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Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 9:59 pm
Tonestue had spent most of her life fighting. She was a child of the Shadow Herd--even if you were a Dark Courtier, you fought like hell to survive. She'd fought to survive when she was born and her biological parents--whoever they were, she didn't remember them--abandoned her for no reason she knew of; she fought to survive her childhood and subsequent adolescence. She fought to keep her siblings alive, healthy, happy (or as happy as they could be) in the face of...well, in the face of childhood and adolescence in the Shadow Herd. But one fight she was particularly proud of was the fight to be a healer.
While all Arcturuses were born with the potential to dispense healing magic through their horn, it still had to be developed, like a muscle. And in the realm of healing, Tonestue was building up her muscle mass. It wasn't so long ago when she was still pregnant with Nile and Cerulean and she couldn't heal a broken bone. But now she could heal broken bones, cuts, scrapes, bruises, even deep gashes (although it took more effort--she was getting better, and she would be able to heal it all someday). She was getting stronger and stronger, and she was confident now that if there was a battle, she could dive into the thick of it to save the lives of her comrades.
But the army was big--probably bigger than the court, and if there was going to be a war, a single mare wasn't going to make much difference in saving lives (in pure numbers, of course--saving a few select officers would make a difference even if a dozen others fell). If she wanted to be effective, she needed help, and she knew exactly where to find it.
Exhibit one: her son, Nile. Nile had been drifting and aimless, content to just sit on the sidelines and joke with his cousin Nyctyr all the time rather than do an actual job. The boy needed discipline and guidance, and Tonestue intended to give that to him. Exhibit two, Dahlia, one of the results of the Damiana Incident. Dahlia had already joined the army, but that was just a bonus--it meant that she was already in the thick of it during a battle. She'd be in a perfect position to help Tonestue out. She'd asked her mother and gotten permission to crosstrain the arctara in the craft.
Now she stood in front of her "troops" and took a deep breath. "Time to learn how to use your natural abilities to your best advantage," she said. "Time to be Shadows."xx
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Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 9:17 pm
Well...it wasn't the worst use of his time he could think of, after all.
To be honest, Nile had never had much in the way of ambitions in the herd. His grandmothers were both powerful warriors, and his mother was a Chaos Duchess, but he'd never really been interested in pursuing either of those paths. To be a warrior was to be in danger, and to take orders from people that, if he was honest, he didn't entirely respect. He respected some of them, obviously--his grandmothers Azura and Retinadeath among them. But it was people like Osteocyte, to pick a random example, that he resented taking orders from, or that daft idiot Cranium, or that brown-noser Wolfbane. He didn't want to take orders from any of them, and he knew that as a rookie in the army, he'd have to take orders from all of them. Even the lowly Dark Knights would be above him in the hierarchy, and no, no, he just couldn't do that. Not at all. He didn't want that. So no, the army had never been an attractive option to him.
That left being a dark courtier, which wasn't entirely interesting. His mother had found a way to make it all work out for herself. She'd made a place for herself, gotten herself promoted to a duchess, the highest rank a courtier could get (without being the Queen or King, obviously). She had ambition. But she had a goal in life, and a drive and such, while Nile...eh, he'd never had any solid plans for his life. There wasn't anything in particular he wanted to do. He couldn't think of a niche for himself, and he didn't particularly want to apprentice himself to one of the other Chaos nobles.
But then his mother had stepped in, and dragged him out here to teach him how to heal with his horn. That...didn't sound like an entirely terrible option, to be honest. As a healer, he could boss soldiers around (maybe), bully them into actually taking care of themselves. Also, he respected his mother. He could take orders from her. And besides, it wasn't as if he was going to be alone. One of his friends, his cousin Dahlia, was there, too. How Mum had pulled that off was a mystery to him, since Dahlia was already a dark knight. How the heck had Mum managed to get Grandma to give up one of her knights? Heck, how had she manage to convince Dahlia? She wasn't exactly the "sit tight and let others do the fighting" kind of person...
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Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 9:23 pm
This sucked. This majorly, majorly, majorly sucked. This was awful and it was going to be sucky, and there was no way she wanted anything to do with this.
But orders were orders, and after bootcamp ("you mess up, I boot you out" camp) she had learned how to take orders from her superior officers, and yeah, this one had come from the Death General herself. You don't get to argue with Great-Grandma, she just wasn't arguable. She'd kick you and scream at you if you didn't follow orders, and she had quite a few experienced warriors that she could--and would--order to beat you up. That's how the army worked, and if you couldn't stand that, yeah, you had to get out and go slinking back to court. That wasn't Dahlia's idea of a good time. Her mother may have been a proper Lady, but Dahlia liked beating people up, quite frankly. She liked showing off her skill, and she loved the look on people's faces when they thought, oh, she's a pretty girl, of course I can take her in combat! Then nope, Dahlia's hoof to their face. Bam! The look on their faces was priceless, and that was why she had joined the army and put up with stupid superior officers and stupid, sucky orders all the time.
The Death General had told her that she wasn't going to be an all-around fighter anymore, or even a scout or anything. Nope. Apparently because she was part Arcturus, had the horn and everything, she was going to be a medic. A combat medic, Retinadeath had been quick to add, but yeah, a medic. Because of stupid, sucky genetics.
She wouldn't be alone, of course. One of her favorite cousins, Nile, would be there, too. He was their teacher, Tonestue's, son. She was the herd's lead healer, and now she and Nile were going to be...okay, they were going to be the herd's second and third healers, but seriously? Healing people? Fighting them was so much more satisfactory! And funny! Do not forget about funny.
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:33 pm
Tonestue sighed. This was what she had to deal with, huh? Nile and Dahlia. On the one hand, she had a young stallion with no ambition in a herd where the only rule of the day was "serve your ambition." There was a possibility that he'd learn a few tricks, get bored, and weasel his way out of it. He might not, he might surprise her, but he had been lazy for a long time, and laziness was a hard habit to kick. As for Dahlia? Well, she was violent. She enjoyed fighting, saw it as a chance to show off and to prove her superiority over people. Well, healing was hard work, and it wasn't very flashy, so she wasn't sure what either of her recruits were going to think of it.
But that didn't matter, because she was a Chaos Duchess, and she had the backing of some people even more powerful than she was. Tonestue paced in front of her "troops" and inspected them. Nile was flicking his tail aimlessly and staring off into space, while Dahlia was pawing at the ground and glaring sullenly at Tonestue. Well, that was as good a place as any to start. She might not like her place here or have any interest like Nile had, but at least Dahlia had had discipline drummed into her by a very unforgiving teacher. "Attention!" she barked, and was rewarded by Dahlia snapping to attention and her son snapping out of whatever fuzzy, fairy-lights daze he was living in. "You are here to learn the art of healing, because I cannot be everywhere. I cannot fix every problem in the herd, and when there are too many problems to fix, you delegate. You two are among the only Stars in this herd I can delegate the task of healing to! But first, you must be trained." She looked down her nose at Dahlia. "Dahlia, why were you chosen to learn this?"
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