Fable - Ask Fumbles and Foibles

[Kristen Pirian]

What was she doing? Huh? She was doing what everyone else was doing, just going to class.

Don't you have a garden to look after? Some field to tend?

Mild confusion. "What? No."

I assume like the rest of your family you have some...plowing to attend?

Though Kristen didn't know overly much of Liliana (certainly not enough to have formed an opinion of her, apparently), Edric had referred to her as a...rather coarse word. Kristen was wary of trusting Edric's opinion on anything these days, but it seemed in this case he was close to the truth.

The confusion slipped away, like a sheath falling away from a kitchen knife, and something more barbed came out. Something Kristen would have not dared give voice to a year ago—the very thought would have failed to present itself to her to be said.

"Hm," Kristen said, "I seem to have forgotten what Lorels are famed for. Other than staggering mediocrity."

Liliana

 

[Liliana]

Liliana let out a laugh. "Ah yes, the mediocrity of two Archons."

She smiled, a wicked little smile.

Kristen was right of course. House Lorel was a minor house, and in truth compared to Pirian they were almost insignificant. They were still a client to Virak, though Liliana had never much seen a difference in it. Especially now that Cousin Elise was the only one left.

What Lorel did have going for it was the prestige of it's Dreadlords.

The family had produced a dozen powerful sorcerer's over the last three hundred years. Two of them going on to become Archons. Isbrand was the latest one, though he too now lay in an early grave thanks to the Revolution.

"It's refreshing to see you try to bite back, Kristen." Liliana continued. "Much better than the meek little mouse that had been running around here."

That witchy little smile remained. "Maybe you'll be something after all."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen wanted to extricate herself from the little confrontation. She wanted to be off to Proctor Fernando's class and then to the free period after such that she could continue trying to delve into the mysteries of curses, and how she might be able to unlock their power and satisfy Proctor Magomo's assignment. She was so close! She didn't have time for this! Liliana had within only the span of a few seconds proven herself to be needlessly belligerent at best, maliciously scathing at worst. Did she really have time for this, with Proctor Magomo's deadline looming? Did she really have time to endure Liliana, to stand here as her blood boiled—

Wait.

As her blood boiled. With...anger...loathing...indignance. Crisp tastes of those negative emotions she needed to channel! Emotions which before had so rarely skittered across her heart with their spindly, pointed legs. Mayhap...trading a few barbs with Liliana could be just the inspiration she required! Divine Magic Cake!

"Have you taken any flowers to Archon Isbrand's grave?" Kristen asked. "It's the least you could do. They could keep him company in the dirt, along with the rest of House Lorel's most laudable claims."

Liliana

 

[Liliana]

A spike of utter hatred radiated through LIliana’s chest. Anger and seething rage that never for a moment touched her face. Instead her features remained all smiles and joy, a radiant glow of attention as though Kristen had just bade her the kindest of compliments.

She had loved her Uncle.

To many he’d been a monster, but to her? He had been a guidestone. One of the few people who had actually cared about her, not just seen her as another tool for House Lorel. Perhaps because his own life had been much the same.

For a moment she considered turning Kristen into a blubbering little moron that could barely speak. A weaving lashed in the right place would have her drooling on her tabard, needing care for the rest of her life.

It would have been so very satisfying, seeing the Pirian turned into a gibbering moron.

But the price was too high. More than a few Proctors would instantly know what had happened, and the fallout would be utterly colossal. Better to just pick the little noble apart. ”Oh I wish I could.”

She made a face, as if in true despair.

”Unfortunately your sister has been buying them all up for her upcoming wedding.” Liliana sighed. ”Bought out every shop in Vel Anir. What with it being Prince Lynus and all.”

Liliana knew that Kristen had not yet heard. The news had barely been disseminated, and she had only learned of it from her Cousin Elise. A woman who seemed to know every tick of gossip in the city. ”She did tell you about it, right?”

She asked innocently, as if she noticed Kristen looked surprised.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Disarmed.

There was no better word for how Kristen's face, whatever resolute expression she had been able to muster upon it, simply deteriorated into one of unfiltered surprise. Surprise became bewilderment. And bewilderment became disbelief.

Prince...Lynus? Him? That prince? The very same from the Anireth Royal Family? Wha...no. N-No! It couldn't be happening, of course not, because if it were there would have been a tremendous fanfare about it. Alliance of Houses or no Alliance, Republic or no Republic, the Royal Family was still the Royal Family. And if Amelia, her dear sister Amelia, was the one to whom Prince Lynus would be betrothed, then two people out of everyone in Vel Anir would have been the first to know: their mother Josephine, and Kristen herself.

"S-Surely you jest." Then, gathering a touch of mettle. "You do jest, Liliana Lorel! I've spoken on something dear to you and you have conjured a fabrication to strike at something equally dear to me! 'Tis a fanciful falsehood and nothing more!"

Liliana

 

[Liliana]

Liliana lavished within sweet, sweet victory.

Kristen broke, faltering long enough for the young Lorel to capitalize. She practically beamed with joy, reveling in the panic which flickered through her fellow Nobles face. If ever Liliana Lorel had been giddy, it was right in that moment. "No of course not, Kristen!"

She said, sounding genuinely aghast at the accusation.

"I assure you I am being utterly truthful." Her smile turned upside down, as though she were quite distressed Kristen had not yet heard. "Why would you think I would do that?"

Liliana asked. "It must be a mistake."

The Noble continued.

"I am sure you'll be invited." That smile flickered over her face again. "It is your Sister, after all."

Liliana paused a moment, then added. "But it is the Prince..."

Suddenly her fingers flickered, just slightly, ever so slightly. A touch of doubt casting as a net, drawing against Kristen's mind. So subtle it was little less than a breeze.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

No, Liliana was wrong. She wouldn't be invited. Kristen had felt convinced, utterly convinced, that Liliana had been making it all up. Yet now there was a crack in that conviction. A fundamental crack. Amelia had not been particularly forthcoming in her more recent correspondences, not as much as she had been while she was away. Gods...her hand was available for marriage, so was the Prince's, both House Pirian and the Royal Family were surely keen on seeing their respective daughter and son married before long. And wasn't the Prince a notorious recluse, quite secretive in this way? Hadn't Amelia been upset that Kristen enrolled into the Academy?

Thus the weave did its work.

And genuine resentment began to build.

A hand smothered one side of Kristen's face, her palm dragging down slowly from her forehead to her cheek. "This is...unthinkable!" she said, more aloud to herself than to Liliana specifically. Her voice was quiet, a touch breathless. "Does my own sister, my very own sister, not trust me to keep so momentous and sensitive a secret in confidence??"

Half seemingly remembering that Liliana was still there, half in a strange way looking to the blonde girl for some manner of guidance, Kristen glanced back up at her and met her eyes.

Confused, lost, hurt.

Liliana

 

[Liliana]

Liliana's face was a painted mask of sympathy. Like carved by the great artist Raphine himself she swept forward and place a gentle caring hand on the other noble's shoulder. "There there, my dear Kristen."

Her words were that of the serpent whispering to Lyeve.

The quiet murmur of Lucanyel tempting Kress within the desert.

A melodic honey that could soothe all aches. A balm that touched upon wounds of the soul. The way Liliana spoke was enough to make one forget of the barbs on her tongue. The viper that had bit down into flesh over and over again.

"It's not you." She said quietly. "It's this place."

Her words were nothing less than the utmost sympathy. "They foisted you here. Thrown you to the wolves. Forgotten about you."

Genuine, almost empathetic despair flickered through her tone. "Not a Pirian...not a precious sister to be loved..."

She said quietly, another gentle twitch of her finger. "Just another common...Initiate."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Not a Pirian.

Those three words seemed to break the pall of hurt and doubt. A single ray of clarity speared through overcast skies, and a few more broke through when Liliana suggested that she was just another common Initiate. Still, though the second attempt to manipulate Kristen had been resisted, a hard denial of those words—Not a Pirian—coalescing into a kind of united aegis, damage from the first had been done, and this yet remained despite what she would go on to do and say.

Kristen roughly shoved off the arm she'd allowed to be draped over her shoulder, and she gave Liliana a cross look.

"I know not what grievance or circumstance has kept my sister from telling me of this news, but I am a Pirian. I shall always be a Pirian!" She said adamantly. "Mayhap your own House of Lorel is a den of serpents, but House Pirian always in the end rises above such pettiness. We are the best of Vel Anir."

She took a step, then added, "I will send you a flower for your perished uncle—the traitorous cur."

And Kristen began to stomp off down the hallway.

Liliana

 

[Liliana]

As Kristen went stomping down the hall she would hear something following behind her.

A melodious laughter.

Resounding and echoing, sticking to the mind even in the midst of night.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

DAY FOUR​

Maddeningly close. And with just three full days left to unlock the power of Curses, Kristen needed to do something. Strange as it was, that brief encounter with Liliana had been quite helpful. Quite helpful. Kristen rarely felt the sort of powerfully negative emotions which engendered the mindset necessary to cast a curse. In her practice, emotions like sorrow and regret (which was to say, emotions that typically did not have an object, a target) were useful, yes. She even hypothesized that they would be very useful indeed for niche curses, mayhap.

But it was the truly malevolent emotions which bore the most fruit. Allowing her veins to burn with anger, her heart to dissolve into hatred, her muscles to sizzle with scorn, she could feel the raw power invested in each. It was the will the hurt someone. It was the desire to see them suffer. It was the satisfaction of witnessing ill befall them. In some ways these emotions and the indulgence in them was frightening. But in a very specific way, a way which had festered and metastasized ever since her kidnapping, basking in the baleful glow of emotions born of pure malice inspired in Kristen a sort of...

...serenity.

But all of this would count for nothing if the aspect of Curses remained out of reach for her. Thus, feeling so close yet so far, she did the only thing she could think of at this point.

She reached out to a Proctor for help.

Since Proctor Magomo wouldn't be available, she turned to Proctor Pallatrix. Certainly Proctor Pallatrix was one of the very best, and perhaps it was that he was the best teacher that the Academy had to offer (many apologies, Evangeline!). But not only that, the manner in which he handled Kristen's...ahem...forced silliness as part of Everleigh's Punishment Game made her think that if there was anyone who could help her at this most critical of moments, it would be Mars Pallatrix. He would be able to see the earnestness which which her plea was made, take it seriously, and provide the instruction—however rigorous it happened to be—she needed to finally grasp a new facet of her Divine Magic.

And, as it turned out, Proctor Pallatrix seemed to have just such a plan.

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

There had been a time when Mars Pallatrix would have taken any measure, no matter how forceful and cruel, to shape the Initiates into killers. To bring the most out of their magic. Such as when Henry Bauer had been left in the Box for a month in winter, filled waist-high with water, so he could adapt to the frigid temperatures his body would suffer from overusing his magic. Or how he'd beat the memory of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters right out of newly enrolled children.

He had slept soundly for years despite the cruelty. After all, he was but a well-trained tree, and when commanded, he would bear fruit for the greatness of Vel Anir.

But things changed. The system he had been raised within and believed in fell. A new order was instilled. A new way of doing things. A battle of ideas clashed, and so did his thoughts and emotions come into conflict. Where had he gone wrong? Had his methods been incorrect?

Of course.

So Mars tasked himself with a new duty. To be better. He could not ask for forgiveness from the lives he twisted in these halls. His atonement was to guide future generations better than those before.

When the Pirian girl had come early in the morning with a desperate plea, Mars quietly listened to what she had to say.

"Come to the sparring hall after your lessons. I will prepare something," he had said.

In truth, there was very little he could do to prepare. He was no spellcaster, no master of the divine. His abilities, frankly, were unremarkable.

When the time came, Mars could only offer Kristen the handle of his dagger.

"Try taking my life," he said dispassionately.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Proctor Pallatrix's four simple words echoed in the sparseness of the arena hall as much as they did in Kristen's mind. Her hand gripped the handle of the dagger well enough, a miracle that in her shock she did not drop it. Yet still she stood gripped by surprise and a kind of terror.

Even when Vance fought with Proctor D'amour it was well within the context of a duel. This? This was...utterly unexpected. Kristen briefly had a cavalcade of foolish thoughts go washing through her mind: what if I do something I'm not supposed to do? What if I seriously hurt him? Is this truly part of his instruction or a test to see if I'll actually try it?

Kristen swallowed.

And, nevertheless, complied. Goosebumps dotting her flesh and the tiny hairs at the back of her neck raised.

"Yes, Proctor Pallatrix," she said. A final thought in that split second of how strange it was to be polite and say that given what she was supposed to do.

Kristen swung the dagger in an overly wide arc, an inexpert attempt to slash at Mars's throat.

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

A firm hand lashed to capture Kristen's wrist in a vice grip. It was unbelievable how much the young lady had changed in such a short amount of time. When she'd arrived nearly a year ago, it seemed impossible that the girl would ever have the capacity to do another harm. But how quickly she agreed to his order. Conviction was lacking, however—the Proctor's magic told him such—and she was clumsy with the weapon. A folly on the instructor's part.

"The neck is an important vital spot," he said, "Which makes it obvious to strike."

His free hand reached for the small of his back. There was no urgency to the motion. It was almost languid. Then, suddenly, thrust the point of a dagger towards Kristen's throat, stopping just short of piercing her windpipe.

"But if you do target it, be deliberate. Keep in mind you needn't always lunge for the one decisive blow." Then, with a swift adjustment, Mars reversed his grip of the dagger and made a quick slash at the wrist he held but slowly and harmlessly dragged the blade just under her thumb. "Cut here, and your opponent cannot hold their weapon."

He made a series of swift, feigned cuts and stabs at several of Kristen's vitals.

"Weaken your foe. Cripple them. Even the strongest man in the world is only meat. To beat him, you need only be a stronger butcher."

And then he released Kristen.

"This is all to say that there are many avenues one may take to kill their enemy. I am no conduit of the Divine, Lady Pirian, and know little of the nature of the Curses you seek to master. But to wish a curse upon another exacts a heavy toll on the heart. It is something that the accursed will bear for their life until death. Don't you think it necessary to understand what it means to take a life before you damn one?"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

It shouldn't have been surprising. Really, it never should have been surprising, whether she was leveling a strike at a Proctor or another Initiate for it to be blocked with discernible ease. A year spent training for someone with a natural aptitude and inclination for martial feats would likely have seen a great deal of expertise fostered, every other year spent after that merely adding little touches and improvements here and there to an already formidable skillset. With Kristen it wasn't so. She was, certainly, farther along down the path of progress than before she'd enrolled into the Academy. But nowhere near her contemporaries.

Kristen's eyes fled from Proctor Pallatrix's own and down to the knife leveled at her throat. Alarm, of course, painted a pallid picture on her expression, for had it been an actual fight she would have been dead.

It retreated, this alarm, back into the wretched hole from whence it came. And Kristen listened with the reverential awe of a model student to Pallatrix's curt explanations. It wasn't necessarily the first time she heard words of their like, but it was the first time she'd heard them in this context: in the direct application of martial prowess (and the grim end goal thereof) to the enrichment of her magic.

Don't you think it necessary to understand what it means to take a life before you damn one?

An anxious tongue wet her lips. Her averted gaze was hesitant, and she worked up the will to admit what she reckoned would be a terrible indictment of her ability.

"Proctor Pallatrix, despite the missions I have been set out to accomplish, I..." She tried to look up. Failed at first. Tried again. And this time had the wherewithal to hold his gaze. "...I have not taken a life."

Guilty, her tone there.

But not here:

"Though I have wished...death upon others. Before."

Upon Dominic Foresend, that lowlife pirate.

And upon Duresh, that foul villain of an orc.

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

"I know," the Proctor stepped back from Kristen, turning his dagger, inspecting its edge, "I read the reports."

From the most mundane tasks to brutal biddings, strict documentation of these missions and assignments has been a standard set by Mars from the earliest years of his placement within the Academy's halls. It was his duty to see things through. And he was a diligent man.

"You have wished death... upon others. Before." He echoed, now testing the edge of his knife with the pad of his thumb.

"You're sharp of wit, Pirian. Here's a quandary for you. Which has the greater weight, a mighty stone or a man?"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Proctor Pallatrix's riddle had her spinning around in loops within her mind, getting caught in a cat's cradle of twisted lines of thought trying to conjure up the right answer. A mighty stone or a man? Weight. Surely the stone. No. Does weight mean weight? What does weight mean in this context? Can the man construct something which weighs more than the stone? Is there a purposeful delineation being made between the specific mention of a stone and not, say, a boulder?

Finally, at the height of her mental exhaustion and having only raveled herself up into a mess, she bowed her head and allowed herself to say:

"I must admit that I do not know."

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

"Shatter a stone to pieces, and you only have smaller stones. But when you cut a man down, you are cutting down a great many people. You kill a man's great many former selves. An enemy and a comrade, a son and a father, a teacher and a student. The life of a man is a vast net that drags out and hooks itself to all he was attached to, and when slain, tears a hole into the web of being. Don't you think the flesh of man is very dense, in the grand scheme of things? Men have a great many attachments and many former selves, after all."

Mars looked up to meet Kristen's gaze, but his character was not that of a small man, "Could you still wish death upon others, knowing this?"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Yes," she said, and it felt like she had driven a dagger into her own chest. The sting was somehow both one of betrayal and one of acceptance, at long last.

"I wished death upon them...I cared not for their wretched parents nor the spawn that might have been their misbegotten children nor what twisted web of misery they with their worthless lives cast over Arethil."

She sucked in a thin sleeve of air through her teeth.

"But I lacked the power to carry out my will. I would have seen them scoured from the world, if I could have done so."

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

Mars was stunned into momentary silence. What a gaze she held. That spark of malice behind her once innocent and ignorant eyes was akin to what he'd seen from the countless children who had passed through these halls. He imagined for a moment what kind of person it took to earn the hate of a girl like Kristen.

Dark brows flecked with greying hairs furrowed, and the old Proctor's trademark verdant glare melted a hole through the young woman.

"If you can feel that, you should have no issue casting a curse."

He folded his arms, "But you don't always feel that, do you?" Then, he began to pace. To recall, exactly, all of the little details of her life he had read upon her enrollment. But what he remembered was no little thing. He came to an abrupt stop. An idea struck him. Yes, perhaps this was the way.

"Say that your captors were in front of you now. They are coming for you!"

Suddenly unfolding his arms and whirling on Kristen, Mars lunged at her, "To take you!"

He reached with an open hand to seize Kristen, "Do you have the power now? Protect yourself!"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

But you don't always feel that, do you?

She shook her head. Kristen saw the simple wisdom in what Proctor Pallatrix was saying, that essentially the foundation—maybe even the perfect foundation—was there. Her kidnapping had been an incredibly emotionally charged event in her life. Traumatizing.

Yet that got right to the heart of it. She had the foundation, she could reach out and touch it...but in so doing it, like a rose branch, touched back with a bladed return. Cut into her a little deeper with each instance. She knew—

(she was afraid of that pain)

—that she needed to steel herself. Toughen up, as Proctor Magomo might say. Or else she'd never be able to truly unlock this domain of her magic.

More thoughts might have come to her on this. But Proctor Pallatrix suddenly lunged!

Kristen yelped, shock and panic the lightning bolts which coursed through her arms and her legs. Defensively she reached up to shield herself with her arms.

Protect yourself!

Despite her alarm, these words were heard on a primordial level. She knew what she was here for, and she knew what she was supposed to do.

Her right hand whipped up. A baleful light, symbols which scorched the eyes with their horrid designs, radiated faintly about her hand like a corona. Quiet and shrill like a haunting whisper came its malevolent tune.

And then it all fizzled. Kristen breathed heavily, looking at her own hand as it weren't her own.

Yet she was close. So close. On the cusp.

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

When they were but mere Initiates, Arne Kellmir asked Mars, "What's if feel like, Mars? When you use your magic?"

And Mars answered as such: "Like ten million ants are trying to crawl from my marrow, gnawing and tearing through the sinew of my muscles to burst free from my skin."

"Oh."

Mars sharply turned his gaze away from Kristen's raised palm and felt the waning heat of a failed cast warm his cheek like he'd stepped dangerously close to an open flame. The Proctor's assault continued, and with both hands, he reached for the wrist of her outstretched hand and the front of her shirt.

"There is no one coming for you this time, Initiate!"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

All of the preparation. The studying, the contemplation, the experimentation. Both in the Academy within the past week and back even to her first harrowing day. Beyond, even. This was a moment seven years in the making, its genesis when Duresh first laid his orcish hands upon her.

And strong hands seized her now.

Her wrist.

Her shirt.

Kristen, her face pallid with fear, exquisitely tapped into negative emotions both startlingly new and horrifyingly ancient. Her mouth uttered not the proper words to shape it into something potent, only a kind of terrified gasp.

Yet the unshaped Curse manifested. Like a dread bell tolling one's demise did the sound herald the malevolent light around her hand, that corona of ill intent emerging once more. Unshaped as the Curse was, it manifested perhaps as only a small pall of undefined horror for Mars (if not resisted entirely), like the sound of a branch snapping in a dark wood when you thought you were alone. And it would not last long, this Curse. Present only for a few seconds before it dissipated like blood, spilled from some foul misfortune, washed away in the rain.

Kristen.

Shocked. Incredulous.

Breathing as if she'd run a lap around the Academy. Just staring at Proctor Pallatrix wide-eyed, scarcely able to believe what she had just done.

Mars Pallatrix

 

[Mars Pallatrix]

The back of Mars' cortex sparked with the threat of danger. His synapses fired, electricity sparking with pain to the very tips of his fingers and toes. The Proctor allowed himself a brief glimpse and saw what awaited him.

And he allowed it to be.

The bud of a curse rooted in Mars' mind, and he immediately released his grip on Kristen, dropping to a knee with an audible groan.

The curse persisted for a fleeting moment but caused a sharp pain to viciously throb as a distant, looming terror in his head. Sweat had formed across his brow.

It was vital that she experienced harming another person.

"You would—urgh," Mars braced himself on his knee and pushed himself to his feet, quickly composing himself before her, "You would do well to commit this sensation to memory."

He would spare her no words of praise until she passed Magomo's trial. And with that, the lesson was concluded.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

DAY FIVE​

You would do well to commit this sensation to memory.

Proctor Pallatrix's words were wise, and they applied not merely to the casting of Curses, but more broadly to the entire business of becoming a Dreadlord. There would come a time in the future when his advice would echo back to her, and through it she could tap a whole new reservoir of strength.

But for now, she attended to the specific task of refining her Curses.

And to that end, what better way to do it than to practice on someone (or, in this case, something) which could endure such debilitation over and over again? Kristen asked Proctor Magomo if she could call upon Drastus Tal'deneshaar, and more directly his summonable companion Rupert, for help in this regard, if he could be spared from classes for the day to help her train. Such a concession might well have been gruffly denied, but Proctor Magomo was pleased (only slightly, and this difficult enough to discern from his granite expression). Given her progress, he allowed for it.

So here they were on the sparring grounds while everyone else was in class or out on missions. A few hours had already gone by, and though the strain of arcane fatigue was increasing, Kristen was determined to have something concrete to show for their efforts.

"It is the shaping of a Curse that is most difficult. Shaping it into something specific and useful," Kristen said during a small break, sitting down on one of the stark benches outside of the ring. "The negative emotions are a volatile and...dangerous thing to work with."

Drastus Tal'deneshaar Mars Pallatrix