>>5881207>>5881129>>5881017>>5880994>>5880942>>5880922“Raise it,” you say, setting you jaw.
“Ezreal…” your mother begins.
Her tone is warning, but you do not flinch at it. Even she seems to realize after a moment that it holds little weight, and you think you see some hurt and sadness in her eyes. To her, fifteen years may have been a brief time apart, but in that span you grew from a boy into a man… Current, ah, intimate complications aside. You may have let your anger with her go, but you still cannot be chastened or lectured by a voice you haven’t heard for half a lifetime.
“Atta boy!” says your father, apparently oblivious to the undercurrent off familial tension.
He strums out a rapid tune on his lute, the tempo making for most excellent battle music. Laskar Endingray, meanwhile, fastens the banner—a pennant, white on top and black on bottom—onto a knurled pole, and hefts it high. With your aid and—after a moment—that of your mother, he plants it.
“They’ve seen what we’re capable of,” Endingray notes quietly. “They’ll have prepared an appropriate counter.”
“IF they have one,” you reply.
“There IS no counter for RUDOLFOOOO!” your father belts out merrily.
You cringe a little—not just at your seventy-some year old father capering and twirling about like a man less than half his age, making eyes at your mother and your people’s priestess while strumming a diddy to his own derring-do… But because you haven’t yet CHSOEN a champion. A part of you think your father’s battle experience genuinely WILL make him uniquely suited to the task, but another part of you still remembers how feeble he was a few short weeks ago… And how aged he still is, even after your enchantments. Your mother, bless her heart, had to apply a soothing herbal poultice to him after his first battle to protect the moon-stone, so that he could sleep in spite of sort and aching muscles.
But who else? Muffins? He’s savagely strong—probably a little larger than a real lion by now, though it’s tough for you to be sure since you’ve never actually SEEN a lion in the wild. He’s also, well, strongly inclined to savagery—no tactical fighter, he. You can direct him, but only so far… Unless you join him? Would they even allow that? Or… Maybe if you were to mount him, or have your father do so? A knight on horseback is still ONE champion, isn’t he? Just… Astride a noble steed.
