Chapter 8: Defiance

It could not have been a drearier Wednesday in May. The sky was blanketed in grey clouds all day yet with no sign of rain, while a cold wind howled everywhere.

Inside the training room, Melia was letting off steam from yet another half hour of failing at Spear Break by directing a summoned aqua to dance around the room, Reddel monitoring from a chair to the side. In the last year and a half, she had succeeded in eliminating all the pesky leaks of the summoning process, and was almost as proficient with it as her original two summons. On the other hand, Spear Break continued to be one hundred percent ineffective, aside from whatever minor damage it inflicted.

After five minutes of spectacle, Reddel interrupted. "I think that's enough of a break."

Disappointed, Melia dispelled the elemental and focused back on the Luxel drone. However, before she could resume practice, a guard walked into the room, orderly but clearly with an urgent job.

Reddel stood up. "Yes, what is it?"

"We need to accompany princess Melia to her dentist's appointment."

Instructor and student shared a worried glance, both recognising the code phrase for "security breach". "Very well," said Reddel, "let's get you over there."

Melia nodded. She was about to lay the Training Staff against the wall when there was a thwhip sound, followed by a dart appearing in the guard's neck. A mere second later, a second dart appeared in Reddel's arm.

The guard collapsed quickly, while Reddel pulled the projectile out of his arm and sniffed it. "Not poison, probably tranquiliser." He turned to Melia but slumped over onto the floor before he could say any more.

With both adults in the room incapacitated, the unseen attacker leapt out from behind a pile of mats and blocked Melia's path to the exit. She looked just like Melia imagined a lunatic civilian assassin would look like: athletic build, black cloak, trained wings, and a crazed grin.

"Well that's just a shame," she uttered, her uncultured voice full of taunting, "having to use the dart with your name on it to get rid of that silly guard. I guess my partner's distraction was just a bit too obvious." She shed her cloak, revealing a tan leotard and a belt full of knives. "Looks like I'll have to deal with you the fun way!"

Melia tried to shake off her fear paralysis as she watched the assassin select a pair of daggers with blood-red handles. Summoning bolts is the fastest thing I can do. She started to prepare the electric elemental, but the attacker was already on her, and she had to break her concentration to raise her staff in defence.

"Too slow to ready yourself?" The assassin started making a series of extravagant slashes, more for spectacle than anything, and Melia only just blocked each one. "You're lucky I enjoy playing with my food, or we'd already have quite a mess on our hands!"

Melia knew she was in trouble. She had to dedicate all her focus just to react to the attacks, never mind try to run for positioning or attack back.

"Since we're about to become entrenched in history together, why not get to know each other? My name is Hillary Glenbrook." She slashed her right dagger upwards at Melia's chin with an intentional near miss. "Of course, no need to tell me who you are. Melia Antiqua, the misguided prat of Sorean's, who couldn't stop chasing some Homs broad despite knowing her inferiority!" Spinning around, she launched a kick at Melia's hip, which connected with staff and staggered both parties.

Sensing an opportunity, Melia shifted her grip to the bottom end of the staff and made a backhanded swipe towards her assailant's head. It was a complete whiff, forcing her to clumsily roll across the floor to avoid the retaliatory slash.

"You're not very good at this physical stuff, are you?" Hillary allowed Melia to stand up before continuing the assault. Each deflected blade left dents in both the Training Staff's handle and Melia's morale.

If I can...just summon... a single...bolt... Melia's thoughts were fragmented as she constantly blocked the accelerating onslaught of attacks. The back of her mind was hoping for guards to come bursting into the room at any moment.

"You do know how to speak, correct?" The taunting was ceaseless. "You have functional vocal chords? Or is that just as broken as your other pure-blood genes?"

Melia refused to dignify the attacker with a response. Her only goal was survival until help arrived. At this point, getting a single hit in would be a bonus.

"Well, if you're not going to join me in conversation, I see no reason to keep this going for much longer." With a powerful flip kick, Hillary sent the staff clean out of Melia's hands, landing near the exit. "But I do ever like giving people fun choices to make before they die, so here's yours: Are you going to run and cower? Or try to get past me to your stick?"

Frozen in fear, Melia started trying to work out a plan of escape. She knew of no secret exits in the room; the only vent visible was in the top corner where she couldn't reach it. If she ran into the back half, she could possibly slip by the assassin by weaving around obstacles, but the distance she'd need to cover might be long enough to get caught.

"I don't have all day, you know. How about I count to 10, and then cut the first slice of my victory cake? 1... 2... 3..."

A potential plan occurred to Melia. It was quite risky, since she'd have to dash right past the enemy, but it seemed like her only choice. She tried to keep looking scared stiff while waiting for a good time to go.

"4... 5... 6... 7..."

Melia bolted sideways towards Reddel's limp body. Momentarily confused about the choice of direction, Hillary ended up giving her a good few seconds of head start before giving chase.

Arriving at Reddel's side, Melia grabbed onto his staff and started lifting it. It was significantly heavier than she expected, being a foot taller than she was and made of holkwood, but she eventually got to a standing position with the help of adrenaline. Slowly swinging the big staff around to face her attacker, she caught the two blades by the hilts as they came down, knocking her onto her backside.

Leaning over Melia with weapons locked, Hillary lost her crazed grin for the first time. "Clever girl. 'Course, that thing's way too big for you, isn't it? All I need is to open up your arm and no more big stick for you!" She tried to get her daggers free, but Melia was using the staff's weight to her advantage, keeping the blades' curved crossguards locked onto the staff's handle.

After a few seconds of struggling, another idea came to Melia's mind - a far more dangerous one that she didn't know if she could even pull off. Riding on the high of her first plan succeeding, she started focusing on summoning a flare. It appeared in the swirls at the head of the staff surprisingly quickly.

Hillary scoffed, still trying to get her daggers free. "I call your bluff. You wouldn't dare detonate that at close ran-"

Melia pushed the staff forwards, unlocking the daggers while lobbing the flare into her attacker's face. The subsequent explosion blasted the combatants away from each other and set them both ablaze.

With a tight grip on the heavy staff, Melia stood back up before realising that the burning hurt quite a bit more than she expected, and that instead of "considerable" pain she was in "rather extreme" pain. Keeping her hands and face clenched shut, she made a mad dash towards the back of the room, leaving the assassin to uselessly attempt putting out the magical fire by rolling around. Upon reaching her destination, the sprinklers in the rear half of the room immediately activated, drenching Melia while leaving her opponent untouched.

Still in major pain but no longer actively burning, Melia reluctantly realised that her soggy clothes would be an impediment to movement, and so quickly removed her shoes, socks, gloves, and overcoat. By the time her arms and legs were free, Hillary had realised that half the room was wet, and was now running her way. Now with the advantage of time, Melia summoned a bolt, and prepared to throw it at the enemy.

But the assassin had thrown something first. A knife flew through the air and slashed open Melia's right bicep.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Melia unconsciously dropped Reddel's staff and fell to her knees, clutching her arm. The pain was unimaginable. The summoned bolt fell out of the staff and sat on the floor, arcing electricity around the puddle it landed in.

With fresh burns all over her body, Hillary strode up to Melia with contempt on her face. "I must admit, I didn't think you'd have that much fight in you. But like I said, all I need is one hit to stop you." She picked the bloody knife up off the floor. "And one more to finish you."

Wading through the intense pain, Melia stared at her enemy and focused her entire mind on the ball of lightning lying nearby. Only dimly aware of her surroundings, she put everything she had left into one more action.

"I REFUSE TO SUBMIT TO A NOBODY!"

Taking her bloodied left hand off her fresh wound, Melia pointed at the heart of her assassin. The summoned bolt shot off the floor and struck true, blasting the assailant backwards into a hanging punching bag.

There was a clattering of feet as no fewer than twenty guards stormed into the room. Someone started barking orders. Melia wasn't really paying attention. No longer with the energy to sit up, she fell forwards into a pool of what was hopefully water and blacked out.

The world was a black void, filled with an endless array of stars.

Melia realised she was already standing up. She looked down at her body, covered in torched clothes and burns of various severity, and with a large gash in her right arm. There was no pain or blood, only the stench of burnt hair and feathers.

She strained to recall what had just happened. My arm was cut, and I fired a bolt, and then many people entered the room. But then what?

With no memory beyond that point, and the curious situation she currently found herself in, the obvious answer came to mind. I refuse to believe I died from a simple cut to the arm.

"Good, good." An unknown voice filled the world. It was both familiar and foreign; loud enough to come from everywhere at once, but quiet enough that its identity was a mystery. "Refusal to accept an untimely death is the first step towards defying it."

"Who's there? Show yourself!"

"I will show myself...in time. For now, simply know that your success in this...unexpected task is a sign of greater things to come."

The world suddenly faded to black once more.

Melia woke up. Eyes still closed, she could sense the room was quite bright and the bed she was in was significantly less cushy than the one in her chambers, ruling out the possibility that everything that had just happened was all a highly-realistic dream. Her sense of touch slowly started coming back to her; while most of her body felt pretty much normal and pain-free, her entire upper right arm felt like it was encased in a block of ice. It approached the line between "uncomfortable" and "painful", making her wince.

"...Melia? Are you awake?" Kallian's voice came from directly to her left.

Not looking forward to speaking or opening her eyes, Melia responded with a nod. The cold on her arm felt like it was getting stronger.

"Send for the Emperor," Kallian ordered. Someone hurried away.

Melia opened her eyes very slowly, dragging them out of the dark into the bright light. Kallian was sitting as close as he could get on her left side, while a doctor was standing to her right, monitoring the device that was wrapped around her injured arm. A single guard was the only other one currently in the ward, though she suspected many more were just outside. She couldn't see any of herself aside from her right arm, but she could feel that all the burns were gone, although alongside a noticeable amount of hair and feathers.

"How does your arm feel?" the doctor asked.

"...It does not hurt." Although it may begin to if this device has to stay active for much longer.

"Good. At the present rate, it should be completely healed in approximately ten hours."

Melia's head, which had been slowly inching upwards, flopped back onto the pillow. She didn't want to spend the next half-day laying idle with an icy grip on her arm. Her energy was gone, but she had a deep-rooted desire to do something, anything at all.

A second guard entered the room, followed immediately by Sorean, with a look of immense relief on his face.

Oh boy, Melia thought as he started speaking. Time for a heap of empty platitudes and false emotion. I'm not listening to this tripe. Sometimes she honestly believed that her father saw her as a burden, an unnecessary addition to the royal family that consumed extra resources while being nothing but "princess for life". She knew that the various laws and rules put a massive damper on his ability to express himself to her, but it didn't reduce the jilted feeling.

"...Hello? Melia? Were you listening?" Kallian interrupted her self-imposed misery binge. "You were asked what happened."

"...oh." Speaking slowly, Melia started to recount what had happened, from the adults being ambushed to the nature of the fight and the eventual final blows. It was almost harder to talk about than it was to fight, though at least when talking there was no opponent.

Sorean's face was hard to read once the story was finished. "I must once again commend you for your courage and ingenuity in this unforeseen situation. I freely admit that I would have been unable to succeed in your place when I was your age."

Melia didn't believe this for an instant.

"Now, I'm sure you want to hear the other half of the story," began Kallian. "At about two-thirty, the guards caught someone making a fuss up near the astronomy tower. He freely identified himself as an assassin with a hidden partner, so safety protocols were initiated: gather all the imperial family in the lockdown room under heavy guard while the guards search the palace. We were just reaching the time limit for you to arrive when someone reported that the sprinklers in the training room had been activated. A contingent was sent to investigate. Upon arriving, they saw you fall unconscious and immediately sent for medical aid. Your attacker was quickly subdued, with not much effort I was told, and was thrown in the dungeons far from her accomplice."

"Both of them gladly and independently confessed their method," continued Sorean. "They flew into the palace in the cloudy darkness last night, hiding in the gardens. Before daybreak, they split up and each travelled to locations where they thought you likely to be, each planning to act as distraction for the other should either be discovered. While I have my doubts about the possibility of this explanation for their intrusion, I see no reason for them to lie about it, and will take the appropriate measures to prevent such a recurrence. As for motive, they claim nothing but a hatred of all half-bloods, and planned to start a reign of terror with you. Who is to say whether they have rational enough minds to grasp the aftermath of their potential actions."

Melia twisted her head sideways towards the clock on the wall, which read almost five. I'm going to be stuck in here until tomorrow morning, aren't I.

"If you will excuse me," the doctor interjected, "the princess needs rest for maximum effectiveness of the healing procedure."

"Yes, of course." Sorean nodded and turned towards the exit. "I will inform the kitchens to deliver here. Kallian, I wish to speak with you privately. Take care, my princess."

Kallian reluctantly followed Sorean out of the room, taking the guards with him.

Melia looked back at the clock. Still more than nine and a half hours to go with a frozen arm. She looked down at the healing device, a while tube encrusted with several water and ice gems. A slider was also visible, suggesting the device was at about three-quarter power. She began to move her left hand towards it, but caught the doctor's attention.

"Is the freezing sensation too strong? Would you like it to be reduced? Of course, doing so will slow the healing rate."

The decision was instant. "Turn it up to full power."

The doctor frowned and looked at a status panel. "Are you quite sure? Doing so would cut the healing time by a factor of four, but also reduce the perceived temperature by approximately twenty degrees."

"Do it."

"...Very well." The doctor slowly raised the slider up to its maximum.

The coldness on Melia's arm felt like it was magnified by a factor of ten, colder than anything she'd experienced before. Managing to keep a straight face while grinding her teeth together, she gave a curt nod to the doctor and closed her eyes again. It still hurt less than it did when it was slashed.

When Melia was released fully-healed just before eight o'clock, she quickly began wishing she had instead chosen to take it slowly and stay in for the night. She couldn't take a step without being blanketed by six guards, all the palace windows were closed and curtained, and all her privileges and schedule had been blanked until further notice. Retreating to her bedroom, effectively the only place outside the dining hall she was now allowed to go, she threw herself down on the bed and started grumbling about how long it might take for life to return to normal.

Rolling over, the Practice Staff caught her eye, as it usually did with its glaring orange hue. It was sitting on the floor next to the bed, having slid down off the wall it had been leaning against. She picked it up and stared through the hole at its tip.

A whole eight years of training, and I still can't defend myself against a single attacker. The thought began repeating itself over and over again, becoming louder each time. Eight years, one attacker, utter failure. Father probably wouldn't have been injured. Brother could take her out with only one arm! If I'm supposed to be some ether prodigy, why could I only get TWO HITS IN?!

Starting to rage a bit, Melia chucked the staff across the floor, where it clattered into the wardrobe door. Her thoughts morphed into an incomprehensible mess as she started beating on pillows. Within seconds her bed was a war zone, with all its soft elements strewn everywhere. She continued to vent until her limbs were sore and she collapsed face-first into the pile of blankets on the floor.

Slowly regaining control of herself, Melia groggily looked at the mess she had created. ...This is going to take a while to fix. She slowly started to get up and put things back in order. Keeping her room tidy was one of the few chores she was expected to do, not that the cleaners wouldn't do it for her if she left things alone for long enough.

Actually, I should just go to bed. I'm tired and have nothing to do.

Melia normally didn't go to bed until about ten-thirty, but the realisation of how tired she was made it feel like midnight. Not even bothering to drop her clothes down the laundry chute, she was in her nightgown and fast asleep in five minutes.

Of course, sleep was not a sanctuary. Her dreamcatcher couldn't hold a candle to the immense power of the day's events. She was murdered thirteen times that night.

It was three weeks before Melia was allowed to resume her ether staff training. As usual, she arrived right on time to find Reddel waiting for her.

"Well, it's been a little while, hasn't it?" he began. "How about you get back into the swing of things on your own."

Melia picked up the Training Staff. She ran her fingers down the handle, feeling the dagger marks the assassin had left behind.

Eight years. One attacker. Utter failure.

It was hardly the first time since the incident she had been reminded of it, but it was the first time returning to the scene of the crime. Indignance started to well up again; if there was one thing she could say she hated above all else, it was failure.

A flare appeared in her staff without even thinking about it. Surprised but still primarily upset, she launched it into a blank patch of wall.

See? That was trivial. Why couldn't you do that before, eh? WELL?

Angered, Melia swung her staff forwards, summoning and casting a bolt in a single motion that knocked over a dumbbell stand. She aimed at something else, blowing the top mat off a pile and sending it flying. Fuelled by a chain reaction of rage, she fired random elementals in various directions until her burst aura appeared, followed by jamming her staff into a dummy's chest and detonating Burst End, scattering the dummy across the room.

Melia turned her attention to the Luxel lazily sauntering around the room. Rearing back, she speared it in the knee with more force than she had ever applied before. It slid backwards about two metres and started limping, still fully stable but with impaired speed.

The result of the attack stunned Melia out of her angry trance. What was that? She watched as the drone shortly shook off the injury and started walking at full speed again. That wasn't a break, but it was certainly something new. She tried poking it in the knee again. While she couldn't match the power of the previous attack, it had the same result: a temporary limp.

"Intriguing." Reddel seemed about as confused as Melia was. "You have somehow steered your Spear Break towards slowing foes' movements rather than breaking their stance."

"I assume this is a bad thing?"

"Well...not entirely. It is likely that the effect will interfere with your efforts to learn how to break opponents, but once you pass that point, having an art of multiple effects is always welcome."

Just what I need, another challenge in learning this stupid thing. Frustrated, Melia kicked the limping Luxel, knocking it over. I should have just went with Rod Bruise, no need to muck with stances or anything.

"As long as you can harness your emotion correctly," Reddel stated, "you will have no trouble eventually succeeding in whatever you do."

Melia was starting to calm down. That's it, isn't it. Emotion is the key. Fear crippled me; anger propelled me. I need to channel rage without actually being angry; I need to have righteous indignation on command. She looked towards the spot across the room where she was slashed; there was no evidence of a confrontation having occurred. Well, at least I have some powerful ammunition on that front.