Ten thousand gil wasn’t an exorbitant sum of money, all things considered, but it went a surprisingly long way when their arms were already secured and their armour was being paid for by a third party. With the sudden elimination of costs, the chest began to sit there as a sort of discretionary stipend for the fledgeling adventuring company as the frenzied flurry of events that transpired during the first week of Katsumi’s stay quickly wound down into a sudden and abrupt lull in immediate crises. The announcement of the tourney went public the day after Ástríðr and Katsumi’s appointment with Rhiannon and Fèng, and with that announcement, the quest postings at the Guild dried up like a puddle in the desert, dominated by recruiting drives to gather teams for the tournament, leaving anyone who already had a close-knit or well-off team with little to do but wait for the lists to be open for registration.

Given this lull in rapprochement, and in between lessons from both Madam Tsuyu and Dame Rienna, the latter of which was swiftly ramping up—three days in, and she had gotten fifteen consecutive times, and the fourth day was the day when she had gotten twenty, so now they were working on having Katsumi replicate the feat, but now completely unarmed—Katsumi and Ástríðr had taken to actually following through on the sharing of common interests; having done music lessons the day before, today was for cooking, and more specifically the culmination of a great deal of work they had been doing for the past few days.

Katsumi considered teaching how to make the unagi she had served to help everyone break their fast and stave off the intake of coffea, which was imbibed in the morning like it was water, and thus save the udon they had managed to make from scratch for another day, but she thought better of it; the meals that could be made from marine animals that she knew from her previous life were numerous, and they very quickly became prohibitively complex for a novice with no talent for food such as Ástríðr. Not to mention, taking buckwheat and making them into udon was a touch time-consuming when attempting to also instruct someone who, by her own admission, had once managed to char water.

It was late afternoon, so the soup would be ready by the time the doors opened, and given how much they were making, it seemed as though it would manage to last the night. The dashi had been made the previous day, and given the nearby orchards and forests, it hadn’t been especially difficult to find wild edible mushrooms approximate to the taste of shiitake or enokitake for an extra dash of home. She had just set out the last of the ingredients for the broth and udon when Ástríðr ascended from the cellar, a large covered pot in her arms. “The whatever-it-is did the thing where the fat’s all cold and solid.”

Katsumi nodded. “Good. Now, I’m going to need you to put that down, pick up a knife, and cut away the fat that should now be on top. Just the fat, and I would advise you to use something a bit more precise than a cleaver this time.”

“I think I can do that,” Ástríðr replied with a touch of bravado.

“And so Ástríðr is left with the titanic task of not making the kitchen look like an abattoir like she did the last five times she was left with meat prep,” Kyomi sighed, taking a small paring knife to a large, ripe orange, her price for helping with the mushroom-gathering, and popping a slice of the fruit into her mouth. “Sixth time’s the charm, I suppose.”

“Ya know, you’ve said some variation on that every time she’s done this,” Kagura remarked as her nimble hand reached around Katsumi to nick from the plate of umeboshi she had by her side for precisely that purpose. Early on, they’d found that Kagura had a nasty habit of nicking food as it was being prepared, which was unpleasant for all involved, as very few of the ingredients used in traditional Far Eastern cooking were especially palatable raw. “Nothing good’s gonna come from psychin’ her out like that. Plus, it’s sorta unoriginal. Low effort, really.”

“Ora?!” Kyomi exclaimed. “Calling me low-effort?! You wanna go, kusottare?!”

Kagura considered for a moment as her jaw worked at the dried pickled plum she had just taken and popped into her mouth. “Nah. Not feelin’ it. Ya might as well take one o’ these, aho-nee. They’re really helpin’ me mellow out.”

Kyomi sighed from where she was perched on the countertop on the opposite side of the kitchen from Katsumi, and, setting down her orange, she slipped from it to the floor and walked over to Kagura, who was directly beside Katsumi. With an ill-tempered expression on her face, she snatched the proffered snack from the smirking Kagura’s raised hand, and popped it into her mouth, chewing it. Almost immediately, her face twisted up in disgust as she spat it out and did her best to spit the taste out. “Kimoi! How the fuck do you like these things?!”

Kagura shrugged, and took another piece of the incredibly sour and briny fruit into her mouth. With a shit-eating grin, she swallowed and said, “I guess they remind me of you.”

Katsumi sighed, but couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. To look at them, no one could possibly deny they were siblings. Which reminded her…

“Where’s Sonja been? I haven’t seen her in a week.”

Kagura shrugged. “Search me. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her either.”

“Probably still doing that training of hers,” Kyomi mused.

“Who the fuck knows?” Ástríðr sighed. “Better question: who the fuck cares?”

Katsumi sighed as she moved to wave her lover away from the pot. “I’ll take over here. You don’t seem to be getting anything done over here, and we’re working on a bit of a time constraint. But I want you to explain to me why you guys seem to be at each other’s throats. I’m trying not to take it personally, but the fact that I’m so thoroughly out of the loop on this isn’t helping that effort.”

Ástríðr nodded with a huff as she backed away from the covered pewter. “It’s a bit of a long story. A long, boring story.”

“I sincerely doubt it’s anywhere near as boring as you’re making it out to be,” Katsumi said as she lifted the pot and carried it over to a stool in the far corner of the kitchen. She opened the pot and took a slim butcher’s knife to the first slab of meat floating in alcoholic broth. “Kagura and Kyomi here are something of a comedy duo, and my own experiences with sibling relationships were never so adversarial as the one you share with Sonja. There’s something there that’s causing that profound dissonance, and I’d rather air it than risk failure in the tourney from a lack of synergy.”

“Well, you know how Sonja took up that whole sword and shield schtick?”

“I’m familiar,” Katsumi replied. “She knows her way around it, but that’s more for general martial prowess than any real connection to it, I’ve noticed.”

“Yeah, well…when we were young, Sonja always wanted to be a knight, and she dubbed herself my ‘protector.’ I was sort of a morose kid,” Ástríðr explained. “I was moody and more than a little reckless, got into more than a few scrapes that sometimes left me the worse for wear. But she more or less defined herself around that, and when Taliesin came around to start seeing what we were made of, Sonja committed to the training almost obsessively. But it wasn’t enough. In a short amount of time, I’d outpaced her, and suddenly I didn’t need a protector. Sonja took exception to that, because she’s a bratty, entitled little shitstain.

“When I got Eisentänzer on my coming of age, Sonja showed her true colours. She challenged me to a fight, and when I knocked her on her ass, she got up again. She kept going and going, and eventually I got it. She was angry because the world wasn’t the way she wanted it to be—she had built herself around being my defender, and now that she was undergoing this existential crisis because I could knock her on her ass so reliably, it was somehow my problem that she had lived her life with the assumption that I’d always be weaker than her. So, yeah.” Ástríðr shrugged. “I’m not dealing with that. I refuse. Categorically. If she can’t get her shit together, I refuse to let her make it my problem just because she’s existentially limp-dicked.”

“…I’m trying to think of something more eloquent than ‘uh,’ but…” Katsumi began even as her fingers moved through the motions of meal preparation that were down to muscle memory by this point. “I guess all I can say is that I hope Sonja eventually finds something beyond trying and failing to define herself around you.”

“Oh, she did,” Ástríðr explained. “She’s the prince’s concubine, now, and she’d probably be happier focusing on that than she would have been protecting me if I had needed protecting. But that obviously didn’t happen, because she’s still trying to one-up me, and it’s still not my problem. When she makes it my problem, like with what happened the day after the mithril mines, I step in to lay down the law, but I’m not about to choose to get tangled up in her basic bitch bullshit. She wants to throw a one-woman pity-party extravaganza, that’s fine, but I’m shredding my invite on principle.”

“…Seems like I’ve chosen the perfect time to walk in on,” said Tandem as he entered the kitchen. “You kids gonna be alright with making food? I could pitch in if it’ll help.”

Katsumi shook her head. “Thank you, my lord, but we’ve done all the heavy lifting by this point. All that’s left is putting them together, which shouldn’t take much more than half an hour.”

“That’s all well and good, but don’t go calling me ‘my lord’ or anything like that, you hear?” Tandem replied. “Fucking hate being noble. But Marique wouldn’t let it rest. He always did like taking a pound of flesh right outta my hide for his own amusement. In that, Mercédès really does follow suit. Then again, all three of them resemble him, just in different ways.”

“I’m sorry, all three?”

“Marique and Rienna had three kids. Triplets, delivered at the same time,” Tandem explained with a sagacious nod. “Mercédès is one of them. The other two haven’t been seen in a long while. One of ‘em up and vanished one night, stolen right out of her bedroom on the eve of her sixth nameday. The other one went on a trip to find her missing sister, and she disappeared, too. Mercédès was the only one left to take the throne, which I guess is fortunate, because neither of the other two could have.”

“Why’s that?” Katsumi asked.

“Race,” Tandem said as though that explained everything.

“Race?” Katsumi parroted dumbly.

“What, you didn’t think House Lucerne was made up of elves, did ya?”

“I had assumed,” Katsumi confessed as she checked her progress. She was somewhere between one quarter and one third done with the lot.

“Yeah, well, that’s the thing about assuming things. Makes an ass out of you,” Tandem replied, walking over to the plate of umeboshi and popping one into his mouth straight away. “Props to ya, kid. This is some good shit.”

“Then…what race are they?” Katsumi asked.

“Ah. Sorry, kid,” Tandem mumbled as he chewed the fruit. “That question runs right up against the boundaries of ‘not my story to tell.’”

Katsumi nodded, turning her attention back to her task.

“What’re you down here for, Dad?” Ástríðr asked.

“What, I can’t come down here just to shoot the shit with the kids?” Tandem shot back.

“Yeah, pull the other one, why don’t you?” Ástríðr snorted.

“You got me there,” Tandem admitted, putting his hands up in a gesture of faux surrender. “Registration’ll be three days before the event, and while you all are already in the books, I thought I’d give you a few pieces of advice leading up to this. I mean, this is all of your first times in the tourney circuit. What kinda dad and or guardian would I be if I didn’t volunteer to show you young’uns the ropes?”

“Is there a rest stop between here and the point?” Katsumi sighed.

Tandem was quiet for a moment, shock clear in his eyes, crimson in the waning light of the noontime sun. “…You’ve been spending way too much time around Rienna.”

“More matter, less art,” Ástríðr snapped.

“Oh, oh! I’ve got one!” Kyomi called, jumping up and down with her hand raised. Then she cleared her throat, and spoke in a voice obviously meant to mimic an old man. “Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth!”

Kyomi gestured to pass the lead off to Kagura, who took up the torch readily. “I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man ‘til the lightning falls!”

Then the two vii siblings hooked their arms together, and bowed with a flourish, as though on a stage.

“You two are hilarious,” Tandem deadpanned. “To the point, then: The tournament promoters need names for each company to participate as a way of associating fighters to the audience. Have you all given any thought as to what you’ll want to use as far as that goes?”

Silence was his immediate response, the only sound being the working of cookware and the drawing of the knife through the pork belly.

Tandem sighed. “Look, you’ve got a while before the lists go up, so just give it some thought. That’s all I’m asking. Okay?”

A chorus of assents went through the kitchen.

Having never been one for imbibing alcohol, and doubly so for doing such in a crowded social space, Katsumi was unsure of precisely why she had agreed to join Kagura on a bar crawl. She was even more uncertain of why she had actually followed through on the commitment, and even now dreaded what Ástríðr’s reaction would be were she to return with the hard-earned knowledge that she could not hold her liquor. And yet, here she was, sitting in a tavern filled with ruffians and cutthroats, men considered too rowdy for mercenary work, but perfect for gangs in the city’s thriving underworld.

On the bright side, she was now growing more aware of the reality that the Rouge was far and away the largest part of Maelnaulde.

The game in which Kagura was engaged, ringed in by uproarious spectators, had a name, she was certain. The rules were simple: each player would slam down a tankard of a foul concoction they called ‘firestone rhum,’ which was rum fermented in this world’s substitute black powder—namely, a naturally blue crystal that turned red when enriched with magic called prismere, that was then shaved to create an explosive sand, seeing use in firearms and war machines, imaginably called firesand—down their throats as quickly as they could, and then each would pick up a knife. They would then place their off-hand, fingers splayed, upon the table, and stick that knife in between each of their fingers and back to the start as quickly as they could. The first to lose a finger lost the game, and the one who successfully executed the knife section the fastest got a number of points dependent on the time taken, with greater weight given to the scores later on in the game, given the increasing difficulty of the game. Kagura had boasted that she had played this very game a number of times, and given the fact that she still had all her fingers, Katsumi was left to assume that Kagura was undefeated.

Getting further and further into the game ramped up the tension to a fevered pitch, and every successful run, going the entire ladder up all five fingers and down, was met with an increasingly uproarious reception. Katsumi wondered at the point of the game until she saw money changing hands after successful runs. Gambling, then, and given the portion that went into a cauldron on a far table before a bet was noted down, there was some set aside for the winner, a prize pot that increased exponentially the further they got into the game.

As the frenzied jabbing taps of the latest round drew to a close, Katsumi took a sip of the drink she had been given and grimaced as the gathering crowd of rascals and ne’er-do-wells. Whatever creature possessed her, someone who had no acquaintance with alcohol, to choose what amounted to a spirit for the night, was probably laughing themselves under the table as she gently nursed the juniper brandy. She had taken down several rounds of it, as Kagura had bought the tavern free drinks almost immediately upon walking in, and she was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, yet inebriation was still beyond her reach. The burn was there, but she knew herself to still be fully in control of her faculties, oddly enough.

Apparently, there were others that were not so privy to her sobriety, and when one slid into the seat beside her, to which she had her back, she continued to sip, but noted the notable weight of the other’s presence.

“Haven’t seen you around here before.”

Katsumi suppressed the urge to sigh and roll her eyes. Here we go. “I would be worried if you had. This is, after all, my first time here.”

“Really? You know, it’s dangerous to go wandering the Rouge alone,” drawled the man, and indeed, man it was. The weight of his gaze on her back made her skin crawl. “People might get the wrong idea.”

“I agree, which is why I’m not alone,” Katsumi replied firmly.

“Oh? Who’s the lucky guy?” the man asked, probably believing his derision would slip her notice.

“Girl, actually,” Katsumi corrected. “I’m here with my friend Kagura, who is set to win the night at that knife game they’re playing.”

“Raptor’s Forfeit,” the man supplied. “I’m impressed. You must have faith in her.”

“Well, given that she seems to be doing fairly well, is by all accounts fairly experienced in this, and has all of her fingers remaining to boot, I daresay it’s less ‘faith’ and more ‘an accurate accounting of her abilities,’” Katsumi remarked. Kagura’s boisterous, gregarious tones rose from the general carousing, and though Katsumi could not discern the vii’s exact choice of words, it was fairly clear that she was having a great time. “Plus, she seems to enjoy this, for whatever reason.”

“What, isn’t it obvious? She’s chasing the thrill. The risk. I wonder if a lady like you knows anything about that,” the man said, and his tones slipped around her torso like a slug. “Look at her. At any moment, she might lose. She’s drinking heavily and doing something that’d be difficult to do sober. She could maim herself here, and she’s putting that on the line. It’s the greatest high she’s ever had, I’ll wager.”

“Well, that’s certainly in keeping with the other things she tends to do,” Katsumi noted. “She’s daring, and sometimes reckless, is my friend over there.”

“Well, maybe you want to get some of that, hmm?” the man slithered. “Want to court that risk, to let go, and be free for a night. Risk, chance, release—I’d be willing to teach you all about that, if you’d like.”

“I would not, thank you,” Katsumi replied primly.

She could feel the man balking behind her, but true to form, he didn’t take the hint. “Come on, now, beautiful. Bet you I can make you unravel like no other.”

“Now you see, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said, and the grin on her face as she turned to face the man who thought he was being seductive but was really just being sleazy was all teeth. “Because while Kagura is only my friend, I am, romantically, spoken for. Best of luck manipulating another more hapless woman to rut with you, though. It seems as though you’ll definitely need it.”

The man before her certainly did. His gaunt face was long and pock-marked, his eyes and cheeks sallow and dark, his pale, watery gaze lidded, and dark chestnut hair hung limply in greasy locks around his face. He was tall and lean, though, and had she any appreciation for ugly men, she could certainly call him unique with his overlong nose and lips like a deathly slash to separate chin and jaw from nostrils and philtrum. His fingers, long and bony and pale, looked as though they belonged to a first-rate cutpurse, though his drab, mangy, ragged garments, frayed and threadbare, spoke to profound poverty, or perhaps simple greed to the point where the hoarding of his ill-gotten gains overpowered the natural desire for comfort. Katsumi’s grin shifted into a smirk as she looked him up and down. “On second thought, you’ll probably need far more than luck. Good day.”

She stood and turned from him, but those fingers, like claws, latched onto her shoulder with a strangler’s grip. “Oi! We’re not done here, harlot!”

“You have until the count of four to remove your hand from my person. If by that point I have not been obeyed, you will never use that arm again,” Katsumi replied calmly.

“You need to learn to bluff better, puterelle! There’s not a guard in sight and no one who’s gonna stick their necks out for some no-name stuck-up…”

“Zero.”

As with her training with Rienna, Katsumi drove her elbow into the man’s kidney with the force of a warhammer. Air and spittle sprayed forth from his piscine lips, even as her arm grabbed his. She ducked under his limb and flowed around him as he recovered, wrenching his arm back and slamming her heel into the back of his knees. When he was on his knees, she placed her foot onto his back. “Now that you’re on your knees, I want you to beg. Beg me for mercy. Beg me for forgiveness. Or you can say goodbye to your limb, and say hello to a role in a cautionary story centuries in the future. Grovelling, or maiming. Your choice.”

In listening for the man’s response, she became aware of the dead silence that had settled over the tavern.

“You’re gonna get it now, bitch!” the man snarled.

Katsumi sighed, and followed through, wrenching his arm in such a way that it would never fully heal through mundane means. The harsh, wet snap was accompanied by the high-pitched whining whimper of pain that came from him. “Cursing at me wasn’t one of the options, I’m afraid. Sorry. Better luck next time.”

Then she stomped on his head, and the wet splitting sound was akin to crushing an underripe melon. As she stepped over his body, facing the full patronage of the tavern who now glared at her murderously, she cracked her knuckles with her fists, and rolled her neck. She knew from somewhere that showing a complete lack of fear was likely to inspire it, if played correctly. “Now then. Looks like you boys are spoiling for a fight. As it happens, so am I. The only question that remains is who to maim first. Are there, perchance, any volunteers?”

One man, burly, bald, scarred and missing an eye despite his obvious brawny youth, took a glass cask and crashed it down upon the bar, making a makeshift weapon.

She cocked an eyebrow.

“Get ‘er!”

Katsumi watched the surging tide of filth and villains barrel towards her with a smirk. Now we’re talking.

“Suge! I haven’t had that much fun in forever!” Kagura exclaimed as she stretched her arms above her head, the waxing gibbous illuminating their path as they walked back to the Drunken Whore a little over an hour later. “You’ve gotta come drinking with me more often, Katsu-chan! Do you know how rare it is for me to be part of an honest-to-gods bar fight?!”

“I’m glad you had fun,” Katsumi replied sourly. “Though I still wonder at why you dragged me out here to begin with.”

“Well, that much is easy,” Kagura replied. “Kyomi and I decided that since we knew you as yourself for so short a time before you became Ástríðr’s aijin, we’d each take the time to get to know you outside of your relationship with our friend. This was just my way of getting you out alone so that we can get acquainted, be friends, all that good nakama shit. Ya know?”

“Hmph,” Katsumi replied noncommittally. “And what’s your assessment, then?”

“Assessment? Fuck, if I wanted to get tested, I’d take the first ship to Emberlet!” Kagura exclaimed, shaking her head. “Nah, this wasn’t anything like that. We just thought we could all be friends. Now, if you’re asking what I think of you, well, that’s a different question entirely. And what I think of ya is, you’re not half-bad. Could use some work in the whole letting your hair down department, sure, but overall? You’re alright, Katsu-chan.”

“Really?” asked Katsumi, taken more than a little off-guard.

“C’mon, not all of us have as big a post up our asses as Sonja,” Kagura complained. “I like ya, Kyomi’s Kyomi, but she’s decided she’s open to likin’ ya, too… So stop actin’ so surprised that we don’t wanna kill ya. Well, that’s a lie—I do wanna kill ya, but for a completely separate reason, ya feel me?”

“…After a fashion, I suppose,” Katsumi replied at length.

“Hm,” Kagura grunted in response.

They walked in silence for a little ways longer, and Kagura broke it next. “Say, remember that thing we did the other day? Your first full day here, where we fought.”

“…To an extent.”

“Mm. Well, besides being super fuckin’ cool when you cleaned our clocks like that, I remember there was this feeling comin’ off ya in waves,” the vii explained. “Hadn’t felt anything quite like it before, really, but ever since ya went off and did somethin’ with the prince… I haven’t said anything about it, but that feeling I got wen ya went all berserk, I’ve been feelin’ it comin’ off ya day and night ever since.”

“What’s your point?” Katsumi asked, glancing at the battle-hungry usagimimi out of the corner of her eye with no small amount of suspicion.

“Well, you’ve obviously gotten a lot stronger since then,” she elaborated. “But more than that, it’s like there’s…more of ya, ya know? Like the bud of a flower doin’ the whole bloomin’ thing. Ach. I’m no good with words, I know, but am I makin’ sense? Like, at all?”

“In a way,” Katsumi replied. She took up her arm, and closed her hand in a fist as she watched the pale scar shift along the skin of her flexor. “There was this…thing inside of me when you nearly killed me that day. Its presence was pervasive, to say the least, and for a while, I genuinely thought it was going to stay with me, as a reality of my life here. And then, the day that the prince and I met, we…exchanged something. The Beast within me recoiled, and then surged, as though what was given to me was seen as a threat that caused it to grow. It was this angry, winged black serpent, with thoughts of its own after a fashion, and eyes like fire; but now I feel it as I do my own skin. Its scales are mine, and I have neither heard its voice nor felt its presence since, no more than I feel the presence of my own limbs.”

“Sō ka…” Kagura replied, her expression turning pensive.

“Sō ne,” Katsumi confirmed in turn. Then she furrowed her brow, suspicious. “What are you thinking of?”

“Oh, not so much,” Kagura waved off. “Just a theory of mine. I mean, if this thing is fading into you, then you shouldn’t only be able to pull it forth when your life is in danger, right? I mean, last time, you were almost unconscious. But now I wonder if you can’t just use it whenever you need a boost.”

Katsumi snorted. “That’s ridicul—”

Then her eyes went wide. She remembered the feeling from the day she had sparred with Ástríðr, the feeling of the scales creeping up her limbs, strong enough to turn aside the blows of a greataxe without even the slightest feeling of impact. She remembered the heat racing in her veins, the feeling of fangs against her gums, the sensation of claws digging into the turf.

She remembered power.

“So you’ve seen it, then?” Kagura remarked. “You pulled upon its well of power, but not fully. You’re hesitant. Could it be that you’re scared of it?”

“I don’t know how much control I would have were I to go all the way into it,” Katsumi explained. “It’s dangerous. Of course I’m…disinclined to go further with it.”

“Well, that won’t do,” Kagura decided matter-of-factly, punching her palm and turning to face her. “You can only pull so many punches before you forget how to follow through, and as your friend, I can’t let you get in the way of being your best self like that.”

Katsumi took a step back. “Why do I feel like whatever you’re about to do is going to be a staggeringly bad idea?”

“I dunno,” Kagura said with a shrug. “Maybe because that’s completely in character for me? And it’s more surprising that you’re surprised by it by this point?”

“You…have a point there.”

“Of course I do. I always have a point,” Kagura scoffed. “Now, why don’t we get right down to it, hmm?”

“…What is ‘it’?”

Kagura smirked, and took a slow, deliberate breath in. The air hummed with danger, almost alight with sparks, like being near a lightning rod in the last moments before it’s struck, and with further breaths, that energy in the area soared. And was that Katsumi’s imagination, or was Kagura glowing—

“Meteoric Overdrive!”

The first hit forced the air from Katsumi’s lungs as she crumpled like a rag doll around Kagura’s blow, and then the impact took over and sent her flying; that same moment, a brilliant explosion of golden light slammed into reality, searing her eyes and leaving spots, as though she had just gazed directly into the desert sun.

The next thing she felt, besides the profound weightlessness of sailing through the air on the cusp of a brutal impact, was her landing. The area of the Rouge they had been walking through was a semi-abandoned shantytown, and she could discern multiple distinct materials, from rusted scrap to green wood to pieces of assorted garbage and metal, as she crashed into the hastily-assembled lean-tos, hitting the ground in a heap.

She lifted herself up onto her elbows, coughing and wheezing to get air back into her lungs, even as Kagura stayed precisely where she was. “Come on, then! Get up! I can’t hold this form for very long yet, so we’re working on a pretty strict timer! If you don’t come to me, I’m gonna have to come to you! And that’d be…that’d be pretty bad.”

Katsumi looked up, shielding her eyes, but it barely helped; Kagura was enveloped in seething golden light, rising off of her in unrelenting refulgent pulses. Her hair and ears were a colour more vibrant an aurum than spun gold, her argent eyes were a fiery scarlet tone, and her grin promised joyful murder, or failing that, gregarious and gratuitous violence. She staggered to her feet, wishing she had brought her satchel with her, but as she gained purchase on the ground as she rose, what then did she find but the seed, so subtly furtive, yet so incredibly vital…

How could she have stood to be parted from something so utterly indispensable…?

She needed her hands free, and so she slipped it into a set of bandages wrapped securely around her upper arm—she had gotten good, but accidents still occurred when working with and fending off live steel bare-handed—flush against her bare skin, knowing that the binding would at least keep it safe while she worked. That done, she secured her footing, and slipped into the hand-to-hand stance she learned to use during her morning practise; then, she dug for that core of darkness that slumbered within her, the act of falling into it only to then seize it by the throat from within having grown much easier since she gained the mark.

I need it…

I need the power of the Beast.

Bringing forth a recollection of what it was like to fight Ástríðr, she tried to find that place again, that place fathoms beyond counting beneath the surface of the opaque black bile that shone with crimson waves in the light, when her body had begun to change.

“Time’s up!” called Kagura, and Katsumi’s sharp intake of breath was the only reaction she could give as the empowered vii was suddenly in her face, winding up to strike her. Both hands caught the incoming fist that shot forth with all the speed and force of an arquebus shot, but the impact wrenched both her shoulders and pushed her back quite a ways.

Blocking another blow like that will take my arms right out of their sockets, she thought in the infinitesimal moments before the next punch. I need to dig deeper…!

A low, bestial growl built at the hollow of her throat, satisfaction mixing with the feeling of her scales encroaching on her flesh, her teeth growing sharp and elongated as her nails lengthened into black claws or talons. Her horns engorged and grew a bit more elaborate, and the excruciating racing of fire in her veins was a welcome distraction from the nearly-wrenched shoulders. Behind her eyes was a sudden feeling of relief, as though she had been studying by candle-light and did not notice the strain on her vision until she allowed the black curtain of night to grant her repose—which was odd, because her sight was sharper now than it had been the last time she had dug this deeply into the well of pain and hate and rage that sat in her core. Her jaw dropped in an exhale, and now instead of mist, it was clear that it was truly steam that left her open mouth, while the growl tore itself free from her throat and manifested in a staccato clicking, the sound of a predator as clear as the moon above.

“Now that’s more like it, Katsu-chan… Come at me! Give it everything you’ve got!”

“Gladly,” she replied, the slight, somewhat sinister reverberating double-tone of her voice subtle enough that she dismissed it as merely auditory distortion that she heard due to her altered state.

The darkness swelled beneath her feet, dancing almost eagerly. The cold stone underneath that darkness cracked with force as she launched herself forward, meeting Kagura’s grinning face with a diving punch of her own.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Kagura tilted to the side at the last possible moment, and the hit sailed afield of Katsumi’s target, leaving her extended and exposed.

The elbow drop that followed onto her spine was strong enough to shatter bone, though her scales took the brunt of the force and held; even so, she was sent face-first into the ground, a desperate handspring allowing her to recover, but only just.

“You’re too slow, Katsu-chan~!” Kagura called after her. “Come on! You should know by now that a half-assed attack won’t reach me! I wouldn’t have been able to dodge that if you were really giving it your all!”

Katsumi spat out a mouthful of foul-tasting blood, ignoring the harsh, bubbling sizzle as it hit the stone and started steaming with an almost corrosive hiss. She drew her off-hand across her jaw, wiping the remainder off and dashing it away. “You’ve got that much right.”

With that, she planted her feet again, digging deeper—

And then nothing.

It wasn’t like she was at the bottom; far from it—she could feel the boundless abyss swirling just beneath where she was, where she had stopped and was unable to draw further. But she couldn’t go deeper. It was like a floor, transparent and tenebrous, but undeniably there, and try as she might, focusing every mote of her will on digging just that much further…

…Nothing.

Kagura’s hand landed on her shoulder, and she looked up, the darkness slipping from her grasp like so much sand strained through the sudden opening of a sieve. The golden light snapped away from her friend as though tearing itself free of her skin, her eyes, hair, and ears returning to their normal hue almost immediately, as her posture sagged to a degree that was, for Kagura, quite dramatic. “It’s alright. I didn’t really expect ya to get it on your first try. Just needed to give ya a push, ya know? Else you’d never’ve tried, and what a cryin’ shame that’d be, eh?”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure. Yuriya-sensei’s been talkin’ about getting me to use my aura if I wanna go any further, and that’s a bitch an’ a half. This ‘manipulation’ shit, it’s hell on your lungs and steals the life right outta your limbs when ya run outta energy to keep it goin’, but it’s a helluva boost in the moment,” Kagura explained. “She called it the ‘Ripple Trance,’ but I dunno what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”

“Well, if it has to do with your lungs, maybe it’s your breathing that’s wrong,” Katsumi mused as she moved into a position more able to support Kagura’s weight for what she somehow knew was about to happen.

“Mebbe,” Kagura mumbled in acknowledgement before letting loose quite the mighty and prodigious yawn. “Ach, that’ll be for the mornin’. I’m beat. Let’s just go home…”

On cue, Kagura’s posture sagged again, and thankfully Katsumi was braced well enough to adjust to the sudden sharp increase in weight with barely a flinch. “Right then, big girl. We’re gonna get you home and get you in bed so you can nurse that hangover in the morning, okay?”

“Sounds good…” Kagura murmured. She lifted her arm with some effort, and pointed feebly in the complete wrong direction. “Onward…”

Katsumi gently nudged Kagura’s hand into the correct direction with some application of her horns as prods. “Wrong way.”

“Ugh, fuck, man, whatever! Maps are for numpties anyway…”

They had been told to expect results in twelve days. They got them in ten.

Eleven days after the initial appointment, Katsumi was once more within the warm walls of the Blackwood Townhouse, this time in a windowless room covered in large, lavish, elaborately decorated mirrors, clearly well-lit despite the noted and stark lack of any visible light sources. She stood upon a steep dais, initially garbed in a long-sleeved aketon and hose. Today was the day for her new armour’s final fitting, and Fèng was squiring for her while Rhiannon leaned against the nearest mirror and eyed her critically.

In any other set of circumstances and in any other company, Katsumi would have at least thought to ask why the blacksmith was only garbed in an unsecured dressing gown, sheer silk more draped around her bare shoulders than truly worn and hanging open in the front, thus giving a full view of Rhiannon’s nudity; but there was neither sexuality nor shame in her stance, nor even really awareness that some might consider her overt nudity sexual, and so Katsumi saw fit to not bring any attention to her peculiarities with purposeless scrutiny. Fèng worked from bottom to top, starting with her feet, probably because of how the armour was designed to fit together, and as she was quietly about her task, Katsumi was as willing as Rhiannon seemed to just silently and amiably share the space.

“I’ll be honest. I’d expected you to ask about why Fèng didn’t ask Ástríðr to come with you,” Rhiannon remarked idly.

“It’s generally accepted that it’s usually ill-mannered to pose a question when you are already aware of the answer, and it seemed unwise of me to antagonise the woman tasked with forging equipment that might wind up the difference between whether I win or die,” Katsumi explained. “When last we spoke, you said that you already knew Ástríðr’s specifications, and—”

“Did I?” Rhiannon interrupted inquisitively. “Well, that’s certainly true, and it sounds like something I would point out besides…”

“…And,” Katsumi reminded, her voice gentle, but firm. “Given the obvious rapport you two share, I daresay the information you have concerning her armour is of sufficient specificity to necessitate the forgoing of a fitting in the interest of time and other projects. In the interest of both intellectual honesty and full disclosure, it was academically possible that you just weren’t finished with filling her order, but certain relevant intangibles both confound and negate that particular probability.”

“I would probably have used less bookish words if I was asked to explain it myself, but that’s about the size of the situation,” Rhiannon confirmed with an affirming bob of her head. “I sent the missive for my sister’s finished armour to be delivered when I finished it just yesterday, actually, so it should be in her possession if not now, then by the time we’re done here. Any adjustments that might need to be made to yours should be minor, so if there are in fact a few kinks to work out, I’ll go back, do ‘em, and we’ll fit again to make sure it works. Makes more sense than sending you all the way back, only to call you up minutes later, that’s for certain.”

“How eminently practical,” Katsumi replied, only half-indulgent.

Rhiannon shrugged. “It is what it is. Like it or not, mismeasurement is part of the process. It’s like what Tandem always told me: the unsung hero of any creative work is the failed first attempt. Even if I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing, I’m not completely infallible.”

“Only mostly,” Katsumi supplied with a wry twist to her lips.

“Yes! See? You get it!”

“Damn it, they’re multiplying,” Fèng grumbled—with her tongue thoroughly in her cheek, if Katsumi was correct about what she heard in the woman’s voice. “Thank you for holding still. Almost done with the legs. Next we’ll move onto the torso.”

“You know, plate armour isn’t nearly as constrictive as those who haven’t worn it or only ever joust in it would have you believe,” Rhiannon began. “Having said that, I designed this with a special emphasis on low weight and high mobility. For weight, the armour is unadorned, which is fortunate—the one thing Ástríðr and Sonja share as people is a sheer ability to perform. Could probably go professional if either of them were so inclined. They aren’t, unfortunately, no matter how many times I beg. So much for that. Where was I?”

“You were talking about the lack of adornment as it relates to weight,” Katsumi supplied.

“Oh, yes! Thank you. Lost my cabbage cart for a moment there,” Rhiannon said with a light laugh. “Anyways. It’s unexpectedly fortunate because with what Ástríðr wanted and the amount of detail required to truly bring the motif to life, if I had to do something similarly complex for you, someone I barely know, I think my brain’d fry from all the possibilities.

“For mobility, I went with a focus on articulation, hence greaves and sabatons under poleyns instead of the full lower leg case under poleyns that a lot of knightly folk like to order from lesser smiths. I put a little extra oomph in there to get them to allow you to move as though fully unclothed without sacrificing any extra protection. Techniques are proprietary, I’m afraid, but the bonus is that with my methods, the need to spend hours riveting little rings together was totally nixed. So that’s a cause for celebration—forging mail is mind-numbing. Plus, finding a way to make a sectioned cuirass without the safety net of those irritating, boring little rings was a great little challenge.”

As Rhiannon spoke, Fèng attached and secured the cuirass to Katsumi’s chest. There were no straps or latches, yet somehow, the segmented chest armour secured around her all the same. As her hands moved to fix a gorget about Katsumi’s throat, Fèng said, “The aketon is proprietary, too. Its design means that we’re securing the armour to it as much as we are to the other plates in and of themselves. There aren’t really special protections to keep it from being imitated—Rhiannon believes the level of quality the design demands to be beyond the level produced by the type of smith who would attempt to replicate it for their own gain, and galling as it is to agree with her in a business arena, I’ve since been convinced that she’s correct. Now I’m going to need you to lift your arms. The rerebraces go on first, then the vambrace, then the gauntlet. The couters and spaulders will go on next, followed immediately by the gardbrace, at which point, we’ll be—”

The fitting room’s heavy wooden double doors burst open, the unknown yet oddly familiar woman beyond showing no signs of having lifted so much as a finger to make them move in such a way. Though the memory that presumably made her so familiar was further beyond Katsumi’s grasp than most any other recollection to date, she noticed first the way the woman’s chestnut hair, penned up in a high tail secured with a headpiece that struck her as Sinitic in origin, so thoroughly resembled the streaming, freely-flowing horsehair plume of a legendary warrior’s helm.

The woman’s skin was a dark olive, though not so dark as to be another named shade, and her face was well-defined, with strong features and a commanding air that did not demand obedience, but simply—and correctly—assumed it. Her deliberately windswept bangs hung over her forehead, softening her authoritative eyebrows and alleviating some of the shallower curves and harsher angles of her countenance, while eyes of a hue with blued steel shifted from one point of the chamber to the next.

She was tall, not quite so physically imposing as Ástríðr, but still perhaps fifteen to thirty centimetres taller than Katsumi, with a martial, but not Amazonian, build; the stiff collar of her finely-crafted open black coat, its pronounced lapels adorned with swirling and twining argent vines and twin rows of auric buttons, rose to just below her earlobes, and its hem fell to just above her ankles. Well-fitting black breeches and riding boots covered her legs, and underneath the coat itself was a waistcoat, into which was tucked a voluminous indigo scarf, thin but sturdy, that was wrapped around her neck and formed a sort of makeshift cravat while sporting a diamond-shaped silver brooch that framed a stone of purest solid black.

“Sister, I beg you to reconsider!” Taliesin cried, running in after her and looking, to Katsumi’s eyes at least, uncharacteristically harried, his decorum clearly thoroughly shattered.

The woman, apparently Taliesin’s sister, crossed the threshold in a few firm strides, and stopped an appreciable distance from Katsumi, flicking the implement she carried—her hands were bare, she noticed, in direct contrast to her brother’s—to the ground, and thus revealing a cane topped with a silver effigy of a raven.

Then those eyes, possessing not only steel’s hue, but also its unrelenting strength, locked with Katsumi’s, and the unusually intense scrutiny with which she was favouring the woman at the behest of her instincts fell away in the face of what she found there.

War. She saw war, in all its boundless horror and unspeakable savagery. War, in all its alien chaos and eldritch beauty. She gazed into the dark and vicious heart of eternal, unending war, and therein witnessed bloodshed beyond human reckoning. She saw desolation, fear, and merciless slaughter. She had never experienced synesthesia, where one would process a stimulus with a different sense than was intended, but she was almost certain that this was what it was like to see music.

There was violence. Murder. Conflict in its most grisly, unbound state. Lands rendered barren, fields set aflame ahead of a siege, waters turned to poison as they choked on the bloated, decaying bodies of the dead as well as those who weren’t quite there yet, but were about to be. She watched as a conspiracy of ravens descended onto a mound formed of bodies stacked high, and was struck by how, as the carrion began to peck and tear at the corpses, they seemed to form a crown, a stone circle to mark the barrow of some great king or hero.

She felt something within her lurch, and like when she fought Sonja, a calm settled over her mind and body as she returned the gaze in kind. She did not need to dig for the darkness; the darkness rose within her, like floodwaters as it surged past its banks. She remembered Rienna’s words to her upon the start of her training, and for perhaps the first time, there was a sense of recognition in the idea, a validation, a sense of belonging.

War. Senseless, random, purposeless, indiscriminate, chaotic.

Life, but through a different lens—Life that bloomed and blossomed and burned only in the cloying shadow of unrelenting Death.

No malice.

No hatred.

No weak, infantile justifications.

Bloodshed, horror, murder, brutality, savagery—War, for War’s own sake, and no other.

Someone cleared their throat, and the sound snapped her back to herself. She was still staring into the face of the woman as she nodded away, so, seeing this, Katsumi looked around, and found that all three of the room’s other occupants were prone. Conscious, to be certain, but pressed flat to the ground as though pinned beneath a great, unconquerable weight all the same.

Katsumi turned back to the woman, as the other’s lips, full but not overly so, quirked up into a pleased, approving smirk.

“You have such pretty eyes, even now…” she began, and though her voice was powerful and her diction immaculate, there was something about it, some intangible quality, like the gently throbbing edges of the gaping hole where a precious memory once rested, and now was no more. Then she closed her eyes, and chuckled. “Indeed, they’re every bit as remarkable as ever.”

“What…the fuck…was that?” Fèng, sounding none too pleased and somewhat battered to boot.

“It seems you were worried for nothing, dear brother,” the dark-skinned and oddly dressed woman announced. “This one need not die by my hand.”

“I suppose that’s pleasant news,” Taliesin gasped at length as he became the first to recover enough to stand and have his legs support him, even if only just. “Am I to understand that congratulations are in order?”

The smirk broadened to a rakish, cunning grin with a flash of white, thankfully mostly square, teeth as the woman extended a hand to Katsumi. “As I’m certain you’ve already guessed, Myfanwy Blackwood, at your service. Charmed, I’m sure.”

Day Three after her first encounter with Myfanwy Blackwood was when Katsumi was beginning to lose hope that this was going to resolve itself.

Shortly after introducing herself, the woman grabbed Taliesin’s arm and gracefully dragged him out of the room, where, after a few minutes of recovery, the fitting continued from where they had left off, though both Rhiannon and Fèng were understandably quite a bit more reticent and terse in the immediate wake of what had just transpired. They moved through it quickly, and barring a few instances where Rhiannon’s sharp gaze caught onto something that Katsumi thought was perfect but was in fact not up to her exacting standards, leading to a couple of short minutes of her taking the piece and going to the forge to work out the issue each time, culminating in the appointment running not even twenty minutes later than expected, it proceeded without further unforeseen complications.

She did not know, looking back, whether the first fit had happened before or after the odd woman, engaged in rapid yet quiet conversation with her brother, caught sight of her as she moved to leave the townhouse. Myfanwy’s blued steel gaze met her violet stare, and she was overcome with a sudden jolt of vertigo that stole the strength from her body, sending her careening into the wall with a dull thud—both of these things occurred within the bounds of the haze that engulfed her mind in a moment, and in that moment’s passing, so too did the haze and the dizzying weakness. She did remember gazing into the woman’s face when she came free of the fit, her scrutiny unrelenting as her mouth twisted into a small, mirthless smirk. And she remembered the cryptic statement that followed.

“Time grows short. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the coming days, I’d imagine. Sooner than you think, at any rate.”

Irritation was Katsumi’s emotional response, irritation that she was exposed to yet another person who seemed to know far more about her and what was going to happen to her than she did, and the worrying trend that was beginning to arise from the apparent ubiquity of the knowledge of the nature of her existence—knowledge to which she was, distressingly, not privy. Yet when her eyes focused once more, the woman was gone, and a few errant leaves, oddly enough, warm with Autumn’s grasp, were left drifting in the place she had stood.

That was the first such fit in the following days, certainly, but it was by no means the last.

There was no way to prepare for it, and neither rhyme nor reason could be applied to the repeated recurrence of the attacks. One moment, she would be fine and hale as ever, and the next moment she would be on the ground, immobile with her limbs robbed of the strength to move of their own accord. They would pass, certainly, but the danger they posed was immediately apparent, and one such attack occurring mid-practise with Dame Rienna was all it took for that danger to become immediately apparent to everyone around her, as well.

That was the morning of Day One. Dame Rienna immediately cancelled their sessions until such time as this issue resolved itself, of course—the extremity of her methods aside, she was eminently responsible, and the results they produced effectively spoke for themselves to boot—but as Day One wore on, and then Day Two, followed by the morning of Day Three, with the only change being that the random frequency of these fits was becoming steadily higher, the variable intervals between them shortening markedly, Katsumi began to genuinely consider the situation truly untenable, and also interminable barring external intervention.

Well, no, that was a lie. While it was certainly the most significant change, it was by no means the only one. With it came an increasing sense of lethargy, and each fit became steadily more painful, heralded with a compounding sensation akin to being electrocuted. By Day Three, it had begun to resemble a fugue state, this persistent haze of fatigue that bordered on torpor, punctuated by instants when she felt a jolt as though struck directly by lightning.

Of course, this was overlaid with a profound, conflicting sense of delirium that made her essentially a prisoner in her own failing, treacherous body, denying her the ability to sleep or rest or ever really feel refreshed or restored, and so to combat this, during the early morning hours, when the sky was grey and the world awash in pale, dreary hues, she was out in the yard where she and Ástríðr had had their bout, the space Yuriya and Kagura used for training, with Deatheater in her grip as she started moving, exercising with the purpose of brute forcing her way out of this febrile state that so vexed her, hampering her efforts.

Strenuous motion seemed to provoke it, to make the fits not only worse but also more frequent, she found as she went through this process. Several of the fits that happened caused her to grit her teeth as her knees shook, but that was before her refusal to relent caused fits that ripped the keening wails of pain from her involuntarily, despite her best efforts to suppress them.

Each one sapped more vitality from her body than the last, but, harried and pale, she adjusted her grip on Deatheater and kept moving, practising, replicating the attack patterns she adopted in the course of training with Dame Rienna, who, after the initial success of her first trial, revealed that she had been restraining herself, and now could never be beaten with the same strategy twice.

Each one sapped her control, as well, and after each successive fit, a little more of her decorum and composure flaked off than the last, bringing her mood from slight irritation to a simmer in record time, rapidly approaching the boiling point.

It was after one failed swing in particular, her arm faltering and skewing the angle, thus sending her stumbling with her own momentum going in a direction distinct from the direction she had braced herself towards, that her vexation bubbled over. Without thinking and on impulse, she dug into that familiar dark place that brought her power, letting the black bile surge through her, only instead of suffusing her with vitality, celerity, alacrity, and strength…

“GAH!”

It was the worst one yet, like live wires snaking their way under her skin, like multiple bolts striking her at once because the gods decided they wanted to display their disdain for her in particular and opened the heavens to demonstrate their displeasure in no uncertain terms. She felt her skin begin to smoke, sensed the charnel scent of singed flesh enter her nostrils, and plunged Deatheater into the ground, narrowly avoiding collapse by leaning onto the sword like a crutch, as she caught her breath. Moments later, one several orders of magnitude worse surged through her and caused her back to arch near to the point of snapping like an overdrawn bow, and she could not tell if she was making a sound as the roaring of pain blocked out all other senses. Her body fell in a heap, and no amount of leaning would keep her upright.

This didn’t stop her from trying to reach out to the ground to push herself back up, despite the aftereffects coursing through her body; what did stop her was an admonition. “Oh, for the love of fuck, would you just stop already?!”

With a great, herculean effort, Katsumi tried to turn her head. “K…Kyomi?”

“No, I’m the milkman. Yes, you idiot!” Kyomi snapped as she rubbed at her temples, her eyes dull and unfocused and her hair frazzled. “For fuck’s sake, woman, can you not go five bleeding seconds without attracting or provoking a crisis of some variety?!”

“What are you…?”

“And she’s still talking!” Kyomi cried.

Katsumi remained silent after that.

Kyomi sighed. “Sorry, sorry. Just…stay where you are, and for the love of friendship, fire, and good booze everywhere, don’t. Move. I’m wigged out and fried, and in no mood to sit back and watch you make my job of coming over there and helping you any more difficult than it absolutely needs to be. That means no moving your limbs, no attempts at straining yourself, no talking. I can’t guarantee I won’t freak out at you again if I see you blinking too hard. Just stay over there so we can sort this out before you do any permanent damage to yourself. I’m just going to assume you understand because asking you to nod or blink twice runs right in the face of everything I just said.”

The soft crunch of depressed green informed Katsumi of her friend’s approach, but even if it hadn’t, she couldn’t have missed the almost intangible feeling of her as she knelt on the ground behind her back. Cracking her knuckles, Kyomi muttered what sounded like profanities under her breath. “Let’s see how bad you’ve fucked yourself over here, shall we?”

A white-hot poker impaled her in the left shoulder, thorns of fulminating fire fractalling through her from that point and radiating outwards. When it abated a moment later, she was just this side of conscious.

“Now, tell me, class, what was Katsumi’s first mistake?”

An involuntary groan emerged from Katsumi’s diaphragm.

“Very good, children,” Kyomi hissed waspishly. “She tried to get her destabilised aura back to working order with brute force. Hold please.”

Kyomi jabbed her thumb into Katsumi’s shoulder, and the snapping of bones made Katsumi concerned, but still unable to move. Then a sharp jolt ran through her a fraction of a moment later, this one far from unpleasant, followed immediately with a sense of relief akin to the popping of a stiff joint. Strength pulsed through her, and suddenly she felt…better than ever, really—renewed, though she would not go so far as to say reborn.

Kyomi stood with a groan and shook her hand out. “Ah, fuck me, that’s gonna smart. It can’t be helped. So…uh…yeah… Go ahead and try it out, now that one of your most curatorial nodes isn’t blocked off anymore, why don’t you.”

Katsumi did as she was bidden, getting to her feet cautiously and retrieving Deatheater from its post. She gave the sword a few experimental swings, conjuring a recollection of the gambit Rienna was now teaching her how to defeat through doing—the more complex tactics she used sometimes confounded her, though she had gotten much faster at figuring them out, to the point where she only had that particular one fresh in her mind because it was the very last one she had been shown before the fit—and, finding that she was much faster and sharper, in reflex, technique, power, and even clarity of thought than she had been even going into the armour fitting, she nodded in satisfaction.

“If you’re curious about what I did, you had a node in your left shoulder that was all sorts of fucked. A large degree of energy was pooled there, and a single node isn’t supposed to handle that kind of strain. So I drove an about average amount of my aura into it, kinda bursting the bubble and letting the energy flow out again,” Kyomi explained, cradling her hand in her other hand. “This normally doesn’t hurt this much, fuck.”

“…Nodes?” Katsumi asked, stopping mid-swing.

“Right, I forgot, you have less magical education than the average infant,” Kyomi muttered. “Nodes are…a system of the body, I guess, though not entirely physical. Magical energy, whether mana or od, travels through the body in certain channels, not unlike blood or neural impulses, and like those systems, those channels link up regularly. These clusters are called ‘nodes,’ and there aren’t names for individual ones because there are, like, a few million of ‘em. So I guess in that way they’re like nerves, only they serve a purpose like the vascular? Whatever. It’s literally academic.”

“Mana? Od?”

“…Okay. So. It’s generally accepted that mana, or I guess quintessence, if you wanna be a narc about it, is magical energy pulled from an external source. That can be from the world around you, or from a thing that those born to magic all have, which are Gates. Od, in contrast, is magical energy pulled from an internal source. In its native, very dead, language, I’m told ‘od’ was ‘light of the soul,’ or some shit like that,” Kyomi sighed. “From od, we get aura. Aura is what happens when we use od, because at this level, observing a thing changes its nature. Those are the two types of magical energy, but they’re better understood less as two distinct domains and never the twain shall meet, and more like one of those kinda illustrative diagrams with the two overlapping circles. You know what I’m talking about?”

“With regards to the diagram? Yes,” Katsumi replied.

“We call it a Ventus diagram here, I just didn’t know if I used that name that you’d recognise it,” Kyomi explained. “Now, next question? I mean, unless you’ve got a chalkboard, chalk, a pair of glasses for me, and several hours for me to just dump loads of info onto you that you’re not going to be able to absorb because you’re essentially being bombarded at that point.”

“What happened?” asked Katsumi.

“A while back, you had a surge of energy, some kind of awakening, and your body for some drunk-ass reason kinda took the release, and instead of venting it—like what you’re supposed to do, hence the word ‘release’—turned it inward, contained it inside yourself. Then, it shunted the excess off to a node in your left shoulder. Dunno why it did that, but I can’t exactly ask it, so…” Kyomi shrugged.

“That’s interesting and all,” Katsumi acknowledged. “But not what I meant. I meant to ask why you’re here and not in Rosenfaire. Madam Tsuyu gave you the week off to go there, after all, and you certainly seemed to jump at the chance when it was presented.”

“Ah. That,” Kyomi said, her tone sour. “Yeah, well, Ástríðr owes me big time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Look at me, being anything but surprised. She felt out of her depth in dealing with you, so she roped Kagura and me into helping her help you,” Kyomi sighed. “I mean, given what just happened, I’m glad I did, and truthfully, it’s not that big a deal. Sophia’ll be coming around in two days with the ducal delegation to get here ahead of the Bantamoor and Emberlet delegations for the wedding prep and everything. It’s just fucking annoying. I mean, I like you, Katsumi, I really, genuinely do, just as much as Kagura does despite the fact that I don’t show it nearly as often as she does. Don’t get that twisted. It’s just…”

“No, I get your frustration,” Katsumi interjected. “I might be your friend, but I’m not the person you’re in love with, and no matter how close of friends we might be, even if we were bosom companions, it’d still suck to be denied that person, even if only for a few days longer.”

Kyomi smiled, the expression weak but genuine. “Thanks for being so understanding. Between you and… I don’t actually know how I was gonna finish that… Look, Katsumi, you’re a good friend.”

Katsumi’s immediate reaction was as visceral as it was negative, but she managed to noose it enough that all she said was, “I’m not certain about that, but I’m trying.”

“Mm,” Kyomi hummed noncommittally. “I guess we’ll see, now won’t we?”

“I suppose. I’d best make sure Dame Rienna’s informed of me being back in action. We’re coming up on the tournament fast, and I don’t feel nearly as confident in my skill level as I’d like to be at the moment,” Katsumi mused. “I feel bad enough about losing almost three days of training. I’d rather not miss any more.”

“Well, if you’d like,” Kyomi began. “I know my qualifications are hardly ideal, but I could try and teach you some basic black magic over the next week—if you’re open to it, of course. You’ve got a substantial pool of magic power, and it’d be a shame to let it go to waste. Not to mention, you can never have too many advantages…”

“I’d like that,” Katsumi said with a smile.

Kyomi smiled broadly back. “Wonderful! I’ll get organised, and we’ll start after the midday meal. How’s that?”

“It’s an appointment,” Katsumi nodded.

Kyomi chuckled a bit as she turned away and began to walk back into the bordello proper. “Could be better, but we’ll work on it. See you then!”

True to expectations, on Day Five after the incident, Day Two after Kyomi offered to teach her some basic magic, the ducal delegation arrived in Maelnaulde. It was mid-afternoon before Sophia Holstein was able to politely excuse herself from the goings-on, handing off her duties to the only person in whom Mercédès seemed to invest enough trust to allow to serve as her Minister of the Interior—namely, herself—so that the chief envoy, Sophia, could make her way into the Rouge to visit Kyomi.

By the point the time came, Kyomi was practically ricocheting off of the walls, to the point where even Kagura was pitching in on the attempt to keep her nervous energy in check. When the door opened, they were in a rather compromising position, Kagura sitting on her sister’s legs with Ástríðr exerting her strength on the vii’s torso, while Katsumi was hard at work putting the finishing touches on the bindings of her wrists. She didn’t quite remember when she picked up torinawajutsu, but she was never particularly one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Of course, the moment the final cinch snapped closed and Kagura and Ástríðr got up off of her, leaving Katsumi confident in her friend’s inability to slip free, an easy, smooth, distinctly accented contralto let out a surprised laugh. “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

“Sophia!” Kyomi cried, and suddenly she was slamming into the woman’s chest like a bullet, leaving behind a coil of rope in the space she had just occupied, much to Katsumi’s confused consternation and the bemused resignation of the other two. “Sophia! Hi!”

“Hey, Kyomi,” the woman replied, wrapping her arms around the smaller vii.

Sophia Holstein was tall and fairly imposing, creeping up on but not quite achieving the Amazonian frame of Ástríðr. Her knee-high brown leather boots and form-fitting black leather trousers, together with her reinforced gunmetal black corset tank top, were not just stylish, but also sturdy, and Katsumi figured they could take a few hits straight-on in a pinch. Over her shoulders she wore a royal blue half-jacket, also armoured, the sleeves of which went halfway down her forearm, and her hands were sheathed in black leather half-palm gloves. Above the neck, itself encased within a choker that looked able to take a crossbow bolt if need be, was a face that, while certainly attractive enough, looked artificial. It was slight and barely there, but once it struck Katsumi, she couldn’t unsee it.

Her features were, while angular, still distinctly feminine, if more than a bit austere and stereotypically aristocratic, with a stronger brow than Katsumi herself, though not incredibly so, and blue-black hair that almost looked more like a dark purple, cut short in a modified bob and swept largely to one side. The oddest part, however, was her eyes, which were narrow and bore the colour of molten gold, sweeping around the room and seeming to miss nothing, no matter what obstacles existed between her and the object of her scrutiny.

When they locked onto her, she felt a distant part of her raise its hackles at the impassive stare, but Sophia smiled in greeting, and though it didn’t nearly reach her eyes, Katsumi was inclined to believe that this was the best Sophia could do with regards to emoting, so she relaxed, active vigilance settling to semi-passive wariness. “Well well, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. You must be Rienna’s newest protégé. She’s told me quite a bit about you, says you’re quite remarkable as a fighter.”

“Really?” Katsumi asked, standing from her crouched position and crossing her arms over her chest skeptically. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“Well, you know Rienna. She doesn’t really do the whole ‘uncomplicated praise’ thing,” Sophia admitted. “But I’ve known Rienna for almost thirty years by now, and while I can’t claim to read her nearly as well as Lady Tsuyu here can, I’ve been around her long enough to get the hang of reading between the lines when she speaks. She thinks the world of you, Katsumi of the Fallen Rain. Never doubt that.”

“It’s immaterial. I can’t afford to let myself lapse regardless.”

“If Rienna saw fit to teach you personally, I know for a fact that you already knew that and didn’t need to say it aloud,” Sophia returned, her admonition truthful, but still good-natured, as she released Kyomi from her embrace and Kyomi skirted to the side, still as close as she could feasibly be without touching the envoy, but no longer restricting her motion.

“It’s good to see you, Sophia,” Madam Tsuyu called as she entered the commons from the kitchen and the cellar. “You’re looking well.”

“And you are as vital and vibrant as ever, Lady Tsuyu,” Sophia said, bowing low at the waist with an arm swept across her chest.

The older woman caught her laughter behind her folding fan, a proper akomeogi. “Come now, dear girl. I get enough formality from our little dragon refusing to drop the ‘madam.’ You ought to know by now that you may call me simply by my name.”

“Certainly, but you know what they say about old habits,” Sophia chuckled as she rose.

“Old habits are but leaves on the vine, like brave little soldier boys who think they’ll come marching home,” Tsuyu shot back. “And we both know quite enough about them, now don’t we? Lady Hoarfrost?”

“Point taken,” Sophia replied, somewhat stiff with visible discomfort, but duly chastised.

“Excellent,” Madam Tsuyu replied, clapping her hands together and snapping the fan shut in the process. “Now, have any of you children given thought as to what you wish to call yourselves? Time grows short, after all. You have two days left before you absolutely must register in the lists, and while my husband wished to give you all a gentle prodding, I feel a more insistent hand is required here, especially with the need so close at hand.”

“Well, we were somewhat hoping that Sonja would return first, so that we could all have a hand in choosing our name, Madam Tsuyu,” Katsumi said.

“Correction, you were hoping Sonja’d return, babe,” Ástríðr interjected. “Soph, back me up here.”

“Why? You’re correct,” Sophia replied, bemused. “You’d sooner see the sun rise in the west and set in the east than Sonja putting down a grudge. She’ll return when she’s good and ready and not a moment before, so you really can’t wait on her.”

“Fine,” Katsumi replied with a sigh. “Any suggestions?”

“Magic Shinobi Squad Galactor!” Kagura proclaimed.

“Midnight Falcons?” Ástríðr posited.

“Fūrinkazan,” Kyomi piped up. “Or Rōtashi Aku no Hana. Otherwise, I got nothing.”

“We’re not using Fūrinkazan. Rōtashi Aku no Hana, though…” Katsumi considered. “It’s good, but I feel like the last thing we need is to emphasise the fact that three of the five of us aren’t from the Free Cities. So, something like that, something almost as allegorical, but…not quite as overtly Far Eastern, you know?”

The four of them signalled their agreement with little grunts, before lapsing deep into thought, contemplating what they were going to use.

“Hasn’t this game gone on long enough, Tsuyu?” Sophia asked, looking pointedly at the oldest woman in the room.

Madam Tsuyu pouted. “You’re no fun. But fine. Tandem approached Yuriya and I did the same for Sebastian, and the three of us approached Rienna with it. Tandem thought that if you needed a name, you could just use our old one from when we were an adventuring company, and the others and I agreed. It’s been largely forgotten in the current talk of adventurers and heroes, especially over the past few decades—today, the name to know is that of Bantamoor’s own Warriors of Light, after all—but there was a time, specifically during the course of the Great War and its immediate aftermath, that the name of our company, and the image of the banner we fought under, was known not just in the Free Cities, but the world over.”

With that, she reached into her wide sleeves and brought forth a roll of what looked to be high-quality canvas as she walked over to a nearby table. She slammed it down, unfurling it, and upon the flag was a great leafless black tree with an extensive root system on a field of grey, with a grinning face near the base on the trunk. The face showed only the shape of eyes and the broad smile, which were filled with vibrant, bloody red.

“We were called the Laughing Tree, and that name, should you wish to use it, shall be a gift from all of us who were once adventurers, to you, our successors, as an inheritance, for we believe you all willing and able to use it well.”

Katsumi barely heard Madam Tsuyu’s explanation, too drawn to the image of the tree, the figure of it, attempting to discern where she had seen it before. It took her an instant to recognise it from the gil, for a simplified version of this very tree was stamped opposite the raptor on the golden coin, but it was more than that. Through her head passed the same few snippets of prose, World Tree and Irminsûl coupled with names—Yggdrasill, and another that was so distressingly at the edge of her memory that she was very nearly wroth at her inability to retrieve its meaning.

Phantasia.

“It’s perfect.”

It took everyone else looking at her for her to realise those words had come from her own mouth. She cleared her throat and schooled her expression to save face. Stepping forth into what felt like a reflex, an instinct-driven impulse, she asked, “Is anyone opposed?”

“I like it,” Kagura vouched.

“Oshare da yo ne,” Kyomi agreed.

“Thanks, Mom,” was Ástríðr’s contribution. “It’s great.”

“I hear no dissent,” Katsumi remarked. “Shōganai na. Then from this moment henceforth, we shall be known as—

“—The Order of the Laughing Tree.”