felt one of her sisters would have made, she even added a phony giggle onto the end of her sentence.

“Well, it seems you two are getting along well, I’ll just be taking my leave,” The king said, stepping back into the crowd to speak with more of the nobles assembled in the banquet hall.

“Would the dear lady favor me with a dance,” Van said, extending his palm, and giving her his most air-headed, charming look. Any other girl would probably have melted into a pile of softened wax at a look like that, but not Aurora, the effect on her was quite the opposite. Rage flared within her, normally Van would have escaped the wrath of the angered Princess, but Aurora had been through just one to many annoyances this evening. As she took his hand she muttered the words of a paralysis spell which left him stiff as a board with a very stupid expression on his face.

“Be a dear would you and hold this for me, I really must be going,” Aurora said, hanging her diamond circlet on his outstretched arm.

Moving quickly Aurora ducked and dodged her way through the assembly of nobles heading towards the exit. Since she had discarded her circlet, most of the noble assumed that she was just another nobles daughter and not a princess. She managed to make it through the door and out of the banquet hall. The halls of the palace were dark and empty thanks to the party. Aurora creeped silently down the hallways heading back to her room. Then it occurred to her, once they figured out that she had disappeared and paralyzed the prince they would all be looking for her. She needed a place where she could hide until the party and all this marriage foolishness had gotten out of her father’s system. The treasure room was the obvious choice for a hiding place: it was large and there were many mounds of gold coins, enchanted swords, helmets and the like.
It would be very difficult for them to find her amidst all those gold coins and jewels. She could also cast a simple chameleon enchantment that would render her invisible as long as she didn’t move.

“I can’t believe that I didn’t see it before!” Aurora muttered to herself almost slapping herself very loudly in the forehead, fortunately she managed to restrain herself, and all the incessant giggling that usually followed an excellent idea.


She ran quietly down another dark hallway towards the large curving stairway that would lead her down to the treasure room. She descended the stairway and pushed open a large pair of metal doors. The hallway that led to the treasury was filled with various stone statues of soldiers and monsters. Aurora knew that should the guardian of the treasury hit the alarm the statues would come to life to stop the intruder or the escapee. Aurora walked past the statues towards a set of bright gold doors at the far end. Behind the gold doors lay a giant golden dragon, who at the time happened to be sleeping on top of a large mound of gold coins and jewels. The legendary golden dragon had been the guardian of Ivywall for centuries, although since Ivywall hadn’t been involved in a major war in over 70 years, the dragon had been reduced to Guardian of the treasury, a noble but very boring position, especially for a 500 year old dragon.

“Brightscale,” Aurora whispered quietly, not getting any response she decided to up the volume a little, “BRIGHTSCALE!”

“What, WHO GOES THERE!” The Dragon roared, about to let loose with a breath of flame.

“Quiet you old fool! It’s just me Aurora,” She said calmly, stepping into the well lit treasury. The dragon had been Aurora’s friend since she was a little girl, she would always come down and visit him, since he was so lonely.

“Oh, Princess, what are you doing down here, isn’t it your birthday?” The dragon asked quizzically.

“Yes it is, and the party was absolutely horrendous so I decided to hide out here until morning,” She replied, walking in and sitting down on a gold embroidered cushion that sat atop yet another mound of gold coins.

“That’s hardly proper princess, you should be at your party” The dragon said.

“It’s my party and I’ll hide if I want to! And besides It isn’t proper for a princess to consort with a dragon of any type, especially a princess as young as me,” Aurora retorted sharply.

“Point taken,” The dragon conceded, propping his massive head up on his clawed hand.

“Thank you,” Aurora responded.

“So what made this party so unbearable that you’d come down here to enjoy my exciting company?” The dragon asked sarcastically. Aurora told him, at some length, why she was angry with her father.

“Well does that answer your question,” Aurora replied.

“Yes princess, I believe it does. Well feel free to look around, some questing knights made some new additions just last week and I believe that a few wizards conjured up some strange items in some rituals a few months ago,” The dragon said, putting his head back down on the gold and resuming a steady snore.

“For a guardian you sure don’t do much guarding,” Aurora replied quietly.

“Now that’s hardly fair princess,” Brightscale responded, sounding a trifle hurt.
“I’m sorry Brightscale, but I’m just a little frustrated that’s all,”

“It’s quite alright,” Brightscale stated in a comforting tone.

“It’s just….there must be more to life than this, there must be something more out there, am I doomed to marry one of those irritating narcissistic fops my father is so fond of and live out the rest of my life as a fawning slave?” Aurora continued, staring deep into a blue sapphire which adorned a platinum pendant inlaid with diamonds.

“You could always go see the Oracle,” Brightscale suggested.

“The what?” Aurora questioned, her green eyes piercing into Brightscale.

“The Oracle of Isis,” Brightscale replied lazily.

“And what does this Oracle do exactly?” Aurora inquired.

“Oracle’s read the prophecies of Isis, they’re very flowery and poetic about it of course and I personally find them rather aggravating, why…”

“Brightscale, could you get to the point?” Aurora interrupted

“The point is you can go and ask the Oracle what you should do,”

“And where would I find this Oracle?” Aurora asked intently.  The realization of what he had been implying suddenly came crashing down on Brightscale.

“Um… nowhere princess, the Oracles are rarely right and you shouldn’t really bother going all the way to Kole to…uh…….,” Brightscale stammered.

“Thanks Brightscale,” Aurora replied with an impish giggle. She bid him goodbye, despite his wails that she shouldn’t do anything rash. She quietly made her way back up the stone steps and into the dark hallway which would lead her back to the great hall. She kept to the shadows and made her way past the guards assigned to watch the doors to the hall and dashed towards a flight of spiral stairs.

One should consider that at the time most of the castles in the Thirteen Kingdoms where built the spiral staircase was something of an architectural fad. the King of Ivywall at the time was very much in tune with current trends in the world of architecture had commissioned the construction of many spiral staircases in his castle. Although this was very stylish and fashionable, it proved rather exhausting for someone trying to move around the castle quickly, at this precise moment in time, that person happened to be Aurora. The route she had chosen to lead her to her room involved climbing more than a few of these staircases and by the time she reached the top of the tower her room was found in, she was more than just a little tired and very much wondering what genius decided that it was necessary to have so many spiral staircases.

Aurora’s room lay in a small tower that arched gracefully out from the center building of the castle. It was a medium sized circular chamber with a large window that overlooked the palace gardens with only one exit, that being a small causeway that led back to the main structure of the castle. Since her room was so high in the structure it was completely unguarded, especially on an evening like this one, only a lone watchmen wandered the halls to redirect guests who lost their way in the massive palace. Aurora found it rather easy to avoid him since the new recruits were always set to guarding the upper levels of the palace during major social functions. Gathering a small ball of shadows, Aurora snuffed out the light from his glowing crystal lantern. The guard panicked and began to disassemble the device, trying to get at the small crystal which produced the light. Aurora deftly made her way behind him and into the corridor which joined her room to the rest of the castle before removing the shadows from the crystal. The guard was a little startled but rather promptly resumed his patrol of the hallways. His route was long, but Aurora was still working within a rather stiff time frame.

She quickly gathered up the clothing she used when she needed to sneak into town to see Mygas. This consisted of a pair of hardy leather trousers, a light tunic and a hooded cloak of deep forest green. She also made sure to bring along a set of bright Mystora set earrings and a deep blue pendant made of the same material. These simple adornments allowed her to draw upon a larger amount of energy when casting spells. They had been a gift from Mygas when she had completed her training as a Magician. She simply could not leave them behind.

Quietly, Aurora slipped from the room and made her way back to the maze of staircases. Following these she returned to the main level of the castle. She knew she was definitely cutting things close, since they were no doubt looking for her now. Aurora still had several things she needed to pick up before her departure. She first visited the kitchens and bullied the rather apprehensive chef into giving her a generous amount of food fit for travelling, which consisted of sausage, cheese, bread and dried meat. She also visited the armory, where she procured a set of small daggers and a polished staff of hard oak. The daggers where small but serviceable as both tools and weapons and the staff was of the type generally used by the palace guard for training, so Aurora could be assured of it’s durability. Aurora inspected her equipment and decided it was time to leave. She slipped out of the armory and began to make her way towards the main gates.

The palace was awash with guards, her departure and paralysis of the prince had apparently been noticed. It had honestly taken a surprising amount of time for them to notice her disappearance which all things considered was rather strange considering it was her party to begin with. The guards were dashing around frantically attempting to get organized. Although it was difficult, Aurora managed to slip past most of them unnoticed with a few liberally used shadow enchantments. She crept slowly up to the large wall that surrounded the Palace. There were guards running back and forth with lanterns, scouring the trees and bushes since those where the favorite hiding places of Aurora in her youth. She had to move fast. She slowly began to mutter the words to a levitation spell when suddenly a light fell on her. She glanced at the guard holding the lantern. He was of medium height and slim build, a single glance at his face could tell you everything you needed to know about him, his black hair was cut short and slicked back, his brown eyes narrow and deceitful. He projected an arrogant haughty demeanor coupled with an air of lingering mistrust which made one feel very uncomfortable. Aurora knew him instantly, his name was Anrak, the newest addition to the royal guard of the palace. Aurora hated him.

“Well, Well princess, what are you doing out here on such an important occasion?”

“It’s none of your business Anrak,” Aurora said, her voice dripping with malice.

“Oh but I think it is, your father seemed rather annoyed that you’d skip out of your birthday, and enchanting a prospective suitor as well,” Anrak stated. Aurora was quickly losing her patience.

“I still don’t see how it’s any of your concern,” She replied.

“It is very important princess, where word to get out that the princess was studying magic, it would be scandalous,”

“What are you implying Anrak?” Aurora inquired fighting the growing urge to incinerate him on the spot.

“Why nothing princess,” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. Despite her anger, this had worked out perfectly, Anrak’s nature demanded that he demean her, this gave her the perfect amount of time needed to complete her spell.

“Well Anrak, I must be going, sorry you won’t be able to gain any satisfaction from catching me,” Aurora replied with a laugh.

“Wha…” Anraks stammer quickly changed to a scream of surprise as Aurora shot into the air like a stone from a catapault. She could hear him shouting for the rest of the castle guard as she sailed over the castle walls. She flew low over the city until she reached the forest beyond. She slowly touched down in a small clearing not far from the city gates. Her eyes immediately sought out the towering palace. Although she would miss it at first, she had no regrets, destiny was waiting and Aurora fully intended to meet it. She tore her eyes away from the palace and began to walk down the road towards the unknown.