RP:Knighting the Silver
Smithing Supplies
Hildegarde had been mended by the kitten, patched up and sent back out into the world once she had gotten some rest of course. The knight had spent too much time wallowing in her misery and darker thoughts, as well as contemplating the events of the hunt. She sat at a bench, whetstone in hand as she pulled it down across Oathkeeper to sharpen the blade. Her hair was tied back, kept tidy behind her so she could focus on sharpening Oathkeeper for whatever challenge next presented itself: even though she knew exactly what she needed it for.
Satoshi, under the pretense of checking on inventory, finds herself standing at the smithy's entrance and gazing at the knight. She knew Hildegarde was here, more than one guard had informed her of the Silver's presence, and so the magus had made an excuse to find herself here too. For a long while, Satoshi remains where she is, leaning against the doorway and watching Hildegarde at work. She hadn't seen the knight since they took their separate ways from the poacher's den. Unlike Svilfon, Satoshi is not linked to Hildegarde, and thus had to learn of the dragon's fate through word of mouth in Frostmaw. As the whetstone is brought through for another pass over Oathkeeper's length, Satoshi's lips quirk into a lopsided smirk. "If I didn't know better," she comments in an amused drawl, "I'd think you were sharpening that blade so finely to allow you to cut through into another plane of existence, Mithril."
Hildegarde had spoken to Drargon while she rested, relying upon him and a few patrons to deliver news of the land, even though they consistently reminded her she was in no fit state to be doing anything or worrying about the land. Not that she particularly needed to: or so she had believed until she realised what she had seen and experienced was not just her imagination. Although the presence of the Queen surprised her, she dared not show it as she kept her hand steady with the whetstone. Once she had completed the stroke of the whetstone against her blade, she lifted her head and smiled at Satoshi, as an unruly curl of her fiery hair fell forward, "M'lady, with what I have been tasked to do, I may as well be doing so," she said in a friendly tone, even though a sort of glumness lurked behind it. Since the events of the den, things had been amiss with the knight. The once bubbly and sweet girl had become quiet and reserved; whispers floated around Frostmaw that she now screamed in her sleep, or didn't sleep full stop these days.
Satoshi had also not had a full night's sleep since those events. Despite her mind suddenly clear of voices and influences, despite regaining a once waning confidence, when she closes her eyes, Elenor's gaze is there waiting. When her eyes are open, the azure glow of her palms are a constant reminder of the runes now carved into them. Satoshi had been made freed of the entities shrouding her mind, but she had been manipulating in the process to do, and that sits as heavily as a boulder in her gut. Such thoughts are easily read in Satoshi's eyes now, for although her face is a constant mask of joviality, her eyes are weary. Said eyes give Hildegarde a sympathetic look as the magus moves to sit atop a barrel beside the knight. Her legs, where they dangle over the barrel's edge, swing in a child-like fashion, a movement at odds with her somber gaze. Satoshi is both happy and unhappy, for while she delights in the present state of things, a fragment of her mind stubbornly remains in the past. Thus she is in Balance, when she looks at the Silver once more, head cocked in an expression of curiosity. "A task, you say? And what plane are you intending to slice your way into? I've always been curious what waits beyond the fabric of our world~."
Hildegarde recognised that look in Satoshi's eyes, having witnessed a similar look in her own reflection; something she could no longer bear to look at. With a small movement of her hand, Oatkeeper now pointed down and the tip touched the ground, whetstone gently placed on the bench beside her. "Hell, if I must," she said, "just to make sure the thing is dead once I'm done with it." She stared at Satoshi for a long moment before shaking her head and sighing, "I..." she frowned, not sure how to explain it exactly. "Something spoke to me, after... after we left the den." The words were heavy on her tongue, alien in her mouth and troublesome. "There was something in the lake, Lake Frysta, m'lady. It... well, she, charged me with this task. To slay a beast from the Wintering Cascades, before it corrupts the waters; before it feasts on our people." Her fingers flexed around Oathkeeper's hilt, rune-carved hand tensing as she did, "I gave her my word."
Satoshi's brow furrows into a frown at Hildegarde's words. It isn't a look of doubt, however. She has no reason to believe Hildegarde would ever speak anything but the truth. As hands move back to prop up Satoshi's leaning form, and heels thunk dully against the barrels side, the magus looks toward the ceiling. "Mithril, sometimes I fear you were born to be a storyteller or a merchant, with the way you drop tidbits of information and leave the listener hanging there, waiting impatiently for more. Don't leave me hanging, dear knight. Who was this 'she'? What is this beast?" And why, why was this knight charged with the quest, when it should have been the Snow Maiden's job to defend Frostmaw? Satoshi can't help but feel a pang of jealousy in this, and a bristle of anxiety that Hildegarde's path is being manipulated again.
Hildegarde might have laughed at Satoshi's remark of being a storyteller or merchant before the events of the den, but now she couldn't. She yearned to laugh, yet it felt as though it would never come. Things amused her, yes, but they did not make her laugh; her smiles felt false and everything about her felt wrong. At times it was difficult to just walk out the door of the room she held in the tavern, but she'd rather no-one know that. "I am more fit to read books than to tell stories, m'lady," she said as warmly as she could, mostly fuelled by her passion for reading. "I do not know who she was. She... She formed from the water itself," she said, looking only a little bit confused, "she said it was hers, the lake. That the lake was hers and she has always maintained the waters." She frowned, trying so desperately to remember it all as precisely as she possibly could, "I do not know what beast it is, m'lady, but I have a good idea," she said darkly. "The lady of the water told me that this beast is ancient, once many but now terribly few. She said she could "feel its bite on me", she said I have faced its like before." She looked to the Queen, "M'lady, I think it is a beast similar to the one from Kelay," a topic she did not like to dwell on or mention much, for fear of recognition, "I think they are one in the same; at least species wise."
Satoshi listens with all due attention, to the point even her boots stop swinging and she sits poised and watching Hildegarde. The magus' expression grows thoughtful. A being of water in Lake Frysta? Could she be an aspect of the original Snow Maiden? Fragments of her have made themselves known in parts of Frostmaw before, always hidden away as if waiting for the right person to find her and hear her words. It was how Satoshi and Kirien had discovered the fluorite cavern and the glacier manor the Coterie now live in. It had been the Maiden's whispers that had guided the excavators for the bank, and how they had found an ancient shrine to her. "And she tasked you with going to the Wintering Cascades to find it? Those falls are shrouded in tales, Mithril. Many have traveled there, all of them seeking. Either seeking for riches, lost artifacts, a legendary beast, their destiny. It doesn't matter what they sought, none of them came back. Those gifted with means of flight were the quickest to fall, for when they attempted to rely on their advantage, they discovered the Wintering Cascade's air is dead. Wings do not function, levitation does not maintain. To enter the falls, one must rely on their feet. The Cascades end somewhere deep in the heart of the glacier. Deeper than even my senses can detect. You'd be going where there are no maps, no shortcuts, and no help, Hildegarde." And yet, Satoshi doesn't sound concerned. In fact, she sounds confident, assured in her faith of the knight's capabilities.
Hildegarde drank up the information that Satoshi was offering, soaking it all up and tucking it away for later. After a long moment she nodded and looked down, somewhat glumly, "She named me her champion, yet..." she shook her head, "I am no champion. I am no knight," she said the latter much more quietly and glumly; head having dipped down as if to hide what might well be a tear or two. "But I have an oath and a love for this land. So whether this beast takes me or the Wintering Cascades, it shan't stop me. If the beast kills me, then at least I will have slowed it down some. If the Cascades do, then... well, then that's that, I suppose." The Silver had never been so bleak or sad in her life before; she had been left a changed - and often rumoured broken - woman.
Satoshi, without a second thought, jumps down from the barrel and whirls around to face the Silver. "Hildegarde," she begins, only to lash out with blinding speed and swipe Oathkeeper away. Just as quickly, the magus darts away, out of the room, the pattering of her boots on stone sounding down the hall and toward the throne room. The taunting flick of her tail that's offered as she rushes from the room is message enough to Hildegarde, 'Follow me~.'
Hildegarde frowned some as the Queen was suddenly moving, wondering if perhaps something was wrong or perhaps she had said something wrong! She grunted when Oathkeeper was swiped out of her reach, feeling that it was only another indicator of her failure in being a knight. Not that she even was a knight, truthfully: she only called herself such and tried to act as such. "M'lady, I apologise for any offense I may have caused..." she said, while following her like a lost puppy.
Satoshi lounges with all the regal grace she can muster upon her throne by the time Hildegarde arrives. Oathkeeper rests across the magus' knees. All eyes are on Hildegarde as the Silver enters the room, although Satoshi and guards alike wear unreadable expressions. With a languid gesture of her hands, Satoshi indicates the Queensguard flanking the room, ever in position to strike. "Do you know what it means to be a knight of Frostmaw? It is to be fearless. It is to be devoted, to the city, to Aramoth, to me. It is to strike with the force of a god's hammer, to face foes and mortal peril without faltering. It is to face each day, task, journey, and end without doubt." The Frost Giants stand a little straighter, prouder, at the words. Their spears are lifted and slammed against the ground in a single, unified crash as the guards a roar as one. Satoshi beckons Hildegarde forward, face stern, eyes glacial. "Kneel, Hildegarde the Doubter," she commands in a tone that brooks no argument. Oathkeeper's hilt is taken up then as Satoshi raises it above her head, as if ready to cleave through Hildegarde's neck.
Hildegarde looked around the throne room with some envy, yet her awe of the room and the knights within still struck her. She was still as awed by it as she was when she first saw it. The Silver nodded her head before looking to the floor, closing her eyes at the title of 'doubter'. Indeed, it was well-deserved, yet it still stung for some reason. "As my Queen commands," she replied, as if the reply was expected of her, before slowly dropping into a kneeling position. It was difficult to get into that position: feeling pain in her legs, hip, chest and side from wounds still healing, yet she would do her best not to show signs of her pain. Hilde glanced up to Satoshi before closing her eyes again, accepting that her fate was in the Queen's hands.
Satoshi says to Hildegarde, "I am not your Queen." Oathkeeper is raised another inch. The blade trembles in Satoshi's hand, not from any doubt or misgivings on the magus' part, but rather because its Earthsong is silently answering Satoshi's own Snowsong. The twin elements are what birthed Frostmaw, its might from the unrelenting earth and its fierceness from the biting blizzards, all perched atop a foundation of permafrost. A faint humming comes from it as a ghostly shroud if amber and azure light covers it, earth and ice intertwined. Oathkeeper descends--to touch lightly upon Hildegarde's shoulder. Oathkeeper rests here a moment as Satoshi speaks, "You have proven yourself time and again, to be not only a warrior, but a defender. You give yourself readily for the sake and safety of others. When faced with impossible odds, you achieve victory. Your arms carry both the strength of the dragons, and the gentle touch of a mother." The blade is lifted and brought down to touch Hildegarde's other shoulder. "Your faith is unwavering. Your might unquestionable. Your devotion incalculable. And so too shall be your confidence, as of this day. We have seen this, and we acknowledge it, and honor it." With this, Oathkeeper comes to rest atop Hildegarde's bowed head for a moment before Satoshi withdraws it, turning the blade to lay across her open palms in offering to Hildegarde. "Rise then, Sir Hildegarde, as a knight of Frostmaw. For if the Wintering Cascades are to be conquered, it shall only be by a knight of Frostmaw, true of heart, strong of body, and certain of mind. You are no longer Hildegarde the Doubter. Those thoughts are forbidden from entering your mind." Satoshi leans forward then, to add with a whisper and a wink, "-Now- I'm your Queen~."
Hildegarde held her breath at Satoshi's announcement; feeling almost as if she had been cast out from Frostmaw itself at the words. Yet she would accept the Queen's judgement, even if it frightened her to her core, she would accept it: but it was not what she thought it would be. As Oathkeeper touched her shoulder, her cheeks reddened and then shimmered with the appearance of silvery scales. "M'lady..." she said, after all those words of Satoshi's; the touching words that meant more to her than most people could understand. She rose to her feet, invigorated, unfeeling of her pain, as her hand so carefully and reverently accepted Oathkeeper from the Queen. "As you command, my Queen," she said with an unblemished and unrelenting smile. It was a dream come true, for the Silver: now a true and real knight of the realm as she had only ever wanted.
Satoshi smiles at the knight as the guards once again thump their spears and voice a roar of approval. When the room falls silent again, Satoshi nods and says, "You'll succeed in your quest, Knight, I know it." Satoshi doesn't need to be a seer to know this.
Hildegarde flushed a bright red before nodding her head, "M'lady, Frostmaw will not come to harm at the fangs of this beast, this I swear." She smiled again, "I may not be the champion of Frostmaw, nor anything beyond a knight, but I swear it to you, I shall not fail in this quest."
Satoshi again grins, this time the expression a fair bit less formal. "I'd expect nothing less from you, Mithril. Promise to bring me back something lovely when you get to the Cascades, hm?~" Which is Satoshi's way of saying, she'd love to accompany Hildegarde on this quest, but she's also aware that it is for the knight alone to accomplish.
Hildegarde paused for a moment, before replying with a smile, "While I do not believe in the mutilation of foes," she said carefully, "I can think of an appropriate trophy for my Queen." She smiled again, before dipping her head respectfully to the Queen, "I am keen to display my devotion and prowess to the realm."
Satoshi says to Hildegarde, "Then go~. And return victorious!"
Hildegarde grinned before bowing to the Queen and making her way out. She'd need to be suited and booted for this Quest!