So here I am, out in the courtyard of my family’s mansion. Noone Is here to witness my hard fought battle against… Well, nobody. I’m practicing fighting, well, specifically moving my body in conjunction with my conjured arms.
Conjuring weapons to fight with is quite rare, mostly it’s used by my family. There is a good reason my family uses it, despite its difficulty, and that is its power and versatility.
See, we are the knight family in Zendor. If the royal family is the premier mana users, we are the premier stamina users. Mom and dad have worked with the king and queen since around the time the kingdom was founded, leading the warriors of the kingdom.
They have protected the royals from everything from assassins, to repellions, to accidentally stumbling down the stairs. Granted, that was only once, and only the king’s dignity would be harmed, but dad still brings it up with a smile, claiming it to be him defending the king from the most dangerous of foes, stairs.
Given the status of my and the royal family, they decided to produce heirs at approximately the same time, so that we would get to cooperate for our entire lives. That was the public story anyways, from my understanding it was mostly a coincidence, with me being about a year older than the crown princess.
Which makes it my duty to protect the princess, which is the reason I’m all alone. She ran away about a year ago…
I swing out in frustration with the bright green blade that’s attached to my forearm, and the metal pillar is cut in two. She just left me alone. It’s incredibly frustrating, both because I thought we got along better than that, because I can’t protect her like honor dictates, and because I want to see the world too.
I once again swing the shimmering blade through the pillar, which is swiftly followed by a thud as the cut of part falls to the ground.
With a sigh, I let the blade dissipate, not bothering to reclaim the energy held within it. So much for the title of royal guard, can’t be a guard without anything to guard.
I’m also still learning to fight properly, although you wouldn’t be able to tell by comparing me to most of the warriors in the kingdom. I can beat all but the most senior ones, but that doesn’t matter. I’m not supposed to be compared to them, I’m supposed to be in a different league, the one my parents are in. And compared to them, I’m but a bumbling fool.
I’m only really proficient in a handful of different weapons, with my favorite being the blade attached to my forearm. I like it because it lets me deliver a lot of power, though it loses out on a fair bit of flexibility in return. Ranged weapons like bows are well beyond me, with the exception of the javelin, which I can do sort of reliably, though while each one thrown can do devastating damage, I also lose a lot of stamina by throwing it.
It took a lot of effort to attune my stamina to become a green color that matches my green hair, cause you know, gotta look cool, and everyone has green hair. Everyone in the royal family has the forest green color, dad has a slightly darker green, except the white tip of his tail, and mom’s hair is red. Yup, she’s the odd one out, though my hair skews a bit towards yellow from inheriting her and is a bit lighter purely from the fact I’m younger. They all have an attunement that matches their hair color, so I’m just following the trend, and stronger attunement means more raw power, as long as I play into it.
I’m definitely not in the mood to continue with training with all these thoughts derailing me, so what should I do instead? It’s still too early for lunch even though I could always ask Girard to make me something light if I really feel like it. I should go wash up, but drying my tail takes ages, so I’ll just pretend it’s not necessary.
Going for a walk in the city sounds much more appealing. Normally that would mean changing into a nice looking dress to reflect the status of my family, but as a knight in training I get a free pass, at least as long as grandma isn’t here. She’s a real stickler for formality and even refers to us as kitsune to separate us from the commoners, which is bullshit according to both mom and dad. It’s just a word that she borrowed from a different language.
Going through the mansion is the quickest way, but I feel like taking the scenic route through that rose garden that Rose manages, yes she really does that. We didn’t have a rose garden until mom hired her ten years or so ago. Nobody is complaining though, she does a really good job with it, and the rest of the garden. She has even made it so the flowers match mom’s hair and the leaves match dad’s, which looks really good when they spend time there.
Walking through it always leaves one smelling a little better, and since I was just practicing, I rub my tail along some of the bushes to get a bit extra. I’ve gotten good at ensuring that my tail doesn’t get stuck, which it might have done before. Rose really didn’t like that I cut away a large swath of roses to free my tail, and I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t me since I found leaves in my tail for days afterwards.
The memory has me chuckling, it wasn’t funny in the moment, but in retrospect it has been quite entertaining. My mind is just all over the place today, going on all the tangents. I’m guessing it won’t stop until I get a good night’s sleep.
Exiting the front gate of our larger than most, but still relatively small property, I find the streets of the city to be much the same as usual. We are close to the royal palace, right next to it in fact, so everything here is upscale stuff aimed at nobility, which I guess includes me, though our family doesn’t really partake in the economic posturing that the rest of the nobles do, at least in a major way. Our loyalty to the kingdom is unquestionable and the few that challenged us didn’t last long, though only the really persistent ones lost their heads. Actually it was just one dude. A human that was third in line at a noble house, either viscount or baron, don’t remember, decided to challenge our loyalty despite us being a few steps up the ladder of importance, and when his challenge failed, he persisted, and towards the end he was just spouting nonsense about beastkin inferiority. Eventually he went too far and was tried for treason.
I just walk on autopilot while reminiscing, at least until I spot something interesting, namely a high grade weaponsmith, tucked in between a high end furniture shop and an equally high end tailor.
Azure’s Armory was set up here about two years ago, after Azure, the dwarven blacksmith, immigrated to Zendor. Well he immigrated a few years prior, and eventually his skills were recognized and he could move his operation to a more affluent area. He got his name from his blue hair, and beard, but his parents didn’t know the color of his beard until his third birthday. Dwarves are normally not named after their hair color, but blue is rare enough that they did so anyway.
Walking through the blue door, I’m greeted with a deep gravelly voice at a slightly too loud volume. The only reason I don’t wince is because I’ve been here before and folded my ears back ahead of time.
“I’ll be there in a moment, gotta strike while the iron is hot you know!”
I laugh a bit before answering at least as loudly, “Yes, I know, you say the same thing every time you are working on something! Get an assistant already!”
I hear a bit of chuckling between the bang of his hammer before he answers my response with a greeting at a slightly lower volume, now that he knows it’s me.
“Viridia, it’s been like almost a day since you were her last. How quickly do you expect me to get an assistant? Or are you hinting that you want the position?”
I chuckle a little more as I make my way to his forge. He has made me a couple cool weapons, but the main reason I keep on returning here is because he’s good company, and knows how to use stamina in ways that not even my parents know. I try to glean some secrets from his technique while we exchange banter.
He is working on a shield destined to a guard captain at the moment. The shaping is done both with the force of a hammer and the use of his stamina. The basic shaping is fairly simple, so I don’t get to glean anything today.
In the end, I hang around there until the shield is complete. The design is standardized and not too detailed, so It doesn’t take too long. Combine it with the fact that the captain is a mana user, which means that Azure isn’t doing the enchanting either, leading to a fairly short turnaround.
By the time I’m back out in the streets, it’s nearly dinner time, and the streets are starting to get crowded. And with my luck, who do I spot but Elianna Moises, eldest daughter of Earl Moises. The most stubbornly arrogant elf I have the displeasure of knowing, and I’ve met a lot of elves, including every other noble in the kingdom.
She’s strutting around with her six guards like she owns the world. If she sees me, she’ll probably fling some comment at me, either about un-noble behavior, me not being an elf, or the fact that I can’t guard the first princess. She won’t go beyond that though, as I could quite literally smear her and her entourage across the ground, and if she drags her family into it, they’ll either beat some sense into her, or our family will do it instead.
Luckily she’s as observant as the metal pillar I “fought” earlier. Despite me being one of two green haired fox-kin, she doesn’t notice me and my fluffy tail. Well, I might have heard a rumor of the queen being pregnant, which means I might get a sibling soon, which in turn means I might become one in three instead depending on my potential sibling’s hair color.
On the way into the mansion, I make another pass through the rose garden, because a forge isn’t free of smells, before entering through the back door. Normally I would change before eating, but I skipped lunch, so while I didn’t exercise as much as usual, I’m still quite hungry. The deciding factor will have to be if grandma is here. She usually isn’t, but she has a habit of occasionally showing up unannounced.
Peeking through the door of the dining hall, I spot the distinctive orange fur of her tail, and immediately turn around and head to the washroom, asking the maids to bring me a change of clothes before going in.
Cleaning up is neither hard, nor particularly time consuming, but drying takes forever, especially since I haven’t figured out how to use the weapon manifestation to pull the water out of my fur. Mom says it’ll come sometime after I master freeform manifestation, but I want it now.
I look in the mirror while the maid helps me put on the slightly too decorated dress, which means grandma probably noticed me peeking and ordered them to get me into an appropriate dress. It does make me thankful that my eyes match my hair though. It lets me pull off the two color look I like with the dress they pulled out, though I lose out on the three color look mom does so well with her bright blue eyes.
Soon enough I get to satiate my growling stomach with Girards cooking, though only after grandma has forced us to act all prim and proper. The only one who doesn’t bow down to her, aside from the royal family, is dad, though even he respects her. She’s apparently a real powerhouse, though since she uses mana and I have never seen her do anything of significance, I don’t know if it’s true.
Soon enough dinner is done, and I can get to this evenings reading material, which is supposed to be some boring political book, but who am I to deny myself a romance novel… or two.
