Sweeter, Bitter Ruffian (Patreon)

Bitter Ruffian is Mathias's favorite horse. You already have the chance to meet her in Mandra's battle route, but that won't be the last time she'll make her appearance in the game! ^^ Because of that, here's a sweet summer memory of DC, Matt, and a Sweeter, Bitter Ruffian. ♥♥♥ I hope you enjoy!

Opala, the Summer of 8:40

It’s taking me so long to find Mathias that the pitcher of cold water in my hands is already as warm as the harsh, setting sun outside. My clothes are damp with sweat, my feet are hurting, and I’m pretty sure the bandages around my midsection would’ve slid down to my ankles if it were possible. Or, maybe, they would just combust in this hell of a weather. It is the hottest summer since the fall of House Tides, after all, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be any colder.

“My Liege?” The words echo in the empty gardens, but no one answers. He’s not here either. And my voice is getting husky too. Great.

With a huff, I stop and rest my back on a shaded column in the garden. My mission was simple; the queen asked me to bring refreshments for the Crown Prince, to help him concentrate on his studies; while I’m at it, I should “ask him” to practice his presentation with me and answer my questions (which, really, are Yvana’s questions, and they are merciless). 

With good reason. At this time next week, Mathias will be in Safira, defending his thesis in front of the Safiran School of Arcane, and we all agreed that he still needs… quite a lot of practice (to say the least) if he wants to be approved and become an Arcano.

I close my eyes and sharpen my ears again, but if the horses aren’t around, I’m pretty sure Mathias isn’t either.

“Well, that’s just great.” I’ve been treading up and down the castle grounds for at least three hours without any success, and I— 

You know what?

I sit down against the column and fill Mathias’s cup, then take a few big gulps. The water might not be cold anymore, but the mint and lemon still make it taste fresh. 

...

All right, I give up.

If Mathias doesn’t want to be found, I won’t….

Wait. 

I narrow my eyes and stand, cup and pitcher still in hands. Something among the bushes catch my attention, and when I approach it, I find one single page of "Practical Spells for the Nobility" speared in the leaves. I lean closer to read it, and this time my eyes widen.

These are instructions for a silence spell.

That little—! This time, I don’t even need to think. I start toward the stables (again), and when I realize what I’m doing, I’m already in a full sprint, flavored water sloshing everywhere.

I shoulder the stable’s gate open, panting. Two young horses are walking around in the first paddock, and they stare at me as I walk, but I ignore them. A molten something swirls around in my stomach. The first two paddocks are in view, but there’s a third one behind the stables that I didn’t check; it was eerily silent in here, so I didn’t think I would need to.

Coldness washes over me as I cross a transparent barrier around the third paddock, and the sound of a running horse reaches my ears. 

Of course.

“Mathias!” I shout. “Do you have any idea how long I've—?”

My steps slow to a halt. The sun is setting, casting orange light and long shadows across the third paddock. It’s a round pen, smaller than the others but perfect for training, and in the very middle of it, Mathias stands. Linen shirt soaked in sweat, long hair tied in a bun, bare feet covered in dust. He holds a rope attached to a horse’s halter, and as I watch, he tugs gently at it, making a massive, gray campolina stop and look at him. I try to swallow my worry for his bare feet.

“Good girl,” he says with a grin. He steps to the side, moving in an arc around Bitter Ruffian and smiling ever wider every time she moves her hind legs to keep looking at him in sweet curiosity. Then he stops. Mathias approaches her, hand raised, and lets her sniff it. 

Goddess. 

He was right!

“Here—not scary, is it?” Mathias says. “No, it isn’t.” He gently tosses the rope across her back a few times so she will get used to it. She doesn’t run, she doesn’t fight, and she doesn’t even try to bite him like she did to all her previous trainers. “No, it isn’t scary. It’s just rope.” The horse turns to sniff it, but Mathias gently tugs it to the side so he’s standing a little to her left and she’s looking forward. “Good girl, Bitter Ruffian. Good girl.”

She nickers in response, and the pause I see in Mathias is almost enough to make me tear up.

Bitter Ruffian was bred to be a racing mare, coming from a line of tall, proud, but docile beasts brought from Amonita to Opala to appease King Elias’s rage toward the much-smaller kingdom. For a while, Mathias worked on gentle-breaking her, and she responded well to him. But King Elias took offense to “having his gift stolen,” and when he threatened to literally break Bitter Ruffian with his whips and punishments, she, at the time two years old, fought back with enough ferocity to put Elias on a healer’s table with a nasty, bleeding bite on his arm and a crushed leg.

It took the efforts of all the siblings, combined with Yvana’s coaxing and Filtchen’s quiet threats, to convince Elias not to put her down. Instead, Bitter Ruffian was confined to the outer pastures outside city gates, under constant threat of animals and hungry people alike, and treated with the same “kindness” as the king had offered her.

Then Elias died, and Mathias brought Bitter Ruffian back to the castle—back to him—but the damage was done. She came back angry and scared, lashing out at anyone who dared to approach her; she chewed through three of the most famous horse trainers in Opala before Mathias decided to train her himself, promising with all the confidence in his body that he could “bring her back.”

Nobody really believed him.

Now, after three years of gentleness and patience, of quiet conversations, of approaching and reeling back, of near accidents and ugly bites, she nickers again. Bitter Ruffian steps forward to lower her head and sniff a frozen Mathias’s hair, then touch the side of her muzzle to his cheek. 

That seems to wake him from his shock, and he lets out a teary chuckle. The show of affection is new, and it leaves me there, head tilted to the side, watching and smiling like a fool.

“Good girl, Bitter Ruffian.” He caresses her forehead. And as if he couldn’t stop himself, he hugs her neck. “Good girl.”

She startles when she sees me, and Mathias’s shoulders tense. He steps away, rubs his face, and turns around.

“Oh, hello, I…” Mathias looks at the pitcher in my hand, at the side of the paddock (where a pile of books and scrolls lie forgotten), and finally at me. “Oh no.”

"My Liege.”

“Oh, no. No, no.”

“My  Liege, you have to.”

“I spent the entire day practicing my presentation, I don’t need to—!”

“Did you, My Liege?” I send a pointed look at Bitter Ruffian, and the (night)mare has the audacity to squeal. At me. When I step forward, the immense horse puts herself in my path, tail lashing right and left.

“I don’t think she likes you very much.” Mathias chuckles; with quick, expert hands, he removes Bitter Ruffian’s halter so she can run back to her stall if she wants to. “Mares usually squeal to assert dominance when they meet a horse they don’t like.”

“I’m not a horse!” I bash the pitcher on the ground and climb up the fence. “Come here, My Liege.”

Mathias laughs. “Oh, you’re going to catch me?” 

“I will. I have a list of seventy-two questions to ask you, and I can’t practice my swordplay until we finish.”

He laughs even harder, taking one step back for each step I take forward. “Bitter Ruffian might think you’re a different type of horse. Do you really want to face her?”

“I want to practice—she will have to face me if she stands in my way.”

He chuckles and runs toward the opposite fence, barefoot, sweaty, covered in dust. I run after him; he feints right, then left, running faster when Bitter Ruffian starts playing with us, and then, finally, he lets himself be caught. 

I’m still panting, smiling, as I push a long lock of light hair behind his ear. 

“Will you practice now?” I ask.

He shrugs. Smiling. “If I have to.”

“Oh, you do.”

We laugh and chat as we walk back to his books, and we share the cup as we drink the last of his flavored water. We sprawl on the floor beside the paddock, my back against the wooden fence, and his head resting on my thighs. Bitter Ruffian approaches. 

Mathias smiles as he brushes my arm, my hands busy braiding his hair. “And thus, my thesis intends to prove that in fact the optics of a light spell is the base and the very heart of what Arcane Fire might become if...”

Bitter Ruffian lets out a sound, soft and gentle—and as Mathias continues reading about illusion spells, about the science behind the Arcano, and his theories on light and vision, she lies down by our side, her thick mane brushing my hand.

“I think she likes you now, My Liege,” I whisper in his ear.

Mathias doesn’t answer, still talking about formulas and theorems, but the smile he gives me, so warm and so pretty, is more than enough confirmation that he agrees.