Private Tales Father and Daughter

[Walter Banick]

"Solitary."

"Yes, Count Walter. Solitary confinement," the Proctor, Andre Magomo, said again. Hardly enthused was he to be speaking to a nobleman.

Both the Proctor and Walter were in the Academy's infirmary. After the incident at the First Annual Solstice Ball, Walter--along with a host of initiates and Guardsmen--required the attention of the Academy's staff of healers.

"Ralene Banick...my daughter...is in solitary confinement." Walter closed his eyes, his brow furrowing tightly. Indignant was he at the news, despite knowing well enough the Academy's harsh methods--or, at least, the harshness that had once been ascribed to them. He knew that his daughter wasn't to receive any special treatment, and nor should she. She was a Banick, and Walter had little doubt that she could not only survive the ordeals of the Academy but thrive, emerging as a capable and fearsome Dreadlord to make the House proud.

Walter looked back to Proctor Magomo. Demanded. "Take me to her."

Magomo blinked slowly. Leisurely. Then stated firmly, "Ten minutes. That is all the Academy will allow."

"Very well then."

And Proctor Magomo turned curtly on his heel and motioned briskly for Walter to follow as he stepped off. Walter did, and they departed from the infirmary.

Solitary confinement. Seems the Republic had yet to strip all the meat from the bones, so far as the Academy was concerned.

* * * * *​

Proctor Magomo stood beside the cell door, making one small motion with his hand and then crossing his arms and staring impatiently at the wall across the hallway.

Walter reached for the handle, then an apprehensive hesitation gripped him, the like of which he'd not known for many years. He didn't know what to expect once he opened this door. The last time he had seen his daughter was thirteen years ago. Thirteen years, for Vel Anir's sake. It remained the most painful event of his life. Yet it was his little Ralene's fortune to be blessed with magic and her fate to attain the prestigious title of Dreadlord, and the glory she could bring to House Banick was worth several stellar military campaigns all on its own.

Little Ralene. Not anymore. That would perhaps be the single biggest change to overcome, how his little girl had grown into the woman she was now. The woman he was about to see.

Walter pulled open the cell door. Light from the hallway spilled inside, casting him in partial silhouette.

"Ralene."

Ralene

 

[Samantha Black]

He arrived to the staccato tune of heavy thumps within the cell. Heavy enough at times that dirt and stonedust fell from the ceiling of the cellblock. When the door opened, throwing streams of light into the darkness, they fell across the figure of a young woman's back who was nearly as broad as she was tall. Faintly tanned skin bore a motley of runic tattoos and scars, easily visible upon her bare shoulders and midriff.

She was a woman of cut brawn, the haze of archaic magic glimmering over her figure in flashes of red with each subsequent punch into the stone wall. The pounding of which had left a depression and stopped at the sound of her name spoken by an unknown voice.

Two glacial blue eyes glowing faintly from her active magic, shifted back over her shoulder in a cutting, curious glance, "Who the fuck are you?"

 

[Walter Banick]

Walter could hardly believe it.

Yet he saw her mother's eyes, perhaps the single unchanged facet of the little Ralene he had last seen all those years ago. All else seemed foreign. Another person. In a sense, it was another person. Across a bridge of time spanning more than a decade and the product of a crucible of the most elite training any mage so walking upon Arethil could undergo. His little girl was no more. She stood before him now with a stature that eclipsed some of the finest Guardsmen Walter knew.

It was not only the arresting sight of his daughter, but her terse words which led Walter to be taken aback. He ought to have been ready for this. The transformation of a civilian man into a soldier was dramatic, the transformation of a child with magical potential into a fully-fledged Dreadlord more so.

Walter took a couple of measured steps into the cell. Spoke in a level voice. He couldn't blame her for not knowing.

"Your father."

Ralene

 

[Samantha Black]

The first step inside was cause for a raised brow.

The second step her lips peeled back over her teeth in a scowl.

The third one fully offended her.

"The fuck you are," Ralene swiveled toward the man, red flashes of energy coursing across her coiled fists and up her arms, "what do you want. You're interrupting my me time."

 

[Walter Banick]

Walter planted his feet where he stood, those few paces beyond the cell's door. His mind had blanked when first he'd touched the cell door's handle, but now he was alert. Prompted to be so from the vicious red flashes of magical energy bolting up his daughter's arms. Where before his mind had stilled at the enormity of seeing his daughter again after such a gulf of time had passed, now it was in fluid motion. Anger. It was natural. Aggressiveness came part and parcel with military training of any kind. What was missing with his daughter was the tempering, the sheath to go along with the sword. It explained why she was in solitary confinement.

And though he kept it buried, it was heartbreaking to see. To hear, as Ralene's rough brevity continued. But perhaps that tempering was soon to come. He could only hope.

"I wanted to see you," Walter said. "I wanted to see how far you've come. And here you are--your present confines be damned--on the cusp of earning what many of your peers have failed to achieve and what your contemporaries across Arethil can but enviously dream of."

And then he spoke firmly, saying the word with a quiet pride.

"Dreadlord."

Ralene

 

[Samantha Black]

Ralene leveled the old man with a stony stare, the line of her jaw growing taut as he continued to blither on about her greatness. Should have been a grand gesture. Perhaps he was expecting her to break out in happy tears and thank him for the opportunity. This once-in-a-lifetime achievement all for him, sweet old daddykins.

Instead she sniffed, spat her disgust off to the side, and rolled her broad shoulders at him, "Yeah. No thanks to you. You finished? I'm kind of busy."

 

[Walter Banick]

I'm kind of busy.

"No you're not."

The words snapped out quickly, like a commander reprimanding a subordinate officer. It had the manner of reflex about it. Walter only caught himself afterward, centering himself once more. The undignified mannerism of spitting openly, the frigid terseness--it was becoming increasingly difficult to believe that the person before him was Ralene. More akin was this woman to an enemy prisoner of war than to a daughter of any kind.

Walter leveled out his tone. Folded his arms behind his back. "I would not diminish your achievement by tampering with your training through unwarranted involvement. What you have earned, you have earned by your own merit. No one can take that from you."

Ralene

 

[Samantha Black]

"You what?" Ralene's took a dangerous step forward at the man, magic crackling angrily across her arms, but was cut short by the glint of Magomo's eye just over his shoulder.

She had zero fucks to give about feeding this man's teeth to him with her fist, but Magomo had her respect ever so much more than Walter Banick could ever hope to. Ralene was a student at the top of her class for many reasons, disrespecting the Proctors wasn't one of them. They, at least, had earned the allowance to reprimand her.

"Five minutes," Magomo uttered from the hallway.

Fucking hell, she had to listen to this for five more minutes? Ralene relented with the stare of a captive tiger prowling its cage, and slowly drew herself back into the cell where she dropped to sit on the bench strung against the wall.

"Tick tock," she gestured to Magomo before crossing her arms at her chest and her legs at her ankles, a begrudgingly expectant glower boring into Walter's forehead.

 

[Walter Banick]

Walter didn't back up, didn't look away, when approached. Doing so would have been disastrous folly, as this had, quick as lightning, become a battle of wills. Something Walter would not have ever anticipated engaging in with Ralene, yet here they were. Time had proven the most formidable foe of all, change the sword with which it cleaved one's life in twain.

Inadequately equipped against magic as he was at present, Walter had no doubt that Ralene could have killed him right then and there. That it was only the presence of the Proctor which shielded him. This very thought, that he ought to be properly equipped in order to merely meet with his daughter, was disturbing.

Walter was not a religious man, yet another thought occurred to him regardless. Gods, what had become of his little girl?

He watched with a stony gaze as Ralene withdrew to sit on the bench within the sparse cell. To think that a Banick would be made to quarter in such wretched confines. Yet it was part of the program in which Walter placed so much confidence.

"You've attained proficiency with your power," Walter said, his tone low and measured. "But, as you've just demonstrated, you don't yet know how to use it properly. Ralene..."

I expected better of you.

"...I suspect that you do not even know why you're in this cell."

Ralene

 

[Samantha Black]

Didn't know how to use her power properly? That was rich coming from a man with no magical abilities to speak of. Ralene's gaze remained impassive while he spoke, fingers idly one-two-three-four-four-three-two-one tapping along her bicep. Back and forth.

One-two-three-four.

"...I suspect that you do not even know why you're in this cell."

Four. Three. Two-

"Proctor Magomo, do I know why I'm in this cell?"

"You certainly do, Ral," Magomo answered with about as much interest as a man reading the daily news.

"It's because I tore the right arm off of my classmate, Devos, during a sparring match. The other students will say I did it to skip the dance, but you know why I did it, don't you Proctor Magomo?"

"I have my suspicions..."

"Because three days ago I caught Devos beating the shit out of a girl named Chasmine while two others held her down. Which isn't exactly a top offense, but he was doing it during free period out on the grounds, outside of designated spar sessions and supervision. Before the revolution that wouldn't have mattered,"

One.

"Now it does. I followed the rules and bent them so he couldn't break them anymore. They can't just let me go for what I've done, they have to make a show of some form of punishment, but they can't punish me the way they used to, isn't that right Proctor Magomo?"

Magomo took a long, slow breath--a man who had spent the last decade at least inflicting heinous levels of mental, physical, and emotional abuse and torture on Walter Banick's child--and gently cleared his throat, "One minute."

"I know exactly why I'm in this cell."

 

[Walter Banick]

Walter listened to it all with a granite expression and a narrowed brow. In the quiet which followed his eye studied the woman in the cell.

At last, he said, "How laudable."

A half glance over his shoulder to Proctor Magomo. A nod. And Walter turned with a precise military motion on his heel and departed from the cell. He could hear the Proctor locking the cell once more as he walked down the hallway.

He clenched his right hand. Unclenched it. Then gave it a brief shake.

There was so much left unsaid. And, as it appeared, so much that could never be said.

Ralene