A Sophia Most-Definitely-Not-The-Paledrake-That-Would-Be-Wrong-And-Very-Silly Ascart Interlude

The arrival of the diplomatic party from New Catarina gave Sophia a chance to catch her breath as Maria and Lady Katarina watched from over the parapets. Ugh, why did she have to do so much walking around? She was a gainfully employed adult now, she was supposed to be spending most of her time sitting and moving papers about!

"Oooh! Onion knights!"

Oh, right, she remembered now. Silly her for forgetting.

Maria, mercifully, let Lady Katarina watch the procession until it finally entered the castle, giving Sophia time to rest. For a moment, she admired how Lady Katarina could stay so energetic despite carrying so many heavy things. Sophia knew that Lady Katarina had big, strong, muscular arms from all of her farming over the years, arms that must be so hard and thick and warm, throbbing with strength as—

"Lady Sophia, are you well?" Maria asked, and Sophia jerked back to the present. "Do you need Light Magic?"

"Huh?" she asked.

"Ah! Sophia-chan, your nose is bleeding, your nose is bleeding!"

Ah, hex it! There it was again! Sophia sighed. Lately her chronic childhood ailment had been making more regular embarrassing appearances. No one knew what caused it, and she had been taken to the best doctors and Light Magic wielders… those that knew better than to recoil and say 'paledrake', anyway. Why did this keep happening? And in front of Lady Katarina every time, too! Sophia took out one of her handkerchiefs and staunched the bleeding—it always looked worse than it actually was—as she let Maria use Light Magic to heal her. A least she hadn't gotten any blood on her books. It sometimes happened when she was reading, which was why she'd long since learned to read with her books held away from her.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Sophia finally said. "It's nothing, just the same old thing. Let's get going while there's still sunlight for you to spar."

"Are you sure, Lady Sophia?" Maria said. "Should we not be taking you to the castle's infirmary? Where ever that is."

"Oh, there's one on every floor, just find the sign of the sword in a bonfire," Katarina said helpfully. "You can't miss it."

"Yes, my squire, I know what an infirmary sign looks like…"

Sophia felt the tingling in her nose recede and when she carefully dabbed at her face, no more blood trickled down. Stupid illness.

After making sure asking her once more if she didn't need to go to the infirmary, they resumed their trek to the garden under Lady Katarina's window. Sophia memorized the path, half-baked thoughts of trying to climb up to the window at night flitting through her head. Not that they'd happen, because Sophia was terrible at tree climbing, much less climbing anything else that wasn't a ladder, but a girl could dream!

Once Sophia had assured them she was fine, they carried on, walking across the rest of the parapet and down a ladder to balcony, where they jumped over the railing to walk across the roof…

Yes Maria, we know you hate mythic architecture, we heard you the first time!

Finally however, they reached the little courtyard garden. It was a small place, since the space was only to allow some guestrooms to have outside light, basically a glorified light well, but as with the rest of the castle it was nice to look upon. Trees had been planted to prevent direct sunlight from shining into the south-facing rooms so that they wouldn't get hot, and tastefully arranged flowers, bushes and sculptures allowed for a touch of artistry. Instead of flagstones, there was thick, manicured grass, the kind that Lady Katarina would have gladly taken a nap on if Maria hadn't been around watching her like a basilisk. All of it was intended to give people who would happen to look out their window something to gaze at in the brief moment before the closed the curtains.

Sophia sat in one of the benches in the shade as Maria and Lady Katarina stood opposite one another. She'd never really watched Lady Katarina practice with her sword, although she vaguely knew that she did so from Keith. Maria was holding wooden swords, while Lady Katarina… was holding a long, basically sword-shaped beam of wood wrapped with padding. Wait, wasn't that far too big? She thought Lady Katarina used some kind of longsword, why was she holding what was either a greatsword or an ultragreatsword?-! Did she even have the strength to wield that properly? Then again, she was two-handing it, so maybe just barely? Its shape tickled something in Sophia's mind. Something about… flips?

Still, Lady Katarina seemed to be holding it wrong. Most swords of greatsword class or larger were carried by resting it on the shoulder between swings, but Lady Katarina was holding it in front of her in a defensive posture. Not the normal defensive, two-handed posture of a greatsword or larger, with the weapon behind held vertically in front of her like a really narrow shield. No, it was held with the point angled forward. The tip wavered slightly, and Lady Katarina looked like she was struggling to hold it that way, but she did it.

Maria, for her part, sighed. "I question why you keep using it like that, my squire. You know the proper way to hold that sword."

"It's a sword, I'm going to parry with it. Properly, not just holding it up and letting fall to the side!"

"My squire, perhaps you would be able to have the strength—and the size—to do so in a few decades, once you have grown strong in souls and gained height and strength as a powerful knight, but right now this is an exercise in aggravation," Maria sighed. Still, she faced Lady Katarina, her own wooden weapons in her hands. With a slow and graceful, almost lazy, movement, she held the saber out to her side was she began walking towards Lady Katarina.

Then she lunged, and suddenly she was a blur, and Lady Katarina was moving to face her and—

Sophia gasped as Marias' sword didn't hit Lady Katarina's, but rather the Duke's daughter's side. Wait, that wasn't right! You were supposed to use your sword to hit the other guy's sword! Lady Katarina darted back, then threw herself in a roll as Maria followed, the blonde's paired practice swords moving with a relentlessness that made their movements not so much slow as inevitable, and Lady Katarina almost managed to sweep the blades aside with a sideways gesture of her sword. However, she had moved just a little bit too soon, and Maria's weapons came after the greatsword had passed, punishing her with another solid 'thwack' to her side that had Sophia wincing.

There rest of the afternoon took the air of the surreal for Sophia. She watched with morbid fascination as Maria attacked Lady Katarina relentlessly, only occasionally pausing to regain her breath and stamina before charging in again to continue the attack. Lady Katarina herself didn't strike back, didn't swing the greatsword in her hands in powerful, sweeping blows. Instead, she continually retreated, always facing Maria and tried again and again to parry her weapons. Most of the time, she missed, parrying either too early or too late. But sometimes…

There was a strangely metallic ring in the air as the weapons of wood met, Maria's saber being rebuffed to the side as Lady Katarina's parry finally met success. Lady Katarina's greastword pulled back and slammed itself into Maria's gut, making Sophia involuntarily cheer. She realized she'd been doing that for a while, but she couldn't help it, it felt so nice to see Lady Katarina finally land a hit on the faster knight! Rather than going for another hit while she was down, however, Lady Katarina stepped back, and fell once more into the stance she'd been taking the whole fight, with the sword angled forward…

The fight—spar—wore on through the rest of the afternoon, and while Sophia's voice faded, her excitement did not. Lady Katarina… was clearly not matching Maria. In fact, she was clear taking far, far more hits and most of the hits that didn't land were more due to moving aside or rolling away than her parrying. But when she did manage to parry, it was devastating, or at least it would have been if the two women hadn't been using practice weapons. The scaleless young woman found herself sitting with her hand raised, fingers curled in excitement, as she tried to will Lady Katarina to move one way or the other, her thumb jerking left or right as if to try to point the way. As she watched, her fingers would twitch and her thumb would jab down seemingly at random as she was caught up in the sight of the two figures before her…

"Roll! Roll… how did that not hit? Why did she dodge, she should have dodged… Are you serious?-! Show me where that hit, that was nowhere close, that hitbox is broken! Come dodge… dodge… dodge… parry! Parry, why didn't that parry connect, you rat bastard…!"

Still, by the end of it, Lady Katarina was clearly tired. The tip of her sword was much lower now, and she was clearly struggling to keep it pointed up. She was also panting hard, her hair sticking to her wet, sweat face as her shoulder heaved and sweat dripped down…

"I believe this is enough, my squire," Maria said. "We must return now if we are to make ourselves presentable for dinner." Even though she said that, she still didn't drop her guard or sheathe her weapons.

Sophia blinked and looked around. Only then did she notice how dark everything had gotten. The only sunlight was touching the roofs above them, and she could see the lights starting to shine through the windows from the rooms above.

For a moment, Lady Katarina got that adorably stubborn look on her face. Then her stomach growled, and she winced and finally lowered her sword, grounding the point and using it for support. Her left arm let go and flopped down, seemingly too tired to keep holding the training weapon. So she had to support her semi-slumped form with one hand. "Yeah… I don't think I can keep going any longer…" Lady Katarina panted. "I concede…"

"There is nothing to concede, my squire," Maria said, only now lowering her weapons. "I suppose I can say you are making progress… but my squire, do not expect to reach the level of skill you are used to any time soon. You trained for over a decade to be able to reach the parrying skills with the longsword that you are so rightly proud of. While you have experience, it will take you at least that long to reach the same level of skill with that weapon."

"Then I can't let up, or else I'll never get there," Lady Katarina said, somehow managing to smile widely despite looking utterly exhausted.

"No, I suppose you cannot," Mara conceded. "Now, gather your equipment and let us return to our room. After dinner, we will still be doing etiquette drills, don't think I have forgotten."

"Eh? But I'm so tired…"

"And whose fault is that?"

A sigh. "Yes, Dame Campbell. "

"That was amazing, Lady Katarina!" Sophia exclaimed after she'd finally managed to stand up and shuffle towards them. Her posterior had gone numb since she'd been sitting in the same position for who knows how long. "Your swings looked really powerful! I'm sure you'll beat Maria next time!"

"Only if she manages to push me off a cliff," Maria said as she started putting away her training weapons and started putting her real ones on.

They gathered all the training equipment they'd brought, Sophia still singing Lady Katarina's praises as they followed Katarina back to their room… which was somehow not just going back the way they had come, because apparently there was a short cut that only went one way for some reason…

Yes Maria, we know you hate mythic architecture.

A few minutes later, Sophia had to run back because she'd left all her books where she had been sitting.

The other delegations arrived slowly over the week, though Maria mostly heard about it after the fact since most of the time she was still attending the lectures. Queen Mylene of Tasmeria was the next to arrive, representing her husband King Leon, and they could actually hear the minor uproar of her arrival.

On the next day's lecture about Tasmeria, Maria learned that Queen Mylene was originally native to Sorcier, a distant cousin of King Artorias who had been sent to Tasmeria as… well, officially it was a 'marriage of alliance' between the then-king of Sorcier, and the then-king of Tasmeria, King Lorant. Unofficially, it was whispered that the two kings had been doing a 'swap', and that one of then-King Lorand's unrecognized bastards had been sent to Sorcier for the king in exchange. Professor Vaati spoke of the sordid matter with detachment, but it was clear how distasteful he found it, because he grew very sarcastic when he talked about how King Lorand had an 'unfortunate accident' which somehow led to the then-Marquis Leon, a minor scion of the Duchy of Almeria, becoming king and marrying the now-Queen Mylene to legitimize his position…

Sorcier's official response was delayed because it was around that time that the former king had died, setting off the civil war among his offspring that had led to King Artorias coming to rule…

"Why weren't we taught about this in history?" Katarina had exclaimed incredulously after the lecture had ended. "I'd have remembered this if I had been taught it! Why didn't we take this up in the academy?"

"Because the Academy was meant to teach us magic, my squire, and the principles by which it could most effectively be used," Maria said dryly. "They assumed tutors had already taught you all this."

"And our tutor did try to teach you this sister, it's just you never stayed awake for it," Keith said blandly.

"Then he was teaching it wrong! I'd never have fallen asleep for such an exciting story!" Katarina frowned, then seemed to come to a realization—Maria checked, but fortunately no blood was dripping from her squire's ears, so she hadn't ruptured anything—and sighed. "He only kept teaching us the dates, didn't he?"

Keith paused, but nodded, conceding the point. "Yes, he did. That's probably why you fell asleep."

"Argh!"