Gods' sake, Raphael, I thought we agreed on you not pulling any more of these ridiculous stunts.
>[User AureliaHK signed off.]
>[User GreggoMan was kicked by admin RaphaelHK / reason: “Come back when you're ready to act your age, father.”]
>[User GreggoMan joined at 10:02:34 PM CelST]
>/quit
>[User RaphaelHK signed off.]
Chapter 19
The Fencer's Tale
September 6th, 7:30 PM, on the outskirts of La Toza. The trailer park was dead silent, with the exception of the occasional Orthodox hymn amidst candlelight. The nightmares of five years ago weren't forgotten so easily.
No two people process grief in the same way, and elves were no exception to this rule. Mischa used his new runic paint on the Doomwagon, making some modifications on the bottom of the chassis. His work was distracting enough; if Mischa couldn't forget his grief, his machines could drown it out. And he was temporarily out of liquor, so the more obvious option wasn't available.
Inside the Doomwagon, however...
Halfway into their fifth pizza, Branwen had a question for Era: “What was the Fall of Rosencrace, anyhow?”
Like that, the interior of the Doomwagon went completely silent, and everyone's hopes of a relaxing, distracting night in were dashed.
Era froze. Noah gasped. The plate broke in Liv's hand.
Branwen's face turned red. “Ah, vogdammit. Just when I’m non-berserkery for a few minutes, that actually comes out of my mouth. In words, no less. Sorry, Era.”
“I mean, at this point...” Era turned to Liv. “I know you lost your dad in the Fall, so if I brought it up here, would it be too much?”
Liv shook her head. “My dad died quickly and painlessly when the Grand Palace blew up. But that's the most I know, and I feel like there are a bunch of different, conflicting versions. Truth be told, I'm not convinced what exactly happened, either.”
“How about, let's not talk about this anymore,” said Noah. “I don't wanna make Era uncomfortable.”
Suddenly, Era piped up: “You know, I wouldn't mind telling you what happened, at least from my end.”
“You sure, Slasher?”
Era chuckled. “I mean, I'm pretty tight with you guys, I don't think I'd mind as much as I would have a few months ago. Maybe it's something I need to get out of my system, right? And this way, you could know what actually happened, five years ago today.”
“Take your time,” said Noah.
Era sighed through his teeth, already regretting this. “Yeah, one step at a time. A little background, to start you off—I feel like jumping right to the meaty bits would give me a panic attack. Let’s start it off as far back as possible…”
“I was born on the 25th of May, 5192. The next day, my mom divorced my dad. From what I heard, she caught the eye of Emperor Pietro (granted, he was blind, but he must have fallen in love with something about her) and ran off to be one of his consorts.
To be fair, we were living in a mold-soaked boarding house in the slums of Nabucco, so life with the Emperor might have been an upgrade. Or a downgrade, considering that Pietro probably didn't see his concubines as people. But from what I heard, my dad wasn't an ideal husband himself (he might have had an affair with my mom's mom).
Either way, I was Mischa Gualtieri's problem.
I did have a mother figure, I guess. My sister, Papagena. “Gena” for short, pronounced like “Gina” but spelled with an E. She's ten years older than me. She has this long, pointy nose like a bird, and a huge mane of flowing black hair, but other than that, she's very small-bodied, and lots of people mistook her for a much younger girl well into her teen years.
Gena's one of the chillest people I know. I mean, not that many people pick that up. She hardly ever smiles, even when she's happy. Usually, she has this intense look on her face, like she's trying to read some really tiny print, and people who don't really know her think she's angry and bitter all the time, like she's getting ready to stab the next person who looks at her funny.
She's a...I guess “thinker” would be a good way to put it. “Intellectual” would just sound sarcastic. She spent most of her time thinking about stuff, not saying much. Daydreaming. Mainly plans, “what-ifs,” and the third path, like Lutero Gualtieri.
Speaking of Lutero, she's his biggest fan, and always read his essays to me instead of bedtime stories. I didn't understand a lick of them until I was a teenager. But on those bad nights when the sound of wind drake attacks or dueling in the street would wake me up, or we were traveling and she, Dad, and I couldn't find an actual bed to sleep in, I could only go back to sleep to the sound of her voice, talking about something she admired.
If that's not home, I don't know what is.
When Gena got to be about 17, and I got to be about seven, she picked up psychokinetic fencing. She was too old and too not-a-boy for Mt. Colibri Academy for Boys, so she learned from Uncle Alessio, who went there as a kid. She picked it up very quickly; she was a regular savant with the ol' movin' swords with your mind business.
You know how I always use a Schiavona, and sometimes a parrying dagger? Each fencer has a particular weapon and fighting style that they adopt as their schtick. Her favorite weapon was a one-handed Rosencracian bullfighting sword, called an “estoc” or a “spiker” depending on who you asked. It was more of a sword shaped spear than a sword—one sharpened point, and no edges. It was the best kind of sword for when you needed to do a lot of damage with as few strikes as possible.
When she got into non-lethal competitive dueling, we found some financial stability with her prize money. Instead of cupping our hands and screaming over long distances to each other, we had cell phones. Instead of sneaking onto public transit without a ticket, we had a van. Instead of sleeping in cheap hotels and underpasses, we had...well, a van.
We would follow her to every tournament. She went around Rosencrace in our little tour van—the original Doomwagon, in a way. Her fencing name was “La Matadorina,” though I'm not sure how grammatically correct that was. She had this gaudy bullfighter costume, and her schtick was taking down burly, testosterone fueled warriors twice her size with nothing but her wits, her charisma, and a pointy stick—kind of like an actual bullfighter, minus the animal cruelty.
So that I could defend myself
in hypothetical schoolyard fights, she taught me the trap strike when I was young—it was her signature technique in the ring. Granted, I didn't know how to psychic fence, but with a few adjustments, it works with other types of fighting, too. The basic principle is using an opponent's own kinetic energy against them to have them charge head-on into your weapon, dispatching a larger, stronger, and more threatening opponent with only minimal effort on your part.
I wanted to be just like her.
In September after my twelfth birthday, I went to Mt. Colibri Academy to become a full-fledged fencer. I thought I would have been happier to do so, but Gena had gone off to college in San Cyro, dropping out of competitive dueling to study law. Understandable, as that was more of a stable way to get income for the family than relying on a winning streak.
But it was the first time in my life where my sister wasn't by my side at all times. When she left in August of 5204, she gave me a big hug and told me it wasn't really goodbye. She'd keep in touch on social media and it would be as if she was still there.
Even then, sitting in my top bunk at the academy late at night, talking with her on my laptop, it wasn't the same. I felt like her being in my life was me, if that makes any sense. That was my entire identity. On my own, I wasn't anyone. I often joked that if I were a superhero, I would be called “sidekick boy.”
That's why it was all the more startling when aspects of my actual personality started to come out. I was a bitter kid. Whenever something went wrong in my life, my first thought would be about how “unfairly” I was being treated.
I didn't have many friends, just the other guys on the fencing team. My best friend was Dario Parra—the brawn to my self-proclaimed brains. He was twice my size, and his favorite sword to use was a two-handed claymore. Hardly ever said much, but he liked my jokes. Even when things got rough and I lost my cool, it was nice to have a strong, stoic guy like him on my side. Sometimes I wonder if he survived the Fall.
Our coach was a famous athlete in his own right—Giordan “Jordy” Halfmoon. His stage name was “Dark Sun Jordy,” and he had this whole mysterious eclipse motif about him, with a pair of curved swords. My sister lost to him a couple of times. No one could fling a scimitar quite like him.
Jordy couldn't compete anymore, so he taught others how to fight like him. He was forced into retirement from dueling after a really nasty scandal involving his now ex-wife came up. Every time he lost a duel, he'd get drunk off his ass, go home, and use her as a punching bag.
Jordy always said the charges were false, and often complained that his wife was just a gold digger after his fighting money. Either way, they ended the case with a cash settlement, and the National Gladiator Association (NGA, their logo's this cute little dagger) banned him from competitive dueling for life.
In retrospect, he totally did beat his wife. But you couldn't tell us that then; everyone on his team idolized him, myself included, and we could never imagine that someone as cool and honorable as Coach Jordy could do something so terrible.
When his true colors came out, it was already too late for me.
Anyway, to move swords with your mind, the first thing you gotta do is go through the week long initiation rite, said to be the most terrifying experience on Luminar (I mean, it was scary, but it's mainly the anticipation that gets ya). The content of the rite, traditionally, is supposed to be kept a secret to initiates. Those who know what awaits them in Mt. Colibri Academy's Sealed Dormitory are forbidden from taking part; it would ruin the surprise.
Fortunately, seeing as the Sealed Dorm became Ruined Building Number 370 during the Fall, I'm no longer bound to secrecy, so...
Dario and I came to the steel bulkhead guarding the Sealed Dorm an hour early—we were way too excited to join the fencing team. Dario was a literal-minded kinda guy. He thought the fear of the Sealed Dorm was just an old superstition. Me, I was less scared and more curious.
The three other initiates—Bartok, Jesse, and Rodrigo—had to be dragged there kicking and screaming. In retrospect, I think they had a better idea of what was beyond the door.
Coach Jordy told us to remain absolutely silent as we entered. He opened the bulkhead, and it was underwhelming at first. The Sealed Dorm was just that, a dark, dusty, abandoned dorm wing of the academy, sealed off from the rest of the building with all the windows locked and barred.
The rules were simple: we had to bring enough food for seven days, and spend a week in that building, going about our business as usual.
Just before Coach Jordy closed the door and locked it for a week, he left us with parting words I'll never forget:
“The first lesson of dueling: physical pain is temporary.”
He slammed the bulkhead shut, and the resulting noise woke up tens of thousands of sleeping daggerflies from their hibernation. They poured out the walls and furniture like the whole building was bleeding internally, and the sound of our screams just made them angrier.
Now, here's the thing about daggerflies...”
[Bestiary — Daggerfly]
[Type: Insect]
[HP: 1]
[Weaknesses: Everything, though it's not much consolation, to be honest]
[Description: The daggerfly is both the weakest and most feared monster in Rosencrace. Its body is five centimeters long, two centimeters of which make for the stinger. It's notorious for its extremely painful (and non-lethal) sting. The pain from a single sting can last for up to four hours. To make matters worse, daggerfly venom contains a serum that temporarily prevents the body from going into shock.]
Noah cringed. “That's certainly one explanation for your pain tolerance,” he said.
“The pain wasn't the worst part,” said Era. “After my week was up and I became a full-fledged psychokinetic fencer, I learned that the daggerfly's venom is actually the catalyst for someone learning how to control your weapon with your mind.”
“What's so bad about that?”
“I talked to my sister afterward, and it turns out you can just order daggerfly venom online, drink it, and get the same effect without any pain. As terrible (and, according to Gena, unnecessary) as it was, I always thought Coach Jordy had a point about the whole ‘pain being temporary’ thing.
The five of us stuck together in the daggerfly-infested building and helped each other through the swarm. Whenever we weren't shrieking for our moms and dads, we were excited. From some notes scattered throughout the building, we learned that this venom was the source of our new powers, so we struggled to endure as much of its blessing as we could. With a definite date and time on our freedom, we could have something amazing to look forward to.
It was terrifying, but it's one of those experiences that I like to remember when things get rough. I just go, “I could handle the daggerflies, so I can handle this.”
After it was over, Coach Jordy took his scimitar and gave us two ceremonial dueling scars on our cheeks, “to show the rest of the world that you walked into Hell, and left without needing bandages,” or something. This was our last initiation into our dueling team, the Mt. Colibri Hummingbirds.
Thing is, that's how I deal with physical pain.
Emotional pain is something I have next to no mastery over.
Two years and many fencing tournaments later, I had a new archnemesis: Tobias Pent (never Toby). He was my sister's classmate at the San Cyro College of Justice, and well on his way to becoming the youngest District Attorney in San Cyro's history. And he was ripped—I used to think he did bodybuilding in his spare time, but turns out, he just really liked doing manual labor. He thought it was the moral obligation of all men. Those abs, though.
Thing is, Rosencrace is part of the Northwestern Orthodox Church, which is already restrictive enough. Atheism is still technically punishable by fine. But Tobias was a part of the North by Northwestern Orthodox Church, which comes from secluded villages in the far Northern mountains of Rosencrace. They're iced over all year, there's no public transportation or highways, and the most commo
n monster is the blizzard dragon. In short, the entire planet wants to kill you. When that's your day-to-day life, the only explanation you'll be able to think of is this: you and your family are in the Gods’ frozen torture school, and the only way out is to get straight A's in all your misery classes.
As a result, Tobias was basically Noah's evil twin. Replace all the kindness, love thy neighbor, and “I need a priest” with solemnity, fire and brimstone, and “you need a beheading,” and there stands the good Mr. Pent. He saw married women as their husband's property, he saw unmarried women as their father's property, and thought that all of society's problems could be solved if we gave disobedient children the death penalty.
And for some ungodly, inexplicable reason, Gena, a liberal atheist, fell in love with him.
“Probably the abs,” said Liv.
“Probably. Whatever the reason, I didn't trust the guy. Gena would post pictures of them on Countenance* all like, “I'm so lucky, heart heart heart” and when Tobias posted the same picture, he'd be all, “THIS IS MY WOMAN”—all caps.
*(Countenance was this social network exclusive to Rosencrace. It was wiped off the internet after its server rooms were destroyed in the Fall).
Gena loved him, so I kept telling myself she's smart, so maybe she sees something in him that I don't.
Last week of July, 5206. It was summer break and in between fencing meets, so I was home with my dad. He had finally landed a decent job as an automancer, so we were living in a middle class apartment in one of the less roach-infested parts of Nabucco.
We heard Gena was coming home to introduce us to her boyfriend. I couldn't wait to show her my Schiavona, my initiation scars, and all the wonderful new techniques I learned at Mt. Colibri.
We opened the door and Gena wasn't there, just Tobias.
“Are you this Toby guy?” asked Dad. “Name's Mischa. Gena's told us a lot about—”
Tobias grabbed Dad's hand, dropped a check for 5,000 G in it, and said “She is mine now.”
Neverstone: A LitRPG Adventure (The Mad Elf Book 1) Page 27
