Starting Life From Zero: Far From Home

Chapter Twenty-Five

When everyone had regrouped only five people had been lost in all of the fighting. Two knights and three civil servants that were not of note enough for anyone to name them directly in front of Emilia. She had seen one of the bodies curled nearly split in half against a wall from where one of the puppet creatures had managed to corner it and explode. There was something familiar about the body, she didn't know where she had seen that kind of carnage before.

Sure, she had seen some violence and fighting in her time. People had come into the forest where she lived hoping to conquer or do violence or even try to sell her into slavery. There was never anything in Emilia that made her feel that she couldn't fight back to protect herself or others.

Seeing that body on the ground brought something back for her, she couldn't remember where she had seen this before. But she remembered a bloody body laying in a snowy field and she couldn't shake the sight from her head.

Now, standing in the hall with one of the bodies of the civil servants that she had found she took notice of the others around it. All of these bodies that had been part of that puppet grouping. There were too many to count strewn about the halls and the throne room as they exited, some of them barely had on clothes and just lay lifeless against walls and slumped over in corners.

No one was counting them among the dead and no one seemed all to worried to start looking at them like people. At least not that she could see in the immediate area.

"Miss Emilia," there was a confident, dignified tone to the voice that spoke her name. When she looked up a woman in a dress blue uniform with dark green hair was standing at her side with an unrelaxed posture that said she was ready for anything.

"Oh, Miss Crusch, did you need something?" Emilia asked. Crusch had been one of the few candidates not to outright throw slurs and hostility her way. She was also, if Emilia was being honest, the most likely candidate to actually win the throne.

"Seeing as how this place is in a state of disarray and guards from another part of the castle are coming to assess the situation, I thought it might be wise to have the days proceedings moved to my estate here in the city," Crusch said.

"It's understandable that there might be more going on here," Emilia couldn't stop thinking of the blood on the snow, why couldn't she remember. She forced a small smile. "Why, Felt hardly got to even say her piece."

Crusch nodded, though the change in her expression signified that she must have picked up on something. "I have something of a proposal to make..." Crusch said, "Though I will wait until we're away from prying eyes and wagging tongues to do so."

A proposal from Crusch, Emilia couldn't imagine what she would want from her. There was no reason for someone with her prospected to associate with a silver-haired half elf who had just spent the better part of the ceremony so far defending her right to enter the castle and exist, let alone serve as the next ruler of this country.

"Even with everything else going on, I would be foolish to not admit that I'm curious what you need to talk to me about," Emilia said. "But you're right, after everything is sorted."

Things had become even more confusing than they had been previously. Steve was now chatting with his two friends, another pair from Earth. One of them seemed to have the ability to grow wings from a Metia that was strapped to his back and the other had what Emilia had first assumed was an armored arm sheathed in some manor of bespoke protective metal. The more she watched him, the clearer it became that his arm was actually made of metal.

"Don't worry, I'm sure what I have to suggest is mutually beneficial," she said before walking toward the other end of the hall where Ferris was standing and talking to another knight.