“Welcome to the first emergency meeting of our group. Speaker, you have the word.” I pointed towards Hannah who sat opposite of me on a round, shabby, wooden table. She ordered the papers in front of her, one of them out of the pile and acted as if she knew how to read. Her gaze wandered over the papers way too fast though, which made it look like she could read faster than me. If she wanted to challenge me with that … I didn’t know.
“Welcome. Today we … ehm … we gathered here to discuss the newest developments.” She said and rectified the crocked, useless glasses on her nose. “The saint has the word.”
A bit disappointed by her performance, I looked down on my own notes and cleared my throat.
“As you all know, the gods selected me as their saint. This position promises an equal standing to the king, but I do have very little backing by the different churches.” I said and stared towards Tom who was drawing something on a piece of paper. As we all stayed silent for a little while, Tom finally realized it was his time to speak up.
“Oh, yeah! Question! Why do you have such little backing?” He asked and immediately resumed to scribble on the paper like a six year old.
“That is a great question, head of the underworld. The council of gods, the place where all the important gods gather, vote, at least in this instance, on a simple majority in which the ayes must triumph over the nays. This means, in theory, one god could have selected me, while the others abstained. Because the gods apparently have a problem in their public relations management, no mortal will ever know who voted for me. In conclusion … Tom, are you listening …” He stopped scribbling and looked me straight in the eyes. Reluctantly, I resumed my little speech. “In conclusion, every church has to think about five different scenarios.
One: Their patron god voted against me. They neither can risk going against the gods who were in the majority nor can they go against the other churches. Thus, they will stay passive.
Two: Their god abstained. It is only natural to stay passive as well.
Three: Their god voted for me. Sounds nice, but nobody knows that. The probability for the goddess of life to have selected me is for example very high because it all happened within her church. But, it will be quite hard for them to support me openly as well. Nobody can be sure after all. And because of that little chance their god wasn´t my supporter, they cannot move as well, mostly because they fear the revenge of their god more than mine. Thus, they will stay passive as well.
Five: None of the gods voted for me and it was a one-man show by the goddess of life. Needless to say, they will stay passive and let the gods decide what to do with me …
Tom, are you listening?” I said and nearly smacked his head hard with the side of my hand.
“Yeah … yeah.” He rubbed his head furiously, but still had quite a lot of interest in his artwork.
“What was point four?” I asked, a bit angry about his behaviour.
“Uhm … uh…” He looked around helplessly, but the other two in this dark room didn´t give him a helping hand. “I drew a tortoise?” Smiling brightly, he presented his drawing which somewhat resembled a circle with five blocks sticking out in random directions. “… and it is on his back?”
“You can´t draw.” I commented on the atrocity he committed.
“Bet I can make money off it within a week?” He asked so cockily that for one second, I really thought he pursued some kind of artistic career.
“Very well … speaker?” I asked drily, but nonetheless snatched Tom´s painting away.
“Well … I think it is Mary´s turn?” Hannah answered and nodded towards Mary who cleared her throat.
“I think you were supposed to call me …” She leaned forwards, looked over the little piece of paper I folded in the middle to make something akin to a name tag. “Head of the overworld … who came up with that?” It was me. I always wanted to have a meeting in secret with all that accompanying stuff, and that was the time where it presented itself.
Mary shook her head and put the thick scarf, covering her mouth completely onto the table. After taking in a deep breath, she continued.
“So, while Lucinda … the saint … had her spiritual journey, I collected the little money we had left, bought the restaurant you wanted and spent the rest to support the citizens outside the wall, naturally in your name, Miss Saint.” She said and started to make origami with the papers in front of her. Somehow, I got the feeling nobody took this meeting seriously. Except Hannah … she … was balancing her weight on the hind legs of her chair.
“Perfect. Tom … Head of the Underworld?” I asked slowly realizing that I had gathered a crew that liked to fool around quite a bit … just like me.
“Right … I did drugs.” He claimed and laughed loudly as Mary and Hannah stared at him as if he ate their children.
“Which ones?” I asked swiftly, took a quill and prepared to take notes.
“Uhm … that was a joke. We prepared to auction off the valuables and already got in contact with quite a few underground organisations. We will start the day after tomorrow, the invitations are already out. The three big gangs are kind of a hassle though as they apparently noticed our presence now. Oh, hanging our flag outside the merchant’s guild as we blew the rest up did wonders though. Somehow, everyone knows our organisation, even though we haven’t found a name yet. I hereby suggest we name us ‘Tom´s gang’.” He proclaimed and folded the next piece of paper into a paper plane. It was pretty clear by then that he was considerably bored about this meeting.
“We´ll name us ‘The Crown’. Should be pretty obvious what we want to do then.” I said and he threw the plane through the whole room. Props to his folding technique though because it hit the other wall not even remotely close to the ground.
“Kay.” He said and stood up, but froze mid-movement. “Before I forget it, I got in contact with someone who knows more about magical artefacts. We should meet him soon.” Finally, things began to move in a good direction. Too long did we react to things others did, now it was our time to be actually proactive and act according to our plan. Tom apparently felt exactly the same as he left the underground room, humming a happy melody along the way.
Next up, it was Hannah who stood up and proceeded to walk out of the room, but not without leaving a few last words. “Uhm … the speaker closes this session?” She said and closed the door behind her.
“You alright?” asked Mary, highly concerned all of a sudden.
“Yes. Why do you ask?” I said, quite surprised by her question.
“Since the day I met you, you always gave me the feeling of being stressed. But now? It looks like you try to do a years’ worth of work at once.” Was I? I tried to hurry up, that was true, but I also couldn’t risk making any mistakes, which slowed me down considerably as well. There were too many watching me, one hiccup and I was done for.
“Maybe I am shouldering too much, but there is simply no other person who can do all that. You are busy with your own tasks, Tom needs to hire and manage his thugs, and Hannah … well, she´s not fit for the task and never will be.” I claimed unhappily. Hannah was too … she didn’t have the drive to take things into her own hands. She stayed completely passive in the slums and I was sure that trying to become my maid was Mary´s idea.
“Why don’t you search for someone to help you then?” She asked which baffled me quite a bit.
“That’s impossible. This person would need to think the way I do, and frankly speaking, I could never trust such a person.” I claimed with such a conviction that Mary was slightly taken aback.
“There must be a way…” She said, getting slightly dispirited.
“I don’t know … and even searching for such a way would be too much right now. But don’t worry. Sometimes, there are tasks that are quite relaxing … can I borrow your sewing stuff?” I asked and stood up as she nodded. We both walked out of the dark storeroom nobody used for years. But we had to find an acceptable location for this meeting. Something underground. Something mystical. Something … I don’t know, we picked the first room in the cellar that was slightly acceptable.
Unsurprisingly, Mary led the way back upstairs and into her study where I directly collected all the things I needed. Golden yarn, black cloth and so much more. While she did her usual bureaucracy stuff, I made two capes, ornamented with a golden crown on the back. Both of them also had a hood, which would enable us to hide most of our features if we wore a mask. As I finished with my work that went around my whole body and covered most of it, I looked up, only to find a sleeping Mary at her desk.
Sighing, I stood up, took the nearby blanket and covered her shoulders. Her position must have been uncomfortable, but I still didn´t want to wake her up, remembering the dark eye bags she had. Somehow, I got the feeling she was worried about me and couldn’t sleep properly due to that. But except assuring her that everything was alright, I really couldn’t change that. I would always live in danger after all.
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Looking at the window, I frowned and rather opened the door silently to look out into the hallway. As there would be no servants around during this late hour anyway, I closed the door silently behind me again and went to my room.
Despite the later hour, I could still hear noises coming out of the neighbouring room, belonging to Hannah. Interested, I sneaked over there and listened in. A short while later, I opened the door and saw a training elf in the middle of her room where once a table stood while I awkwardly placed two capes on the ground.
Amused, I closed the door behind me again and leaned against it. She continued the training she was probably given by the guard captain, but I could see how nervous she was.
“Undress.” I said after waiting for the right moment to interject.
“Eh?” She exclaimed abashed and nearly tripped over as she was still stabbing forwards.
“Oh, please. Just get rid of all this unnecessary clothing.” Slowly, she started to undress her maid attire and stopped as she wore just her underwear and bra. “Go on.” I said and watched every muscle intensely as she stabbed forwards once more.
“You need to stand upright. You tilt your torso forwards, meaning …” I walked directly in front of her and waited for her to repeat her movement with the wooden dagger. After a few seconds, she did so, and I easily dodged it, which wasn’t the point I was trying to make though. I pulled on her arm until she had no other choice but to stumble forwards. I could have easily tripped her over at that point but moved my foot away in the last second. “… this becomes considerably easier to do. But I´m probably not the first one to tell you that, no?”
“No …” So the guard captain wasn’t entirely incompetent.
“Great. I know you like to duck yourself, make yourself less of a target and such. That may have worked in the slums, but not here. Alright?” I asked and finally, let go of her hand.
“Okay...” She mumbled moved her shoulders upwards and directly looked a lot more confident, even though nothing changed otherwise.
“Again.” I said and stepped to the side. As she did so, I felt a lot more satisfied with her progress, even though there was still a lot to improve. “That’s better. Try to think about strings pulling your shoulders backwards, at least for a little while. We don’t want you to fall backwards after all. And now, try to take a few steps forwards before stabbing.”
“Uhm…” She said, completely thrown out of her element. “why?”
Did she really mean it for real? Stranding and stabbing is fine while learning the basics, but one wouldn’t get very far with that strategy.
“If you run up to someone, do you use that momentum, or do you stop first?” I asked, imagining how someone would do that. I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
“Well, stopping would be quite bad.” She concluded and looked at her wooden, crude dagger.
“Precisely … so try to stab me.” I stepped back a bit and indicated to her to do exactly as I said, all while looking slightly bored. At first, she stood there, slightly unsure what to do, until she gathered the courage to grip the dagger tightly with one hand. At one moment, she just stood there, and during the next, she was already running towards me.
I still kept track of her muscle movement, noted every useless move she made, and simply waited. It took her three steps to reach me, and with full force, she thrust the dagger forward as if she stood still, but while moving. Still, the dagger stopped quite a bit away from my throat.
“I told you to stab me.” I said and touched the tip of the dagger with my index finger.
“How could I? We are training.” I … couldn’t see her problem. Stabbing someone during training was normal for me, if not the fun part.
“As I was still quite young, I once fought against a soul who was apparently quite the big shot in sword fighting. He never killed anyone though, and couldn’t even slash at me properly as I had no chance of dodging. He had the chance to behead me, but he didn´t do so.” I claimed, which may have been a little lie. This fight happened during a time when I only fought with the least amount of strength I could put into my movements.
“And so he lost?” Hannah asked in doubt.
“We both lost that day … what I want to say is that showing mercy …” I pinched the dagger in between two fingers. “is a habit. A bad habit. I don’t want to see you die because you stopped right before another´s throat out of habit, understood?” I asked, tilted my head slightly and smiled brightly.
“Yes.” She said and the heavy atmosphere vanished somewhat.
“So … go all the way through when you are training with me. Go on.” Hannah stepped backwards again, seemingly still hesitant to attack me, but my reassuring smile seemed to help somewhat. I moved a bit away from the place I stood towards the door, leaving me no room to escape backwards. I still smiled brightly as she stormed towards me, my foot already moving into position. Even though it was quite difficult at first, I managed to squeeze my shoe underneath one of the coats and kicked it towards Hannah as she was close. Tom´s coat entangled itself with the dagger successfully, which enabled me to grab it and simply wrap it around the dagger and her hand.
She tried to pull back, but was too late to do so, even when she managed to stop in her tracks. I moved to the left, the coat, now functioning more as a rope than anything else, followed me suit including her hand.
Next, I simply let go of the entangled mess, grabbed her right shoulder with my hand and swung myself onto her back. My feet interlocked before her belly as she already swayed backwards, but didn´t lose her balance completely yet.
Swiftly, I brought my sharp incisors to her neck but stopped short of touching her skin.
“Dead.” I whispered and jumped off her. She was too slow and didn’t ract at all as I overwhelmed her … which was usually bad during battle.
“Great, and what am I supposed to learn from that?” She asked slightly angry.
“Nothing … but you were determined to stab me, which is certainly a beginning. Now … try to defend yourself.” I gave her a few seconds to get rid of the coat until I circled around her like a hungry beast. Without much hesitation, I ran up towards her, stopped shortly as she tried to stab me and then easily got a hold of her hand right in front of my chest. I pushed it backwards along with the dagger, forcing her to hold it awkwardly between us. I didn´t stop there though but rather pushed onwards until she had to take a step back. She was still wrestling with both hands to get my hand off, but my grip remained firm. Like this, I forced her backwards and backwards, until her heels stooped as she touched the edge of the bed.
Surprised, she couldn’t even react as I shoved her backwards and she fell onto the bed. Shortly afterwards, I followed suit, finally managed to tilt the dagger, now in front of her chest, awkwardly so that she had to let go of it. Shortly afterwards, it landed in the opposite side of the room and I placed my knees beside her.
“This is the point where you lost. Again.” I said and smiled like a saint would do.
“I had no hopes of winning in the first place.” She said and tried to free herself from me.
“Praise me more.” I said, held both my hands in front of a chest and giggled childishly.
“No.” I pouted a bit and then grabbed her axels to push her upwards. Despite how I looked, it was fairly easy to manoeuvre her completely onto the bed as she was also fairly thin. Shortly afterwards, I laid down near her, nestling my head onto her shoulders and dragging a blanket over us. She tensed up in the beginning, but thankfully relaxed after around half a minute.
“Mary was right … I seriously need a break.” I mumbled as I enjoyed her heartbeat to the fullest. Hannah didn´t resist my approaches, but rather wrapped an arm around my belly and dragged the blanket further upwards with her other arm.
“I guess I am a pillow then …” She said and luckily, she didn´t voice her dissatisfaction because of how cold I was.