Using the power of her name and the good amount of money she had with her, Nessa made her way further north in the territory.
She took the time to find a carriage and hire a driver before she stopped the sword dance in the wagon. She was immediately overwhelmed when she stopped the flow of magu. She was assaulted by dizziness, all her senses got torn apart and she felt like she was about to vomit. Her head spun heavily and all her muscles were taken by continuous spasm she had no control over.
In less then a second after putting an end to the technique, she collapsed and lost consciousness.
She only woke up hours later and it still took three more of these long hours for her to feel good enough to sit upright in the wagon. She looked hungover and felt even worse. She was really good with alcohol so she was very rarely drunk but she could recognize the feeling and this was way worse than that.
Her whole body was in pain as if she rolled down the side of a mountain while monkeys threw rocks at her. Even after all this time she still felt like throwing up and was both parched and starved. At least her vision wasn't spinning anymore and the ringing she could hear was slowly dying down.
The technique had quite a violent backlash attached to it apparently. She now understood the consequences of using the third stage of the dance.
Her body would heat up a lot and deplete her water and strength. Her senses and consciousness were messed with so much it made her dizzy after the end and her muscles had to take on some incredible punishment.
Would practice make it easier on her or would it just worsen her current state?
One could never know with things like soul magic.
If this was the price to pay every time she needed to use it then it would be very difficult to make use of it for anything less than a desperate situation. Hopefully she could get used to it with practice and if not, she at least hoped that it would be easier to go through if she kept it up for a shorter amount of time.
There was a component of self-magic in that after all. It was a well known fact that the human body was heavily taxed by self-magic and using them for long periods of time could even result in death. Maybe she just felt so bad because she used it for way too long this time.
Whatever the case was, she would need to try it again to make sure and considering the state she fell into just now, she would have to try somewhere she could make sure she'd be safe.
Nowhere was absolutely safe however, there would always be a risk.
She couldn't just guess when and where trouble would find her. Even if she wanted to be as safe as possible and wait to be somewhere like in an inn to try, she could still get assaulted in the night. Someone had just tried to kill her after all and she didn't know who sent them. As long as she didn't know exactly, she would have to remain vigilant.
Thinking about the three that tried to kill her, she felt horrible about those too.
She had killed two people. It couldn't really be helped since they were there to do the same to her but she still took two lives. She knew she couldn't do otherwise but she still felt regret. The worst part wasn't even about how she sliced them up with her blade, it was how coldly she did it instead.
Instead of shrieking about cutting them up, she had just been surprised by how cleanly her swords passed through them. Instead of worrying about their lives, their families and what motivated them to do such a thing, she worried about becoming overconfident. Wasn't she just the worst?
Those were the thoughts that surpassed her will to hold back her lurching heart and had her throw up on the roadside. She had barely been able to hold on from how bad her body felt but those ideas just sent her over the edge anyway.
What was wrong with her head?
Those two guys died by her hand and she glided through the events with just a mild surprise and a warning to herself that she wasn't taking this seriously enough. If you do not panic in the least after ending the life of someone then of course you're not in your right mind!
She opened the hunting card in front of her to look at her hunting list. There were two men at the top, those were the only things on the first section of the card. Because of how easily she dispatched them, she feared they might have ended up in the second section left for the worthless prey along with the bug but it wasn't the case. She was thankful for that at least.
They probably got there because she would have been in deep trouble if she hadn't managed to understand the third stage when she did. She could have easily died at any point before that. In the end, those two men at least served a purpose. She understood that their spirit might not be pleased by this fact but at least it appeased her slightly.
Thinking that they might have died for nothing at all was pitiful after all. Even if they tried to kill her, some part of her felt bad for them. It comforted her a bit to know that at least they helped her reach the third stage and prove her abilities.
Thanks to them, she now knew how it felt to be in real danger, how it felt to take a life and now also had a proof of her growth. It was a bit strange that her first kill ended up being a man instead of a monster like she intended but the end result was the same.
Maybe it would be even better!
They'd say "Lady Hasting can shed human blood if need be. She's more reliable than a hunter."
Wouldn't it be great?
She tried to focus on that lone positive point to steer her mind away from the fact she took two lives.
It didn't work all that well but it somewhat helped to calm her down. She felt shocked at first but she wasn't tormented by the events.
Those two made some bad choices and would end up rooted somewhere in the forest around Folcourse. She had nothing to feel guilty about, she was responsible for their deaths but not for the decisions that led them there.
She tried her best to think about her future plans while the wagon brought her further from her home instead.
It was only two days after her departure that she found the occasion to test things out with the third stage of the sword dance. She had wanted to do it as soon as possible but civilization thinned sharply when travelling further north than Folcourse.
The further one went from the city, the higher the chances were of encountering warriors sent from the tribes-land. Because of that, villages were only established with enough people to defend themselves and only in places easily defensible.
Travelling in this region with only a few companions was incredibly dangerous despite the low density of monsters so she waited patiently for a good occasion. It was only in a village wedged between two cliffs crumbling into a desolation of jutting rocks that she found the time to try the third stage again.
The place was called Cliffton for obvious reasons, aside from the path leading to the gate, there was no way inside beside scaling the brittle rock cliffs. Even though the population wasn't that large, they built a strong stone gate with massive steel reinforced doors and a portcullis. A short wall was also erected all around the cliffs and lined with rows and rows of stakes pointing down to discourage anything and anyone from climbing them to get inside. Even without the stakes however, it would have been rather safe because whenever too much weight was applied on the slick rock wall, chunks of it would crack and fall off. Anything stupid enough to climb that would end up falling to their death onto a bed of jagged stones.
Nessa ranted a room in the inn of Cliffton and used it to try the third stage of the dance again.
The room had nothing special and far bellow in quality to what she was used to. It was small and the bed matched its size, a creaking dresser a small round bedside table and a worn out chair. The small table could be pulled towards the middle of the room to make it easier to use it as a tea table but one of its leg was a bit shorter than the others so it kept wobbling. She found even the wooden walls to be ugly, it felt like nobody cared about how depressing the room looked, there weren't even any decoration. Suffice to say, she was far from impressed with her accommodation which made the innkeeper rather nervous right from the get-go.
At least, if she pushed the furniture aside to one corner of the room, she had enough space to practice her dance. The ceiling wasn't tall enough for her to point her swords upward and her servants couldn't stay in the room when she practiced but aside from that it was fine.
In her first attempt at the inn, it took her a relatively long time to reproduce what she had done last time, she was still not familiar enough with the process of crossing from the second to the third stage. When she managed to do it, she looked around herself once to make sure everything was like the last time, she moved a few steps and then stopped the dance again.
She started feeling nauseous again and her stomach cried in hunger but it was much more manageable than last time. To her, this meant that the longer she stayed in that state, the worse she would feel afterwards. That third stage was exhausting because it was at least in part fueled by her own energy.
The magu seemed very greedy on what it consumed in exchange for this power. She wasn't unused to self-magic since she had practiced their use for a long time but there was a clear difference in scale between this technique and the usual spells she used.
Considering how she felt just from activating it for a moment and how she felt after using it such a long time the other day, she was starting to have a good grasp on how much it would take from her. Using it any longer than she did last time would be really bad for her health, she might have went close to destroying herself with it already.
To keep herself safe, she should limit the time she spent performing the third stage of the dance to maybe around ten minutes every time. She believed she could go up to almost an hour without it being life-threatening but she would definitely be unable to move for the rest of the day and probably get knocked out again from it.
Now she would have to see if she could improve that time limit with practice. She decided to remain in this small town for a few days to practice the dance thoroughly. She didn't choose to do this only because she was in a hurry to practice, she also did to find out how her father would react to her departure.
Because of her letter and the way he recently acted, she didn't know for sure what his answer would be. What she hoped for was that he'd grumble and ignore her for now. What she believed would happen instead was that he'd send a group of knights after her to escort her back.
If he gave them strict orders to take her back, she would not be able to get rid of them without a fight. She doubted she'd be able to outrun them either and even if she did, they'd get her once she stopped on the front-line. Since that was the case, there was no reason for her to rush, they'd catch up regardless of her efforts.
She didn't just stay there to wait and see what her faith would be however, she had already put her own plan into motion. She had realized this would happen the moment she left the city and so she tried her best to help herself.
As she moved out of Folcourse, she left behind some instruction to her few supporters. She asked them to do their best to move things behind the scene to make it so only knights that would take her side would be on the team sent to bring her back. If such a team was made, it would be rendered useless right away.
Her plan was to use the knights sent to bring her back as an escort to accompany her all the way north instead. Going alone was dangerous after all so she had hoped to twist this disadvantageous situation around and make it an advantage instead.
She only had little hope that it would work because her faction was still very disorganized and she didn't know how much they could really accomplish but she still had to at least try. It would have been much more efficient if she stayed herself to oversee the whole plan but she couldn't, she would have gotten caught right away.
So she would stay there and practice. If they came for her and forced her to go back then so be it.
The inn she stayed at had a rule about not wielding weapons inside the building but she ignored it. She was certain they would overlook her on account of her name. That sort of rule wasn't a big deal to break anyway.
She wore her armor and swung her swords. She spun and danced until she managed to step once more into the third stage of the dance. She practiced the different steps of the dance, she tested out her strength on some logs, compared her speed between this stage and the one before, asked Cherry and Myrtille to detail what they saw her do from the corridor and tested her endurance.
It took her the whole day because she made sure to take frequent brakes in between the training sessions. She couldn't let her eagerness cause problem to her health.
The most troublesome part about training this way was that she felt hungry the whole day long and kept ordering food to be brought to her room. It wasn't really the inn staff's job to make food all day but they did anyway since it was Nessa who asked.
She felt a bit bad to inconvenience the innkeeper's family like this but she was paying for all that food and she really needed that training. She was doing all this to improve the lives of everyone in the northern grove after all so they should put up with it for now. She only ordered six meals that afternoon even though she felt hungry for eight, they should have been thankful for that.
She didn't go for the two other meals because she had to wait a bit after each of those before resuming her training. Whenever she didn't, she ended up throwing up everything she ate. She tried it twice but it was just impossible after all. The burden on her body was just too heavy and she couldn't keep her meal.
The technique was truly exhausting and it's intensity had her almost swimming in sweat the whole day. She took a long bath to refresh herself before going to bed but still had trouble falling asleep because she felt her heart beating inside of her head instead of inside her chest.
Her two loyal servants worried about her health but she couldn't stop now. She had managed to reach deeper into the technique than anyone since the founder, she had to keep going. Even if she felt sick all the time, even if it felt so hard she had the impression that her arms where falling off, she just had to keep going further. She did not have the right to stop, she didn't have the leeway to relax. She couldn't say that the whole duchy counted on her because it would obviously be untrue but she believed in herself and the impact she could make.
She knew that she had the ability to make a difference for the better and that gave her the responsibility to help. She would be duchess and her people deserved a lord that did their best for them. That was her true feelings and she would not slack off just because no one was watching.
She woke up the next day just as tired as when she went to bed in the evening and resumed her training.
No knights came to bring her back that day either so she worked hard until nightfall and went to sleep the same as the previous day.
On the third day her training progressed enough that she felt like she had a good grasp on the technique and how to enter the third stage quickly. She also believed that activating it for just a short time wouldn't make her head hurt too strongly anymore.
If she had to rate the headache she felt two days ago in comparison to the headache she felt now that she got the hang of it, she would say that it was an eight out of ten before and a six out of ten now.
If she could really master all the aspects of the sword dance, it would probably go down further but she was learning by trial and error only. There was no one to teach her properly after all. For all she knew, she might be entirely wrong on how she was proceeding and interpreting the whole thing way off the mark. No one could tell, all she could really do was try to understand the words of her ancestor and follow what her guts told her was right.
She expected it would take her years to perfect the third stage, maybe it would take decades before she felt comfortable enough to attempt to reach the fourth. The only reason she was progressing fast now was because she was still so bad at handling this new stage and understood so little of it that anything was an improvement over how she currently was handling it. Getting two percent of its power was still double the one percent she had.
Her movements would only grow more fluid from now on, her technique more refined. She would grow more and more accustomed to it until she could spend hours in that special state without problems. Even if for now this sounded unrealistic even to herself, she would do her very best to achieve it.
She would do her best to understand all its intricacies, how to stand to best endure the power, what her movements looked like and what they really were, what she could and could not do, what was her senses deceiving her and what were things that were really happening, how to best use the strange sense of hearing and so on.
Every detail was important, if her right arm was off its mark by just an inch for example, the speed of the seventh step of the dance ended up much slower than the sixth and broke the pace of it all.
Finding the perfect position for each of her limb for every movement of the dance was a real hurdle however. She almost couldn't feel them at all while she was in the third stage and didn't know what was the right position in the first place. She had to do it over and over again by changing the position of every part of her body only slightly in between each test to find out what was best.
She had never done anything so challenging and abstract in her life before. The path ahead of her was daunting but she was greatly comforted by how even the slightest swing of her arm in that state made a devastating attack. Even if she butchered the dance, her movements should still be deadly to anyone standing in the way of her blades. She would only get in trouble in front of actual master of martial arts.
A sword master or a savage cursed-blood chieftain might be able to overpower her with their own clever tricks. She couldn't get conceited and believe that everyone would be as easy to beat as the three assassins sent after her.
When she woke up on the fourth day, she still felt incredibly tired because of her relentless efforts. She forced herself to get up and eat her breakfast.
The kids of the innkeeper worked hard with their mother in the kitchen to provide a decent meal to her and they brought it rather nervously. They were obviously getting tired as well. Being the host of a high noble was probably the most stressful thing a lowborn person could possibly do outside of being caught in a battle. She should probably leave sooner rather than later.
This made her think about the knights. By now, they should have caught up with her. Were they delayed by something or did her father just decide to let her do as she wanted in the end?
She decided to stay for three more days and if no one showed up after that, she would move on by herself.
This decision of hers also annoyed the driver she hired to bring her here because she was clearly wasting his time but she didn't feel bad for him either. He was being paid for his service so she should have the final say on how long she stayed in town.
As she waited for any sort of news to arrive, she kept training assiduously and kept asking for enough food to feed three persons everyday for herself.
After two more days of training she finally saw the signs of a group of knights arriving in town. There were five of them riding abreast and going directly towards the inn. She could hear their horses and their armors from her room in the inn.
She stopped her training to take a breather before they came to her. There was a slim chance they weren't here for her but considering how long she waited, she would find it absurd.
She wanted to take the time to let her dizziness leave her before she went to meet them but they didn't wait for her. They directly asked the innkeeper about her and made their way to her room. Since she heard them well in advance, she asked Cherry to heat some water for a herbal drink before they came. There was no way it would be ready in time but she would have something to entertain them with if they talked for long enough.
Not long after she gave the instructions, a few knocks were thrown upon her door.
"Lady Hasting? We're knights sent by the duke Hasting. Would you please receive us?"
She didn't recognize the voice but she didn't know every knight so it didn't bother her much.
"Of course, Myrtille, let them in."
Her servant opened the door for the five knights and they all lined up in front of her sitting self. With eight person in it, the room now felt extremely cramped and she only had one chair so the knights would be forced to stand even if she gave them tea.
This didn't seem to bother them too much however so she took the time to look at them properly. She knew three out of the five of them.
The two she didn't know must have entered knighthood while she was away in school because they didn't ring any bells at all. She ignored them for now and placed her attention on the three that she did know.
One of them was Alan Bluerose, he had been one of the knights who escorted her back home after she left the school. He dealt the finishing blow to the twin headed beetle for her. When she saw him, the first thing she thought was that her supporters failed their tasks but the next knight present had her think otherwise.
Lady knight Laurie, the daughter of sir Clarence, was there in high spirit. She probably wouldn't have been looking so joyous if she had intended to bring her back forcefully to her father. Either the nobles on her side managed to do what she requested or they only partially succeeded but one thing was for sure, Laurie had to be on her side.
The next one to be here was the renowned sir Mathis Dendourse. He was not of the same caliber as the powerful sir Clarence but he had fought in many battles on the border over the years, he was a reliable man and a senior of the knights of the kingdom. In all likelihood, he was the assigned leader of this small team of knights and she was fine with it. Like any good knight should be, he was tall and strong looking, he had a reliable facial expression and a few wrinkles around his eyes. Nessa remembered that whenever someone talked to him, deep trenches would suddenly appear across his forehead while he focused on the words. She had always thought it was endearing.
Everyone stood still and silent while they waited for her to speak. It was only right for the more highly ranked noble to speak first. She decided to address the three of them first since she knew who they were but didn't leave out the other two completely either.
"Sir Mathis, Lady Laurie, Sir Alan and the two sir knights I don't know, good afternoon to you all. I expected knights to come for me sooner. May I ask you what were your orders?"
"Good afternoon to you as well lady Hasting." The five of them bowed deeply.
Sir Mathis followed right away with the answer to her question.
"This small group I was put in charge of was tasked of retrieving you and bringing you back to Folcourse safely."
She nodded in understanding and kept her calm. By the way he answered and the expression of everyone here, there was probably more to it than what he said.
"I understand, in that case, what do you all intend to do and are all five of you in agreement?"
"Yes, we discussed it beforehand. I hope you will forgive our rudeness but we were thinking that our orders never specified how fast we had to bring back our lady. We were wandering if you'd perhaps like to go somewhere else first."
Nessa rejoiced in her heart. Those nobles in Folcourse did their job properly and managed to send some people who'd be helpful to her. To be honest, even though she left instructions, she didn't know if they would be able to do anything. Even herself didn't know which knights sided for her so she couldn't really expect them to find some for her in such a short time.
They surprisingly did and it made her very optimistic about what would follow in the future.
"I see." She answered with a bright smile. "I was thinking of going to the border and go help the knights and soldier defend against the tribes for a while. Would you five be willing to follow me and protect me over there?"
She also intended to ask many questions about why they were having so much trouble with the tribes but it would all come in time if she just went there to see for herself.
"We would be honored to be of help of course." Sir Mathis told her.
"Thank you, in that case, I'll be in your care."
This marked the final day she spent in Cliffton and she spent most of it listening to what had happened in Folcourse since she left a few days ago. The short of it was that the woman they caught alive hadn't spoken yet and her father was looking into sending a spell caster along with the torturer to expedite the process.
She also learned about the two men she didn't know by asking them directly. She was usually pretty good at remembering everyone in her family's service so it was bothering her to not know at all who those two were.
"I'm Noa Burncoat my lady." "And I'm Arlan Ponbranlant, at your service."
"Oh! I don't think I've ever met you two properly but I know of your fathers. Sir Burncoat was in charge of protecting the gate of the Poolburrow fortress for years until it was destroyed by the enemy. Sir Ponbranlant too fought hard, I heard he died in a savage skirmish to retake a hill. I am pleased to make your acquaintances. Please, do your best to keep me safe even though I'm selfishly going to a battlefield."
They all assured her they would and that she could rely on them. She acknowledged their answer with a nod and offered some tea to everyone. She listened to their reasons for being here while everyone drank peacefully in the cramped room.
The reason behind Laurie's presence was obvious but Nessa wanted to know why the other four had been chosen by her supporters to escort her. Alan for example was part of the group that had annoyed her so much before so she was wondering what changed his mind about her.
Interestingly, he said that he felt really guilty about that time. He hadn't taught anything good or bad about her at all, he just wanted to escort her back home as his orders were and did whatever the group leader Duncan asked of him. It was when she instantly overpowered the beetle as if it was nothing at all and spoke to him by name that he realized he had been unfair with her. He wanted to be allowed a second chance after disrupting her plans with the others last time.
As for he other three, their reasons were more political. Sir Mathis was in agreement with the speech she made in the great hall and believed her brother would never be strong enough to face the tribes, she was the best choice he had. He was the oldest here and had the opinion closest to her own.
Sir Noa had lost four brothers to the cursed-bloods and he felt deeply frustrated that the war was more a series of violent but sparse skirmishes than a real battle to put an end to it all. He was unsatisfied and wanted the duke to take this more seriously, since it wasn't the case, he felt that helping her out was the next best option. He was really only here for revenge and wanted an all out war with the tribes-land but she wasn't certain that his wish would come true like he wanted. She desired the best for the dukedom and an annihilation war was rarely the most efficient solution. He might just have his wish granted however if the tribes didn't stop pillaging and rampaging in the northern grove.
Sir Arlan was there because his uncle was part of her budding faction and her victory over her brother would let them crush the house of a rival Baron who was fervently in favor of her brother and who held the rights over an important section of river bordering their own territory. He seemed to have the worst reason to be here but it was really the easiest to understand, it helped a lot that he was honest with his desire. He was just here for the profit of his house and the house of his relatives. Because her victory meant his own, he was likely to do his best as long as she helped his uncle's river problem.
She would keep it all in mind to make sure her supporters were satisfied. She would still also have to look more into those that helped her up until now and those that waited the right moment to help her still. She should work hard on growing her influence in Folcourse but she was much more interested in seeing the border and the soldiers still fighting for now. She would come back to Folcourse soon enough, just a few letters here and there should work fine for now.
Nessa thought of such things as she left for the battlefield the next morning with the five knights in tow.