That you loved me, you loved me still the same

I dreamt last night.

I am the most powerful man in the world.

When the time came for my apprenticeship, I was fifteen. My stepmother wanted a post for me in the crossbow regiments. My father would have none of it, and so I was thrown to the mercy of a distant member of the family that neither respected. He was Troaliss, and he was an heir of the Kumate Chorjish Iron Lion Legacy.

Troaliss tried to make me otherwise.

The first weapon I ever killed a man with was a rapier, delivered through the right ear. Since that time I've killed with many other weapons: daggers, bare hands, bows, tankards, words, spears, and shadows. Currently, I favor the naginata: unpretentious, and graceful in its use. But I still carry my rapier.

Cast adrift, an orphan of Kumate Chorjish, I've drifted through many styles of death. I fought with a buckler and a hatchet in blood-churned earth; I've fought in a fine mail shirt under the banner of various causes. I've flown my own banner - per pale sable and azure, a rose argent - and armies have marched under it.

There are more people trying to kill me than you'd imagine. My usual response is to shatter their weapon in their hand and offer them a chance to surrender. Some do.

I walk in the halls of power, like none of my kin before me. I speak in them, and the lords of this world listen to me. The echoes of my voice shake the world.

Osomo's Mistake, pt. 1

"I challenge you to a duel of honor."

I wanted to respond to that. Dueling is something I can do well - not as dangerously as a true Iron Lion, but as effectively anyways. This was my game.

Instead, I decided that trying not to suffocate underneath a thousand pounds of bricks and bystanders was a better idea.

As it turned out, it wasn't, because Osomo (Osomo!) decided to speak instead.

"I'll defend your honor for 250 in gold."

I wanted to respond to that. I decided that trying not to laugh instead was a better eidea.

A woman's voice, sounding not flustered enough to lose her haughty cool, answered him. "Does it look as if I carry that much in gold?"

(Osomo again. "Half?") "Fifty." ("Only fifty?")

Chitin pulled himself out of the pile, and I had a precious moment of sunlight and air before the pile caved in on me to fill his void.

It was enough time for the woman to finish speaking. I recognized the accent: Serpentine. "My bodyguard is-" (Osomo interrupted: "He's dying.") "You're a four-arm I know nothing about."

Osomo sighed. "Fifty now."

I heard leather slap and money jingle as a coinpurse got tossed. Then, with a hard push upwards, I mananged to pull myself up into a sitting position, with my head above the rubble. Just in time to see what happened next.

Osomo responded, as is his nature, in the usual fashion.

He stepped backwards and reached under his cloak, tossed his hooded head back, and pulled his arms back out with four of his custom-ordered crossbows.

Then he fired them all.

My eyes shifted, and for the first time I saw the circumstances. The woman was indeed lithene, and dressed well enough to be from Embassy City. Just in the background was Serpentine, lying face-down in a spreading pool of blood.

Most importantly was the challenger. His race was unimportant. What was important was his outfit:

Plate armor. At least six ribs on each side of the cuirass. Specialty work, in other words, and expensive enough that the owner inside was clearly Noblesse.

Nobody wears armor like that casually, not even in Cloudbirth. And nobody ever wears just plate armor. The plates are over full mail, and the mail goes over an inch-thick layer of felt. All of that is over a layer of silk.

The silk layer is for use after battles. When you have a spare moment, you grab the hems of the silk and padding and you yank them. This causes all the missiles that pincushion your armor to pop out.

Two of them hit ARMOR square in the chest - and harmlessly. One of them shattered on his armor.

The fourth bolt went wide, and I saw what was going to happen a split second before it hit a passer-by.

If it's any comfort, I don't think she felt any pain. It was a clean hit between the eyes, with one of the special quarrels that Osomo had gone to great pains to buy.

The shafts were filled with some chemical - naphtha resin, I think - that made them explode and burn on impact. Which it did, a split second before her corpse flew past me and knocked down what was left of the scaffolding.

Before I was buried under the rest of the scaffolding, I took a moment to sigh.

Prelude to Osomo's Mistake

Spring Eve, Water Eve

My companions and I had met up, cleaned up, and were departing to go our separate ways for the morning when abruptly the entire day turned into a disaster.

It actually was a disaster: a runaway cart came rampaging down the street, right towards a violently sick Chitin and myself. (He had made the mistake of drinking witch's brew, and for all his efforts couldn't keep his stomach down long enough to meld his soul.

(This probably won't be explained much more.

(These things usually aren't.)

I saw it coming and dodged into Chitin. Chitin saw me coming and dodged into the passers-by.

They saw several hundred pounds of muscle, meat, bone and spikes flying towards them and scattered, except for one. He was bodyslammed backwards by Chitin into what was behind him.

Unfortunately, that was a scaffolding, which promptly collapsed on all of us.

Amidst all the screaming, I heard somebody say the magic words:

"I challenge you to a duel of honor."

Learning my trade

There was an interlude during my apprenticeship that I will talk about another time, during which I did virtually nothing.

When it was over, I received what I remember as the first formal lesson of my apprenticeship. (Doubtless Troaliss would disagree, but we disagree on many things.)

Troaliss surprised me by waking up early. During this time, he had gone to the yard of a blacksmith, coming back with a large, quarter-inch-thick scrap of tempered steel.

He gave it to me with these words: "Fold it in half."

When I couldn't do it, he got pissed and called me a weakling.

He never did explain why he did that. Such is his nature; he usually didn't.

In hindsight, I understand.

The test was to see how quickly I could bend it, and thus how much he would have to catch me up with before the real training began. When I couldn't, he realized that what he was duty-bound as a master to do - instruct me as a student of the Kumate Chorjish Iron Lion Legacy - was never going to happen.

He could have sent me away then, judging me rightly unfit to be a Strong Studious Son of his Style, and continued looking for an apprentice.

He instead chose to teach me - as best he could - a style that could make me strong.

I did not carry on his Legacy. If I was ever asked my style, I would say that I was taught by a son of the Kumate Chorjish Iron Lion Legacy, but claim none as my own. I will never bend a quarter-inch plate of steel in half.

But I can defend myself. To some degree, this is the result of Troaliss teaching me.

It was the greatest act of kindness he ever did me.

It may also have been the only one.