Chapter 31: A Radiant Princess Mia Lights Up the Dark Night!

The smoke filled the area in an instant, but Bel was watching during that instant, so she saw everything. It all happened in a heartbeat right in front of her eyes.

While Barbara was distracted, Citrina had walked over to the bonfire, where she’d picked up the water she’d boiled for tea...and dropped something in. An explosion of white smoke immediately followed. Soon, no one dared move, for not a thing could be seen. Or so Bel had thought until she felt the rope around her arms give way.

“...Huh?”

Surprised by the sudden freedom, she was about to turn around when a shove to her back sent her lurching forward. Behind her, a faint voice echoed in the smog.

“...Goodbye, Bel. Be well.”

“Huh? Rina?! Ri— Ow!”

Stumbling headfirst through the thick smoke, she promptly crashed into someone else.

“Yeeow!”

The victim let out an undignified shriek. It was, of course, none other than the person who was supposed to be coming to her rescue.

“...Huh? Miss Mia!”

“Wha— Bel?! How?”

Mia’s astonishment lasted for only a second, for she soon realized something else.

Wait, this is our chance! Time to scram!

Fortunately, mental flexibility was one of her strong points, and she quickly burst into motion.

“Kuolan!”

She urgently called her steed’s name, the slim window of opportunity affording her no time for further instruction. Kuolan didn’t need any. He charged through the smoke and stopped at her side. Mia deftly flipped onto its back and hoisted Bel up in front of her.

...Well, that was how she envisioned it, anyway.

In actuality, her bestriding process included her usual sequence of preemptive leg pumping and motivational chanting, which was followed by an intensely laborious and decidedly ungraceful effort to heave Bel onto the saddle. Still, the sheer urgency of the situation had triggered a primal amplification of Mia’s physical prowess, and she ultimately managed to get both of them seated fairly quickly.

“B-But Rina!” exclaimed Bel, peering desperately into the smoke. “She’s still—”

“We can’t help her. Not right now. But...” Mia paused to gaze into the smog as well. Then, she continued. “We will. One way or another, we’ll come back to save her. But for now, we run!”

With that, she gave the order.

“Go, Kuolan! Get us out of here!”

Thus began the most dramatic escape of Mia’s life, wherein a desperate flight for survival would culminate in an epic race between heroine and villain.

At Mia’s command, Kuolan all but exploded into motion, instantly breaking into a full-speed gallop. She wrapped her arms around Bel and pressed their bodies forward to withstand the intense shift in momentum that threatened to fling them off. Smoke surrounded them on all sides, impairing Mia’s sense of direction. Which wasn’t much of a problem, actually, thanks to a potent technique she’d acquired through her autumn riding practice.

Mia, you see, had mastered the Flotsam—the secret art of reinless riding in which the rider conformed to the horse. In other words, she just let Kuolan do whatever he wanted and tried her best not to get in the way. So long as the horse knew how to get back, they’d be fine. All she had to do was blankly stare off into the distance for a while.

They soon broke through the smoke. A quick glance backward revealed a large cloud of brilliant white had swallowed the entire village. Brilliant, as in glowing.

“That...must be the same bath herbs that Chloe gave me.”

She recalled the time when she’d gone to the bathhouse with Tiona, and Citrina had shown up soon after.

Does that mean she asked Chloe to give her some? If so, that would suggest Rina saw this coming and was intending on helping us from the very beginning...

The thought threatened to pull her into a bout of rumination. She shook it out of her mind.

“There’s no point mulling it over right now. The most important thing is that we managed to get away. Once we’re back together with everyone, we can figure out a way to rescue her. Oh, but we’ll need a boat to get back on the island... That merchant is almost certainly gone by now. I guess that means we’ll have to hide somewhere and wait until morning. The moon’s out tonight, but it’s still pretty dark everywhere. It can’t be that hard to find a hiding— Hm?”

It was then that Mia noticed a strange phenomenon. For some reason, her immediate surroundings looked...brighter than they should be. She glanced upward, wondering if the moonlight had grown brighter. It seemed the same as before. She looked back down. And that was when she realized the source of the enhanced illumination...was them!

Specifically, it was her and Bel who were glowing. Kuolan had not turned radiant. The pale light highlighted their forms against the dark backdrop of night, making it look as if they were floating. At a distance, they resembled a pair of fairies darting through the air. If a certain author of supposedly nonfiction content had witnessed the sight, the Princess Chronicles would surely have gained another few passages of spectacular nonsense.

“How— What in the moons is this?”

A moment’s confusion, but clarity soon followed. To digress a tad, while Mia’s little gray cells generally existed in a state of perpetual inaction, there were a couple of trigger words that could excite them. “Sweets” for one. “Mushrooms” too. But there was another... Any time “bath” was mentioned, her brain would go into overdrive. And what among recent events involved the bath? The bath herbs, of course, and their pleasant aroma. The aroma of lucioluna grass...

“Lucioluna grass... Lucioluna... Wait, lucioluna? That sounds like it glows!”

It hadn’t occurred to Mia until that moment, but the name’s etymology spoke for itself. Lucioluna grass—a grass that gives off light when the moon is out. Naturally, bath herbs made from it would have the same property. This fact had unfortunately eluded her due to its pale light being unnoticeable when it was bright out. Unfortunate, because right now, it was not bright out, and its light was definitely not unnoticeable.

“Okay, this might be useful when I’m walking around at night, but how am I supposed to hide...” she muttered amidst a mounting sense of panic.

Only for that panic to triple when three glowing forms burst out of the shining white smoke behind her. All imbued with the same light, it was impossible to mistake their identities—the masked man atop a horse and two massive wolves!

“Eeeeek! They’re coming! They’re coming for us, Kuolan!”

Her shriek proved unnecessary, as Kuolan had already sped up at the first sight of their pursuers. She almost bit her tongue as the violent acceleration hit her like an invisible wall. With a grunt, she hunkered down as her steed went from fast gallop to furious gallop. And so, once again, she became the wind.

...But the wind wasn’t fast enough!

A quick glance backward was followed by a terrified shriek.

“Eeeeeeek! They’re getting closer! Kuolan! They’re catching up!”

She could barely believe her eyes, particularly because she knew how fast Kuolan was. Yet the man’s horse was undoubtedly gaining on them. Like a spectral knight of death, his glowing silhouette grew closer second by terrifying second.

He was so damn fast!

For a moment, Mia considered the possibility that the combined weight of her and Bel was slowing Kuolan down, but she quickly dismissed the notion.

“No, I can’t be that heavy... Kuolan should be able to handle the two of us no problem.”

She was soon proven right as the pair of wolves began to fall behind. Kuolan wasn’t slow. Her foe’s horse was just too fast!

“F-F-Faster, Kuolan! Come on, please go faster!”

All she got for her efforts was a curt huff. There was a hint of irritation to it, as if to say, “Ah shaddap, I’m gallopin’ here!”

Little did she know, her desperate moonlit flight had only just begun.