Angelique took a deep breath.
"You really don't need to go there." Angelique said "Just go back, get in bed, and we'll go through this tomorrow, right?" She turned to all sides to check that nobody was listening "right." She looked at a map she bought a few minutes ago. She didn't really trust the map as she was told not to.
Of what she knew, The Woods of Misery was a place where people tended to go in, but not to go out. But no one actually believed that, not anymore, at least. It was until it was heard that eighteen men entered the place and exited successfully. If one might say so. They exited the place, yet they ended in different conditions and got to unplanned destinations. Which finally gave everyone the conclusion that it wasn't the amount of feral beasts nor poisonous plants that gave the woods it's reputation, rather than the thieves and the mysterious light that resembled fog which covered the entire thing. "Woman up, woman. Not like you have a way out of this." She looked around her. There was no one. "So in we go." Yet she stood still, petrified for almost ten whole minutes.
She gained the costum of talking with herself when she was a child. She spent so much time alone in the castle she even spent hours and hours in the castle's library looking the forbidden section for witchcraft books that explained how to bring unnanimated objects to life. She never succeded in finding such thing. She did, found a witchcraft book, but it was a really small one with few to none spells or anything in general, for Angelique at least, as she was barely learning languages arts. But she made the mistake, one time, of leaving the library too late in the night with the book in her hands, where Ridglum, her butler, found her red-handed and immediately ordered, with Angelique's older brother's permission, to burn down the forbidden section of the library and the small book of witchcraft that was teaching Angelique new vocabulary and to read faster rather than actual magic. And furthermore, the library was then meticulously secured by the guards. But for a bored little girl who's life orbited around the library, this was but a nuisance. That's when she starded talking to imaginary friends, making plans about how to break in the library and any kind of strategy in general. And most importantly, she would do this at all times. When she woke up, while waiting for breakfast, while in number classes , while in weaponry lessons, when practicing with the self-defense instructor, when hearing overly-intense political debates, when she went to bed, she would always speak out loud, yet not loud, and would get an immediate response by her imaginary friend, who quickly became her best, and practically, only friend. With the help of her new, nameless best friend, Angelique was able to break in the library and trick down security measures, to such extend that it became routine.
She would now look for hours at the book stands, hiding at this hours from this windows so that the guard standing there at the other hour wouldn't notice her due to this lighting. And would throw small giggles to the air when she succeded. She spent a whole week giggling and hiding and passionately looking for the small tome before realizing they had actually burned them, and there was now, not a single method to animate her dolls. But she then realized that her objective of finding the books became quickly but a mere task, as she no longer needed living dolls as she had now You, a friend she trusted and spent time with. So as she didn't wanted to throw to waste her new playground, she decided to read the forbidden books that proved quite interesting as they had mysterious themes and topics in terms and vocabulary she didn't really understood, but she enjoyed the illustrations and talked about them with Hey. But eventually, there would be books of ancient politics in archaic lands and she would discuss this with Boy, Ridglum and rarely with Xsivortie, her older borther. That's how she started gaining knowledge in politic science and gaining maturity in general, but regardless of this, Friend always remained close and loyal, even after the The Great Betrayal.
But it was in the year when she became sixteen years old when she started gaining popularity, and a lot of bad things came with it.
It was rumored far and wide across lands that the new Commander of Yvogne was a girl. A girl that with only sixteen years, already resembled the beauty of a woman and the bravery and strategic intelligence of a veteran warrior. And people started gathering at the doors of the castle, and advisors where crazy about the next political move. Angelique though, remained aloof about everything and everyone, until one day, she was presented some girls her age of exceptional beauty that stood in shock once they saw in first person the blood-red eyes of the Inmaculer Family and immediately started blabbering about how beautiful her eyes were and how her golden hair matched her pale skin tone, and how her heavy suits gave her an air of an iron sword. Yet she, like always, smiled and nodded without giving their words any importance as she was in the meanwhile, talking with her best friend in her mind. But the day progressed and she was forced to leave Bestie aside and actually keep her feet in the ground and dine with the girls. They were like seven and each of them had very peculiar names Angelique never heard of before, and then tried to memorize the names of everyone and with a lot of effort, she succeeded. So at the end of the day, she enjoyed the company of the girls, but was exhausted and threw herself in the library to which she entered by the main door as they weren't even trying anymore to keep her out of it and then giggled, yet made the terrible mistake to ask:
"So hey, about time I asked" she told her best friend "what's your name?"
