Valeri stumbled to the ground uselessly, as if her legs were gone from beneath her. Without the physical strength to get her arms up to stop her fall, her chin smacked into the ground with a significant amount of force. The blow sent a shock of disorientation through her body, all of her limbs unable to anything but flail uselessly beside her as she tried to force them to work.

Even if her mind wanted to get up from the ground, it was only an instinct that drove her now. The actual stubbornness had left her quickly against the stone wall that the shorter man had become to her. Thought even as she managed to get a limp arm underneath herself and pushed herself to her feet for the hundredth time, she could make herself do it anymore.

She couldn’t look into his eyes.

The divine gold intermingling with the burning green always sent a deep sense of inferiority to her very core. The bright light that surrounded Midday had stayed continued to be just that, as bright as the midday sun. From the early morning until far into the depths of the night, Midday shone with an unerring power, only truly seeming at home while the sun had been truly uncovered by Orisis in the sky.

“Is this the end, Valeri?” The distinctly young voice called, something that had grated on the girl’s conscious for the entire day. The man, while embodying everything that she would consider a man to be, was too young. An almost mortifying possibility would be if the boy was younger than even she was. Thus, leading Valeri to secretly hope that Midday was simply a very short man.

“I can keep going.” She said, iron still in her voice. It was the benefit of being a blessed with Might, that unerring disposition was something that Valeri hadn’t found all too useful until today. She couldn’t force her eyes up to meet the man’s anymore, but she could feel the powerful gaze on her.

“Good.” The powerful word came to meet her again, along with a blow faster than she could truly react to. She took the blow to her gut, letting the blow wind her like they all had before, and prepared to strike at the man with the training rapier that she had used for years.

Of course, she didn’t hit Midday. The blade, though dulled, was still enough to do a significant amount of damage with though that hardly deterred the metal masked man from toying with it like it was nothing more than a twig.

He would brush the blade off with the back of his knuckles and even then, it wouldn’t even do so much as graze him. It was infuriating, the total lack of care for an art she’d practiced for a good portion of her life. She’d had teachers who were the best around, and she had even managed a few matches against them—yet Midday was a lord above them all.

It was humiliation supreme when the blade she’d professed to be skilled in was so useless against the man across from her, even as he used nothing but his hands. Then, as well, it was pride of the highest order that she still used it, despite her complete lack of effectiveness against Midday’s dominance.

She let that frustration override her, as she struck out with the rapier’s tip once again. Midday dodged it smoothly, smoother than she’d seen any but the most proficient of dancers move. If the blade was of no use, then she had no choice but to abandon it.

The lunging rapier was left to clatter to the ground as Valeri felt her body tighten together and sneak closer to the radiant man, her fist rocketing out as she drew close enough to strike.

That was when her fist made contact with Midday’s palm, and like flesh against rock, it did nothing. When Midday’s surprisingly gentle grasp surrounded her fist, she realised that her hand was trapped, just as she was.

“Well, that certainly took you long enough.” Midday’s voice rang out harshly as he let go of the fist that he’d wrapped in his grasp. Valeri quickly retreated a few steps, eyes covering the man’s body, looking for a sign of any movement. The man’s movement was as esoteric as his master’s, Maximilian. Though he didn’t seem to have the same astounding closeness to the art of it, making Midday’s movement seem like a pale likeness in comparison.

“Are you going to stand on guard all day?” The cutting voice spoke again, just a little too high pitched for Valeri’s pride to accept, desperate to consider Midday a man. Her eyes glanced up to Midday’s face, the golden light still poured off of him and from his eyes, but it was no longer the oppressive light that it used to be.

“I can continue.” Valeri said, gritting her teeth even as she said it, but Midday just shook his head.

“Probably.” He stated, a raised eyebrow was evident even underneath his mask, “But, frankly, you don’t have it in you to learn much more than you have today.” Valeri’s face darkened with the implication that she wasn’t up to the task, but Midday just flashed with the golden light again, shutting her up.

“You have no idea what constitutes actual training.” He paused to wait for Valeri to look directly at him again, then continued, “You have trained with a weapon that doesn’t suit you, totally ignoring the strengths of your own blessing and the resources that you have available to you. Master told me a lot about you, and the only reason why I believe you are worth anything is because he said so.”

“Why am I not worth anything?” Valeri snarled, indignancy rising to the top of a fetid pool of emotion, “Why are you worth more than me, Midday?” As soon as the flash of anger was gone, Valeri’s jaw clicked as it closed, a cold dread washed over her body, though she was too prideful to possibly take back her words now.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Valeri.” Midday’s voice warned as his eyes adjusted to capture her own gaze in a stranglehold, “It’s not that I was ever worth more than you. It’s that I wasn’t, and you should be.” Midday walked closer to her, each step forced Valeri to move back another step as well, his purposeful strides overpowering her shaky, unsure ones. Each of Midday’s footfalls felt like its own tremor through the earth, even though Valeri knew that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, but it felt as if she was being approached by a giant.

“W– What’s that even supposed to mean?” Valeri gasped as she tripped on nothing and fell backwards into the dirt like she had a hundred times during the day. Her eyes remained locked with Midday’s; the golden light almost made it feel as if her face was burning with its intensity.

“You sit in your tower, warm and fed at night.” The light around him dimmed, the darkness around him seeped in ever so slightly, “You worry about what coin will be pinched from your horde as those on the street starve. You sit in your tower, observing it all, yet you receive a blessing. For what?” Midday asked, his voice cold with disdain.

“I don’t know!” Valeri yelped, almost as if she were being struck, “I don’t know why I was given a blessing it was given in my sleep!” The green eyes burned into her, the pure criticism in them was something she’d never felt in her entire life, it was something that she was sure that she’d see as she closed her eyes for a long time.

Midday straightened his posture entirely, looking down on her from above like a King from on high, peering down at a foolish peasant who understood nothing and was worth even less. “Yet you have the gall to do nothing, to stay ignorant and foolish?”

Valeri wished so badly to answer the barbed question, but she couldn’t. She had kept the secret of her blessing so well that even she had forgotten it at times, and if not for that little piece of twine that still connected her to Tarania, she’d have allowed herself to forget entirely.

“Disappointing.” Midday decreed; the power of the word radiated throughout her entire being—scorching her worse than any fire possibly could.

What could she say to that? To a word that so wholly summed up her entire self, that defined her so completely. It was the most painful thing someone had ever called her, despite so much of her life revolving around the meticulous and callously crafted insults of Crossroads’ wealthy. It felt like she’d had her skin stripped from her muscle, flayed with impunity, and treated like nothing else but the cattle would be.

Midday only looked at her for a while, before removing his overpowering gaze and walking away from her slack form to Gods only know where. Valeri felt the desire to ask one last question, the burning in her chest coming from more than just her muscles.

“How?” She said finally, her voice cracking lamely even with Might granted by a Goddess. Midday stopped his walk, letting the faint glow that surrounded him die—making the man almost entirely indistinguishable from any other person on the street.

“You come tomorrow.” And then he was gone, moving at a speed that Valeri didn’t have good enough eyesight to track in the dark.

Valeri could do nothing but walk painfully to her horse and ride home, each jolt that travelled through the horse would send her body through a shockwave of colliding pain, more than she’d been in her entire life.

She reached the back door of her home that she’d left through, knocking in a specific pattern on the door. In only a moment, the door swung open to reveal a hefty woman in her early sixties.

“Ma’am,” the woman said gently, before allowing Valeri to slide an arm over her shoulder, standing much shorter than the dark-skinned woman. Valeri knew the woman, and had almost her entire life, she even knew her name, though she’d never used it.

Valeri had never come home in such a state, the worst being when she’d gone to a ‘secretive’ party with some others of her generation and had managed to spectacularly ruin her own dress, to where she was legitimately indecent in the foppish thing. The servant had helped her every time, doing absolutely anything she could to for Valeri, to make her comfortable in what had been a harrowing moment for her.

Though, Valeri could only assume that the woman was quite shocked to see her beat up the way she was, skin scrapped up like nothing, but a fight could produce. Bruises, cuts, blisters, the whole nine yards.

“Uaele…” Valeri said hesitantly after the woman somehow hauled her through the corridors to an empty room. The shock on the woman’s face would have made Valeri’s day if the day had been anything else, but it wasn’t.

“You know my name, Lady Ephars?” The older woman, Uaele, said with a hitch of surprise or worry in her voice. Valeri grimaced as she tried desperately to move into a more comfortable position, though her body had decided that now was the time to totally crash and be useless.

“Yes, I learnt it when I was ten,” Valeri said quietly, but didn’t expand on the statement. “I know you must have things to do, or family to be around, but–” Uaele, her eyes flashing in understanding, held up a silencing finger and rushed from the room post-haste. Valeri eased herself up against a wall that the bed she’d been placed on was flush against. She didn’t dare let herself lay down on the bed truly, the only possible outcome being that she’d fall asleep.

It was only a few moments later when Uaele bustled back in the room with more genuine liveliness than Valeri had ever seen on any of her household’s servants, aside from Yeram—if you considered a slight crinkle of his eyes to be lively.

“Alright, let’s get your clothes off!” Uaele said, placing down a small pail of water along with some other items on the room’s supplied table. Valeri, having never been bathed or seen by any others naked, was too shocked to even yelp as the older woman practically tore the clothes off of her—somehow managing to make what would seem like a lengthy and painful process as easy and painless as taking off a sock.

“Ouch, those must have hurt,” the woman said kindly, a soft and worried voice carrying to Valeri’s ears as Uaele gently pressed around the many wounds on her skin. Valeri hissed in pain, but the woman ignored the expression with only an apologetic murmur. After a few moments, Uaele was gently washing Valeri’s wounds with mercifully warm water, carefully and methodically cleaning her body.

Valeri, overly anxious of the woman’s view of her almost totally bare body, sans underwear, almost shrieked when the woman began to clean at the smattering of wounds and scrapes on her breasts.

“Oh, calm down! You’re a little girl now, are ye?” The tough old lady’s voice said instinctively, before going ramrod straight as she realised what she’d said, and who she’d said it to. But before Uaele could apologise for her grand misstep, Valeri couldn’t help but let the compressed laughter burst through her nose in surprise—the motion instantly making her groan with pain multiple times as she alternated between laughing and cringing with pain.

Uaele didn’t hold for much longer herself, barely containing a warm, full-bodied laugh by grasping at her knees as her body shook in restraint. The hilariousness of the statement had somehow opened a whole new world to Valeri, a sudden sonder striking her as she realised that each and every one of her household’s employees were like this in some way or another. A brusque mothering from Uaele was all it took for her to realise that.

Valeri let the wizened woman continue her work, her hands moving methodically from wound to wound and applying and of a handful of different salves and mixtures to them. Valeri would have believed that the woman was a medic of some sort before she worked here, if a qualified medic weren’t paid far more than a simple maid would be within her household.

“You do this often?” Valeri asked with a cautious curiosity, managing to get the words out despite the pain.

“Oh, once upon a time, darlin’.” Uaele said happily, “When you have two sons who like to scrap with the other neighbourhood boys, you’ll be doing lots of this!” Valeri chuckled along with the woman, though she found herself wondering if she would ever have to do such a thing when she could simply get a trained servant to do so. Suddenly that idea felt hollower than it practically should, like there was a sudden loss of warmth and compassion in such an intimate action.

“Your sons, are they…?” Valeri said tentatively, yet Uaele looked up at her sadly, the pure sorrow in the woman’s eyes was something that she felt resonate in her chest, like a drum being struck mightily atop a mountain and to hear a different drum resound back from the mountain standing opposite.

“No, honey.” Uaele’s hands stopped moving for a moment, only to begin again in short order. They stayed in silence for a while, letting the sorrow integrate into the atmosphere comfortably.

“Is… is it that bad out there?” Valeri asked as she let her dark eyes scour the older woman’s face, “Am I truly living in an ivory tower?”

The pitying glance in place of a reply was enough. Valeri hated being treated like a fragile thing, as if an errant blow would crack her skin or break her bones, but today she’d been beaten so thoroughly by Midday that it’d destroyed her entire perception on what it meant to be treated like a porcelain teacup. Midday had held back in every sense of the word, clearly capable of doing far more than what he’d done to her.

“I’m sorry, Uaele.” Valeri said quietly, a flood of emotions springing forth from the pool within her chest and making her entirely incapable of stopping it from leaking form her eyes. There was nothing graceful about those emotions, nothing pretty of beautiful. They were the infected remains of what she’d repressed her entire life, and even as Uaele pulled Valeri’s much taller form into her gratuitous bosom it wasn’t quelled.

“It’s alright darlin’.” The woman whispered gently into her ear, over and over again. It soothed the pain, but only affirmed Valeri’s stance, each word from the mouth of the woman who pitied her innocence, even when she had somehow believed in the innocence of the world despite knowing full well that the world outside her towers wasn’t as peaceful as it appeared from above it all.

No, it wasn’t alright, Valeri decided. It wasn’t alright that the world was this way, and that she did nothing about it. It wasn’t alright that the woman who’d lost her sons, however it’d happened, was comforting the sheltered princess like she would a babe with a teat.

No. It wasn’t alright, and Valeri was going to change it.

She swore that she would.