Crisanta Knight: Protagonist Bound

CHAPTER 2 WE Meet Again-2

I glanced at my friend as she started to unpack the suitcase she’d dragged in. Unlike us, Blue was not a princess. Even so, she was still a Half-Legacy because someone in her family had experienced a fairytale and protagonist journey of their own. Blue’s older sister, Rachel Dieda, was the main character in question, though most people probably knew her as “Red” from Little Red Riding Hood.

Blue was just a baby when the whole thing with the wolf and trip to Grandma’s went down, but she had grown up with the story at the forefront of her mind. Not in the sense that she aspired to be like Red. Actually, it was the opposite. She absolutely hated the story that made her sister famous.

It wasn’t that Blue didn’t love Red, because she did. But the way Red had been so easily tricked, so gullible and defenseless, and so in need of someone to save her, sickened Blue. And I totally understood why.

I mean, come on, anybody who would mistake a talking wolf for his or her grandmother seriously needs to get it together.

Because of Red’s weakness and lack of admirable protagonist qualities, Blue spent her life striving to achieve something quite different. She wanted to be nothing like her sister—nothing like a damsel in distress. She wanted to be a hero.

This, sadly, was a dream that most of our teachers (particularly our headmistress, Lady Agnue) regularly tried to discourage.

Our school broke down its students into two separate categories: princesses and common female protagonists. The princesses were supposed to be princesses and nothing more. Meanwhile, the common protagonists had the option of either being damsels who got themselves into perilous situations that heroes had to save them from, serving as feisty sidekicks to boy protagonists, or winning the heart of a prince or other male main character. Being a hero, in short, was not even up for discussion. It was a career opportunity reserved for the male protagonists in our land. And the matter was sternly, cold-heartedly non-negotiable.

I have a few thousand things to say about that, but I’ll keep it to five words:

What a bunch of malarkey.

Blue’s feelings on the subject were equal to my own and, ever the gutsy one, she spent every day trying to defy the restrictions that people like her sister had always been bound by.

In my opinion, thus far she had been truly successful. She was one hundred percent nothing like Red. Honestly, the only thing the two had remotely in common was the fact that they were both nicknamed after the color of cloaks they constantly wore. Other than when she was asleep or at one of our school balls, Blue was never spotted without the powder-blue cloak that hung from her shoulders like a fashionable security blanket.

That, however, was where the sibling similarity ended.

Unlike Red, Blue was fearless, bold, and rebellious. She loved taking risks just to test her strength, which both physically and emotionally was unyielding. Above all else, she had devoted her life to becoming the fiercest of fighters. A big believer in the importance of warrior versatility, through a combination of her own self-teachings and the athletic electives our school offered its common protagonists, like Runaway Carriages 101 and Charm and Death, she’d become skilled in a myriad of combat forms. Sword fighting, archery, hand-to-hand combat, jousting—you name it, she’d mastered it.

But Blue’s favorite form of kick-buttery, by far, was her knife. Rather, her hunting knife. She usually kept several tiny throwing knives on her at all times, but the hunting knife she’d been given when she was eight years old was like an inanimate best friend. She almost always kept it in a sheath that hung from her belt. And she polished it constantly; despite how frequently she practiced with the weapon, it gleamed like new silver.

That was the knife we’d seen sail across the room minutes ago. And, as per usual, Blue was now wiping it off against her pants leg in preparation for returning it to its sheath.

SJ was not as fond of it—or the various other weapons Blue utilized—as I was. In her opinion, ladies did not play with knives, especially not in such close quarters. But this was precisely another reason why I loved having Blue around. While SJ’s princess decorum was habitually my norm fifty percent of the time, Blue’s warrior persona impacted my other half. The most obvious way she influenced me being in the area of combat.

I loved the challenge of combat practice as much as Blue did; however, before she’d come along, it had been quite difficult for me to find anybody to train with. None of the other princesses would’ve ever been caught near the practice fields where many of the common protagonists worked on their fighting skills. And even though they were usually very nice and relished any opportunity to practice, the common protagonists typically felt awkward fighting me because of my princess-ness.

Basically, it was a lose-lose situation no matter how you spun it.

That was why it worked out so well that Blue was probably the most skilled fighter in school, and that she did not feel awkward in the least coming at me with a knife . . . so as to push me to improve my skills, I mean.

Blue unpacked several new long blades and a fresh set of throwing knives. I grinned at the prospect of the training-related fun that awaited us in the days to come. Although Lady Agnue’s was far from my favorite place in the world, I felt happy to be back in this familiar room with my two very different, very best friends.

It was funny how well we worked together—them being so dissimilar and all. I mean, one aspired to be the model princess and the other to be a scrappy female hero. But, personality contrasts aside, it just felt right when we were together. We were like the Three Musketeers—the beauty, the brawn, and the—

Wait. What was I exactly?

Time passed quickly that first afternoon.

We spent most of it lounging around telling stories of our summer ventures. SJ gushed about the various upper level potions she’d successfully brewed in the basement of her castle without getting caught by her parents. And Blue was excited to talk about how she’d joined a pub fight club in her village and emerged as its summer champion.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much to tell when my time for sharing came along. My mother had kept me pretty close by her side all summer in the hopes that her example would rub off on me. And, truly, she also hadn’t wanted me to waste my days getting into mischief as SJ had predicted and as Blue had, well, suggested.

The sun finally began to set as half past five approached. We all knew what that meant—time to get ready for dinner.

Evening meals at this school were never anything but formal. Like, so formal that a normal utensil would have imploded self-consciously around the stunning silverware that set our tables.

The reason for this was that Lady Agnue’s used dinnertime as an unofficial class period to test its students. At the beginning of the meal, Lady Agnue would give announcements and usually some sort of little lecture. Then, throughout the meal, we were reminded and expected to employ formal eating etiquette (lest we want to be deducted marks from our overall class standing).

It made it a bit stressful to be honest, trying to remember what fork to use and which direction to pass the bread when your stomach was growling and your teachers were hovering over you like vultures with lipstick.

But I digress.

At least the food was something to look forward to, even if all the table-manners rubbish prevented me from eating as much of it as I would have liked. Furthermore, I did keep in mind that I had it pretty easy in comparison to Blue. We princesses were trained in this stuff since our sippy-cup days. So, even for a princess like me, having been raised around this royal, fancy-shmancy nonsense allowed me to adjust a lot quicker than the common protagonists who weren’t as accustomed to it.

My friends and I changed speedily and headed down the grand staircase toward the win-lose feeding situation.

When we arrived in the foyer I was struck by how quiet it was. The grand marble-tiled foyer, which had been bustling with activity just hours before, was now empty. The only sounds were my boots pounding against the floor and the subsequent echo they caused to bounce around the room’s redwood-sized pillars.

The three of us headed down the hall. Chatter and clinking glasses became more audible as we walked on. Soon enough, we reached the entrance to the dining room where the sounds were coming from.

Describing it as a dining room was a bit of an understatement. It was more of a massive banquet hall—five long tables on the right, and one long table on the far left elevated atop a stage for the teachers to watch and judge us from.

Tonight all the tables were draped in raspberry-colored silk tablecloths with sparkling silver runners down their centers. Interspersed across the tables were crystal candlesticks and bunches of white lilies that sat in tall, slender vases.

A warm glow from the dozens of candlestick chandeliers filled the air, their light reflecting off the flatware, glasses, and impeccable china. I practically had to squint in order to adjust to the shimmering light.

I didn’t know what the school staff planned on serving in the hall that evening, but food around here was usually fairly fantastic. And they typically went all out for the first dinner of the semester. Accordingly, thoughts of prime cuts of meat and freshly baked pies filled my head like glorious, hopeful daydreams. It seemed my stomach got overly excited by the imaginings though, because it growled super-loudly.

“Classy as ever, Crisa. Did you spend your summer with trolls?”

Perfect timing as always.

I turned around to address the source of the familiar venomous voice. Mauvrey Weatherall was standing behind me in a magenta peplum dress with black, sharp shoulder pads that matched her glittering dragon-scale necklace and equally harsh stilettos. Her arms were crossed, and her pale blue eyes were fixed in judgmental amusement.

“Or maybe you just spent your summer with Blue.” She smirked as she looked my friend up and down. “Same difference I suppose.”

Mauvrey’s usual posse stood behind her. This group consisted of two girls. First, there was Princess Jade—the oldest and least favorite daughter of, ironically, one of our realm’s most favorite underdog protagonists, Aladdin.

Jade’s younger brother and sister (twins Eva and Lawrence) were the sweetest and most humble kids, so I could never quite figure out why their so-thin-she-vanished-when-she-turned-sideways older sister was such a self-absorbed, self-entitled beauty queen. Nor could I figure out why in all the years I’d known her I had never given in to the urge to smack her across the face like she so justly deserved.

To sum up, Miss Jade was a shallow, conniving priss. And I (like so many other girls at school who she regularly tried to make feel inferior) really hated her. Even so, I still preferred her to the second member of Mauvrey’s entourage: Girtha Bobunk, the little sister of Hansel and Gretel Bobunk.

Little was a relative term by the way, considering that Big Girtha was massive. Like, seriously. Unlike her older siblings, I gathered starving to death was never an issue that she’d had to face growing up in the forest.

I rolled my eyes at my nemesis. “Very funny, Mauvrey. At least I eat like a normal person. Unlike Miss Size Negative-Four on your left.” I gestured to Jade. “And the teenage mountain range on your right.” I gestured at Girtha.