Dorothea Hohnstein
von Albesatz-Danzau
A collab post with
@Force and Fury
Dorothea was walking around with her journal in hand, looking over all that she had learned these past few days. It made her rather annoyed how little of substance it was although that’s usually how the year starts. All this reading left her thirsty for a good old refreshing beer.
Most inns all serve beer with barely any craftsmanship, or at least that is what Dorothea thinks. Only the alcohol from her homeland of Feska scratches that itch and the only people that come close to it…. regrettably, are the Kerreman.
“Oh, are you perhaps also from Kerreman? What province are you from, I don’t recognize your dialect.” Why does she always have to be confused with them?
“I sound nothing like those Kerries… Do I?” Not that it mattered, all that was important right now was getting a good drink.
After a long while of searching all the girl could find were Kerreman beer halls. Letting out a rather heavy sigh while tightening her cloak.
“I guess I won’t be mistaken for a Kerreman here…” Having mentally prepared herself, Dorothea went inside the beer hall.
The halls were noisy and booming with cheers. Not her choice of background noise, but this wasn’t the place to complain. Choosing to sit a bit further from the big crowd, noticing someone that she’d spotted at the academy grounds. Deciding to sit next to him as a somewhat familiar face was better than a complete stranger.
Manfred had seen the girl around before. It was something with a D, he remembered. Well, she was pretty and she’d addressed him in Kerreman - though it was a particular sort, he noticed. Northerner or Feskan. To hell with it, he thought. This day had given him enough to think about. Kerremand was baiting the bull that was Perrence, and people would likely die for it. Tonight, howeverr, the idiots were celebrating. He’d put in an appearance for the free beer, to be perfectly honest, which was reason enough. He pivoted on his stool and addressed her.
“You’re in a couple of my classes, right?” he began.
“I’m Manfred.” He held out a hand.
“Hohenfelter,” he added.
“Of Meckelin-Thandau. Gods, why are our names so long?”Dorothea looked the man in the eyes. Seems like he did remember her in some way as well.
“Dorothea Hohnstein, a pleasure.” She put up a rather forced smile as she took his hand to shake it before noticing she completely forgot to complete her noble name.
“Ah, of Albesatz-Danzau…” The free hand covering her face, not used to using that name yet. Trying her hardest to change the subject to cover up her embarrassment.
“Yes, we do share classes… What others do you attend?”“Ugh, too many,” he replied, waving dismissively, “and most of them aren’t of much use if I’m to be honest. I come here for the beer to forget about them, and today it’s free. How about you?”“I tried to choose a couple that would’ve helped me improve on my existing skills mostly.” She answered before letting out a sigh.
“But there’s barely anything new for me to learn there.” Her hand went up in the air as she asked for a beer.
“If it’s free I may be here all day!”Unbidden, Manfred let out a laugh.
“Hah! You’re cut off. It’s night, Dorothea Hohnstein of Albesatz-Danzau!” He took a sip, cheeks perhaps a bit rosy, and grinned.
“Look outside!”That smile of hers quickly turned to a frown.
“Who cares if it’s night? Don’t people keep drinking till the sun rises?” She took his mug and sipped from it.
“I guess I’ll take yours then if I’m cut off!”“Treacherous woman!” He grabbed hers and took a sip back.
“All’s fair now!” Manfred grinned challengingly. Their arms had actually linked while stealing each other’s drinks.
“This is a Feskan beer,” he stated, ninety percent sure of it.
“I took you for a Swampy. You clip your r’s like one.”“That’s the only thing that made you realize I was a Feskan?” She took his mug and placed hers to replace it.
“There, now drink beer how it’s meant to be drunk!” “That and the beer theft,” he accused, chugging what was left.
“I’ll not have a Feskan telling me how to drink my beer, thank you very much.” By Ipte, she was pretty, and he was half-certain it wasn’t only the alcohol making him feel that way.
“Say, you Feskan crook, have you ridden the teufelsrad yet?”“Beer trade.” She corrected, chugging the other mug.
“Why not? We make the best beer on the continent!” Why was it so easy for her to talk to him so easily? Even alcohol doesn’t make it that easy normally.
“Teufelsrad? My father told me about it back when I was younger.”“You haven’t ridden a teufelsrad before? Dory, you’re missing out!” He grabbed her arm, feeling a bit presumptuous for a moment, but he would of course be a gentleman.
“Come on! They’re about to start a new round.”“I haven’t, is it that good?” She let out a soft gasp as he grabbed her arm, surprised by the action.
“How do I even play it?” Seeing his excitement was enough to suck her into the same excitement.
“Ah,” he began,
“so you take a position on the wheel. You want to be near the middle or you get thrown off by the…what was the word again. Scheisse!” He paused and furrowed his brow as they walked.
“Oh yeah,” he recalled,
“the centrifugal force. When the music starts, the wheel will start spinning. It’ll spin faster and faster and people slide off. Last one still on is the winner. That’ll be me, of course.”“Is that all there is to the game? Sounds simple enough!” She smiled and got her competitive spirit on.
“It’ll be you? Are you really that confident in your own ability or are you trying to show off in front of me?” A rather crude hit against his arm as Dorothea chuckled.
There were about a dozen people gathered behind the gate as they arrived, and it looked about to open. The band was warming up and the announcer was just finishing up talking with a handful of spectators.
“So, the question is,” Manfred whispered, leaning in,
“do we play fair, end up on the outside, and lose, or do we leap ahead with the Gift and get a good spot near the middle?”The woman started to rub her chin softly before smacking him on the back.
“Guess it’ll just be more challenging for us then! Hope you don’t mind doing it all fair.” “Fair is my middle name,” Manfred protested,
“and colour me impressed: a Feskan playing fair. Never thought I’d live to see the day.” Truth be told, there had been a time when Manfred had been certain he would not live to see another day at all. The anxiety of it nibbled at the back of his consciousness, but that was fleeting at best. He had good beer in his belly and a fun, pretty girl to mercilessly stomp at a game of teufelsrad. Life was good at the moment. Then, the horn sounded. The announcer shouted, “Go, go, go, you little devils!” and he joined all of the others in the mad scramble for the best spots.
“Not playing fair? If I ever was caught cheating before a game my grandfather would roll in his grave.” Dorothea proclaimed smugly.
“And you have a pretty low opinion of us Feskans, why’s that?”Sliding into place closer to the middle than he expected, with Dorothea more or less beside him, Manfred paused. It was hard to hear anything above the cheers of the crowd.
“You don’t actually think so, do you?” He shook his head, finding that he almost needed to shout to be heard.
“It’s just the same sort of thing a big brother does to his younger one. I’m rather partial to Feksans, actually.” It was half a lie. He loved their cuisine and the few he’d met had been pleasant people, but the way that they treated their workers was atrocious.
“Much better than Holmanians,” he added. Now that was wholly truthful. Just then, as he glanced her way for a response, the music began and he could feel the wheel start to turn.
“Well the last Kerreman student that found out that I was Feskan called me a stingy succubus. I was so mad, I almost grew horns on the spot.” She shouted as the crowd’s cheers would make it quite hard to understand.
Manfred laughed at the image.
“Well, you did come here for the free beer,” he shouted back, arching an eyebrow. His expression quickly turned to alarm, however, as the great wheel picked up speed and he felt himself begin to slip.
“That’s true… but there’s nothing wrong with free stuff, is there?” She shouted back with a rather proud tone. Her eyebrow was raised as she saw his face contort to alarm.
“What’s wrong? Not used to this?”Manfred caught himself for a second. Three others were spun off of the wheel in rapid succession.
“Nonsense! I am a Honehfelter of Meckelin-Thandau. Victory or glorious death!” Truth be told, he was quite inebriated. It didn’t help the dizziness any.
“But,” he added slyly,
“If I go down, woman, I am taking you with me, chivalry be damned.”Dorothea’s smile turned quite sinister.
“Me? Going down with you?” She looked around and noticed that quite a bit of people had already fallen off.
“How do you see that happening then? As you’ve noticed, I can hold on for quite a bit longer.”She was right, of course. She was small and light and had managed to squeeze herself into a spot close to the very center. Manfred blinked. The music was loud, the colours swirled, and there was altogether too much lederhosen in evidence here. He tried to pull himself up a bit further, but then the wheel accelerated again and he found himself slipping irreversibly. Truth be told, he was awful at the teufelsrad, so he laid himself out on his side, elbow on the floor, hand on his chin, and grinned as he slid away, throwing in a wink at the very end.
“Farewell, succubus!” He tumbled off of the wheel and lay there in a heap for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s only three remaining!” shouted the announcer, “who will it be!? Cheer for your favourite!”
He really had to show off to his last moment on this battlefield of a game, causing her to click her tongue with her cheeks glowing a slight red.
“Farewell, Spasti… Wait, only three remaining?” The Feskan was surprised by the amount left, was she too focused on the man who invited her on the wheel?
“How’s the heap feeling there?”Manfred sat up. Dory had said something, but he’d be damned if he’d understood it over all of the noise. He grabbed onto the railing and pulled himself to his feet, accepting backslaps from a few observers. It was tempting to push at some of the others just a touch to see if he could make her win, but that’d be unsporting and he was actually curious if she could pull it off. He blinked and averted his eyes for a moment. The way the women were on the wheel, you could see quite far up their dresses. While he didn’t mind the view, there was decency to be considered too. Keeping an eye on proceedings, he grabbed his beer stein from the tall table where he’d left it and took a refill from one of the roving waitresses. Amazingly, Dorothea was still holding on, though she was starting to look like she might hurl.
“Alright, now it’s getting a bit more challenging…” The woman slowly but surely started to lose her grip on the wheel. She wasn’t going to lose her first game after coming this far, was she? Looking around, she noticed the two others were also slipping but the question was who was slipping slower than the rest? The first to go was getting too dizzy to carry on and quickly lost their grip a while later. Now there were just two left.
“Don’t slip, Dory!” Manfred shouted, partly mocking, but mostly encouraging.
“Use those muscles!” He took another sip of his beer and grinned.
[color=86608E]“I know, I know! You don’t have to tell me!”[/cplor] Dory yelled back, quite annoyed by his words. Both her and the other contestant were close to falling off. As she was about to fall off she kicked herself up before falling off, little did she know that that little stunt caused her to win by such a small margin that the announcer and bandmaster had to take a moment to confer.
“It was Dory!” shouted Manfred,
“the Feskan wearing the dead otter on her shoulders! She won!”“You know what, Meine Damen und Herren, I think we should vote!” the announced crowed. “Loudest cheer wins.” He spun on the spot, working up the crowd. “If you think Fräulein Margarethe Leitmer von Assalin-Heinkel deserves it, let me hear you!”
People whooped and hollered and their cheers thundered off of the walls. Prancing about the clearing around the teufelsrad, the announcer spread his arms, and Manfred could not help but be reminded somewhat of Leon Solaire’s theatrics. “If you think it’s fräulein Dorothea Hohnstein von Albesatz-Danzau, make some noise!!!”
People damned-near blew the roof off of the beer hall with their noise, but Manfred decided to use a little bit of his kinetic wizardry to make the victor that much more certain. He grinned roguishly, as she was presented with the trophy and a reward of one free meal each day from the restaurant for the rest of the school year.
“See? Told you I’d be able to do it!” The still dizzy student would lean against the other for support.
“Guess you won’t have to pay for my meals now, huh.” A laugh followed by a soft elbow jab in his sides.
“The perfect reward for a stingy succubus,” he teased, jumping a bit as she shoved her elbow into his side.
“Ouch! And a feisty one too.” He put an arm around her shoulder to steady her. Yes, definitely only to steady her.
“But really, good show. Colour me impressed.” They took a few steps away from the louder area, back towards where they’d started, and passed a group of students murmuring excitedly amongst themselves. “Francois Laroux,” one said. “Arc-en-Ciel,” he overheard another. “Yeah, in the practice hall - we should go.” Mannfred tried not to make it obvious he was snooping, but everybody was drunk and nobody much cared.
“Hey, looks like Francois Laroux’s performing in the mess hall of The Castle,” he told Dory.
“Wanna score a free concert too?”“A free concert? Count me in!” a grin covered her face as she thought for a bit.
“It’s quite fitting for a stingy succubus like me, right?” She locked her arm with his as a sign that they should go. It was one that Manfred heartily agreed with.
Certainly, when the day had started, neither of them had expected it to go the way that it had. As he reclined on a settee in Arc-en-Ciel’s large practice hall, arm around a beautiful woman, warm food and good beer filling him, listening to the Twin continents’ second most renowned young performer strum away on a lute, Manfred was as happy as he could remember himself being since his childhood - since before the war. In truth, it was not a concert, but a loose crowd of people had gathered in various states of inebriation, and Francois, who’d been practicing, had not told them to leave. He seemed in his own world anyhow, and the music that he played tonight oddly more soulful than the often bawdy tunes that he was best known for. The Kerreman glanced down at Dory, her head resting against her shoulder.
“You know, I’m glad that we have tomorrow off, more or less, though I’m in that camp class.” He stifled a yawn.
“How about you? Got any classes tomorrow or did you dodge the bullet?”"I don't have anything important tomorrow, why do you ask?" He had really become her person of comfort in this school.
"Are you suggesting something with that question?" A smug smirk filling her expression as she whispered it in his ear.
Manfred blinked. He had not thought… but he had. But he hadn’t, of course, for Manfred was a gentleman… somewhat. Somewhat of a gentleman.
“I am merely suggesting what I think is already in that pretty little succubus head of yours.” He grinned conspiratorially.
“But um… I also did want to know if you were in that camp class tomorrow, haha.” He chuckled a bit. It would be nice to see more of her. They hadn’t been placed in the same apprentice group, but being in some classes together would be nice.
"What's already in my head? There are many things going on in there, you have to be more specific." She winked quite teasingly.
"I am not… but I don't mind signing up for it." She was serious about this choice. Spending time with him seemed more fun than her current classes after all.
“The sort of stuff one would usually expect of a succubus,” Manfred teased, as Francois’ music grew softer and more intimate.
“And if you need help navigating that tangle of bureaucracy to switch your courses, I’ve got a connection or two. It’s gonna cost you, though…” He grinned, looking her eye to eye for a moment.
"Then name your price. I will try my hardest to pay it. As a Feskan you have my word." The music had become nothing more than background noise now.
"And you must be quite knowledgeable on succubi if you're so sure." She put a finger on his chin.
“How about this?” he replied, and he simply couldn’t bear it any longer. She was beautiful. By Ipte, she was. There was a glow about her: a sense of fun and mischief, and a whole other side - a mind he had yet to explore, but Manfred reached out and took her gently in his arms. He leaned in and kissed her and their lips became a single thing, connecting them. He could feel the muscles in her shoulders and back flex. He could feel that dainty little waist. Her eyes sparkled and everything else faded away.
Did it actually happen? Her mind was processing it all but nothing made sense. Was she really starting to like a Kerreman? Her body sure didn't mind, it was like the kiss caused her body to feel something she wasn't used to. As the kiss faded, she wouldn't let go of his embrace. Completely speechless, her eyes told him how she felt.
It was a cliche but it was true. It seemed like forever and no time at all before they separated. Manfred reached up and brushed some of the hair from her face with his fingertips.
“Paid in full,” he said with a soft chuckle.
Around them, a handful of glances were stolen. Manfred did not care very much about those, though. With a final flourish, Francois finished his song and people applauded. He was tuning his lute now. The magusjaeger blinked. Dory was still very much right there in his arms, warm and soft against him.
“You know,” Manfred began,
“if you stay like that, I’m going to have to carry you.”"Then I'll stay like this until you do!" She looked up and let her tongue out teasingly. Did she actually find a man she liked? What would mother think of him? Father would like him a lot but it's always a gamble with mother..
“You little shit, you,” he taunted, hefting her up and standing somewhat unsteadily. He gave her a little kiss on the tip of the nose.
“Too stingy to even walk on her own.” He shook his head playfully. They had best find somewhere to go. He wanted her, truth be told, and not just in the way that he might fancy many pretty women. There was something just… lovable about her. And she is a Feskan noble, he remembered. Father would approve. Mother would approve because I’d ‘followed my heart’.
“Well, if you won’t walk yourself, then I get to take you wherever I want.” He grinned mischievously and began moving.
"Well, maybe I'm still dizzy from the game you had me win. Got a problem with carrying me?"“Psh, you're a feather,” Manfred scoffed.
Something about being with him felt just right, even a little kiss on her nose made her heart skip a beat.
"Wherever will you take me? Not your dungeon, right? That would be oh so cruel!" Her acting skills weren't her strong side but they did their job.
“I would never be so cruel. I prefer to think of it as my castle.” He winked.
“I have a real one at home, I promise.” With that, they exited the building. Eventually, Dorothea did find her way back to her feet. Being carried to bed is romantic. Being carried half a kilometer across campus gets old after a bit.
Someone was launching their own fireworks in the Arboretum and the booms and crashes echoed through the air. A group of Jorubans were up late drinking Danzagg and cheering rowdily for their favourites in a game of Ziggurats. It was a warm and a cool night at the same time, but it was bright and beautiful. Four of the five moons were up in the sky. Eike, Raske, Murri, Zollmun, he recited in his head, remembering the childhood rhyme he’d used to help memorize them. Eberhoff comes once a month. He hummed along with it and noticed Dory, nestled under his arm, doing the same, as if she’d grown up with it too. “You know the rhyme too, hmm?” he asked. They were nearing his dorm and would soon be there.
"I do, my father used it to teach me about the moons. Is that rhyme in Kerremand as well?"She continued to hum it after answering his question." As they walked around, she overheard people talking about the explosion. Today's events almost made her forget about it.
"Hey, Manfred… What do you know about the explosion?"Explosion… Manfred thought for a moment.
“I heard some people talking about an explosion earlier, while we were listening to Laroux, right?” He sighed and shrugged.
“I know nothing and I have little enough desire to worry about it tonight.” He glanced up at the stars, that nursery rhyme still stuck in his head.
“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that strange things always happen at Ersand’Enise. Hope everyone’s alright, though.”"I hope so too, it would be a shame if that explosion ruined even one of the bright minds here…" she smacked her own head. "Enough about that. It's only about us, right now."For most of Manfred’s life, it had always been about other people. His brother, the heir, had come first. His sister and her treatment had come first when she came down with the Tethering. Then, his country had come first when war had come knocking. Even recently, he had put Eun-Ji’s feelings first before his own. He was always doing things like that.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s only about us.”And so it was.
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