Princess Sophia Wilson

"Who are you?" the young woman screamed. Her voice was fearful, but it also had a demanding and royal tone to it. She was used to ordering subjects around, "And what are you doing in my private quarters?"

Kat and I struggled for words. After all the horrific and intense situations we had found ourselves in previously, the seeming peacefulness of a bedroom was somewhere we never expected to have been transported to in the Tower. We both looked at each other with blank expressions as we tried and failed to explain ourselves to the young woman.

A thought struck me, was this the 'her' that the voice mentioned? How did some primordial mysterious being know about a woman trapped in a Crimson Tower? Wait, was this woman the 'true secret' to the Tower the Stranger mentioned?

"Guards!" the woman called out. Commandeering, with a hint of fear and confusion, "Arrest the two intruders!"

I froze and waited in silence. I assumed Kat was also doing the same since I couldn't hear her breathing even though she was standing beside me.

But nobody came.

The woman shuffled. She tightened her grip on her bedsheets and when she moved, her face was more visible from the light machine on the table next to her bed, and I caught my breath. She looked to be around my age, but what really spooked me was her striking blue-grey eyes. I quickly realised she was the spitting image of the mage princess in the grey being's memories. Even in the soft, orange glow, I could tell the true colour of her eyes they were so dazzling.

"Guards!" She called out again, though this time her voice was laced with more worry since nobody came the first time she called. Even though the young woman seemed to be the same age as the princess I saw in the memories, her voice was slightly lower than the princess' and I noticed slight differences in how she held herself. The princess in the memory was a little bit more proper and royal even when she was shocked and in trouble in front of the grey being. This woman in front of Kat and me seemed a little bit more inexperienced.

Somehow, she scrunched her body up even more to escape Kat and me. She tried to sound more authoritative, but the fear in her voice caused it to crack a little.

"Who are you?" she asked, "Are you assassins sent to kill me?"

I felt Kat tug at my jacket. When I turned, she was looking up at me and asked, "What does that word mean?"

"Really bad guys," I quickly muttered under my breath to Kat. I raised my hands in a bid to look unthreatening, "I'm sorry to scare you, but do we really look like we're a couple of assassins?"

"Guards!" The young woman was practically screeching now. Desperate for her protectors to burst into the room, she was only met with silence.

"You keep calling for guards," I spoke, my hands still raised in front of me, "Where do you think we are currently?"

The woman scoffed, "Do not play dumb with me. Why are you pretending to be unwary that you are currently intruding on the private quarters of Princess Sophia Wilson!"

I nodded slowly, "Okay, you're a princess. Princess Wilson, right?"

She saw the confusion on my face and her mouth gaped in shock, "You do not know who I am?"

Mine and Kat's dumbfounded silence seemed to anger her more.

"I am Princess Sophia Wilson, daughter of Gregory Wilson, King of all Aldgenn! You are intruding on my private quarters in Castle Alleria!" the young woman declared defiantly.

She had spoken with such conviction and assurance that for a split second, I felt like I was a subject of her kingdom, but then I realised that everything that she had just said sounded like utter nonsense to me. I ignored the woman and turned back to Kat. There was one question that nagged at the back of my mind.

"What happened to Saizo?"

Kat's face brightened, but she didn't pay attention to me, she stepped forward a little in innocent excitement and asked the young woman, "Did you say Aldgenn? As in the Aldgenn Empire?"

"So, you know who I am?" the woman, Sophia, said proudly, but her pride was shattered when Kat answered.

"No."

Kat turned back to me and saw my questioning look and explained, "The Aldgenn Empire is a country that's in the north-eastern quadrant of the world! I learnt a bit about it on the campus—"

"What are you talking about?" Sophia interrupted loudly.

Kat jumped slightly at the interruption and apologised to Sophia as she performed an awkward bow.

"Princess, unfortunately, I don't think you know exactly where you are, you see we're currently not in the Aldgenn Empire—"

"You're in Pjana," I said bluntly.

Sophia scoffed loudly and abruptly before she devolved into a mad laugh, "Bushwinkle, we cannot be in Pjana, how could I understand what you are saying? I do not know the Pjanic language."

There was an awkward silence as both Kat and I stared at the princess with blank eyes.

"What language do you think we're speaking in right now?" I asked.

"Well, obviously I am speaking in my mother tongue: Aldgennian." Sophia proudly declared.

I scratched my head in discomfort as I spoke.

"Paradigm, please show Sophia what language we're currently all speaking."

"That's Princess—" Sophia interjected but suddenly screamed and jumped out of her bed, as if to get away from something. She gave up on covering herself with her bedsheets in modesty. She was wearing some sort of ink-silk robe. It was hard to tell what colour it was because of the lack of light.

"What in the blazes is this ghostly box in front of me?!" she screamed.

I gulped a little when I realised that Sophia had quite an attractive figure and forced myself to turn away from her and distract myself. I looked at Kat and commented, "That reaction sounds familiar."

Kat nodded, "She's acting like me when I got Registered. She must be a late bloomer like me I guess."

"You handled it really well," I complimented her as I turned back to watch the princess' melodramatic shock.

"What is happening? Please explain!" Sophia cried out.

"I think it's better if you approach her," I said to Kat as my face started to feel hot at the fact that Sophia was still only in her ink-silk robe, "There's probably some sort of royal rule that I would be breaking since I'm a guy."

Kat nodded and slowly and carefully approached the cowering princess. She slowly calmed Sophia down and explained to her about the Paradigm System. I leaned against the wall while I waited for them.

***

"I'm guessing Paradigm didn't exist for you?" Kat asked when Sophia seemed like she had calmed down enough.

Sophia shook her head and cautiously eyed an invisible (to us) Window in front of her.

That surprised me. Princess Sophia seemed to be part of the Last Generation like the Stranger. Though, unlike him, she wasn't around when Paradigm was created. I opened my mouth to say something about it but decided against it. It didn't seem like the right time to reveal that information and it would have caused more confusion.

"What is it?" Sophia asked weakly before she squealed suddenly.

The sound scared both Kat and me.

"What's wrong?" Kat asked while I simply gritted my teeth.

"The box changed. It says a new message now." Sophia explained breathlessly.

"What does it say?" Kat asked patiently, "Can you share it with us?"

"I do not know how to do that."

"Just think about it."

After a short moment, two Windows popped up in front of me. In front, the smaller Window was a notification Window that said:

[USER: SOPHIA WILSON HAS AUTHORISED WINDOW SHARING]

The other Window was what she was seeing right then:

[WARNING!

USER HAS NOT BEEN REGISTERED. PARADIGM HELP ENTRIES ARE CURRENTLY LOCKED.]

"What does 'User' mean?" Sophia asked, "Is it talking about me?"

"You really are a late bloomer," I commented, "I think you might be the oldest person to not be Registered yet."

"How do we get her Registered?" Kat asked. She was still by Sophia's side. Sophia had a tight grip on her hand for comfort.

"A lot of people get Registered when they have a life goal," I started before I continued quieter, "or something highly traumatic happened to them."

"I feel this is traumatic enough, no?" Sophia exclaimed in exasperation, "I get woken up in the middle of the night by two strangers and suddenly a blue box invades my vision, and I cannot get rid of it!"

Before I could retort back, Sophia's Window chimed and changed which surprised all of us as it suddenly said:

[CONGRATULATIONS!

USER HAS BEEN REGISTERED.

NAME: SOPHIA WILSON

AGE: 18

LEVEL: 5

STR: 10 | VIT: 10

AGI: 7 | INT: 12

WIS: 15]

My jaw dropped when I saw her stats. I looked at her in shock as she kept glancing between me and Kat with a questioning look in her eyes.

"What just happened?" Sophia asked.

"You got Registered," Kat answered slowly.

"Just. Like. That." I said slowly. I paused after every word as my brain struggled to organise itself after what it just witnessed.

"That is good, right?" Sophia asked again.

My mind went back and remembered my poor excuse of stats when I got Registered as I nodded. "They're great," I said through gritted teeth.

I looked back at the Window and noted that Sophia got the average amount of Attribute Points for Strength and Vitality for someone our age, and while the Agility Attribute was a little bit lower than average, her Intelligence and Wisdom were quite high.

Guessing from the Attribute Points alone, and what I remembered about the princess in the grey being's memories that Sophia was a dead ringer, it seemed like Sophia could have an affinity to Magic like her counterpart in the — what did the Stranger call it? — 'Old World'?

A new Window replaced the one that had Sophia's stats on it. It said:

[CONGRATULATIONS!

YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE CRIMSON TOWER QUEST!

1000EXP WILL BE REWARDED!

750 GOLD WILL BE REWARDED TO EACH MEMBER OF THE PARTY!

conGRATULATions!

YOU HAve discovered the true secret of the crimson tower!

five available stat points have been rewarded!

levEL UP!

LEVEL 14!

HP REFILLED AND (+10) CAPACITY!

MP REFILLED…]

The middle congratulations message stood out to me even though it wasn't glitched, as not only did the text change the way it looked from other Paradigm messages, but there was a tinge of the maroon colour in the section of the Window that the modified message was in. It was like something slipped an extra message in between the official Paradigm messages. Whatever the entity in my Left Arm did must have lingered.

"I can't believe I'm already level 9," Kat mumbled.

All around us, the dust particle effect that came before teleportation started to happen. A compelling feeling started to grip my heart as I remembered what the Stranger and the entity said before.

The Stranger had said 'Protect her,' and the entity had warned me to make the right choice for 'her sake'. And then when Kat and I found myself in this bedroom, there was a princess. One that looked exactly like the one I saw in the entity's memories. I couldn't shake the feeling that this had all been destined to happen.

"What is happening now?" Sophia asked fearfully as she watched her bed start to disappear.

"Sophia, quick!" I urgently ordered. She shot a look of disapproval at me that I ignored, "Grab something to cover yourself! We're going to be kicked out of the Tower!"

"What do you mean? What Tower?" she meekly asked in confusion.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance and quickly dashed to a wardrobe that started to disappear. I slammed the door wide open and grabbed what looked like a plain, animal fur coat. It was soft and thick and seemed to be long enough to cover Sophia's whole body. It also had a big hood, which was ideal.

I dashed across towards the princess and Kat. Sophia squealed in embarrassment as she realised that she was still in her sleeping undergarments and hugged herself tight, but I tried to ignore it as much as possible as I draped the big coat over her and pulled the hood forward to cover her face.

"What are you doing?" she cried out.

I grabbed both her shoulders and ignored the heat that started to rise in my cheeks. The warmth in my Left Arm also swirled around as I quickly explained, "Listen to me, we don't have much time! We are currently in a Crimson Tower located in the dry plains in southeast Pjana.

"When we get out there, you have to pretend like you're not the princess of Aldgenn!"

"Why—?" Sophia started to ask.

"If a foreign royal suddenly and mysteriously appeared in a remote part of Aldgenn, would the king — or even the governing class just be fine with it?" I blurted out.

"Maybe if we explain the situation—"

"Is that a risk you're willing to take?" I asked over her rationalising. My grip on her shoulders tightened as the heat from my arm started to flare.

"Ow, you are hurting me," Sophia flinched as she tried to escape my grasp, "why is your hand so hot?"

The heat in my arm spiked to an unbearable level and a bright light flashed from my left arm that made all three of us shut our eyes tightly.

The heat from the sun signalled the end of our teleportation. When I finally opened my eyes, I looked around and saw that we had been teleported outside the entrance of the Crimson Tower. I noticed that Saizo hadn't been teleported with us and just as I was about to ask Kat, a flaring pain shot up from my left wrist.

Sophia also cried out in pain, seemingly from her right wrist and when we both checked our respective sources, we both saw an intricate and beautifully drawn, black band that encircled our wrists. There was no writing on the black band and we both noticed that the bands were not drawn on top of our skin, but seemingly underneath it.

"What?" Sophia simply said. Everything that she knew had been turned upside-down and she was struggling to make sense of it all.

As the pain subsided, I looked back up and noticed that in the direction of the Churchgoer camp, there stood flags of another creed. I heard Kat gasp beside me and assumed that she also noticed the flags.

A single white pillar in the middle of a grey and black background. It was the flag of the Religion of the One Creator.