"I will not marry any of them!"
"Vanessa, I'd really like it if you could see reason."
"You're the one being unreasonable father! They can try to court me all they want I will not yield to them or you. My convictions will not waver just for a few weeks of isolation."
To be fair, Vanessa had already completely lost track of how long she had been restrained to her own chambers. She had no idea how long ago it had been since she confronted her father in the great hall of Folcourse.
He came to see her time and again after that and almost always for the same thing, marriage proposals. All sorts of people wanted her hand from renowned knights to heirs of other big houses and they all had one thing in common, she turned them down.
If they couldn't understand that she was trying to accomplish something and wasn't in a position to think about any of them then they were hopeless from the start. Sending a proposal only served to disqualify them right away, they had no brain.
Her father however was obstinate, just as much as she was herself. He came back often and tried to convince her to pick one with many arguments she refused to listen to. Whenever he became too insistent, she would shut herself into her head and picture herself practicing the sword dance instead. It wasn't as helpful as actually performing the dance but it was still much more productive than listening to him.
Whenever she started doing that, he usually got tired of speaking to a wall and left after a moment.
Again that day, he left frustrated at her stubborn refusal of even considering any of the choices he brought her. Her whole family was upset with her now.
Her father was obviously mad at her disrupting his plans, her brother was certain she was being mean to him and his mother hadn't even come to see her once since she came back. She only had the company of her two servants and the occasional visit of her father or the maids to keep her company.
She was starting to feel rather lonely.
"Nessa, whether you like it or not, I'm doing this for your own good so I won't give up." He told her as he slammed the door shut behind him.
What he didn't understand was that she thought exactly the same thing in reverse. She was doing this for the good of the house and whether he liked it or not, she would not give up.
She let out a sigh and moved into the next room to train her technique. She should have a few hours still to train before anyone came to disturb her next.
She had been a bit upset when her father came to disturb her at this critical moment but now that he was gone, she could get right back to it. She could feel the third stage of the sword dance with the tip of her fingers, it was almost in her grasp, she needed just a bit more efforts.
First however, she needed to calm down. The excitation from her progress and the annoyance towards her father wouldn't help her reach the third stage. She reached to the side and Myrtille placed a filled cup in her hand. She drank the warm and calming beverage before taking a deep breath to still her beating heart.
Soon, the cup was back into Myrtille's hands and Nessa was taking a stance in the room.
Getting to this point had been terribly hard for her. Even though she felt so close to the third stage, she wasn't sure that she would manage to step into it today or even this month. She had studied the old records earnestly but they were unclear. Catching the hidden meaning behind the words was a suffocating task.
The words themselves had nothing wrong with them and her ancestor tried his very best to convey how to use the technique but there was a fundamental barrier that no amount of words could transcend. It was the problem with the senses. Her ancestor put it in a way that made a lot of sense.
< When people try to explain to me the difference between the color green and the color yellow, it just makes me mad. Those that can see think that the difference is obvious but it's not, there are none to me.
Yellow is warmer and brighter they say but what does it mean? If I touch a yellow cloth with one hand and a green one with the other, they'll both be the exact same temperature. Yellow isn't warmer at all! What does brighter even mean to me? Do they really expect me to understand with that? Does it mean that there's more light getting to it or something? But light and dark are both the same to me, I feel like they're trying to make me angry on purpose.
There are some things in this world that people won't ever understand if they don't have it. You can't understand the feelings of others if you haven't experienced them yourself and the five senses are the same. Trying to make me understand colors is just meaningless, even if I got it, what would I do with the knowledge? Stop harassing me with your colors, if I can't feel it and I can't hear it then it doesn't really exist.
Wait, Clide, don't right the last part, it will make me sound idiotic. >
Well, clearly that Clide didn't listen but it was for the best. This was valuable insight from her ancestor too and she was glad that the whole rant had been written.
This explained her current problem perfectly.
The first stage of the royal sword dance could be done with a lot of practice and talent. The second stage could be reached with enough physical abilities too, one only needed speed and a stomach made of steel to endure the dizziness.
To master the second stage however, one needed to sense the music of world, explaining it in words wouldn't make sense for most. Either one got it like she did or they didn't. There was no possible shortcut and no amount of practice would ever let one experience the strange feeling she used to keep track of what was around her in that state.
Even that however didn't come close to the wall between the summit of the second stage and the third one.
Her ancestor tried his best to explain the steps and she memorized the whole thing by heart. He also had this Clide write down in great details the sensations he felt when in this third stage to help his house through it. Nessa read it all, understood the steps, reproduced the flow of magu described and imitated the described procedure perfectly but it failed every single time.
The problem wasn't with her talent or her technique, it was about her perception of the world around her. She had thought that perceiving the world as a single line was already quite special but despite her previous experience of changing the way in which she perceived everything, she still could not match what was told in the old transcription.
She needed to stop hearing the music of the battle but become it instead. She did not understand how this was possible or what it really meant and so however much she tried, she could never get it right.
As she saw from reading about the fourth stage, that one would be even harder. The words of the founder made no sense at all about the fourth stage. It was all gibberish even though he believed that this was the best way to explain it all to his descendants. His perception of the world was clearly apart from her own.
She did not get frustrated however and persevered. She had to master that no matter what and step into the third stage. No one had managed to do it since the founding ancestor and she had to do so now if she ever wanted to achieve her goal. If not, she would have to rely on Luck and she wasn't ready to leave her fate to the whims of a god. She was better than that, she could rely on herself and her own determination to get through this.
All she needed to do was to become the music, could it really be so hard? What did her ancestor mean?
< Once the music you can hear dies, the true melody can be uncovered. There's a certain serenity to the cycle unfolding around us. All comes to a standstill and every efforts I produce is absorbed into stillness. In an unmoving land, I dance, the movements lost to stillness. Once immersed into it properly, I feel as if the notes themselves assault my opponents. I do not know whether I'm moving or not, I only know that the dance isn't over yet. >
He spoke for pages and pages about this all but the key to what she was missing was right there in this one paragraph. She knew she was close and yet the solution escaped her.
How was she supposed to understand though?
As long as she didn't become the music herself, she would not understand what it meant just like how her ancestor would never understand colors without witnessing them. But how did one become something they could not understand or feel? The founder had done it so it must have been possible but how? What was the trick?
These days, most of her training time was spent pondering over this. She would let her body move on its own and loose herself in thoughts instead.
Looking outside, she stared at the old and pale sycamore in the garden. There was an ant running up its trunk and the wind gently shook its leaves. She stared at it intently while her body moved but she wasn't paying any attention to it. Her eyes were fixed on it but didn't see. She was much too absorbed in her problem to pay attention to the ancestor.
The answer was clearly not related to sight because the founder would not have mastered it. It couldn't be related to form either because even though she didn't have any living example, she had the impression that her movements were right. It could be about sounds, about her hearing but even though the text spoke about music a lot, it didn't mean it was really about that. It might have been like describing red as warm, it was just how the founder decided to explain the feeling.
It might be something else entirely. Nessa didn't know what she was looking for exactly, she only knew that she needed it and that she hadn't found it yet. To put it simply, she felt blind. It was ironic that her blind founder discovered the answer right away while she remained blind to it despite her perfect vision.
All the Hastings that tried to understand the third stage before her must have felt just like that, lost, blind and confused. How to surpass them? How to get past the wall?
The music dies, then the true melody shows, serenity in the cycle, stillness in the land and her body, all actions absorbed into nothingness. How does one dance while not moving? This was the part that bothered her the most. She was a dancer, that was how she grasped the previous two stages. Dancing without moving sounded just incoherent, completely absurd.
Feeling herself fall into the same trap she did everyday, she did her best to turn her thoughts around. She always ended up thinking about dancing without dancing and it didn't help her at all. She needed to change her thoughts and think about something else.
She kept practicing as her mind wandered here and there. Even though she felt so close to the answer, that final door didn't want to let her through. She didn't know how to silence the world and bring out the "true melody" as long as she couldn't she wouldn't go anywhere.
After a while of training, she took a brake and looked at the three outside. This time, an ant was running down its trunk instead of up, there was a tiny jumping spider too. She stared at the two insects in silence while she let the tiredness leave her.
She took another sip from the cup, exhaled profoundly and focused her mind again. She moved her body as it usually did and tried the dance again.
She heard her metal boots clank and scrape against the floor, felt her armored dress lift up from the speed of her spins and felt her weight slowly diminish as the world around her turned into a blur.
Everything in the room merged into an amorphous mass of disjointed colors and sounds blurred just the same. If she focused her mind on it, she would be able to direct herself in this world somewhat and feel the movements around her but she needed more.
She constructed the world around her in her head and moved according to it. She could point out the breathing of Myrtille, the wind through the leaves outside and her own feet against the ground. For the current her, the rest of the world didn't really exist, she couldn't see it nor hear it clearly, everything else was blurred.
She moved her internal magu across her body, letting it flood her brain and ease the pressure, her feet danced on their own to sustain the spins and her eyes glazed over.
The blades on her dress whistled in the air around her, her swords cut at nothing and her mind wandered on its own. How would she do it? Her heartbeat quickened along with her efforts while she pondered again.
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a scream she didn't hear clearly. The sound of her servant was blurred by the rotations. Then, she sensed something pierce through the air right towards her chest. She brandished her sword Lockstep on reflex and a spark lit up her blurred world.
She hit something that flew back away instantly. She didn't have the time to wonder about what it was because a second one rang an alarm in her head. Another whistle of the wind and another spark quickly followed. What was happening?
Myrtille's heart quickened and her distorted voice cried in alarm again. Meanwhile, Nessa focused her hearing and searched for the problem. There, another breathing, soft shoes faintly touching the ground, another heart, the note of steel ringing as a blade was drawn. Someone else was here and they weren't here for a friendly chat! Did they get in from the window? What were they after? Her life?
She felt her face burn in stress and sweat formed all over her body. She had never fought in an actual battle before, she didn't feel ready and was caught off guard.
She picked up speed and her world narrowed into a line just as the blade darted to her legs. She almost let out a shriek as she sent down her sword to block the attack. This didn't feel like a spar at all, the movements were the same but it just couldn't be compared.
The blade was repelled and flew back after a strong shock. The person in front of her wasn't nearly as strong or efficient as the people she used to spar with but they still felt scarier. She couldn't even see them because of all the spins. Was this how the founder always felt? Usually, she saw her opponent before she started spinning, she could tell who they were. This person didn't even present themselves, they just attacked.
What was she supposed to do?
The blade came back from a new angle and she adjusted her own while stepping forward. If she wanted to counterattack, she couldn't remain where she was or she risked cutting Myrtille. That was the only thing that wasn't thrown in confusion in her head right now.
The blade was repelled again but the moment she pushed it back, she felt something was wrong. The music changed, the ruffle of clothes, a deep sound like what Emp would make followed. It was a hammer. This time, she really shrieked, there was yet another person muffling their music!
She barely had the time to raise up both of her sword to resist the impact. She felt both of her arms go numb and her feet scratched along the floor with a wretched sound. The three weapons burst into a myriad of explosive clanks and the heavy hammer got pushed back.
Before she could regain her composure, she felt the sword darting towards her again, this time, it felt like it came seven times at once. She had never faced that sort of techniques before, she worried about her safety.
She pulled back her swords in an attempt to block the new attack but her weapons passed through those of the opponent like they weren't there.
What sort of trick was this?
Then she felt a blade try to puncture her armor, it made a scraping sound around her belly button and she felt the blade poke her armor all around her waist as it tried to find the gap.
She couldn't let them do as they pleased because if they managed to find an opening she'd get really injured. She extended her arm quickly and reached for the other person. She felt her blade tear through cloth and then leather but the other moved back quickly. At least the attack ceased.
!!!
She was naive and almost took another blow from the hammer. She barely had the time to drop towards the ground as the weapon flew over her head with a woosh and an ominous glow. Immediately after a loud bang thundered in the room and a powerful flash of light burst to fill her vision. She was lucky that she didn't need her eyes.
Instead, she needed to be faster! She needed to spin more quickly. This was bad, dangerous. She was too taken aback to think about the fight properly but if she didn't, she might die. The possibility alone made her fingers cramp around the hilt of her swords.
She had to go all out! No holding back!
She filled her lungs with air and brought her swords close to her body. Her blurred vision stretched to the sides into seemingly infinite lines. It made her feel sick so she closed her eyes. She wasn't wearing her helm because she was just training alone in her room. Even if she had been, she wouldn't have had the time to lower her visor.
Her two assailant didn't say a thing and a new set of attacks were launched her way. Using the sounds as landmarks, she pulled the hammer close to her and threw it back into the invading sword. All the while, she lunged forward with her sword Chassé but didn't catch anything. She only felt the outline of her opponents distort to dodge her form.
She stepped forward again, not a small reposition but a leap forward instead. Her dress tore through something but it barely slowed her down. It made a sound she didn't recognize clearly and the sound shape of her opponent crumbled. She had a hard time figuring out what happened to it in this land of only forward and back.
A third sound shape lunged from over the crumbling first and a new blade whistled towards her along with the hammer. How many were there exactly? How come she couldn't hear them properly before they attacked her?
She heard a loud cry of pain from the crumbled opponent and it distracted her enough to hide the next set of attacks form her senses. She had never heard that kind of wail before and the spins made it all the more unreal.
She felt a blade slide around her upper body and as she pushed it off, the hammer hit her sword hard. The angle was wrong and the shock was too heavy for her to hold it properly. Chassé flew away from her hand and disappeared from her world of sounds.
All her fingers felt so numb that she wasn't even sure they were still there. She brought her empty hand against her chest to reduce the air friction and protect it from further harm.
This still wasn't fast enough, at this rate she would die. She would die!
She moved her feet faster, her heart beat quicker, pounding like a war drum as her internal magu rushed wildly across her body.
The sounds followed the path of her vision. Now all sounds blurred together, melting into a constant line of sounds. She had never been spinning that fast. She was now absolutely unable to distinguish any sound from any other.
She stepped again and trusted Lockstep forward. She felt a hundred shock buzz through her arm and into her spine. The sounds didn't reach her however, all of it was too blurred, it was like the music she relied on had turned into a flat line.
A single continuous note, loud and overbearing had taken over the world, she was feeling as if her head was about to burst. She felt overwhelmed.
Yet, the hint of a smile crept up her face. In that desperate moment, she was hit with insight. It was like a divine intervention.
Her world was now empty, no light and no sound, the sound turned her deaf but one thing remained. Her frenzied heart was still beating, the only sound in the whole world. She could hear it pump blood into her veins.
This was the true melody underlying her world.
Everything had come to a standstill aside from herself.
She was the music, she had become it.
Moving her leg was pointless because in this world, there was no leg, same went for her arms.
Only blood existed here, hers and the enemy's.
She understood that she was moving but it didn't feel like it anymore, she was feeling as if she had gone past movements. Her head ceased to hurt, her legs ceased to burn from fatigue, her soundscape burst from the single point it had been reduced to into her room in full again went past the window and beyond the three.
She was the music and therefore, the sounds complied to her will. All of it was connected to her. She took a deep breath, she felt the world shiver from the movement of the air.
She opened her eyes and immediately saw the tree outside. It was fixed in the center of her sight. The world was a blur no more, it wasn't spinning anymore, she was still, the center of it all. Her body was still and yet, if she looked down, she could see that her dress still hung up in the air from the centrifugal force, all of its blades raised menacingly.
She glanced around the room. Myrtille was in a corner cowering in fright and three person stood in the room between her and the window. One was missing a leg and wailing on the ground, one was a man holding a hammer and the last a woman with a straight sword. All three wore green and grey clothes to move unnoticed, masks of cloth, bandages wrapped around their feet to make no sounds and leather armors concealed underneath it all.
The two still standing stared her with worried eyes, they did not understand why she suddenly stopped moving and her smile didn't reassure them.
Nessa was extremely nervous and even scared that people came here to try to murder her, it was the only explanation for their presence here after all. However, she was also drowning in the exhilarating feeling of achievement. She had done it, she could feel it in her bones and in her soul, this was the third stage. She was the first to experience this since the founding ancestors hundreds of years in the past!
The second stage was a transition, a cocoon, this was the true royal sword dance. A dance no one can follow but those who can feel the beat of the world itself.
Outside her chambers, she could already hear the knights getting agitated from the wails of pain they heard, they would soon be here to save her. She didn't really feel in any danger anymore however. She wanted to taste this new stage to the fullest. Her eagerness was overwhelming her fear.
She willed herself to move to the left yet her legs didn't budge an inch. Still, her feet slid across the stone floor, she felt like she was floating.
A pool of blood was spreading from the severed leg of the first assassin but when her feet came close to it, the blood fled from her path like a mice from a cat.
The other two assassin stepped back, they could not comprehend what they were seeing.
While they were frozen in stone, she ignored them and looked for her precious sword, she found it nailed into the wall.
Around her, every little sound felt connected into the same piece of divine art. All of it was combined into one yet magnificently distinct. There were no words to describe the feeling, the music she was following had transcended reality.
She extended her arm towards the sword. Her arm remained peacefully at her side but the sword snapped out of the wall and into her waiting fingers all the same. She didn't do anything special, she just picked up the sword, she could feel her arm do it even though her eyes told her otherwise.
Not that she was certain that her arm really moved either, she could feel it both extended towards the sword and lowered along her side at the same time. It felt as it it existed in two states at once, it was truly a mysterious feeling.
She turned back towards the two standing assassins and raised Lockstep to point at them. Her arm blurred as if shifting outside of reality but rose slowly into position nonetheless.
She could feel their heartbeats like her own, so quick, so bewildered.
"Since you came this far, won't you dance with me?" She asked them with a smile befitting a lady of her rank.
Her voice was strangely reverberating, not because of her room but because of the music, it was now melted into it, clear but alien in shape.
The two raised their weapons, Nessa could hear the shaking of the woman's arm.
They might try to flee but Nessa would not let them leave. Either they surrendered to the knights or they died to bring a first kill onto her hunting card. Their end was up to them.