owlmessenger
Parts Guy Extraordinaire
- Location
- New York
Yes, I failed reading comprehension there.
A Practical Guide to a Cushy Retirement ( Youjo Senki/APGTE )
- Thread starter Raiseth
- Start date
- Fantasy
About Catherine’s Second Aspect
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Crossposted from SB since, eh
This is probably interesting to you, too, so:
Hye Su, the Ranger, has the same first Aspect as Catherine, only their applications are diametrically opposite.
Catherine Learns everything not pertaining to direct combat, while Hye's been seen to Learn only combat techniques. The kicker is, it happens in active combat, so the effect is activated, but the actual benefits are passive, meaning they stay with her forever.
Strive is like that, a little or more than a little.
It's activated with one degree of separation. Meaning, that whatever Catherine is doing right now, either needs to be directly threatening to her life, or her failure to accomplish the task will pose a direct and real possibility that she will die as a result.
The task should be related to direct combat. Infiltration, assassination, duel, assault, skirmish, large-scale battle with her as a commander or a direct participant, all fall in this category, with an amendment that the latter only works if she commands from the front, so to speak, instead of sitting in a tent and giving her orders from there.
The caveat is that it doesn't make Catherine immediately stronger or more robust.
Like, if someone blasted her with magic, or stabbed her from behind, or poisoned her with one of the few poisons that work on Named despite their general immunity, it wouldn't actually make her less stabbable or more resistant to poisons or magic. It allows her to dodge faster, to hear someone sneaking up on her better, to be more sensitive to the smells of poisons in her food and drink. It also serves as a sort of an early-warning system, sorta a message that if this Aspects activates, either what she's doing is dangerous or she is in danger in general.
But the danger has to come from malicious intent of another person. So, like, a trap set up to kill or maim would trigger the Aspect, but her climbing up a cliff and falling from it would not, because in the latter case the danger is environmental and self-inflicted.
Same with the deep-diving or trying to breathe toxic fumes around the Kingdom of the Dead. ( the latter example is non-intuitive, but the intent needs to be actively malicious instead of just a byproduct of another action. So yes, someone could accidentally kill Catherine and the Aspect wouldn't activate, but someone maneuvering another person so that they would accidentally kill her with their actions would trigger it. If you somehow elongate the chain by another person, though, somehow, it wouldn't work. One degree of separation. )
So, the actual mechanism. If the dueler has good chances to kill her, the Aspect activates. With each strike she blocks or parries, she becomes a little better at blocking and parrying and keeping overall balance. With each riposte or attack she makes, she becomes better at attacking and riposting, duh.
If someone who pursues her is very likely to kill her if they catch up, the Aspect activates. With each step she takes, she becomes a little bit faster, a little bit better at controlling her stamina.
A disclaimer is that it doesn't actually make her more physically able, just more able to apply what physique she already has more efficiently, if that makes sense. She has a cap for her physical abilities, well above superhuman, but still. However, her skills don't. They gradually improve, slower and slower from outside perspective, but never actually stop, eventually leading into fighting with inhuman grace and precision at an indeterminate but very long amount of time in the future.
The main difference between Hye and Catherine in this regard is that Hye copies, perfects and transcends her enemy's efforts, while Catherine is largely self-contained and just gains insight on how to become deadlier using her own means, including what she's learned already. A bit of a fine point, I guess, but it's still there.
If she sneaks to stab someone in the back, the Aspect doesn't activate preemptively. Unless someone threatens to kill her if she fails and has a good chance to act on it. If the assassination fails, and the target is good at fighting, the Aspect does activate immediately.
If she plans an attack with herself as a direct participant and a good chance to die during or as a direct result of it, the Aspect activates, allowing her to notice more details about the plan. It never actually suggests anything to improve on it, but makes it easier to notice mistakes, especially post factum, and correct them, if Catherine knows enough to realize what would be a mistake in the first place.
I am being pretty exhaustive here to demonstrate that the Aspect is actually very defined and somewhat strict, with limitations on how useful it is and in what situations it's applicable.
The Aspect lasts for as long as her life is in danger, and can stretch for as long as one battle engagement lasts. What an engagement is, is pretty well defined. A skirmish or a series of skirmishes between two armies will count into the larger conflict if they plan to fight seriously soon enough, but if they disengage and maneuver around for a week, the Aspect counts the skirmish itself as an engagement and only if Catherine is in the thick of it, again.
It also has intensity. It, I guess you can say, hibernates, between the periods of active conflicts or planning, with just an overall boost to wakefulness and alertness. Which, incidentally, makes her twitchier and more irritable the longer it's active, but we're talking days here, like, starting from three.
It's also quite possible to just utterly exhaust Catherine. It makes her fight sleep with increasing skill of a professional insomniac, but sooner or later your organism has to shut down despite your best efforts to stay awake. If that happens, the Aspect crashes together with her and becomes utterly unusable until she recuperates enough. So yes, normally, it would react to someone trying to stab her in her sleep, but in this eventuality, it will not.
Lastly, it won't activate if the opponent isn't trying to kill Catherine at any point in their plan or trap.
Sedatives work ( whichever, again, still work on Named ).
Nonlethal traps work.
Lies work.
Truth also works.
If the opponent fights her and wants to subdue her or just isn't serious about it ( serious meaning actively trying to kill her ), it also works.
Anything resulting in her capture by someone who isn't going to kill her would work.
The moment her opponent changes the mind about not killing stuff, the Aspect activates.
Just saying again, but probably even half of this isn't going to be relevant in the story itself.
This is probably interesting to you, too, so:
Hye Su, the Ranger, has the same first Aspect as Catherine, only their applications are diametrically opposite.
Catherine Learns everything not pertaining to direct combat, while Hye's been seen to Learn only combat techniques. The kicker is, it happens in active combat, so the effect is activated, but the actual benefits are passive, meaning they stay with her forever.
Strive is like that, a little or more than a little.
It's activated with one degree of separation. Meaning, that whatever Catherine is doing right now, either needs to be directly threatening to her life, or her failure to accomplish the task will pose a direct and real possibility that she will die as a result.
The task should be related to direct combat. Infiltration, assassination, duel, assault, skirmish, large-scale battle with her as a commander or a direct participant, all fall in this category, with an amendment that the latter only works if she commands from the front, so to speak, instead of sitting in a tent and giving her orders from there.
The caveat is that it doesn't make Catherine immediately stronger or more robust.
Like, if someone blasted her with magic, or stabbed her from behind, or poisoned her with one of the few poisons that work on Named despite their general immunity, it wouldn't actually make her less stabbable or more resistant to poisons or magic. It allows her to dodge faster, to hear someone sneaking up on her better, to be more sensitive to the smells of poisons in her food and drink. It also serves as a sort of an early-warning system, sorta a message that if this Aspects activates, either what she's doing is dangerous or she is in danger in general.
But the danger has to come from malicious intent of another person. So, like, a trap set up to kill or maim would trigger the Aspect, but her climbing up a cliff and falling from it would not, because in the latter case the danger is environmental and self-inflicted.
Same with the deep-diving or trying to breathe toxic fumes around the Kingdom of the Dead. ( the latter example is non-intuitive, but the intent needs to be actively malicious instead of just a byproduct of another action. So yes, someone could accidentally kill Catherine and the Aspect wouldn't activate, but someone maneuvering another person so that they would accidentally kill her with their actions would trigger it. If you somehow elongate the chain by another person, though, somehow, it wouldn't work. One degree of separation. )
So, the actual mechanism. If the dueler has good chances to kill her, the Aspect activates. With each strike she blocks or parries, she becomes a little better at blocking and parrying and keeping overall balance. With each riposte or attack she makes, she becomes better at attacking and riposting, duh.
If someone who pursues her is very likely to kill her if they catch up, the Aspect activates. With each step she takes, she becomes a little bit faster, a little bit better at controlling her stamina.
A disclaimer is that it doesn't actually make her more physically able, just more able to apply what physique she already has more efficiently, if that makes sense. She has a cap for her physical abilities, well above superhuman, but still. However, her skills don't. They gradually improve, slower and slower from outside perspective, but never actually stop, eventually leading into fighting with inhuman grace and precision at an indeterminate but very long amount of time in the future.
The main difference between Hye and Catherine in this regard is that Hye copies, perfects and transcends her enemy's efforts, while Catherine is largely self-contained and just gains insight on how to become deadlier using her own means, including what she's learned already. A bit of a fine point, I guess, but it's still there.
If she sneaks to stab someone in the back, the Aspect doesn't activate preemptively. Unless someone threatens to kill her if she fails and has a good chance to act on it. If the assassination fails, and the target is good at fighting, the Aspect does activate immediately.
If she plans an attack with herself as a direct participant and a good chance to die during or as a direct result of it, the Aspect activates, allowing her to notice more details about the plan. It never actually suggests anything to improve on it, but makes it easier to notice mistakes, especially post factum, and correct them, if Catherine knows enough to realize what would be a mistake in the first place.
I am being pretty exhaustive here to demonstrate that the Aspect is actually very defined and somewhat strict, with limitations on how useful it is and in what situations it's applicable.
The Aspect lasts for as long as her life is in danger, and can stretch for as long as one battle engagement lasts. What an engagement is, is pretty well defined. A skirmish or a series of skirmishes between two armies will count into the larger conflict if they plan to fight seriously soon enough, but if they disengage and maneuver around for a week, the Aspect counts the skirmish itself as an engagement and only if Catherine is in the thick of it, again.
It also has intensity. It, I guess you can say, hibernates, between the periods of active conflicts or planning, with just an overall boost to wakefulness and alertness. Which, incidentally, makes her twitchier and more irritable the longer it's active, but we're talking days here, like, starting from three.
It's also quite possible to just utterly exhaust Catherine. It makes her fight sleep with increasing skill of a professional insomniac, but sooner or later your organism has to shut down despite your best efforts to stay awake. If that happens, the Aspect crashes together with her and becomes utterly unusable until she recuperates enough. So yes, normally, it would react to someone trying to stab her in her sleep, but in this eventuality, it will not.
Lastly, it won't activate if the opponent isn't trying to kill Catherine at any point in their plan or trap.
Sedatives work ( whichever, again, still work on Named ).
Nonlethal traps work.
Lies work.
Truth also works.
If the opponent fights her and wants to subdue her or just isn't serious about it ( serious meaning actively trying to kill her ), it also works.
Anything resulting in her capture by someone who isn't going to kill her would work.
The moment her opponent changes the mind about not killing stuff, the Aspect activates.
Just saying again, but probably even half of this isn't going to be relevant in the story itself.
Interlude: Reckless Paradise
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
"One grace: Victory. One sin: Defeat."
-The motto of the modern Legions of Terror.
"Companies!" Captain Hasan, also colloquially known as Ratface, called out. "Salute!"
This, he mused, was the day ( or evening, if he wanted to indulge in pedantry ) of surprises for everyone.
He still could recall Hellhound's flabbergasted expression, when he'd been dragged before her from the prison pens to explain why the fuck he'd given the order to bombard the fortress with combat-grade magical rituals during a godsdamned training exercise.
It was, he freely admitted, one of the few pleasant memories he'd carry with himself from his sordid captaincy. He wasn't planning on prolonging it, in any case.
Much less pleasantly, Juniper had been this close to order to drag the prisoners atop the western wall and use them as live shields against his company's improvised artillery.
He didn't know what stopped her exactly, but he could surmise.
Firstly, the logistics of herding thirty unwilling people, some of them orcs at that, who would definitely resist for all it's worth, were going to be a nightmare.
Secondly, the spells hadn't killed anybody, even if they injured quite a few cadets. Ratface was not a tactical genius, but even he understood that this mean whoever was aiming the spells was being soft on the First Company. This was still a training exercise, not that different from before, and considering they were allowed to use goblin ammunition with reduced yields and lay traps that killed and maimed a few dozen cadets every year, this was arguably much safer than their normal activities. At least, you could say, the mages firing the ritual were quite evidently not trying to kill them. Regarding quite a lot of cadets in other companies… he had doubts.
The third point was what he had told Juniper himself: he knew the resident Claimant of his company, not personally, not very well, in fact, he had tried to avoid her as much as one possibly could avoid a nominal subordinate under his command while not being obvious about it.
And from what he knew, he could say that he didn't believe placing them in front of her would actually stop her or even appreciably slow her down, and swear on it before the Gods Below themselves.
Tanya was… chillingly polite. Monstrously meticulous. Hellishly relentless. Her lifeless eyes bore inside his soul each time she suggested another insane strategy that would surely bear fruit and win them a game. To give her credit, they were certainly not bad strategies, in principle. With any other company, they could certainly be tried and would undoubtedly provide no small amount of success to the one who was insane enough, and more importantly, skilled enough, to implement them.
A few ideas that would have probably resulted in half of his company dead by the end of the exercise, he stopped listening. Whatever infernal knowledge Gods Below chose to whisper in the ears of the little talking jar of goblinfire he had the misfortune to call his sergeant, but he wanted no part of it.
She almost always wore a pleasant expression of a well-fed tiger, alternating it only with an "irritated, but not murderous tiger" and an absolute lack of any expression whatsoever. Ratface could feel his lifespan shortening with each passing day he had retained his command while Tanya was undoubtedly coming up with more and more inventive plans to murder him.
Nowhere in that overly long description, could he find the words "merciful" or even "hesitant".
Honestly, relinquishing his command was going to be a tremendous relief, now that he had a ready pretext and a suitable successor.
Lieutenant Callow.
He glanced back at the small figure walking beside him. She winked at him gamely, looking for all the world like an ordinary young woman with a lot to prove and not that much behind her shoulders. Not as the one, who he'd been told came with the insanely dangerous plan he would have rather expected from Tanya Degurechaff in the first place.
She had guts, he had to admit, not only to come up with the plan but to give herself the most dangerous role in it, too. Running across a killing field of traps, jumping over the moat as if she hadn't even noticed it was there, smashing through the legionary wall to climb and bludgeon her way to the top of the tower…
He chuckled, a little ruefully. If nothing else, they were going to have a good synergy with each other. More so, if what Sergeant Hakram had said was true. He'd give it a coin toss they wouldn't all end up under the ground by the end of the next term.
They must have fucked Callow up pretty seriously if those were the sort of girls who came from there to attend the War College.
She raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly in response to his thoughts, but much more probably, or at least he hoped so, due to his chuckle. He waved her off and turned his head back to look forward and savor a little more of Juniper's constipated face.
Unfortunately for him, she already managed to twist her mien into something more presentable.
"Not how I expected it to go," he said freely, yet like admitting to an embarrassing secret of his he no longer cared about.
"You could say that again," Juniper not-quite growled, her face, to his short-lived delight, twisting in a grimace for a few heartbeats. "Let's just… get this over with."
She turned towards her legionaries, starting one of the few rituals universally accepted by all the cadets in War College.
"One sin!" She exclaimed.
"Defeat!" They called back, a little sullen they had to after such a long string of victories.
"One grace!" Ratface shouted, grinning.
"Victory!" His company screamed as one, all of them banging on their shields with their swords or butting their staves against the hard earth, everyone exultant to have an occasion to do it after a long, long time.
Well, almost everyone. Even then, he could see Tanya… smiling, if only faintly.
Ratface carefully suppressed his shudders and averted his eyes. Instead, he chose to go about the much more cheerful business of explaining Lieutenant Callow what she needed to do to complete the ritual, now that she was going to be their captain, and gloating silently at Juniper for however long she would sulk, etching every moment in his memory.
It was the middle of the night, and the celebration was in full swing. Rat Company weren't the only ones feasting, her own cadets mingling freely between them, all grudges and worries forgotten, if only for the night. It probably helped that they still had a comfortable lead of three to five points between themselves and Wolf Company, depending on how Aisha's match had gone. Very probably three. She was going against Morok, and it would be a sorry day indeed when Aisha lost to him during a game of pathfinding.
She would be marginally more worried for her if it was a straight-up battle since the bastard had somehow managed to shuffle the roster enough he got himself a full tenth of ogres this year, but pathfinding? Morok could probably find his way to his own ass, in the middle of the day, if the room was well-lit and he had two lieutenants to help him. Probably. Maybe. It was not outside the realm of possible.
Juniper was a woman enough to acknowledge if only to herself, that she was sulking and distracting herself when she probably should just get drunk and go to sleep if celebrating was out of the question.
Instead, she was sitting in front of the fire and thinking about the last two days. It wasn't particularly productive.
What rankled her the most — aside from the defeat itself, if she was to be completely honest with herself, because that smarted a lot— was… her loss of initiative, she supposed.
Like an idiot, or a donkey, or Captain Morok, she allowed herself and her Company to be led around by her nose. She could pinpoint many mistakes, even if some of them would not look so dire come the next day, but the moment she had chosen caution instead of temerity was, in retrospect, the most damning.
Not to say that caution didn't have its place on the battlefield. Nevertheless. The root of it, she now knew, was that she had attacked the Rat Company's camp the night before, fully expecting they would fold like wet paper. When that didn't happen, when Tanya Degurechaff vaporized that hill, when someone new led most of them out through the forest in the middle of the night, while not losing any legionaries or supplies to the ambushers she sent ahead of her company… she hesitated. It was as simple as that.
A lesson for the future then. A defeat rankled, sure, but she was alive, and nothing except her pride was hurt, so she would learn, and next time-
Until next time, though, she needed to figure out how to neutralize the Rat Company's pet Claimant. From what her Mage Lieutenant told her, the ritual should have been… fairly taxing. Quite taxing, actually. Not terribly complicated, when it came down to it, but involving a lot of magic channeled through someone, repeatedly.
Juwan had advised her to call their bluff and wait it out. Told her she herself wouldn't be able to channel more than five, utterly exhausting herself in the process.
After the sixth shot, Juwan had visibly paled. After the eleventh, while they had been already sortieing out, she started cursing under her breath.
In the end, Tanya had managed eighteen and didn't even look winded during the closing ceremony.
She heard rumors about the Claimant. Everyone in College did, and many of them supplemented the rumors they already heard with wanton speculation. When someone made an effort to separate the spoils from the rabble, however, there was surprisingly little.
She was from an orphanage in Laure, which was quite obvious from the blonde hair and blue eyes, which, while unordinary in Callowans, were much rarer in Taghrebi, Soninke, or even Duni.
She had a work ethic Juniper would call admirable in anybody who wasn't her enemy. Her staying in the Legions even after claiming a Name probably meant she wanted to pursue a military career, so she was looking forward to working together with her, one day.
She remained a Sergeant, which was a little curious. She didn't know Lieutenant Killian all that well, but she doubted she could somehow obstruct a Claimant's bid for her position. Still, a secondary concern. She didn't know the politics of the situation inside their company, and unless she absolutely had to, she wouldn't bother finding out.
Much more dubiously, until quite recently, Tanya didn't even know how to cast spells. The Gift, as the Praesi called it, could be discerned in children as young as six years old. Very rarely it awakened in anyone past the age of twelve. Tanya was sixteen years old, by the looks of her, maybe a little younger.
Then again, she was from Callow. This… probably involved something she wasn't aware of or privy to. She needed to ask some questions about the laws of conscription for the Callowan provinces sometime later, but for now, she set it aside.
In practical terms, this meant that Tanya evidently managed to become a practitioner more capable than anyone in the College in a span of a few months, while most of them had almost a decade of experience on her. This, in turn, meant that the next time they fought she was only going to become even better.
And if she could conjure enough magic to break the walls of the fort, ( that the cadets had the collective responsibility to maintain in pristine condition, so her antics were going to cost the entire cadet corps quite a lot of time and sweat to spend on putting it back together ) with enough precision to aim it away from her legionaries, ( mostly, Juniper thought, her teeth gnashing together ) she couldn't even imagine what she would be capable of in a few months more.
This warranted more time for investigation. And probably more time to spend on learning what exactly mages could do. Not just the legionaries either, Tanya was beyond that… she needed to find out what someone like Warlock could do, and how to plan around that. She earnestly hoped Tanya was many years away from Warlock, because that would mean Juniper didn't even stand a chance, not with a hundred cadets. Probably not with a thousand, even. But the principles would probably still apply, once scaled down appropriately.
A treacherous thought slithered in her mind, about how unfair it was to fight against such a monster before she even graduated, but she mercilessly quashed it. Life was never fair, her mother had taught her. Money, race, the people you knew… no matter how much Juniper hated it, they all played a role, the little factoid cutting her like a sword with two edges, all the more aggravating that it cut both ways.
She would never be accepted by the Praesi nobility as anyone more than a half-savage that could do some useful tricks, like standing upright and not drooling. In the Legions, however, she had another thing to worry about. No matter how absurd the idea that her mother's reputation and rank carried her along to the captaincy of the most successful company in the College, many idiots still thought it. At least she had taught them not to say anything of the sort in her face or behind her back. Orcs had naturally good hearing.
This was a goblin hole to fall into much, much later. Juniper stared into the fire, unblinking, rearranging her thoughts on the current moment. Tanya was an obstacle that needed to be overcome, true, but there was another she knew next to nothing about.
Captain Callow.
Her plan was… reckless. Aggressive. In retrospect, more than a little risky, and not just to her personally, but more importantly, to her chances of victory.
It also worked. She won. She was a new arrival, and she already managed to figure out how to use Tanya's destructive potential, something that former Captain Hasan Qara never had.
She needed to find out more.
Juniper stood up, stretching. She had to find Captain "Callow" and ask her some questions. Confirm some suspicions. Before that, though…
Juniper glanced at the jar of aragh standing beside her place on the sitting log by the fire, almost untouched. Shrugging, she grabbed it and drank it in five long gulps, careful not to spill it on her face or neck.
Something for the road.
Tanya, Catherine had realized, was avoiding her.
Which didn't bide well for the little conversation she wanted to have with her. She was searching for her through the piles of drunk and celebrating legionaries, and couldn't find her anywhere, so unless she was already asleep in a tent-
Ah, nevermind. That was probably it.
Not that Catherine still didn't have suspicions that Tanya had turned in early not due to any particular state of exhaustion.
That was a tortured sentence to think of, Catherine grimaced. Almost like a knot of tangled strings. Quite appropriate to the subject at hand.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulder, and she whirled around, a little unsteady from the drink she had, shaking the large hand off her and-
"Easy," Captain Juniper was the one standing behind her. That was… she actually didn't know if it was good or bad. "I just wanted to talk."
"Lot of that going around this night," Catherine muttered. Then again, Juniper was… interesting. She was the most successful captain in the entire College. She could stand to learn something from her, if she managed not to snark at her for a few minutes it would take to have a polite conversation.
Catherine didn't like her chances, but she already managed one improbable victory, maybe she could for a second.
"Alright," Catherine said. "Let's talk… there." She pointed at the low hill behind Juniper, a hundred feet away from the joint camp and the clamor.
Juniper nodded in agreement and started walking with her towards the hill.
En route to their destination, Juniper decided to throw the first punch.
( Metaphorically speaking, thankfully. Catherine didn't know who would win, a drunken her without the gladius that she had left behind in the camp or an orc built like a handcart with hands almost big enough to wrap around her head and squeeze, and she didn't particularly want to find out. )
"You have a Name," she said, almost conversationally.
Catherine missed a step, her foot dragging in the air before she quickly reoriented herself.
She thought about denying it, then thought better. If her reaction hadn't provided Juniper with all evidence she needed, the very fact she figured out enough to say it probably meant there was no point to play coy.
"Yes, I do," she said challengingly. "What of it? Is this going to be a problem?"
"Not at all," Juniper answered easily. "You had two Named on your side. I had the best company of cadets under my command, and I still lost." She shrugged. "This was never going to be about fairness or," she sneered. "propriety."
"Then," Catherine asked, a little more cautious. "What is this about?"
Juniper shrugged again, expansively.
"It could be a trade," she said. "From one Captain to another."
Catherine said nothing for a few seconds, looking at the hill she'd chosen for the conversation. Now that she was closer, it was quite a bit steeper than it looked from the distance.
"Fuck that," Catherine said. Juniper scowled at her, opening her mouth to retort. "Wait, no, not about the trade. I still don't know what it's all about. I meant, fuck the hill. I'm not climbing it while drunk." Juniper snorted out, seemingly despite herself.
"Fair enough," she chuckled, then glanced at her sharply. "You're not that good at planning, are you."
Despite the faint smell of alcohol, Catherine didn't believe Juniper was addled at all. Fair is fair, probably needed much more to get drunk, since she weighed at least three times more than her.
She also heard things about orcish livers. Good things, mostly. She shook her head, chasing away the errant thought.
"Hey," Catherine said, trying for nonchalant. "This is supposed to be a trade, not you figuring me out while I'm stumbling around, half-drunk."
"What are you going to do about it?" Juniper asked, smiling humorlessly. "Complain to me about how unfair it is?"
Catherine barked out a laugh.
"No," she answered. "I guess not. What are we trading? Fact for a fact?"
"And mistake for a mistake," Juniper responded. She elaborated under Catherine's curious gaze: "You tell me what you think you could have done better. I do the same."
"And we both find out what the other was thinking," Catherine pronounced thoughtfully. "Along with what we believe to be mistakes in the first place."
"You," Juniper said slowly, with a small yet very much present sliver of respect in her voice. "Are much smarter than you look."
"It's my genius strategy," Catherine half-bowed. "To look as stupid as possible so that everyone is surprised when I do the unexpected."
"What works, works," Juniper quipped, almost comically serious.
She leaned against the hill's side, sitting on the ground, and motioned Catherine to sit with her. Once they settled in, she spoke again.
"Alright, since you already gave me two freebies, I'll start," Juniper sighed, sounding a little tired. "My first mistake was not noticing I was a part of the story. I thought I accounted for your sergeant during my attack, but then you arrive, a Lieutenant from out of nowhere with an obviously fake name, and just like that, there's a pivot where none was before."
A pivot? Something to… turn around on?
Ah. So Catherine was a pivot, because she literally turned the game around on Juniper, snatching victory from the proverbial ( and banal ) jaws of defeat.
This sounded like a proper term and also a thing that happened fairly often. Godsdamned Black, she repeated inside her head for what felt like the hundredth time. He could have explained at least that much to her, but nooo, it's far better to be a mysterious ass, farting mysteriously about things instead of saying them outright.
"So, what exactly wad your mistake here?" Catherine asked.
"Should have figured you were a Named from the start, with a story that obvious," Juniper enunciated. "Should have found you and Tanya as fast as I could, then send two full lines and bury you under the bodies."
"Could have worked," Catherine admitted, then amended. "Maybe. I'm not sure. Depends on how good Tanya is at fighting in close quarters." How much better she became since her Claim, she carefully didn't say.
"So a combat Name, but one you aren't sure about how strong it is," Juniper muttered, loud enough she could hear it. "A transitional one? Ah." She turned to look Catherine in the eyes. "You are the Squire, the girl who burned down half of Summerholm."
This, Catherine complained inwardly. This was uncanny. Also completely unfair. She already regretted she couldn't bitch about it. How did she figure so much stuff from a few words?
Aside from that.
"Why does absolutely fucking no one believe I wasn't one who started the fire?" Catherine asked rhetorically, throwing her hands in the air, choosing to complain about something she actually was allowed to.
"Because you are a villain?" Juniper asked, a little amused.
"Well, here's a fact for you: I wasn't the one throwing munitions around," Catherine said exasperatedly. "The whole thing was monumentally stupid, and a lot of people died, most of them needlessly, some of them by my hand. You noticed I'm fairly fresh. I am not that jaded yet I'd start a fire in the middle of a city."
"Yet jaded enough you'd order to throw large spells at another company during a war game?" Juniper retorted. Catherine bit back her first reply, then the second.
"Tanya promised she'll do her best not to kill anyone," she finally answered, looking away. "And," she turned back, her gaze becoming steely. "I believed her. Not unreasonably, as it turned out."
Juniper hummed, not quite agreeing, not quite disagreeing.
"So you knew each other from before," Juniper mused.
Catherine cursed out loud.
"Will you stop this?"
"Not a chance, Callow," Juniper smiled. "Should work on keeping better control, is my advice to you. You are too easy to read." Her tone suddenly grew serious. "When you are high enough up, with a weakness this obvious… the Tower eats people like you alive."
It was probably good advice, Catherine conceded after some consideration.
"My turn," Juniper went on. "My other mistake, the biggest one, was ceding the initiative of the engagement. Once I stopped dictating the flow of the battle, I lost my agency in deciding the outcome. This is doubly true for a story."
"Regrouping was a smart move," Catherine disagreed. "You didn't know what I was doing, so you consolidated your gains while remaining as protected from a counterattack as possible. We were planning to hit your fort as soon as possible, while a part of your forces was still outside. Your decision to recall everyone and reorganize made us come up with a riskier plan."
Juniper looked at her, speechless.
"Or at least that's what I think about it," Catherine shrugged, trying for nonchalance and probably coming off as smug instead.
"You sure you are new to this, Callow?" Juniper wondered. "This was from the treatise by Terriblis the Second, wasn't it?"
"Sure was. My teacher is a cryptic ass," Catherine responded. "But he has a very extensive library."
"You," Hellhound started. "Did not just call Lord Black 'an ass'."
Was she blushing? Was that what blushing looked like on an orc? Terrifying.
"Sure did," Catherine said instead of pursuing that line of discovery. "I'm not sure whether he's incapable of not being cryptic or just can't resist most of the time, but I could really use more advice from him. But hey, he throws books and tutors at me as a distraction, so I can't really complain."
"…I'm not touching that," Juniper decided after a few seconds. "To answer your suggestion. You are not wrong in principle, but you do not account for the fact that I could regroup in any location, not just my primary camp. I could have left a token garrison to escort the prisoners and bait you into doing what you just described, while I laid in ambush somewhere nearby to find where your new camp was. Or, as it turned out to be, to attack you from behind while you were trying to assault the fort. Instead, I responded with timidity when decisive action was required.
"Huh," Catherine replied at length. "That's… yeah. That would have made things a lot harder on us. Why didn't you think of it before?"
"Aside from the hindsight making everyone a better commander than they have any right to be, you mean?" Juniper chuckled. "My guess is that when I didn't recognize the framework of the story, I instinctively chose to follow the broadest groove of it." Her dark amusement morphed into genuine offense under Catherine's uncomprehending gaze. "You really are new to this. What is the most popular story about a smaller army attacking a fort with a larger garrison?"
"A hero with his followers storming an evil lord's citadel," Catherine recalled instantly. "Ah. So I was the hero," she made air quotes with her fingers. "And you were the villain. And that's why you lost."
"That, and because you came up with a half-decent plan. Heroes don't always win," Juniper chided her, bluntly but not unkindly. "Else the Fields wouldn't happen."
Catherine went rigid, the reminder scraping at her thoughts like a knife against stone; not really hurting, but unpleasant and uncomfortable.
"Superior tactics and sufficient difference in unit cohesion can overcome anything, heroic interference included," Juniper continued, not noticing or pretending not to notice. "That's one of the primary principles on which the modern Legions are built, and you ought to learn as much about our way fighting as possible." Catherine didn't know whether 'our' included her or not. "Considering your Role, you wouldn't always be the hero in the story, after all."
"So," Catherine started. Juniper seemed to know quite a lot about how to fight heroes, which made sense if what she said about the Legions being organized to defeat the Good armies was true. Their record suggested it was. "How do you fight a hero?"
"This is a conversation for much longer than we have left," Juniper said. "But first, you need to recognize that you are a part of the story. If you don't, the battle is decided solely by your opponent. And that's a shitty way to fight, hoping your enemy will fuck up enough they'll hand a win over to you." Juniper stayed silent for a few moments, looking at the stars. "Your turn."
Catherine considered what else she could say. Several mistakes came to mind, but most of it she had a ready answer on how to do better, without talking it out with Hellhound, who was, no matter how amiable she was about it, mining her information and weaknesses. Even if she did provide a lot of interesting stuff in return.
She could ask her what she thought about her encounter with William… if she was suicidal and wanted to hand over the evidence of her borderline treason to someone with indisputable Legion loyalties.
So she said something else. Something secret, yet almost worthless now, after everything."
"My real name is Catherine," she said, grinning. "Hope we get into another scrap soon, Captain Juniper."
Juniper snorted.
"Completely worthless," she accused, her tone suggesting that she didn't mind. "Fighting you next time will prove… interesting." She pushed herself up to loom over Catherine, intentionally or not, she couldn't say. "My name is Juniper, but you knew that already, and I never make the same mistake twice. You'd better come up with something more inventive for the next time, Callow."
Catherine nodded in acknowledgment, her head twisting to look up at Juniper.
"What was your plan if I didn't surrender?" Juniper asked abruptly. "I thought you were just a fresh rookie, but you seem sharp enough to realize what you did wasn't technically in the rules."
"Find the prisoners, get them out, kick down any of yours still in the fort, then pincer you between myself and the rest of the Rat Company," Catherine said immediately.
"So you did have more of a plan than just some creative rule-breaking," Juniper grunted. "I figured as much. Still wouldn't bet on you to win it in a straight-up fight, but you had both flags, and I had none, so I figured it wouldn't do to be a sore loser. Rest up, Callow. We have a long day ahead of us."
She turned towards the camp and left.
Catherine stayed for a minute, looking at the same stars Juniper had. She needed to get up and get going, they still had to march towards the campus tomorrow, but for now, she was content to sit back and relax.
Only then, she noticed that her Name went back to sleep. When did that happen? Probably right after she won the game. Very probably. Now that she recalled it, the moment of elation when she mounted the standard of the Rat Company had been accompanied by… relief?
Name shit was weird.
Catherine stood up, careful not to move too quickly, and started walking leisurely towards the camp.
Once she was in her tent and preparing for her night's rest, though, her senses lit up with a-
What was a water bowl doing beside her bed anyway?
A second later, her unasked question was answered with a blurry image of the Black Knight in all his smug glory retracted in the water, looking like he was sitting across the room ( or tent, as the case might be ) and just waiting to ambush her with some news.
"Captain Callow," he greeted her cordially. "I suppose congratulations are in order."
For fuck's sake, couldn't he have waited for a day? Or at least pretended he wasn't immediately aware of everything that happened, despite being hundreds of miles away? You know, like a normal person?
The Black Knight was met with a groan of frustration. Catherine was probably disappointed she didn't get to tell the good news herself, Amadeus thought, almost fondly.
She'd tough it out.
Her strategies were… interesting. Almost instinctive ability to use the stories and resources falling in her lap. Good improvisational skills. A lot of… raw charisma. Outstanding leadership skills.
Quite more ruthless than he believed her to be too, even considering everything else.
Overall, he was satisfied. Even elated, as much as the word could be used to describe him.
He supposed that his plans to kill her and her friend from the orphanage were unnecessary at this time. Certainly premature.
For now, he had some good news of his own to share and an invitation to extend.
It was the time for the Squire and her dear friend to be introduced to the Tower.
-The motto of the modern Legions of Terror.
"Companies!" Captain Hasan, also colloquially known as Ratface, called out. "Salute!"
This, he mused, was the day ( or evening, if he wanted to indulge in pedantry ) of surprises for everyone.
He still could recall Hellhound's flabbergasted expression, when he'd been dragged before her from the prison pens to explain why the fuck he'd given the order to bombard the fortress with combat-grade magical rituals during a godsdamned training exercise.
It was, he freely admitted, one of the few pleasant memories he'd carry with himself from his sordid captaincy. He wasn't planning on prolonging it, in any case.
Much less pleasantly, Juniper had been this close to order to drag the prisoners atop the western wall and use them as live shields against his company's improvised artillery.
He didn't know what stopped her exactly, but he could surmise.
Firstly, the logistics of herding thirty unwilling people, some of them orcs at that, who would definitely resist for all it's worth, were going to be a nightmare.
Secondly, the spells hadn't killed anybody, even if they injured quite a few cadets. Ratface was not a tactical genius, but even he understood that this mean whoever was aiming the spells was being soft on the First Company. This was still a training exercise, not that different from before, and considering they were allowed to use goblin ammunition with reduced yields and lay traps that killed and maimed a few dozen cadets every year, this was arguably much safer than their normal activities. At least, you could say, the mages firing the ritual were quite evidently not trying to kill them. Regarding quite a lot of cadets in other companies… he had doubts.
The third point was what he had told Juniper himself: he knew the resident Claimant of his company, not personally, not very well, in fact, he had tried to avoid her as much as one possibly could avoid a nominal subordinate under his command while not being obvious about it.
And from what he knew, he could say that he didn't believe placing them in front of her would actually stop her or even appreciably slow her down, and swear on it before the Gods Below themselves.
Tanya was… chillingly polite. Monstrously meticulous. Hellishly relentless. Her lifeless eyes bore inside his soul each time she suggested another insane strategy that would surely bear fruit and win them a game. To give her credit, they were certainly not bad strategies, in principle. With any other company, they could certainly be tried and would undoubtedly provide no small amount of success to the one who was insane enough, and more importantly, skilled enough, to implement them.
A few ideas that would have probably resulted in half of his company dead by the end of the exercise, he stopped listening. Whatever infernal knowledge Gods Below chose to whisper in the ears of the little talking jar of goblinfire he had the misfortune to call his sergeant, but he wanted no part of it.
She almost always wore a pleasant expression of a well-fed tiger, alternating it only with an "irritated, but not murderous tiger" and an absolute lack of any expression whatsoever. Ratface could feel his lifespan shortening with each passing day he had retained his command while Tanya was undoubtedly coming up with more and more inventive plans to murder him.
Nowhere in that overly long description, could he find the words "merciful" or even "hesitant".
Honestly, relinquishing his command was going to be a tremendous relief, now that he had a ready pretext and a suitable successor.
Lieutenant Callow.
He glanced back at the small figure walking beside him. She winked at him gamely, looking for all the world like an ordinary young woman with a lot to prove and not that much behind her shoulders. Not as the one, who he'd been told came with the insanely dangerous plan he would have rather expected from Tanya Degurechaff in the first place.
She had guts, he had to admit, not only to come up with the plan but to give herself the most dangerous role in it, too. Running across a killing field of traps, jumping over the moat as if she hadn't even noticed it was there, smashing through the legionary wall to climb and bludgeon her way to the top of the tower…
He chuckled, a little ruefully. If nothing else, they were going to have a good synergy with each other. More so, if what Sergeant Hakram had said was true. He'd give it a coin toss they wouldn't all end up under the ground by the end of the next term.
They must have fucked Callow up pretty seriously if those were the sort of girls who came from there to attend the War College.
She raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly in response to his thoughts, but much more probably, or at least he hoped so, due to his chuckle. He waved her off and turned his head back to look forward and savor a little more of Juniper's constipated face.
Unfortunately for him, she already managed to twist her mien into something more presentable.
"Not how I expected it to go," he said freely, yet like admitting to an embarrassing secret of his he no longer cared about.
"You could say that again," Juniper not-quite growled, her face, to his short-lived delight, twisting in a grimace for a few heartbeats. "Let's just… get this over with."
She turned towards her legionaries, starting one of the few rituals universally accepted by all the cadets in War College.
"One sin!" She exclaimed.
"Defeat!" They called back, a little sullen they had to after such a long string of victories.
"One grace!" Ratface shouted, grinning.
"Victory!" His company screamed as one, all of them banging on their shields with their swords or butting their staves against the hard earth, everyone exultant to have an occasion to do it after a long, long time.
Well, almost everyone. Even then, he could see Tanya… smiling, if only faintly.
Ratface carefully suppressed his shudders and averted his eyes. Instead, he chose to go about the much more cheerful business of explaining Lieutenant Callow what she needed to do to complete the ritual, now that she was going to be their captain, and gloating silently at Juniper for however long she would sulk, etching every moment in his memory.
It was the middle of the night, and the celebration was in full swing. Rat Company weren't the only ones feasting, her own cadets mingling freely between them, all grudges and worries forgotten, if only for the night. It probably helped that they still had a comfortable lead of three to five points between themselves and Wolf Company, depending on how Aisha's match had gone. Very probably three. She was going against Morok, and it would be a sorry day indeed when Aisha lost to him during a game of pathfinding.
She would be marginally more worried for her if it was a straight-up battle since the bastard had somehow managed to shuffle the roster enough he got himself a full tenth of ogres this year, but pathfinding? Morok could probably find his way to his own ass, in the middle of the day, if the room was well-lit and he had two lieutenants to help him. Probably. Maybe. It was not outside the realm of possible.
Juniper was a woman enough to acknowledge if only to herself, that she was sulking and distracting herself when she probably should just get drunk and go to sleep if celebrating was out of the question.
Instead, she was sitting in front of the fire and thinking about the last two days. It wasn't particularly productive.
What rankled her the most — aside from the defeat itself, if she was to be completely honest with herself, because that smarted a lot— was… her loss of initiative, she supposed.
Like an idiot, or a donkey, or Captain Morok, she allowed herself and her Company to be led around by her nose. She could pinpoint many mistakes, even if some of them would not look so dire come the next day, but the moment she had chosen caution instead of temerity was, in retrospect, the most damning.
Not to say that caution didn't have its place on the battlefield. Nevertheless. The root of it, she now knew, was that she had attacked the Rat Company's camp the night before, fully expecting they would fold like wet paper. When that didn't happen, when Tanya Degurechaff vaporized that hill, when someone new led most of them out through the forest in the middle of the night, while not losing any legionaries or supplies to the ambushers she sent ahead of her company… she hesitated. It was as simple as that.
A lesson for the future then. A defeat rankled, sure, but she was alive, and nothing except her pride was hurt, so she would learn, and next time-
Until next time, though, she needed to figure out how to neutralize the Rat Company's pet Claimant. From what her Mage Lieutenant told her, the ritual should have been… fairly taxing. Quite taxing, actually. Not terribly complicated, when it came down to it, but involving a lot of magic channeled through someone, repeatedly.
Juwan had advised her to call their bluff and wait it out. Told her she herself wouldn't be able to channel more than five, utterly exhausting herself in the process.
After the sixth shot, Juwan had visibly paled. After the eleventh, while they had been already sortieing out, she started cursing under her breath.
In the end, Tanya had managed eighteen and didn't even look winded during the closing ceremony.
She heard rumors about the Claimant. Everyone in College did, and many of them supplemented the rumors they already heard with wanton speculation. When someone made an effort to separate the spoils from the rabble, however, there was surprisingly little.
She was from an orphanage in Laure, which was quite obvious from the blonde hair and blue eyes, which, while unordinary in Callowans, were much rarer in Taghrebi, Soninke, or even Duni.
She had a work ethic Juniper would call admirable in anybody who wasn't her enemy. Her staying in the Legions even after claiming a Name probably meant she wanted to pursue a military career, so she was looking forward to working together with her, one day.
She remained a Sergeant, which was a little curious. She didn't know Lieutenant Killian all that well, but she doubted she could somehow obstruct a Claimant's bid for her position. Still, a secondary concern. She didn't know the politics of the situation inside their company, and unless she absolutely had to, she wouldn't bother finding out.
Much more dubiously, until quite recently, Tanya didn't even know how to cast spells. The Gift, as the Praesi called it, could be discerned in children as young as six years old. Very rarely it awakened in anyone past the age of twelve. Tanya was sixteen years old, by the looks of her, maybe a little younger.
Then again, she was from Callow. This… probably involved something she wasn't aware of or privy to. She needed to ask some questions about the laws of conscription for the Callowan provinces sometime later, but for now, she set it aside.
In practical terms, this meant that Tanya evidently managed to become a practitioner more capable than anyone in the College in a span of a few months, while most of them had almost a decade of experience on her. This, in turn, meant that the next time they fought she was only going to become even better.
And if she could conjure enough magic to break the walls of the fort, ( that the cadets had the collective responsibility to maintain in pristine condition, so her antics were going to cost the entire cadet corps quite a lot of time and sweat to spend on putting it back together ) with enough precision to aim it away from her legionaries, ( mostly, Juniper thought, her teeth gnashing together ) she couldn't even imagine what she would be capable of in a few months more.
This warranted more time for investigation. And probably more time to spend on learning what exactly mages could do. Not just the legionaries either, Tanya was beyond that… she needed to find out what someone like Warlock could do, and how to plan around that. She earnestly hoped Tanya was many years away from Warlock, because that would mean Juniper didn't even stand a chance, not with a hundred cadets. Probably not with a thousand, even. But the principles would probably still apply, once scaled down appropriately.
A treacherous thought slithered in her mind, about how unfair it was to fight against such a monster before she even graduated, but she mercilessly quashed it. Life was never fair, her mother had taught her. Money, race, the people you knew… no matter how much Juniper hated it, they all played a role, the little factoid cutting her like a sword with two edges, all the more aggravating that it cut both ways.
She would never be accepted by the Praesi nobility as anyone more than a half-savage that could do some useful tricks, like standing upright and not drooling. In the Legions, however, she had another thing to worry about. No matter how absurd the idea that her mother's reputation and rank carried her along to the captaincy of the most successful company in the College, many idiots still thought it. At least she had taught them not to say anything of the sort in her face or behind her back. Orcs had naturally good hearing.
This was a goblin hole to fall into much, much later. Juniper stared into the fire, unblinking, rearranging her thoughts on the current moment. Tanya was an obstacle that needed to be overcome, true, but there was another she knew next to nothing about.
Captain Callow.
Her plan was… reckless. Aggressive. In retrospect, more than a little risky, and not just to her personally, but more importantly, to her chances of victory.
It also worked. She won. She was a new arrival, and she already managed to figure out how to use Tanya's destructive potential, something that former Captain Hasan Qara never had.
She needed to find out more.
Juniper stood up, stretching. She had to find Captain "Callow" and ask her some questions. Confirm some suspicions. Before that, though…
Juniper glanced at the jar of aragh standing beside her place on the sitting log by the fire, almost untouched. Shrugging, she grabbed it and drank it in five long gulps, careful not to spill it on her face or neck.
Something for the road.
Tanya, Catherine had realized, was avoiding her.
Which didn't bide well for the little conversation she wanted to have with her. She was searching for her through the piles of drunk and celebrating legionaries, and couldn't find her anywhere, so unless she was already asleep in a tent-
Ah, nevermind. That was probably it.
Not that Catherine still didn't have suspicions that Tanya had turned in early not due to any particular state of exhaustion.
That was a tortured sentence to think of, Catherine grimaced. Almost like a knot of tangled strings. Quite appropriate to the subject at hand.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulder, and she whirled around, a little unsteady from the drink she had, shaking the large hand off her and-
"Easy," Captain Juniper was the one standing behind her. That was… she actually didn't know if it was good or bad. "I just wanted to talk."
"Lot of that going around this night," Catherine muttered. Then again, Juniper was… interesting. She was the most successful captain in the entire College. She could stand to learn something from her, if she managed not to snark at her for a few minutes it would take to have a polite conversation.
Catherine didn't like her chances, but she already managed one improbable victory, maybe she could for a second.
"Alright," Catherine said. "Let's talk… there." She pointed at the low hill behind Juniper, a hundred feet away from the joint camp and the clamor.
Juniper nodded in agreement and started walking with her towards the hill.
En route to their destination, Juniper decided to throw the first punch.
( Metaphorically speaking, thankfully. Catherine didn't know who would win, a drunken her without the gladius that she had left behind in the camp or an orc built like a handcart with hands almost big enough to wrap around her head and squeeze, and she didn't particularly want to find out. )
"You have a Name," she said, almost conversationally.
Catherine missed a step, her foot dragging in the air before she quickly reoriented herself.
She thought about denying it, then thought better. If her reaction hadn't provided Juniper with all evidence she needed, the very fact she figured out enough to say it probably meant there was no point to play coy.
"Yes, I do," she said challengingly. "What of it? Is this going to be a problem?"
"Not at all," Juniper answered easily. "You had two Named on your side. I had the best company of cadets under my command, and I still lost." She shrugged. "This was never going to be about fairness or," she sneered. "propriety."
"Then," Catherine asked, a little more cautious. "What is this about?"
Juniper shrugged again, expansively.
"It could be a trade," she said. "From one Captain to another."
Catherine said nothing for a few seconds, looking at the hill she'd chosen for the conversation. Now that she was closer, it was quite a bit steeper than it looked from the distance.
"Fuck that," Catherine said. Juniper scowled at her, opening her mouth to retort. "Wait, no, not about the trade. I still don't know what it's all about. I meant, fuck the hill. I'm not climbing it while drunk." Juniper snorted out, seemingly despite herself.
"Fair enough," she chuckled, then glanced at her sharply. "You're not that good at planning, are you."
Despite the faint smell of alcohol, Catherine didn't believe Juniper was addled at all. Fair is fair, probably needed much more to get drunk, since she weighed at least three times more than her.
She also heard things about orcish livers. Good things, mostly. She shook her head, chasing away the errant thought.
"Hey," Catherine said, trying for nonchalant. "This is supposed to be a trade, not you figuring me out while I'm stumbling around, half-drunk."
"What are you going to do about it?" Juniper asked, smiling humorlessly. "Complain to me about how unfair it is?"
Catherine barked out a laugh.
"No," she answered. "I guess not. What are we trading? Fact for a fact?"
"And mistake for a mistake," Juniper responded. She elaborated under Catherine's curious gaze: "You tell me what you think you could have done better. I do the same."
"And we both find out what the other was thinking," Catherine pronounced thoughtfully. "Along with what we believe to be mistakes in the first place."
"You," Juniper said slowly, with a small yet very much present sliver of respect in her voice. "Are much smarter than you look."
"It's my genius strategy," Catherine half-bowed. "To look as stupid as possible so that everyone is surprised when I do the unexpected."
"What works, works," Juniper quipped, almost comically serious.
She leaned against the hill's side, sitting on the ground, and motioned Catherine to sit with her. Once they settled in, she spoke again.
"Alright, since you already gave me two freebies, I'll start," Juniper sighed, sounding a little tired. "My first mistake was not noticing I was a part of the story. I thought I accounted for your sergeant during my attack, but then you arrive, a Lieutenant from out of nowhere with an obviously fake name, and just like that, there's a pivot where none was before."
A pivot? Something to… turn around on?
Ah. So Catherine was a pivot, because she literally turned the game around on Juniper, snatching victory from the proverbial ( and banal ) jaws of defeat.
This sounded like a proper term and also a thing that happened fairly often. Godsdamned Black, she repeated inside her head for what felt like the hundredth time. He could have explained at least that much to her, but nooo, it's far better to be a mysterious ass, farting mysteriously about things instead of saying them outright.
"So, what exactly wad your mistake here?" Catherine asked.
"Should have figured you were a Named from the start, with a story that obvious," Juniper enunciated. "Should have found you and Tanya as fast as I could, then send two full lines and bury you under the bodies."
"Could have worked," Catherine admitted, then amended. "Maybe. I'm not sure. Depends on how good Tanya is at fighting in close quarters." How much better she became since her Claim, she carefully didn't say.
"So a combat Name, but one you aren't sure about how strong it is," Juniper muttered, loud enough she could hear it. "A transitional one? Ah." She turned to look Catherine in the eyes. "You are the Squire, the girl who burned down half of Summerholm."
This, Catherine complained inwardly. This was uncanny. Also completely unfair. She already regretted she couldn't bitch about it. How did she figure so much stuff from a few words?
Aside from that.
"Why does absolutely fucking no one believe I wasn't one who started the fire?" Catherine asked rhetorically, throwing her hands in the air, choosing to complain about something she actually was allowed to.
"Because you are a villain?" Juniper asked, a little amused.
"Well, here's a fact for you: I wasn't the one throwing munitions around," Catherine said exasperatedly. "The whole thing was monumentally stupid, and a lot of people died, most of them needlessly, some of them by my hand. You noticed I'm fairly fresh. I am not that jaded yet I'd start a fire in the middle of a city."
"Yet jaded enough you'd order to throw large spells at another company during a war game?" Juniper retorted. Catherine bit back her first reply, then the second.
"Tanya promised she'll do her best not to kill anyone," she finally answered, looking away. "And," she turned back, her gaze becoming steely. "I believed her. Not unreasonably, as it turned out."
Juniper hummed, not quite agreeing, not quite disagreeing.
"So you knew each other from before," Juniper mused.
Catherine cursed out loud.
"Will you stop this?"
"Not a chance, Callow," Juniper smiled. "Should work on keeping better control, is my advice to you. You are too easy to read." Her tone suddenly grew serious. "When you are high enough up, with a weakness this obvious… the Tower eats people like you alive."
It was probably good advice, Catherine conceded after some consideration.
"My turn," Juniper went on. "My other mistake, the biggest one, was ceding the initiative of the engagement. Once I stopped dictating the flow of the battle, I lost my agency in deciding the outcome. This is doubly true for a story."
"Regrouping was a smart move," Catherine disagreed. "You didn't know what I was doing, so you consolidated your gains while remaining as protected from a counterattack as possible. We were planning to hit your fort as soon as possible, while a part of your forces was still outside. Your decision to recall everyone and reorganize made us come up with a riskier plan."
Juniper looked at her, speechless.
"Or at least that's what I think about it," Catherine shrugged, trying for nonchalance and probably coming off as smug instead.
"You sure you are new to this, Callow?" Juniper wondered. "This was from the treatise by Terriblis the Second, wasn't it?"
"Sure was. My teacher is a cryptic ass," Catherine responded. "But he has a very extensive library."
"You," Hellhound started. "Did not just call Lord Black 'an ass'."
Was she blushing? Was that what blushing looked like on an orc? Terrifying.
"Sure did," Catherine said instead of pursuing that line of discovery. "I'm not sure whether he's incapable of not being cryptic or just can't resist most of the time, but I could really use more advice from him. But hey, he throws books and tutors at me as a distraction, so I can't really complain."
"…I'm not touching that," Juniper decided after a few seconds. "To answer your suggestion. You are not wrong in principle, but you do not account for the fact that I could regroup in any location, not just my primary camp. I could have left a token garrison to escort the prisoners and bait you into doing what you just described, while I laid in ambush somewhere nearby to find where your new camp was. Or, as it turned out to be, to attack you from behind while you were trying to assault the fort. Instead, I responded with timidity when decisive action was required.
"Huh," Catherine replied at length. "That's… yeah. That would have made things a lot harder on us. Why didn't you think of it before?"
"Aside from the hindsight making everyone a better commander than they have any right to be, you mean?" Juniper chuckled. "My guess is that when I didn't recognize the framework of the story, I instinctively chose to follow the broadest groove of it." Her dark amusement morphed into genuine offense under Catherine's uncomprehending gaze. "You really are new to this. What is the most popular story about a smaller army attacking a fort with a larger garrison?"
"A hero with his followers storming an evil lord's citadel," Catherine recalled instantly. "Ah. So I was the hero," she made air quotes with her fingers. "And you were the villain. And that's why you lost."
"That, and because you came up with a half-decent plan. Heroes don't always win," Juniper chided her, bluntly but not unkindly. "Else the Fields wouldn't happen."
Catherine went rigid, the reminder scraping at her thoughts like a knife against stone; not really hurting, but unpleasant and uncomfortable.
"Superior tactics and sufficient difference in unit cohesion can overcome anything, heroic interference included," Juniper continued, not noticing or pretending not to notice. "That's one of the primary principles on which the modern Legions are built, and you ought to learn as much about our way fighting as possible." Catherine didn't know whether 'our' included her or not. "Considering your Role, you wouldn't always be the hero in the story, after all."
"So," Catherine started. Juniper seemed to know quite a lot about how to fight heroes, which made sense if what she said about the Legions being organized to defeat the Good armies was true. Their record suggested it was. "How do you fight a hero?"
"This is a conversation for much longer than we have left," Juniper said. "But first, you need to recognize that you are a part of the story. If you don't, the battle is decided solely by your opponent. And that's a shitty way to fight, hoping your enemy will fuck up enough they'll hand a win over to you." Juniper stayed silent for a few moments, looking at the stars. "Your turn."
Catherine considered what else she could say. Several mistakes came to mind, but most of it she had a ready answer on how to do better, without talking it out with Hellhound, who was, no matter how amiable she was about it, mining her information and weaknesses. Even if she did provide a lot of interesting stuff in return.
She could ask her what she thought about her encounter with William… if she was suicidal and wanted to hand over the evidence of her borderline treason to someone with indisputable Legion loyalties.
So she said something else. Something secret, yet almost worthless now, after everything."
"My real name is Catherine," she said, grinning. "Hope we get into another scrap soon, Captain Juniper."
Juniper snorted.
"Completely worthless," she accused, her tone suggesting that she didn't mind. "Fighting you next time will prove… interesting." She pushed herself up to loom over Catherine, intentionally or not, she couldn't say. "My name is Juniper, but you knew that already, and I never make the same mistake twice. You'd better come up with something more inventive for the next time, Callow."
Catherine nodded in acknowledgment, her head twisting to look up at Juniper.
"What was your plan if I didn't surrender?" Juniper asked abruptly. "I thought you were just a fresh rookie, but you seem sharp enough to realize what you did wasn't technically in the rules."
"Find the prisoners, get them out, kick down any of yours still in the fort, then pincer you between myself and the rest of the Rat Company," Catherine said immediately.
"So you did have more of a plan than just some creative rule-breaking," Juniper grunted. "I figured as much. Still wouldn't bet on you to win it in a straight-up fight, but you had both flags, and I had none, so I figured it wouldn't do to be a sore loser. Rest up, Callow. We have a long day ahead of us."
She turned towards the camp and left.
Catherine stayed for a minute, looking at the same stars Juniper had. She needed to get up and get going, they still had to march towards the campus tomorrow, but for now, she was content to sit back and relax.
Only then, she noticed that her Name went back to sleep. When did that happen? Probably right after she won the game. Very probably. Now that she recalled it, the moment of elation when she mounted the standard of the Rat Company had been accompanied by… relief?
Name shit was weird.
Catherine stood up, careful not to move too quickly, and started walking leisurely towards the camp.
Once she was in her tent and preparing for her night's rest, though, her senses lit up with a-
What was a water bowl doing beside her bed anyway?
A second later, her unasked question was answered with a blurry image of the Black Knight in all his smug glory retracted in the water, looking like he was sitting across the room ( or tent, as the case might be ) and just waiting to ambush her with some news.
"Captain Callow," he greeted her cordially. "I suppose congratulations are in order."
For fuck's sake, couldn't he have waited for a day? Or at least pretended he wasn't immediately aware of everything that happened, despite being hundreds of miles away? You know, like a normal person?
The Black Knight was met with a groan of frustration. Catherine was probably disappointed she didn't get to tell the good news herself, Amadeus thought, almost fondly.
She'd tough it out.
Her strategies were… interesting. Almost instinctive ability to use the stories and resources falling in her lap. Good improvisational skills. A lot of… raw charisma. Outstanding leadership skills.
Quite more ruthless than he believed her to be too, even considering everything else.
Overall, he was satisfied. Even elated, as much as the word could be used to describe him.
He supposed that his plans to kill her and her friend from the orphanage were unnecessary at this time. Certainly premature.
For now, he had some good news of his own to share and an invitation to extend.
It was the time for the Squire and her dear friend to be introduced to the Tower.
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ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tanya's going to meet Ubua again. Gods above and below, this will be glorious.
Also, Juniper is making some assumptions about Tanya being a lot more skilled a mage than she is. Powerful, but still relies on others.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I delight in giving the readers the bird's eye view of characters, so to speak.
Meaning that everyone has impressions about everyone, including themselves.
Some of the stuff they figure out is true, some less so, some of the things they think about themselves are pretty inaccurate too. Like, it's hard to be objective about yourself, so sometimes another person will be more correct about your motivations than yourself.
Ratface, for example, carefully doesn't think that he was maybe a little too proud to accept Tanya's advice and instead comes up with a few reasons of his own for why he didn't listen to her. They aren't even untrue, he is just omitting some things Killian figured out, not to say that she's absolutely right either.
Can be confusing, yeah. Catherine is actually my character of choice for when I need to ascribe motivations to other people as closely to objective truth as possible, when you consider the facts she's already aware of.
Juniper, on the other hand, is scarily insightful about almost everything that could serve as another person's weakness in military pursuits, and I hope I managed to capture this quality of hers.
Excuse me for somewhat mangled English, I'm exhausted. Hopefully, I'm making myself understood, at least.
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warhammer651
The Festive Fortress is Unbreachable!
Black, no, you'll be putting the Dense Protagonist, Childhood Friend, and Rich Tsundere in close proximity, you're derailing good vs evil into a harem comedy stahp
I'd laugh if that is how things play out. But I suppose adversarial nature is typically a story for two? A story for three might be that way.
Welp. The Prasi nobles are going to have a fun time dealing with these Callowans. This cannot possibly go wrong at all.
warhammer651
The Festive Fortress is Unbreachable!
Something will be set on fire, and it will be confirmed that Callowans(-ians?-ese?) are an unusually human looking breed of goblin
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
was
You've got a trailing quote there that shouldn't be.
Tanya's misunderstandings are spreading~! Soon the entire world shall be mired in confusion and talking past each other!
...On a meta level, the whole story of APGTE is that the story itself must be broken for humanity to be freed of the tyrannical gods' control. Derailing the entire thing into a harem comedy would probably be an acceptable win condition.
Or the kingdom will be hit with a third Red Letter from Tanya's business/logistical advancements and the whole thing ends up a Nonstandard Game Over.
(Actually, assuming she actually makes her goal and gets to explain logistics, and they don't get Red Letter'd, that might actually solve the enmity between Callow and Praes because they could possibly finish fixing up the food problem...)
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- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- Any/All
Your English was perfect, mate, so no worries there.
That said, having just consumed the whole story so far, there is a thing I've noticed in your writing in that you pretty much always use 'you are' instead of 'you're' that feels very out of place and at odds with the casual tone of the conversation it often arises in.
That aside, I'm interested in seeing how Tanya affects the events of Catherine's introduction to the Tower. Will her previous life experience (particularly that of being a living piece of propaganda brought out to smile to the cameras) help her and/or Catherine not embarrass themselves?
...with Catherine and Akua in close proximity, that's probably a dumb question.
- Location
- Montana before it became stupidly Republican
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
So, I post this on the other site and thought I should do the same over here. We are getting to the first scene in the Tower and it is pretty important and likely to have tons of butterflies. Akua is trying to set up a Rule of Three with Cat, but thinks that her first 'lose' was her ambush at The Blessed Isle. She doesn't realize that she wasn't nearly impactful enough to actually initiate a Rule of Three. The actual first lose happens here, at the Tower, for Cat.
Akua makes Cat realize that for all of her bluntness and combat ability she's nearly worthless in a court setting like this and that all of these people will do everything in their power to put obstacles into her path because of who she is and what she represents. If this doesn't happen the fight at the end of Book 2 becomes much more difficult as Cat isn't guaranteed a victory over Akua. Then again Cat also has Tanya in this so it's possible that the entire fight ends up differently.
Akua makes Cat realize that for all of her bluntness and combat ability she's nearly worthless in a court setting like this and that all of these people will do everything in their power to put obstacles into her path because of who she is and what she represents. If this doesn't happen the fight at the end of Book 2 becomes much more difficult as Cat isn't guaranteed a victory over Akua. Then again Cat also has Tanya in this so it's possible that the entire fight ends up differently.
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
What? Cat wasn't guaranteed a victory over Akua, it was the other way around. It's just that due to extenuating circumstances, namely being dead at the time, that victory didn't kill Cat and she was able to recover in time for what was technically an entirely different conflict.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I have… complicated feelings about the Rule of Three.
But, without giving too many spoilers, here's one of my headcanons that are probably incorrect for the original: the Rule of Three ends in someone's death mostly if one of the participants has spent all of their narrative weight and character potential. Meaning they became too boring to watch and the Gods don't really care about them anymore.
This is, like. There is canon that in some cases, Rule of Three doesn't initiate even if all conditions are fulfilled, because one of the potential participants just isn't going to be relevant for much longer.
To contrast it, I decided to implement another condition, that if the characters involved initiate the rule, but they are just at the start of their stories and full of potential, the Gods or whatever will nudge thinks a little to ensure their respective champion survives if it's at all feasible.
Like what happened to Akua and Catherine during the Book 1 and 2, no matter which of the wins and losses you actually consider relevant to the rule.
There are a couple of other things I also decided to add with the hindsight from Book 6 and what happened to the Rule there.
But to summarize, without, again, giving out any spoilers, the rule can be played straight, but it also can be subverted, broken, ignored, and played with, because it's pretty much a reality-bending trope, and like any trope it is interesting to everyone to see what happens when the story deviates from it at least once.
The same is true for any narrative rule in Creation, otherwise, the Evil would always lose, and the Good would all be paragons of moral conduct. And many Good characters don't even conform to medieval moral standards, scarce as they are.
But, without giving too many spoilers, here's one of my headcanons that are probably incorrect for the original: the Rule of Three ends in someone's death mostly if one of the participants has spent all of their narrative weight and character potential. Meaning they became too boring to watch and the Gods don't really care about them anymore.
This is, like. There is canon that in some cases, Rule of Three doesn't initiate even if all conditions are fulfilled, because one of the potential participants just isn't going to be relevant for much longer.
To contrast it, I decided to implement another condition, that if the characters involved initiate the rule, but they are just at the start of their stories and full of potential, the Gods or whatever will nudge thinks a little to ensure their respective champion survives if it's at all feasible.
Like what happened to Akua and Catherine during the Book 1 and 2, no matter which of the wins and losses you actually consider relevant to the rule.
There are a couple of other things I also decided to add with the hindsight from Book 6 and what happened to the Rule there.
But to summarize, without, again, giving out any spoilers, the rule can be played straight, but it also can be subverted, broken, ignored, and played with, because it's pretty much a reality-bending trope, and like any trope it is interesting to everyone to see what happens when the story deviates from it at least once.
The same is true for any narrative rule in Creation, otherwise, the Evil would always lose, and the Good would all be paragons of moral conduct. And many Good characters don't even conform to medieval moral standards, scarce as they are.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
Pehtrai Darkos has the right of it, the encounter at the tower wasn't involved in a rule of three between them.
The one time Akua and Cat had a rule of three was at the climax of Book 2 and that one guaranteed Akua's victory. It is just that Cat was involved in another pattern of three with the Lonely Swordsman (which ended with him killing her and Cat raising herself as undead), so Akua's win was to steal Catherine's name for her own Squire candidate. Cat killed them immediately afterwards and claimed it again, then next time she met Akua she mocked her for it because Cat's Name was damaged from her previous fight with a demon and thus had lost her third Aspect and now that she claimed it again she could start again from zero, which meant that Akua actually ended up helping her (she did expect that Cat could possibly claim it again, but she didn't know that the name was damaged so she thought it would just weaken her by making her lose her aspects for their confrontation, without knowing was damaged and unusable).
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- It/Them
From the source material, it also seems like the power of the patern is ramping up during the different encounters. So while it's still possible to avoid the draw on the second encounter, the loss on the third one has a lot of narative weight behind it. Through you can still shift it to a non lethal loss if you put some work into it.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
Kind of yes but also no. The Pattern is that ifwhen two named fight seriously for the first time one wins decisively yet both survive and the second time they fight it is a draw, then the loser of the first one will win the first encounter. So there is no pattern until the draw happens, it is just a regular scrap before that.
I guess it can set on the first one if you fall into a story in which you are fated to fight again like if you turn them into your nemesis, but most of the time it is the second fight that matters.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
That's what "forcing a pattern" is about, which Catherine does accidentally in book 1.
The Black Knight was very angry about that, because by creating the pattern, Catherine had inadvertently shackled him - he couldn't kill her, since she was fated to confront the Lone Swordsman again after she beat him but let him live with a "come back again to prove me wrong" challenge, and so if he (or, what he was likely more worried about, another member of the Woe like Warlock or Ranger) tried to kill Cat, Providence would interfere to ensure her survival, and Amadeus' plans would be unraveled.
We see a case of this later on, when the Grey Pilgrim tries and fail to force Cat into a pattern; he can do it because they're "equals" in a way (and that's important: a pattern is unlikely to form between individuals who lack a clear antagonistic connection, such as when one didn't form between Amadeus and Hanno in canon), but Cat foresee the maneuver by refusing to allow a draw, which binds the hands of the Pilgrim because, if he uses his power, he'll win and squander the possibility of forcing the pattern on her.
Just wanted too say that this is quite interesting and valuable information, and I liked it a lot, and wanted to thank you for it.
That said, from the way you explained it here, it doesn't seem like your very detailed description here really matches with the meaning of the word? As in, Strive is determined as the process of trying to achieve a goal despite hardship, which I suppose is related to what you say, but it also always felt to me like it had a sense of progression and... movement, for lack of a better way to explain it, that your explanation doesn't seem to show. I would call that something like Overcome or Surpass - similar, but more fitting of the power to have it operate as described. I guess my main gripe here is that Strive is defined in function of the self (you strive for something), while overcoming is defined in function of an external challenge (you overcome something else), and this Aspect as you explained it seems to be more focused on external threat than internal achievement. If that makes sense.
I'm not asking you to rename the aspect or change the way it works or anything of the sort, here; I'm just puzzled, and I'd be curious as to what made you pick the particular word you did, instead of a closer one that would better represent what the aspect does. I'm just very interested in this kind of detailed explanations, and find the reasoning behind them intriguing to learn.
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Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I used Strive because it's pretty similar to Struggle, which highlights the differences between this Catherine and the canon one by pointing out what they have in common, all so that what sets them apart becomes starker in contrast, if that makes any sense. Well, it did to me, when I thought of it, lol.
As for why Strive specifically, I might have mentioned it already, but Strive here is used not only in its primary meaning as "fighting to achieve something", but also as a cognate word to Strife. ( estrif and estriver )
As in, a violent conflict and disharmony, which I believe pretty handily describes why it activates only when someone is trying ( or planning ) to kill Catherine.
As for why Strive specifically, I might have mentioned it already, but Strive here is used not only in its primary meaning as "fighting to achieve something", but also as a cognate word to Strife. ( estrif and estriver )
As in, a violent conflict and disharmony, which I believe pretty handily describes why it activates only when someone is trying ( or planning ) to kill Catherine.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Well, the skills gained from its use aren't lost, so every time it kicks in she grows permanently into someone who can more easily deal with what she just dealt with, at least.
- Location
- Montana before it became stupidly Republican
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
So, I'm going to reply to both of you at the same time.
First of all, we have the scene at the end of book 2 where we have Akua admit that she had tried to set up a rule of three and that this assured victory tasted like ash in her mouth because she lost in every way except the most important.
During this scene she talked about giving Cat a worthless victory, which I took to mean the ambush back in book 1. It's entirely possible that she might have meant the 5 way battle of the companies, but that feels entirely too impersonal to actually be able to initiate a rule of three.
The thing you have to remember here is that Akua isn't actually story savvy back during this time. She's researched a bit and has her family record and whatnot but that's largely a record of Stupid Evil not actually story savviness. She also has Name Dreams of the last Heir but he wasn't anything special and probably couldn't provide much help. She knows enough to know that you can manipulate a rule of three, giving a worthless victory to later guarantee yourself a success.
Now looking at it from an outside perspective, the company battle was a bit important. It was not, however, nearly as personally important to Cat as Akua manipulating her and verbally slaying her in, to quote Black, "the most dangerous place in the world outside of an active battlefield." From this first impression Cat's chance of ever being able to interact peacefully with the high nobility of Praes was mostly destroyed. She already had a low chance of it due to being Black's chosen pupil. Cat feels despair after this and has to scream out her feeling and be comforted by Black.
This is a loss in every way that matters except the most important. This reflection of Akua after her 'victory' is not a coincidence. It's a story that has repeated itself on both parties.
Now look at what started the pattern on William. A betrayal, not unexpected from an anti-hero, that ended up backfiring on him. An intimate moment where they both had tried to kill each other and had largely succeeded. Cat could have killed him then, could have saved herself the trouble that he would provoke. She instead brands his name with a directive and sends him off to start a real rebellion.
She suffers from doing so, being weakened and less than she was because of the redemption story that she started. Notice how at the end of his story, at his victory, he was also weakened and less than he was before because he had to give up his magic sword. He is given a chance to kill Cat and unlike her he takes it. A pattern repeated on both parties.
Remember the Shining Prince? How when he tried to interfere with the Rule knowingly, he ended up dying because of a mistake? The story at the end of Book 2 was largely the same. Two destined rivals fighting each other, with an outsider interfering between them. The way it ends for the outsider was due to a story mistake that ended up guaranteeing victory for the person who was destined to win.
Masego tells Cat that there was something helping him bring her back. Bard warns William to let Akua and Cat settle their Rule of Three first, so that he has a chance to actually win. A story that guarantees her lose wouldn't have worked out quite so well for Cat.
Edit: corrected a couple things.
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Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
The company battle? That had nothing to do with it. Akua's Loss was when she sent assassins after Cat on the way to the War College and threatened to have everyone from the orphanage killed, before backing down after Cat killed the assassins. The victory being phyric and swiftly undone doesn't change that is was Akua's win, just look at William's win (decapites Cat, she gets back up and kills him a few hours later). You're guaranteed a win in a single encounter, it doesn't effect any of the peripheral objectives or later encounters to any greater extent than the outcome of that fight would normally.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
The point being made is that, while Akua tried to establish a first confrontation there, the actual first confrontation was the one at the Tower, in some people's opinions (I happen to agree with this reading, for what's worth). It's really only important to this thread because, within the fanfiction, Akua already had that meeting at the ruins, but hasn't yet had the meeting at the Tower, while at the same time also having had a first meeting with Tanya similar to the first one with Cat (a meaningless but lightly humiliating defeat). Thus, depending on what the fanfic author's opinion is on this particular matter (and really, the fanfic author's opinion is the only one that actually matters for this particular point), there's the potential for the pattern of three to either not be established, or for it be redirected onto Tanya. That's what the discussion is actually about, since everybody with a different opinion reaching a definitive agreement about the actual APGTE canon here is both unlikely and not really all that relevant to the thread.
- Location
- Montana before it became stupidly Republican
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Ah you did mean the ambush on the Blessed Isle. Sure it's a win but it's so impersonal and it doesn't really lead into a destined rivalry, like we see in nearly all other cases of a Rule of Three. A Squire and an Heir are rivals, of a sort, if they are both fighting for the same position but that was never Akua's game. The whole reason why she moved against Cat in Summerholm and at the Blessed Isle was to confuse Black and Malicia from her true intentions. That was literally the entire purpose behind her prompting the Rivalry in the first place.
In the end, this was Akua making a threat because of expectation, like why she plays shatranj. It wasn't personal, wasn't her being serious in trying to resolve the problem that is Cat. She ran the moment she faced any resistance and it was exactly what a weaker transitional Named should do. It would be a nightmare for Akua to try to be Black's apprentice and she admits as much in a later chapter.
There is also the issue of both the Company battle that Akua instigated and Cat's complete loss at Court existing between their draw at the Demon and then their confrontation at Liesse. As we see in the case of the Gray Pilgrim it has to be a case of a Victory, a Draw and then a fated Loss or the reverse, you can't have multiple confrontations between these. The last in person confrontation between Akua and Cat before the Demon is at the Tower, where Cat loses and that is a deeply personal moment where Cat decides that she must fight against Akua or at least what Akua represents. Besides a Rule of Three isn't just about a first confrontation.
Anyways,
As Egleris points out, in a polite way to get us to stop derailing (I had this mostly written out by the time they replied so if you want a last shot you can take it but after that I would request we go to PM), the actual discussion was about how Tanya being here might have butterflied this entire Rule of Three out of existence and how the author might interpret it.
On that issue, I'm unsure. It's possible for this Rule of Three to still be in play, but it's equally as possible that it has been stopped. William's is still possibly in play as well, if he manages to get a draw.