It was hard to think about anything but assassins. I probably should be in my room. I feel like I should hire bodyguards. I am channeling owl and steel together, to make me resistant and enhance my senses. With my Alertness pushed up to double what it had been, I could feel a little more comfortable. But I still just wanted to lock myself into my bedroom with a gun. First, I need to invent guns.
Unfortunately, the smart thing to do is to hang out in the game room with hundreds of other freshman girls, where the sheer number of witnesses and combatants present would discourage anyone from doing anything rash.
For my sake, Elica and the others had moved their poker table to the edge of the room, so I could sit with my back directly against a wall. That helped a lot. My hands were not shaking as much.
I caressed my magic, and started releasing the essence of steel that was bolstering my thoughts again. My hands started shaking first, and with a sigh I allowed the essence back in. This did not feel good, using magical manipulation of my own emotions to suppress a traumatic response, but the last time someone had really attacked me directly and I had not managed my own emotions, I ran out and killed dozens of people. I cannot react like that again.
It did not feel like I'm suppressing terrible thoughts and emotions, it feels like I'm drugging myself just to keep from processing them. Even bottling up and refusing to acknowledge my fear would be a healthier psychological reaction than what I'm doing.
I just need to hang on for another hour. I'm always better at dealing with these things in my sleep.
Which sounds funny but is literally the truth, thanks to the Untethered Essence.
"Please make her pay attention to the game! I can't just keep getting wiped out like this!"
"We should play partners. Larianne and I share a pot of chips, you and Natalie share a pot of chips."
"Hey, that'd be fun!"
"Hmm. We could, but I think Natalie probably should pay attention to the game instead of just brooding."
"Hang on. You are recommending against brooding!?"
"There's not enough room for two of us."
Elica's hand tapped my wrist, and I looked up from my chips to look at her. Gods, how many hands had I won!?
"hmm?" I said.
"Hey, Natalie, how do you feel about playing partners, with you two sharing a pot and the two of us sharing a pot?" Elica said. "Just to keep things interesting."
Lol. You mean so that Vancy and Larianne can sit in on more than half the game, I thought to myself.
"Maybe later. Elica, I was meaning to ask, how much time did your mother spend teaching you to play cards?"
She started shuffling with easy dexterity. "Oh, no more than an hour a day. I think most of this is just natural talent that I inherited instead of getting her dimples."
I was more inclined to think it was the intensive training. An hour a day is a lot, over a dozen years, and I say this as someone that did a lot of intensive training through her childhood. The Duke and Duchess Harigold made sure their kids were competent.
She dealt out, and the cards thrummed and snapped in her hands. The scuffle and skiffle and swivel of the moving pack had a rhythmic clipping clack when a card was sent to the table, she always placed the cards down and never just skimmed them across the tabletop. Funny, I used to coast them when I would deal cards for friendly games back on Earth. I never played a lot of card games then, but it was easier to relax and just play for the sake of it.
Was I having a hard time relaxing because I did not have friends I trusted very well? Or did I have trouble trusting because I was always so restive? Maybe in my old life I was too freewheeling and trusted too easily. Maybe I was wrong then and I'm right now. But... it doesn't feel that way.
When every player had our two hole cards I lifted mine to read them, then ante'd in on the first flop card. Where I came from the first three flops came at the same time, but the local version called for a round of bets between each turned card.
Back in my old life nobody ever tried to kill me even one time. I was probably not being unnecessarily neurotic and jumpy. I really can't sit here and judge myself for being too high-strung while I'm also magically suppressing a panic attack from being stabbed in the back.
Why am I playing cards with these aristocrats? I should be exploding monsters. That always makes me feel better.
Well, the easy answer is that I really don't want to be alone right now. Especially not alone in a pitch-black cave full of monsters.
I checked when it came my turn, I was not ready to bet seriously until the third community card was turned. Larianne started the betting early and aggressively, so I folded out and let them fight through this hand. On Fiveday I had coursed through this room obsessed with love interests and antagonists and keeping Princess Lachel away from my brother.... And then this morning I had really felt peace. A good weekend.
Funny how an assassination attempt ruins your mood.
Ugh. Why exactly could I not just start killing people who get in my way? I'm trying to save the world here! If some schmuck can try to kill me on the camogie pitch, why can't I get this princess out of my way? She's only one station higher than I am, it's not that far out of reach! For something as important as the world, this should be possible!
"Natalie," Elica said gently, tapping my wrist. "Stop plotting murders and at least look at your hole cards." She sounded more sympathetic than I would have expected.
Hmm. Pair showing, with a very real 20% chance to build a three-of-a-kind out of it.
I did not bother denying that I was plotting murder, Elica really did have my tells.
Weirdly it was kind of fascinating to watch Larianne handling her cards, she never touched them with her nails at all, or the table. She never made contact between those long, tapered talons and anything other than her filing and shaping implements or the brush that brought brooding black polish to fill the smile line every other day or so. It required a fair display of manual dexterity that she was able to slide the cards about using nothing but the pads of her fingers, and even handling chips without ever a clink of her claws against the shaped wooden tokens.
She spoke rarely but she did have a lot of physical vocabulary. Small gestures, the way a flick of her fingers would dismiss entire topics. Or a turn of her shoulder to ignore a person who was speaking. The way her eyes could roll with her face perfectly still, or the small movement of her head to show someone wasn't worth her time. Most of her nonverbal communication was just different ways of rejecting someone or something. For being so very silent and portraying really only one emotion, she wound up putting forward a lot of personality.
Vancy could surprise me. On the one hand she's got a ton of heart, and she's very earnest and seems to very sincerely want nothing but positive vibes. And despite being an academic low-achiever, and having a particular mannerism to her speech that would normally indicate someone who is very dumb, she's not actually very dumb. She's a bit unworldly, and she prefers simple answers when she can get them. But it's not like she was some total dolt that periodically blurted out something shockingly insightful. Her baseline is not that low, she's overall fine.
She does a good job of appearing stupid, considering that she hardly ever actually does anything stupid. I fuck up a lot more than she does. Elica has a lot more that-was-stupid-in-retrospect moments. Even Larianne gets caught slipping more often than our Vancy. She's not some bonehead. And she's not a dimwit with flashes of genius. Nor is she a mastermind faking the part. She's just got all the markers for a dummy, and has a good head on her shoulders. It's not a combination I expected to ever see.
Gods, Elica made such a bad impression on me at first. And to be fair most of it was well-earned. She is spectacularly spoiled, and she does collapse the second that she has to do something for herself. She is narrow-minded, judgmental, and she is very much locked to the assumptions baked into her upbringing. She's hateful, spiteful, vindictive, and ruthless about using social maneuvering to lash out at anyone who offends her, to any degree. She's also thick-skinned, loyal, and generous with her time and her belongings.
This is someone who did not think twice about starting a war of rumors against another girl for snubbing her social circle, and appears to be entirely fine with murder, larceny, social devastation and horrific torture. She looks ill if you suggest an activity that could get her clothes dirty, she throws a fit if she can't have her favorite hand lotion, and her main objection to me is that sorcery is a lowbrow magic and that noble ladies like us should not have magic because it is utilitarian and plebeian.
She also appears to be a shockingly good judge of character and does not hold that against any of us. If there was someone like me around I wouldn't hang out with her, but Elica has chosen exactly that, on purpose.
My friends baffle me.
Maybe that's why we work. I often don't get along well with people I understand.
"You're doing it again."
"It wasn't murder this time!"
"Check or bet."
"Check."
The play moved around the table, and the next card was turned. The odds of me getting that three-of-a-kind are down to 4%. But the community cards are trash, it's unlikely anyone has more than a pair here. Someone here might have the makings of a two-pair, but my counting shows that to be unlikely. Every time I lift my hands to manipulate the chips I have to consciously still the shaking, like I can just willpower my way out of this mental state.
The fifth turned over, and betting started in earnest. Elica was pushing hard against Vancy, who was trying to bluff. I'd buy the bluff myself, but if Elica is seeing through a bluff she's going to know better than me. Larianne is betting steady but not aggressively, and Elica is calling like she thinks Larianne probably has the better hand of the two of them but might get bluffed out of the pot.
I don't want to fold a pat pair, but the community cards have no help for me and a pat pair doesn't beat a built pair. I fold after just a couple chips, watching them scratch their way to a finish. Larianne takes the pot, but doesn't get as much for her high pair as she should have. We pass in for the discard pile and Elica deals out, forgetting to shuffle before third deal.
Two games away, five center cards and eight hole cards each game, means twenty six are shown and twenty-six remains, of which five are going face up and two go to me. My math brain starts to kick in, I've got enough data now to make some real moves.
I don't even try to read anyone's faces, I'm more likely to get suckered by a bluff or to misread an expression than to get anything useful. I play against the odds and the cards and the bets, and try not to take in any tells. Ante in. My hole cards are rubbish, no match no suit, and just offset enough to have me hoping for an inside straight.
"Check."
"Check."
"Check."
Elica turned the first, and it didn't help anyone. Three checks finished at her turning the next. Larianne stiffened up abruptly, and she started betting on it. I called to stay in, Larianne raised limit, and we all called to get the next turn. She bet in again, I called, and Vancy had to go all-in to stay the round, so she did. Elica matched, and turned before Larianne could call for a bump raise.
The fourth turned, and Larianne is still betting each pass like she's trying to push us to fold. Vancy's already all in and can't get pushed out, so Larianne is definitely going to a shootout at the river- if she's trying to bluff us away it's not going to work now. I call to stay, and Elica follows suit. The fifth is turned, and I start running the numbers. I'm sitting at two-pair with high cards, but two-pair is median for this deal. Strict odds, all of them have two-pair with lower values and I win this hand.
I know what I'm holding and how it builds from community. Only two percent odds that anyone here has even a pair of face cards. Fractional percentages that anyone has a three-of, too. This deal has been broken all up- that's good for a counter like me. There's an eight-percent shot that one of them is holding a flush against me though.
About four-hundred to one against Larianne having a decent winning hand from the second turn, it's not impossible but it's not something to count on. Much more likely is that one of the three is holding a flush and being very quiet about it.
Simple math: I've got a 90% chance of winning this hand. I started betting.
Vancy sat back, since she was in this one way or another. She was happy to watch us betting since she was already in and all we were doing was increasing the amount she could potentially win. Larianne was still stubbornly calling, refusing to give up the chips she'd already committed. Elica kept raising just enough to keep the betting going, and I bumped limit. Eventually we turned it all over.
Larianne had the two-pair that she was threatening since the second turn. Vancy had the three-of that I was sure could not happen. And Elica had the flush that took all our chips.
I sighed. "I'll redistribute chips. You shuffle. I think it's time to go with that partner suggestion."
Vancy nodded. "I'll be your partner but only if you stop paying so much attention to the game. When you're dialed in like that you're even worse than me."
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The spot on my shoulderblade felt... sandy, like there was still some granite grit mixed into my skin. I had left that stone plug in the wound for a long while, and I was attuned to the stone's essence the whole time. Curving the stone so closely to me and keeping it so meticulously under control might have affected me a little bit there. Or, perhaps Licard just got a rough finish when he sealed that wound.
Or it was my imagination and I should stop running my fingers over it over and over as if that would scrub the memory out of me, or as if I could just use my fingers to erase the fact that someone had tried to kill me. Like I can sit here in the shower and just dwell like that until everyone decides to leave me alone.
I step out of the shower, soaking wet, warm all the way through and suffused with the comfort that a good shower brings. It's a good state to go to sleep, I find. Elica feels different, she likes to get her day started by scrubbing down. Perhaps the key to a good roommate situation is striking this balance, so that the bathroom is always clean and ready and vacant for the interested occupant. Kind of like how the ideal companion for a lunch is someone who picks their pickles off / steals your pickles.
I drew on my affinity for water, and told all of the loose water that the way downhill was over through this spiral in the air and down through that drain. It all wicked off of me like I was an oiled duck and flowed away, leaving me in my towel. Sorcerously-manipulated winds brought my nightgown and helped me get dressed in it, and then I walked out to the bedroom where Elica was settled down into her bed, waiting for the bells to chime the night.
She and I traded words and pleasantries and then I laid down, and started parting my soul from its shell. By the time the bells were ringing the simple parts of me were asleep, quite exhausted. The mind and body relaxed away, confident that I would take care of it, that I would guard us and resolve things. I still vividly remembered a few hours ago, using channeled essence to suppress my emotions. I had clamped my feelings until I could not recognize them, and told myself that the untethered essence at night would solve this.
As if I were not the same person. As if I were some spiritual custodian to fix the broken furnishings, replace the burned-out defense mechanisms and sweep up the wreckage. When I was awake and intact I had a bad habit of treating my nighttime sojourns as if they were someone else and I would not need to be accountable to myself.
I slumped over the bed, encompassing my own body and mattress. I watched all directions and stood ready to act up if something happened.
To a degree. I could deal with slow-moving threats. I had gotten much better at stumbling the body along. But if I had to run from here to the door it would sunder soul from body. If Elica rolled out of bed, grabbed me and dragged me over faster than my misty self could follow, that would be the end of me.
Would she? Of course not. I don't share quarters with people who might do something like that. And if i ever saw Elica leap out of bed and run at me, I don't know if I would curve void to teleport away to safety, or conjure void to implode her instantly. I know damn well that I'm not going to just stare and hope that she does not choose to hurt me.
I turn myself around and around. The mind of the girl is having nightmares already, she's really torn up about this. I mean, I am. It's hard when you see your dreams from the outside. I'm not a different person, it's just that when I'm in this state I'm so much more aware of myself that it feels like a different life.
Maybe that's why Waking Me assumes that Untethered Me can solve my trauma.
Or maybe it's because sometimes I assume that just because my soul and essence don't have hands that can tremble, should mean that I'm just fine. Just because my voice doesn't hitch and my eyes don't twitch, must mean that the discorporate soul is immune to feelings, emotions, neurosis, trauma, pain... well, I'm not. I'm just elementally me, and nothing else. The reason I'm not trembling is because that is part of the nature of hands, not of me.
I unraveled the nightmare she was in the middle of and gave her a version where she saw the sorcerer's spear coming in time and she struck it with her hurley, swatting it backwards to hit the black-robed figure of a generic evil mage. The dream had her triumphant, brave and victorious. She was carried around on her teammates' shoulders and they won the big game.
Sometimes dreams are really kind of stupid. These players haven't even had a game yet, let alone a big one.
Just to be thorough, I went through the memories with a fine-toothed comb. Maybe the dreaming mind had access to important details I had not noticed before. I went through the whole scene, tracing way back, trying to find any occasion that my eyes had tracked up across the correct area. I had been looking around a lot- mostly focusing on what was near but I had looked up and around a lot, because we were practicing hand-passing. Maybe I had seen something and just not noticed it at the time-
But no. In most TV shows this would work because people really want to believe that their subconscious mind is recording a million details and all we need is some hypnosis or dream therapy or memory regression or whatever, and we all become superhuman cameras that have always noticed everything around us. Unfortunately that's a myth and it doesn't work that way.
No, I did not have a secret snapshot picture of the assassin taken moments before they struck.
What I had instead was a half-hour of worrying and wondering, and trying to keep my eyes everywhere, trying to keep anyone from getting near my back. I had been dodging all around to avoid people who would never have touched me, who were armed only with ash-wood hurleys. Focused on the wrong things.
For a half-hour I had danced around and tried to avoid trouble. But I was already on the field, and I had already accepted the conflict and its terms, when I stepped onto the pitch from offsides. I had been acting like it was possible to avoid trouble. Like suffering and difficulty was something I could outmaneuver.
But it's not, is it? I can maneuver, but only to choose which trouble I'm going to charge straight at. That's how this game works. Pick your options and deal with the consequences. Choose a path and walk it. This game doesn't have a stat for "run away and don't get hit", it has a stat for "find trouble and overcome it". To avoid pain, to sidestep conflict, I would need to pick paths that lead me away.
And I'm not going to. I already know that. I curl around myself, like a big misty mother cat coiled around her sleeping kittens, my body nestled within my foggy banks. I'm not going to avoid trouble and pick the paths that never lead to conflict. That's not my path. And I need to act like it.
Need to behave as though conflict was not just inevitable, but necessary. Danger is not just out there, it's right here. I have to trust myself to hit it face first and walk away victorious.
After all, not only did I survive this attack with only two HP lost, I gained a point of Stamina doing it. That's another point of HP I have every day from now on, and more actions per day. My training pays off, but only if i embrace it.
I rustled around. Books shifted with my moods, blankets rumbled beneath me, and my living body reacted to my movements. When I wafted to the right, the body's posture and position rolled with me. Normally that did not happen, the body was only responsive when I carefully planned which limbs to move and how. But after years of practice, some of this was becoming instinct. Enough to roll towards one side without paying special attention to it.
I glared out the window, like I would spot someone trying to kill me. Why this right now? It has to be about Vendetta or the Byeview Boys, right? There's only one cycle of violence I'm mixed up in right now. That quest I'd advanced was called "Eye for an Eye for an Eye for an Eye". I had reached a checkpoint in it but it does not register as being completed, which... I mean that has to mean there's more steps to the quest, right? Kralcit comes after the Duke, I go after Kudder, the boys come after me, Frantlin and Yheta turn them into mulch... every step of this progression has been unexpected but inevitable. Kralcit didn't think I would go after her network, but in retrospect she probably should have. I didn't expect to be confronted by the families of the victims, but honestly with that many victims it was all but guaranteed to happen sooner or later. They probably did not expect their harassment and threats to end with them being tortured to death by faction gangsters, but honestly if you're screaming insults at a princess day after day, you should anticipate some very unwelcome attention. And now... now I'm at a dead end.
Maybe this is the part of the parable where everyone's blind.
I should get some reading done, some studying, something productive. But it's just not happening. I'm restless, pacing at the length of my anchor-chain, close to my body. I've never tested to see what happens if I break contact. For years I've kept myself confined to those boundaries, because I assume that if I break the soul completely free of the body that I won't be able to rejoin. That's an experiment you can only get wrong once. So now I'm writhing around, frothing back and forth as an insubstantial animus.
And right now, mostly animosity.
And I don't think I'm mostly mad at my attacker. I'm angry because I'm sure that I've allowed this to happen. For this entire time, just over a week now, I was acting like I wanted people to leave me alone.
Unrealistic. This isn't something being done to me, this is not some unprovoked attack from an aggressor. I've moved through this world making big moves, taking big swings, and I've bowled over thousands of lives, interrupted hundreds of plans, killed dozens of people, threatened thousands more. I'm not going to get everyone to leave me alone because that's not the dynamic. I am not reactive, passive, or responsive. I swung first. Princess Natalie Harigold is nobody's victim, I'm the aggressor. I make the moves that other people react to. I don't sit around while other people are making plans, I make moves and they follow me or break in front of me. I don't sit on the gameboard and wait to find out what the players want. And if someone is attacking me, they're attacking in self defense, or a reprisal for something I've done. Being the antagonist is freeing, being the rival is powerful. But to get there, you have to give up the idea that anything is not your fault. What happened is my fault, I need to figure out how. And then I need to follow up. Because whoever is acting against me is someone I've already hit once. But now I need to find them, and hit them again, harder.
In a story, a villain and a hero occupy very different roles. The hero is reactive, he or she is trying to defend a status quo, they are immobile and content until the status quo is threatened. The villain is the one that sees the world in a snapshot, makes decisions about how to change that, and starts getting to work, forcing the heroes to try to keep up, to fight back. How well the hero does in defeating the villains' schemes is determined only by how much the story respects that status quo. And in Harigold Glitter, the answer to that question is "very little".
A rival is not a villain, but they do have a lot in common.
It's not like I'm the only villain. Or a main one. Not by a long shot. My position here is to be a running antagonist, who's always doing something, always instigating something, but is never a bigger threat than the real story, of Kralcit or the Cachexia or the Freckentops... this world's status quo is already a shallow illusion that is being rent asunder. I have no loyalty to it. I am not depending on it. I don't need things 'back to normal'. I don't need safety and boundaries. My security and control does not come from trusting someone else's wards, or someone else's motivations, or someone else's plans. My safety and my control come from making my own moves.
The next time that giant spears flew out of the darkness at me, I was not running to the locker room to hide there because that's what a camogie coach decides would be the best answer. Next time, I break off the weapon, seal the wound, and I fly out there to find who it is that tried to murder me, and I beat their face in. Action. Initiative. Aggression. That needs to be me.
I swirled harder, cycling like a storm. The reason I've been twitching and nervous all day is not because someone hit me. I've been hit worse, recently. It was because I had been trusting other people to take care of it for me. Their helplessness made me feel helpless, and that is what has been wringing me dry for the past four hours.
What I was feeling wasn't fear, it was just stalled-out anger. My hands were not shaking in panic and worry, they were impatient to swing back. I'm going to find that sorcerer. I'll use my plans and my resources, my connections. And if someone tries to throw me some mealy-mouthed excuses about it being impossible, they can get thrown to the side. I don't have time for people who aren't onboard.
God I wished I had a fist to clench.
