Now 8 winters had gone by for Lili in this new world and summer was already on its way once more. After her enslavement a few winters ago Lili had estimated that she had grown a whopping 6 centimeters during this time. This meant that she was now about 106 centimeters tall and about 20 kilograms in weight to her own estimations. With the best Weight throwers capable of throwing such weights up to about 30 meters away, this meant that she could be sent flying by such a strong man if they wished to do so. The simple thought of this brought her great distress and as such she had continued to act nicely towards everyone around her.
With girls usually stopping to grow in height when they are 14 or 15 years old this meant that by age 15 Lili might grow up to be a whopping 127 centimeters tall. Of course, there was supposed to be a massive growth spurt at some point, so more centimeters might have been coming her way, she hoped.
All this made Lili feel even more humble and kind towards others. And it also made her extremely desperate to find something positive to bring herself out of this hopeless situation she found herself in. While searching for this one positive thing she suddenly found it inside of herself. She discovered something there, it felt like a small spark of light and her only hope.
For all her time here in this world she had found that her body never had gotten sick and it recovered fairly fast from all wounds, even her slave brand had started to slowly fade away. Despite her obvious physical weaknesses, she could feel that this small spark of light inside of her was her hidden strength. This was possibly her key to success. Now she just needed to find out how she could unlock it. But at this moment she had more concerning matters to attend to than focusing on unlocking this power if it even was real or just her imagination.
During these years it had become more and more obvious to her that Robin could not be relied on to get her out of slavery. At first, the boy had been just annoying and sometimes a bit funny with his attempts to flirt with her and gain her affection. Obviously, she turned him down each time as she was not interested in guys much less such a young boy.
But over time as Robin grew he quickly realized her uninterested attitude in him, so the boy had stepped up his attempts at winning her over. From just words, he had suddenly decided to move into more physical acts of affection. Namely, the boys hands seemed to be on her all the time no matter the occasion he would always find some excuse to touch and caress her.
Feeling creeped out by his forceful flirting Lili tried to create distance between them during nights but Robin would always come sleep close to her no matter what. Even when she tried to tell him to go away and leave her alone he didnt listen and just hugged her close until he fell asleep and Lili could escape. This matter was also not helped by the fact that none of the men ever stepped in between to stop Robin and even encouraged him onwards. She was now truly left alone to fight off Robins advances.
What made this situation even worse was the fact that thanks to her teachings the boy had become an extremely powerful young man that she physically couldnt resist. It seemed that it was only a matter of time that the boy would do something unforgivable to her. And as such she seemed to finally understand what the word sexual harassment truly was all about.
With this in mind, she quickly stepped up her efforts to help the Kane brothers out to the best of her abilities in hopes that they would finally grant her freedom. She started out by creating new musical instruments. She created primitive drums, a bass and a more modern version of the guitar. With these things, she was able to create a real band.
With this new band called The Sons of Albion fame, money and fame quickly came to the Kane brothers who were the owners and protectors of the band. The Band of 4 blood-related brothers of Kane then created their new mercenary group called the Brother Hood of Kane. They even created a red banner with a black scorpion tale on it.
Financially supported by the Sons of Albion their numbers quickly grew as did the armor and weapons they carried. Now they were a group of over 38 armored men. One-third of them were bowmen and the rest were equipped with different bladed weapons and shields. They even had 8 war horses that were not cheap, in this world, they were the same as buying a middle-class car. There were also 3 wagons that were pulled by common 6 common pack horses that were like cheap end cars in price. In the wagons, they carried their supplies and the rest of the men who werent on horseback. To Lilis relief she was allowed to sit on the wagons and sadly Robin was also.
Then as summer rolled around the drums of war were sounded across the lands of Albion in preparation for an invasion from the north. Lili didnt know or really care about what this war was all about, but apparently, King Uther had seen a vision of something dark coming their way and so the whole kingdom was now preparing for war as did the Brotherhood of Kane.
For Lili who hadnt been taught anything about this world at large, all this seemed so uninteresting all she wanted was her freedom and that was it. How could she even begin to care about some war when she didnt even know where this kingdom was or where its northern border lay?
Nonetheless, it didnt really matter as on a fateful summers day a royal messenger arrived to deliver an invitation to the Brothers. It was an invitation for them to join the kings men in Camelot in preparation for the coming war and it was also an invitation for the Sons of Albion to come and play a few inspiring songs for the soon-to-be marching men. The king wanted to raise the mens morale, which was understandable.
But most importantly all this felt exactly like the thing that Lili had been looking for all this time. Finally, she had a chance to go to Camelot and maybe even meet up with the kind boy named Art again. Maybe, just maybe he might be the one to free her from slavery and then her real adventure could actually start.
Dressed up like Little Red Riding Hood with the black cloak that Art had gifted her Lili felt extremely excited as their caravan started finally heading south towards Camelot. She couldnt wait to see Arts face when he saw that she still had his cloak on her. After all these years she had carefully preserved the black cloak and done some modifications to it so that it fit her better and didnt drag on the ground when fully opened up. The cloak even now still held the same familiar intoxicating smells of Art in it that she had found herself getting quite accustomed to.
Sitting atop the middle wagon between two large armored men, Lili was completely lost in her thoughts. She found herself just thinking of their hopefully soon-to-be reunion. The thought of it brought a great big smile to her face as she started excitedly kicking her legs back and forth. Sure she was a bit worried about what he might say if he saw her as a slave, but surely it couldnt be anything too bad. Although, she did kind of break her promise to him of staying safe and out of harms way.
Right opposite to her Robin observed her expressions and behavior with an unreadable expression on his face. He could obviously see how she kept on sniffing that cloak of hers and he had already seen how she refused to wear any other cloak than the black one she always wore. From the corner of her eyes, Lili could see that her ignorance of him was driving the boy insane which really scared her. For whatever reason he was extremely obsessed with her. She had tried to play nice with him, but that had just escalated the situation even more.
For the rest of the day, Lili kept her head down not daring to even look at Robin as she just took occasional glimpses of the surroundings and listened to the other men speaking around her. From them, she had already learned a lot.
According to them the large river just north of them which she could slightly see past the roadside trees, apparently this river was the Kingdoms northernmost river called The Great River Rose. The reason for this was apparently because a lot of blood had been spilled along this river and it is believed that the great quantities of blood spilled had then led the shorelines of the river to be filled with red roses. Whenever a soul is lost here and their blood is sent into the river a new rose will then bloom in that souls memory.
In honor of the fallen men here, King Uther had ordered the construction of the fortress city that they had just left. A city that was also fittingly named after the flower rose as it was called The Great Fortress City of Rose.
Hearing all these names she couldnt help but feel that she had heard these names some were before, but where she wasnt sure. But then again when it came to the story about blood and roses, those she had definitely never heard anything about. But if such stories were true then just what type of bloody battles had there been here in the past, how many had died here?
All of a sudden Lili started to get a bad feeling about this. Why did they have to come so far up north, why couldnt they just stay down south? Looking up into the sky she could see the sky turning dark with fast-moving rain clouds. Seeing this sent shivers into her very core. Out here in the countryside if you had rain during the night then fires would be extremely hard to light and so the nights would be nothing but pitch dark.
Seeing the rainclouds coming their way the armored men all pulled their hoods up and aimed their gazes low so as not to have the rain fall upon their bare faces.
Then the sky opened up and darkness fell upon the land. First, there were but a few droplets, "drip, drip, drip." But then it started to intensify gradually until finally, the sky opened up fully with heavy rain.
The rain was so loud that it blocked out most of all the sound around. Only the boss's loud commands to halt and set up camp could now be heard.
Pulling on the thin black slave collar around her neck, Lili adjusted it to a better angle and prepared to join the men in setting up the camp, but then the familiar sense of danger rang out In her head.
No more was it a stinging pain in her head, but a much clearer picture of something with dark intentions approaching her. She could feel their black and gray forms coming towards them from the north.
Realizing this Lilis eyes then shot open as she hopped off the wagon and ran to the thin man who was on horseback barking out orders. The man's senses were sharp as he immediately turned to her and yelled.
" What are you doing girl? Get back into your assigned position, now!"
Shaking her head Lili pointed towards the Great River Rose as she yelled to him desperately.
"Boss, there is something bad coming across the river!"
Hearing this the thin man seemed confused by her words as he looked to the northern dark forest which held the river behind it. For just a moment he looked there until he turned to her and said.
"Nonsense girl, there is nothing coming from there! It is nothing more than your young mind playing tricks upon you! Now get back to work!"
Lili wanted to say something, but wasn't sure what. Even she didn't know what was coming or how many of them were coming. All she really knew was that she had a bad feeling that so far hadn't been wrong not even once.
As she thought on this her left hand was grabbed by Robin who turned to her and said.
"Come on Lili. Come before the boss gets mad at you."
Lili could feel the black and gray figures approaching closer and closer, she could feel their bloodlust now clearly. In a panic, she looked around and saw the unsuspecting men all around the caravan.
They needed to be warned and fast before the night got too dark. If that happened she knew that they would be as good as dead then. Right now the only source of light they had was the occasional glimpses of the full moon in the sky.
Looking at it her senses suddenly sharpened and she heard it faintly in the distance. It sounded almost like a wolf's howl, the only real noticeable difference of it was the tone. The howl was not that of a wolf but a beast.
Putting the pieces together Lili froze in fear as a thought came to her. A full moon plus deep beastly howling in the distance and an unnatural bloodlust in the air. Using her knowledge of fantasy lore this could surely only mean one thing. But how was this possible? Could such beasts be here? This wasn't that type of a medieval world or was it?