The heavy sigh that escaped Fanilly’s lips, no matter how involuntary it may have been, could not have gone unnoticed.
While she had a direction now, she was still no closer to finding the shards of Angroron, or even guessing at where they might be. On top of that, it didn’t seem as if it was going to be easy to gain access to the College’s records, let alone secure a meeting with their headmaster. It wasn’t as if she expected it to be, but that didn’t mean the prospect wasn’t a little frustrating at the very least.
Perhaps she was simply feeling somewhat overwhelmed.
The Knight-Captain’s gaze drifted as she passed, and happened to fall upon a blade that she didn’t recognize, resting beside the pallid form of the oldest of the Knights. The inscription on the blade was in Elvish, and she hadn’t seen Dame Tyaethe with two blades before.
It took an awkwardly long time for Tyaethe to react to her presence, the vampire’s eyes flicking open to look in Fanilly's direction before closing again, hands surreptitiously shifting their position to be ready to arrest her swords if they might get disturbed and fall.
"Is there something that requires my assistance, captain? I'm sure that for most purposes your tutor would be of more use."
“Ah, I apologize,” Fanilly replied, upon realizing she had disturbed Dame Tyaethe. She hesitated only a moment before deciding to mention it.
“That sword, I don’t quite recognize it, it definitely hasn’t been on display before, so I was just wondering…”
She trailed off awkwardly.
“Daybreaker? No, you wouldn’t have. It isn’t a sword that ever got put out. I wanted to, back when I brought it home, but I got talked out of it,” Tyaethe replied, a finger tracing the writing down the length of the sword. “It’s such a waste… this whole thing could probably buy you a castle, but all it does is gather dust in my room.”
Daybreaker. One of a handful of weapons forged by the most renowned of elven smiths, the creator of the holy sword Rephairon. No matter what the sword’s true abilities were, the fact it found itself sequestered inside a girl’s bedroom for years on end was absurd. Yet, with its former wielder…
“Daybreaker…”
Finally paused for a moment as she turned the name over in her mind. That wasn’t just any sword. And there was a good reason it wasn’t put out on display.
The elven-forged blade had belonged to the traitor Edwin, who had turned against the Iron Rose Knights and allied with the wicked mage Maglad and his allies. The fact Tyaethe had been there, that she was the one who defeated Edwin…
It was something she hadn’t thought of before.
It took a few moments for Fanilly to clear her throat and speak once again.
“Was… was it difficult? Facing him, at the end, er…”
She trailed off again. Was that even an appropriate question to ask? The moment she spoke, she felt like she regretted it.
“Practically, or emotionally?”
Even knowing Dame Tyaethe’s demeanor, Fanilly hadn’t been prepared for such a swift response. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, but at the very least it didn’t seem as if she’d offended the oldest knight.
“Emotionally, you fought alongside him, so… It’s something I’ve always found it difficult to wrap my mind around, I guess.”
“He wasn’t just someone I
fought alongside, he was my friend. Not my best friend, I was closer to Elionne and Cyrus, but we’d all known each other for years…” Tyaethe started, pulling her arm back from the swords. “Somehow always beat me at cards, even though you would think being a vampire would make it impossible to bluff that consistently.
“I didn’t even make an attempt to fight him, for most of the battle. Sure, I could have just done my best and get through, but I tried to avoid that. Focused on clearing the way so the others could deal with the golem, or get to Maglad. We had Parv with us! All we had to do was kill one more evil wizard and talk him down, go home, and work out how to explain it…
“But then the idiot had to go and
fight his brother, Parv got killed, and…” the small girl’s grip on the stuffed rabbit tightened. I was so
angry, and even if it would have been better for me to go for Maglad than let Cyrus do it, and I wanted to stop him but more than that I wanted to know
why.”
Tyaethe’s eyes shut again, the vampire sighing. “But he didn’t realise anything until I ran him through. And then Cyrus was gone too, and we had funerals to arrange, and… I think Elly said I didn’t move for a week? Or was it two…”
She shrugged, remembering that this was originally a question. “Fighting your friends is hard. If something has gone terribly wrong, maybe you’ll have to do it, but… don’t hang around and wait for someone else to do it. Or just leave it to me, I’ve learned my lesson…”
Fanilly drew a sharp intake of breath when Tyaethe finished speaking. She hadn’t thought about what she was saying well enough, it was obvious the paladin wasn’t in the best spot emotionally and she felt she had only made it worse.
“I’m sorry, Dame Tyaethe,” she apologized, bowing her head as she spoke, “I shouldn’t have pried. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like… I guess… I’ve just been curious about the first knights, I suppose, and I went about trying to learn in the worst way I could.”
It was hard not to show herself some derision at that point, and the awkward laugh did little to mask it.
“Hnnn… it's not like anyone else knows them better, Lilette wasn't as close as I was to most of them, and the Witch might be annoyingly perceptive but she knows better than to visit and get dragged into everything again.”
She shifted position, somehow keeping the swords balanced as she shifted to better face Fanilly, despite her hands being wrapped around the rabbit still. At least her eyes were open, now? “Well? Which one do you want to know about?”
“Ah? I…”
Fanilly hesitated again. She still felt guilty, but at the same time this was an opportunity she’d never managed to find it in herself to seek before. Tyaethe knew all the original knights, she was the best possible source to learn more on them.
The blonde girl cleared her throat.
“I… I’d like to know more about Sir Cyrus, I suppose,” she began, “I suppose it’s just that he always seemed larger than life. So I want to know what he was like.”
“He was… big.” Tyaethe stated, giving the most obvious piece of information as it came to mind and waving with one hand. “I think he was a bit bigger than Gravinir, even, if you don’t count the horns. And the way he dressed, fought… Agrahn in a rage might have been stronger, but it was Cyrus who had the presence.
“Forget all the stuff about battles and fighting, he was just a great friend. Remembered when someone’s birthday was and arranged a party without fail–I think he half just wanted the excuse, though; stepped in to calm down arguments… went along with half the stupid ideas Ed or I would have. We once got that statue of Mayon in the courtyard onto the roof as a joke on Reon and he went along with it despite the absurdity.”
The vampire snorted. “He’d stick me on his shoulder whether I wanted it or not, if he had something in mind. Even if I didn’t want to do anything, Cyrus wouldn’t let me leave myself out. Plus it
was pretty hard to find someone strong enough to do some of the things he thought might be fun.”
Her cheeks turned pink, breaking eye contact, “He was also really good with children. Used to take any opportunity to help out, or play with them.
Honestly, I think he sometimes forgot I was the older one… maybe he just thought I should be less scary and join in. Or both.”
Fanilly listened quietly as Dame Tyaethe spoke. It was actually sort of surreal, in a way. She’d never previously worked up the courage to ask about the founding knights, and now she was hearing about Sir Cyrus not as a historical figure but as a person. Certainly, she knew of some of these details, like Sir Cyrus’s good-heartedness. But hearing about them here simply gave her much more depth even if only for a few moments.
And admittedly, the thought of him putting Dame Tyaethe on his shoulder was kind of amusing.
“It’s kind of strange, honestly,” she said, finally, “I’ve read plenty of history books. I enjoyed it, but when they talked about the founding Knights it was always as a historical figure. Hearing about Sir Cyrus from you sort of grounds him in reality as a person, rather than someone so distant.”
“Yeah, I guess it would…” Tyaethe said, attention drifting back to the wall in front of her, “I think there's some magic or other to share memories, that would be better than telling anecdotes, but it would be much too complicated for me to attempt.”
Delicate mental manipulation? She'd probably just burn someone's head if she tried.
“Is there anything else you're interested in…? I can probably think of a specific story if I tried.”
There was a spell for everything, it felt like. Was there spells for cooking? Spells for doing the dishes? Fanilly felt certain that Alaree at least would love it if she didn’t have to lift a finger to wash anything by herself. But that was probably an outcome to be avoided.
The Knight-Captain considered Dame Tyaethe’s words for a moment.
“To be honest, er, I always had a hard time finding anything about Sir Cyrus and Sir Florian’s encounter with the White Rabbit Knights. It’s something multiple history books mention but they never go into detail about it. What happened?”
The response was a groan. “That entire thing was
ridiculous, I was hoping that it would never have found its way into the books. Neither of them were particularly aware of Hundi customs, and their Ithillane wasn’t great…
“You would
think that if they were travelling up in Stalva, I would have been asked to come along, but they didn’t bother. It didn’t matter that the twins were doing their best to explain, and the pair of them completely missed why these two were checking who they were interested in. The sister ended up challenging Cyrus, the brother challenged Florian… and then those two somehow thought it was a much more dangerous challenge than it was, and fought as a team.”
Tyaethe put her head in her hands, “They thought that was the end of it, but the White Rabbit Knights managed to find a good healer, and spent months following them around trying to get the duels that they had agreed to, as well as some measure of compensation for breaking the rules so flagrantly in the first place. Neither of them wanted to kill a pair of teenagers who were mostly just being annoying… so they kept
running away until they lead them all the way back here.”
The vampire’s face turned pink again. “I hadn’t been pleased about being left behind, or that they’d made such a mess of finding someone fluent in both languages, like it would have been
hard... well, if they hadn’t basically put themselves on the run. So, I left out the part about what the duels were
for and just told them the conditions.
“Obviously, Florian and Cyrus won, but they put up a good enough fight that we asked them to join. It’s not like they were going to leave, anyway, since they were trying to get a marriage agreed… in the end, Raya decided that since Florian had knocked her out in their original fight, it was fine to go after him too, and Randon didn’t disagree.
“They never did get married, but they seemed happy enough with the circumstances they were in. Made for a shockingly open relationship, those three.
“And
that is why it doesn’t get much more than a mention. The end result was all Flori’s personal business, and the actual sequence of events was stupidity by bad Ithillane.”
Fanilly remained silent as Dame Tyaethe relayed the story, but the moment she realized what direction it was going in her eyes widened. She’d never encountered a hundi on their coming of age journey before, but she had heard enough to guess at what a duel with one entailed.
As the story reached its climax, the Knight-Captain found her cheeks growing more and more red, the heat creeping up to her ears. It had all been a misunderstanding to begin with, but then for it to end up that way…!
“Y-you mean… S-Sir Florian, both of them, they, with…” Fanilly trailed off, softly placing her hands to her cheeks as she averted her eyes slightly.
“N-no wonder none of the sources I f-found ever go into detail…”
“Yes, both of them. And with basically anyone else that was up for it, Flori wasn’t exactly
picky. And he was charming, and handsome, and a massive flirt. Though I think changing Raya’s mind was probably an accident at first, they were almost indistinguishable and he
was very drunk…” Tyaethe continued, smirking at the captain’s reactions. Ah, she was so much more confident with fighting than even the slightest hint of intimacy, hm? That was unfortunate, she had
so many more stories like this.
And not all of them involved Florian, even! Two hundred years of a famous knightly order let you spectate a lot of things.
“A lot of the stories that aren’t written down are like this. We weren’t always the most sensible lot when out in small numbers.”
It was several moments before Fanilly found it in herself to clear her throat and try and speak again. She knew about Sir Florian’s handsome looks and charms, and it was hard to avoid his reputation as a flirt. But hearing about the knight’s relationship like that was so embarrassing!
I, er, I see, er,” she tried to clear her head, “Then, um, s-something happened when Dame Sescille went to Kaerveil, d-didn’t it?”
Surely
that couldn’t be embarrassing, right?
“Ah, that was that city over the sea, right? Thaln needed to do something about the growing piracy problem, so Sescille went over as the Roses’ representative. She… got bored waiting for everyone to finish talking it over, and just went looking for any known pirates. It
worked, but it definitely strained relations for a while… I think I remember the souvenirs more.” Tyaethe answered, looking thoughtful before she remembered something
else and shot the captain another amused smirk.
“Oh, and Sescille kept telling me how surprisingly good with their fingers nem are.
More than made up for the lack of size, she said,” Tyaethe looked at her hand. “I think she was trying to tease me. Or maybe it was her idea of flirting rather than being direct.”
Ah, that wasn’t an embarrassing story at all. Fanilly relaxed a little bit. It was actually fairly interesting, Sescille being overseas—
Immediately the Knight-Captain’s entire face colored.
“Wh-wha-th-that’s…. That’s…!”
She couldn’t have meant it like
that, right?!
“Ridiculous, right?” Tyaethe agreed, smirk widening, “She should have
known her flirting wouldn’t work. Although, I wouldn’t have said no if she kept flaunting her abs some more… girl had some of the best muscles I’ve ever seen, and those abs? Perfect.”
“I-I… I…”
It was simply too much for Fanilly by this point, her hands having returned to her burning cheeks.
“I-I’ll t-talk to you a-again another time!”
With that, she turned and nearly ran.
She couldn’t handle any more embarrassment.
Tyaethe snorted in amusement. Who knew their captain was so easily wound up? Well, she was still young and inexperienced, it probably wasn’t that surprising. At least she’d be able to work through the stories this way, if it would keep being so fun to let Fanilly know exactly how much all those famous knights had actually been
people behind the stories and legendary achievements.
Maybe then someone else would start to see Edwin as a person that made a bad choice, rather than some pantomime villain. At least, she had to hope that’s all it was, and not something that she should have seen coming, a failure even before it got to the point of battle…
It wasn’t like she could ask.
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