Upon Steel's Edge Proven
Twenty-Eighth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
The knight tested the blade in his hand, a hair lighter than it aught to be, but as sure in his hand as though it had grown there... and
sharp. Even the slightest touch upon the edge had drawn blood, the droplet turning from red to black the moment it touched the steel. As a boy at the Twins, Ser Walder Frey had played at bearing a Valyrian Steel weapon. Who hadn't? And now here he was with a dagger in hand and not knowing what to do with it. He couldn't wear it at home, it would be too clear a mark of his presence at the 'Mystery Tourney' or the 'Traitor's Tourney' as Baratheon's lickspittles were like to call it.
The Old Man would say to give it to him for safe keeping, he'd be right too, and there was the rub. He was usually right, but he used his wisdom as a spear from atop that oaken throne of his, poking and prodding, as a hook drawing everything in. Everything for the family, and the family was him...
Slowly, the knight raised his head to stare into the fire. A look at once sly and thoughtful passed over the dark-haired warrior's features, alongside something else, something softer than few indeed could ever say to have seen upon it.
***
Arwyn Frey had just been finishing a cinnamon bun high in the stands of the Circle of Battle when the shadow of dark wings passed over her and a croaking voice called: "Package and letter, package and letter." Something small but heavy dropped in her lap. Then before she could do more than look up the talking bird had flown off, leaving her with a mystery to untangle.
Predictably as the sunrise Walda called out from beside her: "Oh... maybe it's a secret admirer."
Arwyn knew better than to take the older girl's teasing seriously as she pulled on the string securing the small package. "Generally those wait at least until a girl is..."
A dagger gleaming smokey black slipped from the packaging, silencing her words with a gasp.
"There's a note," Walda said softly, not in the mood for japes anymore. She did not even try to snatch it away to read herself.
Hurriedly, the younger girl looked over the lines scrawled into the wrapping.
"Take this to aid in the interests of House Frey in this place of magic. Use it to defend yourself from harm that common steel will not ward off. If Walda asks why I did not trust her with the dagger, remind her of the incident with the sled and the lard barrel.
W.F."
At the reminder of the time her cousin had convinced some of the boys to try sledding in summer by greasing the sled with lard, Arwyn giggled. That had been one of Walda's more infamous tricks, and one of the few that earned her a tanned hide right alongside the ones she had put up to it. But as the laughter faded and the impossible treasure remained, Arwyn found herself staring intently at the pair of initials, ones shared with so many other Freys, and yet...
She remembered a rumor she had half-heard through a cracked door, one that Ser Stevron was telling off Merrett for repeating. Rumors were as common as air at the Twins, you learned to live letting them fly, but if he had been right... that would mean her father was not the ancient man upon the black chair around which everything seemed to revolve. Her father was a knight who had unhorsed five others in the joust, the warrior who would be fighting in this very arena against sorcerers and other stranger things.
"Is that a
demon?" Arwyn asked in a hushed voice to the girl sitting on her other side who had watched the delivery in silence.
"What... oh, her?" Kyla Fairwind looked intently at the horned woman entering on the side of the opposing team. "Just a tiefling most likely, fiend-blooded," she explained as if that made it better. "It runs strong in her, though. Most don't get wings."
"And she can just walk around and...?" Arwyn had the sudden mad impulse to march up to the Dragon King and demand to know what he was about letting her... the man who might be her father fight demons. When she looked at the royal box, however, he wasn't there.
"As long as she doesn't break any laws why wouldn't she?" Kyla shrugged. Then more seriously, "If the Lawmen went after her for having horns, what's to stop them for going after me and Jori for having weird shadows?"
"I... I guess that makes sense," the young Frey said, sitting back down. As much sense as the rest of this place.
She did not have much longer to ponder the matter before the trumpets called and the arena descended into the clash of steel and spell.
A bolt of poisonous green arched from one side to the other faster than the swiftest arrow, hitting the Ironborn prince square in the face, while the demon or whatever it was seemed to claw at the air until it bled... and Theon Greyjoy bled even more with it, through the dreadful scars.
Even as she did so the knight and the dragonrider charged as one, the girl jumping
over the stone man that emerged from the sands before falling on the vitriol thrower with the weight of steel and fury. The chain tangled, the sword cut and cut again and again. The mage collapsed in a puddle of blood while the wounded prince's sister charged the half-buried stone man, but her axes glanced off his stony skin.
The strange creature did not take that well, blasting a wave of blazing sparks into the woman's eyes with one hand while it sliced into her side with its heavy curved sword.
Two arrows flew hissing overhead, but Arwyn barely noticed it. The demon had turned to her father and said... something, her snake eyes glowing gold. Like a man in a trance the knight began to turn away before the silver-haired mage noticed what he was about and flung some spell of her own over him. "Eyes in the fight not on her tits!"
The knight took this to mean striking the demon with one mighty blow of his sword, though it didn't seem to do much.
"Stolen life," Arwyn heard Kyla say faintly from the side. She sounded like she was a million miles away.
The Ironborn princess and the stone man continued to trade blows.... he kicked her to the ground... a black feathered arrow lodged in his back. As the demon threw herself into the air her father's sword again barely seemed to nick her, though the heavy stone disks the dragonrider threw hit her full in the head... too late for the prince.
The demon clawed at him and now there were three fighting two, though even as she stood over the young man's body the knight strike her in the back between the wings, cleaving her back it in twain while the sorceress rushed over to help the other warrior woman against her foe, chain flashing with fire and ice.
The fight was soon over as the last of the otherworldly ones yielded.
Arwyn cheered until her throat was sore, though she also worried about what else her father would have to face. Only when the thought had run its course did she realize there was no hesitation to it anymore. She wanted Black Walder to be her father, she might as well admit it.
OOC: With the sort of luck Walder had, if Valaena's Dispel had not worked the Outsiders might have just carried the day.
