[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Cr9MNcF.png[/img][/center][center][color=#2E2C2C]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#737272]•[/color][color=#757474]⋅[/color][color=#777777]⊰[/color][color=#797979]༻[/color][color=#7B7B7B]༒[/color][color=#7D7D7D]︎[/color][color=#808080]༺[/color][color=#7D7D7D]⊱[/color][color=#7B7B7B]⋅[/color][color=#797979]•[/color][color=#777777]─[/color][color=#757474]─[/color][color=#737272]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][/center][indent][indent][indent][indent][justify][color=bdbdbd][h3][sup][sup]𝕳ow very foolish she'd been. How changelessly, irredeemably foolish. To think she would come to this place and not make herself look silly—that she would generate for her name, her family, her progeny, anything but embarrassment and shame, like she always did—why? Why did she choose to become a soldier? Why not the comfortable solitude of the priory, or the squirrelish busywork of a barrister when father had laid her options bare? Better yet, why not go off into the countryside and have no one but herself to answer to, curl up in a tavern somewhere and rot? Just what had she thought would happen coming to this place with all its etiquettes, its uniformities, pleasantries, rules? [i]What,[/i] exactly?

Deep and stately and many-cornered was this hall down which she'd been herded, its farthest reaches flickering with lamp and brazier which were not kissed first by the sunlight, streaming down through the stained-glass windows, between the pillars of a nearby cloister. But worst of all were the eyes; the roving, judging eyes of her peers, yes, but painted eyes as well, nailed to every wall, transfixed upon her every vulnerability, her every weakness and mistake. Eyes framed in painted teak and guarded by dusty glass, eyes abutted by bald, liver-spotted foreheads, by powdered wigs, by mutton-chop moustaches, by turkey-gizzard chins and decorative [i]gorgets[/i]......In the hundred years this school had stood it seemed one painter or another had immortalized the unapproving glare of every headmaster, every donor, every visiting [i]adjudant-commandant[/i] to ever grace its lecture halls with their loquaciousness, its many and spacious benches with their highfalutin bottoms......Some of these brushstroke ghosts were of long-dead men, others of the recently retired, or of the still-in-service; most stared out from frames barely larger than a dinnerplate, but some from canvases the size of a dressing mirror, a few particularly lauded figures taking up half the walls to which their likenesses were crucified by nail and wire. Some wore anachronistic armor, some court dress, some a simple sacksuit cut for the rigors of the desk and the chalkboard. But despite all these disparities, they did share one commonality: not one of these figures had smiled for his portrait. Imperiousness and rigidity and fatherly dissatisfaction, yes—each of these moods was accounted-for across the walls of this hazy corridor—but not one of these dead men looked down on her with pride. Not one with love.

Real or imagined, emanating from eyes of jelly or eyes of oil, soon these scrutinies, far more than the greasy smoke guttering from the braziers, were tightening her chest, stealing her breath, and Hloþhilde for the time could no longer bear to exist as the others existed, walking down this hallway, beneath its portraits and over its carpets, past its banners and tapestries, the way a dutiful salmon swims a fixed current, follows the curves and swells of a river it is powerless to divert. A trespasser was she to this place—a pretender to all its disciplines and trades—and the longer she stood there gawking up at the paintings and breaking beneath their deafening, roaring, silent judgment was the sooner someone would have her pegged for an impostor, and she had to get away, she had to find a place where she could breathe again, if she could only breathe again......

There—a staircase—she knew not where it led but it mattered not, not if it got her away from that woman and the other first-years and most of all those nasty, terrible paintings. Hloþhilde climbed until she'd long escaped those purviews. She climbed until it was not the loud noises and the louder disdain which yawned her up but the inviting calm of derelict classrooms, of an empty landing (replete with chairs by the northern window, for sneaking in an inbetween-classes nap, or chat, or study session), of the balustrade and the precious, impalpable view it afforded over the hall and its gathering procession. Then, when the slightest sound betrayed that one of those classrooms may have been less uninhabited than it first appeared, or when an awe-stricken peer, in wonderment of the paintings, the chandeliers, the tapestries, let wander his gaze a bit too high, a bit too near to her hiding place, she receded even deeper into the cheerless second story, finding her refuge behind a bookcase, a suit of armor, or whatsoever stood great enough of height and breadth to mask her passage. All the while Hloþhilde told herself she'd been stupid for coming here, stupid for thinking she could make it as far as the front gate without looking the idiot. It was warmer here, the heat from the braziers, the lamps, the candles all rising up between the rafters, morning sunlight pouring through those northern windows in stiff, scintillating beams. But here was silence (or near enough to it, as the dense stone floors swallowed up all the noises issuant from below, reducing them to distant, muted echoes), and solitude, and so here she sat to collect herself, unconcerned with the sweat once more rising up through her skin, the dark wool itching and chafing......She had not been crying when driven to this place, but somehow there were tears at her cheeks, sprung forth from eyes hot with rage, with loathing; hot with shame......

Of course, worse than the feeling of having humiliated herself in front of the academy's aide and a few of her peers was the still-more-foolish feeling of having so viciously overreacted; of finding her composure, returning to her senses, and realizing just how small of a snake she had managed to nurture into a dragon, capable of devouring all her joys, all her peace. It was thus, over a number of minutes no one cared enough to count, that the young apprentice restored herself to her feet, restored the breath to her chest, serenity once more befalling the seas of her mind after the squalls had taken their turn. And there she stood, emerged unharmed like always; like always, more disquieted by the worry itself than by whatsoever had caused it. Is this how she would behave the first time a musket, a lance, a cannon was leveled her way? she wondered—she would curl up somewhere, heaving and gripping and waiting for it to be over? If all these professors and headmasters even let her step foot on a battlefield, that is—if she did not first humiliate herself beyond all possible pity, earning herself an unceremonious ousting through that very same door whence she'd just toddled, unprepared. Undeserving.

Then again, perhaps that was not so bad an outcome—to quietly depart before she'd made an impression among her teachers, made a friend or two, and tricked any number of these people into believing in her, like she always did. Hellie and father would be furious—how they'd shout and sigh—but better to have it over with sooner than late—better to uproot now, before she could disappoint them by yielding no fruits despite their most efforted cultivations, no? To let them down sooner, gentler, before their hopes had soared too high, grown too weighty. Moreover, did they not also share in the blame?—for ever thinking she could overcome her own nature?—(as if [i]anyone[/i] truly could, in the end......)

Hloþhilde peered down nervously over the banister, lest someone should have chosen that exact moment to let his eyes wander up toward the second floor. Let them wonder what her purpose had been in the alcoves and corners of this place, she resolved; exploring without a chaperone, scrambling to find the privy, aught was better than the truth. She gave a hearty sniffle, and with the hem of her sleeve hurried to mop the last of the tears from her face, those detestable, bitter little beads somehow blacker than the fabric into which they soon soaked, and vanished. Then, the strangling of a scream; the smothering. It was the very same look she'd worn at so many of father's [i]soirées[/i], deep into the night when the music was too loud, and the cravats had come off, and the men roved chop-licking through the grasses of the party, the wine having doused all their temperances (inflamed all their hungers). A weary, practiced look, as frayed with use as a childhood doll, popped at the seams, button eyes rolled beneath the bed, dog-chewed, but for all its abuses and ugliness still dearly cherished......Hloþhilde thought she might, at the least, make it down the stairs before this artifice of hers did falter—that it should be the sight of her fellow students which spurned her back into place, or the stirrings of the ceremony—Hellie, watching hopeful and proud from the loges—but, no—remained standing watch over the hall, like its most rigid and implacable halberdiers, were those paintings. Still measuring her with their gazes. Still dissatisfied by what they found in her; only, their judgment had alchemized somewhat. No longer did she feel to have disappointed this stately audience via self-inflicted error and [i]faux pas.[/i] Now they rather seemed to ask, in their silent, looming way, whether this was the farthest her courage could carry her. If she had nothing better to offer them than a whelp-like whimper of submission......It maddened her how they looked down on her. Like a bellows did they stir and feed a rage in her belly, and yet what was to be done for it? She could not so much as enter this place without resistance; not one person, neither peer nor professor, could she address without some girlish foolness leaking from her mouth. Some of the paintings hung far enough down the wall to observe in detail, and so Hloþhilde did, daring even to run a finger over one or two, baptizing her hand in the holy dusts and cobwebs settled on the glass as if in the hopes of stealing away with a mote of their majesty. [i][url=https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d3d5ce1c-c457-453e-9a94-25a01ac8773e/d7bgp9h-9fbc33cb-ea53-441b-ad8b-ec9c1ec16e05.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1325,q_75,strp/brennus_oil_on_canvas_by_vincentpompetti_d7bgp9h-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTMyNSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2QzZDVjZTFjLWM0NTctNDUzZS05YTk0LTI1YTAxYWM4NzczZVwvZDdiZ3A5aC05ZmJjMzNjYi1lYTUzLTQ0MWItYWQ4Yi1lYzljMWVjMTZlMDUuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.VATaLSwLRzpZX6C1lYNB0Iwf1HqQMCk8ETeFRP056aY][color=e8e8e8][u]Ingomar, the Wolfenspear[/u][/color][/url],[/i] dreamlike upon his destrier, 'neath his eagle-crested helm, blade-fanged; [i][url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Ritratto_di_Michelangelo_Pittatore_-_Rudolf_Lehmann.jpg][color=e8e8e8][u]Headmaster v. Bracken[/u][/color][/url],[/i] by far the more urbane figure with his thicket of a mustache and his slicks of ash-brown hair, his imperial nose and moody brow. Other, greater portraits imposed from well beyond Hloþhilde's reach, nailed high upon the eaves that they might judge all who passed beneath their gilt frames; for instance, the massive [i]Sixth Prince of Laachtalia, 580,[/i] a handsome man in impressive armor, wearing for his sash and baldric a white-and-scarlet flag, lion-rampant and laurel wreaths on plain field, draped mid-flutter over his august person; another of curled, white wig (the artist having taken pains to capture the powder sprinkled across his shoulders), and long, aristocratic face, and droll expression, simply titled, via burnished bronze plaque, [i][url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Tomas_de_Iriarte_Joaquin_Inza.jpg][color=e8e8e8][u]Our Founder[/u][/color][/url].[/i] These figures, each and all, in their turns had mounted enormous difficulties in their quests to win power, to level their enemies; to unite their people under tribe or nation or even a brotherly pursuit of the arts and sciences. Hloþhilde, in her glaring inadequacy, questioned what each of them had had that she so lacked. Whether it was something innate to the blood, and thus impossible for one as small as her to earn through even the most immense exertions of studiousness and grit. And was her father, despite all his ambitions, destined to resent his station forever, no matter how he yearned and vied, because the world had cut him from a lesser bolt?—and, inversely, had all the kings and heroes of history risen to greatness because they were born with that very greatness already imbued in their marrow? Standing there beneath all the shadows of those massive men, all their immortal phantoms pinned to the academy walls, to the young, lost Hloþhilde it seemed painfully so.

Nonetheless, though each and all of these paintings stirred in her a vicious guilt, a vicious shame, not one of these was the one to truly rouse her heart. That, compared to some of its neighbors upon the wall, was a modest thing, ovular, and framed in simple stained wood; its title more ostentatious than its contents by half: [i]Hródda, Queen of the Vedatanii, After the Breaking of the Siege at Uxantium,[/i] boasting only a few feets' breadth at its widest point, and nestled, almost demurely, between two other portraits far more grandiose than itself.

Hloþhilde knew her histories well enough to recognize the scene, even without the title plaque's mnemonic assistance. In the background stood the smolders of the sacred Witchtimber, and in the fore the wreckage of the besieged town cut thereof, its wattles trampled, its palisades loosened and leaned-over from the blood-loosened earth, or splintered or burned. The subject walked a field strewn with the standards of her enemy, scarlet, each depicting an eight-spoked, eight-bladed circle (simultaneously sun and wheel), some scorched, others tattered, all of them forlorn and shattered at her feet. Hródda "Hard-law" had, by all accounts, defeated the Nhirishmen; she'd triumphed. So why did every vivid, stark, expertly-stroked detail—from the dreary color of the smoke-strangled afternoon sky percolating through the immense firmament, to the ruin at the titular queen's feet, to her stumbling posture and dazed, desolate expression—speak of forsakenment, of devastation, of ruin? And her cloak, not cut and ribboned from her shoulders but torn, her brooch dislodged amidst the maze of blood and limbs strewn over the ravaged ground, and so her cloak draped and dragging; and her sandals, one lost shortly behind her, the other barely clinging on by an unsnapped strap or two, and her tunic-dress, also not sliced, also ripped, as if they were not swords and spears she'd barely fended off with all her ferocity but fingernails, the rape and reaving of her womanhood. And the trophy impaled upon the tip of her sword—too weak was she to lift it and so while she staggered forth she dragged it along with her, grip feeble around the hilt of bronze, the faceless head obscured by its own braids of black hair drawn over its face, snagged on the wet dust. Hródda's thigh bled on one side, her breast bruised and exposed on the other, the coppery-golden hair seeming feral with matting and knots. Her every muscle seemed to strain and labor against the weight of the sword, the weight of the broken armor, or her own crumpled body. Such movement captured in the stillness of the image; such a rhapsody of rage, of terror, of the bitter coldness of her victory. Truly, the apocalypse had come for Uxantium, and at first Hloþhilde wondered why anyone would go on in such a state, fighting through the pain of every every break, every cut and every burn, and to reunite with what—houses razed, families slaughtered, kin and foe made equal by their terrored, wounded bleating, the empty pleasure of gloating over the dead? It was when she decided the "why" didn't matter, however, that Hloþhilde understood. The queen's victory had cost her everything that day—everything perhaps but her pride, according to the artist. But she endured. She continued. And she suffered. Not to find anything of value among the embers, not to save some final vestige from the flames, but because that is simply what a queen does. What a [i]warrior[/i] does.

Steered then by impulse to have it once more between her hands—to see how the mornlight snagged upon the buffed steel, the polished silver—she opened the box again. The locket and the chape and the pommel all engraved with the same motif, of raspberry vines twisting, grasping across their surfaces; the gentle curl of the quillons, and the comforting swell of the grip; the smell of fresh leather emanating from the frog and scabbard; though she had not yet been afforded the chance to wear it, already it brought her some comfort to touch her hand along the joined metals, and even just to have it in view. A token of her family's—no, her [i]sister's[/i] faith in her. Did it not deserve, as noted by the Signore di Vicquerno in the foreword to his [i]Comprensioni sull'Arte del Combattimento Singolo,[/i] to "be drawn only in service of the King, the preservation of Life, or the defence of Honour"? Shouldst the interwoven metals in the hilt, steel-on-silver, not ripen with a most distinguished patina, darkening and dulling where the sweat of her hand had tarnished it, and her years of carry and practice had worn them fresh again, on and on until it was formed to her hand and storied and perfect? And shouldst the blade not notch upon the edges of other steels, and scratch where it had worn through to the locket from so many drawings and sheathings, and stain grey with blood wheresoever she had carelessly nicked herself, and shouldst it not be born anew by scouring cloth and whetting-stone? Would it not be a terrible shame to hang it from a nail and relegate it to a wall ornament (if a winsome one)—or worse yet, to shove it away in drawer or wardrobe, too beautiful to throw away while too ignominious, too stark a reminder of this painful day to display proudly in the room?

Hloþhilde turned her gaze upward, meeting once more the gazes of Ingomar the Wolfenspear, and Headmaster von Bracken; and Duke Tælman van Barbroek, and Emperor Vernholf III, and all the rest of them, their expressions fixed in their pitilessness. She snapped shut the box, clicked her way down the stony stair, and filed in along with the rest of the students, sardine-like, in their search for their respective sections. She knew her answer.

At the end of the first hall opened up several crossroads of cobblestone, a great many doors, stairs, and forking corridors leading this way and that, each a vein which together formed the circulatory system of the school, flowing with students and faculty, rich with their wisdoms. But following wordlessly where the others went, Hloþhilde needed not travel so far, nor so deftly navigate; for at the northwest corner of the cloister had five professors sequestered their broods. At first overwhelmed and awestruck by the sight of her nine-and-forty peers all gathered in one place (it was, she realized, not so many people as it sounded—the rarity of the opportunity afforded to her, the exclusivity of her place, all beginning at last to strike her), she meandered between the herds of eight students or ten, meaning to overhear which section was her section, and which imposing man was her professor, the elusive Herr Schöst. Those teachers who had once attended and graduated this school wore proudly their [i]couleurs,[/i] their bright caps, cloaks, and ribbons bearing no small resemblance to those worn by the ruffians out by the gatehouse. Those who'd seen action—actually stood a theatre, and orchestrated movements and actions thereon—preferred their medals, their parade helms. Their staunch hairstyles and thick, virile facial hair, streaked with grey, looked so very grand beneath a brim of polished leather, above a collar of steel. It brought Hloþhilde no great surprise to learn, through her eavesdropping, that none of these men were to be her tutor for the next three years. ("Morning, chaps. Is this Section C, then?" "No, friend, Section B—I reckon yours to be that one there," and so forth.) In fact, only fitting, thought she, with jaded ease, that she should fall in with their own most irregular misfit.

Unlike the four by whom he seemed so beleaguered, his patience so quietly tested—their standing at perfect parade-rest in their military fineries, all preening and flaunting—the man sat upon the balustrade, his walnut-headed cane propped beside; his clothing dark and roomy, his ringleted hair reeking of [i]négligence.[/i] But most of all his demeanor, a bittering thing, seeming to poison the moods of any who stood too near, producing around himself, allelopathically, a certain perimeter of solitude. He watched her awhile, ere something else caught his curiosity.

Hloþhilde was choosing for herself such a distance that she should not attract this man's (enduring) attention, while likewise not straying too far from his orbit as to seem wayward or lost, when a voice—feminine and clarion-sweet—addressed her. And there, just beside her in Schöst's erratic little flock, stood the one to whom that voice belonged, shorter than her, golden-haired, and resting nonchalantly her slender hand where soon her hilt would go—an effortless, nay, ingrained posture. Indeed, that hand seemed less comfortable [i]without[/i] the sword than with, falling where there was no pommel to catch it.

"T'would seem you're the tenth." Confidently, [i]declaringly[/i] this girl spoke, unconcerned with being heard for the chatter resounding all about her, in every direction, as other classmates too made fast acquaintances, or recalled distant encounters of their own.

Hloþhilde, nonetheless, startled at the address. "Pardon me?"

"I've been counting," said the blonde. "Ten to a class, and you're the tenth. Herr Schöst, [i]ja?[/i]"

"Um—I—" (taking a moment to muster all that lordly poise Hellie had spoke of)—"I have the right place, then?"

Suddenly robbed of one hand, and pulled in close thereby, Hloþhilde stumbled forth. Squealing delightedly, the blonde girl had snatched away with it, and had then both of her own hands clasped around it; but not to shake or to squeeze, as if it was, rather, something more precious merely to own, to possess, like a porcelain doll, too brittle by far to play with. "[i]Wunderbar![/i]" exclaimed this girl. "I have so dearly wanted another friend to sit beside. I've already met Giselmina, of course—she's the one sitting nearer to [i]Herr Professor,[/i] with the birthmark on her chin—pretty, isn't she?—"

While the blonde prattled, Hloþhilde's eye wandered the field of helms and pinned-up hairstyles afore of her. Besides the aforementioned Giselmina, perfect and statuesque in her aloofness beside the veined marble pillar, there were the seven young gentlemen to be her classmates: there were paler boys and some more sun-bronzed ones, fairhaired boys and black; thin and aristocratic-wristed, or oxen and strong. But besides her fellow young gentlemen were their environs; already, there on the first day of September, had the aspens and honey locusts shading the cloister gilded at the tips, even their greener leaves slightly yellowed in the mornlight, summer's tenderness giving way to brittle, conflagrant autumn. Like a dandruff had the first leaves been shaken from the twigs, still damp underfoot. And overhead, a few threadbare clouds drifted across a sky deeply, fathomlessly blue. The sun had crested; the day had come.

"Oh, but where are my manners?" the girl was saying. "I'm Agalind. Agalind von Einsbück. And [i]you,[/i] my new friend, are too tall to be [i]Merovisch[/i]—too elegant for a Lóðyrian—and that accent—no, no, let me guess—you're a [i]Märzener![/i]"

Hloþhilde, for her part, had judged Agalind to hail from a place not so far from Ansbourg whatever. The same duchy; perhaps even the same county. Her accent, her boldness, her hair of burnished sunfire, her eyes of glacial grey—but Hloþhilde was being watched, and measured, and worse than that, correctly. Agalind's clear, grey, dangerously sincere eyes had a keenness to them now and that made them so very uncomfortable to stand beneath, the way stained-glass windows captured and trapped the noontime heat; and the taller girl had the sudden urge to be elsewhere. Anywhere but there being browsed like a museum hall, admired like its many exhibits. But where could she go?—particularly with a herald arriving through the far door, and announcing everyone to full attention; with the dour Mr. Schöst reaching for his cane, steeling with grim determination, struggling to his mangled feet.

"Hloþhilde," she whispered, accepting then and there that she was trapped beside this person, boisterous and cocksure. For the length of the ceremony, and for the next three years. "Hloþhilde du Guillarmes. Uh, my sister calls me Tilly."

She cursed viciously whatever urge had just caused her to volunteer that information. Still, the girl seemed terribly pleased with this answer.

"Well, Tilly," said Agalind, exuberant in her triumph, latching (of course) to the pet-name like barnacles to a keel, "let us become fast friends, [i]ja?[/i]"[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]
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[color=bdbdbd][h3][sup][sup]𝕱irst there was the silence. Issued their instructions by the arriving herald, the five classes stood arranged at the door, back-to-fore; with Class E to set the pace, and lead the march. Twice they received their directive—down a hall and turning at a marble bust, down the center to the front of the assembly, and filling in to the left—but Hloþhilde decided simply to trust where led the boys afore of her. She and Agalind, as naturally as drinking from the same cup, shared in a glimpse of nervous jubilation. Then, nothing; nothing but the catspaw clouds skulking past on high, nothing but the faintest whistling of a wind between the cloister pillars; the rustling of the autumn-brittled aspens, molting leaves like a dandruff. Each of these the students dared not break, almost devout in their orderliness. But supreme over all other silences stood that which resounded through the castle walls, brimming with an audience hushed and bated at the turning of pages. The lifting of a conductor's arms.

Then, in full [i]fortissimo,[/i] the roll of the drums, the blare of the horns—the splendor of music! The [i]Syggstrunnslied[/i] had begun, and like a ghost did its echoes, distant and dampened, hum through the ancestral walls. The stone, the foundation, and the very mortar of this place, once dismal and grey, all come alive with lyrics known by every Laachtalian tongue, with melodies buried in every Laachtalian heart. Some among the freshmen could not help but hum along, their breasts aflame with fervor. Herr Schöst's demeanor, however, did not waver—staunch in its bitter grimness.

Hloþhilde knew not how best to proceed—only to walk when walked the boys ahead of her, ushered, no doubt, into the next hall by that stodgy herald. The music was louder then, all-consuming, shuddering through every bead of the chandelier, every flagstone lining the stark, cool corridor. Then, it wasn't—the holding of a note, the applause, the collective sighing of so many chairs. The festivities continued with a speech, inaudible through the heavy doors and the immovable walls, save for the occasional stressed inflection; how this person, a gentleman, so emphasized certain words like "not a privilege but a duty," and "never," and "eternally." Already her blood thrummed over her ears; her chest began to squeeze; as she imagined tripping on her way down the aisle, seating herself too early, forgetting the lyrics no true Laachtalian would ever forget.

"Say," said a terribly hushed voice just abreast of her, "is this what I think it is?"

Already feeling terribly possessive over the box, even though she'd only held it for but a few minutes—even though she'd only allowed herself but a meager peek into its contents, the feeblest little taste of ownership over the thing—Hloþhilde clenched to it that slightest bit more tightly. [i]It is,[/i] she so dearly wanted to say, [i]and 'tis not yours to touch.[/i] Of course, on their travels from her heart to her mind to her tongue, these words' edges had a way of blunting against all her niceties. "From my sister," she divulged, praying for that to be warning enough.

Alas. "May I?" said Agalind, and ere Hloþhilde could object, small, delicate fingers, smaller than her own, worked at the hinges of the box, peeling back the lid. And, too polite to chastise, lest she should drive away perhaps the very first friend she might have made at this school, she kept her silence; condoned. Pretended it did not irritate her terribly to know that another's fingerprints blotted [i]her[/i] new sword before she'd even had the chance to wear it.

Agalind stifled a gasp. "The silver-on-grey is magnificent. And the ricasso—such elegant touches all! Your sister has very good taste, t'would seem."

"Thank you."

"Alas that mine has already been sent ahead to my room, along with the rest of the luggage," Agalind whispered. "'Tis hardly so new and pristine, of course—I've worn it for years—but once we've settled in, we simply [i]must[/i] christen this with a spar, don't you think?"

But Hloþhilde, robbed of her chance to answer, jolted with fright. For that distinctive [i]tap-tap-scrape[/i] of a lilted, three-leggèd walk, one leg made of hickory and another dragged behind with a heavy limp, had come to rest just aft of the two girls—an effect she had first paid no mind. But it was, of course, Professor Schöst; catching up, in his shambling way, to the far brisker pace of his young and sprightly students. At first passing those two girls by, but then detecting their hushed chitchat, he must have let his cane fall with a particularly harsh rap upon the flagstones, there, so near to Hloþhilde's foot that it could not have been anything else but a warning shot, aimed at her poor, unguarded toes. The two yelping in unison (and stifling their skittish giggles), they met his expression, flashing with reprimand; heeded this message, and the good Herr Schöst needed not chastise them a second time, issuing on to the fore of the queue once more to wait with the rest of them. This girl seemed naught but trouble, decided the reproached Hloþhilde—who, nonetheless, could not but envision the adventures they'd have, the mischief they'd make, if she did not separate their friendship at birth. Agalind was already so very charming, true enough. So calming to stand beside with all her excesses of confidence, of aplomb.

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/85dr9337/image-1.png[/img]

𝕿he longer they stood there, squirming like bugs in a perforated jar, ready for the pin and the cork, warming the hall with their entanglement of nervous bodies, was the more the worsted wool of her uniform seemed to rake her skin, and draw thereof a terrible itch. And why not?—with nothing else serving to whisk away her attention—the hall stark and bare of the previous's fineries, the speeches and the music inaudible through the wall, and Schöst, vigilant Schöst, in his lackadaisical slouch against the stairwell, appearing entirely to the contrary, but his ears too sharp by far to fool—that abhorrent itch, of black wool on summertime skin, provided the only diversion. From the regimen of steps and lyrics and rituals she had so dearly committed to memory in previous nights, and from the inevitable thought that she'd forgotten one; all her vain efforts to banish the dread that she would somehow err in performing these, too. And not only in front of a secretary and a small periphery of students from other classes, peers she may never see again; hundreds of people. [i]Thousands.[/i] She could hear them in there, the impatient tapping of their feet against the rafter floors, the squealing of benches beneath the shifting of all their amassed weight, the timely applause! A sister, a headmaster, a professor, a class, a populace—and who knew?—perhaps an Archduke awaited in there, a Prince, an Elector—humiliate herself then and she might as well humiliate herself before the entire town of Ansbourg.

No. Before an empire.

"I swear to uphold the laws and values of the Laachtalian Empire," Hloþhilde mouthed, "I swear to uphold the laws and values of the Laachtalian Empire, I swear to uphold......" Tight was her chest, and swimming her head, but if she could only perfect the words; have them so utterly troughed in her mind by so many reiterations, chisel over stone, chisel over stone, that she could not possibly forget them......

Agalind, knowing not what so worried this new darling of hers (but how could she?—as effortlessly composed as she was), knew nonetheless to give her shoulder a squeeze, and to meet her gaze with an unflustered wink. Hloþhilde affected what little tics she could to reassure the girl she was quite alright; a faint smile here, there a straightening of her back and shoulders (as if literally inflated by the confidence); but the recesses of her mind remained a bedlam.

[i]To bring strength to its people in war and in peace, to bring strength to its people......[/i] Only one thing interrupted this chanting, this sheepish trance, and that was the arrival of a second herald through a yet-farther set of doors, leaned around a corner and beckoning to Schöst to march his greenhorn platoon through to the lecture chamber. And so began again his three-leggèd lilt, the crisp rapping of his cane against the flagstones. So began the drumming of some twenty boots behind him, their heels all of stiff, snappy leather, earning there and then their very first scuff marks, the first of their patina.

Keeping with Schöst's labored, lolling pace perhaps robbed their entrance of its grandeur for some. But for Hloþhilde was it a most valued opportunity. Rushed to her seat and arranged into the various rotes of the ceremony, she would have no chance to turn her head—nay, hardly a chance to [i]cough[/i] without all the audience detecting it; in the shaking of her [i]panache,[/i] and the rattling of her insignia, just as it had been back in the courtyard, the uniform itself forcing these untempered boys to stand straighter, and carry themselves with greater dignity than ever they had mustered before in all their lives. Still, with all his nonchalance (or was it apathy?) did their professor break them through the doors, onto the carpet beyond; down an aisle and on toward their rows. Narrow, confined halls of drab stone, like a birth canal, opened up to a womb of marble; of granite and alabaster, draped all in the colors of Empire. Flags and ensigns and coats of arms, stitched silk on lustrous silk. Like all the spectacles and cues which had come before, this entrance too the audience applauded. The music of their clapping hands and stamping feet could have filled a countryside and there it was, birdcaged beneath a domed vault and between hallowed walls which already had stood for a century, and intended to stand for centuries more. Thunderous was the applause and yet harmonious; choiral, and echoing back into a shared history, forward into a shared future.

Hloþhilde stole her chances where she could; turning the corner from aisle to row, for instance, and about-facing to place her gift beneath her chair, as others placed their own bouquets; moreover, while she doffed certain articles in readying herself for her seat, cloak smoothed out and cast over the back of the chair, helm doffed and held at the ready. In these sparse moments did her eyes wander the ceiling, the coffers, the opera boxes. Hellie had promised to be there. She would not have broken triflingly such an oath; she had to be somewhere up there. And yet in scouring the crowds gathered behind the students and above, peering down on them from on high, Hloþhilde saw only the same sea of cravats, and lapels, and waistcoats. A few cockades and ribbons. Twisted mustaches and forkèd beards. And in such multitudes! Just how many had arrived for this moment, and from what distant reaches of civilization? But with Hellie unaccounted for among those throngs, realizing the sight of them would only further shrivel her courage, the younger de Guillarmes sister resolved herself to the conduct of one unobserved at all. She would simply have to act as if they were not up there, looming, observing—remarking.

After the last of the applause died down, so too did the final flourish from the band, and through a great many horns and pipings, acoustic channels and coffers, did a great voice, an already-potent, assured voice, only furthered by these effects, begin to thunder across the vaulting. It urged them to sit, that voice, whereupon a multitude of helmets was seated upon a multitude of knees, plumes rustling, badges rattling. The voice belonged to the same man from before; stately and eminent and old, dressed in his gently rusted cuirass which jingled with medals, his bicorne which wavered with wilted feathers white. The one who had met that four-teamed carriage in person, even doffed his hat and bowed for its most prized passengers. Hloþhilde, at no more than a glance, had already come to expect no less from this man. Though his voice was tinnier than she had guessed, rasping sword-from-scabbardlike on certain trills, and in some places whistling like a tea kettle, his barrel-chested, thick-bearded personage spoke wordlessly of strength. Perhaps his voice had been even mightier once; less consumptive; but what he spoke of he addressed with a fervor which utterly filled the room. Not in his stature nor his seething countenance nor in his booming, rolling voice did he once falter; a well-practiced speech, reiterated over decades, to dozens of graduating classes. May be that he even deigned to mean what he said, inflaming his words not from performance, but the passions.

"My name is Hladekný," they began: "first a viscount, then a brigadier-general, and after that, for but a few brief, bloodless years, a field marshal. Now, in the autumn of my life, like a leaf shaken from the heights of the tallest oak, have I come aflutter to my earnèd rest within this very institution, as its humble headmaster." He indulged in a timely pause; perhaps seeing something amusing in the crowd, or thinking to himself a timely jape, for he smirked down into the flat of the podium. "I can hear some of you now. 'How dare he self-aggrandize at a time like this? Speaking of personal glories instead of duty, and sacrifice, and empire?' Fear not. For when I speak of myself, 'tis not lost on me that I speak of the past. Dust and cobwebs. In fact, the future—of the [i]Reichsarmee,[/i] of the Crown, of peace, of honor, of Laachtalia, of Everything—it stands not upon this dais at all. It sits before us, in these very rows."

He gestured to the very center of the front rows (to the astonished Class C) and all the room once more erupted into applause (Hloþhilde's time to chance another peek—behind her and above; over the heads of the upperclassmen sat just behind her, who despite a mere year's distance between them in training and discipline, seemed utterly unflappable and rigid in their graces—already more ironlike). She lamented how this pause did not give her moment enough to count them. One year ago, sitting then where she sat now, in the front-most rows reserved exclusively for the new admittals, there had been fifty of them; but did fifty sit behind her in that moment? Just how many had succumbed to the tests, the rigors, the expectancies? But the clamor from the crowd once more snuffed out; the speech continued, dragging Hloþhilde's attention once more to the front of the room.

Beginning in earnest, it began predictably enough; inheritors of this, the future of that. Yes, yes. In truth, more interesting than the platitudes was how each of her peers in the front rows received them. She noted which faces brightened with enthused zeal, which remained deadened and dim like the cold ashes of an ardor long-ago-spent. Agalind, for the time, remained suitably unimpressed, though not without her graces, throwing all of herself into every applause, every teeming silence—precisely as expected of her. A few of the seven lads, hardly the masters of themselves which Agalind was, did not listen with her practiced measure, none of her decorum; even Hloþhilde sensed the change within their breasts, as the speech, stinger-like, slithered between two ribs and grabbed each one of them by their passions, injecting into them all the speaker's mettle, shaking them to an animate fury. As if Hladekný issued to each one of them in personal conference, extracting and distilling the very fierceness from their hearts.

But it was Schöst who managed to surprise her once again. True, Hloþhilde had come by now to expect his calloused indifference; his immunity to all ceremony and ritual; the music, the audience, the grandeur, all of it failing to stir from his soul its reeking, lilypadded stagnancy. But slouched there, bombarded by Hladekný's verbiage, and by all the sanctimonies of a crowd most well-trained, knowing fully when to chew the silence or when to clap or when to work themselves into an uproarious froth, Herr Schöst excreted a [i]disgust[/i] the likes of which Hloþhilde had thought too crass—too vulgar—too [i]blasphemous[/i] to ever find refuge in such a place as this, all its rites and traditions. Transfixed to him as all those paintings nailed to the academy walls, she watched as he employed every tactic, short of squinting shut his eyes and plugging his ears with wax, which would shut out this bedlam from his mind. How he drilled his livid gaze into some insignificant detail of the carpet tassels at his feet, or the various scuffs and scratches in the weary shoes (one more worn than the other) which had shambled these corridors, endured these speeches, for a decade or more. For Schöst was young, but carried with him, everywhere and at all times, the bitter desolation of a soul which longed for a carefree boyhood from many summers past; a ghost too forlorn to even haunt the halls he drifted.

No mere battle wound could so buttress a man with hatred, Hloþhilde was sure. So, what? What chained him to this place he so despised; what salary could be worth this day-and-nightly torment, marionetting himself along with rituals he resented, choreographed by people he loathed?

So consuming was his melancholy that it even seemed to bend the speech, nay, the room itself around it, sucking these down into its quagmires. The mood itself had changed, bidding Hloþhilde's attention once more to the fore of the room, toward the dais. Gone was Hladekný's enthusiasm, stripped away was all his zeal; he spoke softer then, slower, and in mustering from his deepest bowels this vicious anguish, he bent and stooped, gargoyle-like, over the lectern, clutching his talons round its book stand, sneering out at the new students like the limping prey, and the audience behind them and above them his legion of circling, black-feathered angels. No longer did he speak of duty, privilege, and other such high-minded abstractions at all, this headmaster, but the reek of the powder. Of mud. The screams of men and the roar of guns and the screams of devils all in choir. Gunfire and hellfire licking at the gods' sky in obscene confederacy. Daring them all to object with all their better understandings of what it was to be a soldier. Daring them to tell him what it truly meant to war. The audience, robbed of all their gaiety, as if then and there watching the [i]Generalfeldmarschall[/i] join, and paint, and stuff with silken pillows their fifty children's coffins, looked on in astonished silence. All the while his dismal visions danced above them, echoing and amplified across the acoustics of the vaulted ceiling.

"The professors before you are among the most skilled and proven officers in the Laachtalian Empire. They will guide you, yes, but they will not carry your burdens. It is up to you to rise to the challenge," said the headmaster. It was Hloþhilde he addressed; and the rest of the nine-and-forty, yes, but it was she who had very nearly turned away before her journey through this place had truly begun, and who'd tasted already a morsel of the suffering then promised. "Where you may have found excuses and comforts as nestlings, you will find here only hard truths. You will be tested, you will be judged, and you will be held to a standard higher than you have ever known. You will face doubt; pain; defeat. Your boundaries will be appraised and dismantled. You will learn discipline; and like an iron in fire, you will fortify."

In all their copious silence laid a stunned terror, wide-eyed like that which belonged to the roe deer catching flashes off the hunter's barrel, the snap of twigs beneath his booted step. Had any one of them anticipated this?—a school intent on frightening them away with ghost stories, professors and headmasters like demons intent on sapping away with their will, their strength, their courage? Where was the eiderdown they'd been stuffed with all their lives by nostalgic grandfathers, by sentimental fencing teachers, by eager and emboldening parents—their power and their glory?

And before any one member in the audience had resolved in full to object, either to the vicious lies in themselves or the charlatan who uttered them, he had already finished. Hladekný's final, resounding syllable died across the vaulting, to a threadbare applause; undeterred, he ushered in the next proceeding. Explaining to all of them their role in the next ritual, he called the first student to the dais. The time had arrived for each of the fifty, starting on the opposite side of the room, with Class A, to deliver her oath. The headmaster asked the first boy his name, and though he spoke too softly to hear it, it seemed not from any dearth of courage; rather, an assumed intimacy on the part of the two participants, the older grasping the younger by the shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. Swapping reassuring whispers.

"Judeau von Sarkenberg!" declared the headmaster, loud enough to shatter that personal intonation, and announce to all the name of the prospective soldier who before them stood. "Repeat after me, lad." Issued he the oath, and Judeau mimicked it, effortlessly earning for himself that most sublime thunder, bellowing all through the lecture hall, the stamping and the clapping. Hloþhilde had both times followed along with the words, mouthing each one a moment before it was uttered. She would do so for most of the forty situated before her. But the finality of her own moment fast approached; forty was too few, far too few. Her chest feeling so much like a womb, the heart within it kicking and thrashing like a babe nourished on all her terror, all her dread, she peered out across the row. Morbidly compelled to count its ranks, and see with her own eyes as it shrank with every student processed up there, upon the stage and down the aisle and out of sight.

Should she have been grateful or dismayed that she would be one of the last? Perhaps forty students later the audience would have lost interest, offering only what remained of their halfhearted, obliged participation. Or, the later students would be all the more memorable amidst the slew.

"Egil of Stückeren!" announced the headmaster. "Repeat after me, son."

"Hmm. A commoner," Agalind remarked without a hint of malice, not holding the boy's lack of a family name against him for a moment. Of course, it brought Hloþhilde no comfort to know that she, or anyone, actually engaged with the ceremonies; that they were observing, and listening, and remarking. And worst of all: remembering.

Once more she was compelled to lean forward, looking past Agalind and over to the bedlam of Class A, with one student called up to wait in the aisle for every one processed through and then off the stage. Teeming with nerves, yet also pride, as they waited their turns. Damn it all! How was her own time onstage simultaneously so far away and yet so fleetingly near? How did she all at once dread what seemed but around a street corner, yet have to sit there squirming for minutes which felt akin to hours? Again she hazarded a glance up into the opera boxes, the audience pews; Hellie was up there somewhere, she [i]had[/i] to be, but with their longing gazes unable to lock, their eyes unable to meet, it mattered not. Without Hellie there, there was no landfall, no sandbar, nary even a life raft to cling to in a sea of strangers. Another name, another seat closer. And another. Most of them spoke more brazenly than the intrepid Judeau had, their names bearing no repeating by the perfectly affable Hladekný. Even this, however, brought Hloþhilde some degree of shame, as she found herself hoping—[i]wishing[/i]—for other students to stumble and err before she did; that she might gauge the reaction from the crowd, and know likewise that she alone would not stick out in their memories of this day. Serving as the centerpiece of all their bemused reminiscence and anecdotes......

"I swear to uphold the laws and values of the Laachtalian Empire, to bring strength to its people in war and in peace......" said Egil.

"......and to uphold the honour of the realm in all my deeds, in life and unto death," Hloþhilde murmured along. "In all my deeds in life and unto death......" Of course, she only needed worry if she actually made a mistake at all, and with the number of times she had repeated to herself this simple sentence, driving the words over her brain again and again until it was furrowed with their shapes, it should hardly have been possible.

Moreover—she pondered—even if she did somehow blunder over the words, surely in the last fifteen thousand years someone besides her had made of himself a fool before a crowd? Statesmen—schoolteachers—flautists and drummers and harpsichordists—even pharaohs? Maybe Artheuse Himself had once or twice stuttered and stammered his way through a speech. Why not? Give five hundred of them in a lifetime and surely no man could for five hundred successive incidents deliver perfection! How many great men had suffered similarly as she, laboring and agonizing before the stirring of a crowd? And how had each carried on despite his errors? The line shortened—the row was vacated—nearer and nearer to Hloþhilde did her fellow first-years rise from their seats, walk down the aisles, and give their introductions before their families, their peers, and their Empire—and then walk out through the vomitorium, this whole excruciating affair put behind them for-ever.

She blinked, and somehow it was Class E's turn.

Hloþhilde tried so very dearly not to panic. How terribly she tried to focus on something, on [i]anything[/i] else but her impending decimation. She began with learning the names of some of her classmates. Giselmina—Giselmina Van der Szaalm, as it happened—remained stony and unflappable and lovely as she delivered in her oatmealy accent the magic words, the answer to the riddle, earning her passage over the stage and on through the academy doors. Just behind her answered another [abbr=lit. ``one from between the two seas``; a Lóðyrian][i]Tussenzijner[/i][/abbr]: one Roelo de Barbroeck.

Before Roelo had even the chance to speak—nay, very nearly before Herr Hladekný had—from the moment the name left the headmaster's lips (foamy from two hours of bellowing) it had churned the crowd into an uproar of whispers and mutters; a turning of heads, a daisy-chain of mouths to ears, mouths to ears. Hloþhilde had heard of the Dukes of Lóðyria, of course. Everyone had, from the greatest political minds to the lowliest, muddy-footed peasant bairns. But the onlookers, ravenous for gossip and news, thirsted to know how a Prince-Elector's son had turned up at a military academy. Some even conjectured that they must have misheard; they had not known there to be a Barbroeck named Roelo at all. A second wife's firstborn?—perhaps even a bastard? Even the upperclassmen, sitting mere rows behind Hloþhilde and the others, exchanged tantalized words. "We should test that one," said one. "He would do nicely, I think."

From a second: "Agreed. He has a fire in him."

"A radiant blaze, or a guttering candle?"

Three voices chuckled in unison.

Floating amidst the pandemonium across the audience was the silence onstage, while Roelo and Hladekný waited for a return to the room's previous reverence; an oath unheard, after all, was no oath whatever. And how did Roelo feel about all this attention, and not, from what Hloþhilde could hear, of any welcome kind?—only jeering, and judgment, and scorn. Only as a centerpiece to their cruel scandals and slanders. How did [i]he[/i] take it? She could not see much of his bearing, situated behind and beside him as she was; but what she did see astonished her: his head wanting to slouch forward, his shoulders shrink up in a shamed, defensive posture. And despite this instinct, how he pushed to remain straight-backed and high-headed. A quaking of silent rage to his hands, made subtle by his stifling. How brave he was being.

Then, having given his oath, Roelo turned to make the same march as the two-and-forty before him, and she saw him, as rhapsodic as any of the massive things which had preceded him, the massive orchestral chords and the crashing applause. His determination. His indignation. His spite. His fury.

For a single moment—only the one—Hloþhilde was not the next chicken on the chopping block, not the next bug primed for the scorch of the magnifying glass or the cold, crushing impalement of the pin through the cork. Just another member of the crowd, peering down on him. And she was in awe.

Agalind's turn came two students later, which left Hloþhilde standing, box in hand and shako acrest of her little head, at the fore of the aisle. She should have been terrified; as terrified as she had been for nearly an hour leading up to the moment. Instead she thought of Roelo. She suspected this time was not the first for him; ridicule and scrutiny chasing him like so many phantoms in their incalculable legions. Perhaps she was foolish, attributing to him so much bravery when he seemed so practiced in navigating such derisions. After all, after practice came grace; after grace, mastery. Perhaps it was no mark on his character at all that Roelo so nobly ignored the cavorting of the crowd but a symptom of his circumstance. It mattered not. As Agalind descended the dais (having performed as elegantly as Hloþhilde had already come to expect of her), the induction had very nearly concluded, with but three or four students left to enlist. Her turn had arrived.

Hloþhilde did not look to her right; but not for any fear of drowning among all those jackal-like eyes and all those jackal-like smiles. She had seen with her own eyes, tasted with her own teeth, what so amused them; what-upon they fed their sorry merriment.

And like all those eyes were stricken blind, and all those teeth plucked from the gums, their scrutiny seemed somehow powerless then.

The blood coursed slow and honey-like through Hloþhilde's veins; pumped tirelessly in her ears. But before her stood the table, and the four remaining swords. [i]Her[/i] sword.

"What is your name, lass?" said the headmaster, still managing, despite the rote, to muster for her a sort of grandfatherly affection, twinkling alike in smile and in gaze. Not to would have been to spit in the face of she who offered up her life to him for the next three years. To Laachtalia for the rest of time.

"Hlo—" she began to say to him. But it felt—wrong, somehow. Like she was once more relying on the courtesies (the pities) of another. It wouldn't do. It would not do.

She turned and there they sat in all their multitudes, chitchatting, watching listlessly, adjusting their cravats, checking their pocket watches; most of them quite ready to be done with all this ritual, the people they'd come to see, to support, already long ejected from the lecture hall.

But then, by coincidence, glowering up into the opera boxes—there sat Hellie, holding a kerchief over her mouth, and beginning to weep.

Hloþhilde smiled.

"My name is Hloþhilde du Guillarmes! Daughter of Count Grinault-Pôntëfors du Guillarmes of Rodon!" shouted the soldier-to-be, up to her sister, up to all of them, that not even a dormouse could find a nook in the wall and escape her declaration; that the very ceiling resounded with it. "'Twill be an honor to serve you all!"[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color][/justify][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][center][color=#2E2C2C]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#737272]•[/color][color=#757474]⋅[/color][color=#777777]⊰[/color][color=#797979]༻[/color][color=#7B7B7B]༒[/color][color=#7D7D7D]︎[/color][color=#808080]༺[/color][color=#7D7D7D]⊱[/color][color=#7B7B7B]⋅[/color][color=#797979]•[/color][color=#777777]─[/color][color=#757474]─[/color][color=#737272]─[/color][color=#707070]─[/color][color=#6E6E6E]─[/color][color=#6C6C6C]─[/color][color=#6A6969]─[/color][color=#686767]─[/color][color=#666565]─[/color][color=#636363]─[/color][color=#616161]─[/color][color=#5F5E5E]─[/color][color=#5D5C5C]─[/color][color=#5B5A5A]─[/color][color=#595858]─[/color][color=#575656]─[/color][color=#545353]─[/color][color=#525151]─[/color][color=#504F4F]─[/color][color=#4E4D4D]─[/color][color=#4C4A4A]─[/color][color=#4A4848]─[/color][color=#474646]─[/color][color=#454444]─[/color][color=#434242]─[/color][color=#413F3F]─[/color][color=#3F3D3D]─[/color][color=#3D3B3B]─[/color][color=#3A3939]─[/color][color=#383737]─[/color][color=#363434]─[/color][color=#343232]─[/color][color=#323030]─[/color][color=#302E2E]─[/color][/center]