with my life.

Men swirl the dregs of dusk hours in their flagons, and laugh, because they can; because no one will know it came from them. In an alley, vermin, night’s vanguard, sniff at halos of flies who circle rotten food. They take their fill without fear of reproach.

Phila must walk very carefully, place her left foot in that perfect space, where there are no ditches of dirty water, or apple cores, or smells so strong they overwhelm the senses. If she is very careful, she can avoid the worst of it.

Footsteps richochet across the stretches of stone that are visible and she hopes (vain a gesture as it may be) that they are not here. What a wonderful thing it would be to find those disappeared students, weary and confused, wandering in the open. To scold them for choosing to go where impulse took them, and send them back to the monastery where the worst that faced them was weeding duty.

But there is no sign of them in shops, silent and reproachful. No flash of uniform is to be found amongst the taverns.

It had to be here.

Rose petals try to push against the layers of filth, they smell like the Royal Gardens. Phila turns, regards Lachesis. ‘This is the only avenue left unsearched. If you will allow me to lead the way...’

A partner hadn’t been her intention.

They had encountered each other inadvertantly, scouring the same paths. It was impractical to work at the same task individually and so they had conducted investigations together; but standing at the mouth of this vermicated alley, she knew she must brave whatever lay within first. A familiar role, a comfortable one.

Phila could understand the necessity of a name. To be without a name was to be a mass, directionless. And yet, it was easy to stress this necessity when names were inherited. The Pegasus Knights of Ylisse were sanctified by age. BOOMS however. Well, it was certainly punchy. Combative. Not necessarily appropriate for school grounds.

Being all too familiar with the legacy in a name, Phila felt that the legacy this name promised to leave behind was dangerously crater-shaped.

Fortunately, the task of locating this group came with relative ease, and a round of cheers, as a charge of fire flew into the air and rained down cinders like starlight. The sparks kissed the earth and extinguished, turning to smoke under her boots.

‘It is far too late. What are you doing?’ Phila asks, sending ripples of alarm through the huddle. She knows what they’re doing - how could she not? - but any so-called instructor also knew the power of a rhetorical question in rendering any and all response inadequate and peevish.

And yet, a response they had. ‘Aw, c’mon teach! We’re just experimenting!’

Now it was her cue to give no response. Silence let in doubt, if you used it well. And Phila's had once been infamous.

‘…And it was all her idea anyway! She’s the one who told us she wanted to liven up her entrances!’

The ringleader turns traitor with a shocking amount of ease, cracking under the pressure of a conversation cut short. Following the accusatory point of her finger, her eyes land on…?

An unfamiliar young girl. One she thinks she may have glimpsed in her flying classes. Though she can’t recognise the features, she is certain she has seen them, somewhere, before. They chime with a recognition she can’t quite put a name to.

‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ She asks, arching an eyebrow.

"You? You wanna be my dad?" Cynthia's eyes are pure glitter. Phila is like, the greatest pegasus knight. She's everything. She's even better than Mother, if that's even possible! And Phila wants to be her dad?!

For a moment she is worried that she has disappointed the fledgling knight. After all, what good was she, with her mousy blue hair and her strikingly blood red eyes. But suddenly there are papers in her hands, and well, gee, what the heck!

'Of course, allow me to sign them immediately.' Producing a bright blue gel pen (that is also her special weapon, btw, it's a massive lance that explodes when you throw it) she signs her full name: Philein CloudWalker Tempest Common Cold Skylark Levan.

But she doesn’t leave. Instead, she is takes the seat offered to her with a ‘Thank you’ so quiet it’s almost inaudible. It lulls her with its familiarity. Old memories of meetings with diplomats, of standing vigil behind her Grace’s chair, of staring down those men who wanted to eat her alive, and knowing that she could do nothing except whisper those words: thank you.

The table is enormous, large enough to house at least a hundred of them: a gallery of pale-faced cowards, bright innocents and monsters. No, monster was too fanciful. The man who guided to her seat, and pushed her chair in with the force of a gaoler, was not a monster. He was far worse.

A monster can be killed, after all.

Across from her sits the man the monastery sent. Does he know? They’re leagues apart, her at one end, he at the other, their host in the midst. If she attempts to make a communication that their esteemed Duke is unaware of… She can’t afford it, can’t risk an unapt word.

They had arrived that morning. Phila was far from gifted in magic, and the remnants of what this land called ‘Faith’ had long since been drained from her. What use could dead hands be, in tending to the living? She had been sent as a piece of flesh, to carry things, or sort the inventory. And she knew this. Was quite reconciled to it. But he, her companion. She could not allow harm to come to him. To sully the memory of her sister's sacrifice would not do. No more innocent blood, she had sworn it.

‘Shall we dine?’ The Duke asks.

And, without waiting for their comment, he seizes upon a knife and fork. He moves them with careful precision as if they didn't quite fit in his hands. There is silence, except for the sickening squelch of a knife cleaving meat.

He eats quite happily, for a man who just hours ago had transformed into something hideous.

Phila hadn’t meant to see him, she had just been inspecting the halls. The portraits fascinated her, and a selfish impulse had lead her in search of a music room. Most self-respecting nobles were in possession of one.

Instead she had found him, door ajar, writhing and screeching in pain and she had drawn closer, ready to do battle with whatever was making an attempt on his life, only to encounter… It was impossible to describe. She wasn’t a poet. Nightmares were supposed to be their realm.

He hadn’t seen her, and that was a small mercy. But now she had been brought to a more acute awareness of their entrapment. And she was, as ever, as always, utterly helpless.

Phila bends her head, she takes a bite of something warm.

The line in the report had been a concerning one. Particularly so for Diamant, for he knew well the grand aspirations of knights. Committing their entire lives to the pursuit of justice, protecting both country and liege from any and all threats.

Beholding some of the world's greatest atrocities—living and breathing war, so that others might enjoy the bliss of peace. After living by it for so long, it wasn't easy for a warrior to simply lay down his blade.

Brodia, too, was dealing with this issue. Many fighters and knight hopefuls left displaced by Diamant's new peace policies, left to spit venom and strike at air in the absence of any new enemies (any new Elusians) to turn their blades on. An issue that had hit the commonfolk particularly hard, as limited as they already were in job opportunity.

He never thought the transition period would be a smooth one, but even Diamant had underestimated just how much of a tectonic shift halting Brodia's invasions would cause.

His people did not desire war, not when it brought them so much pain. And yet, it seemed as though they had reached a point where they could hardly live without it.

Perhaps these soldiers were the same...

"According to the scouts, the group should be in a clearing north of here..." Diamant walks along the moonlit forest path, whispering to the woman next to him: a fellow instructor by the name of Phila. He knew little about the woman, but she seemed the capable, disciplined sort. Always good to have in unpredictable situations.

He gives her a sidelong glance, "I trust you're prepared for the possibility of battle, should things go awry?"

Her eyes rove the forest, seeking wounds, seeking harm, seeking danger on the point of an arrow. Against these verdancies, a rupture would be evident.

But all is quiet. Her fingers tighten around the bow string, and she swallows a wince at its bite. An old instinct. The impulse of one used to a lance. Her hands will bear the mark later, when she enters her room and sees it in the flash between the removal of her gloves and the extinguishing of her bedside candle.

'My bow is readied, and so am I.' She responds, returning his gaze evenly. Red meets red. Were she a superstitious type, she might think it an ill-omen. Two bloody gazes, wandering the woods at night... It tempted a sight to satiate, or perhaps outdo, their own.

And, though she did not tolerate talk of fortune and fate, it certainly seemed something like fate, to be born with eyes such as these: inexorably drawn towards sightings of their colour-kin.

Their feet begin to outpace the path, it fades into soil and moss. A warm glow spills over the moonlight like handfuls of maize. She wonders what has taught the man beside her preparation. Whether he, too, had endured a life governed by it.

'Although, it would not do to anticipate an attack too obviously. We cannot afford any indication of distrust.' She says, as they draw nearer to the murmur of weapons and voices. 'It could be that they desire nought but a spar.'

And it is a thorougly strange feeling. Were she to catalogue the limited emotions that an event such as this inspired, she reckoned it would be a blend of exhaustion and dread. A desire for the entire thing to be done with, to send the curious faces of the courtiers and nobility who marvelled at the spectacle of a common stable-girl wandering the halls of Ylisstol castle as if she belonged there, into the oblivion of sleep. 

Of course, her presence before had been occasioned. Sanctioned by a desire to defend her Grace. And so she had endured it, easily, even. To stand vigil was to stand proud, she’d had a purpose - and hadn’t been afraid to assert it. 

This directionless wandering was so much harder, and she shrunk from it, even as she was amongst those who wouldn’t deign to comment on her dress or suggest she had misplaced herself. Her eyes kept trawling the crowd, looking for that bright spot - her purpose. 

But, the quiet mystery of this girl arrests her eye, brings it to rest somewhere closer to the present. Especially once she expresses an interest in flight. 

‘So, you’re interested in pegasi?’ Phila asks, trying to turn the edge of a plea, a leap towards familiar ground, into something more inquisitive, more curious. ‘What is it that you wish to know? I will try my best to provide a satisfactory answer.’ 

Maybe later... Yes, there wasn't much in the way of practical demonstration she could make at the moment. And, though the promise of a pretext with which to make her exit was promising, Phila wouldn't cede to it just yet. She had become well-versed in theory, since her fall. Talk was far less harmless than action, when it came to flight.

Yarne accepts the hand, pulling himself up until he stands at his full height of 6'something, he doesn't exactly know how manspawn measure them. He gestures down to the small bits of shed fur, tied together into a small rope. They fit neatly into the grooves of the wood, and over his boots, maybe a little too snug, but otherwise fine.

"I've found that whenever I'm attacked, I'm usually the firs to find out, because I can see them coming. So, I figured, why not take that further? To optimally protect myself and others from any attackers..."

Yarne closes his eyes, breathing in.

"That... sounds really stupid now that I say it out loud, doesn't it."

He shakes his head, untying his feet from the wood.

Certainly, he will have outgrown his mother, who she recalls as far shorter, far closer to her own standing: primed to meet Phila's eye whether she sought it or not.

Phila does not shrink to meet this one's eye.

He cowers within his height, as if it were some unwanted cloak he would much prefer to be rid of, were he able to secure something better suited. And yet, he takes her hand, he tries to take advantage of the hand fate dealt, he admits an impasse. He is far braver than she.

'It is never a folly to use what strength you have to defend your allies.' She says, nodding at his reasoning. It was natural to give your all to those you sought to protect. Diseased as the mantra was in her own failing, she still turned to it; a habitual hypocrite.

Years of shodding pegasi intended to tread the uneven grounds of Ylisstol for parades move her hands on instinct. Picking up a discarded block, she weighs it in her hand.

Wood, was far less stubborn than metal. Easier to bend into shape. That was an advantage here. She'd never had to handle the shoe itself of course: that had been the preserve of the blacksmiths, but she'd shaved plenty of hooves - they'd given with a similar, flaking ease.

'One moment.' Turning on her heel, she marches towards the stables. It only takes a moment before she re-emerges: rasper and a sharp hoof-knife in hand. 'It is not their typical application, and we must be careful not to inflict any damage,' She says, not specifying whether the forewarned harm will come to them or the equipment. 'But if we work these blocks into something more level, you may yet be able to aid your friends further.'