As Adon looked down in horror at the wreckage of Wayn's walls—they had collapsed in two separate locations that he could see from the air, and the army outside was already pressing into the city—he felt movement beneath him as well as renewed, albeit dazed, mental activity.

Rosslyn… shit. When she sees this, she's going to freak!

The Princess stirred, let out a low groan, and stilled. She wasn't losing consciousness again, Adon sensed. It was more like a deliberate choice to wake up a little more slowly. She kept her eyes mostly closed, as if the sunlight was painful for her.

Perhaps it was. Adon began to feel a pounding headache radiating off Rosslyn. He thought it might be a migraine.

Oh, my head… ran her entire thought process for the first ten seconds of coherence.

Finally, she licked her lips, opened her mouth experimentally—eyes still clenched tightly, protectively shut—and began to speak in a slow, careful cadence.

"Did I—Did I get drunk and pass out after we cleared the dungeon? Was there a celebration that I have blanked in my memory? I have a splitting headache, and I do not remember leaving…"

No, Rosslyn, Adon sent in a deliberately gentle voice. This isn't a hangover. You just burned through all your mana.

Why did I—oh…

The last thirty minutes or so of their dungeon trek came back to her in a rush that seemed to momentarily worsen her headache. Adon saw it all inside of her brain, as if he was watching a movie montage, but the screen he was watching it on had the brightness turned all the way up.

You should rest, Adon sent.

"No, I—we are outside now, right?"

That's right.

Rosslyn slowly, carefully opened her eyes again. She blinked a few times, and Adon sensed when her eyes had adjusted a little to the light.

She took a few deep breaths, leaned over the side of Prime, and then cried out.

"No! No, what?! What happened to Wayn? Adon? Adon! Please tell me we have some plan for this, what are we doing, what…?"

We just got out of the dungeon, Rosslyn, he sent. I… I don't know what we can do.

"Have—have you spotted my father? Carolien and the children? Our friends?"

He could tell she was on the verge of tears.

I don't know where any of them are, he replied in a subdued tone. I'm sorry. We'll figure it out as soon as we can.

"We have—we have to do something. My people—they are being butchered in the streets!"

The soldiers were still struggling valiantly to contain the Demon Empire's soldiers who had surged through the breaches in the walls, but all they had managed to do was to keep the fighting and killing to Wayn's avenues rather than allowing civilians' homes to be destroyed. Many unfortunate men, women, and children who had been caught out on the streets had already been cut down by the indiscriminate swords of the Empire's grunt soldiers.

There were no indications that the flow of demons was slowing, either. From where they were, it was clear the Empire had an abundance of men poised to fill in any opening they could find. In addition to pouring in through the existing gaps, they were still attacking a third gate, trying to open up another route into the city.

Maybe that was a sign that the two openings that existed were not enough for them to be certain of taking Wayn, but Adon suspected it was more along the lines of the Demon Army in that space continuing to make the same movement out of sheer inertia.

Rosslyn, I… I don't think there's anything we can do, he sent. If we were to go down there right now, we'd drown in that sea of soldiers.

"They are dying, Adon. If I can save one person… Tell the griffin to let me off. If he is wary of getting too close, I understand. Just dip to a height where I would survive the fall, and I will jump. You and I can still make a difference to a few people. We can—"

You're not thinking straight, Adon replied quietly but firmly. You wouldn't save anyone. What you're suggesting is just suicide with extra steps.

The Princess turned back for the first time from staring down at her city helplessly and glared at Adon. He saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Finally, she broke down and let them flow freely.

"Those people believed in me," Rosslyn sobbed. "They believed that my family would keep them safe. Why should I live while they die? This is a betrayal—"

Not one of those people down there is thinking it's your fault, the butterfly sent. I can hear their thoughts. We're close enough. None of them are blaming you or the Royal Family.

That was technically true. There were those who were crying out in their minds for the King or the Army to save them. But they weren't blaming them. Everyone who was dying in Wayn that day was united in whose fault it was.

The Empire broke their deal! thought a soldier as he fought one of the demons.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

What happened to settling this with a duel? thought another.

Goddess, please keep my children safe!

The King will save us!

These were a small sampling of the hundreds of voices that cried out in pain while Adon was deliberately turning his Telepathy on the city. Many of those voices were violently silenced before he withdrew the range of his powers back to just around himself, Rosslyn, and the griffins.

He silently thanked the Goddess that he had control of that. The amount of suffering radiating off of the city was too much for him. It dwarfed anything he had experienced directly across his lifetimes.

But he did not tell Rosslyn that. She already knew, and he was trying to distract her from it.

"What would—what would you suggest we do?" the Princess asked.

Let's look for your family and our friends, like you were thinking earlier, Adon sent. Do you have any clue where they would go if the city was being invaded?

"My father would never flee while people in Wayn were dying," Rosslyn said. "But I have not seen him on the front lines, trying to break this tide of enemies. We could check around the palace, but… do you know something I do not?"

Adon could sense that Rosslyn knew the answer to that. She wished she didn't, but she was fairly perceptive. She could tell when there was something Adon wasn't saying.

Yeah, he replied reluctantly. Some of the information I received from Telepathy suggests that your father is dead. I'm sorry.

"I had guessed as much," she said quietly. "If he was alive, none of this would be happening."

Probably not, Adon sent. I guess he lost a duel? At least, that's what—

"I—I do not believe that," Rosslyn said. "I can only imagine him losing by some form of treachery. You cannot imagine how strong my father truly was at his peak, Adon."

He wasn't exactly in the best shape the last time we saw him, Adon thought but did not send. Rosslyn knew. She was just licking her wounds as best she could. Her pride was a defense against the world and reality as much as it was an authentic part of her. Her pride in her father's strength was one of the only things she had left of him. She would not have the palace or the throne that he had wanted her to inherit. Even her half-siblings' fates were in limbo.

I'm sorry, he sent again instead.

"Thank you, Adon. I will mourn him when his—when my—city is not on fire, and my people are not being killed. As for where we start searching for the others, I think—"

Adon was listening, when a noise overwhelmed his telepathic hearing and kept him from perceiving the Princess's actual words. The sound resembled a dozen voices screaming in unison.

He looked around at the ground, but he could not see where the noise might be coming from. As he thought about it, he recognized that it might be further back, the way Adon and Rosslyn had come from. Not within the city, but outside of it.

Why would there be screaming like that coming from outside the city? he wondered. We didn't see any fighting on the ground outside. The knights we flew over out there were already dead.

He realized Rosslyn was staring at him curiously.

"Did you have any thoughts on my idea?" she asked. "I am open to suggestions for a different starting point. But, um, if you agree about where they will likely be…"

Her voice trailed off, but he knew what she was getting at. Only he could actually effectively communicate a change of directions to the griffins.

I actually missed the last parts of what you said, Adon sent. You see, there was this strange noise from outside the city…

He quickly explained the oddity.

"That… might actually relate to what I was saying," Rosslyn said. She swallowed and looked nervous. "There was a secret escape route from the capital, through the catacombs. My family would never flee the city if my father was still defending it, but of course, they would not want the children to be in this fighting, while Wayn is being overrun. So, if you heard something like that, and you could not find a source for the noise, it might be the sound of a large number of people dying underground."

Would the Empire be able to find this place? he asked.

"I would think not. It was not a secret that Lord Baranack was privy to. But they have held command of the outside of the walls for almost the entire time we were gone. They will have been exploring, looking for such escape routes. The Royal Family escaping intact would render their victory less complete. I only hope—" she paled—"that the sound was not a large number of people dying because of a cave-in. If the escape route collapsed, I have no idea how they would escape. None of us is magically strong enough to lift tons of rock off of our heads once it has fallen. Even if my family survived, they would probably be doomed to either starving to death in the catacombs or retreating back into the city currently being sacked."

Adon wished he could transform into his humanoid form and hold Rosslyn's hand. The Princess looked very upset the more she spoke, despite the fact that she was clearly trying to hold herself together and put on a brave face, even for him.

But he couldn't. Not without weighing their ride down so much that they would probably fall out of the sky. If Rosslyn had not been a small, athletic woman, she probably would have been impossible for Prime to have carried for as long as he had, but with Adon at his full humanoid size, the griffin would have definitely started to spiral downward.

All I can do is give her certainty as quickly as possible, he thought.

Where does the catacomb escape route lead to? Adon asked.

"We first have to leave the city again," Rosslyn began. She hesitated for a moment, eyes still looking over the carnage, wishing she could do something. Then she gave directions, which Adon relayed to Prime as instructions.

The griffin made some of its barking noises at its fellows, and the monsters' V-formation wheeled and reversed course, flying back over the city and toward the area where the dungeon and the crownlands were.

I never would have guessed all those vineyards hid a network of caves, Adon sent.

"That is part of why it was so important to place the crownlands in the hands of loyalists to cultivate," Rosslyn replied almost automatically. Her mind was already down on the ground, digging through rubble, trying to rescue her family. She had assumed the worst.

Adon only hoped she would be proven wrong.

The lush, green countryside came into view once again, but its beauty seemed to have lost something in their circumstances.

As they neared the specific site, Adon saw the familiar landmarks he remembered: the beginnings of high iron fences emerging from out of a hillside. The distant greens and purples of grapes growing on trellised vines beyond the fences.

"Here we are again," Rosslyn said.

Sarsen's vineyard. That was where the catacomb escape route let out.

As the griffins arrived above the property, Adon saw a handful of figures, battered and bloody, emerging from out of what looked like a bunch of greenery growing along the hillside.

The hidden exit.

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