Eliza went back to her chamber with a heavy heart. She slowly grabbed some dresses she came with and stuffed them in a ragbag. Simple dresses, but dear to her, the ones she wore when she kept herself busy in the palace kitchen. Then she intensely looked at the ball dress that hung quietly in the closed and gently touched it to feel its softness one last time. She suddenly remembered the engagement evening and dancing with the Prince. Was she truly happy back then? Or was the entire happiness just a figment of her imagination?

She quickly brushed that memory away along with the tear that dripped on her cheek. Tommy felt her bitterness and tried to comfort her, rubbing his small body against her hand, from the tip of his moustache to the tip of his tail. Eliza rummaged through her drawers and found the first book she had ever taken from the Palace library. She must have forgotten to return it. But it wasn't the book that caught her eye, but a rose hidden inside its pages. It was that delicate flower that somehow endured the freezing cold to be given to her by the Prince in one of their walks around the Castle's garden. She carefully folded it in a handkerchief like the most fragile thing. Then, she found the Prince's letter, kissed it and carefully put it next to the other things so dear to her.

Now, what? She didn't know what to do or where to go. Her regained youth didn't make her either cheerful or confident. A light knock on the door made her cast away the dark thoughts that were about to settle in.

Nanny Ana, or, better yet, the Dawn's Fairy with the nanny's looks, came in making sure she wasn't seen. Eliza threw herself in her arms, sinking her head in her soft clothes which smelled like summer flowers. And she cried until her tears ran dry.

'There, there, child,' said the Fairy. 'It's time to go...'

'I have nowhere else to go,' sighed Eliza with a loud wipe of her nose. 'I fear father and Adrian will be thrown in a dungeon. And Mara would be forcefully brought here... And the Prince's wrath will all come down on them. Maybe he will declare war on the whole country... And my poor parents, now that I've found them... I didn't even have time to hug them...'

And Eliza wept some more.

The Fairy smiled, 'That's not entirely so, my dear. The Prince truly loves you. And no matter how angry he is with you for breaking his heart and jeopardising an entire country, he couldn't harm you in any way. Maybe he's drowning his sorrow in preparing for the battle to come... But in time, he'll forgive you. That's what you do when you love someone.'

'You really believe that?'

'I know that,' smiled the Fairy, wiping the girl's tears from her cheeks. 'Now get ready. Celestius awaits us.'

'Where are we going?' asked Eliza seeing Celestius flying at the window. But the Fairy gave her no time to answer. She rushed the girl to grab her things and after handing Tommy to her, the two of them got on the winged horse and disappeared somewhere above the horizon.

●

The Forgotten Realm was in a frenzy. Spring had come bringing along soft breezes and nature began to rouse. But the inhabitants of the magical realm appeared to be preoccupied with something else. Frown faces, hastily footsteps and a quiet, suspicious back and forth.

'What's happening?' whispered Eliza to the fairy. 'Why did you bring me here?'

The Fairy, who was now back to her majestic appearance, seemed preoccupied as well.

'You see, Eliza, the Shadows who are to attack the Dark Kingdom are the impersonation of such evil forces, that a kind soul cannot even imagine. And their master, the Witch, is the purest evil. As you've seen, she won't let anything go between her and her goals. And once they take over this world, together with the forces of darkness, no one and nothing will be safe. It's just a matter of time until they reach us. So we must prepare. We decided to join the Prince in the battle against the Shadows.'

Eliza couldn't help herself and gave her a hug, a deed forbidden to the lieges. But considering she was her Godmother...

Preparing for the battle, though, was harder than she expected. Her weapons' master, Rufus the Centaur, was tough and determined. He was the first to teach her to use the sword and master the bow and arrow. All of these mounted and wearing an armour ten times heavier than her. If at first Eliza was moping all the time, whining about the sword being heavy or the fact that the arrows were flying everywhere except towards the target—it was the wind's fault, of course—in time, she gained the discipline and the ambition that made her a better fighter. Even the armour became lighter...

Perhaps the master, not giving into her whimpers, also helped. His face was blank, and she had never seen him smile. In the evening, the captains were gathering in the Dawn's Fairy's cave, developing war plans, studying maps, and listening to what the scouts coming from the Forest of Whispers had to say.

But the smaller fairies and elves, even when invisible, couldn't get too close to the Witch's castle. That's because the magic dust accompanying them made the Witch's guards sneeze and feel their quiet presence. All they knew was that Guzma met her sisters, as evil and hideous as her, and gathered thousands of Shadows to stand against the Prince and his army. And that worried them the most.

●

A tiny, agitated fairy, fluttering her wings, rushed into the cave and rested in front of the Dawn's Fairy, almost out of breath.

'It has begun,' she said in a thin voice. 'The battle has begun.'

It seemed that the Dark Prince attacked the Forest of Whispers a couple of days sooner, baffling their plans of attack in the day prophesied in the old books.

There was no time to waste. The army of the Forgotten Realm gathered in ordered lines, each led by a captain.

In front of them all, there was the Dawn's Fairy, riding on the back of Celestius; on her right, on a black winged horse, there was Eliza. She proved herself to be a fierce and courageous fighter and gained her well-deserved place. They started towards the Forest of Whispers with hope in their hearts, but concerned about what they were to find there. They knew the Dark Prince, in his turn, gathered an army of hundreds of thousands. But was it enough to defeat an army of a thousand black souls from the depths of hell?

The road took them longer than expected. Nature itself seemed to oppose the bane that was about to unleash and whipped the strange army of magical beings with heavy cold rains. Not all creatures could keep up. Of course, it was easy to fly for the winged horses, dragons and fairies; but what about the gnomes, Centaurs, and Minotaurs, dwarfs, and giants? Their pace was getting heavier and the bad weather was slowing them down.

After a couple of days of walking over mountains and valleys, they finally reached the Forest of Whispers. Others have joined them in their way, simple men who knew they couldn't face the invasion of the Shadows if they didn't fight. Besides them, real warriors and brave knights have joined the creatures to fight together in the most fierce battle those lands were about to witness. Thus, on the very day of the Prince's twenty-first birthday, the one that was supposed to be the day of his wedding to Eliza, the strange and colourful army had reached the battlefield.

But the sight of the place horrified them all.   

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