“As an Advisor, our principal duty is providing the support our charges require. This can take many forms, from instruction in the use of their magics to acting as an emotional sounding board for the tribulations they are confronted with. When they make mistakes it is incumbent that we be there to provide corrections, and of course we should also recognize and celebrate the occasions where they manage to make the correct choices, should those ever occur.

Therefore, though it pains me to do so, in regards to my charges actions during the trials for admittance to the Imperial Academy, I am force to sternly offer the following admonition;

It is unseemly to wipe one’s hands on one’s own clothing after tearing the heart from an enemy. The extra laundering is simply wasteful when you have a perfectly viable corpse to use as a dishrag instead.”

– Zindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame

I wasn’t supposed to kill the Imperial Cadet. It wasn’t supposed to be possible and I wasn’t supposed to do it even it was. There was no official rule to that effect. The trials were explicitly unrestricted combat exercises. But the Cadets weren’t supposed to die.

I think that’s why the arena was silent for a long moment after I let most of the Cadet fall to the platform once I felt I’d done enough damage to him. I’d heard that healing magics could repair amazing levels of injury, so I’d felt the need to be somewhat thorough before I stepped away. That didn’t seem to be what the crowds had been interested in seeing though.

Which was fine. I hadn’t been fighting for them.

I hadn’t even been fighting for Kelthas. If I wanted to claim that then I needed to answer the question of why I hadn’t jumped in sooner.

I could have saved him.

That thought bounced around in my head like acid, dissolving all the other thoughts it brushed up against.

“You’ll need to put that down,” someone said from beside me.

I turned with a growl but recognized that it wasn’t the Cadet come back from the dead. He was still properly inert. 

The proctor who’d dared get within claw range wasn’t him. 

Was I supposed to fight the proctor next?

He’d let Kelthas die too.

Except no. 

That meant he was no worse than I was.

“You can drop it,” he said and I squinted at him searching for what he could be referring too.

He glanced at my right hand and its rather meaty contents.

Which I suppose still technically belong to the corpse.

Or was it a prize I’d won through right of arms?

Right of arms with my right arm, I giggled at the idea and then scowled and threw the corpse back the heart it was missing. I didn’t want anything to do with that one and if he rose back up once his body parts were restored to him then all the better – I’d just get to take him apart again.

He didn’t get back up. He wasn’t going to get back up.

Which was good.

For him.

For me? I was tired. I felt exhaustion crushing me down that had nothing to do with the magic I’d spent, or the barely repaired state of my body. 

“This match is ended,” the proctor said. “Are there any who will speak for this applicant.”

The silence we’d been wrapped in exploded and I let the wave of angry voices wash over me.

I could smell blood and rage, but most of that was of my own doing. The distant crowds didn’t sound or smell properly enraged. Most of what I picked up in fact was fear.

The Cadets were trying to sound angry, protesting that the match should be declared in violation of some technicality or other. None of them leapt into the arena though. None of them even suggested that they should be allowed to pick up the challenge the Imperial Cadet had failed to complete.

There were calls from the patron boxes calling for a disqualification too. Several seemed to think that the guards would have a better time with me than the Imperial Cadet had.

I don’t know. Maybe they would have.

If they’d had weapons like his, it would have been unpleasant to discover how many I could stand against, and I was reasonably sure they’d be able to send at least that number plus one more.

The proctor sighed, and I almost laughed at that too. He smelled of long suffering aggravation and, surprisingly, it didn’t seem to be directed at me.

“Are there any who will speak for this applicant,” he repeated, enhancing his voice to ring out much louder than the bickering and bellowing Cadets and representatives of the Great Houses.

Silence returned once more.

Because they all wanted to see how alone I stood.

Because no one was going to speak for me. Not after the display I’d put on.

A crazed berserker girl who could tear apart one of the Academy’s best and brightest was valuable in the abstract but two concerns held them all back. 

First, there was the obvious question of whether they could control something like me and if it was worth it to even try. Anyone who spoke for me would be responsible for whatever mayhem I caused and I think everyone present was keenly aware that this was only the beginning of the mayhem I was going to be responsible for.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Imperial Cadet wasn’t a random nobody. To have the weapon and armor he did he had to be the scion of one of the more important Houses. For a moment I wondered if he’d be a cousin or sibling of Idrina and part of the Ironbriars. They were renowned warriors and could plausibly have provided him with whatever the hell that sword was.

The only problem was if the Ironbriars had access to the gear the Cadet had wielded and he had been judged qualified to bear it, I couldn’t picture Idrina not be given similar gear too. 

Also there were the glares coming from the Lightstone box. Plenty of clear and undisguised malice there. Almost as though I’d killed one of their favored sons.

Which I clearly had. Brutally and right before their eyes.

So, they wanted to kill me.

And were the most powerful of the Great Houses.

Doxle had probably been right about mercy.

“House Riverbond will speak for her.” His voice was amplified enough that I didn’t recognize it was Doxle speaking at first.

He might have had something to say after that but if so it was drowned out by roughly everyone in the world speaking at once.

The proctor let that go on for a minute or so but finally calling “Silence!” when it became clear that the only other alternative for quieting people down was going to be violence.

“With the representative for House Riverbond approach the dueling arena,” the proctor said. “Any other representatives who wish to weigh in on the matter may approach as well.”

I expected to see a flood of people come pouring at me but only Doxle and four others boarded disks to float over to the dueling platform. The moment they were all together, the proctor raised his hand and the sound amplification spell was inverted. All the outside noise went away and I was pretty sure nothing that was said would be transmitted either.

The assembled representatives didn’t rush over to the center of the arena, but strolled casually as though they were old friends, whispering little whatevers as they approached.

Seeing who was representing House Riverbond, the proctor gave another sigh.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “But what foolery are you up to now Zindir?”

“I am wounded Jalaren,” Doxle said. “I thought we were still on a first name basis?”

“We were until the opera,” Proctor Jalaren said. “Now I ask again Advisor Zindir, what is this nonsense about House Riverbond?”

“No nonsense I assure you,” Doxle said. “And please, you must be fair. The opera was not my fault.”

“Riverbond is a dead house,” a heavyset woman in the uniform of House Greendell said.

“Silent, not dead,” Doxle said, raising his forefinger to correct her.

“Only because no house has been declared dead in two centuries,” said a weasely little guy who wore the colors of House Greyfall.

“A policy which has served to blur the distinction between the truly departed,” Doxle glanced over at the mess I’d made of the Imperial Cadet, “and those Houses which have been sufficiently diminished so as to allow their lands and duties to be managed by their senior House instead of placed before the High Council where they can be redistributed according to need and ability to manage the properties and revenues.”

“Are you making the claim that House Riverbond seeks to return to its duties and claim its ancestral holdings?” the representative from Lightstone asked.

He was worrisome. I couldn’t smell almost anything off him. Just the hint of granite and brimstone. He wasn’t lying through scent like Doxle could but he was as cut off from the world as he could make himself.

“Nothing of the sort,” Doxle said. “House Riverbond will leave its holdings under their current management, and will not be exercising its voice in vote during the High Council.”

“Then in what sense can they speak for this…” Lightstone looked like he wanted to use an epithet but diplomacy wrestled whatever word he’d chosen off of his tongue. “This applicant?”

“In the same sense any may speak for an applicant,” Doxle said. “House Riverbond offers financial support, and it’s official backing to vouchsafe the applicants suitability as an elite in the Imperial forces.”

“Suitability? You claim that this…this thing,” the representative from Greyfall sputtered.

“Take care,” Doxle said. His tone was light and his posture was unthreatening but the Greyfall rep retreated from his animosity towards me pretty quickly anyways.

“You claim that this young woman is suitable for training after the spectacle that we witnessed?” Greyfall reframed his question.

“Demonstrably so, based on what we witnessed,” Doxle said.

“You feel the destruction of one of our cadets should qualify for her admission?” Lightstone asked.

“I feel it should qualify her for your highest sponsorship in fact, though out of delicacy for the cadets immediately family I understand that you will be rightly hesitant to provide her that distinction. Hence why House Riverbond, which always had a warm relationship with your family, will offer its support instead.”

“Our sponsorship? And why would we extend that honor?” Lightstone asked, sounding more curious than appalled at the idea.

“The Trials are meant to be as much a test of the Cadets as the applicants,” Doxle said. “A Cadet who would fall before someone without Academy training was obviously a failed specimen and unworthy of bearing your name. The Academy let both you and he down by not exposing his weakness sooner, and so any reprobation for his current state must lie with them. Had he graduated though and been given a role in your service, he would doubtless have failed you as he so clearly failed them. This applicant has therefor performed a vital service for you in preventing the dishonor of the Cadet’s incompetence from staining the honor of House Lightstone.”

The representative from House Greendell laughed at that.

“You are still the most slippery eel I have ever had the misfortune to known Doxle,” she said. “And I still for the life of me can’t make out how much of that donkey dung you actually believe.”

“Every word of it my dearest Lufina,” Doxle said. “And you know I am always true to my word.”

“You won one bet, that’s not always,” Lufina said.

“One bet and one wonderful night. Perhaps you would be willing to make a similar wager here?” Doxle said.

“You are a vile tempter,” she said, entirely without malice.

“Which means, I would hope, that you are tempted?” Doxle said, projecting an air of delighted expectation.

Lufina sighed.

“It is years too late for me to give into such temptations again.”

“Oh I don’t believe that to be true,” Doxle said. “Not at all.”

The proctor cleared his throat, bringing all eyes back to me.

“How will this matter stand then,” he said. “Will the other Houses speak against the claim of Riverbond?”

“I would have some proof that House Riverbond still exists and that our friend here,” Lightstone indicated Doxle though I was reasonably certain it was the sort of friendship that involved knives planted in unsuspecting backs, “is not laying claim to unattended authority.”

“Oh please. You know me. I despise wielding authority,” Doxle said. “And, as for the proof that House Riverbond still exists, the House Heir stands here before you.”