The dawn of the day of the tourney arrived, and with it, two unannounced visitors. Katsumi was the first dressed and down the stairs, Ástríðr moving through her morning work-out routine in her own bedroom—some silly superstition or other concerning intercourse the night before a large competition—and so she was the first to see both Rhiannon Blackwood and Fèng standing in the middle of the tavern area, a pair of large crates at their feet. Rhiannon was dressed in her usual revealing outfit, striking a pose reminiscent of an ancient hero’s statue with pride, while Fèng had her arms folded across her chest as she took in the room impassively; yet, Rhiannon was the one who noticed her first.

“You!” proclaimed the blacksmith, a broad and flamboyant grin forming on her face.

“Me,” Katsumi replied with a measured nod.

“We come bearing gifts!” Rhiannon gestured to the crates none too subtly. “Plate armour isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can put on alone, don’t you know. Typically we do the whole ‘let the commissioner find their own damn squire’ song and dance, but given the fascinating prospect of continuing to work with someone who has Aunt Myfanwy’s personal attention, I thought it would be a grand idea for me to serve in that capacity, take some notes, analyse, theorycraft, all that nifty stuff. And if I’m coming to see you, to help you with your armour, I thought I might as well bring Fèng along to take care of Ástríðr’s gear.”

“Ah, sō desu ka. I must confess, I had wondered why you mentioned having sent the missive for delivery and then failed to deliver it,” Katsumi nodded. “And I suppose the crate at Fèng’s feet contains the armour commissioned for Ástríðr?”

“Just so!” Rhiannon announced with pride, as she bent over at the waist to reach the lid of the crate, which was visibly nailed shut. Then, with no visible effort, she wrenched the lid off of the container, nails and all, following through with a cheerful flourish. “Now, let’s get to it, shall we?”

“I have no objections,” Katsumi assented, stepping forth at an angle to both put her arms straight out to the sides and also allow Fèng ample space in which to work when Ástríðr came down to join them. “Will I need to don the aketon this time? Perhaps a pair of leggings, for that matter?”

“Oh, no,” Rhiannon replied with a dismissive hand-wave as she began to unload the plates of protective metal, which Katsumi now noticed had been recoloured from the glittering silver hue of mithril it had borne before to jet black. “I actually did some special tailoring on the armour set itself after you left the other day. Hit with a surge of inspiration, you know. The result is that it can be worn over basically any and all items of clothing that are likely to be in your wardrobe. Thank you, by the way, for making that so simple. You wouldn’t believe the number of frilled highborn fops who seem to think they can insist on layered doublets. Factoring in the extra constriction from the changing construction of the garment started making my head hurt after a while, and then I got bored and stopped. Those blouses of yours are significantly easier for me to work with, believe it or not.”

“I thought you liked things to be challenging,” Katsumi remarked, her brow furrowing.

“She doesn’t like it when she finds a solution and then fashion changes or this noble does this thing at court,” Fèng interjected.

“I won fair and square!” Rhiannon protested, raising a finger to emphasise her point. “Artificial difficulty is what that was. And no amount of Hoddy’s trifling saccharine deceptions will ever get me to go back!”

“Whatever you say, love,” Fèng sighed.

“Indeed! Now then, from the bottom…”

Rhiannon’s deft hands and sharp eyes worked wonders with regards to speed, and she had Katsumi sufficiently plated to the waist when Ástríðr walked down the stairs, using a cloth towel to dry her hair and her ears, and beheld the situation in progress. She blinked in surprise, once, then twice. “Wow, you guys are punctual.”

Fèng scoffed, jerking her thumb towards Rhiannon, who was now partway through the process of securing the cuirass of Katsumi’s armour, for illustration. “This one was chomping at the bit to get here. We’d have been banging down the door just after closing if she had her way.”

“Genius cannot be deferred any more than it can be rushed, Fèng,” was the blacksmith’s retort. “Sleep is for the weak and the creatively bankrupt, of which I am, happily, neither!”

“You see?” Fèng asked rhetorically. “Now come over here. Got your order right here in this crate, so we’re going to get you outfitted, too.”

Shrugging, Ástríðr strode up to the smaller woman, and mirrored Katsumi’s pose. “Might as well, I suppose.”

“Thank you,” the shorter woman sighed, reaching down and prying the lid off of the crate full of Ástríðr’s new armour, though she exhibited much more effort in doing so than Rhiannon had moments prior. She then began to gather up the first few pieces of armour, placing them on the ground next to her as she began to work at a much more sedate pace than the blacksmith. It was still a rapid speed, and far faster than would be expected from any squire, however, and over a relatively short period, long after Rhiannon had finished securing the last of the armour to Katsumi’s form and was now simply fussing while nattering on endlessly, presumably to herself, under her breath, Katsumi bore witness to the image that was born of the mysterious commission that Ástríðr would enter the tourney wearing.

It was themed, which was immediately evident—Katsumi doubted the stylised design of Ástríðr’s sabatons had much in the way of utility beyond the cosmetic, what with it being in the shape of a clawed rear paw of a great monster—and also not solid black, but rather a mix of dark purple, black, and red, with the addition of every piece further lending credence to the image. The cuirass connected to an armoured curtain Katsumi could only call some form of open kilt, like the tails of a coat and tattered deliberately at the hem, with decorative ridges of what was just as likely to be spikes as feathers, given they were made of metal, on her shoulders.

“It’s meant to evoke the image of a behemoth,” Ástríðr supplied glibly as she caught Katsumi staring, much to the latter’s chagrin.

“That would have been much clearer had you chosen to spring for the helm, too,” said Rhiannon, throwing the observation over her shoulder before turning back to her examination of the work that Katsumi now wore.

“No offence, Rhi, but the helm was, A, stupid-looking, and B, a hazard,” Ástríðr replied, rolling her eyes. “Personally, I much prefer something a bit lighter and less likely to fuck with my equilibrium if I take a hit to the head.”

“I still don’t for the life of me understand how you manage to just shrug off unarmoured head hits like that,” Fèng interjected as she retrieved one last piece from the crate.

Ástríðr shrugged, insouciant as ever. “Anger no-sells hits better than any helmet. Honestly, I only wear the visor because getting blood in my eyes fucking sucks.”

“And I’m sure the fact that it makes you look, and I quote, ‘fucking badass’, has nothing to do with it at all,” Rhiannon jibed.

“That is what we in the biz call a ‘side benefit,’” Ástríðr replied without missing a beat.

“Of course. However could I make such an elementary mistake?” came Rhiannon’s sarcastic remark as Fèng placed the last piece of armour into Ástríðr’s armoured hands.

As Rhiannon wrapped and secured a fine black cloak around Katsumi’s shoulders, those hands raised to her face, sliding the final part of her armour over her eyes until it secured somewhere with a small but noticeable click. When her hands fell away to reveal her visage, the piece revealed itself to be a metal war-visor, shaped like a chevron and covering the majority of her face to her chin in a sharp, plunging angle. The view was a single horizontal slit that followed the shape of the visor and were accompanied by smaller vertical vents for breathing, and the construction of the mask left only darkness where her eyes might once have been visible—though something told Katsumi that the darkness would add an air of further terror (as though Ástríðr needed such a thing) when her lover’s berserker rage caught her in its grips and her eyes shifted to glow a furious and violent red that she doubted the visor would do anything to dim. In adornments, it matched the design of the armour, more or less, and was the same hue besides, but it granted an air of menace to her even as she stood at rest, a pitiless monster bent on bloodshed—and Katsumi was no longer so ashamed of her body that she would fail to acknowledge, though admittedly to her chagrin, that the image was one she found incredibly arousing.

And of course, Ástríðr seemed to immediately pick up on that, judging by the smirking stare with which she then fixed Katsumi. “See something you want?”

“When I look at you? Always,” Katsumi replied, though even the nature of the reply as a quip did not arrest the lurching swell of mortification that surged in her chest. “Your armour looks very…fitting.”

“I could say the same about you, to be perfectly honest,” remarked Ástríðr, biting her lip ever so slightly in an obvious display of her attraction—Katsumi had grown sufficiently accustomed to those that she no longer felt cause to question whether she was misinterpreting them—and wetting her lips with a quick swipe of her tongue. “I probably should have mentioned this when you got your new clothes, but I must say, black is definitely your colour.”

“Are we gonna do this tournament thing, or are you two gonna just stand there flirting all day?” came Kagura’s voice as she descended the steps herself, rubbing at her clouded silver eyes drowsily. She had managed to don the hakama, black tabi, waraji, lopsided haori and mesh cuirass Yuriya had commissioned for her use as battle-wear, together with the vambraces and long gloves to protect her arms, all richly decorated though not crossing into gaudiness, despite her obvious grogginess, and Katsumi had to admit that the ostentation matched the boisterous belligerence of Kagura’s personality. “Ordinarily I really wouldn’t mind, given how little of a leg I have to stand on regarding the subject, but I was promised that we would be fighting, and I’m going to be very salty if for whatever reason that doesn’t happen.”

“There will be plenty of fighting today, Kagura. Don’t be so impatient.” Yuriya’s voice called from the rafters of the tavern area, drawing Katsumi’s attention directly to her even as she leapt down from the beams to the ground with the same predatory grace that informed her every motion. “I will not tolerate a slovenly performance today, especially in light of what I have at last decided will now happen. Am I clear?”

“Of course, Yuriya-sensei,” Kagura replied, her tone laced with both surprise and that girlish infatuation that always filled her words whenever the conversation involved or concerned the Sword Saint. “I would never fail you.”

“Never intentionally fail me, I’ll grant you,” Yuriya sighed derisively, gesturing slightly with a bundle wrapped in canvas and lengths of hempen twine she held in one hand. “It’s a paltry assurance, perhaps, but I guess it’s the best I’m going to get. Catch.”

With a casual underarm, the bundle flew free of Yuriya’s hand and sailed into Kagura’s grasp, which lashed out to catch it, quick as an adder. Doing away with the twine just as swiftly, the canvas fell away to reveal a nihontō, the length and curvature of which placed it as either a very long uchigatana or a relatively short ōdachi, just barely clearing what looked to be three shaku in the blade length. The saya was pale with a sort of sickly greenish tint that made it look as though it was carved from old bone, and then lacquered as such, and the octagonal tsuba looked more like a spindly wagon-wheel given the spokes that determined its inner construction—all of which appeared, much like the saya, ossified. The tsuka seemed malformed almost, mangled and irregular in the way, again, of bone, though the irregularity seemed to create an ergonomic grip. In pulling part of the sword free to check the blade, Kagura revealed the entire construction to be seemingly made of bone, and while the cutting edge seemed sharp and smooth as a razor, the mune was serrated, like the tooth of an antediluvian shark.

But more noteworthy than the construction of the weapon was the fact that Kagura’s eyes had widened to the size of saucers, stars dancing in their argent depths. “Is this…?!”

“I said I would return her to you when I believed you to be able to handle her,” Yuriya confirmed. “And so I have. Take care that you do not make me reconsider the stock I place in your abilities, developing still though they may be.”

Kagura sighed reverently. “And so you return to me at long last…Chigurui…”

Kyomi very nearly stumbled down the stairs, dressed as a miko of all things, but upon the landing, when she took one look at the weapon in Kagura’s hands, she threw hers up and stalked back up to the second level. She came back down a few moments later, looking for all the world to be the most put-upon creature in existence, tossed Deatheater to Katsumi, who caught him adroitly, then stalked up to Ástríðr, and shoved Eisentänzer into her hands; then she strode over to Kagura, hackles raised and bristled for conflict. “You’ve suddenly become at least three times as annoying as you used to be. I can just tell.”

“I’m sure our birth mother said the same thing about you when you came out of the womb all a-gekker,” replied Kagura. “And besides, you’re just jealous because you don’t have a Devil Sword.”

“Am not!”

“Are too.”

“Hmph! We’ll see just how smug and smarmy you are when you overdo it with that thing again, and I’m left having to heal you!” Kyomi scoffed.

“I didn’t know you knew white magic,” Katsumi remarked.

“Well, of course I know white magic!”

“She doesn’t,” Kagura interjected. “She just has a summon that can and does do the healing in her stead. Fairy, I think it’s called? Very original, as you can plainly tell.”

“Shut up!” objected Kyomi, stomping her foot.

“You can just feel the love in the air, can’t you?” Kagura jibed around Kyomi’s head.

“Oh, you can just fuck right off and die!”

“Well, you kids are certainly spirited this morning,” Tandem jested, having entered unnoticed during the small yet routine altercation between the twins. The albino man, tall and lean as ever, seemed to have purposefully dressed himself in far finer garb than he was normally inclined, swathed in a mustard yellow tunic and dark green trousers that were almost black. The boots he wore were crafted from a reptilian leather that filled her with an odd, inexplicable sense of vindication to look upon, rising to just shy of the cusp of his calf, with the trousers tucked into the boots neatly. A diadem of silver rested upon his brow, artfully figured into a pair of leathery wings in the process of unfurling, sweeping like a laurel wreath across his forehead and pushing his long white hair into place, hair that now shimmered and shined as though oiled and anointed, far more elaborate than what he normally did during the mundanity of day-to-day living. Then, as a finishing touch, from his shoulders draped a cape of rich midnight blue, while from the harness on his back dangled a truly massive sword, as long as she was tall from the hilt alone, the black blade, crafted from a metal almost distressingly reminiscent of flesh, straight and double-edged, etched with runes Katsumi knew she would never have even the slightest chance of comprehending. The hilt was a cruel and elegant thing, the entire quillon construction seeming to evoke grasping, coveting claws, and in the centre of the hilt was a single large spherical ruby, which looked for all the world to be at the same time a living eye, searching, appraising, and scrutinising with a gaze that felt oddly familiar to her. All this came together to ennoble him with an air of ancient majesty, as if he was a legendary hero of eld, his tale long since swallowed whole by the insatiable swirling abyss of time.

That blade…

Hello to you, too, Deatheater, Katsumi replied to her sword glibly.

Yes, yes, hello, Master, the sword hissed impatiently. I have to warn you about the sword that man has on his back!

Tandem?

I can’t keep track, nor would I be so inclined to care even had I the ability, Deatheater rebuffed in clipped, short tones. The sword he’s wearing, the black sword… It is one I recognise, and one that any blade of my lineage must!

Your lineage…?

It’s unimportant right now! Deatheater urged, as though caught in the grip of some frenzy of anxiety and nerves. What is of paramount importance is that the name of that sword is—

My, my… To think the two of you were having these sorts of conversations all along…

Both sword and master froze, neither of them having heard the new arrival before. But Katsumi could make out the general shape of it, not in her mind but rather in the area, and it felt almost like—

Careful now, both of you. Revealing too much to each other might cause everyone else to feel like you’re cheating, and, well, some of them might be disposed to simply upending the table, so to speak—and that is an outcome I think none of us desire. Immediately, Katsumi’s gaze locked on Tsuyu, descending the stairs, and garbed in a manner that was utterly atypical of her, to the best of Katsumi’s knowledge, dressed in black boots, dark green trousers, a white ruffled blouse with a lace jabot woven of threads of silk and silver, pinned with a ruby brooch, a violet waistcoat, and a deep royal purple overcoat with golden buttons, all crafted from seasilk in a fashion she had come to recognise as native to the Maelstrom—and yet, perhaps the oddest thing about her was how her eyes, fixed with grave severity upon her and her alone, glowed the same ruby red as Katsumi remembered seeing in the gem laid into the hilt of Tandem’s sword, which, now drawing her attention, seemed to glow as well as it hadn’t before. It is a delicate thing we do, Eater of Death who hides behind a false name, a very precise dance we must weave. Take care that you remember the steps. And do not press him, little dragon. It could well be the doom of us all.

“Well then! It seems we are all of us here assembled!” Tsuyu called out, blinking and subsiding her eyes to their normal jade hue, with which the jewel laid into the black blade dimmed in concert. “We had best be on our way to the arena with the utmost haste. Preliminary registration was necessary to qualify for the tourney, but proper registration is still sure to be an ordeal and take up a great deal of time.”

“We have a problem, though,” Kyomi spoke up, coming to the fore as Tsuyu ceded the space. “Namely, that we, the Order of the Laughing Tree, were registered as having five members—yet, as I cast my notice around and take count, I cannot help but express concern that we have here only four. We need Sonja to even be able to enter the lists proper. Where is she?”

It was at that moment that there was a knock on the front door of the Drunken Whore; and as she had at some point become closest to it, she acknowledged what she had to do and volunteered with a fond sigh, excusing herself from the continuing discussion of their newest logistical dilemma. “Worry not. I’ll get it.”

She crossed the tavern floor in a few dozen quick strides, and when she reached the door, another cycle of knocks had just then begun. Wasting no further time, she opened it to the streets of early morning Maelnaulde, an acknowledgement dying on her lips as she came face to face with someone she had never seen before, but, judging from the expression of something like realisation across their face, seemed to know her. “O frabjous day, callooh callay… It’s you. I… It’s you. It’s really you!”

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my friend…” Katsumi said at length.

“Oh, of course! Silly me!” the person in the doorframe, who looked for all the world to be a woman with long crimson hair and dressed in an ensemble of garments that would not have looked out of place on a travelling jongleur, save for that its hues were only and uniformly crimson and gold, but felt not a woman at all in truth, replied, bonking the tip of one finger against their temple that then ricocheted off. Their voice was of no import, but the iambic diction, lilting cadence, and dramatic flourishes on nonverbal gestures all compounded into a very strong sense of necessary yet forgotten acquaintance, like meeting and conversing with someone whose name should be known but has nonetheless been lost. Nevertheless, she could not shake the feeling that she should absolutely know who this was, but the attempt to retrieve the relevant information failed utterly in its nascence. “My name’s Krile Mayer Baldesion, of the Rosenfaire Stormcrows. Her Grace stated that you might well be short one member to participate in the tourney come today, and, well, I volunteered, and all. So, for the moment, I’m to be your interim fifth slot member! Oh, this is so exciting, you have no idea…!”

Krile Mayer Baldesion, to Katsumi’s mild surprise, did not seem to be at all exaggerating their statement; it was as though she had acquired a ball of lightning content with bobbing in the air alongside her, cycling slowly in her orbit. There was neither flushing nor shame in their countenance, nor any outward sign of attraction or interest to which she could even remotely append a motive, up to and including conspiracy of betrayal. When she met the Red Branch a few days prior, she had noticed one of them staring at her in a certain way, and upon their leaving for the lodgings Mercédès had secured for them elsewhere in the city, there had been two who gazed upon her in such a fashion—it was in this same inscrutable vein that the mysterious Krile Mayer Baldesion’s eyes remained fixed upon her form, though admittedly to a far greater order of magnitude with regards to extremity. If Katsumi had to dissociate and choose a word to describe the manner in which they attended her, it would be ‘enraptured.’ Distantly, she was well aware that this ought to make her feel incredibly uncomfortable, but she could not muster the sensation, at least to any greater degree than that which rose within her upon being scrutinised with any emotion more positive than absolute indifference.

One thing that Katsumi did have to credit Krile with, however, was the fact that they seemed to know that useless prattling would only serve to cause Katsumi at best irritation, at worst outright suspicion. The silence was companionable, and to the Stormcrow Katsumi could only manage a sense of almost fond indulgence, though she was admittedly wholly ignorant of precisely wherefore or from whence such a reaction sprang. And so it was in silent procession that the Order of the Laughing Tree cut through the Rouge to eventually come upon the venue for the tourney—a seldom-used structure some ways into the district, previously occupied by squatters and vagrants, by the name of Saint Haurchefant’s Amphitheatrum Magnum.

Crafted in antiquity and brought to ruin during the War of False Winter—a seemingly massive and sweeping conflict only ever attributed indirectly and never explicitly—it was once a beacon of civilisation for the nation that some several centuries later came to be known as the Principality of Maelnaulde, where peoples from the farthest-flung corners of Deist and even Mysidia would come to marvel and revel. The millennia and countless wars and conflicts, the latest and bloodiest of which being the Great War of over a century ago, had given rise to the destruction of large swaths of the city, razed into what was now known as the Rouge by the fires of war as the powerful relocated and clustered together, leaving untold hundreds of thousands to starve and die, forced to debase themselves relentlessly and then summarily labelled inferior for the recognition of necessity. But as the Rouge bloomed as a great urban corpse flower, so did the Amphitheatrum Magnum, together with all knowledge of the supposed saint to which it was dedicated, fall into disrepair and then subsequent obscurity and ruin, a bloated corpse left to rot, a great sea-beast beached and forced to drown on air.

The tourney, Katsumi knew from inference, served another purpose entirely, that being it had provided Mercédès with the exact opening she needed to initiate her long-term plan of urban renewal, a full restoration of the Rouge and the infrastructures it had once boasted, and so in preparation for it, the nobility had been convinced to commit vast quantities of resources to the restoration effort as it concerned the monument—they had even competed against one another in a wonderfully-orchestrated contest in one-upmanship, a brilliant play on Mercédès’s part—and thus managing to restore a swath of the Rouge that lay between the ‘civilised’ Bodice and Corset districts and the arena itself, which had also been restored almost wholesale to its former glory.

Not for the first time in recent days, Katsumi was struck with the sentimental realisation that it was in these layered plays of Mercédès’s machinations that she felt most strongly attuned to the prince, who from the first had seemed to go out of her way to court Katsumi’s favour. She understood not one whit of the sort of politics and double-dealing that seemed to be the prince’s stock and trade, which she plied as easily and as readily as she breathed, but that aside, the underlying logic, the rationale, was, while not identical, incredibly and uncommonly similar to Katsumi’s own understanding of what it was to engage in combat. It was that acknowledgement that brought Katsumi to her current understanding of her circumstances: that it mattered not to precisely what end Mercédès meant to extract her aid or service, for neither betrayal nor exploitation laid within her plans. It would be duplicity for duplicity’s sake, deception for the sole purpose of self-aggrandisement bordering on autofellatio, and Katsumi intimately understood that Mercédès knew as well as she herself did the extent to which such deeds and needless intellectual acrobatics only served to complicate further endeavours. There was a directness to Mercédès that Katsumi could relate to very strongly, a sense of economy and abhorrence for waste—wasted effort, wasted resources, wasted advantages—that the drahn understood herself well enough to know that she shared.

Betrayal and misdirection was part of the game, but alienating one’s allies was not the game—it was, in fact, nothing short of absolute idiocy.

“I do believe we have arrived at last,” Krile remarked idly, drawing Katsumi free of her contemplation as she stopped to behold the sweeping, spiralling monument to opulence and vainglory that was to be their arena.

“So we have…” Katsumi muttered to herself, staring at the towering edifice as the other members of the Laughing Tree, Tandem, Tsuyu, Yuriya the Sword Saint, and Fèng and Rhiannon Blackwood of all people, came up alongside her.

“Well, children, welcome to the Amphitheatrum Magnum of Saint Haurchefant. There’ve been some interesting choices made with the restoration, but the overall fidelity is impressive, I must say,” Tsuyu began, the wind billowing her seasilk coat as she stood before them in a manner that Katsumi struggled to call anything but imperious. Tandem followed, standing off her shoulder, and Katsumi could tell there was not even a flicker of a thought passing through his mind to cut in—Tsuyu, as always, held centre stage unchallenged. “Once we come through these doors, you all will proceed to the herald’s booth and go through the process of registering. They’ll ask for an assortment of information for bureaucratic purposes, and once you supply what they ask, you’ll be entered into the brackets. The tourney is a series of sudden death duels, one on one, and the festivities will take place over the course of three days, as that is the nature of the beast, and scoring will happen along team lines, so no two members of the same team will fight each other. Points are distributed according to victories of team members, and weighted according to rounds. Each victory in the opener counts as one point, the quarter-finals count as two, the semi-finals four, and the finals count for five. At the end, the score is aggregated and the winning team receives the prize, which will be revealed before the first match of the opener, to share amongst themselves. That said, I expect you all to give this nothing less than your best. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly,” Katsumi assented with a nod, and then was somewhat perplexed when she was the only one to reply.

“Very good,” Tsuyu replied indulgently. “Now, have you all decided on who will be leading you, both today and moving forward?”

Katsumi put her confusion aside, and prepared to nominate Ástríðr for the position—it only made sense, given that she had been leading them since before the drahn had even been known by any of them to exist, and had further led them in their first and only successful quest as a party of five, ergo she was the most qualified. But before her breath could even start rattling its way through her vocal chords…

“Katsumi.”

“I agree. Katsumi.”

“Are you kidding me?! Katsumi! Fuck yeah!”

“What Lady Kagura said.”

In briefly dissociating, Katsumi found herself able to imagine that an onlooker would find great amusement in the expression of absolute shock she felt as it emerged across her face. She supposed that she could still have gone with her initial intent for nomination, but doing it felt awkward and almost gauche. But she felt Tsuyu’s expectant stare boring down upon her like a physical weight, and like the last gasp of a man suffocating by having his chest slowly crushed, she spoke her choice. “…Ástríðr…”

Tsuyu smiled. “Very well. By popular vote, Katsumi will be registered from now and henceforth as the leader of the Order of the Laughing Tree.”

There was an impulse within Katsumi to reject the title, citing that she would not be as able by half as Ástríðr was, an impulse to try and cling to being a follower, a member of the five person band of adventurers, with no responsibility save to pull her own weight—but the very fact that she viewed this prospective burden as so unambiguously onerous and fraught with peril prohibited her from passing it off to someone else. And after all, they had expressed that they felt her capable of shouldering the burden, and they expressed their trust in her abilities to that end in so doing. In her mind, she had done nothing worthy of being given the task of leadership, but it was evident that her friends felt differently, and she did not wish to insult them by questioning their judgement on this matter—for indeed, if she doubted their judgement so, did she truly believe that they would be better served leading, or was she simply trying to shirk her duty, to run from the responsibility with which they had elected to entrust her?

Would rejection be a sign of humility, or merely cowardice?

She did not see what they saw, but she could accept and respect that whatever it was they saw, they had indeed seen it. And so, instead of an objection, what came next was a defeated, resigned, but resolute sigh. “Very well.”

Ástríðr’s arm slung itself around her shoulder, and pulled her in close to press a kiss on the crown scale pattern of her forehead. “You might not see it now, but you’re going to be the best leader there ever was—way better than me. I appreciate the vote of confidence, though.”

Tsuyu looked on with a faintly fond smile, and then turned to Tandem. “Could you take them to the herald, my love? I have a few old friends I’d like to meet with.”

“Do I have the option of saying no?” Tandem asked wryly.

“No, you don’t,” Tsuyu replied with an equal sense of the coquette. “But it’s adorable that you even thought to ask.”

“That’s me, alright. He Who Asks the Stupid Questions…”

“I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

“Uh, Mom? Dad? The tourney?” Ástríðr interjected. “Love that you guys are still going strong after however long, but we do have a bit of a time constraint going here.”

“Youth. So wasted on the young. Would that such halcyon days might never end. But alas, such is not the way of things,” Tsuyu lamented with another fond sigh. “Well then, children, I’d say that I hope the odds are ever in your favour, but that’d be rather trite, now would it not? Instead, I will say that I have every confidence each and every one of you will do all your tutors credit. In truth, I daresay each of you has the capacity to exceed even the loftiest and most wild of our expectations for you. Go out there, and show them all who you are. Rhiannon, Fèng, with me, if you please.”

As both Blackwoods nodded their assent, she gave a flourishing bow, roguish in the gesture’s articulation, before straightening and walking off, traces of a confident swagger working their way into her gait, as though it had been second nature once upon a time, and then painstakingly unlearned, though never forgotten. It was not the first time Katsumi acknowledged that it wasn’t likely that Tsuyu had been at all truthful on the subject of her past, but it was the first time she found herself wondering what the truth of it all actually was. What secrets did Tsuyu hide behind that coy smile? What forked tongue lay behind her fangs?

Katsumi shook her head free of such useless speculations. All would be revealed in time, or it would remain a mystery—either way, Tsuyu more than had a right to her secrets, however many or few, however damning or benign, and she would rather die than see herself become rude enough to be so invasive, to pry into them unwelcome. Tandem stepped up as the silhouettes of Tsuyu and the Blackwoods retreated into the distance, so Katsumi focused herself on him, and in so doing, she refocused upon the task at hand once more; he sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, uncertain. “Alright then. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the lead, so I guess fall in behind me and I’ll get you all there in one piece. Eh, shit, how do we wanna do this… Tsuyu didn’t leave any instructions, so I guess we can play it by ear, maybe…? Damn…”

“Honestly, Tandem, you’re so hopeless sometimes. That Father ever thought you more suitable than I…” Yuriya huffed, closing the distance between her and him with the quick, loping strides of an apex predator.

“Hey! I never wanted to be the heir!” Tandem objected. “Are you honestly still sore about that, after all this time?!”

“‘Still’ implies that I ever was,” Yuriya rebutted coolly, lifting an imperious eyebrow as she stood face to face with her brother. “Ultimately I’m glad it happened. The exile wound up being the best thing to ever happen to me, which your experiences as heir only further affirmed. But that doesn’t preclude me from finding it equal parts hilarious and pathetic that our people felt the need to force someone wholly dependent on progressively more potent drugs and whose greatest aspiration was to be a whore onto the throne for whatever reason.”

“It was because I had higher magical potential…” Tandem muttered sullenly.

“The rationale of idiots determined to doom themselves does not interest me,” Yuriya dismissed with a hand gesture that seemed to communicate a feeling that bordered on disgust. “The fact of the matter is they’re all dead. Every last one of them, save for you and me, a line spanning ten thousand uninterrupted years, was wiped clean, and I’m glad of it—saves me the trouble of hunting them down and slaughtering them myself. Now, are you going to continue to insist on rehashing literal ancient history on account of an offhand comment meant as a jibe, or can we get on with the events of the day?”

“Do you even know where the herald’s office is?”

“No, I don’t. But I’ll certainly find it faster than you will if you insist on standing here gormlessly from now until the end of time. And besides, I know for a fact that you don’t, either.”

It was at this moment that Katsumi decided that her reluctance to be a leader did not give her leave to be a bad one. She stepped forth and cleared her throat, and when that didn’t work, she shoved her reluctance aside fully, found her strength, and spoke.

“I cannot help but notice that for all that both of you wish to help us get to the herald, we have yet to move a single step.”

Something about her tone of voice, though she made no effort to raise it, caused both of the siblings to stop arguing almost involuntarily, as though instinct demanded they strain to listen to what she had to say. It was a good feeling, a wave of relief that she would not have to yell to make herself heard. Obedience obtained through domination felt like a hollow goal to strive for, after all—if she was to be a leader, she would be one that people wanted to heed, not one that they felt they had to. This opening thus created, she capitalised upon it. “Now, it seems no one here knows exactly where the registration booth is. If you wish to guide me, I will heed your counsel, but we gain nothing through such vainglorious posturing. Am I understood?”

Tandem seemed somewhat taken aback by what she had just done, but she met his shock with an even gaze, a cold serenity stealing throughout her, a sickly pale green flame licking at the insides of her chest, and thanks to that selfsame flame that flickered within her, that resolve took very little effort to maintain.

In contrast, Yuriya looked…

Well, she reminded her of how Krile and the two members of the Red Branch looked at her, though with additional nostalgia and fondness—a fondness Katsumi found herself returning in kind, strange though it might have been, given how little direct association she had had with the Sword Saint up until this point, but like other such odd feelings on her part, it would behoove her none to decipher them actively; there were no answers to be had, or at least, none that would yield themselves up until they were good and ready to be known, actively scorning her attempts to unearth or exhume them.

“Of course, my mistress,” Yuriya replied with a soft smile, placing one arm across her chest and bowing deferentially.

She was aware of the surprise everyone else was feeling—except for Tandem, curiously enough, who seemed to have recovered and not been further thrown off by this development (as well as Krile, whose expression was filled with something that was equal parts remembrance and approval, so perhaps not truly everyone)—but the twinge of discomfort she felt at being accorded such reverence was for one, hardly unique to the current situation, and for two, one that lived a meagre existence and perished quickly, and beyond that, she did not feel the need to react with anything but acknowledgement of such.

“Wonderful,” she nodded, wearing a smile she did not feel, something that felt calculated and composed and not really all that genuine, before beginning to walk towards the obvious entrance of the Amphitheatre at long last.

She did not need to look to know that everyone had fallen in line in her wake.

As it seemed as though today was determined to be a series of surprises, Katsumi was thankful that finding a troupe of nephilim near the crowded entrance choked with the bodies of civilian would-be spectators and noble processions, standing apart from the Crown Knights (the latter of whom eyed the former with naked fear and trembling terror, if anything an unsurprising development considering recent happenings) as though awaiting someone’s arrival, was one that was at least both minor and pleasant.

From the ranks of white kyūdōgi came a single woman, pretty enough given that Katsumi had discerned Mercédès’s preference for surrounding herself with beautiful women for whatever reason beyond the immediately obvious, with dusky skin, emerald eyes, and straight black hair cut in a severe bob, whose every step informed a background martial and a present commanding. “Lady Katsumi of the Fallen Rain and the Order of the Laughing Tree?”

“Speaking,” Katsumi replied, putting aside her appreciation of the nephilim’s voice. This was a woman who was merely doing her job, after all; it would be rude of her not to respond to her professionalism in kind.

The woman nodded. “We are to escort you to the herald’s booth, and to ensure your safety amidst the crowds.”

“So, a security detail?”

“Exactly, ma’am.”

“I believe I shall be sufficient in that task, Miss…?” Krile rebuffed.

“Be that as it may, my orders were as explicit as they were specific,” said the nephilim, deflecting Krile’s fishing for a name rather blatantly. It would have been rude were her tone not so impersonal. “There is a well-documented history of irrational actors becoming emboldened in the wake of a declaration of Aschtinricht, especially in the case of swift resolutions like the most recent one between House Lucerne and the former House Fortinbras. Perhaps wisely, Her Grace does not wish to take any chances, and so I am afraid I must insist.”

Krile’s face twisted into a rictus of malicious fury so profound that Katsumi would not have been surprised had a normal person immediately fallen over themselves to gain distance at the expression, to the point where even the other nephilim showed minor flinches—though to her credit, the one who was the bearer of the message that so incensed them kept her composure to a degree that was as impressive as it was impeccable. Katsumi’s instinct, however, was not to retreat or express wariness, but rather to soothe, and so her hand found its way onto the redhead’s shoulder; she was glad that that instinctive response was all it took to get them to immediately calm, defusing the situation marvelously. “That will be acceptable, thank you.”

The nephilim allowed for a small smile to quirk across her face at that. “Of course, Lady Katsumi. And may I say, if I may be so bold, that it is a rare and pleasant event to meet another of the Blood.”

She could feel the rampant indignation building in Krile once more, so she squeezed their shoulder quickly, enough for reassurance, and was gratified to feel them calm once more. This left her with the other problem, which was that she did not quite know what ‘Blood’ the nephilim was referring to—but she was neither so dense nor so unversed in the ways of winning friends and influencing foes that she failed to understand that she was meant to know what was being spoken of, and that it was in her best interest to pretend to know, even if in truth, she did not. Not to mention, the sentiment struck a very strong chord within her, so on some level she recognised it, she knew; she merely could not consciously retrieve it.

“Likewise,” she replied cordially. “And your candour is appreciated. I would ask your name or rank, but I am given to infer that as a nephilim, you either have neither or are allowed to divulge neither?”

“The latter applies with regards to the name, the former with regards to rank,” the nephilim explained as she gestured for Katsumi, and Krile in her grasp, to walk with her as she spoke, the other nephilim smoothly closing ranks around the other members of the Laughing Tree, past and present. “I have been granted special permission to speak for this detachment. The others are still under the obligation to hold to their vows. We may never speak where others might chance to hear, for example, unless, like in this case, a special exemption is made for the purposes of serving Her Grace and Her goals.”

“I suppose I am thankful that Mercédès has such a devoted group of capable individuals to protect her person and aid her in her endeavours,” Katsumi remarked, taking careful note of the momentary flinch present in even the nephilim she had previously assessed as unflappable at the very mention of Mercédès’s name, and revising that assessment accordingly. “If this situation has taught me anything, it is that she clearly lacks for people she can trust and rely upon beyond those residing within the boundaries of Ridorana Monastery.”

The nephilim’s answering smile was just strained enough that despite her obvious efforts, she failed to conceal it. When she spoke again, her voice was tight, somewhat clipped, and ever so slightly curt, to the degree that Katsumi did not believe the nephilim herself was aware of her obvious tension. “Your praise does us credit, ma’am. For what it is worth, Her Grace speaks highly of you as well.”

Katsumi cocked her head, confused and searching. “Pardon me, have I committed some faux pas?”

“Not as such,” the nephilim assured her. “My sisters and I are… We are inclined to regard Her Grace with a certain modicum of respect, you see, and so hearing one address Her in so familiar a manner as yourself puts us ill at ease, regardless of who is doing so, and whatever explicit permissions they may have that enable them to take such liberties.”

“Are you not to be her companions? Confidantes?” Katsumi asked.

“Certainly not,” the nephilim replied, as though the very concept was preposterous. “We are but extensions of Her Grace’s will. That which She desires, we see done, without question.”

“Hmm… Sō desu ka,” Katsumi affirmed.

The nephilim, by virtue of Occam’s razor possessing sufficient understanding of the language Katsumi was using to read the nuance of her utterance, grew even more tense, and her sisters after a moment grew as tense as she, as though in response. Like the turning of a screw, the almost-hostility in her tone and diction wound itself tighter when next she saw fit to speak. “We have arrived. This is the herald’s registration booth. Best of luck in the tourney.”

Katsumi nodded her permission for the nephilim troupe to withdraw at last, noting Krile’s near-glee at the rising discomfort from the nephilim, both speaking and silent, as she looked upon the room in which resided a dwarf that she was shocked to immediately recognise. “Gwenett? Well, well. Will wonders never cease.”

The russet-haired dwarf’s cobalt eyes bugged nearly out of her skull. “Well there, lass! Small world! How the fuck did you recognise me?!”

“You feel the same,” Katsumi replied with a shrug. “Your accent’s gone.”

“Nah, Her Grace just had a spell worked on me to get rid of it,” Gwenett sighed. “It’s temporary, or so I’m told, but in light of Maerwhentt’s spectacular blunder, mouthing off to a kinswoman of the prince like he did, I’m just glad I got indenture in exchange for him spending the rest of his life in an oubliette instead of a declaration of Aschtinricht for my trouble. Right messy bit of business, that.”

“I am certainly glad that was not your sentence,” Katsumi replied at length with a chortle. “So, you are acting as a herald as a sort of service to the crown?”

“Aye,” Gwenett nodded. “Who better than a Bodice hawker to make the announcements heard over the chatter of a crowd? Or so the prince said. But that aside, it’s mighty good to see you again, lass. More so than I expected it would be, told true. Now, how can I help you?”

“My companions and I…” Katsumi began, gesturing to the people behind her, “…are the members of the Order of the Laughing Tree, here to register properly for the tourney. We did pre-registration at the Guild a few days ago, so we should have everything in order, at least as far as I am aware.”

“Well, in that case, lass, it ought not to be too much of an issue to get you all set up and ready to fight!” Gwenett exclaimed.

“Why don’t you introduce us to your friend, my love?” Ástríðr said, leaning in close to Katsumi and almost draping her body over the drahn in the process, bringing the very same mortifying heat as always to her cheeks, much to her distant chagrin. But the admonition was heard loud and clear all the same, and she managed to keep her composure as a result.

“Oh, of course! Gomen, shitsurei shimashita! Eto…” Katsumi exclaimed, the words tumbling in shock at her oversight from her lips. “Kagura, Kyomi, Krile, Ástríðr, and I suppose Tandem and Yuriya, I would like you all to meet Gwenett! She was the first person I spoke to upon reaching Maelnaulde, and…she helped. Gwenett, this is Krile Mayer Baldesion, who will be registering with us today, and Tandem, Yuriya, and my paramour Ástríðr are all members of House Desrosiers. The head of House Desrosiers, Lady Tsuyu, had business of her own to attend to. Kagura is Yuriya’s consort, and Kyomi here is her twin sister. And…I am Katsumi of the Fallen Rain, though you likely knew that already.”

“I didn’t, as it happens, lass,” Gwenett replied reassuringly, though a pained wince twisted her face into a grimace for a moment in memory. “Her Grace was mightily tight-lipped about exactly what you were called when I was brought in to answer for my no-good brother’s crimes, and Maerwhentt, the only other who might have informed me, was…freshly elinguated as satisfaction for his incurred weregild by the time I was summoned. And to be clear, lass, because I see it in your face, I don’t blame you. Drahn or no, Maerwhentt should have had beard enough to put our history with your kind to the side and do his bleeding job. The fact that he didn’t brings shame upon him, upon me for failing to stop him, and upon our clan by association. If seeing my only brother with his tongue out and tossed into a hole to be forgotten about for his own dishonourable behaviour was the price I had to pay to save my clan from Aschtinricht, I pay it gladly. And besides, by clan law, he’s actually no brother of mine anymore. The clan and I’ll be cleared of association with his stain once amends are made for the grudge he brought upon our heads, and it’ll be like he never existed. Good riddance.”

“I am glad there is no ill will,” Katsumi sighed, nodding and giving a conciliatory smile. “I should certainly hate to have caused offence by virtue of my existence.”

“Heh. Nah, lass, all’s well. Now, if you’ll all form an orderly line, I have to enter you all one at a time into the ledgers. Leader first,” Gwenett dismissed, shifting away from conversation and towards her task with commendable ease.

“Of course,” Katsumi assented, stepping forth more properly, and letting the others figure out the order amongst themselves. There was some shuffling for a few moments, but in short order did Gwenett bob her head once in approval that they had at last discerned who would step forth when.

“Lovely, lass. Now, name?”

“Katsumi of the Fallen Rain.”

“Affiliation?”

“The Order of the Laughing Tree.”

“Allegiance?”

“The Principality of Maelnaulde.”

“Wonderful. Nice and easy,” Gwenett remarked. “Now, could I see your Parameter, lass?”

Katsumi stared at Gwenett nonplussed for a good three heartbeats before her mind at last managed to dredge up what was being asked for.

“Right! We have those! They were relevant to our lives at some point!” Kyomi exclaimed from further back, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I had somehow managed to completely forget the quaint little things even existed!”

Katsumi cleared her throat, and Kyomi, hearing it, fell silent as Katsumi reached into her satchel, her fingers brushing against the seed stored within with a shock of scorching cold and freezing heat. The seed was…agitated, for some reason… Putting that out of her mind, she felt her fingers close around the roll of vellum and pulled it forth, handing it to Gwenett.

The dwarf took the roll from her with a nod, and unfurled it, looking down at its contents, and going ashen as she took in more and more of it.

“Is something wrong?” Katsumi asked.

Gwenett, frowning, held up one meaty finger as she brought out a small device, a slim box with a bell attached and engraved with a myriad of esoteric characters from under the flat, smooth wooden surface of the booth’s divider, and placed Katsumi’s Parameter inside of its enclosure. When the bell sounded off twice, one after another in quick succession, Gwenett went even more pale, her lips pressed into a thin line as she opened the lid of the box, and removed the scroll from it, picking up a quill and entering the relevant information into the ledger, before setting it aside and folding her hands. “This device right here was built on commission for the Guild of Adventurers to detect falsified Parameters. Only twelve of them exist. Three of them were given to Maelnaulde for the purposes of keeping this tourney above board, as defined by the Guild charter. Are you with me so far, lass?”

“Very much so…” Katsumi replied warily.

“Well, when I laid eyes upon your Parameter, I understood that it could not be genuine. A shoddy forgery, looking real save for the fact that what was written on it was so far beyond the realm of what was reasonable that it could not be anything but a fake,” Gwenett explained. “But lo and behold, the device discovered nothing. No deception of any kind existed upon it. Not even an illusion to try to give a false negative—that’d have been three bells. So all that remains is to acknowledge that what’s on your Parameter is the genuine article.”

“What is on my Parameter?” asked the drahn.

“The dark knight bit wasn’t a surprise. Word gets around, after all,” Gwenett began. “But I’ll read it to you. From the very top, then. Strength: eighty-five. Dexterity: one hundred sixty-four. Vitality: one hundred eleven. Agility: one hundred fifty-eight. Intelligence: one hundred eighty-seven. Mind: sixty-four. And finally, Charisma: two hundred fifty-five. Level: Thirty-one. Need I go on?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand…” Katsumi confessed.

“The highest attribute value I’ve seen on a Parameter was ninety-nine. At level fifty,” Gwenett elucidated. “The only one of your attributes that’s even remotely typical of adventurers of your level is mind, and even that is on the very upper end of that range. And your skills… You have five weaponskills listed. That’s unheard of. It shouldn’t even be possible, to be incredibly frank, and even though I know it’s true, I still have difficulty believing it.”

“Yeah, that seems about accurate…” Kyomi sighed.

“Well, in that case, I will be certain to take the discrepancies under advisement,” Katsumi answered. “Is there aught else that is needed for the purposes of my registration?”

Gwenett sighed, sliding the Parameter back to Katsumi. “If you haven’t already, I’d advise you to do yourself a favour and know what your weaponskills are. I’ve never seen any of them before, and so, chances are, neither have your opponents. Next in line, please?”

Katsumi nodded and stepped aside, allowing Ástríðr to step into her place. “My name is Ástríðr Camarille Desrosiers. I am affiliated with the Order of the Laughing Tree, and I owe my allegiance to the Principality of Maelnaulde—for the moment, at least. Here is my Parameter.”

Gwenett nodded. “You’ve the voice of a mountain. I can respect that. Let’s see what we have to deal—

“Because why would this be easy…?” sighed the dwarf woman. “Strength: two hundred twenty-eight. Dexterity: one hundred one. Vitality: two hundred thirty-three. Agility: ninety-two. Intelligence: one hundred twelve. Mind: eighty-nine. Charisma: one hundred ninety-four. Level: forty-one. A little more reasonable for you to have five weaponskills, but not by an astronomical amount, by the ancestors. Next.”

Ástríðr took her Parameter back, and then stepped aside to allow Krile their turn, sweeping around behind Katsumi and embracing her possessively from behind, cradling the drahn’s head into the metal where her breasts would ordinarily be and surrounding Katsumi in the safety of her strength. Katsumi allowed herself to relax just slightly, snuggling into the musculature of her lover’s body, even so armoured.

Krile gave over their Parameter, and said in a sickly-sweet sing-song voice, “I’d very much appreciate it if you could refrain from speaking mine aloud, master dwarf. Krile Mayer Baldesion. Formerly of the Stormcrows, temporarily of the Order of the Laughing Tree, allied with the Grand Duchy of Rosenfaire. Please and thank you.”

Gwenett’s eyes widened, but she did as asked without comment, taking down what she needed and handing it back to the sweetly-smiling female-presenting before calling out, “Next in line, step lively!”

Krile drew as close as they dared, seemingly not wishing to invoke Ástríðr’s formidable temper, which Katsumi supposed was reasonable, and allowed Kyomi to step forth next.

“Kyūbi no Kyomi, at your service,” Kyomi introduced herself, offering up her Parameter. “Order of the Laughing Tree, Maelnaulde, all that good stuff. Here’s the paperwork.”

Katsumi felt her eyes go wide at the full name the albino gave to the dwarf. Kyomi of the Nine Tails… But those aren’t fox ears… But then again, they’re known for their ability to change form, to deceive the senses and confound perception… She has to know what she just implied, so I suppose we’ll find out soon…

“…Next!”

Katsumi startled to notice that she had managed, in her contemplation, to miss what the dwarf woman had said during her interaction with Kyomi, and was only able to keep her own counsel as Kyomi walked up to them because she mouthed ‘Later.’

That left…

“Senran Kagura,” Kagura enunciated calmly, handing her Parameter to Gwenett. “As you can probably guess, I’m with the others in both respects.”

Gwenett unfurled the sheet, scanned it, and sighed in resignation. She copied down the information she needed, and as soon as Kagura took it back, the dwarf buried her head in her hands on the table, letting loose a long, low groan of existential exasperation as she waved the vii off to the side.

“That was a ballsy move, sis,” Kagura jested, grinning. “Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

“So, you two are…?” Katsumi began.

“I’m a vii, like I said I was,” Kagura interjected. “Kyomi over here’s the special snowflake.”

“Oh, hush you!” Kyomi hissed. “And cover me!”

“Sure, sure,” Kagura sighed, stepping around Kyomi to block her from view of possibly unscrupulous onlookers. “Just the ears, though. I can’t do jack shit about the tails.”

“I know…” Kyomi huffed. Then her ears shimmered like a mirage, disappearing entirely to reveal a set of perked-up vulpine auricles, covered in fox fur the same shade of bone-white as her hair. “So, yeah. I use a glamour to make myself look like a vii, but I’m a kitsune. Surprise?”

“At this point, I’m more surprised your albinism is genuine,” Katsumi confessed.

“Really?!” Kyomi gawked, incredulous.

“Well, yeah—retroactively a lot of your more, shall we say, questionable moments make much more sense in light of this,” Katsumi explained. “But you being a fox yōkai doesn’t exactly make it any less unlikely that I’d somehow run into two people with albinism living in the same building—as far as I understand it, at least.”

“I’m actually not a yōkai,” said Kyomi. “I’m a kami.”

“Aramitama or nigimitama?”

“Wakemitama.”

“Really? That’s a surprise,” Katsumi remarked. “And here I thought even the famed nine-tailed kitsune were still considered yōkai.”

“Typically, yes,” Kyomi confirmed. “But we don’t exactly have the time a full retelling would demand in order to serve as an explanation, so let’s instead just say the circumstances of my status are unique.”

“Very well,” Katsumi replied with a nod. “In any event, I am curious how a kitsune and a vii not only managed to meet each other, but also decided to present themselves as twins; yet, it seems that such a retelling might consume the time we have remaining…”

“Oh, no, that’s actually a relatively quick tell,” Kagura rebuffed. “My mom was a vii, I guess, and for whatever reason, she was lynched, and I was born as she finally died, to hear tell of it. I never actually got an explanation as to why she was killed like that—onryō aren’t an especially talkative bunch, as I’m sure you can imagine—but I was raised by the kijo Shuten-dōji until Yuriya-sensei, who was travelling with Kyomi as a guide at the time, challenged and slew her. They found me in her lair, and took me with them, with Kyomi deciding to stick with me so that Yuriya-sensei could go killing again.”

Though she discerned no deception from Kagura, Katsumi nevertheless had a very strong feeling that there was more of the story that was being omitted—but an omission without the desire for deception meant either faulty recollection or an attribution of negligible value to such things, both amounting to the same result: namely, this was the end of the useful information she would be able to pull from Kagura on the subject in question. “Hm. Well, I would be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate the trust you just placed in me. It was imparted in confidence, and so there it shall remain. For now, however, I believe it may at the moment be prudent to assume the glamour once more. We can decide how to approach this issue when we’re not up against a time limit and therefore deliberating under duress.”

“Are you kids done with your discussion?” Tandem asked as he drew close, Kyomi using her abilities to conceal her true ears quickly while Kagura stepped away from covering her, back to a less suspicious position. “Because your processing’s all done. Took a lot less time than we expected, honestly—seems like someone decided to fast-track you, though I’m not sure who.”

“Yes, I suppose we must be,” Katsumi sighed, reluctantly pulling herself from Ástríðr’s embrace. “I am given to understand there is a place where we are expected?”

“To the side of the herald’s booth, there is a passage that will lead to your staging area, beneath the arena proper,” Yuriya cut in smoothly, as quiet and graceful on the approach as ever. “There will be one set of chambers for each team, and a common area linking them for the three teams to fraternise if they so desire. Your brackets will be posted, and once the tourney begins, you’ll be allowed to spectate on each other’s matches, from the stands if you so desire. At ninety seconds before your match, you will be warped to your staging area automatically—the initial congregation is simply to make sure you’re all properly registered to be warped back when the time comes.”

“Well, I thank you for the information, Yuriya,” Katsumi acknowledged. “Let’s not dally without purpose, then. Lead on.”

Dorothea knew that Mami of the Threefold Tomoe had a sister from whom she was now estranged—what kind of leader would she be if she wasn’t aware of some of her friends’ deepest, darkest, most blackmail-worthy secrets, after all?—and she had been aware of this before the person they now knew to be the prince of Maelnaulde sent her very first missive. Similarly, she had written off Mami’s sister as being dead, lost to the world, until the final message gave her cause to reassess the situation and to assert that, in all likelihood, this sister of hers was truly the one sending these messages this entire time. She had considered the mystery solved at the time, the case closed for the moment—but she had never considered the possibility that such a series of circumstances, so mundane on the face of them, could have concealed such a twist within its coils, coils which Dorothea had begun to consider as ‘confounding.’

Dorothea had reached the conclusion that Her Grace Mercédès Charlotte Lucerne had to have been Mami’s long-lost sister—for after all, little and less was known of the secrets of House Lucerne save that said secrets existed in the first place—by the time the day of the tourney wound to the present. So one could perhaps imagine her shock when she saw her friend concealing herself as best she could, watching with abject fascination as the other two teams interacted, as though she had once been blinded for long enough to forget the look of the world and now could once more see the light. Dorothea being herself, she absolutely could not even fathom the very notion that she might restrain herself from butting her way into the situation to which she was currently a witness.

She spectated for a little while to get a better sense of the specifics of what was going on, an initial cursory examination placing this as a meeting between the Red Branch and whoever Her Grace of House Lucerne had chosen to represent the principality, with both groups seeming rather easily acquainted with each other; but while she was intrigued by the fact she recognised none of the people from Maelnaulde, only really catching on to the presence of the Stormcrows member she remembered was named Krile after a few moments of sustained scrutiny, she didn’t really see what someone like Mami could have seen to fixate upon—until she traced the white mage’s gaze directly to another drahn across the room, a slip of a girl, a waif if Dorothea had ever seen one or known what the word meant, dressed in form-fitting but unadorned black armour, in whose stance and demeanour she saw strong echoes of Ophelia.

Dorothea had once considered Mami, while far from her type, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, her own lack of attraction not prohibiting her from admitting that Mami of the Threefold Tomoe was without peer in the looks department. Upon meeting Prince Mercédès, she had been forced to revise that assessment, as the woman who had been Mami’s benefactor and theirs by proxy was every bit as beautiful as Mami, albeit in a very different manner. However, she now found herself needing to revise her assessment yet again upon seeing the other drahn, as the woman she laid eyes upon was every bit their equal. Where Prince Mercédès was beautiful in a kindly way, radiating the gentle warmth of the hearth and home beyond the storm, attracting with the promise of shelter and solace, and Mami was spirited and hoydenish, a spitfire in every sense of the term, this third woman had the gorgeosity of a moonless night, the hidden depths of the sea in which dwelt the primordial and the antediluvian, the unknowable and the eldritch, darkly beautiful and quietly threatening, the subtle creeping dread of a porcelain doll, a still-life image flash-frozen in a moment of unnatural perfection—made all the more unsettling by the fact that she continued to speak and to emote in ways that were so subtle that if Dorothea were not focusing on her hard enough to determine that the raven hue was natural, she would have without a doubt completely missed them. Anyone less perceptive than she would have little to no chance of discerning her emotions without a thorough acquaintance.

Her choice of dress, the relentless and yet layered shades of black, did make her appear more pale, but it gave her an ethereal quality, like a ghost or other apparition, there and then gone in a flash that was so abrupt the mind was left uncertain of the testimony of its senses. However, it also drew attention to her eyes, an unnatural shade between violet and amethyst, with pupils that were the same narrow slits as Mami’s and Prince Mercédès’s, and though Mami’s had the hue of a blind woman and the prince’s gaze was withering in the manner of divine judgement, the waif’s were far and away the most disturbing—Dorothea had seen more lifelike taxidermy.

All the same, sacrifices had to be made in the name of fucking with people.

“Should I inform Zarya that she’s about to get another bed-warmer? Or is this the friend you’re gonna tell her not to worry about?” Dorothea asked from right by her horn, causing Mami to startle and nearly spook. The white mage hadn’t known she was there, which was, of course, by design. “I mean, not that I blame you. Bet you ten gil that girl’s a real firebrand between the sheets.”

Mami whirled to stare Dorothea in the face, murder curdling the pure white of her eyes. She was about to yell, but thought better of it when taking stock of their surroundings, and so lowered her voice to a harsh whisper, more like a hiss. “That girl is my sister, you moron!”

“Pretty sure everyone’s had a twin fantasy at least once,” Dorothea replied with a shrug, suppressing the uproarious laughter that wanted to bubble up in her throat as Mami balked and began to turn different colours in her rising anger and mortification. “I’m sure reliving her adolescence like that might be just the thing Zarya needs to make herself feel young and hip again.”

“No, Dorothea, I am not sleeping with Homura, of all people!” Mami hissed.

“So you think she’s ugly. Got it.”

“That’s not… Ugh! You are insufferable sometimes!”

“Only sometimes? In that case, it looks like I need to up my game,” Dorothea remarked, only half-joking. “I mean, I’m clearly underperforming.”

Mami looked as though she was about to retort, clearly riled, but then she backed down, taking a deep breath to calm herself, and not even Dorothea could stop her own eyebrow from climbing halfway to her hairline. “You know what? Forget it.”

“It’s forgotten,” she replied glibly. “In all seriousness, though, why don’t you go and talk to her? She’s been separated from you at least as long as you’ve been separated from her. I think she’d be glad to see you alive and well—relatively, at least.”

“I’ve considered it, and I want to,” confessed Mami. “But she looks like she has her own life now. I… I don’t think it’s my place…”

“Didn’t know you hated her that much,” said Dorothea.

“How the ever-living fuck did you come to that dumbass conclusion?!” Mami hissed.

“It’s simple, really,” she shrugged. “You have a life of your own now, too, with all of us. If this were reversed, and she saw you instead of you seeing her, and then decided that because you moved on and got friends without her, you didn’t deserve to know she was alive, how would that make you feel?”

“That’s not why…!”

“That’s the result,” Dorothea snapped at last. “No matter whatever good intentions you might have in not going over and talking to your sister, the fact will remain that you decided to deprive her of the chance to know you’re still kicking. All you have left at that point are self-serving excuses, less substantial than the wind.”

Mami looked horrified by her words, which Dorothea could only see as a good thing, and if it caused her to stop acting like an idiot in this situation, it would be even better. Then she let out a mournful sigh. “I don’t know if I have the strength…”

“If strength’s the issue, you have a volunteer right here,” Dorothea informed jauntily.

“What…?” Mami asked, confused.

With a mighty swell of physical strength, Dorothea pushed Mami, sending her flying in the ungainly manner of an avian hatchling, complete with wide-eyed terror, fully into the fray of her sister and her sister’s friends. Then, she cupped her hands in front of her mouth and called out, “Best of luck!”

“Dorothea…!” Mami called angrily, but Dorothea had already melted into the shadows, away from where any of them could see, through sorcerous means placed beyond the perception of even the sharpest of senses.

“…Haruhi?!”

Mami stiffened, and then turned, fear in her eyes, towards her sister, raising an awkward hand in greeting. “Uh, hey, Homura. Hisashiburi da na—!”

Her words were driven with the air from her lungs as her sister, Homura, shot towards her, and wrapped her in a bone-crushing embrace. “Okaerinasai, Haru-nee…”

Mami, who Dorothea could see was beginning to almost violently tremble, replied with an audible quaver in her voice. “Tadaima, Homura-chan…”

And that was all it took, the white mage sagging in her sister’s arms as her body was wracked with heavy, horrific sobs. The younger one, Homura, kept her propped up, held securely and bearing an expression of serenity, whispering words of comfort and consolation, much like Dorothea imagined a mother might, the sort of idyllic parent that otherwise only existed in children’s tales, as Dorothea’s comrade cried and babbled unintelligibly into her sister’s shoulder.

Then her eyes flickered up.

Dorothea felt her heart stop dead in her chest for a moment. She checked, once, twice, thrice, to make certain that not only was she concealed in the shadows, but also that she had her Deodorise, Sneak, and Invisible spells up and running. They absolutely were, and she should have been entirely undetectable—but no one else was around her, and so the eyes of Mami’s dear little sister could only be focused upon her, as impossible as that might seem.

More concerning, however, was the black sclera, and the fact that her irises had adopted a vivid scarlet hue.

Then they blinked, flickered down, and the irregularity was gone—yet, Dorothea could not shake from herself the idea that she had not been spotted on a fluke so much as noticed, and then pointedly ignored in favour of the circumstances.

A smirk twisted the corner of the scholar’s mouth. Interesting…

“If she were even a hair less frighteningly intelligent than she is, she would be dead many times over by now…”

“You’re not the first to make that observation about her. Not that it’s incorrect, mind.”

Ophelia sighed, and nodded. She had to concede that point, at least. “Yes, I suppose it is very much academic at the moment. It still does nothing to assuage the worries that there will come a day that she bets too much on a challenge she cannot overcome, or perhaps a foe she cannot defeat, and that that day can be any day, perhaps even this one.”

Ardrea hummed noncommittally. “She’s audacious, but she knows her limits. Or at least, she does now know her limits. All it cost her was a marked aversion to pottery, really. And snakes, but that’s a whole other tale.”

“Still, coming into the affairs of the Sisters of the Sacred Dark is a touch beyond the pale, even for her,” Ophelia could not help but emphasise. “I would hope this goes without saying, but the Nightmothers are not to be trifled with.”

“Perhaps you’re correct, but for the moment, I will elect to have faith in her judgement,” the Zanthian—nominally, at least—replied, the expression upon her face distinct from the visage she expressed to the public, all the false cheer stripped away to leave behind the harsh angles of a face Ophelia at last recognised. “I’m actually surprised you’re not doing the same, given what you got out of it the last time you placed your faith in her.”

“Her role in the return of the king is one I will not understate,” said the rune fencer. “Through her craft, she rekindled the coals of the Old Kingdom, allowing a flame to blaze to life that was once thought lost, a flame that had passed on from history to legend to myth, and finally to obscurity. Moreover, to discredit her in that way would be to doubt the trust Her Majesty has placed in your beloved, and that is a line not even I am willing to cross. But that was then. This is now. The circumstances, necessities, and most importantly, the stakes, are thoroughly distinct.”

“On a small aside, I find it fascinating that your tongue allows for those terms to be used interchangeably. Usually, they’re two distinct titles, divided between the primary and secondary monarchs,” Ardrea observed.

“The concepts of our language regularly prove difficult to communicate to others, at least when using mortal tongues. We use what works and leave the useless clarifications to the wind. After all, there exists no mortal who could begin to comprehend how we of Phantasia view and refer to the Demon King,” Ophelia explained. “There exist not the words in the minds and hearts of mortal men to describe the nuances, and so we do not bother. The secrets of Phantasia are the inheritance of those who share in its bounty, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, by Her Majesty’s providence and the service of the Blades of the Queen.”

“Sounds like something you’d read off of a brochure…” Ardrea snorted.

“She has done much and more for us. Those of us who speak the language have elected to lead and, if necessary, lay down our lives in her service. I would think we may be entitled to our fervour, at least to some degree,” Ophelia protested gently.

“Of course! It’s just a little amusing to hear the Ophelia I’ve known for so long speak as a true member of the Blades of the Queen,” Ardrea rebuffed. “Truthfully, I’m happy you’ve found something to believe in. You used to be kind of a doomer, if you don’t mind my saying. Or if you do mind. Either way, it’s true.”

“It’s been a long time since the days we spent working together with Dorothea, Ardrea,” said Ophelia. “A very long time indeed, and much has changed. I’ve changed. Much as I’m grateful for Dorothea’s actions indirectly creating an opportunity, being truly a member of the reborn Ten is more than I could have ever hoped for.”

“Just don’t start getting too cult of personality on me. That’d be awkward,” said Ardrea. “Personally, a part of me sees what you’re saying—it’s pretty much impossible to overstate the impact the Demon King has had on our people, after all—but the majority of me doesn’t seem particularly inclined to care?”

“Such is your prerogative,” Ophelia replied. Then her eyes widened and the procession of her thoughts stopped dead in their tracks as she watched Mami of the Threefold Tomoe careen into the midst of the gaggle of adventurers she and Dorothea had been observing—and enter the embrace of one whose face was not entirely familiar, but whose blood was unmistakable. “Well, well, well… Will wonders never cease?”

“What are you talking about?” Ardrea asked. “What is it that you’re seeing? Ophelia?”

“An old friend,” Ophelia answered evasively as Dorothea sank into an alcove and shrouded herself in enhancing magic to conceal herself to the senses. As stoic as she was usually interpreted to be, Ophelia had a soft spot for schadenfreude, and so did not wish to deprive herself of the satisfaction of seeing Ardrea Crocell’s face twist in confusion and dawning realisation. “No one with whom you’ll feel the need to concern yourself, I’m sure.”

Like clockwork, she felt the rush of dark power pulse through her body like a tidal wave, thrilling and invigorating, echoes of the blood-joy crying out in her veins, in the name of Her Majesty and the black pendragon standard under which her forces marched in lock-step to war. The whispers of the Void stirred within her soul, the chittering piece of Her Majesty’s great pet power within Ophelia, as it was within each of the greatest of her servants hissing to itself in excitement and anticipation at the prospect of the reunion it saw as close enough to taste. Then, like a tidal wave, it passed abruptly, but it left no mistake as to who was standing there before the two demons, both alike in dignity. To Ophelia, her own reaction was only to be expected: Her Majesty was the Snow-white Fang of the Moon, the symbol of freedom for all archfiends, the shattered shards of their chains forged of insatiable, ravenous existential hunger reflected in the halcyon light of the celestial body that hung pendulously above the once-ruined land they called home, stripped clean by virtue of that same uncontrollable, bestial, agonising hunger. Her power, the echo of that act of liberation, stirred her blood and set to roaring her loyalty. When she looked over to Ardrea, however, she certainly saw shock—but she also watched as the other demon’s face slipped quickly from that shock and into a toothy, feral grin, anticipation of the ecstasy of savagery coursing plainly through her veins. “Oh… That’s orgasmic…”

Ophelia was nonplussed. “Ardrea?”

“I don’t know what it is, really,” Ardrea began. “But something in me really wants to kill her right now. In fact, now that I’m aware of her, it’s taking me everything I have to not just challenge her right this moment, to see who’s stronger.”

Ophelia was somewhat embarrassed to admit that the truth of Ardrea’s background had somehow slipped her mind, but now that she could remember what the woman’s youth had been like, and then juxtapose it with what she knew of the Demon King’s beginnings, her reaction was, in retrospect, plainly obvious. And so was what she was going to say next. “I don’t doubt you would inspire the same in her were you to make yourself known. I’m told those like you two can sense such things in each other.”

“Is that so? I must confess, I’ve never had cause to run afoul of someone like me before,” Ardrea remarked. “But if she does wish to join me in this contest, I invite her to bring her all to bear. I will not settle for a half-baked battle.”

“Neither will she. You have my word on it, from Blood to Blood.”

“Promise?”

“If the word given by the Blood is insufficient, then yes, I swear it.”

Ardrea’s lips pulled back, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Good…”

“Did you feel that just now?”

Gareth’s voice shattered the relative silence that had otherwise dominated the private box accorded to Maelnaulde’s sovereign and their guests, as he turned on his heel to regard the others with whom he had thrown in his lot. He pointedly made to avoid devoting too much attention to where Junna and Aranea were doing their best attempt at a caduceus impression, as neither their relationship nor their proclivity towards frequent displays of affection were any of his business, and instead looked over to where his oldest friend, Rydia, was secluded, leaning against the wall of the box in a place well out of sight of any nosy civilians attempting to sneak a peek. Maria, bearing as always the cumbersome and unfortunate title of ‘Jeanne Evalach Galatyn’, had stepped out for a moment and would doubtless soon return.

“Feel what?” Rydia asked bluntly.

“I’m not sure. It was too small and too distant to really get a full sense of it,” said Gareth. “But for a moment there, it almost felt like…”

“I felt it, too. Don’t worry,” confessed the voice of Rydia’s temporary Guardian Force, a pseudo-technicality of that variety known only as the Crimson Queen, from over her shoulder. Stepping forth seemingly out of a stone wall, then, was a tall, slender, androgynous figure, clad in shadows and blood with flecks of bleached bone showing every so often depending on the angle and the lighting. “It was most assuredly her.”

“Then…she’s here…” Gareth sighed, something akin to relief sweeping through him at it. The notion that she was here, that she would be within view of him, made the blood in his veins and arteries quiver with joy. “Do you believe she’ll take the field?”

“Given the circumstances, I see no reason why she might be inclined to refrain from it,” replied the Crimson Queen, in a rare show of straightforward honesty. “She may pretend otherwise, but battle is her passion, and murder in all its forms is her art. Her acknowledgement of the frivolity of such pageantry will only stop her from partaking in it all the same if her goals were advanced by such abstinence on her part.”

“Are you talking about your boss, Gareth?” Rydia asked.

“She’s more than that,” Gareth refused quietly. “To be a Blade of the Queen is… It isn’t a job. It’s a vocation, a calling. I may serve her, but part of the demand of the seat is a bond of friendship. The absolute least I owe her is my fealty.”

“Well, if she is indeed here, perhaps she will come to collect you,” said Rydia, shrugging. “I still find it odd that you’re all allowed and expected in some cases to act independently of each other. We’re always supposed to stay in pairs, as you can clearly see.”

Gareth took a moment to divert his attention to the pair curled up together, thoroughly engrossed in the peculiarities of their forms. Then he looked back at Rydia, and sighed. “Yeah, I guess. But by the same token, there are and will only ever be ten of us. Five pairs can only be in so many places.”

“Don’t you have the generals to help out with that?” Rydia asked, slightly incredulous.

“We do, but only in emergencies,” Gareth explained. “They have their own duties to attend to, duties to which they themselves are best-suited. Really, the only general with any sort of true flexibility is the Azure Dragoon. The Dread Legate, the Grand Master, the Captain of the Deathwatch, the Black Huntsman… None of them can really afford to leave their positions. And so here we are, the special task force and instruments of the will of the Demon King, scattered to the four winds on our own missions.”

“Sounds rough. My condolences.”

Gareth waved Rydia off. “While I miss my homeland, I do not begrudge having to leave it in order to serve its ends. But I will be glad to return in any event.”

Aranea bent her head to whisper to Junna, and upon receiving permission, the Savage Valkyrie managed to extricate herself from her lover’s grasp, approaching them. Once, a very long time ago, the three of them would have been bosom companions, friends since childhood; yet, life and the relentless march of years rolling past had seen fit to place them on roads that ran separate from each other. Gareth had found the part of himself that strove for better, a part he had long since counted as dead, once more as one of the Ten; Rydia and Aranea had gone a different route, and found their own paths in the process. A part of him mourned this distance that had at some point grown between them, a chasm separating his life from theirs, but the majority knew that it was entirely possible that, had they decided to attempt to walk the same path, they would all be made miserable by the opportunities their proximity to each other demanded they forsake. This amiable former-friendship was far and away a preferable alternative to the outright hatred he knew would otherwise be their lot. “Is everything alright, Gareth? You’ve seemed…off…for a while now, and I’d be lying if I tried to imply the disparity between the you I’ve known and the you that is now before me was anything but worrisome.”

Gareth chuckled aloud—he had forgotten that this mission was the first time he had seen Aranea since their paths parted oh so very long ago. He had been a different person back then, and while he couldn’t say that who he was now was at all better in a moral sense, he found it to be certainly preferable. “It really has been a while, hasn’t it? You know, I never would have thought of you and Junna as a couple in the old days, and certainly not as you two are now, given how force-happy you were, and how force-averse she was at the time.”

“Don’t dodge the question,” Aranea barked, pointedly crossing her arms under her bust with a frown.

“I’m not,” Gareth refuted, shaking his head. “I’m qualifying my answer, if I may have the chance to do so. I was given to understand that your lot isn’t exactly predisposed to ‘getting it,’ as it were, and so some context may be necessary.

“My point is that you and Junna have become…close, shall we say? I have no talent for it, but I was told such a bond existed between you two, and nothing I’ve seen since we reunited has given me cause to doubt the truth of that statement,” he further clarified. “Now, try to imagine, just for a moment, for the barest hint of an instant, what would come to pass were you estranged from her by virtue of distance for an extended period.”

“You can’t seriously…!” Aranea gasped, taking a step back.

Gareth nodded. He knew full well what he claimed, and understood Aranea’s shock as a result—true love, that most profound of bonds, was the foundation upon which the might of their coterie was built, and the magic by which such a sacrosanct bond could be severed and re-bound once more was considered to be far and away the darkest, foulest, most perverse and most evil form of lore, the sorcery most deserving of the attribution, so fervently applied, of ‘forbidden.’ Yet, he was equally as convinced of the truth of his own claims, and so he placed his conviction into every word, as though remarking upon a conclusion as foregone as the state of the weather. “As you have found Junna, so too have I found…a companion…amidst my fellow Blades. They say we do not have hearts, but I know the lie in that for how mine aches at the distance, as insufferably sappy as that might sound, especially coming from me.”

“What’s she like?” Junna asked, rising gracefully to her feet and walking over to Aranea’s side, draping herself over the Falcon Knight possessively, and thus causing a mighty flush to rise in the blonde’s cheeks. “This true love of yours.”

In his mind sparked to life the image of his beloved, and the siren-song of her voice. The thought brought a smile, wan and rueful though it was, to his face before his breath found its way to his throat. “She is, like me, a Blade of the Queen, and my senior in that station besides, so I think it goes without saying that she’s incredibly formidable. Strong, tall, beautiful—stoic, in a way. To think of her is to think of the sea, in all its wonder and all its dangers, and even as she might seem hard and laconic, she has a vicious sense of humour. I remember she got particular amusement out of watching me try—and fail—to find someone to warm my bed those first few days, and I don’t think she’s ever quite let me live it down since. Of the Ten, she is not the foremost talent with a sword, but her power is in good company, and she is an able battle-leader, independent and fiercely driven. But perhaps most importantly for how we came to be, she needs nothing from me, and so demands nothing save my company, for no sake but its own. I… I miss her. Dearly.”

“Perhaps this is a touch forward of me, but I believe I know to whom you refer,” quoth the Crimson Queen. “If that is indeed the case, then allow me to most generously and graciously inform you that I have checked, and if the Demon King, as you call her, is indeed here, and my senses have yet to take their leave of me, so too is your true love.”

A feverish warmth swept through his limbs at the knowledge, and he felt that piece of himself locked away within his Devil Sword, concealed on his person at all times as was proper, stir and claw at its bindings. Not for the first time, he agreed with those sentiments expressed by his innermost self, the mask which lay sealed within the blade. “That is…happy news…”

“Don’t jizz yourself too quickly there, Bitch Tits,” came the sharp irreverence of Maria’s voice, as the purple-haired archangel swept into the box, crossing the chamber and seating her ample posterior on the ledge of the chamber, her back to the public. Having fully shed the guise of the duchess, sister, and heir of a renowned erudite, with her twintails undone to leave her wavy mane cascading, unbound, down the expanse of her back, she was garbed in a manner Gareth struggled to see as anything but vaudevillian. Spat-style boots, tight, form-fitting leather trousers that rose low on her hips, with the curves of them exposed by the corset that covered her lower abdomen, and only partly hidden from the back by virtue of her cropped broad-tailed jacket—all of these came together to create an image of walking, breathing anachronism, which was not at all aided by the inclusion of the frilly lace parasol, which anyone who knew her, especially as Gareth did, knew to be a concealed weapon. “I know you’re still not exactly used to that form of yours, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve still got this whole day of matches that we need to get through before you can go back to getting ploughed by her instead of me. So go ahead and keep it in your pants. If I need you, I’ll be sure to let you know…”

Maria’s saucy and not-at-all-kind wink to Gareth would ordinarily have taken him off of his guard, but in the state he was in, with his very blood sparking throughout his body—the Void Seal, the mark of the Demon King upon his soul, awakening for the first time in a while as it sensed the presence of another—not even her belittling or degrading remarks could harsh his almost deliriously good mood right then. Then his Void Seal pinged once more, and a smirk of his own crossed his lips. “Oh? You’re not going to watch the combatants present themselves?”

“Why the fuck would I?” she shot back, raising an impatient brow in warning.

A warning he did not heed. “No reason, really. I just thought you might see something that catches your attention. Pardon me for attempting to be conscientious and considerate.”

“Can it, bitch.”

“You call me that like you think it’s a bad thing…”

“Har dee har har.”

“Children, children! Can we not all simply get along?” came a lilting voice Gareth knew all too well. He snapped to attention as none other than Myfanwy Blackwood entered the box, with both an amber-eyed black cat sporting a seemingly very high opinion of itself and she who masqueraded as Her Grace Prince Mercédès in tow, Dame Rienna taking up the rearguard. “I was given to understand that we were here to witness a rousing turn of sportsmanship, but if you’re just going to bicker like this, we can just go home…”

Myfanwy was the same as ever—one of the few constants in all of existence was the fact that despite her having taken a few different forms over the unfathomably long expanse of her life, there was something immutable about her and her presence that never truly changed. Gareth had long since figured out that it was her eyes, eyes that only Her Majesty had ever successfully met and held the gaze of for any appreciable period without at best spontaneously combusting. In contrast, however, no amount of cosmetics or glamours could conceal the clear fatigue that was in very part of not only the prince’s face, but also her gait, stress pouring clearly out of every part of her as she walked over to her seat, a lesser replica of her throne in the Silvern Basilica, and plopped her rear down into it. There were dark circles under her eyes, their golden hue dulled.

Still, he was not so thoroughly without social graces that he would fail to accord them due honours. “Lady Myfanwy, Lady Charlotte. I trust the day finds you well?”

“I will be well when both my sisters are returned to me in full. If you cannot manage that, then perhaps it is best that you hold your tongue, lest you choke the air with your useless, empty prattling,” snapped the prince, her irritation turning her tone waspish, her voice harsh. Then she sighed, burying her head in her hands. “…I apologise. That was…unacceptable of me. My sister would certainly not have had such an outburst.”

“If I may, Your Grace, I’ve been the recipient of much worse vitriolic outbursts—Aranea here has you beat many times over in that department, if it makes you feel any better at all,” said Gareth, replying and consoling with a pause, but without hesitation. “I do not feel those words in need of apology. I must, however, both as Her Majesty’s friend and as an instrument of her will, express that she would be most displeased were she to hear you imply that you are obligated to act as she would instead of as you would.”

“I…” Then she sighed. “Thank you. You do her credit.”

“If I may interrupt this exercise in flagellation to express my own response,” Myfanwy began, a smirk equal parts bemused and irritated marking her interjection, “I find this day to be most agreeable at present, and I thank you for according to us both the pleasantries without resorting to avoidable obsequiousness. Top marks.”

“The presentation is beginning, Charlotte,” said Rienna, her voice stern as always.

“Thank you, Mother,” Charlotte replied with another sigh as she massaged her temples. “Well, shall we proceed? The sooner we begin, the sooner we can get this entire mess over and done with.”

Gareth took a moment to bow to Lady Rienna, to which the short-haired woman replied with a curt nod of acknowledgement, before turning to get into position as Charlotte’s princely mask slid seamlessly into place in the midst of her procession to the railing, Maria hopping off of the ledge to make room enough for her to see to her part of this performance. He looked down at the assembled adventurers and found his eyes zeroing in on his partner, her blend of musculature and curvature, crimson eyes and hair black as jet as unmistakable as the sunrise. The sight of her soothed him, and though her attention flickered to him for but a moment—she was, after all, still undercover—it still made his heart flip.

But so consumed was he in the prospect of imminent reunion that he very nearly missed the hissing gasp when Maria’s own mask of composure shattered, interest so intense it was very nearly violent filling her gaze as she stared at one person in particular—a highlander with silver hair and eyes, azure streaks beginning to come in rather quickly at the root and now halfway down some of her locks. “Who is that?!”

Gareth savoured her gawking for a moment of sweet satisfaction, before giving the reply he knew would dig under her skin most effectively. She would absolutely visit harm upon him for this, but he knew it would be so worth it. “Oh! Would you like me to introduce you?”

The look she used to pin him to the wall like one would a butterfly’s wings in a box was otherwise beyond description, and truly, only one word came to mind when he took the moment to silently gloat at it.

Priceless…

“My friends! Countrymen! Good people of the Free Cities! Welcome, one and all, to this historic event! The first tourney in a thousand years to take place here, in this very monument to past glories, Saint Haurchefant’s Amphitheatre!”

Gwenett’s voice indeed rang out wonderfully over the chattering crowd, drawing them to silence as they raptly bent their ears to listen. But, contrary to what Katsumi had thought that she understood about the situation, the dwarf woman was not the only herald—there had, apparently, been three, one from each participating city. The next voice to speak up was a woman named Cassandra; a hume hailing from the Republic of Bantamoor, she was, to Katsumi’s eyes, a personnage of glamourous trappings, her features lined with age but also profound kindness. Her voice spoke of training, possibly operatic, as she began to speak her piece. “We will have a series of duels between the foremost adventurers in the land, a spectacle worthy of this occasion, the marriage of Jeanne, the Duchess of Galatyn, and Maelnaulde’s very own sovereign, Prince Mercédès of the great and storied House Lucerne!”

Then, at last, there stepped forth a man most erudite, well-dressed but clearly quite aged, and with well-groomed hair turned snow-white with the passage of decades, bearing also an impressive moustache and a monocle over an aquiline pale blue eye—Professor Elessar, the current head of the Heirs of Zilart and the primary authority on the mysteries hidden in the labyrinthine, non-Euclidean expanse of the Xarcabard Necropolis, as she understood it. In lieu of a proper representative from Emberlet, he had volunteered to step in. He cleared his throat, and in the voice of a man who knew how to make himself heard in a lecture hall filled with unruly students, began to say his part. “This tourney will proceed in four rounds. The first round, which, together with the second, you will witness today, shall consist of eight matches. Once they have been concluded, the victors shall then proceed to the second round, which shall consist of four matches. The third round, which will consist of today’s victors, will be seen on the morrow, followed by the final round on the third day. The first match: from the Principality of Maelnaulde’s very own Order of the Laughing Tree, Katsumi of the Fallen Rain shall duel Kai’ri Nhul, of the Federation of Emberlet’s Red Branch, until one is forced to yield! Combatants, take your mark, and prepare yourselves!”

Katsumi was caught in Ástríðr’s sudden final embrace for a flash of a moment, before the Warp spell whisked all other combatants from the field—and as her image faded, she was able to decipher upon her lips a single word: Ganbare.

“Ganbarimasu, anata…” she whispered to herself fondly. Then she sighed, and turned to lock her gaze upon Kai’ri Nhul, her opponent in the upcoming match.

He spoke first, rubbing his palm against the nape of his neck as his feline ears twitched with awkward anxiety. “This is actually my first tournament like this, believe it or not. I’m not exactly sure what we’re supposed to say to each other, you know, to express good sportsmanship or whatever.”

Katsumi favoured him with a smile she hoped was reassuring. “I must confess to some level of profound inexperience with the circumstances, myself. But if I had to speculate, I have heard that some who fight for spectacle once said to their audience, ‘We, who are about to die, salute you.’”

“Really? That’s so cool! I like it!” he exclaimed. “It might be a little too morbid for the crowd, but it’s got me pumped up all the same. Let’s do this!”

The mystel slipped into a hand-to-hand stance of clearly monastic origin, an aggressive posture that appeared to be an attempt to invoke a dragon’s peerless capacity for destruction. She felt her conciliatory smile lowering into something halfway between a smirk and a grin, drew the fine and wicked-sharp ebon-hued blade of Deatheater from her back, and took her position, fully intent on answering his fighting spirit with her own. “Very well, then—it shall be as you wish. Run amok, to your heart’s content…”

“BEGIN!”