Private Tales The Reward of Loyalty

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Rhory inhaled a sharp intake of breath.

The idea of either in such high power and influence did not sit well with Rhory. Her face fell into near defeat, knowing that they may very well succeed in such an endeavour whilst she remained a Private. Perhaps Kristen would have a better chance, but there was a misfortune to being born a woman in this world.

It became too easy to call upon a young woman and declare her inexperienced to even have an opinion.

Perhaps if Rhory had a lick of magic in her and trained to be a Dreadlord, she may have the power to work for change.


"Then we must do something, Kristen. War is already at our borders, and if we are to survive this... I want to return to a home that is safe for all."
 
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Kristen looked to Rhory with a wistful gaze and a mouth made thin by reservation. Whether her sense was right or whether her sense was wrong, in Rhory Kristen could see something which she herself once had in pristine quality—something which had, inevitably, sustained some damage through her years in the Academy. Perhaps it was only because she was possessed of an ill mood in the wake of Garron's vile intervention. But in truth this could not be entirely the reason. Yes, Garron and his poison may have befouled and darkened her spirit for a time, but...she had lost something, going through the Academy, learning the unvarnished truth about an aspect of her country.

Vel Anir wasn't safe for all then, before the Revolution—for centuries, even, before the Revolution. And...

Kristen swallowed, for the thought which followed chilled her to the core.

And after a moment, she asked with all sincerity, and indeed, with all possible gravity, the weight of her words as if the very world pressed down upon them, "Rhory...do you believe in Vel Anir?"

Rhory Grimmere
 
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Rhory did not answer straight away.

Her expression gave away nothing of her thoughts, or react to the delivery of the posed question.

Instead, she took in the quiet and serenity, looking out to the direction of where the stream flowed. The sound of the babbling brook filled her with calmness despite the riot in which her thoughts had taken. "No."

Her shoulders fell with such truthful admission.


"My family have always been in the Guard. I never wanted to be part of the tradition, but with all my brothers... disappointing your mother and father is a grave offense than to leave Vel Anir all on your own. I... used to wish I was a Dreadlord so I could forge my own path away from Grimmere traditions... Even more so now that there is a choice to leave. If a Guardsman were to defect..."

Death. Rhory wouldn't even make it back to Vel Castere without the order for her life to be given and executed promptly.

"So... if I cannot leave, then I must stay... but look at the conditions we must endure."
 
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Kristen simply could not hide the hurt from her countenance when Rhory said no. Her eyes shut and she grimaced as though enduring a slow but deep wound. Yet, she would have it no other way. She resolved that she needed to hear Rhory's sincere answer (and everyone's sincere answer, for this question she would ask again of others), and that an answer founded in falsehood and flattery would have been far more hurtful.

She thought back to her moments with Henk, for then it had been the first time ever she had heard someone so clearly express their lack of love, their contempt, for Vel Anir—and to Kristen's innocent ears this had come as a great shock. And though amends had been made between them in Elbion, Henk's departure reopened the rift. But, gods, did she wish that he was here now; she yearned to hear what he might have to say here, and she yearned more to hear it with ears now made receptive.

And then, inevitably, it came to Kristen's mind, what Garron had said.

You are so incredibly alone, Kristen.

Kristen opened her eyes and said, "Your honesty, the truth of your heart, I value more than anything. Be not disquieted by my face, if you are so, for it is the pain..."

Kristen swallowed. Again. No tears welled in her eyes and her voice did not quaver, but her throat felt constricted, and it tightened slowly like a cruel noose.

"...for it is the pain of a hard coming to terms."

And there was a place where it had all started. Not in that tent with Garron.

But the Academy.

Kristen at last said, "It is good that you are not a Dreadlord."

Rhory Grimmere Henk
 
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Rhory did not acknowledge that her honesty came as a surprise to her.

She did not even get to follow up with a "Maybe there is hope for the future." Not after seeing Kristen's hurt over her face. It made Rhory feel for her, as if she had shattered the painted glass around her friend and showed her the true colours of their world.


"No... you are right. I would be powerful and insufferable." She managed a weak smile.

Her face fell back into the pensive expression that plagued her. "Despite all I said... I want to make a change. I haven't given up. I wouldn't be fighting Olem's command to put me out there on the front lines with my friends to make sure they returned back to our new home. I wouldn't be left here waiting for news, maybe even crafting a letter to the family's of my friends. I would give up myself so that they could live... That is the Vel Anir I believe in..." One that only mattered to her.
 
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No hesitation nor reservation quieted Kristen's tongue here.

"And for your sake, and for Arn's, and for Felix's—for the good men and women around me, be they of the Guard, of the Dreadlords, or of any uniform pledged to the Anirian flag—I would fight and give all that is mine to give. This is a cause most worthy, for family need not be defined by blood alone."

And yet, while this sentiment both Kristen and Rhory wholeheartedly believed in, for Kristen it was not enough. It was not enough to only fight for the sake of those around her, admirable though such action happened to be. She knew, deep down, that she could not fight for something she did not sincerely believe in. The Republic—no, the very spirit of her homeland, the moral essence it embodied upon Arethil—had to be a thing worth fighting, worth bleeding, worth dying for, else, in Kristen's view, the enterprise was corrupted at its core.

The Republic had to be what she, what her House, believed it to be: the new dawn for Aniria. And this Kristen clung to dearly.

"Garron, in but some of that vile poison he spewed at me, would have me believe that Vel Anir sees you and I and anyone who fights in its name..."

Kristen shook her head, a small flash of anger at the memory crossing her features.

"...as disposable."


Rhory Grimmere
 
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Rhory's face turned seething.

She got up from her spot, standing on the rock she had been draped over, but a fury upon her facade. "Disposable?" The Guardswoman laughed derisively, as if Garron were present and had said such a thing. "We are not disposable. We are living, breathing men and women of war. When will that end? Will it ever end? This fighting, this... bloodshed. When will Vel Anir stop making enemies out of ourselves?" Rhory looked close to tears, but she didn't allow the flood gates to open.

Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and turned to dismount from her perch. One step over the other, she stood on stone after stone, her boots dry despite the depth the stream travelled. Rhory made it to Kristen's side, not looking to her, but to the camp where wagons were filling back into the campsite, more supplies being delivered each day.


"I want this to stop. I want the chance to look back on this and think: Where can we fix this?"
 
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When will Vel Anir stop making enemies out of ourselves?

Gods, what a stroke of words, so deep and true. For what Kristen had seen of Rhory's face, she had seen enough, and knew that a similar pain, and a similar longing for their homeland's relief, was shared between them. Even now, as they prepared to march onto foreign soil, domestic woes plagued Vel Anir, and the ripples of the Revolution, rebellions and reclamations, tore apart Aniria at large.

What would Vel Anir do, if it claimed dominion over the whole of Arethil, and everywhere people called themselves Anirian? Would there be peace? Or would there be endless war, and Anirians killing one another on the grandest and most terrible scale of all?

Once, thoughts like these would have been impossible, inconceivable, for Kristen. But her faith in Vel Anir was undergoing a long and slow tempering, and by now this process had been going for years.

I want the chance to look back on this and think: Where can we fix this?

"I do not know," said Kristen. "But I do know this: that we must defy Garron's notion that Anirian life is cheap. And if this cruel sentiment of his is as pervasive throughout Vel Anir as he suggests, then it is all the more imperative that we, and those like us, live, so as to counter his darkness with sunlight. Culture is shaped by the people who carry it. We, too, not Garron and his ilk alone, are its torchbearers."

Merely saying all this aloud helped to elevate Kristen's sullen heart.

"Mayhap the day will come, when so great are our numbers—we who esteem and love Vel Anir—that such vileness as that which lunged from Garron's tongue will in the minds of the ordinary Anirian be impossible. Inconceivable."

Rhory Grimmere
 
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