From Ashtan Journal of Warcraft and Tactics, Valnuary I Edition
The yearly of Blades is always an event of high drama and high stakes, but this year's tourney was historically monumental. City gossip has already woven a hundred different descriptions of the events of the tourney, but this journal's readership is surely dissatisfied with the uneducated yarns of non-fighters. You wish to know what styles were used, how the battles progressed, and what decisive blows were struck. Be assured, the Journal was there, and every detail was carefully recorded. The routine list of tournament standings is published toward the end of this issue, as it is every month. This special segment contains a first-hand account of Princess Catarin deSangre's part in the most recent Tournament, exactly as it happened, from tournament correspondent Callisto Vereth.
Princess Issues Challenge in Tournament of Blades
ASHTAN - The opening ceremonies had ended. Jesters and clowns had finished their mock battles. Fighting masters had demonstrated their might in a crescendo of broken barrels, slashed straw dummies, shattered tiles, and punctured bullseyes. Cavalrymen had unhorsed each other in a series of jousts. It was time for the true business of the Tournament of Blades: the duels.
As the crowd slowly became quiet, the master of ceremonies bellowed his traditional invitation: "All ye who may wish to challenge, an ye are not yet inscribed upon the register, speak ye now! Who will test himself against the mightiest blades of Ashtan and beyond?"
With a sound like ringing crystal, a blinding light appeared in the air at the center of the great arena. The light slowly dimmed as it settled earthward, and as our vision returned we could see that it came from the tip of a golden staff, held aloft by a stately woman in a voluminous white robe. She faced the royal box with a stare of such intensity that even the king allowed his eyes to drop. "I will be tested, but not for your prize of gold and fame, men of Ashtan. I am Catarin deSangre, right Empress of Seleucar, I intend to crush the false rebellion caused by Castomira Brangwin, and when I win this tourney, King Tephicles, my prize shall not be gold or fame, but an army."
While the king reflected upon this unprecedented demand, one of his guests moved to the fore of the royal box. It was Lord Odysseus Rani, a supporter of Mycale who had fled to Ashtan in the wake of Catarin's original victory at King's Tomb. As a famed fighter, he had found favor in the king's court. And as a fighter, his favor was dependent solely upon his personal might, requiring him to continually assert his skill. "Your Imperial Highness," he called out to Catarin, "please accept my apology, for I cannot recognize you as my Empress. You have not been crowned. All your supporters are dead. And as you have entered the Tournament of Blades, where death duels are commonplace, I believe that you may shortly join them." With that, Lord Rani leaped from the royal box to the arena floor just below. He was not dressed in his battle armor, but his great broadsword was very much in evidence.
The master of ceremonies looked to the king for guidance, and at the king's small nod, cried out, "People of Ashtan! A special match! Between Lord Odysseus Rani of King's Field and Princess Catarin, of the Imperial House deSangre!" Raucous cheers rose from the massed spectators. Ashtan values nothing more than personal strength. Our readers are not all of Ashtan, and so I should explain what went unsaid that day: Should Catarin win against such a mighty foe, Ashtan would surely follow her to the ends of the earth. Should she fail, then surely she could not be worthy to rule at all. Such reasoning may sound foolish to philosophers, yet it is the Ashtanian way: a group is only as strong as its leader.
Lord Rani slowly advanced, without drawing his sword. As he strolled, he taunted the princess, saying, "It must be true that royal bloodlines gradually run to cretinism. You seem to have lost your native wit, your Highness. You are lost and helpless. You are without followers. Even if you fled in exile to Hashan, you would eventually be beheaded for your crimes."
"Crimes?" Catarin asked, half-horrified, half-amused.
"Every royal soul has crimes. The deaths of a thousand Seleucarian men can be laid at your hands, for your part in the city war."
"Not on Castomira's?"
Lord Rani stopped a scant three feet away from his delicate foe. "Castomira has won."
Catarin smiled sweetly, and swung the Staff of Nicator at Lord Rani's head. The ex-Knight batted it away with one gloved hand, but Catarin instantly followed his motion and bounced the other end off his kneecap, then struck him sharply in the forehead with the jeweled top of the Staff. The warrior reeled for a moment.
Catarin spun the staff in alternating circles, two to the right, one to the left, two to the right, then down to a ready position. The pattern was unmistakable to one of my experience: Sentaari staff style, Grove of Winds variant, Tykonos form. "Castomira faces a different challenge than the fragile butterfly who fled the city two months ago. I am Catarin deSangre of the Grove of Winds, Initiate of the Sentaari monks, and I will defeat her if I must shed my last drop of blood to do it!"
Lord Rani began to open his mouth, but Catarin cut him off. "I know, I know. 'You're about to.' Right? I've said what I need to." And with that, Catarin launched herself bodily at her opponent, spinning the Staff of Nicator in an alternate version of Willows Shaken by the Wind.
Editor's Note: For much of their history, the peaceful Sentaari monks used a number of edgeless weapons, including the staff and the cane. These weapons allowed them to defend themselves against attackers without killing them, while still letting them strike mighty blows in the defense of humanity, as during the Black Wave. However, during Castomira's occupation of Seleucar, her Royal Elites confiscated all weapons in the area of Imperial Seleucar, including those held by the monks of Judgment Mountain, then the headquarters of the Sentaari order. While his guildsmen were held under martial law, the Grandmaster of Flowers meditated for a month, then unveiled the unarmed art of Tekura, vowing that the Sentaari monks would never again be made helpless against evil. Combining Tekura with his pre-existing mastery of Kaido and Telepathy, the Grandmaster drove the Royal Elites from the area around the monastery. After the war, he disseminated the art to all the other monasteries. Within ten years, the armed arts had fallen into disuse. Within a hundred, they had been largely forgotten.
Drawing his sword, Lord Rani countered with a series of vertical ascending blocks. "Now we know where you disappeared to these past months. You were presumed dead. Are you aware that the succession has already been formally decided against you?"
As Lord Rani refused to back away from her attack, Catarin assumed a deep stance and went to the third level of the Grove of Winds style, "Willows in Rain Storm," striking rapid blows from above and below. Though he clearly meant to toy with her, Lord Rani took painful hits, and was forced to regain initiative with an artless but brutal swing of his sword. Catarin blocked the attack, but was driven backwards. At that point, I got a good look at her face, and realized that for all her brave words, she was teetering on the edge of panic. I suspect that she had never before fought for her life. The noise of the crowd was deafening.
"The child cannot be crowned until he is five years old! Tradition and law demand it. And until that happens, any decision can be reversed!"
Lord Rani assumed the fighting stance of the Eternal Capital style, unique to the Guild of Knights, and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his magical tattoos: a tower shield and a smith's hammer. "Make ready then."
Catarin threw off her robe, revealing the light and flexible summer war garb of the Sentaari monks. The shield and hammer were tattooed prominently on her arms as well. She touched the shield, invoking a sparkling aura of protection, and then planted the Staff of Nicator firmly on the ground. Her posture was similar to that of the Blue Dragon Prayer, from the Judgment Mountain Revised style, and I assumed the motion had the same purpose: to focus Kai energy and bring it to the limbs and chest, invigorating her for the battle to come.
Lord Rani used the classic opening attack. Touching his hammer tattoo briefly, he destroyed Catarin's protective shield, then struck out at chest level with his sword, hoping to run her through. Catarin blocked, then countered with the Tykonos form. The Sentaari staff forms are like chess openings: every possible counterattack is accounted for in the study of the form. Lord Rani was too experienced to be hit by the simplistic attacks of the low-level form, but seemingly could not penetrate its solid defensive motions. For a full minute, Catarin fought Lord Rani to a standstill with the traditional Tykonos form, until the warrior laughed and knocked her to the ground with a single mighty blow. The attack was so heavy that even blocked, it sent Catarin sprawling. "Bah!" he cried. "I should have expected no better from a barely-trained Sentaari initiate. How foolish of me to hope for a challenge."
The ex-Knight strode forward, intending to crush Catarin's guard with another stroke, but his blade was deflected by a rapidly erected magical shield. As Lord Rani broke the shield with a blast from his hammer tattoo, Catarin lunged through the harmless mystic sparks and jabbed the Staff of Nicator into Lord Rani's throat, forestalling his next attack. Immediately, she used another distinctive attack pattern, True Strike of the Live Oak, stabbing the Staff into the center of his chest. Slightly winded, Lord Rani brought his blade up to the defensive.
At the beginning of the fight, Catarin had been somewhat unsteady, wavering between too hesitant and too fierce a strategy. As Lord Rani threw up the famed "Seleucar hard defense," however, she seemed to gain her footing. I now know that Catarin learned to fight the Eternal Capital style while sparring with Damen Kephry, but at the time it was startling to watch her slip her staff into every seam in Lord Rani's defenses, scoring minor hit after minor hit. As Lord Rani's powerful defense began to fall apart, Catarin smoothly transitioned into the fifth form of the Grove of Winds variant, Gaital. Clearly Lord Rani had never seen that beautifully deceptive form, as his every counterattack simply led him to take another blow from the Staff of Nicator.
Even though she was not using the magical powers of the Staff of Nicator, it was clearly as heavy as steel, and its blows commensurately damaging. Its head, studded with divinely unbreakable gems, must have had the effect of a mace. As Catarin tired from the effort of spinning and swinging the Staff, her opponent showed the pain of a dozen bruises, and all his efforts at a deadly final blow had earned him only a single blood-red line along Catarin's pale forearm. This time it was Lord Rani who touched his shield tattoo, gaining a second of precious breathing time.
As Catarin smashed the shield with her own hammer tattoo, Lord Rani advanced on her, sword arm held behind him. Catarin moved in with another attack, aiming at the side of Lord Rani's neck. If successful, the strike might temporarily paralyze one side of his body. Lord Rani was too quick for her, however, and dodged the blow, then clamped his free hand around Catarin's neck and lifted her into the air.
Before Catarin could react, Lord Rani yelled aloud a spellword, and suddenly Catarin's face filled with agony. The thin cut on her forearm suddenly paled to white, as if her blood were being drawn back into her body, and a low hum filled the air with unnerving harmonies. The Staff of Nicator dropped from her hands as they involuntarily twitched in pain.
Almost all eyes, including those of this journalist, were riveted to the combat. However, reliable reports say that the king stood up at this point, with a troubled look on his face. He is rumored to have mouthed, "Necromancy?" One of his advisors, a prominent Occultist, spoke in his ear for a moment, and the king retook his seat, still unhappy.
For a long moment, the princess struggled to twist free of Lord Rani's rigid grip. At length, though her movements seemed to be growing weaker, she reached with one hand to her belt, withdrew a long knife, and plunged it into her captor's wrist once, then twice. At the second stab, Lord Rani violently wrenched his hand away, the knife stuck in his wrist. Immediately he swung his sword, intending to quickly decapitate his unarmed opponent. But Catarin was not moving away from him. Instead, she put one foot on his flexed knee and physically scrambled up his body, grabbing his head from behind and driving her forehead forcefully into his nose. Yet again, the warrior was sent staggering by the unexpected tenacity of his slender opponent.
Catarin herself staggered, and collapsed to her hands and knees atop the Staff of Nicator, rising to her feet only slowly with Staff in hand. And still she did not invoke the Staff's holy power, even though she had clearly demonstrated her mastery of it. Lord Rani, sensing a clear advantage, decided to make the kill, without mercy. He pointed his off-hand at Catarin, disregarding the knife that still protruded from his wrist. Dark magic swirled, and suddenly Catarin's legs were encased in separate blocks of ice, and the rest of her body sealed in a thick sheath of frost. Then, at last, he launched his final attack, the Eternal Capital technique known as Knight's Honor. After gathering power for seven seconds, the blow would penetrate any defense to behead its target . . . and Catarin was immobilized by the icy sheath.
Astonishingly, Lord Rani had underestimated his opponent yet again. Exhausted, beaten, drained of vital essence, and chilled to the bone, Catarin deSangre broke her upper body free of the ice with a mighty effort. By this time, the huge crowds were cheering only for her. For his use of evil magic, Lord Odysseus Rani had been condemned by the spectators; ironic, considering that many Occultists have grown to be well-loved competitors in the Tournament. Many thousands of voices shouted as one for Catarin to use the Staff of Nicator to seal her enemy away in a golden sphere, as Nicator had done to the King of Shallam four centuries ago.
As Lord Rani advanced, swinging his sword in advancing spirals, working up to the deadly and unblockable Knight's Honor, Catarin struck at the ice block around her legs. She succeeded only in splitting it in two. I felt despair. With each leg encased in solid ice, she could not possibly dodge Lord Rani's fatal blow. And then I was amazed. She simply stood in the path of Lord Rani's attack for three more seconds, watching the path of his blade, judging its motion . . . did she mean to use timing to deflect the critical strike? I'd seen the move before, and knew that the final blow would come too quickly to see, and would simply cleave through any weapon or shield held up to block it.
She made no attempt at deflection. Instead, a half-second before the end of the technique, she twisted her entire body into a knee-level kick, bringing twenty pounds of solid ice into direct contact with Lord Rani's knee. The ice shattered, almost masking the audible twisting crack of the knight's bones breaking and ligaments tearing. Lord Rani was master of his own body. Giving no sign of pain, he completed the Knight's Honor, sending his sword lightning-fast at the princess's neck. His ruined knee betrayed him, and the blade flashed high and wide of its target, severing only a lock of hair, which floated on the wind like a summer cloud.
Instantly, Catarin countered, desperation and innovation combining in an unheard-of stratagem. With the end of the Staff of Nicator, she struck Lord Rani's off-arm from below, snapping it up to shoulder height. In the same motion, she spun the Staff and struck the hilt of her knife where it jutted from Lord Rani's wrist, driving the point clean through his hand and into his throat.
With his hand pinned to his neck by Catarin's astounding attack, the dark knight stepped back, shock and horror in his eyes. His damaged knee buckled under his weight, and he twisted to the ground. When he instinctively threw out his hands to catch himself, he pulled the knife from his throat, bringing a pulsing spray of blood. Lord Odysseus Rani, oathbound to Castomira Brangwin and once of the Guild of Knights, spasmed, choked loudly on his own blood, and was still.
Then, and only then, did Catarin summon light and warmth from the Staff of Nicator. For a second, the Staff outshone the sun, and when the light faded, she was whole and strong again. And the King of Ashtan, Tephicles I, vaulted out of the royal box to bow before his imperial princess.
"Vitem et sanguinem," he cried, the legendary oath of eternal fealty. "Our blood and lives."
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