Hey, Listen!
Hey, Listen!
Hi guys. It's been a while.
Life hasn't gotten too much better but things are leveling out a bit.
Hopefully I'll have more time to write and relax now.
I'm not able to promise anything like an upload schedule however I want you.
Yes you.
To know I'm still here and getting back on my feet.
By the way,
I don't own anything related to these two intellectual properties.
Just in case you thought I did.
Thank you all for reviewing and sending your helpful words of support.
There is simply too much to mention here but it was truly what kept me going every now and then.
If you have any questions about the story, need reminders, or spot problems with it, please let me know.
I feel like I messed up somewhere but can't put my finger on it for some reason.
PREVIOUSLY ON IWSaD!
Dove was kidnapped because the enemy went for the throat only to have her destroy their ship when she came too hours later.
Tabitha is bared from going to war because her uncle hasn't chosen a side and probably won't until he smells blood.
Henrietta has come under criticism for it was her musketeers who provided protection for the school. How can someone who can't protect the homeland's major magic school lead their men?
Finally, Louise has just been told what became of her friend and secret familiar. The truth of which had been withheld by her sisters.
Louise couldn't see the walls around her as she marched down the hall away from Kirche and Tabitha's bedroom. There wasn't anything wrong with her, she just wasn't thinking straight. It felt like she was falling forwards, each step was made a split second before she careened into the ground in front of her. It was like something her friends had said threw a switch in her head and now she couldn't do anything that wasn't at full tilt.
"Louise," Cattleya hurried to keep pace behind the small pink haired girl, "Calm dow-"
Louise came to an abrupt halt at the second word, causing Cattleya to stop as well.
"Calm down?" Louise asked, turning to give her once beloved sister an artic look. "I was just told that a person of great importance to me was taken by our enemies and that my sister," her eyes flashed with rage causing Cattleya to take a step back, "the one that I always felt safe and protected with, was trying to keep me unaware for some, probably ludicrous, reason."
Louise's face was hard as steel and as cold as an icy breeze down a person's back. Cattleya's mouth worked for a moment as Louise seemed to vanish for a moment before her eyes. In her little sister's place was their mother, Louise had the elder woman's glare.
Seeing no reply was coming, Louise turned back down the hall. "No, I won't, 'calm down," Louise shot over her shoulder. She couldn't believe it that her own sister had been lying to her! Now that she thought about it, where is Elenore? Her elder sister had been out of her sight for a suspiciously long time.
Louise held the glare for a moment longer before turning away. She needed to get out of their control, if she stayed here then they'd ship her off back home as soon as they could. 'How to…' She thought, ignoring Cattleya as if she'd ceased to exist.
Cattleya felt her eyes start to tear up as Louise turned away and marched into the office. She knew she'd really screwed up but it was for her own good, right?
No. She couldn't even lie convincingly to herself.
Louise marched down the halls away from her stupefied sister until a door caught her attention and brought her to a pause. Agnes was being called to the queen's side and would need as many recruits as she could get...
'This might be the worst decision I'll ever make, but it would take me towards where Dove went.' she thought, weighing the choices for a moment before squaring her shoulders and marching into the room. "I need to join the next group going to Albion," she demanded.
Agnes jerked up from where she was working at her desk. Julio was taking a bit longer than she thought he would, copying the pages so she'd started doing her part to catch up on her work. "You?" she asked, taken aback, "So soon?" It wasn't like Louise wasn't going to be sent to the front lines anyway because of her magic affinity, the queen would call for her eventually, however, most young noble girls wouldn't demand to go to within fifty miles of a fist fight let alone a war.
"I am the only mage with my power," Louise said leadingly, glancing at Cattleya out of the corner of her eye. She wasn't being spiteful, she was under orders to keep her void element a secret. The fact that she felt a surge of spite about leaving Cattleya in the dark was an unexpected sensation.
She shook her head to dispel the thought as Agnes slowly nodded. "I understand," the captain muttered, noticing Cattleya in the background shaking her head. Agnes raised an eyebrow, the plan was to bring Louise to the front lines eventually so provisions were already being made to send her up with the next wave.
"I'll have a spot opened on the next air ship," the captain said. "You'll need to pack a few days of clothes for travel and be ready to go early tomorrow morning. Everything you need should be provided at the main camp."
Cattleya's head dropped in defeat while Louise smiled, now it was an official order. Eleanore wouldn't be able to argue about it.
"Thank you," Louise responded, nodding before turning around and ghosting past Cattleya.
Cattleya turned to follow only to have Agnes's door slammed in her face.
"Something wrong?" Agnes asked the older pink-haired woman. The tension between the two had been thick enough to cut with a club, let alone a knife.
Cattleya sighed. "It's a family issue," she responded. "Please don't get involved more than you already have."
Agnes raised an eyebrow as the calmer Valiere daughter shot her down. "Alright," she backed off, certain that she'd just been used by the youngest to get something over her elder siblings.
Cattleya seemed to deflate at Agnes' response. "Thank you," she sighed again. "Now I have to tell my sister about Louise's decision."
Agnes winced, not at all envious of the girl in front of her.
"So," Dove asked as she chopped at the wild vegetables the two elves had gathered. Together, the two of them had finally found enough vegetables for a stew and with a quiet mutter of LAAS when Tiffania wasn't looking, the Dragonborn was able to get a pair of rabbits.
Tiffania looked up towards the chef as she busily prepared the animals.
"I'm curious," Dove continued, watching a nervous look spread across her companion's face. "I noticed that you've got rather nice clothes, even a fancy looking ring, for someone living in the forest by themselves." Tiffania froze in the middle of skinning the Hares. "It's alright if you don't want to explain it to me," Dove quickly assured her host, waving her hands in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "I was just a bit curious."
Tiffania quietly chewed at her lip. The new elf hadn't torn into her for being a half breed so maybe it was safe to share a bit about herself. "The ring was a gift from my mother," she allowed, "She was an elf and she traveled here from Nephthys and met my father."
Dove frowned, "Nephthys… where's that?" Maps in Tristan weren't exactly clear on what was to the east of them, where she was told the elves lived.
Tiffania looked at her in surprise. "Nephthys is the land of our kin. It's a large desert to the east on the mainland." She then tilted her head, "How don't you know about that? My mother was from a small town on the western boundary and she knew the name of the land she was born in." 'Is she also a half elf,' she wondered, a small bead of warmth appearing in her chest.
Completely unaware of her companion's thoughts, Dove wiped at her forehead, mildly panicking. 'Shite!' She didn't have an answer. Answering honestly was almost completely out of the question, 'I'm a transdimensional Bosmer (not elf) who was brought here through a human mage summoning me just as I learned how to turn into a flipping dragon.' That'd go over super well, probably make Tiffania wonder just how crazy her guest truly was. Her only other option though was to lie without knowing anything about the land the elves came from.
'Middle ground it is then,' she decided.
"I'm from Tristain," Dove said, starting her rendition of 'the truth'. "I hide my ears with a band and cook in the academy of magic. I've never been to 'Nefthis' before. Honestly, I haven't even heard the name before. My parents aren't around anymore." 'Truth all the way up to where I come from, nice,' she congratulated herself mentally.
"Oh, so you're a half elf?" Tiffania asked excitedly.
Dove's face broke into an indulgent, fake, smile. It was an expression she'd practiced often, one that said she was rewarding a student for a correct answer. Thankfully she'd practiced this expression on her students often enough for it to come naturally. The trick works as Tiffania's expression gets even brighter.
"That's so amazing!" Tiffania said, not noticing that Dove hadn't answered her directly. "Just like me!"
"Thanks," Dove responded, more non-answers. "So," she continued, quickly moving off the uncomfortable topic, "What's your sister like? Why isn't she here now?"
"My sister's a secretary at an academy," Tiffania smiled, more at ease now that she knew her companion was a half elf like she was. "She helps run a magic school, kind of like what you do, only she works in accounting and not cooking."
"Really, that's very interesting," Dove replied, trying to imagine a school that would knowingly have a half elf like Tiffanias' sister. "Do you know which one?" Dove asked, "I'm curious which school would also accept someone with ears like ours, I had to hide mine."
"Oh, my sister is more like my adopted sister," Tiffania corrected her companion. "She's a human whose father worked for my father, she's been my only friend since I was little and when… I had to come here, she became like my second mother, bringing me occasional deliveries of food and such."
"She sounds interesting," Dove commented, visibly piecing it together. "And one of those deliveries is happening today, so you want to give her a surprise meal. I get it."
Tiffania beamed before replying, "Exactly," and returned to her rabbits.
Louise sat at the head of a wagon train, around her was the first platoon of musketeers moving to the front line.
The platoon had forty girls apart from herself crammed into five long wagons with another pair of wagons set aside to carry all their personal gear. They were traveling 'light' for a military caravan as they would be getting more supplies in port, but it was all a very new experience for the young Valliere girl.
Louise had traveled light before, on her last trip to Albion she'd basically lived out of a backpack, unheard of for someone of her station, however, for some reason, despite the vast number of warriors around her, this trip left her feeling more vulnerable then last time.
Before it felt like a 'quick' trip to the floating island with her very powerful fiance, familiar, and friends. Even when her fiance had dragged things out by kidnapping her, she'd known that things were going to be alright once Dove got them home in under a week. She'd been right and it had only been a few days before she'd returned to Tristain with everyone alive and well.
'This time,' Louise thought, looking back at the school. She wasn't leaving things the way she wanted to, it felt like there was suddenly a real chance that she wouldn't be coming, or even welcome, home…
Her sisters were both standing at the doors to the main hall, Eleanor quietly fuming as Cattleya held her back. Louise's breath slowed as she forced herself to hold back the anger in her chest and the fear in her gut.
There had been no sleeping last night as Eleanor had ranted and raved at her, trying to shout her little sister down into the floor and then to the carriage she'd ordered to be brought from Arrun rather than help her pack. Thing is, this wasn't like the last time when she'd dragged Louise home for a family 'discussion'.
Louise had felt something in her back harden and shouted right back at her elder sibling until the two were blue in the face. She'd said some terrible things. The brief look of shock and hurt on Eleanore's face had cut her just as deep as it had Eleanore.
In the end, Cattleya had stepped in and forced the two to opposite sides of Louise's bedroom to sleep. Both girls had huffed and got into bed but no one slept.
She didn't want her last words to her sisters to be those hurtful things that had been said last night but things felt too far gone for them to make up despite how much she wanted to. She wanted to hop out of her seat, grab onto and bury her face into Eleanore's long dress to hide from the war. It felt like her clothes were nailed to the cart.
However, now, it looked to be too late. Her eldest sister was physically holding her other sister back from marching down the stairs and doing something drastic. Eleanore's expression was ice cold as the two sisters broke eye contact.
"Time to move out!" Agnes' voice called from the front, causing Louise to jerk in her seat as the wagon started to move away.
-[]-
Cattleya's heart ached as she watched Louise leave. She wanted to be angry with Louise and terrified and proud of her all at once, each emotion feeding into each other as they tangled together like a bag of used yarn.
In the end, she found that all she could do was fall back on her hateful, old habit of quietly watching as the world passed her by.
Louise looked between the two one last time as the last of the musketeers' wagons passed the entrance to the academy, Eleanor glaring at her while Cattleya looked like she was about to cry. The young pink haired warrior bit her lip as she felt her pride crumbling around her, reaching up, she gave them a wave.
Eleanor huffed and looked away while Cattleya started to cry.
-[]-
"Sorry about your sisters," Kirche said from where she sat beside Louise. The red head was in the process of loading her own sack into the wagon. Officially the Germalian was going back home; she'd decided, in her own words, to 'take a scenic route, Albion looks like a great place to visit with friends.' Since members of her house were already on the front lines, she was allowed by Agnes.
"Thanks," Louise grumbled, shifting in place to look towards Kirche.
"So, what's our plan once we get into Albion?" Kirche asked, looking around in case someone was listening in on them.
"I need to meet up with the queen and get an idea of what's going on on the front lines, where the battles are happening, where we should set up our tents, if they saw the ship, that sort of thing," Louise responded.
"Alright," Kirche said, "I can ask around on Germalia's side of things."
"Thank you."
The group started to march down the road towards the airship staging area on the border.
Louise turned in her seat and watched the academy get smaller.
"I'll be back, right?" Louise muttered, the weight of her decision settling on her shoulders.
Kirche looked sideways at her. "I'll try my best to get home in one piece," she declared, "Of course you'd do the same, right?"
Louise nodded. Would they welcome her back though? She felt like she was already leaving a mess behind that could fester and rot. Closing her eyes, Louise let the cart rock her into a daze.
-[]-
Eleanore slowly let go of her breath, wishing her rage could be released just as easily. "So, now we're the only Valliere sisters left," she said, trying to be completely deadpan but failing miserably.
"No, Louise will be fine," Cattleya replied, a crack of reproach breaking through her tone as she watched the cloud of dust resettle on the road ahead.
"Really?" Eleanore growled. She didn't believe that for a second. It was only a few years ago that Louise was slipping into her bed because there was a monster in her closet. A few months since she was struggling to do baseline spells and worrying about what her familiar would be.
It just wasn't possible for someone to become strong enough for war in such a short amount of time. She knew that, Cattleya knew that, everyone knew that.
"Her familiar will protect her," Cattleya pointed out. After all, dragons tended to make great protectors.
"Again, really?" Eleanore snapped, "Just where is this familiar? We haven't seen the dragon since it poked its head into our home. It should have been here when she was taken hostage, it should be leaving with her now. Where is her dragon right now?"
Cattleya opened her mouth before closing it again. Her little sister had a point. Her dragon had been seen in the first battle, people should have been flocking to see her for no other reason than to get close to a famous fighter. Where was it?
Eleanore scoffed at Cattleya's silence before finally wrenching her arm out of her sister's hand and stomping off. Cattleya quietly watched her leave, feeling just as lost as Eleanore. She felt like things were falling out of control. Before they'd been getting better between Eleanore and Louise, however, with the attack they'd fallen apart again.
Eleanore shouldn't be on Louise's back so much, she was a growing girl who had grown so much in the past few weeks let alone the past year since leaving for school and could look after herself.
At the same time though, Eleanore had a point. Where was the dragon Dovahkiin? She was going to be needed in the war, both for the battlefield but more importantly for Louises' safety. Lousie has grown more than Eleanore was willing to admit but a familiar was part of a noble's entourage and should be there.
Cattleya frowned before turning to follow.
-[]-
Eleanore walked through the school, her back was straight, eyes forwards, the pose of a perfect noble woman that had been drilled into her since birth. Her posture made it easy to walk as her mind couldn't focus.
She strode past the remaining students and staff like they weren't even there as she thought about the past forty or so hours.
Her toes smacking into a hard wood surface snapped her back into here and now. She'd arrived back in the bedroom she shared with Cattleya when they'd first arrived without realizing it. On impulse she grabbed the handle and yanked the door open only to catch it again before it hit the wall and gently closed it behind her.
The room was still a mess from when the attackers had forced their way into the room, apparently the mercenaries had taken to destroying their things in anger over losing them. Their beds were slashed and the bookshelf lay on the floor, cloth that might have been her clothes were shredded and tossed around the fireplace. This place would need cleaning before it was usable again.
Eleanore stared at the ruined bed for a long moment before grabbing the nearest bunch of cloth and throwing it atop the mattress. Breathing deeply, Eleanore raised her wand and cast a fireball at it.
The magically summoned fire attacked the mass of wood and comfortable cloth, Her follow up wind spell kept the heat away from the nearby desk as she moved around the room. Every torn, ripped, or otherwise destroyed thing in the room was tossed one by one on the fire before Eleanore came to a halt.
She slowly sank into a chair, breathing heavily as the carefully controlled conflagration burned, her will finally gave out a moment later and her heavy breaths turned to tears that cascading down her cheeks. The fire started dimming as the air spell Eleanore was using to contain the flames started to crush them.
"Come back," She muttered numbly. Her sister was too young, inexperienced, and alone! She wasn't going to come back to them and it was… someone's fault. She wasn't sure who, if it was hers for pushing her away, for being so mean and stiff all the time or not, but someone needed to be blamed.
'Who got her baby sister in this mess?' she thought, the fire gleaming in her eyes as she came to a realization she could live with spat. "Bosquet."
"AHCHOO!"
"Bless you."
"Thanks," Dove turned and sniffed, making sure the sudden irritation in her nose didn't contaminate her stew. The pot was coming along nicely, the meat was cooking in a sauce to be added later while the sweet rolls were baking. It'd be a disaster nearly as bad as her kidnapping if her meal got wrecked. Next was the fruit salad.
She really just needed a win here for her peace of mind.
"Any idea when your sister is supposed to get here?" Dove asked thoughtfully. It would take at least another hour until the food was done.
"She usually arrives just after the sun has gone down," Tiffania replied.
Glancing out the window, Dove noticed that they had about two hours. "Plenty of time then, think we can make some honey cream for the salad?"
"-No sign of survivors were found in the wreckage," the captain reported crisply to his queen. The captain was an older man with salt and pepper hair and a sharp face. Despite his elder years, he'd led the Griffin knights with distinction after they broke off from the Manticore knights and the retirement of Karin of the Heavy Wind. His latest mission had been to get an indepth look at the suspected crash site of the weapon smugglers.
The queen looked up from her maps and nodded. "Thank you Captain Sparhawk," she replied smoothly. "Did you find any sign of the weapons designer? The reports said that she had been taken with the designs of her weapons."
Captain Sparhawk shook his head. "There was a room that looked like a cell but it was empty and the captain's quarters were torched so there were no paper remains. There might be something of value in the cargo hold."
"I see. Please have the wreck searched, it could be dangerous if the enemy ends up with even a list of components." Henrietta acknowledged, lowering her head back to her maps. It'd been necessary for her to lie to the knights patrolling the skies and give a modified truth to the Captain. Information had to be treated as a commodity as precious as water.
"Did you find any sign of people leaving?" she asked to distract the captain from thinking too hard about it. "How many bodies were found in the ship, a full crew's worth?"
"As far as I could tell it was a skeleton crew at best," Captain Sparhawk replied. "No nobles were found in the wreckage. Which is odd for the Reconquista, they should have had more than just a fully commoner crew on an important mission like this one."
"The report said that they had several mages when they assaulted the school," Henretta allowed. "They fell in battle while this last group escaped with the weapon designer and notes."
"That makes more sense," Sparhawk allowed before slowly shaking his head. "We can't be sure of anything. Though, there is evidence that a small escape ship was missing. A disgraced noble smuggler or the weapons designer would have been able to escape before the ship went down."
"True," Henrietta replied.
Captain Sparhawk waited for a moment longer before bowing, "If you have no more need of me then I'll return to my squad."
Henrietta nodded. "Thank you, good day Captain."
With that his job was done and the Captain left.
-[]-
The main camp outside the command tent was an organized mess in Sparhawk's opinion. The southern side, where all the nobles were gathered, was an organized mess of divisions naturally split by their noble family connections while the front was composed of the levies. A nearby town in the middle was being used as a drop off spot for the airship deliveries.
This worked very well in Sparhawk's opinion, the closer to the front line you got the more common you were.
It was a perfect display of how the world worked, each person given a purpose in life by their betters as the glory of War trimmed the fat of society.
Shaking away his thoughts, Sparhawk quickly made his way back to the airborne Griffin corral. His men were all standing at the ready. He was very proud of them, they'd gotten back from the mission only half an hour ago yet they were already prepared for their next orders.
He had no new orders though as they had to wait on her majesty's wishes so he ignored them as he marched into the large supply tent.
The front section of the tent was large and open, more of a pavilion than a tent for the griffins in case of rain. The second section was a large storage section through a guarded door. The guards stood straighter as Sparhawk marched through.
Inside was a collection of chests, feed bags, extra saddles and a couple of men, and one extra man practically mummified in bandages, strapped to a table.
"How is the patient?" Captain Sparhwak asked the man standing near the bandaged man.
"He'll live," the man said, "He's lucky to have survived long enough for me to heal him."
The man in question was beaten to hell and back. The left side of his face was dominated by a large burn covered in gauze, all of his hair was gone. The left side of his body was missing limbs, his arm was a stump four inches past the shoulder, his left leg was just gone past the knee.
Those injuries appeared to be from some kind of explosion, the other wounds seemed to come from a fall. Snapped right arm, lacerations all across his body and a rattled skull, clearly a miracle was the only thing that kept him alive, not that unexpected for a noble.
Sparhawk had found him thrown from the wreckage. Honestly he was going to let the man bleed out like the rest of the commoners until he saw the wand in his outstretched fingers. This indicated to the Captain that he was a noble, and therefore worth saving.
His men cleaned up the rest of the survivors.
"How long until he's awake?" Sparhawk asked, returning to the present.
"Not for a couple of hours," the healer said. "I think he's a wind mage and somehow caught his fall or at least slowed it down significantly, otherwise he'd be dead. However, the landing was rough and the concussion will take a few hours to be safely brought down with magic."
Sparhawk nodded. "Let me know when he's awake," he said before turning and leaving the tent.
Outside a pair of minor officers stood ready for their captain. "Orders Sir?" Sparhawk nodded at them.
"The designer wasn't there, however, there should be some of their work in the wreckage," Sparhawk remembered what Henrietta had tried to distract him from, "I want you to find anything that might be related to this weapon or it's designer. Bring it to me."
So, how are you guys?
I honestly started writing because I was lonely and needed to somehow put the voices in my head out there for others to see.
It's only fair that I do the same in return.
How are you guys handling the Pandemic?
Do you need someone to talk at?
I'm willing to listen, though don't expect perfect answers.
You guys now have nearly 500.000 examples of how well I can talk good.