Celle

We all sat down to discuss our situation. The dining cabin was particularly well-suited for the size of our group, and Carr insisted on cooking us something before we started. It was a pleasant surprise to find he was actually a decent cook—he made all of us an impressively varied dish; deep-fried fish, but he served it with a side of vegetables that was seasoned just right so that it went well with it. It felt incredibly unhealthy in spite of the greens, but it tasted good so we couldn’t really complain.

Valle needed some help eating, but once Isabella had helped him he seemed to be enjoying the meal just the same. Fedal joked around the table about something and they all laughed—I didn’t quite catch what it was, but I laughed along anyway. The mood had started to brighten up now.

“Um…can I get some food?” Gilder asked. “And why am I tied up to a chair?”

“Partially because we’re mildly afraid of the speed with which you fuck up and don’t want to let you loose,” I said. “Also partially because we’re pissed at you.”

“So that’s a no on food,” Gilder said slowly. More cheerfully, he said, “Hey guys, I know you’re upset about the whole princess kidnapping thing, but it’s not that bad!”

We ignored him. “Carr, can you bring more of the fish?” Isabella asked. “It’s really good!”

“Yeah, coming up,” he replied from the kitchen.

“Seriously, guys!” Gilder exclaimed. “It’s not that bad. I used [Forgery] to look like a different person when I was selling her the boat and when bringing her food. She doesn’t know what I look like.”

I held up my hand. “We’re putting a pin on the kidnapping thing. We’re TRYING to have a lovely meal here and not think about the fact we have an Imperial princess locked up a few rooms over, so shut the fuck up.”

“Isn’t that a little rude?” Gilder sounded genuinely hurt.

Fedal raised a fork at him, and appeared to be trying to finish chewing before speaking, but decided to go ahead regardless. “Dude, listen, I’m a professional fuckup, but you seem like you’re speedrunning treason. Like, this is your second go in like a month. That’s kinda fucked man.”

“We have more important things to discuss today,” Carr said. “So let’s ignore the small things for now.”

Gilder tried to look over his shoulder, but being tied up made that rather difficult. “I’m—I’m sorry, small stuff? We got a kidnapped princess!”

AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? But I decided not to engage him. “Let’s…address the most important topic right now.”

We all tried very hard not to look at Isabella, but the topic had to be discussed eventually. She continued to eat, apparently unaware—or unwilling—to acknowledge what we had to say next. None of us quite knew how to breach the topic, but we had to say something about it eventually. I looked around the room and everyone was purposefully avoiding eye contact with anything but their plates at the moment.

“We…have to talk about Duartes,” I said slowly. “We…we don’t know what happened to him after we escaped.”

“Does it matter?” Isabella asked. We all turned to her, surprised. It wasn’t what we expected her to say. “Either Johan is keeping grandpa as a prisoner or he killed him. Both ways end with me shoving a sword so far up his ass he’ll be able to taste it.”

We started to laugh, but didn’t quite commit all the way. It was hard to find the humour in it when we were concerned about Duartes—moreover, we were concerned about Isabella. She seemed strangely detached from this. “You’re right, I suppose,” I ventured. “But—are you—are you okay?”

She shrugged and didn’t look up from her plate. She kept eating in silence, and only when the silence prolonged to the point of uncomfortableness she said, “I am fine.” The uncomfortable silence returned. What could you even say to that? Were we supposed to argue that she wasn’t fine? It was Isabella herself that broke the silence. “More importantly…since both possibilities end with us attacking Johan…how are we supposed to do this?”

This was yet another uncomfortable topic, but this time we were the silent ones. Isabella seemed to find no problem in addressing it. “Johan kicked our shit in. Valle did the best out of any of us, but even he only managed to really hit him once and that was because of a lot of circumstances we can’t expect to happen again. If we have to duel him again, we’ll all die.”

I became very interested in my dish myself for a while, not knowing what to say. Suddenly an idea came to me. “What about poison? If he’s like Duartes and Carr, he must surely be vulnerable to it.”

“How do you suggest we apply it?” Carr asked. “Knowing that asshole, I’m sure he has food testers everywhere. Plus if we poison him outside a duel he’ll just get one of his servants to heal him somehow.”

“We poison him during a duel then, like Cassius did to Duartes. We coat our blades in poison then fight him. If we get one hit in, he’ll be poisoned.”

Valle stirred in his chair. “That’s a big if. I don’t know if I can get one hit on him again if we duel…maybe if we all fought together. But he has enough [HP] that he could probably tank most poisons for a really long time. Maybe if we looked for some exquisite poison we might be able to lower his [HP] but even then it would be a maybe at best.”

“I’ll take maybes,” Carr said, shrugging. “If it helps, it helps.”

“Forgive me, Carr, but allow me to understand your mindset. So level ups are off the table, [Skills] are cheating, but poison is fine?” Valle didn’t sound particularly bothered by it, but his voice had a certain bemused quality to it. “Where is the line for you?“

Carr took a sip of wine—was this his fourth cup?—and leaned forward. “I’m going to be very honest with you, Valle, because I owe you my life. I’m going to be more honest than I have even been with myself.” He drew a deep breath. “I hate everything about [Swordsmanship] and stats. It’s an unfair system that rewards you for being born and discourages hard work. Let’s not even touch how the system lets nobles get away with literal murder through Trials by Combat they can’t possibly lose. I hate everything about it and when I first came here I was willing to die just to prove to people—hell, to prove to myself that there was more to life beyond the system. I was okay with that. I hate everything about this system and I’d rather die than to engage with it.” At the end, Carr finished his glass of wine and reached for the bottle to replenish it.

Valle gestured with two fingers. “However…?”

“However, when it comes to Johan being a mad man who is going to probably cause many deaths because he’s fucking Johan, I would be theoretically willing to put aside my principles. Only…” He sighed. “Only, quite frankly, Johan wants me to throw away my principles. He wants me to level up and become stronger. And to this I say“— he raised his fifth glass of wine and sipped at it before continuing— “Johan wants me to do it? Then I’m not doing it. Out of spite. I’d prefer to let him kill me.”

Valle nodded. “I can kind of see that.”

“I understand,” Isabella said quietly.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Fedal said.

I’m sorry, it does? That was insane logic. Consistent, maybe. Insane and stupid, definitely.

“So you’d be okay with [Skills] at this point, except for the fact Johan really wants you to use them?” I asked.

“Okay is stretching it—I’d hate myself for using them, but if it was to beat Johan, I could consider it.” Carr shook his head. “The thing is, Johan wants me to use them. Say I use them and I beat him—the fucker is going to die smiling like he won. I don’t want that. I want him to suffer. I want his very last minutes to be filled of regrets as he realizes he was wrong about everything and that he is a shitty fencer.”

“So, you’re okay with poison because…” Fedal started, trailing off and looking at Carr expectantly.

“Because,” Carr replied, sipping at his wine, “Johan doesn’t want me to poison him. He does want me to level up though. So I’m not gonna level up and I’m so down with poisoning him. My principles I can part with, but not my spite.”

They all nodded slowly as if this made perfect sense and I just gaped at all of them open mouthed. Forgive me, but are you serious? I looked around the room hoping to find at least one other face of disbelief and I did—Gilder’s, who shared my confusion. This saddened me greatly. Great. The only person who agrees with me is the guy addicted to treason.

“That isn’t enough though. Even if we all fight him at once, it won’t be enough. He can finish us in one move for the most part.”

“For the most part?” I asked.

It made sense in hindsight. I had thought of the possibility before…but this would be tricky. Carr looked at Fedal, and said nothing. Slowly, we all did the same and stared at him. It took frankly too long for him to notice we were all looking at him. Was he not used to people looking at him?

“Wait—me?” Fedal asked nervously. “You—you think I can take a few hits? My [HP] isn’t that high.”

“But your [Swordsmanship] is and it can get even higher,” Carr said thoughtfully. “There’s one thing I noticed about Johan’s fencing…to put it plainly, he’s not as good as he used to be.”

“How can that be?” Fedal asked. “Didn’t he…do a bunch of horrible things to get stronger?”

“Oh, he’s stronger alright. But he hasn’t had a proper fencing partner in forever and his technique is starting to get rusty. I could feel it…he parried my lunge forte to forte. There was no need for that. It was sloppy. It only worked because his [Swordsmanship] was so high he could power through it, but he didn’t have the leverage to make it work. The lack of practice partners has made him worse…he’s been stagnating for over a year. Even if he does footwork by himself, you need a live partner to really get better.” It was probably half of the reasons he wanted Carr so badly. The other half was more twisted, I imagined, but I thought better than to say that aloud.

“Doesn’t that apply to you as well?” Valle asked. “You have been gone for the same amount of time as him.”

“Somewhat, but not as much. I haven’t had that much practice, but I had live matches at least. And the time I spent in the void…I don’t know how to explain it, but it doesn’t feel like a year. It feels like…” Carr trailed off, then shook his head. “Anyway, I have practice partners now.” He gestured with his head at every one of us. When he looked at me, I shook my head and he shrugged. I’m not fencing you, I’m not insane. “Since Johan is relying on his stats instead of his skills—you can be as good as you want if you get rusty you will suck—all we need is someone with stats high enough to survive a few hits and keep him busy while we can attack him with the poison idea. After that point, if we work together we might be able to score a few hits on him…and probably win.”

Fedal stood up in a hurry, half-drunk, and said, “Wait hold on now—Johan is still nearly 2000 points ahead of me in stats. Even if I work like crazy—let’s say I can manage 5000 thrusts a day—to increase my stats…it would take a year to get close to him. And even if our stats were close, even if he’s out of practice…Carr, you’ve proven yourself that actual fencing skill can be a damn multiplier to your actual strength. He would be way stronger than me still!”

“Yeah, he would,” Carr agreed. Then, he tilted his head to the side in apparent confusion. “That is, if all you did was swing your sword like an idiot. But didn’t we already agree otherwise earlier?”

“Agree on what?” Fedal asked, clearly exasperated.

“You’re going to learn how to fence,” Carr replied. “I’ll kick that bad muscle memory out of you and teach you how to fence properly. You might not be able to beat him, but you’ll surely be able to keep him busy within a year.”

“Can I get in on those lessons?” Valle asked.

“Of course you can. Isabella, that goes for you as well.”

Isabella continued to eat and didn’t say anything at first. It seemed like she was much more interested in her food than what we were talking about. When she finished swallowing another bite, she then said, “If it would take a year for him to get strong enough to be able to fight Johan, if my grandfather is alive, it would mean a year of him rotting in a jail cell. He might be dead by then.” We had no response to that. “Not to mention, if you want to avoid Johan becoming Emperor, your time limit is much closer to three months than a year. After that, even fighting him and poisoning him is going to be much harder. There’s not enough time in that plan.”

“I’ve accounted for that,” Carr said. “Sort of. That’s where Celle comes in.”

Excuse me? Now everyone was looking at me as though there was some sort of plan that I was supposed to know. “What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Solve the Emperor’s murder,” Carr replied. “If you can do that, then Johan won’t be Emperor immediately which will give us more time to prepare and if he’s ousted from his position we’ll be able to free his personal prisoners. That will also buy us time so we can all get stronger. All of us, me included. Even if I don’t level up, there’s some adjustments I’ve thought about making to my fencing.”

It was my turn to stand up in half-outrage. “Hang on—you—you know my [Investigation] was stolen right? I can’t solve the crime without that! The whole point was for me to level up my [Investigation] and solve what I couldn’t solve the first time around.”

“Can’t you just solve it anyway?” Carr asked.

His eyes were fixated on me with such intensity I didn’t know how to even look away from him. It wasn’t that he was being insistent, but that he sincerely believed I could do it, from the bottom of his drunken heart.

“I’ll try,” I said, in what I hoped was a noncommittal tone. It would have been rude to dismiss the idea from the get go; it was our only way of stopping Johan right now. “Just don’t blame me if I can’t do it.”

“We won’t,” Fedal said. “We promise, right guys?”

“I’ll blame you if you fail because you didn’t try hard enough.” Carr’s voice wasn’t harsh, but his words were. “But if you try your best and can’t come up with anything, that’s that.”

I took a deep breath. “So to recap—our current plan is to get enough money to buy the crime scene, expose Johan’s crimes, train up, and dodge his assassins in the meantime?”

Carr considered that for a moment. “That sounds about right.”

That was barely a plan so much as a string of outcomes loosely connected by the flimsiest of possibilities. It wasn’t like we had much of a choice though.

“So about the money…” Gilder began. “I can probably arrange a match to get you all the money you need.”

You ever worked together with someone and came to the conclusion that all their ideas are not just bad, but impossibly bad? To the point where you feel like even listening to their ideas might make you complicit in some crime they commit not out of some sort of manic malice but simple stupidity? And yet, you feel so desperate for a solution that you find yourself taking a deep breath, sighing and saying, “Go on?”

This was how all of us felt when Gilder spoke.

“I know someone who’s sponsoring Max Relampago and a few other fencers for the next World Championship. Bet that if you said you could beat them in a team match he’d be willing to give you very good odds.”

“Team matches? They have those here?” Carr asked, leaning forward. “Explain that to me.”

“It’s 3 fencers on each side, plus one substitute. Each of them fencers each of the opposite team’s fencers, and the scores carries over. I…think that’s it?” Gilder said, hesitantly. “I could be wrong.”

“That sounds about right to me,” Carr muttered. “Hey, how do we get in touch with this guy? Send a letter or—something? That sounds great. Besides, that name…Max…is that someone famous?”

“Famous duelist. Low level, though, so he never won anything big. Been around forever,” Isabella said, shrugging. “We actually duelled back when I was on the circuit for a cup of tea. He surrendered halfway through the match—guy was injured or something. I got the feeling he would have won otherwise though.” She grinned and added, “Not that it means much. I used to suck.”

“He’s been here for a while then?” Carr asked. When Isabella nodded, he shrugged. “Nevermind then.”

We talked for a while longer, but the wine had started to set in and Carr clearly needed if not sleep, at least to drink drinking. It was good to party a little, to celebrate being alive…but they all needed rest. [Restoration] or not. Just as I was about to decide whether to say something or not, Valle stood up. Lord, seeing him stand up by himself unnerved me. It felt like the man was made of paper nowadays, and the way he appeared unsteady on his feet didn’t help ease my nerves. “I have to go talk to the princess,” he said, in a nonchalant tone. “Someone has to steady her nerves—and bring her food.”

“Let it be the pretty boy then,” Carr said, raising his glass of wine in his honour. “Best of us at getting the princess to calm down then.

Valle smiled. “I had a brief talk with her when I woke up and she seemed to be handling it all as well as she could be. Another talk wouldn’t hurt though.”

“Wait, you did? Then why am I tied up still?” Gilder protested.

We all looked at him then shrugged. It was a complicated matter. Valle had talked to the princess earlier and she was comfortable enough. She wasn’t locked in a cell but rather a room that had its entrance barred—she had all the comforts she could ask for. With some impressive skill—we weren’t sure if it was his [Diplomacy] or whether the man was just that charming—he had assured her things would be fine, though she was concerned by his numerous wounds.

At some point soon we would have to free her, but explaining our situation to her and how we accidentally kidnapped her would be…difficult, to say the least. Now, I was more than aware that if I were a better person I would have powered through my exhaustion and sleep deprivation and decided to explain the situation to the poor woman right now, free her and find a way to not compromise our escape from Johan in spite of that.

Instead, I took a deep breath and thought, fuck it, that’s a tomorrow problem.

After we all agreed to meet up early in the morning next day, I brought Carr over to our room. It was weird, we hadn’t known each other for that long but both of us just assumed we would be the ones sharing a room. Lately it felt like we had been spending way too much time together. Not that I minded—it was more of an observation than a complaint. “Can you move, you drunk?”

“Don’t think I need to,” he muttered as he fell back-first on the bed, arm draped over his arms to shield him from the light. “I had enough water, I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course you will.” I rolled my eyes at him and laughed when he grunted in drunken suffering. Ah, so he had reached that stage of drinking. Part of me thought he deserved no mercy here and that I should just kick him to his own side of the bed and let it end there. But I thought better. I used [Restoration] to bring him back to sobriety, first of all. “Feeling better?”

“I—yes. What the flying fuck? Is this a thing? Do people never get hangovers here?”

“They usually do. Not everyone has a friend with high enough [Restoration] to help them for free when they drink too much.” I held an intense stare at him.

“Thank you, wonderful Celle, have I mentioned you look beautiful today?”

“No, but say it a few more times and I might believe you.”

“You look astounding especially when you make me not have to live the consequences of my own actions.”

I looked at him—at his mostly ineffective arm and his knee held together by strings. You suffer the consequences of your own actions enough. I don’t need to do anything. “Hey, Carr…are you in a good mood?”

“Mostly, why?” Carr’s voice was justifiably wary. “What do you need?”

“I don’t need anything, I just want to ask you a question and it will probably put you in a bad mood. So if you’re feeling good it can wait.”

“Well, now if you don’t say what’s on your mind I’ll be ruminating it all night. What’s up?”

Was there a good way to ask this question? “The plan you made earlier. About how to defeat Johan?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Are you…satisfied with it? With not just fighting him one on one?”

I expected a pause or surprise of some sort. Instead, what I got was Carr sitting up and shouting, “OF COURSE NOT!” His anger was pure and unrepressed—but though he spoke loudly, I never got the impression that he was out of control. He spoke with the kind of tone that made it clear he was not trying to fool himself about his anger. This had been bothering him for a while now and he needed very little persuasion to speak of it, but he wasn’t going to punch any holes through the wall. “I want to stand across from that bastard on the piste and beat him. I’ve wanted to defeat him since before he went full psycho but now? I really want to kill him. But—but—“ Carr stopped suddenly and drew a deep breath. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey guys, let’s not defeat this guy. I want a chance to do it myself.’ BAH! I can’t really ask for that. I’ll help everyone with the stupid fucking poison and Fedal plan. That’s probably for the best. But…I don’t like it! That plan makes me the least important person in the duel! Isabella, Fedal and Valle would all be more useful than me by far. I don’t like that in the slightest!”

He raised his head high then dropped it low in a dramatic fashion. “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUCK!”

It was hard to tell whether the most surprising thing was that Carr was having this childish outburst right now or that he was self-aware enough about how petty it sounded that he managed to hide it from everyone until he came back here. Actually, the more surprising part is that he felt comfortable enough being this open with me. “I’m actually really glad to hear that,” I told him. When he looked up at me in surprise I added, “I knew that losing to Johan was going to sting your pride a little. I’m just glad you’re still the same petty bastard you were when I met you.”

Carr looked at me with a curious expression, as if trying to decide whether to react positively or negatively to that. “My pettiness amuses you?”

“It does. It’s one of your best characteristics.”

“I promise you’re one of the very few people who ever thought that.”

I shrugged and sat down beside him on the bed. “It makes you…you. It’s weird and I don’t pretend to understand it. And even though I say it amuses me, half the time it makes me want to kill you. But the other half…” I looked him in the eye and giggled. “It’s sort of adorable.”

“Okay that makes me not want to be petty so you don’t think that.”

“Now that is petty.”

“Touché.”

We laughed together for a while. It was nice. It felt like the first genuine laugh since that horrible encounter with Johan. It made me forget for a second that I had lost my [Skill] and that Carr had his knee permanently injured. That all those horrible things happened. For that moment, the only thing that mattered was laughing with and at each other.

“You know what I think?” He asked, grinning.

“What?”

“I think you’re actually just as petty as me.”

“What? No, I’m not!” I protested. “I would never choose to do something dumb just out of pettiness.”

“Oh, but you want to,” he said. “You don’t do it because you know it would be a bad idea, but a large part of you really fucking wants to. C’mon, look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to solve Johan’s murder and then tell him ‘Didn’t even need [Skills] for that one, bitch.’ C’mon, tell me you don’t want to do that.”

“No!” I protested. Carr put his hand on my shoulder, grinned and nodded a few times, causing me to laugh and admit, “Fine! Okay, fine, I admit it! My first thought after we survived Johan was that I still wanted to solve the murder, okay? And that it would be amazing to see the look on his face when I solved it even without using [Skills]. Just…I don’t know if I can.”

“Who the fuck cares?” Carr shrugged. “Just say that you can do it, do your best, and if it doesn’t work out turn around and say sorry.”

Suddenly it all made sense. I had been wondering about what kind of insane logic this man used, but now it worked out. “That’s how you live your life isn’t it? You just proclaim some outrageous bullshit like you’re certain of it but you’re nowhere near certain you can pull it off.” It had always puzzled me. Carr always seemed so confident about the most absurd things, but if you asked him about how confident he was, he’d mostly shrug and say ‘Not at all.’ This insane, petty creature wasn’t massively overconfident—he just acted like he was going to succeed and figured he’d deal with things later if they didn’t go his way. That explains so much.

“Oh god, yeah. Like, the Executioner? I honestly had no idea if I could beat him. I don’t know shit about longswords, just the basics. I was improvising for half of that. I could have died like three or four times and I lucked out. Hell, fuck that one—I wasn’t even sure I was going to survive Valle the first time we duelled. Cassius is just about the only one I was fully confident. Sort of. And Fedal, I guess, but honestly I didn’t rule out the possibility he had some bullshit magic sword beam and I was gonna die by accident. Like, I talked a lot of shit and I was ready to get hit. I did assume I was winning that one though.”

“Oh my god.” I rested my elbow on my knee and my face on my hands, then smiled at him. “You’re the fucking worst.”

“Hey, you just said it was adorable.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Is this one of those times?”

“Eh, don’t push your luck, sword boy.” We laughed for a while longer. It felt like things made sense. Like everything was going to be okay. God, I was so tired…I wanted to keep talking to him, it made me feel so relaxed. But I also wanted to sleep.

Carr laid on the bed, a book in hand, and opened his arms wide. “You got the energy?”

“No,” I replied immediately. Still, I laid my head over his shoulder and let him open the book. It was fine if I fell asleep like this, but I wanted to read a bit with him, even if it was just a few paragraphs. We had been stuck on that story forever. “Hey, be honest with me.”

“In general or about a specific thing? Because the latter I can do, the former is harder.”

“You talked a lot about how we’re going to approach Johan and defeat him. The poison plan—train up Fedal and the others, use Fedal to distract him, then everyone takes turns attacking him. Do you think that could work?”

“Maybe. It’s the plan B for if my plan A fucks up.”

“You have a plan A?” I asked. “C’mon, spill!”

“Look, it’s not a good plan and I cannot stress this enough.”

“I didn’t ask if it’s a good plan. I asked if you had one. You expect me to believe the World Champion is gonna lose like that and let it end that way just because his numbers are smaller? Naaaah. I know you better than that. You already thought of a plan to beat him, didn’t you?”

He smiled back at me. “You’re right…” Carr drew a deep breath, then said, somewhat maniacally, “I already know how to beat his stupid fucking big number.”

“Oh? And are you going to tell me?” I asked. He leaned closer and whispered it in my ear. “Shit. That’s fucked up.”