Days of the Week

Blaze opened her mouth to reply, only to snap it shut again. The response that immediately came to mind, 'That's different' seemed useless and weak. So she merely shrugged. 

Mad watched her for several more seconds before being distracted by the double doors crashing open to reveal a pair of guards and a very frantic woman in a bathrobe. "Mad! Mad, are you OK?" The woman ran to the princess, daintily hopping over the remnant flames and corpse to wrap her arms around the calmly amused girl. 

Blaze moved backward with the help of Destroyer and looked away awkwardly, remembering the last time father had hugged her and wondering if he was ever going to get married so she could have a mom.

"Yes, mother, I am quite well, thanks to this nun." Mad returned the hug with perfect posture and consoled the woman like she had been the one who survived an attempted assassination attempt. 

"Oh, thank you so much, my dear… Oh, my." The woman Blaze could only assume was the queen of Plateau City, put her hand to her mouth and looked at Blaze's stump of a leg, which had stopped hurting, with horror. "My dear, did you lose your leg in defense of my daughter?"

The princess opened her mouth to assure her mother that was not the case, but Blaze was too fast. "Yes, I did." She sniffed, as if she were holding back tears. 

"Oh, you poor dear!" The queen cried out and wrapped her in a hug as well, surprising the fire-haired girl. "I will have a prosthetic made for you immediately!" With that, the queen rushed out of the room with her two exhausted guards a step behind her.

The princess laughed lightly. "I hope my mother didn't upset you too much." She petted Plantaroo, who had wandered over to nuzzle her in the neck. 

Blaze shrugged, not sure why she should be upset. 

"What is your mother like? As you can see, mine is a bit weird." The princess began walking, and motioned for Blaze to follow.

"I don't know. I don't remember her. Though I don't think she would have called everybody 'dear', a whole lot." 

The princess laughed and pushed open a set of double stained-glass doors, revealing a magnificent garden. 

"Wow! This one is so much better than lord Wells' greenhouse." Blaze said with pure honesty. 

"You've been to lord Wells' greenhouse? I've heard about it all the way over here! Just who are you?" The princess asked with excitement for the opportunity Blaze had, and some to spare for having met another plant enthusiast. 

"Yes, I've been there, and I told you- I'm Blaze." Blaze laughed. "Why did you want a nun, anyway?"

The princess entered the garden with light steps, avoiding the massive vines criss-crossing over the walkway with precision and practiced ease.

Blaze had a bit more trouble, though her wolf was there every step of the way to keep her from falling. 

The plants spread throughout the garden were more than fantastic in their shapes, colors and sizes. The pure diversity of colors alone was enough to bring a wide grin to Blaze's face. 

"I wanted a nun to help me figure out what I should sacrifice this coming Sacriday. I know they happen every seven days, but I struggle every time. Do you have any suggestions?"

  "Sacriday? Is that a holiday of some sort?" Blaze knelt to stroke a furry bush and earned a line of splinters in her hand. She burned them without a sound, and watched her skin heal in the blink of an eye. 'Why have a holiday that happens every seven days?' 

Mad laughed. "No, it's the day after Dustday." 

Blaze shook her head. "The day after Dustday is Sunday." 

Mad stood from where she was watering a plant and stared at Blaze. "That was how it was centuries ago. It's been renamed. Just how old are you?" Mad giggled, and Blaze laughed as well while responding with a shrug. "Do you have a mother?

Blaze shook her head. "I have a father, a brother, and two uncles."

"Are they nice?"

Blaze opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, then shut it with a thoughtful look. 'Are they nice? They've all killed a lot of people, so probably not. Though they are nice to me. Hmmm.' In the end, she said, "They're not nice to most people."

"Do they hit you or yell at you?" Mad had a concerned expression.

Blaze remembered her training fights with each of her family members, and how Brother would yell at her very loudly to scare her sometimes, or when she had hidden for too long in one of their hide and seek games. "Yeah, they hit me and yell at me."

Mad looked even more concerned. "I am so sorry. Would you like to live here in the castle with me? I can have people take them away, and we'll keep you safe from them."

Blaze thought that was hilarious, considering all the castles her family had caused to crumble to the ground like the castles she was going to make out of sand once they started the next leg of the journey. "I'm alright, thanks. Every family has its pros and cons." She knew this to be true, though she couldn't say how.

The princess hesitated, then nodded. "You're right. My own parents yell at me sometimes, though it's for my own good." She shuddered at a memory that suddenly came to her. "And one time I even received a spanking. I had never been so humiliated in my life."

"What did you do?" Blaze made her way deeper into the garden, eyes never remaining on a single plant for longer than a second.

Mad trailed after her with her head hanging. "I refused to kill the chosen sacrifices like i had been told to." 

Blaze glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, prompting her to continue, which she did. "As a member of the royal family, I am expected to reach the Class of Master before my fifteenth birthday. As you know, the only way to level up is to kill beings more powerful than you or to harvest rare plantlife." She put her arms around herself as if to ward off a chill, but it was hot and humid as always to Blaze. "Again, I am part of a royal family, so I am not allowed to harvest simple plants, and harvesting rare plants would have given me more levels at once than my body could handle." She stopped and picked a thornless rose. "So on my fifth birthday, my mother and father gathered a large group of animals and commoners that volunteered, immobilized them, and had me cut each throat with a sharp knife." She dropped the rose with a shudder. "I didn't want to, so I got spanked, and I… I did it."

Throughout the story, Blaze had continued moving from plant to plant, looking at them with wonder and interest. But when Mad finished, Blaze turned her gaze to the princess thoughtfully. 'I wonder if father or brother would make me do something that I told them I really, really don't want to do?' She pursed her lips. It seemed to her like a very important question. 'I'll ask them when I see them next. Speaking of…' 

"Oh, I just remembered why I came here in the first place." Blaze said.

Mad looked up from the rose, her expression clearing, and a grateful one replacing it at the change in subject. "You didn't come because I called for a nun?" 

"Not to the castle, I didn't. I came because I lost my family and whenever that happens they tend to end up in castles." She was thinking specifically of when she'd lost track of time playing in lava in the Underground City and couldn't find her family anywhere… only for the Hanging Castle to collapse and reveal her father right in the middle of it. 

"What do they look like? Maybe I've seen them and just didn't realize it." 

Blaze went on to give a description of her two short uncles along with father, and waited patiently while the princess put a finger to her chin and closed her eyes in thought. 

"Oh! I heard the Chief Warrior Priestess talking about three men she captured that meet those descriptions." She frowned. "Is your family made up of a bunch of criminals?"

Blaze shook her head in the negative. "We're not criminals, though we do tend to get put on trial a lot." 

The princess didn't have an answer for that.

"C'mon, show me where they are, and you can talk to them and make your own decisions on their status as criminals, alright?" Blaze offered, and Mad readily agreed.

"The dungeons are this way. I'm not usually allowed to go there, but I think we should be able to sneak down there relatively easily due to the chaos caused by the earthquake."