That was during stat determination. When Metal rolled for Idna's stats, she got a couple crits, essentially increasing her stats.
Regular crits in story don't change your stats, they might give you skills, but Metal Dragon already rolled Elsa's stats. A crit there wasn't gonna do anything to our Strength stat total.
[X] Ask Anna to introduce you to your cousin and the blond man. She knows more about them than yourself.
Finally
You hit your bed with a soft sigh of relaxation.
It'd been a long day. And by that, you meant that this was the most you'd ever interacted with people in one day.
Ever.
What didn't help was the fact that most of them were strangers.
How do I already feel this tired? You mentally groan, I slept for 2.5 years. Shouldn't that be enough?
But evidently, it wasn't. If you had to guess, it was due to all the stress you'd gone through today. Lunch had been a whirlwind of meeting and greeting new people. You could barely keep them all straight.
The actual feast you had with Uncle Fergus was great. Your Uncle Fergus who, it turned out, was also Jarl Fergus of Suðrland. The Dunbroch line, your mother's side of the family, was one of the Highland Noble Lines.
It seemed there was a fair difference between Highland Noble Lines and Lowland Noble Lines.
You didn't even know about the Islander Lines.
Still, you thought your Uncle Fergus was…
[ ] Write in...
But after that,
You asked Anna to introduce you to your cousin and the blond man.
Since she knew more about them than you, you figured it was a great idea for her to introduce you. And they'd interested you. Your cousin especially, since she was family.
Anna Introduction Roll: 94 + 15[Elsa] = 109 Crit!
98 + 9[Overflow] = 107
72 + 7 = 79
Double Crit!
(A/n: Jesus Christ, Anna)
It turned out, that was the right move, for a lot of reasons. One, your social skills...didn't really exist. Two, Anna actually had social skills. But three turned out to the be the fact that she didn't simply know them.
Over the years she'd gotten to befriend the blonde man, or as she introduced him, Knight-Commander Camulus, quite well. They'd gained a sort of student-teacher relationship in the more martial fields. He'd given her a bit of training, helping to learn her way around a blade. Apparently, he'd even let her practice marksmanship with his guns.
Anna really likes guns. You note. Which...probably explains why she liked Feuerpulver so much.
I can sense a trend.
I'm not sure if I like this trend.
And it seems the instant that Merida showed up, Anna latched onto her too. Or perhaps, given the way Merida seemed to do her best to break your sister's back, it was the other way around. Merida was a bright ball of energy and exuberance, much like your sister, but in an older form. Unlike your sister, however, she couldn't even give a decent attempt at hiding her emotions or thoughts, much like her father.
Apples and trees, as the Solgren apparently say.
But, much like the Knight-Commander, Anna had somehow managed to convince Merida to teach her a thing or two hunting, something Merida seemed to have taken up much like Anna took up books.
Though at this point, you have a feeling it was more learning in general, rather than just books.
With your sister's help, you managed to not completely bungle your own greeting.
Elsa Initial: 73 + 15[Anna] = 88
Major Success
Which is to say that you managed to succeed at the monumental task of say "Hi" without messing up.
Progress.
Still, Merida liked you.
Merida:
85
Major Success
She liked you a lot.
You could tell because of how she cracked your Frost Skin when she hugged you with a blindingly bright smile. Merida, it seemed, held the ideas of family and honor in high opinion. And since you were new family, she was...excited to meet you, something that was surprisingly tangible and almost intoxicating in its own sweet warmth.
Even if you were, quote, "Yer bult` lik' a tree o' twigs, sae malinky 'n' frail ye'll fall ower in a stuff breeze"
You know.
Whatever that meant.
Still, she offered to take the two of you to the ranges so you could learn a thing or two. Apparently, you weren't nearly strong enough to use a bow, but they told you a gun mostly just needed a steady hand and a good eye.
You weren't sure you had that either.
But hey, it might be fun.
And then there was Camulus.
Camulus: 13
Failure
Camulus...he put on a good show. He smiled. He waved. He seemed happy.
And that was more than enough for your sister and Merida.
But you?
You could see more.
You could see beneath the surface.
And you could Taste it.
Fear.
Waves of it. Almost overwhelming. Contained, but raging inside his heart. When Camulus looked at you, he felt fear. Almost enough fear to drive him to act.
Idna Influence: 56 + 54[Your Mother is Terrifying] = 110
96+10 = 106
95+6 = 101
7 + 1 = 8
Triple Crit!
Then he took one glance at your mother. And the moment you saw her smile, you felt a spike of absolute Terror. It was like the strike of lightning, so intense that just standing by and watching it, you felt a measure of its terrible power.
A shiver went down your spine as you recalled your mother's smile, if it could even be called that.
But when Camulus turned back to you, you could tell he was trying twice as hard to be nice, despite the terror in his soul.
You gulp, still feeling the aftershocks of it now.
But...that wasn't the worst part. Yes, the fear he exudes when he looked at you stung, yes it gouged another scar in your heart, yes it made you ache to see another person feel so much fear just by looking at you, just because of something you couldn't control. And yes, it made you just want to curl up into a ball, to hide in your room so wouldn't know that pain again.
But the worst part?
Elsa Reaction: 27
Failure
The worst part was the flavor.
Fear...fear had a unique taste. One that, earlier, you had no place for. It was sweet, yet bitter, but in both unique and fascinating ways.
It was only until you tried some of the later dishes that you found something to compare it to.
Chocolate, a dark and bittersweet confection brought by the chef from Corona. It was so much like how Fear felt.
And you hated how much you loved it.
You hated how that bitter taste always left you wanting more. You hated how the sweetness, no, richness overwhelmed your sanity.
For a moment, just a moment, when you tasted that fear?
All you wanted was more.
It's just a tool you clench your fist, doing all you could to push such dark thoughts from your mind. It's just a tool. I control it, it doesn't control me.
It's the truth you think, it has to be.
After a few moments of concentration, you let out a breath, letting your fist unclench as you release your darker thoughts.
Instead, you try to look at better things. The other two you met.
The first person was your Aunt Caitlyn, the woman with pale blond hair. Apparently, she was your father's sister. She looked much younger than him, but you could see the family resemblance. You have a feeling that pale blond hair was something inherent in the Lothbrok lineage, much like red in the Dunbroch.
Caitlyn: 72
Pass
But, unlike your father, she seemed a lot more emotional. Not like your mother and her side of the family, not exactly, anyways. There was a kind of...formality, in her. A loftiness in her every word. It probably came from her being from the royal Lothbrok line. Having a kind of instilled high born and noble air in her every thought and action.
Despite that she was loud, happy, and just as warm as your mother, in her own way. They were very similar, but mother seemed to have more a soft and kind warmth, while Caitlyn had a fiery personality that demanded she laugh, smile, and talk with everyone she could.
Which, of course, meant you were dragged into her little whirlwind of fun, if only for a moment.
And while it was confusing, disorienting, and bewildering, you had to admit...it wasn't that bad.
So you liked her.
The golden blonde woman on the other hand…
Nereia Baldaren: 6
Major Failure
She did not like you.
Not even a little bit.
Oh, she tried to hide it behind a smile, but the cracks in her mask were painfully obvious. It wasn't hatred or anger, it was fear.
The same fear Camulus had.
When you found out that she was Camulus's wife, that, in a way, only deepened the mystery. Sure, it explained why only those two held such fear of you, but it didn't explain why that fear existed at all.
Camulus, could, at least hide it, bury it down where only you or your mother might see. But the way she cringed when you addressed her, the way she flinched when you approached her? Even Anna was able to pick up on it.
And it hurt seeing that fear in her. It hurt seeing the two of them spike in such terror just by your presence.
But not as much as meeting your father.
Agnar: 20
Failure
Not as much as feeling his fear.
Not as much as looking into his tired heart, into his tired eyes, and seeing a man who was desperately trying to do right by you, but betrayed by his own humanity.
It was just a glimpse really. A peek at him from across the hall. But your eyes met, and in that moment you saw all you needed to.
You wanted to go up to talk to him, to try and comfort him. You wanted to take away his pain, because you still loved him, and he hadn't given up on you. Not yet.
But...you couldn't.
You just couldn't muster up the courage. Not when you saw that flicker of pain in his eyes. Not when your mind flashed back to the moment where you killed that man right before him.
He knew it, you knew it.
You were dangerous, deadly, and far more powerful than he could hope to be on his own.
And that inhumanity scared him. As much as he might want to love you, you scared him, and you scared him for very good reasons.
I can't even blame him, you think with a bitter snort. I'd be scared too.
You bite down on your lip, smothering a sob. You couldn't feel sorry for yourself, not with Anna and your mother there. You were alone. Scared and worried, but not alone.
Not anymore.
So, with your mind calmed and your heart unclenched, you finally let go of the tethers of reality, and let sleep consume you, you fell to darkness.
And woke up in a dream.
…
What do you dream of?
[ ] The Betrayed
[ ] The Lost
[ ] The Hidden
A/n:
Not how you expected the chapter to go?
Well that makes two of us.
If you're wondering why it took so long for this chapter to come out, it's because this isn't how I envisioned the chapter going when I started plotting it out.
It was going to be a present-tense, in the moment, play-by-play thing. So after three rewrites and almost a week of little to no progress, I decided that that just wasn't working for me. So I tried something else.
That something else being that I just wrap things up before they get too out of hand and I spend months of time and dozens of chapters on one goddamn day.
So, yeah, day's wrapped up and you get the summary of what happened. And, as a result of this, I rolled to see how things would go when you met the rest of the guests there.
As you can see, not exactly great.
I mean, I'm laughing my ass off, but you? This is more of a problem for you
In any case, next there shall be an Interlude of sorts, and in this vote, you get to pick which one!
No, I won't give you any more hints because I'm not confident that I'm clever enough to give you a hint without it being stupidly obvious.
And right now, I'm really tired. Way too tired, in fact, I should not be conscious right now.
So I won't. I'm going the fuck to sleep. I've probably made some mistakes as I wrote basically the whole chapter in one caffeine induced typing sprint, and now I'm paying the price.
Probably, anyways.
So goodnight, all. Hopefully, this is still good enough despite the fact I had to cut the more in-depth version out.
Later I'll post a side-character sheet so you guys can keep everyone straight.
Adhoc vote count started by Metaldragon868 on Oct 7, 2017 at 7:37 AM, finished with 1191 posts and 10 votes.
Its really disappointing to see those fail pass if only we did not go for Anna first, otherwise best mum would give us a better impression with everyone. Sigh it annoys me a lot that we fail with the father, a new beginning not really.
SO... Daddy issues are escalating, Mrs Camulus is terrifies of us and Camulus was only stopped by Idna from making a scene because he also thinks we are a monster... And to top it all FEAR is to us what chocolate is to normal girls!
This is perfect! Disney has never been so dreadfully funny!
