LTSV - Lost & Found 56 (Patreon)

So far, Mira hadn’t made use of all of Penny’s skills. 

She’d only really needed Penny’s skill as clandestine muscle, but Penny could share her senses with Mira and summon Mira through space as a sort of limited pseudo-teleportation. It was far from instantaneous and, unlike Adra, Penny had to physically go to wherever she wanted to summon Mira to so there was rarely an occasion where it didn’t make sense to just take a carriage instead. 

The reason she’d held back so far was, in part, because she already had access to Adra’s shadow matter abilities and information network largely negated her need for Penny to do anything other than swat the occasional annoyance. The other reason was because she wasn’t sure how sharing Penny’s senses would affect her epilepsy, especially the sight-sharing. 

If Mira had ended up having a seizure because she was using her familiar to snoop on Viola, then Vesper and Nanny would have fussed at her until she died of it and then they would have followed her into her next life just to keep the lecture going. This was to say nothing of how Adra would react, which didn’t even bear thinking about. No intel was worth that, but Mira had been feeling fantastic since Lady Serapha had used Divine healing on her and now seemed like a good opportunity to try. 

Dr. Desmona and Dr. Padre had examined her after the failed coup, while Cecily was occupied with cleansing Hurandel’s unwitting sleeper agents, and they had made it clear to Mira that she was not healed. Rather, Lady Serapha had improved her constitution so that she had much more leeway when it came to exerting herself. 

More to the point, it had been annoying to hear all of Andrei’s encounter with Viola secondhand through Adra so she was going to take care of this new development by herself. 

Bertram arrived around then, leading several guardsmen, and his face looked like thunder incarnate. His eyes sought out Violet, then Cecily, then Vesper before his shoulders relaxed by even a fraction of an inch. Mira was amused that he looked for them in descending order of vulnerability, when all three of his children had evolved into fearsome bitches. Then again, one never did stop worrying, not even once your children were grown and terrorizing the countryside. 

Mira spotted a head of blue hair towards the back of the troupe of guards. It was Bryn and he was wearing the uniform of a Palace Guard. It took her a minute to remember if that was a demotion from a knight in training, but she seemed to recall that it wasn’t. Most knights of the realm started their career in the Palace Guard in Avenon. This would have been the next step in his career. Whatever accounting he’d given for his service with Andrei must have passed muster. 

Bertram noticed that the boys were in a very familiar set of Lightning Chains and he turned his attention to Mira with a raised brow. She smiled sweetly back at him. “Release the prisoners,” he rumbled. “My men will take them into custody.”

Mira loosened the boys’ bonds with a wave of her hand as the guards converged on them, although Bryn was held back by one of the older guards. Randall submitted to being detained without complaint, but Andrei jerked his arms away as they went to help him up.

“Keep your hands off me!” he spat. His blood was clearly still up and he turned on Randall like a snake. “This person has offered me a duel and I have decided to accept his challenge.”

Mira frowned. A duel? Since when?

Then she remembered that there had been a Duel Scene in the game. They’d skipped past that scene with Cecily’s Saintess Awakening and because Mira had deliberately kept Raoul from even seeing Cecily’s shadow, but that didn’t mean that the other encounters from the game couldn’t still happen. Usually, Raoul was the one who got challenged by one of the boys for his treatment of Cecily; either the Garden Party Scene or some other insult of equal severity that depended on the playthrough. Only, Raoul wasn’t in the Capitol anymore. He’d been packed off back for Fort Nightfall and put under house arrest.

Last Mira had heard, he was being put into the subjugation's training squad under the gimlet eye of Bertram’s most trusted lieutenant in the hopes that they could salvage his personality now that his mother could no longer interfere with his education. Was this duel happening because Raoul wasn’t around to cause trouble? Or would it have happened anyway? Andrei’s personality had been rapidly unspooling since they overheard his meeting with Viola—or maybe that had even started during the Coup. She suddenly remembered the way he’d confronted her after the fight and, yes, even then he’d looked a little manic. She’d dismissed that look in his eye as understandable upset over the fact that his father had just carpet bombed his future, but maybe it had been the start of something worse.

Millica cocked a brow as she took in Andrei’s obstinate expression. “Do you understand what you’re agreeing to?” she asked, coolly.

Andrei nodded once, hard, and Mira had to wonder if he really did understand or if he wasn’t concerned beyond being able to thrash Randall. 

The Crown Princess and Queen-in-Waiting looked her stepbrother over for a long, tense moment. Millica wasn’t given much to making facial expressions. She’d been too well-trained in statescraft for something like this to crack her mask, but there was a tense quality to her silence that suggested to Mira that Andrei had just blundered and Millica was taking a moment to decide how she felt about it. 

“Then, by my power as Crown Princess of the Nation of Avenon, in the presence of these witnesses,” she said, stepping face-to-face with Andrei, “I accept your resignation from the Royal Family. You are no longer a son of the Royal Clan and you have surrendered all your previous rights, responsibilities, protections, and limitations. From this moment forward, you are remade as Andrei of Wraithwood, citizen of Avenon.”

Last names were a privilege of the citizenry of Avenon, not the Monarchy. Like ancient Imperial Japan, the function of the Royal Family was to give family names, not have one themselves. The practice was supposed to encourage the Queens of Avenon to separate their governance from their egos. 

Being separated from the Royal Family meant either being granted a new family name or being returned to the families of the Royal Surrogate who bore them, which was usually what happened. Last Mira had heard, Andrei was going to be granted a new surname to separate him from his father’s awful legacy. Apparently, Millica had just changed her mind.

Andrei paled, but clenched his fists and nodded. Mira wondered what on earth was going on in his head, but she was also reminded of Vesper talking about the last time Andrei handed Millica an opportunity to do something she’d already wanted to while making him think it was his idea; annulling the betrothal. Had lightning just struck twice? 

Millica glanced in Mira’s direction. “Lady Priestly, may I inconvenience you to create a duelling ring for these two young men?”

Mira cocked a brow. Thank god she’d already remembered the duelling scenes in the game, so she knew the right questions to ask. “What are the terms of the duel?”

Andrei gave her a cool, scornful look. “Magical duels are forbidden within the Hadleigh Palace Complex,” he sneered. “As the one challenged, I choose swords.” He turned to the guards. “I will have to trouble you to loan me a weapon.”

The guards looked towards Millica, but she nodded, and so two of them handed over their service weapons. Mira waved them over so she could inspect the weapons first. Bertram had the second look and Millica was the last one to verify that the weapons were of equal quality and not magical.

The boys took up positions, backs towards one another, as Mira debated with herself about what counted as an appropriate spell for the occasion. The game had mentioned that the commonly-used duelling ring created a magical null field, to prevent cheating. 

The problem with that was that there was no such thing as a true ‘null’ field, which the game had never bothered to explain. That had broken the immersion for her, a bit because mana was inextricable from life. Even worlds ‘without’ magic had a little bit of ambient mana in the atmosphere, otherwise the planet would be a bare rock floating through space where nothing could live or reproduce. What a ‘null field’ did was multiply the effort required to cast a spell by a factor of ten or more, which made magic inaccessible for most people, but the key word in that sentence was ‘most’ people. 

Andrei had a larger mana reservoir than usual, larger than Randall's and smaller than Cecily’s. On his character sheet, his mana potential was ranked at an A+. For context, Cecily was ranked at SS and Randall was ranked at B. Randall made up for his lack of magical stamina with more efficient spellcasting and a larger repertoire of spells so he was hands down the more versatile boyfriend for gameplay, but Andrei would beat him every time in a contest of sheer brute force. 

That might not seem relevant in a sword fight, but Andrei had just enough juice to force one or two small spells through the null field and Mira no longer had the same faith in Andrei’s integrity that she’d once had.

“Any day now, Lady Priestly,” Andrei snapped from where he was waiting.

Mira gave him a tight smile and decided to just give in to the paranoia and made up an array on the fly in order to include all the failsafes and tripwires she wanted, riffing off other spells she’d learned or developed in the past. Then she held up her hands and purple lightning crackled between her fingertips. The lightning drained down to the ground and pooled around her feet before arcing out on either side of her to encircle the duellists. She stepped back to leave the circle.

‘Don’t you dare disappoint me, fucker,’ Mira thought hard at Andrei’s back. 

If she’d been wrong about him all this time—she didn’t know what she’d do, but this incarnation of him wouldn’t like it. 

Bertram joined her at the circle’s boundary. He stood in a parade rest with his hands clasped in the small of his back. “I will act as the mediator,” he announced. “The duel will begin when I say it begins. It will end when I say it ends. This match will continue until first blood and no further. Anyone who continues to fight after my word will finish their day in the dungeon. Am I understood?”

Randall nodded once, sharply. Andrei’s mouth twisted, but he also nodded his agreement. Perhaps he’d just realized what the ‘protections’ part of Millica’s proclamation meant for him. He had just given up his immunity to summary punishment.  

Bertram nodded as well. “So witnessed. The duellists may advance three paces. One…two…three. HALT.”

Both boys advanced and stopped at Bertram’s command. “Turn!”

They turned to face one another with their weapons at the ready. 

He held up one hand with his fingertips extended towards the sky and his thumb tucked into his palm before bellowing, “BEGIN” as he brought his arm down in an arc that felt as heavy as a headman’s axe.

Mira watched as the boys circled one another, feeling out their opponent. Only Randall was a member of the Duelling Club when they were at school. As a Prince, Andrei had been forbidden from issuing or accepting a challenge. He couldn’t even defend himself, except under very specific circumstances, which was why Bryn had to follow him around all the time. There was a dark side to being protected under Lese Majeste. That said, he’d trained with the best of the best in the nation to be ready for the two or three situations where he’d be asked to raise a blade.

Andrei lunged to test Randall’ guard, which Randall parried and then slid up under Andrei’s guard. The tip of his blade barely missed grazing the length of Andrei’s cheek and it was only by the grace of good reflexes that Andrei jerked back in time. He staggered back several paces, visibly rattled and Mira realized that she’d been wrong about something. 

Otome games and visual novels didn’t have any animated cutscenes aside from the opening sequence. The story was told through stills, so Mira hadn’t seen the boys move in any of the Duel Encounters so she hadn’t been able to see their actual skill as duellists. Success or failure in the game was determined before the duel even began by the decisions the player already made.

In reality, Randall had the loose, comfortable body language of a light warrior who possessed the rare trifecta of skill, talent, and conditioning. Andrei, meanwhile, seemed a little bit less comfortable in the ring and more driven by emotion, which was a fatal combination. Andrei might have had the benefit of a better training environment, but she could now tell that Randall was actually the better overall duellist.

This had the potential to get interesting.