Author's response
to Thunder Dragon (Ch 2): I already have enough fics I'm trying to finish without starting yet another one. Unless you plan on commissioning me to write it (which I do not recommend since I don't know Breath of Fire from Breath of the Wild), I shan't be taking up your challenge. Best of luck to whoever does, though.
to the guest from May 18, 2024: Whoops! Allow me to clarify. When I said "these dregs", I specifically meant the creatures who'd massacred a village and set the livestock on fire. If I didn't like writing the Queen's Blade characters in this, I would've simply refused the commission entirely. Believe me, the multiple pages of story and character treatments that were pitched between the commissioner and myself with are not the kind of enthusiastic brainstorming one does under protest.
Through the dawn countryside raced a noble's warhorse. Faster and faster the rider drove, knowing her quarry might slip away yet again, this time beyond her reach. The rider, Claudette Vance, the Thundercloud General, crouched forward in the saddle, her black cloak billowing behind her, along with her long, smooth, brown-red hair, waving and curving about the sideways golden metal plume of the detail headpiece she wore. She matched the horse's movements, her athletic legs timing its gallop as she spurred it down the country road. The scabbard that held her claymore sword, the magic blade Thunderclap, swayed and slapped against her back and hip in time with her gallop.
Her thoughts focused on her quarry, her half-sister Leina, the rightful heir to the Vance estate. Claudette couldn't help but remember a day when they were children, when Leina had foolishly run off to play on top of the outer walls…
Don't let go of my hand, Leina!
I won't, Claudette! I promise!
The older sister had gritted her teeth and heaved, practically falling backwards to haul Leina over the crenellations. What had possessed Leina to play pretend next to a four-story drop, Claudette couldn't fathom. Leina had seen a drawing of an acrobat walking a tightrope, but the casual disregard for danger still made Claudette clench her jaw.
It had started to rain soon after, as they'd walked back to the central manor inside the inner walls, servants scurrying to start a fire and cover up the scrape on Leina's knee.
Now she's run away again, Claudette thought, spurring her horse to gallop harder through the morning air. Why must she act this way?
This would be the last time Leina was allowed out of sight. The Thundercloud General swore it.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Rowin held his hum as he plucked the rogue string on his instrument, turning the knob slightly after hearing a slight wobble in the two sounds. The notes blended perfectly, along with the note made by the next-highest string playing one octave higher. Nodding, satisfied, he held that note and started plucking and strumming a peppy tune.
"Oh!" exclaimed Laila, hovering over Leina's head. "I've never heard music like this before!"
Bobbing in time with the tempo, she floated on ahead and let the music take her, gently rolling and spinning in the air to the melody.
Leina smiled at the sight, feeling some pep of her own by proximity. She used that to catch up to Rowin and walk alongside him. Now that she got a good look at it, she noticed it only had four strings instead of eight, and the sound hole was completely open instead of the lace-like patterned ones she'd seen on lutes and more similar, wider-bodied instruments. It made her wonder where exactly it had come from, especially since he'd used it on a man's head like a club.
Her gaze drifted up to Rowin's face, his eyelids at ease as he merrily played a song while humming the words in his head. He seemed content, and yet…
"Rowin?" Leina asked. "May I ask where you're going?"
He stopped his song, both humming and strumming. "I'm going with you to find Risty and give that coin back, aren't I?"
"No, I meant before that." Leina bent down between her breasts and pulled out the coin in question, warm but less smelly since she'd moved it from her boot. "I'm going to become a good fighter like she said I should be, before I give this back to her. What I want to know, if it's all right, is where you were going before you met me?"
"Oh, that?" He stared off into the noonday horizon, just visible through the gap in the trees ahead, where the forest ended. "I'm going to Elysium."
"Elysium?" Leina recalled that word from her mandated studies. In some ancient cultures, Elysium was… "The paradise in the afterlife?"
"Huh? No! No, that's not what I meant!" Rowin thought for a moment. "Well, not the second half, anyway."
"I see," said Leina. "So, it exists on the continent somewhere."
"Maybe, maybe not," Rowin said. "It's a place I'll know when I find it."
"How's that?" Laila inquired, lying down mid-air in front of them, floating backwards. "What's it look like, Rowin?"
"It's not a place that looks like… Well, I suppose it looks like…" He strummed a few chords on his mystery mandolin, as if the chord letters would help spell the words he sought. "You know what it is? It's the kind of place-..."
His chord playing returned to what it had been before, with that song he'd been humming.
"-where every daaaaay…"
His voice drifted into a long note as he started singing.
"-is a happy daaaaay… With a sunny sky; kind of makes you sigh, in a happy waaaaay."
Now all three of them broke out into smiles.
" What a very merry daaaaay! All the world is gaaaaay… With your cares so light, that your heart takes flight, and you're swept awaaaaay."
"I musttake this back to Heaven with me!" Laila beamed, swooping and banking with gusto as Rowin continued singing.
" The air is sweet with clover, the clouds are turning over. Oh yes they're turning over, just to show their silver lining- Myyyyy, what a happy daaaaay…"
Leina giggled giddily as Rowin took her hand.
" Never knew such bliss, never read of this, in a book or plaaaaay! What a lovely daaaaay!"
He twirled himself around like a ballroom noblewoman, before placing her hand on his shoulder and frolicking around like a deer.
"What a great big gorgeous, sumptuous, thumping-bumptious, hum-galumptious, simply scrumptious! Oooh myyy, oooh myyy, whaat aa haaaappyyyy daaaaay!/em"
The three of them nearly collapsed into fits of laughter. Leina wiped a tear from her eye that most certainly wasn't from the dirt she kicked up from falling.
"Haaaa…!" Rowin sighed-laughed. "That's where I'm going."
Leina got on all fours and was about to speak, when she froze. There, right in front of her, in the middle of the road…
"S-S-Snake!" she stammered.
Rowin froze, too, his neck slowly following his eyes as he twisted his body around about as fast as a boulder could walk.
"No sudden moves," he whispered.
That was when a new voice chimed in from the side of the road. "He likes you, Leina."
Leina knew that voice. Anger steeled her resolve and she stood, darting back as the now-familiar snake slithered back to its wearer, sliding up her shin guard and stocking before shaping itself into a thong. The elf's white, vest-like top only covered her shoulders, the outside of her breasts, and her nipples, the latter just barely.
"Echidna!" Leina shouted.
"You remember me." The sultry elf smirked. "So it was your first time."
Leina shuffled over to Rowin's side, the minstrel resting a hand on his cutlass after passing his mandolin's neck to his right hand.
"How could I forget how you…! You-! Embarrassed me!" Leina said, reaching back to grasp her sword.
"Awww, it wasn't good for you?" Echidna asked sardonically, raising her hands above her head as she approached the trio.
"Hey, I know that name!" Laila exclaimed as she pulled out a large book from… somewhere. "Echidna… Echidna… Here you are!"
Her finger met the open page, and she frowned. "No battle records yet? But you're one of the top contenders!"
That remark made Leina loosen her grip. She shifted a little closer to Rowin, but not behind him.
Echidna chuckled. "I'm not here to fight," she said to Leina, before eyeing Rowin. "I came to get a feel for your bodyguard."
"I'm not her bodyguard," Rowin said, stowing his mandolin behind him, his left hand lingering on his ice-colored cutlass. "I'm her friend."
He turned to Leina. "We're friends, right?"
"Of course we are."
"Only friends?" Echidna asked, shaking her head. "You don't know what you're missing."
Rowin narrowed his eyes at her, now palming both of his swords. "And you do?"
Echidna's hands came to rest on top of Rowin's. Her face swayed very close to his, enough so they could smell the wild berries on each other's breath.
"Be careful, Rowin," Leina said, backing away from Echidna. "She's the one who I fought in that vulgar oil pit."
"You make it sound so bad," Echidna drawled idly, glancing at Leina out of the corner of her eye. "I sent all those rude men away before we finished. It made things much more pleasant."
Rowin's narrowed eyes followed Echidna as she slowly circled him, her fingers drifting up to graze the exposed skin of his exposed chest and stomach, his chain mail stowed since taking back his coat.
The wild elf hummed, licking her lips. "Oh yes. Yes. I could just swallow you whole right now."
"Is that why you've been following us?" Rowin asked. "Because you were hungry?"
"She was following us?!" Leina exclaimed.
"How could I not?" Echidna's fingertips lingered on his shoulder as she nodded down the road. "Unlike her, I enjoy my work."
Leina turned around and felt her heart sink. There, dismounting her favored warhorse, was Leina's older half-sister, Claudette.
"Is this what you've been doing, Leina?" the brunette said disapprovingly. "Philandering with common sellswords and singing silly songs?"
"Not silly…" Rowin muttered. He slid forward to give Leina some space, but Echidna's hand was like a tether to his kite. Thus, he kept his hands on his swords' pommels as she kept unnervingly close to him.
"I've been following my own path, Claudette," Leina replied. "I'm not going to do as father says anymore. I've had the strength to make it this far myself and I'll do what I want."
"Disgraceful…" Claudette scoffed. "You used our family name when it suited you at the border crossing, but you pretend it means nothing to you. How far would you have gotten without it, Leina?"
Leina's fire dimmed at that, and she inspected the ground. "Claudette…"
"You've made it nowhere," Claudette said, shucking her black cloak and revealing the armored bikini top and thong beneath.
Rowin raised an eyebrow at the sight.
"Now," said Claudette, "we are going home."
"No, we are not," Leina said, rekindling that fire. "You're going back to father. I'm going on my journey."
"And what is the point of said journey? To witness these vulgar duels?" Claudette scoffed again. "You've never been one to see reason when you're like this. I should've done this from the start."
She drew her sword, Thunderclap, from the scabbard on her back. "Leina Vance, heir to the Vance dynasty, I hereby challenge you to a duel."
Leina drew her own sword and readied her tri-pronged buckler. "I accept your challenge, Claudette."
"Oo! Oo! Wait! Let me get ready" Laila, who'd been watching confused until now, closed her big red book and flew between the two sisters. "Ye fighters who seek to enter the Queen's Blade-"
Claudette flinched. "The what?"
"-may all be witness to your compe- Whoops!"
Down went the book and splat went the mud it landed in. Laila looked like she was about to eat her own lips.
"MRRRR, FINE!" She made a chopping motion with her hand and a magic spell circle sprung to life between the two fighters. Images of crystalline fractals spiraled out as it grew in size to encompass the two. Glass-like orbs appeared in the air, not just around Leina and Claudette, but all over the continent.
"On this side, we have Clauuudette, the Thundercloud General! On the other, we have… Um…"
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"Look, Lady Tomoe, it's starting!"
The shrine priestess tipped her hat back and squinted in the harsh desert sun's rays. "Let's get a better angle, Shizuka."
The pale-skinned ninja nodded. "Agreed. This Thundercloud General is worth studying."
"...Uh, the Wandering Warrior… Leinaaaa!"
"Not much of a warrior, by the looks of it," Shizuka commented.
Tomoe silently agreed. However, her interest was piqued by the two figures standing behind Leina. One had the air of a hardened warrior, albeit a shamelessly underdressed one, but the other she couldn't discern. That in itself was interesting, too.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Now it was Claudette's fire that was doused. She lowered her guard and took a step back.
"I'll let you have your fantasy a little longer," she said. "Enjoy this delusion of freedom while it lasts, Leina."
"Not this time!" Leina charged in and swung like a lumberjack, forcing Claudette to block. "You always do this, Claudette! You always treat me like a helpless child: never giving a damn about my feelings, what I want, who I am; I'm sick of it!"
Drawing back, Leina chopped at Claudette's guard again and again, until Leina locked their blades and pushed Claudette to the ground, continuing to rant about what didn't make sense, why their father ignored the starvation of his subjects, why he demanded an unwilling heir succeed him. Much didn't make sense to her.
"Why do you always look so disconnected?!" Leina hammered at Claudette's sword, keeping her prone. "Is it some burden? Do you even know how Father really feels?! Answer me!"
However, while that was important to Leina, Rowin was only catching about half of it. He still had his hands on his swords, and saw the fight was even enough to take his eyes off of it.
"So." He spoke to the wild elf whose fingers still touched his bare skin. "You going to tell?"
"I never kiss and tell," Echidna said softly.
"About why you've been following us," Rowin clarified. "You've been waiting to pounce. My fault for thinking you were just shy."
"Oh, but I am shy," Echidna insisted, dripping with lust but not an ounce of sincerity. "I was working up the courage to join you two by the fire. After all, two's company…"
She drifted close to his ear. "But three's even better."
Chlik.
An inch of steel glinted beneath a brass-colored cross guard, protruding from between Rowin's fingers. He knew Echidna could see it at his hip. The simmering glare directed her way was cast from beneath a perfectly unkempt crop of blonde hair.
"Stop dodging the question or I'll stop taking chances." Rowin's voice was as smooth, hard, and cold as a tombstone. "What's it going to be? Are you some kind of assassin?"
Echidna's thighs rubbed together. Her left hand glided towards her sopping wet nethers, before sliding along her thigh to the serpent-patterned buckler she wore on her hip.
She nibbled her lip before saying, "I could never kill something so precious. Although…"
His eyes flashed a little, and she couldn't help herself. She slid around Rowin's front and grasped his sword, gently twisting her palm up and down the hilt, looking him dead in those deadly serious eyes, daring him to try her.
"Don't let that stop you," she breathed.
His features unclenched a little. "You enjoy courting disaster?"
"Only when it's right in front of me," she said, gripping his sword tighter, "and properly aroused. What about you?"
"Only if friends aren't caught in the blast."
Echidna's eyes inspected him seductively, complemented by the slight smile she wore as she backed away from him.
A thunderbolt interrupted whatever it was Rowin had found himself in. Now he found Leina beside him on one knee, trenches at her toes from behind forced back. Claudette, however, wasn't touching her, and her sword crackled with lightning.
"You alright?" Rowin asked his wandering friend.
Leina gritted her teeth as she stood up. "Yes… I'm fine."
"Remember this, Leina," Claudette said as she dropped her sword into a one-handed hanging guard. "I am well aware of our father's love. That is why I uphold our family's honor, and why I'll put an end to your selfish vagrancy."
Claudette whipped her blade at Leina, sending it spinning through the air like a discus. Leina deflected it with her buckler but sent it at Rowin, who fell back and twisted mid-fall to land on his palms.
"Rowin! I'm so sorry!" Leina cried.
"Eyes forward," Rowin grunted, already hearing the crackle of lightning. He stood as Claudette raised her sword high.
"Thunderclap STRIKE!"
Leina ran. Bolts of lightning crashed through the treetops and blasted the earth at Leina's heels. Claudette pursued through the smoldering leaves that fell.
As she ran past Rowin, her green eyes locked with him. She'd gotten careless; she hadn't realized the nature of this man. He was mid-draw of the sword on his left hip, a curved blade with a silver handle. However, unlike him, she noticed the figure behind him, finally making her pounce.
Echidna's hand looped around Rowin's and slid between his back and his small pack, locking him in a chicken-wing hold. Her other hand held down his other sword as he instinctively reached for it.
Claudette ran past. Leina turned and met her swing, but the force of Claudette's charge sent her flying up the road, getting dangerously close to the cliff at the end.
Rowin's eyes blazed into Echidna's as she put her chin on his shoulder.
"That," he said evenly, "was a big mistake."
"It almost was," she corrected. "Heaven doesn't tolerate interference with the Queen's Blade."
He looked to where Leina was pushed to the edge, taking a full blast of lightning. She screamed in pain and collapsed, breathing heavily as Claudette stood over her.
"Duly noted," he said. "Now, I suggest you let me loose."
Echidna's hands slid free. "Only because you two are so cute together."
Rowin's jog turned into a sprint as the earth crumbled under Leina. He got close enough to hear Leina's plea from the cliff's edge as Claudette held fast to her arm.
"Please, Claudette… Set me free."
Rowin stopped as Claudette stood, without Leina in tow. He heard Laila gasp from above.
His eyes darted to Claudette, then Laila, then Echidna behind him. When none of them moved, he chose to, leaping off the side of the cliff and plummeting towards the sound of the river below…