Child of the Moon.

~Chapter Three~

"Keep your hands up!" Hector ordered Rapunzel as he swung his sword at her again. "Do you want me to skin you alive?!"

"I'm trying!" Rapunzel yelped, falling over.

"Trying isn't good enough."

Hector drew in his blade and offered Rapunzel a hand, which she took.

Rapunzel had been begging Hector for the past five days to teach her how to fight, coming up with all kinds of excuses, such as "A princess should know how to defend herself, don't you think?" and "The Dark Kingdom is dangerous! Shouldn't I be taught how to handle myself there?". Two days ago, Hector finally relented and began teaching her the basics on self-defense only. He figured that learning ways to actually harm people wasn't exactly her style.

It had been about three weeks since the destruction of the Great Tree. Hector had started to talk more and offer to help with things voluntarily. At one point Rapunzel had even considered finally allowing him to join the others in the tent at night, but Cassandra had absolutely refused, saying that he was probably just playing nice so he could trick them all. Rapunzel didn't like how distrustful of Hector her friend was. She personally thought he seemed decent enough and shouldn't be forced to sleep outside and eat apart from them. Even Eugene agreed with her after a while, but Cassandra stood her ground.

As the days went on, Hector began to be more open towards Rapunzel and her friends, though he was always on edge with Cassandra and still refused to talk to Adira more than absolutely necessary.

The past week and a half had been strange. First, they had encountered two rather unfortunate-looking brothers with hooks on their limbs. One had a hook on a hand, the other had one on a foot. Weirdly, they were named accordingly - Hook Hand and Hook Foot. Hector had a hard time figuring out whether those were their given names or some kind of cruel nickname they'd been forced to get used to.

Also, during the past few days, the Sundrop's caravan had somehow come into use again. Hector was sure he'd pushed it off a cliff, but apparently the Sundrop could bring both people and horse-drawn means of travel back to life. And since the party had their caravan back, they offered Hector the tent. He had refused, saying that he'd grown fond of sleeping under the stars, so the others had packed the tent away as a backup. After that, Hector amused himself by telling the others how grateful he was that instead of not being permitted in a tent, he now had a whole caravan to not be allowed in!

But the most infuriating thing that had happened in was that Cassandra had somehow managed to use magic to completely erase Rapunzel's memory back to when she left the tower in which a witch named Gothel had imprisoned her since her birth. The stories Rapunzel had told Hector about her escape from the tower and how she'd met Eugene were incredible, but Hector couldn't fully appreciate them over his new hatred of Cassandra. He'd never been fond of the fiery young woman, but now she'd crossed the line. Magic was not something to tamper with! In the Dark Kingdom, fooling with magic to the extent of erasing someone's memory was punishable by death! It was beyond him as to why she had received no punishment whatsoever.

"Okay, okay," Eugene said cautiously, pulling his girlfriend behind him. "I think she's had enough."

"She's only been training for an hour," Hector stated, crossing his arms.

"And that's an hour too long."

"Eugene!" Rapunzel said.

"What? I don't like you training with him every day. I'd feel a lot better if you trained with Cassandra instead."

"I'm standing right here," Hector interjected. "And she's perfectly safe with me."

"Is she?" Cassandra said, walking up in front of Hector. "Because I feel like she isn't. I feel like we shouldn't even be letting you have a weapon around us, let alone around Rapunzel."