The Maid and Her Princess [On Hiatus]

The Great Duel! (The Great Level Up! 2/5)

II.

Madoka tensed up at the Princess's stance, but stood defiantly. Before she knew it, her hand was already on her axe's handle and her instincts to fight were on the prowl. Audrey's core flickered off and she let out a laugh, something that caught Madoka off guard. She hasn't heard the girl laugh as pure like that in awhile.

"You're so serious!" Audrey buckled over. Madoka rolled her eyes, but her hand's grip remained on her axe. Her expression changed abruptly and her laughing stopped. "But yeah, we are going to have a bit of an exercise."

"Here? Of all places?" Madoka whined.

"Yeah," Audrey rummaged through her bag and produced the storage talisman. "There's a number of reasons why, but I can tell you are rarin' to go by your hand on your axe."

She closed her eyes.

"Firstly, no weapons," she opened the storage portal up. Madoka groaned even more, but after a sharp look from her Princess she obeyed. Her crude axe went in first, then the Serpent's Blade, then the two Esmeralda swords, and a small dagger went in. Audrey gawked at each weapon that passed by, before looking at her. "How are you not overencumbered? Are your Stamina points really that high?"

"Eh?"

"Don't you 'eh' me!" Audrey shook her head. The portal closed and she quietly placed the talisman back into her pouch. "This exercise should loosen us up quite a bit. Considering, well, I want to go up to the tippity top of that spiraling anti-gravity well."

"The top of there?" Madoka gulped. The more she studied the rocks and debris floating upwards, the more she supposed they could climb up there. "But I don't think we should go up there!"

"You can stay down here," Audrey sighed. "Like I said, if I can't get a gauge on how well we're doing physically right now then it's not worth it. Ah, well, it can't be right. If I wasn't ready for it, that God would not be calling me up there. It's all speculation, of course. But you know, I'm worthless in battle, all I do is dodge and run away while you do most of the work."

"That's not true!" Madoka blurted. Audrey was a lot more powerful than she was.

"That's just how the formation is," she explained. The matter-of-fact tone bothered the maid. "If someone gets to me, I'm good as dead. Therefore! I have to get better at magic and running away!"

"D-Dead," Madoka trembled at the thought of her princess being dead. Audrey has been killed before she herself died. She glanced at the stormy cloud and remembered the nightmarish climb up those ancient steps to the mountain's summit with the ruins, where Audrey nearly killed herself doing that strange cultivating thing she called it. That climb was bad, but this seemed worse somehow. "Say, Audrey."

"Wha—" Audrey had been rambling the entire time. "Were you even listening to me?"

"Does that God... Up there," Madoka pointed at the black hole piercing the daylight's blue sky. "Did the Kind god say its name to you?"

Audrey fell quiet, but she could tell the girl was hesitating on being honest with her. Or perhaps she was measuring how much information she could give to the maid. All Madoka wanted to know is if she was serious or not — if there was a sign of honesty inside her to begin with. What has shaken her faith in her princess? Was it the voice speaking to her, urging her to go on?

"He, well, maybe she," Audrey fidgeted her fingers into little knots. "The god wants you to know that you mean a lot to them. They don't want to reveal their name to you — you gotta trust me on that. I couldn't get the answer out of them even if I begged them for it, okay? Madoka, I swear—"

"Okay," Madoka heard the sincerity in her princess's voice. Therefore, it was her turn to be sincere. She clenched her fist and loosened it up again. It was not like she wanted to see magic again, but if Audrey wasn't lying then she will face her challenges truthfully. Knotting Strands began to shimmer and zigzag like the storm's bolts from her open palm.