AN: a note on measurements, it goes:
1 rege = 1 centimeter
1 arge = 1 meter
1 selge = 100 meters (most distances are expressed in selge, for instance the field study area being a radius of 200 selge.)
There is no kilometer analogue
Weights are measured in:
1 curim = 1 kilogram
1 torim = 1,000 kilograms
Character Notes:
Rean Schwarzer: The eighteen-year-old adopted son of Teo and Lucia Schwarzer, and the heir of the Barony of Ymir. He is an intermediate practitioner of the Eight Leaves, One Blade school of martial arts, and as such wields the protagonist weapon of choice...a tachi (not a katana surprisingly). He is a self-sacrificing individual and, despite his doubts, a true hero. At the beginning of the civil war, he is struck down by Crow Armbrust in his mech Ordine during Rean's first time wielding his mech Valimar (we'll meet those other three later). His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Laura S. Arseid: The seventeen-year-old daughter of the Viscount Victor S. Arseid, lord of the town of Legram. Laura is an intermediate practitioner of the Arseid school of martial arts, and extremely capable in combat. She is a driven woman who gladly takes on challenges to grow stronger, especially in overcoming the evil of her nation.
November 6th, S.1204
Sometime later, after Alfin slowly brought her tears to a halt and reoriented herself, she noticed a faint light cresting the floor of the cave. With new eyes she was able to see what had been shadowed earlier in the night. Against the far wall from her lay her captor, one Lucca of Class VII, who was asleep on the cave floor on an almost nonexistent bedroll. He had turned away from her in his sleep and almost seemed to be using his massive shield as a pillow, his body twisted in a way that made her back ache. Next to the shield was a lance that looked larger and heavier than she was, an intimidating cone of steel with a scrappy dark cloak draped over the top. Looking closer she could even see a backpack peeking out from behind the shield with what looked to be an ARCUS unit hanging from it by a chain. The fire had died not long ago, and the soup on top of it looked even less appetizing than it tasted before.
Slowly standing up, Alfin tip-toed her way to the entrance of the cave. Blinking furiously in the morning light she could see that Lucca had positioned them in a cave inside a small hill overlooking a clearing in the forest. Around them stretched trees for as far as she could see, and an assortment of animals and monsters roamed around without a care. Many of them those the same type of strange insects Toval had fought the previous day.
Tip-toeing back into the cave, Alfin slowly unlatched the ARCUS unit from the bag and made her way back outside, only breathing when she had stepped a few feet outside the cave. Flipping it open, she pursed her lips at the configuration. She had always favored Fire and Mirage arts, yet her captor was clearly preferenced towards Earth and Time. As she activated the orbment, information filtered into her mind. The Master Quartz was Emblem, a Space Quartz that protected the user from harm the more they had been hurt. Filling the slots were a mix of Earth defense quartz and two for the arts Earth Lance and Grand Press. That along with the Master Quartz's Golden Spheres would provide her with a workable amount of offense.
Clearly this man is meant to be a monster of endurance, I guess it is not that surprising considering he followed us for five days, and he did not look like he slept at all.
Alfin snapped closed the ARCUS, and slowly made her way down the hill, heading forward in the hope it would take her out of the forest.
Gasping, Alfin fell to the ground. Around her lay strewn the corpses of a flight of those white insect things with rainbow-colored wings. She scratched in vain at the places she had been struck by their dust attacks. Yet no matter how hard she clawed at them she couldn't get the itch to fade. And that wasn't even taking into account the matter of the (monster) blood and dust in her hair! Drawing in a deep breath and exhaling slowly, she pulled up the ARCUS unit and checked the time. It had only been about two hours, and she had gone much much farther than 100 arge away from Lucca's cave. Saying that, she really had...no idea where she was. No matter how far she walked there were no landmarks. At least with the compass in the ARCUS she could tell she was heading vaguely northward, which was the direction Ymir should be in.
Picking herself up, she made her way deeper in the forest for another thirty or so minutes, stomach aching with hunger and mouth as dry as a desert. Eventually, she stumbled upon a small pond in a clearing. With a cry she sprinted forward and fell to her knees in front of the pond and began desperately drinking from it. After filling her stomach to the point it hurt, she quickly scrubbed off the dust and grime from her face and looked at herself in the settling water.
Her face looked thinner and paler than it had just a week ago, and after her trek through the forest her beautiful hair was completely ruined. Blood and dirt and dust were caked through it completely from when she had tripped and fallen over a raccoon thing and its friends after killing them.
The traveling clothes Toval had procured for her were likewise just as dirty and now torn in quite a few places. Idly she wondered how Rean or Laura could go around in school uniforms and be fine fighting, when her clothes were trashed after only a few hours of trekking. She hastily looked around her, and seeing no monsters or people began taking off her cloak and then unlacing her boots. She would need to bathe to remove the dust from those insects and try to clean as much out of her hair as possible.
Distracted as she was by trying to remove mud caked laces, she only noticed the sound of footsteps behind her right as they stopped.
"I see you finally decided to rest, you did a good job making it this far princess. But I wasn't lying about being able to track you. I can't say I expected you to be such a proficient arts user though."
Scrambling desperately, one boot off and another half pulled, Alfin grabbed the ARCUS and turned while casting Earth Lance at her captor; yet found herself both simultaneously tripping over her feet and seized in a vice like grip around her wrists by one of his hands. The other grabbed the ARCUS and yanked it from her, stuffing it into a pocket of his pants.
"Didn't your parents ever teach you stealing is wrong?"
Alfin wrenched herself from his grip with a frustrated scream and collapsed to the ground, turning away from him.
"Did your parents never tell you kidnapping was wrong!?"
"Nope, but I don't have any parents so it would be difficult for them to tell me anything."
Alfin turned, blinking in confusion. "What in Aidios name do you mean? Everyone has parents you...you idiot!" Then she clasped her hands over her mouth in shock; yet was only met with Lucca tilting her head at her in confusion.
"Of course they do, princess. Except me." With that, he shrugged and sat down beside her. Dropping the pack on his back -with lance and shield strapped to it- onto the dirt. "Now, you did a very good job getting here, but frankly you absolutely suck at fighting. So how about you get cleaned up, and then I can show you how to actually fight while we make our way out of this forest."
Alfin was silent for a long time, staring at her reflection in the pond. "You said you kidnapped me because you are supposed to teach me magic... what does that mean?"
Lucca hummed, "That's a difficult question, since most of what I do I just know without anyone teaching me, and what I found while researching at Thor's were half-myth and half-fantasy. But I can try to give an overview."
Lucca stood up, as Alfin turned to track him. He stopped a few feet from her and slammed his hands down into the dirt. From them came a blue glow, and a sort of suction effect that dragged the ground towards him and upward. Alfin felt her jaw drop as the dirt flowed upwards and morphed into a steel rod, and then slowly emerged from the ground until an entirely steel spear was just...there...in his hands...by magic!
"How in Aidios name! That is impossible! You cannot... you should not... what did you do!?"
Lucca planted the spear back in the dirt and turned to look at her. "I called it magic before, but its proper name is Alchemy, which as I learned is a heretical art that the Septian church has banned. It is not the only type of magic, if what I have seen and read is correct, and both are different than what artifacts and orbments do. If I had to...summarize it...I would say Alchemy is the art of enforcing your will, your imagination upon the world. That is what I am supposed to teach you, apparently. I hope that serves as sufficient proof, and you won't go running off again."
Those last three words were accompanied by an intense glare, that caused the hair on the back Alfin's neck to stand up. With an eep she covered her eyes and curled inward more.
"I'm sorry princess, I didn't intend to scare you. Frankly, I was just worried about your health. And, I haven't gotten a good sleep in nearly a week, and you are the reason the one I was looking forward to was interrupted. So please excuse my frustration."
Faintly, Lucca could hear Alfin mumble into her hands, "I'm sorry." And then pulling her hands away suddenly she pointed at him, fire in her eyes. "Wait! No I am not! You are the jerk who kidnapped me and beat up my friend! I hope you do not get any sleep at all!" With that, she huffed and went back to slowly taking off her boot.
Lucca, watching her for a second, shrugged and spoke, "I am leaving a knife here, if you would like to cut your hair down. I will be hunting for food, please wait here when you are done bathing. I will leave my ARCUS just in case you need to defend yourself."
Alfin kept her silence as she heard him retrieve his knife and ARCUS and drop them next to her, then unstrap his lance and don his pack. Finally, just as she heard him reach the clearing's edge she spoke up. "Thank you...and good luck hunting!" Turning to look at him, she got a nod in return as he disappeared into the dense foliage. And then she was completely alone.
Much later, after far too much furious scrubbing with the fabric of her cloak, Alfin finally felt clean. While she didn't have any other clothes to wear, and so had left her current outfit unwashed, she had been able to slowly scrub off much of the blood and mud and insect dust on them to make them wearable again. The only thing left to do...was to cut her hair.
Will people even recognize me after? With these dirty clothes and short hair, I'll look like some sort of...runaway noble or dirty mercenary.
With shaking hands, she leaned over the pool and held up the hunting knife. She could see her reflection in it and the pool and watched with a strange disassociation as a single tear trailed down her cheek and fell into the pond, distorting her reflection. Three more fell, before she wetly breathed in through her nose and choked them back. Then, with her other shaking hand she bundled up all her hair below her shoulders, matted and tangled with grime she hadn't been able to clean. Raising the knife, she took one last long look at herself, then began cutting.
AN: the reference image in mind I have for short haired Alfin is 'Violet Evergarden' from the light novel/anime of the same name.
