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Chapter 3: The Heiress

"So as I understand it, you are angry with us because we have devils living in our country? Well I guess that means we have something in common now doesn't it?"

Diabolist to the Paladin shortly before opening a gate to the middle of Ghaleam.


I couldn't place the exact moment when I became the Heiress, but when I was waiting in the hospital waiting area for Raven to get out her mother had found her, and then her eyes went wide in shock and hugged her close. If I had to guess the exact moment it happened, it would probably be when I slowly came to the horrifying realisation of what exactly I inherited, a country that was founded for the singular purpose of destroying another, and the realisation that I would have to Mend this as soon as possible. The fact that those two same countries had recently come to terms with one another did absolutely nothing to mute that horrifying feeling or make the task ahead of me any easier.

"The first thing you have to realise is that just by being Named you've already received power." Auntie Morgan, as someone whose had to deal with Named of both flavours for the past two decades, was promptly called in to give her a lecture. "Your body is now harder, stronger and faster then most non-named you will ever meet. Your senses sharper and better honed. Your natural life span extended to the point of theoretical immortality, unless someone or something manages to kill you. Unless it has some personal significance to you your body will quickly heal any non-fatal injury you receive and finally your charisma has received a boost in that kind of horrifying 'force of nature: do as I say get the hell out of the way' kind of way. Unique to your name however is a specific set of powers reflecting your role in a story you must now live. In your case, yours is a transitional name, something that ties you to another more powerful one. In your case it's any Named relatives that you have, your mother serving as a fine example, in which case you should be charismatic to the point you possess super natural beauty and can control anything with a animal level of intelligence. You will develop three powers unique to you known as Aspects as the plot of your life unfolds providing the answer to whatever problem you're facing right at the moment." Which was pretty much the end of the good news. "The bad news is that you've being tailor made by the heavens specifically to kill someone or otherwise deal with something they consider to be a problem, probably from my end of the border."

"Do... Do you mean you?" I asked with horrified realisation as Auntie nodded her head and drank her coffee. "It might be egotistical of me to say but the heavens have been trying to kill me for years now."

"I Re-!" I clamped down hard on the thought biting my lip to the point that I drew blood but ultimately pointless as the blasted word appeared in the back of my mind anyway: Refuse.

"Got another one already don't you? Must have been under a lot of stress lately." Morgan idly noted while she cracked her neck.

"This is not acceptable!" I half shrieked and didn't give a damn who I was talking to.

"One. Chill. The good news is that you have Zero obligations to do whatever the hell it is they want you to do, normally they would try and torture you into submission like they tried with Weiss before giving you power, so this cock up is on them." I sat back down in the chair, having pointedly not realised I had gotten up and cared even less. "The bad news is the likelihood of problems coming after you have likely sky rocketed so here's some advice on how to manage the situation. One Aspects, the more you use an Aspect the more powerful that it gets, that said do not rely on Aspects to solve all your problems, cause the gods are jerks and if you don't do what they want you to then they're going to find someone who will and give them the power to take them away from you, or someone is going to figure out a way of sealing them up or making them irrelevant. Then you're gonna be stuck with two legs when you previously had three. Two..." Auntie reached into her pocket dimension and pulled out a stack of books. "Research, get Genre savvy, your life is about to become a pattern of well worn Cliche's that are gonna get very old very fast and it's best not to be blind sided by them." 200 Heroic Axioms, Evil Overlord list, the Chronicles of Theodosius the Mad.

"What's this?" I asked as my finger was run along the pages in a zipper like fashion.

"Tropes. Try not to get killed by them." Auntie stated as she rose to her feet and stretched. "I'm going to make arrangements, tell my people not to kill you on sight if they notice your Named now." I recovered from the shock of the books in time to stop Auntie from leaving.

"Wait what if I use Mend on Raven?" It was a desperate play, one which made it possible to undo this mess entirely, is that the reason why she was Named?

"A gambit one I wouldn't make, I could achieve similar results with magic and may have to yet, but one does not play dice with gods unless they have to girl." Auntie put her dragon hide coat on as she explained. "You could Mend her. Or you could Mend the wall inside of her, which could rip the pieces out to rejoin the rest of it, rebuild the wall inside of her body, or use her as material to fix the wall. Or you could just waste the attempt." Morgan shrugged her shoulders as she finished getting dressed. "Your gods do not take kindly to my lot, so do what both they and villains do and stack the deck in your favour." So I set about figuring out what my Aspects did. Mend was relatively obvious and easy to figure out, as easy as picking up a fallen tree branch and watching it magically, or aspect-ally, reattaching itself to the tree it fell from.

"Refuse!" And just like that, the exact same branch fell off the tree and landed exactly where I had picked it up and I clicked my tongue in displeasure. Morgan was right, relying on aspects was stupid. If I could undo Mend with just a snap of my fingers then some other less than pleasant person could do exactly the same thing and that was not happening. So I spent the weeks until we went to visit Morgan and Raven using Mend and Refuse on the same tree as many times as possible increasing the number of branches that were snapping off and being put back on as time went on. I noticed that I could only use Mend and Refuse three times a day though, I should look into that some time. But not right now, I'll have to catch some sleep before going back to school tomorrow.


The kettle whistled indicating that the liquid inside was ready for the pot. Mother had taken the horse and joined with the Dwarfs farther up the mountain leaving the rest of us behind to make camp. More reinforcements arrived yesterday, the sheer absurdity of it as if they would ever leave, one way or another they would end up spending the rest of their lives up here, notorious Dwarfen infertility combined with the cramp lodgings below the earth meant that there was no room for anyone who wouldn't contribute to sustaining the civilisation. Better to die then be a burden eh? The sound of branches breaking indicated someone in the nearby tree as someone fell out and landed on the ground, a child like me, her back was bloodied and bleeding, holes torn open in her shoulders from within.

"Are you okay? Hey! There's Someone hurt over here!" A pair of arms wrapped around my body after I turned around to shout back to the camp, the winds howled in the air and lifted us both away.


I woke with a start, that person who fell out of that tree looked like Raven, and there hasn't been a crusade since her mother was a child so that meant... gods! What was that? Morgan didn't mention that! I shook off the effects of the dream until morning the next day, leaving my things in what I was now realising to be mine and Raven's shared pent house dorm while we headed for class. I knew I shouldn't have let Raven go, a casual glance around the class room instinctively revealed eight more Named not including myself, some how I don't think it coincidence. But when second period came we were joined by a tenth.

"Raven are you okay?" If my own experience with the phenomena was any indication Raven coming back to class with the word Apprentice floating next to her head was probably a indicator of having a bad morning.

"Ugh. Peachy." Counting Raven that made ten, the others either didn't seem to notice or didn't care dismissing the nascent Named. Raven gave a bored looked through the book as Rumpelstiltskin droned on about what we learned in the month's prior before dismissing the class. "Raven..."

"You called me Apprentice before." Which wasn't wrong, Apple's instinctive recognition of Raven's name came to her as easily as when she saw that Daring had become the Beast or Sparrow the Generous Thief.

"Well... yeah." Apple stated prompting a groan from Raven.

"I've been Named haven't I?" Evidently Raven was taking this whole affair as about as well as Apple did in regards to her own Name, which was to say not very. "Well now what do I do?"

"Gym presumably." I suggested trying to be as helpful as possible. It wasn't, Raven spent the majority of the class sitting out while she made use of a machine for her occupational therapy while the rest of us did warm ups and then got to combat practice, I myself made use of the sword and dagger fencing style, one for parrying blows and breaking blades, the other for stabbing and keeping my opponent far away from me. I noticed more than once Raven turning her head and looking in our general direction, eyes watching our movements. Then a dodge ball nearly beamed me on the head.

"Eyes forward White!" Professor Charming, or should I say Prince Charming, snapped armed with another of the balls as he tossed it up and down in the air.

Never I imagine would I meet a individual whose Name clashed so hard with their appearance as I did this professor, oh sure he was handsome in his own way, but the first thought of Name that I can think up for him was woodsman, not Prince Charming. Also his chucking balls at us every time we weren't doing what he figured we should've been doing? Really annoying. Lunch break couldn't come quickly enough.

"How are you doing?" I watched as Raven put a bowl of fresh meat down for her combination wheel chair and service animal. "I don't remember being able to soak up information this fast it's... weird." Raven snapped shut on the third text book she had memorised the contents of. "It's like it's all just... information I know the words but I'm not sure I understand them, at least not yet."

"Do you know what your Aspect is?"

Raven paused for several moments chewing the bread that was served with her meat.

"Is it that word hanging at the back of my mind? Learn?" Raven paused before ultimately indicating that she was okay with it. "Makes as much sense as anything I guess."

"Learn?" I asked, I needed to find a book of what Aspects did what some time. "Knowledge is the root of a mage's power, in a battle of magic to know more than one's enemy is to have more options to dismantle their gambits. There was also a Spy active several decades ago who made frequent use of Learn in their profession, another category where knowledge is power. For more martial Names it is more useful for training, though in the grand scheme of things less useful than for a mage Named unless you managed to get it up to the point where you could learn things in the middle of a fight." I blinked.

"You know a lot about this kind of thing."

"Do you know what Name my mother use to have?" Raven asked me, of course I knew. Auntie probably told her the same stories of their parents adventures together as her mother told her.

"The Apprentice, like you." I replied not sure where this was going.

"Precisely. And in that capacity she acquired the Aspect of Recall, which allowed the memories of dead villains to inhabit her body while she took a back seat, the use of which she then combined with Learn." I blinked a second time.

"You mean to say that..."

"Have a look at your text books. Mom wrote them. All of them." I did so and found Auntie's name in the author's notes, along with additional names presumably belonging to whatever Named she grave robbed the information from.

"In addition to getting to learn history from the perspective of the villains that made it, all of their fighting styles, and extensive knowledge of whatever magics, sorcery and bargains they made she's got to witness the birth, strengths and limitations of every single aspect ever wielded by a villain, got to see in action hundreds more used by heroes come to take their heads, and bore witness to the death's of billions."

Holy... I had no words for this! No wonder a Crusade had been sent after her! She's Evil's ultimate champion! Did the Gods Above really think they could kill her just by empowering the princess from a dinky little kingdom?

"So in conclusion, if she doesn't know every Aspect in creation, then she knows enough of them to make the difference negligible. Keeps a massive book of them somewhere in the house where she jots new ones down as she learns them, or so I presume."

I rubbed my temples because I was getting tired of being smacked stupid.

"What can you tell me about the dreams?"

"Name Dreams? Supposed to be scenes taken out of the lives of whoever had the Name you got now before you. Supposed to offer advice for tackling whatever problems you're gonna face down the line." So what does Morgan getting horribly wounded in the middle of the night and then deciding to kidnap my mother for a human shield have to do with what's going on now? Well Raven is horribly wounded...

"Raven do you need help with anything?"

"Can't say I am." The other girl put her book down as she started eating her meat, muttering something about needing practice later. "Are... there people trying to hurt you?"

"You know my mother? Uber powerful witch, has a bunch of contracts with the stuff of nightmares, claim to the throne of my homeland, any of this ringing a bell?" I recoiled from the stream of questions. "If you can answer yes to any of these questions then you can also understand why someone wants to kidnap me, kill me, bury me in a shallow grave to make a point..." Raven looked up to the clock. "... being late to class might be one of those reasons here in a minute though." And thus Raven began to quickly scarf down her meal while I watched on in muted horror.

It was a fact that people wanted to kill Auntie, well established actually, but kill Raven to get to her? Well she supposed that the Winter Solstice bombing should have been a wake up call to that, and now her Name was telling her to do something about it. What it was though was a mystery to her that needed answers, desperately in fact. Huu. This demands research doesn't it? Didn't Raven mention that her mother wrote a bunch of books on this subject? Unlike Raven I couldn't do magic so instead I was given a study period that I put to use in the library to try and make sense of the situation by sitting down and reading up on a book written about the forces from above.

"'Chapter 1: Understanding. As demonstrated by the White Knight Caliban and his 264 acts of judgement he carried out during his three month's as the White Knight the Heavens view humanity as being inherently flawed creatures. 9 out of 10 individuals will be found to be guilty of some crime, with the remaining 1 out of 10 either having not been given the chance to commit said sins or being considered in some way as advancing the goals of above. Angels are not physically capable of considering humanity with anything that they would consider objectionable due to the simple fact of the matter that there is nothing human about them. If they do have a goal it is, singularly, to defeat 'evil.' Not only can they not take any action to the contrary, they can't take any other action period.'" So, in layman's terms, they're running autonomously, Apple has a Name from above because she meets their requirements for being a heroine and hasn't done anything to as of yet ruin that plan they have put in place for her. This isn't working, maybe I should read something else. "'Names, all Names, Good and Evil have one fundamental truth to them. The People who wield them believe that they know how the world should work, and have been given the tools necessary to see that truth of the matter realised. The origin of the Name in question therefore, is ultimately Will, not the whims of Above and Below. Aspects are tools to fulfil your goals, shaped to fit your circumstances, not the other way around.'" So... My Name is trying to help me? I am so confused right now. Alright priority number 1 protecting Raven!


"Daring?" I didn't really hold anything against Daring, reported scandal of sleeping around included, I knew he was Named, and that he would help if I asked. "How hard would it be to get the other Named in the class to work with me on something?"

The Jersey he was wearing before had been replaced with a wool sweater, possibly a symptom of winter's cold but for now not important.

"Eh. I think I'm on that side of the pond these days anyway." Daring stated with a shrug of his shoulders. "So sure: I'll keep an eye out for Raven for yah." I cocked a suspicious brow in his direction, she she wasn't being discreet in her question, and it left open what connection this has to this Beast Name. But that would wait until later. "The others?"

"Darling if I asked, Sparrow if I bullied him a little bit. You're better off asking your friends than I am." That was the truth, getting caught with his sword in another girl had done nothing to endear good will to them from Daring. "Fine, I'll ask them about it tomorrow." Well, I wasn't getting any sleep tonight it would seem, not for a lack of trying anyway, didn't exactly help matters here any that this entire school's curriculum lent itself well to the generalised concept of nightmare fuel as clinically as possible, that and at any random point in time I might trip over a weird dream about Mother and Auntie and the time they spent as children together. Ugh. Now I really wasn't getting any sleep tonight.


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