EverRealm

A Way Back

Sofia walked in the hall of the castle heading to Roland's study to find him talking to Baileywick. She smiled and walked over to him. Ronald was at his desk signing some papers and documents.

"Morning dad! What are you doing?" She asked her father. She noticed that he had been looking a little stressed out lately. It was the price of being a king.

"There's been a couple of theft lately in the past few days. It only happens at night and the only thing that's left is a black feather." King Roland told Sofia.

"A black feather?" Sofia murmured to herself. It couldn't be Wormwood, Cedric's raven. He's locked up in jail with Prisma when Vor tried to take over the kingdom. So who could it be?

Roland got out of his chair and stood up and walked around the desk to Sofia. "I know that this is hard but want you to stay in the castle until this whole matter is taken care of. I've already told Amber and James about it as well. You can still play with your friends but when it's starts to get dark, I want you to come straight home." He told her, placing his hand on Sofia's shoulder. Sofia nodded.

"Okay, dad."

Roland smiled and walked out with Baileywick to discuss other matters, leaving Sofia to wonder to herself. What was causing the robberies? She headed to Elora's room to check in on her.

"Hey, Elora, are you in?" Sofia asked about to knock on the door when she heard Elora let out a scream.

"Not again! Why does this keep happening!?"

Sofia immediately opened the door to see what was wrong.

"Are you okay? I heard you scream!" the princess exclaimed. Sofia blinked in surprise when she saw Elora sitting on her bed, looking completely frazzled. The bed sheets were messily tossed all over, hanging over the side of the bed. She was surrounded by many jewels, gold coins, jewelry, and other shiny trinkets, almost like a nest. Elora quickly looked up when she noticed Sofia had barged into her room.

"It's not what it looks like, I swear!"

"Really? Then what's all of this?" Sofia frowned, questioning her. She didn't want to jump to conclusions, but the evidence was plain just as day. "Where did you even get all of this jewelry?" Elora wouldn't steal from them, would she? Why would she, if she helped drove those monsters away from the festival. Something wasn't adding up.

"I don't know! It's been happening for a couple of days now. I wake up and find myself in them." Elora insisted. "I am not a thief!"

Sofia walked over to her and took Elora's hands. "I don't think you did it. We'll get to bottom of this. Let's go talk to Mr. Cedric about this. He might be able to help." Elora nodded before paused.

"What about the, um..." and gestured towards the treasure pile on her bed.

"We won't tell anyone for now, but we need to catch the thief tonight. Hide it under the bed and I'll tell the cleaning maids not to come in." Sofia told her. Elora quickly put the shiny trinkets under the bed, getting rid of the evidence. When she was about to get up, Elora noticed a black feather, lying on the floor and picked it up.

"Sofia, look at this." She showed it to the princess. Sofia's eyes widened, seeing it.

"A black feather? The same as the one's left behind from the robberies." She spoke.

The two quickly headed towards Cedric's workshop, walking up the spiral stairs. Sofia knocked on the sorcerer's door.

"Mr. Cedric, are you in? We need to talk to you!"