Summary: Finé x Izetta AU. In modern times, when witches and humans lived together on the Earth, Archduke Rudolf began the purge of witches, and he possessed a stone that he could wield to render their powers useless. With the witches facing a very real threat of extinction, along came a young witch named Izetta, who offered to infiltrate the palace by becoming the Princess's royal guard.

Chapter 1

In the witching hour, when all creatures slept, magical energy rose to its strongest pulse, thrumming through the leaf-carpeted ground and the reaching trees like the heartbeat of the forest. The large full moon shone in the sky, illuminating the path for a group of hooded figures as they made their way past the shady glades and moss-veiled trails, accompanied by the sounds of rustling foliage, the chirping of crickets, and the crunching twigs beneath their feet. They could feel the beat of that overflowing energy with every step they made, coursing through their veins, gentle like air, but blazing like fire. Sparkles of magic filled the air, floating from the warm earth toward the sky over the trees covered in ivy. One of those hooded figures looked smaller than the others, and when her gaze followed the fragments of magic, the ore gold moon was reflected in that pair of wandering crimson eyes. Then she felt a tug from her right, a shorter girl with long white hair that showed beneath her hood, urging her to stop getting distracted.

They were rushing, and for a good cause.

The forest was no longer a safe place for them.

A scout could be lurking behind every foliage, eager to present their heads to Archduke Rudolf of Eylstadt on a silver platter.

They never knew if this would be the last Coven they had.

However, when the full moon appeared on the sky, the ley lines would call them. And they would follow those sacred magical petals deep into the heart of the woods, almost as natural as breathing. The elated feeling, the way they were whisked away to the hallowed grounds, were more than enough to take them to their feet.

Once they reached their destination, a small clearing in the forest directly underneath the moon, they stood in a perfect circle, all thirteen of them, wearing white hoods that were interwoven with swirling patterns of red and gold threads.

The eldest of them, the leader of the clan, took a step forward and announced with a booming voice, "We are finally here for our seventy-seventh White Witch Coven..."

She paused, and when she spoke again her voice sounded more grim than before, "...Never before has a White Witch Coven been held in such trying times. We have survived, countless times, from those madmen who constantly desire to purge us. But the danger is not over, and our long journey is far from finished. I have received a word...that Archduke Rudolf, with that accursed stone of his, has eliminated most of the witch clans in the East... We might be one of the last clan of witches in Eylstadt."

Two of the figures in the circle winced slightly, but they continued to listen.

"As of now, there is absolutely no known way to fight that stone. There were not many of us left to begin with, and witches all over the nation are either fleeing, or being murdered in such brutality the likes of which we have never seen before. Archduke Rudolf is also going to hold an international conference to discuss the fate of witches in Europe. He would declare an all-out war against witches, launching the inquisition internationally. Under the jackboot of his regime, this situation has truly become dire for us all. We are walking down the certain path to extinction..."

She shuffled uncomfortably, as though trying to comfort herself. "It is like a sign that witches should not exist in modern times..."

There was a long silence, and for a while the only sounds they heard were of the crickets and the screeching jays, as if they were singing for their inevitable funeral.

Then another figure took a step forward, hesitantly opening her hood to reveal a young witch with pearly white hair and piercing blood-red eyes.

She took a deep breath, looking a bit nervous to speak in front of them all.

"There is hope..." she began, "If that stone of the damned is the one causing this whole mess, all we need to do is retrieve it."

The other figures in the circle moved and whispered among themselves.

"And how..." the leader spoke again, "...do you propose we do that...?"

"By inflitrating the palace," she responded, "We just have to send someone there. Once that stone is ours, then the von Eylstadt family would never make a fool out of us anymore. We would emerge victorious."

The leader seemed skeptical to her idea, but some of the figures around her nodded in approval.

"And who would be doing this noble and, frankly, suicidal, deed for us...?"

"Please allow my friend who came up with this idea to explain it herself..."

The figure beside her winced, but she nervously opened her hood and showed the unruly scarlet hair underneath, a truly striking color that jarred with the rest of her outfit. The white-haired witch nudged her to go forward, and the whispers among the witches died down immediately.

The redhead swallowed and cleared her throat.

"I..." she started, "I know I'm not a member of this clan...and I'm not supposed to speak in your Coven...but..."

Her expression hardened under the gentle glow of the moonlight.

"Please listen to what I have to say..."

"Run, Izetta...! Fly away to the white witches! Now...! !"

Those were the last words the young witch heard in her grandmother's voice.

Shrill.

Hair-raising.

Fearful.

They still haunted her to this day.

Her own loud footsteps as she made a beeline to the back door, nearly dropping her broom in her hurry.

Tears streaming down her face as her grandmother's screams and gunfire echoed in her ears.

The gale violently blowing her short messy hair when she flew faster than she had ever been in her life to her best friend's doostep in the middle of the deep woods.

She remembered how she stumbled on the ground, covered in cuts and bruises, weeping and crying and grabbing her wrist as painful wisps of red-hot magic threatened to overflow from her palm and eyes.

And how she was only able to croak out three words to the white witches before collapsing into uncontrollable sobs from the pain that jarred every bone in her body.

"They took her."

For Izetta, that long night felt like the end of the world.

For the rest of the witches, that night was the beginning of everything.

Despite the advancement of modern technology, witches continued to co-exist with humans in certain parts of the land. For centuries, witches enforced a strict law of isolationism, a rule to never interact with humans unless it was absolutely necessary or life-threatening. Because of this, even though humans were aware of the existence of witches, they never interacted much with each other. Conflicts and hate crimes occurred sporadically throughout the nation, especially when humans found out about a location with no ley lines, but violence to witches were few and far in between.

At least until the new Archduke of Eylstadt, Rudolf III, came into power.

His heartfelt speech about true religious values and condemnation of heretics resonated in the hearts of Elystadtians everywhere.

"This world needs to be thoroughly cleansed."

At that moment, not many people realized the trouble brewing behind that fatherly smile.

Izetta's grandmother was one of the few who did.

Izetta remembered having a rather cryptic conversation with her after the Archduke's coronation.

"If a war between witches and humans finally begins in Eylstadt, Izetta, who do you think would win...?"

Izetta cocked her head to the side."The witches...?"

"If it were any other nation, we would."

Izetta didn't understand what her grandmother meant, at first.

However, in a very short time, the Archduke made sure his true self was clearly known to the world.

He was piousness itself.

"Practitioners of malevolent sorcery and worshippers of the devil are the filth that stain this holy Mother Earth," he would say to the public, "That is why the Gods granted me this sacred stone, which has been locked tight as my family heirloom for generations. Now it was freed from its slumber, all because it is our moral duty to weed the heretics, dispose of those rotten roots, and nurture our Mother Earth with only the seeds of those who could rightfully live on this land of the blessed."

Not long after his coronation, the first wave of trials began. The Archduke personally led the soldiers and inquisitors to ambush the homes of the oldest, most famous and influential witches, to be tried and executed. They were granted full investigative powers to terrorize the witches.

That mysterious, glowing violet stone accompanied him in a box wherever they went, and he could command it to temporarily drain the area of precious magical energy.

It was a horrendous, gruesome nightmare.

The capital punishment of the Archduke's choosing were brutal, after long torturous sessions, many of the witches were burned at the stake, boiled alive, flayed, disemboweled, crucified, decapitated, or shot to death.

The Archduke claimed that his more ferocious methods were so that he could "cleanse the very earth that those witches walked on".

He proceeded to wipe out each and every settlement of witches that he could get his hands on, and the witches had no choice but to flee.

Ever since her grandmother died, there was never a night that Izetta spent in a peaceful slumber.

If not because of the nightmares, it was because Sophie woke her up in a panicked tone because the white witches had sensed that there were human scouts in that area, searching for their clan to be surrendered to the Archduke.

And they would escape again, night after night, by foot because they would be quickly found out if they flew.

It wasn't long until Izetta grew sick and jaded of it all. She felt it the most when she was missing her grandmother so much that it nearly brought her into tears. She didn't know what became of her...but it was certain that she was tortured to death like the rest of the others.

"...why can't we fight back, Sophie...?"

Her white-haired friend glanced at her and she could see her brows furrowing under the faint light of the campfire. Jack Frost was particularly merciless during this time of the year, it was a really cold night and they were sitting outside the camp, huddled in their heavy mantles, keeping watch for any signs of scouts, with only the campfire and the quiet winds to keep them company. The Archduke's reign of terror caused them to revert to their nomadic lifestyle in the past, and they now lived in simple, camouflaged tents to avoid capture. The little pitiful fire seemed to reflect Izetta's mood.

"Have you forgotten about that goddamn stone?" Sophie huffed, her breath turning to white fume in front of her.

"There's...there's got to be something we can do! We can't keep running like this!" Izetta cried.

"Are you crazy or what?" she snapped, "Your grandma was the strongest witch that I've ever known and even she didn't stand a chance against that piece of jewellery!"

When Izetta didn't directly reply, she slightly lowered her head and muttered, "...Sorry."

"Then we just have to steal it."

Sophie opened her mouth in her surprise, before closing it again. "You're right, let's just walk into that jerk's bedroom and take it! Honestly? You need to get your head checked."

"I'm serious!"

Sophie's eyes widened at her raised voice.

"...We...we just have to find a chance to get inside."

"You mean like a...sneak attack or something?"

"I don't know...I..." The reflection of the campfire danced in Izetta's crimson eyes, "I will find a way."

"Why can't you just stick to our original plan? We'll get out of this country, live in Westria, and go into hiding."

"Grandma ever said that...not even Westria would be safe for us..."

Sophie stared blankly at her for a few seconds, then gave her a shrug and scoffed, "Well...I hope you're not just all talk."

She wouldn't be.

Her grandmother died to buy her some time to flee.

She would never let that sacrifice go to waste.

A witch was actually indistinguishable from humans.

As long as they dressed like them and never used known or suspected witch jargons in front of them, they could hide themselves pretty easily among humans.

They might have rather unusual hair and eye colors, but those weren't enough proof to accuse them as witches.

The strongest proof usually came from testimonies by a lot of unrelated people, or that they were famous enough to be noticed by humans in neighboring villages.

That was why the oldest witches and the most well-known clans got lynched first.

Izetta realized that sooner or later, there would be no old witches in the whole nation, and clans consisting of relatively young witches, like the white witches, would be the only ones left.

It was frightening, but Izetta could walk freely in the town markets without being recognized as a witch, as long as she kept low and didn't attract anyone's attention. Her hood was useful for this.

She always offered to go to the market whenever Sophie's family needed something they could not obtain by themselves, or there was something they needed to trade for human money.

Today was no different.

She put on her hood and headed to the nearby village, almost too merrily, although she knew there were people that were after her head.

The market was buzzing with people, and Izetta's small figure quickly blended with the visitors. It was a little peculiar for a witch like her, but she loved the crowds. She liked watching people greeting each other, chatting casually about their day, the smell of fresh groceries, the sound of footsteps that surrounded her. The sellers kept offering her their produce when she walked past, and she politely refused. Sometimes it amazed her how normal these people's lives here, as if it never came to them that witches all over the country were being murdered.

It was unfair.

It was unfair that these people's families were alive and well, and Izetta couldn't even see her grandmother's dead body in one piece.

All because this Archduke suddenly decided that they deserved to be purged.

Izetta clenched her hands, trying to maintain her smile as she moved from vendor to vendor to look for the fresh vegetables that Sophie wanted.

When she finally found them and requested them to the vendor, simple introductions were made and the conversation began to flow. The middle-aged lady commented, "My, young girl, I never see you around here...!"

Izetta nervously pulled her hood further over her head and said, "I'm...uh...not from around here."

"That's okay, we have new people around here all the time. Where do you live...?"

"In...the outskirts...near the forest..." She instinctively looked around her, her heart beating faster than before.

There were only shoppers there, and aside from the lady, no one seemed to take notice of her.

"Oh! Isn't that where witches used to live?" the woman exclaimed, putting Izetta's order into plastic bags, "Please be careful. They're dangerous, aren't they?"

"Dangerous...?" Izetta said, her hood slowly slipping back again, "Wha...they're not dangerous."

"I heard they eat human flesh, especially children, and they are accomplices of the devil who bring sorrow and disaster to Eylstadt. And they can hex you! I get the creeps just thinking about it."

"Um..." Izetta felt her mouth suddenly became dry, "They don't-"

"I'm so glad that we have a ruler who finally does something about it. We have let those witches off the hook for far too long. In this age of science, witches are just pests who refuse to conform to society. They are unnatural beings that the Gods have ordered us to purge. Don't you think so...?"

Izetta bit her lip, her head swirling as she handed the money to her with a shaky hand.

We can never...

Live together with humans...

How dare they...

How dare they justify their hatred with such lies…

These people living in ivory towers…

We never...ever hurt anybody.

We're just...

Just here, living in this world...

"Even their existence is a sin!" she went on, "But it's okay, because it seems like the Archduke is doing a very good job in taking care of them. He is so busy recently that the princess has to look for her royal guards herself!"

That caught Izetta's attention, distracting her from the nauseating topic about witches.

"The princess...?"

"Yes, our dearest Princess Ortfiné! Oh, how I love that girl. I just read the poster on the notice board over there. They said she is holding an open recruitment in Landsbruck for anyone over 18 who is interested to become one of her royal guards."

It struck Izetta at that instant.

That's it.

If she became one of the staff of the palace, she could go in and out of it as much as she pleased.

She could spy on the Archduke and the princess, and maybe find a way to steal the accursed stone.

If she could hit the jackpot somehow, that stone was as good as in Izetta's hands.

She could discover its secret, and how the von Eylstadts possessed it, and hell...maybe she could even kill the Archduke and the princess...although she probably didn't have the courage to do it.

Yet.

If they can justify the mass murder of my people...

Then I can justify anything.

Including taking advantage of some gullible, spoiled princess.

A golden chance like this would never come twice.

Anger coursing wildly in her veins, she made a mental note to memorize the poster.

And on that exact place she decided, that she could only do this alone.

"Are...you...insane?"

When Izetta returned to the camp of the white witches afterward and Sophie asked her if she already had any plans later on, Izetta couldn't bring it in her to lie.

She honestly told her everything, and Sophie's face contorted into a mixture of rage and disbelief.

Izetta didn't blame her. She was ready to do anything, something, to set them free from this hopeless situation...no matter how outrageous that sounded.

"I have decided, Sophie, this is something I have to do alone."

"And? You're just going to put yourself in enemy territory alone? Have you lost your mind?"

"This is my problem, not yours."

She walked past Sophie impatiently, knowing full well that she was jarring on Sophie's nerves.

She loved Sophie, she really did.

But she would not get her involved in this.

"...don't tell me you're making this your personal vendetta, Izetta."

Sophie's quiet tone made her stop, eyes staring emptily into the darkness of the camp.

Then before Izetta could answer, the white-clad witch furiously stomped her feet on the floor and cursed really loudly, surprising her redheaded friend.

"Argh, fine! ! I'm coming with you!"

"What? No!" Izetta forbid.

She fiercely jabbed Izetta in the ribs with her finger. "Shut up! This is all because of you! I can't just sit here and let you kill yourself! At least I have to be there to kill you myself when you try!"

Izetta couldn't believe it. "This is none of your business, Sophie!"

"It's final. I'm coming with you, no matter you want it or not. Get used to it," she fumed before storming away while purposefully hitting her shoulder against Izetta's, "The White Witch Coven would be held tomorrow under the full moon. You'd better tell that to everyone."

"I..." Izetta said, "I have to tell the Coven about this...?"

Sophie glared dangerously at her and she gulped.

"...fine. But I'm not backing out whether they allow me to do it or not."

"Izetta, how many years do you think we've known each other? If you obey even a word that comes out from their annoying mouths, I'll eat my broom."

Izetta saw how the corner of Sophie's mouth curled up into a tiny smile.

"That's the only good thing about you anyway."

As she finished explaining her plan to the white witches, she shakily waited for their response.

It was neither a perfect nor intricate plan, but this was the best that she could come up with. If she didn't receive the support of the white witches, then she would do this alone.

The first person to react in the circle was Sophie's sister.

"Sophie-"

"Stop it, Sis. I've already decided to involve myself," she calmly interrupted, "She is doing this for the sake of all the witches in the world. I can't just let her do it alone."

The woman grew silent, and Izetta felt a sting in her heart.

Everyone in that circle knew what grisly fate awaited them if they failed. There was zero possibility that they would come back in one piece.

A witch beside Sophie's sister spoke this time, in a quite intimidating manner, "We admire your selflessness...but there are many things yet to be considered. Landsbruck is supposed to be a safe haven for witches because of the closely compacted ley lines in that area. However, in our current situation that place is a two-headed dagger. There were young witches who got killed on sight there because they had trouble controlling themselves in a place with such dense magical energy. Both of you are young, inexperienced witches. Izetta can't even control her magic perfectly. It would be difficult for you to stay hidden. We would not send two witches to their deaths for a lost cause."

"And can we really trust you to do this...?" the leader added, "The fact that the two of you are young and inexperienced is the truth, and we have a responsibility to protect the last of our kind. Especially you, Izetta, you are the last surviving member of your clan. You're the one who understands the most that you have the responsibility to live. And forgive us for thinking that sending you would...cause some secrets to be spilled and the situation would become even worse than it already has."

"I know it is hard to believe in us," Izetta replied, "But I would like you to know that, if they manage to capture me, they can skin me alive, break every bone in my body and slice my throat open all at once and they'll still have a hard time making me disclose any of our jealously guarded secrets. Of course I guarantee that I would protect Sophie with all my power."

There was a tiny gasp from the witches beside Izetta, but she ignored them.

"They are responsible for my grandmother's agony, and I would personally make each of them pay a thousand fold."

At that moment she knew...that the mad glint in her flaming red eyes and the burning poison in her words had sealed the deal for the white witches.

She didn't notice Sophie's sad stare on her back, not even when the white witches gave them their blessings as they mounted their horses.

"If you go to Landsbruck on horseback in full speed, you would arrive there in two days time..."

"We can't really provide perfect forgeries for your documents...you still have to use your real names and age..."

"But they are enough to hide your true identities in case they decide to investigate..."

"Besides, you are already prepared to greet the jaws of death..."

"We still feel that you should reconsider..."

"But we know you probably won't give it a second thought..."

"So we can only give you our blessings...and we will pray to the Moon every single night so that you can return here..."

"Alive."

A/N: Hello everyone! This story started out as a random idea that some people requested to be turned into a full-fledged fanfic. The only war happening in this AU is the war against witches. Also, there will probably be a change in ratings later on. I already have the basic outline of the story in mind, but if you have any ideas or scenes that you want to suggest or see in this story, feel free to tell me in the reviews! (although I cannot promise writing everything down lol) And please tell me what you think of this so far!