History Literature / LoyalEnemies

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: They live in the same mountain region as the dwarves and enjoy beating in each other's skulls with those. They're not particularly smart or civilized, but live in a clan-like society and worship their anchestors, whom they throw into the lake they later take their water from or bath in. Before every major decision, like going to war, they ask for guidance from their Great Granddad, who may or may not exist. As the heroes find out after crashing that particular ceremony, the trolls are not beyond declaring that Great Granddad has gotten too full of himself.

* AttractiveBentGender: Invoked. When Shelena and Veres ready themselves to confront the virgin-eating [[BasiliskAndCockatrice basilisk]] terrorizing the dwarves, Veres magicks himself a whole body disguise as a woman. Shelena can't decide whether to be appalled or disgusted about the size of [[BuxomIsBetter certain assets]] Veres gives himself, but Veres is confident to be hot as hell. And he proves to be right when they are confronted by a thug who's so distracted by the aforementioned assets he completely disregards how Veres never bothers to change his voice.

* BuxomIsBetter: While Shelena is not exactly suffering from ACupAngst, she often remarks on how some of the women the party meets have bigger breasts and how those must be considered more attractive. [[{{Weredragon}} Gloom]] certainly seems to think so. When Shelena steals a set of clothes from the BigBad, she smugly asserts that the shirt is uncomfortably tight, meaning her assets are bigger -- and thus, better.

* FirstPersonSmartass: Shelena's narration is chock-full of smartass comments on everything and everyone. When she can't snark freely in the elven part of Ash Grove, it goes UpToEleven.

!'''This book contains examples of:'''

* AffectionateNickname: "Shel", Shelena's InSeriesNickname given to her by Veres, morphs into an AffectionateNickname over the course of the book, as they go from enemies to friends and eventually to OfficialCouple.

* RealityEnsues: PlayedForLaughs. When the heroes recover the [[AmplifierArtifact Staff]] of [[GreenThumb Fertility]], the elven king proves it's the real one by making a giant spruce grow in the middle of the throne room. It works, everybody cheers... And then they stop when they realize that, well, there's a giant spruce taking up most of the throne room and they'll have to remove it in the conventional way, then fix both the floor and the ceiling.

* SpoilerCover: A mild case: [[spoiler:the cover looks just a bit like that of a romance novel. Guess who becomes an OfficialCouple by the end.]]

* GoLookAtTheDistraction: When Shelena is injured by one of the wolf-ghoul hybrids that show up in Displacing and Veres wants to know what happened without Rest listening in, Shelena tells Rest to go down and get some potatoes out of the cellar, knowing he's hungry as hell.

* InsultOfEndearment: Shelena dubs Veres "the warlock" before she learns his name. Thing is, that's an in-universe insult as it implies charlatanry and Veres is a formally trained battle mage. The fact that he hates it at first only spurs Shelena on, though, and she continues to call him "warlock" even after they've become the OfficialCouple.

* GreenEyedEpiphany: Shelena [[LoveEpiphany realises she's in love]] with Veres in two parts, the second of which involves him kissing [[spoiler:his former lover-turned-villain Tairinn]]. Even though it was just for show, Shelena needles him for his reasons until he tells her that when you close your eyes, you can imagine you're kissing anyone, yes, even her. It makes her so happy she cannot deny her feeling any longer.

* HonorBeforeReason:
** One can question Shelena's decision to take home and try to heal the man who tried to kill her once already. However, she wants to finish their matters properly, and a knife in the back is not a proper way at all.
** Rest ''breathes'' this trope, his idea of honor being probably taken from some knight lore. First, he decides to take revenge on badass werewolf ActionGirl Shelena for supposedly "eating" his master, even though he ought to know that she could easily have him as a midnight snack. When later he and Shelena are captured by hired thugs, he decides to act as if Shelena of all people was a DamselInDistress, and refuses to abandon her even if he might save her by this. She endlessly curses him and calls him out on that, but Rest would not budge despite being scared out of his life.

* ActionGirl: Shelena is a werewolf and perfectly capable of killing in her wolf form. In human form, she's got better than average strength and reflexes and has actively trained for years to become a MasterSwordswoman, which she proves in a duel against [[spoiler:one of the mages who once tortured her]] in the book's final. She's also not too good to race a ghoul-werewolf hybrid through the woods or climb the city walls in her wolf form.
* ActionMom:
** Liara, when she is introduced, is already pregnant with her second child and still a working battle mage. Her husband occasionally tries to beg her to stop and think of herself, but gets shut down quickly, and Liara actively takes part in the final battle by wading in and sniping {{fireballs}} left, right and centre.
** The novella ''A Trap for a Necromancer'' reveals that Shelena herself, while perfectly fine with a peaceful life revolving mostly around doting on her baby son Roim, is and remains an ActionGirl when the situation asks for it. As long as she knows Roim to be safe, she's ready to go out and hunt for thieves and renegade necromancers.
* AdiposeRex: Shelena describes the elven king as only slightly chubby by human standards, but ridiculously overweight for an elf.

* AmazonBrigade: The dryads are a female-only OneGenderRace, which logically also applies to the army they send with the heroes into battle. Since the dryads are faster and more agile than most other races, they are the best archers around.

* TheApprentice: Thirteen-year-old Rest is apprenticed to battle mage Veres for the entirety of the book. This is mostly PlayedForLaughs, first when he tries to 'avenge' his master who he thinks was killed and eaten by [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] [[FirstPersonSmartass Shelena]] but has to use.. [[RunningGag creative methods]] due to his lack of any actual skills yet, then when he and Veres break half of Shelena's kitchen utensils while trying to teach Rest levitation. As it turns out, Rest has a history of being apprenticed to various masters and getting kicked out. Based on this Shelena questions his adequacy for becoming a mage, but both [[ParentalSubstitute Veres]] and Rest, especially Rest, are adamant that this time, it's going to work out just fine.

* BadPowersGoodPeople: {{Necromancy}}, especially dark necromancy, is considered one of the worst forms of magic, and it's bad enough to justify torturing people who are suspected of practicing it. Despite that, mages are requiered to know its practices to be able to identify it. [[MagicKnight Veres]] is a skilled necromancer, although he only practises so-called neutral necromancy and uses his skills to summon spirits of the dead, and only when he's confident that they wouldn't oppose it.
* TheBard: Hraik is a half-elf bard in one of the pubs in the town of Displacing. He's fiendishly intelligent and agile, being able to sing on without skipping a note when attacked by furious patrons, and is the only person to work out that Shelena is a werewolf without any explicit clues.

* BigEater: Battle mage Veres uses a long-term healing spell to heal himself after being beaten into a pulp at the start of the novel. The spell accelerates his metabolism and burns energy constantly, making him chronically hungry to the point that "Veres ate all our food" becomes a RunningGag in-story.
* BlueCollarWarlock: Mages put on robes and fancy hats only for special occasions. When your job is fighting monsters, practicality comes first and you don't want to stumble over the hem of your robe in an inopportune moment.

* TheCasanova: Gloom the [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragon]] likes to fashion himself a casanova and pretends to leave broken hearts behind everywhere. As it is, every dryad he tries his charms on snubs him and the one time he does manage to score, he can't even remember which sister he slept with and gets chased out of the house by an angry father.

* ChekhovsGunman: Tairinn is mentioned as Veres' [[TheLostLenore dead former girlfriend]], contributing to his DarkAndTroubledPast. [[spoiler:Turns out she's not nearly as dead as he thought. She faked her own death by werewolf after getting what she wanted from Veres -- his research on werewolves. She shows up again as part of the villain duo.]]

* DarkAndTroubledPast:
** Veres was a skilled, talented mage on the verge of handing in his thesis and becoming an archmage. Then the love of his life was suspected of being a crazy necromancer and he refused to be interrogated, believing her to be innocent. [[spoiler:He was tortured for information for days, left the prison as a functional cripple, was banished from the capital, had all of his possessions confiscated and his career thus ruined.]] To top it off, [[TheLostLenore his lover Tairinn was killed by a werewolf]] a week later. If not for his friend [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Gloom]], he'd probably have died right there and then. [[spoiler:The worst part? Tairinn wasn't innocent at all and never loved him, faking her own death.]]
** Werewolf Shelena has her share of bad memories. Among others, [[spoiler:her first child was lynched]], she had to leave a man she loved behind because he despised the wolf side of her and wanted her to kill it with an elixir, and she was once captured by an AxCrazy monster hunter and [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured for days]] before being left to die. That's not mentioning all the times she had to leave everything behind because people found out she's a werewolf.
** Rest, Veres' apprentice, [[ParentalAbandonment was thrown out of his home]] and by several masters he was apprenticed with, often for no good reason other than that they didn't want to feed another mouth anymore. Veres found him on the verge of dying from falling into the lake in the middle of winter beneath a flight of stairs, while his drunk father was about to beat him for falling in.
** Virra is a seven-year-old half-elf girl who, due to her clan who all have the killing touch, is being shunned by both elves and humans. She lost her family to vicious bird-reptile monsters and has been told so often that she's a monster and worth nothing that she's started to believe it.
* DarkSkinnedBlonde: Shelena has pale, blond hair and swarthy skin. This isn't remarked upon by anybody at all, though swarthy skin is noted to be trait of people from [[CrypticBackgroundReference the islands]]. She is, however, a werewolf, so it may be due to her not actually being human.
* DeadpanSnarker:
** Shelena won't miss any chance to snark, especially when she knows it will annoy someone.
---> '''Veres:''' Shelena, I'm telling you for the tenth time...\\
'''Shelena:''' You'd better think for the first.
** Or when she is snarking in [[FirstPersonSmartass her inner monologue]]:
---> He really might become a good battle mage in the future. After all, he was already quite good at running away from the monster looking as if he was gracing it by this.
** Veres, while generally -- unlike Shelena -- less prone to shooting anything that comes to his mind right out his mouth, also has his moments.
---> ''(After Shelena stomps on Gloom's tail, causing their task to be done with much ensuing hilarity)''\\
'''Veres:''' Indeed, you're just plain born to work together.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Sure, the independent mages are vastly underrepresented in the Council of Mages, but is this really a reason [[spoiler:to try to kill all court mages and bring the entire (working) system down?]]

* FaceHeelTurn: When the heroes find out who the evil guys are, [[spoiler:namely Tairinn, Veres' long-lost love, who immediately claims she's only been doing this for him and oh how she's missed him]], he falls for her charms all over again and joins them. He even comes down to Shelena's dungeon cell to gloat. [[spoiler:Subverted because while Veres puts on a convincing act, he only does that to find out what they're planning and to have enough time to free Shelena.]]

* FirstPersonSmartass: Shelena's narration is chocke full of smartass comments on everything and everyone. When she can't snark freely in the elven part of Ash Grove, it goes UpToEleven.

* GoodParents: ''A Trap for a Necromancer'' reveals that [[spoiler:Shelena and Veres]] do indeed have a child and both are shown to be doting parents, though a bit quirky in the latter's case. Roim is always safe, fed and showered with love, and even though [[spoiler:Shelena]] occasionally reminds herself to not be overbearing, she just can't help adoring her son.

* HasAType: Shelena can't stop swearing that TallDarkAndHandsome (that is, in a pinch, [[FoeRomanceSubtext her so-called mortal enemy]] monster hunter Veres) is [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial MOST CERTAINLY NOT]] her type. The light, strong and manly kind is, supposedly. Guess who becomes the OfficialCouple by the end of the book.

* HypercompetentSidekick: Shelena works for a herbalist. She says once or twice that many of the man's mixtures are either a placebo or actually mildly harmful, and her werewolf senses let her make brews that ''actually'' work. Townsfolk has caught on to that and Shelena makes extra profit from selling her products on the side. Whenever the herbalist decides to threaten her about any of that, she points out that he's paying her peanuts and threatens to leave, taking half the customers with her.
* IneptMage: Rest is still an apprentice (and TheKlutz at that), who actually forgets how to use his magic in situations when it might come in handy and is so insecure about it when he ''does'' use it, that it comes out too forceful and everything goes heads over bucket.
* InSeriesNickname: Shel for Shelena. Veres, upon finding out her name, immediately takes to calling her that. She hates it, [[spoiler:especially because that's what her former lover did, the one who couldn't accept her wholly]], but it catches on and [[{{Weredragon}} Gloom]] and even [[LittleMissBadass Virra]] try to use it as well. Shelena shuts both of them up quickly, but never manages to teach Veres to stop that and over time it become an AffectionateNickname as the two of them become friends and eventually the OfficialCouple.

* KilledOffscreen:
** Virra's sister Danka is found to have been killed by one of the bird-reptile monsters the heroes thought to just have successfully fought off. As a non-combatant, she'd been hiding in a corner and everyone thought her safe there.
** When the final battle is over and it looks like a completely happy ending, battle mage Liara's corpse is dug up from the ruins of the villain's castle. She must've not gotten out fast enough when the retreat was announced.

* LittleMissBadass: Virra is a seven-year-old half-elf girl. She is, however, a great archer, a KnifeNut in training and a member of [[spoiler:an elven clan gifted with the killing touch]]. She manages to take out a skilled, much, much older elven master mage, dozens of vicious bird-reptile monsters and a barely visible giant werewolf-bear hybrid, all while looking and behaving like a sweet child.
* TheLostLenore: Tairinn was Veres' girlfriend and they were madly in love with each other until he was arrested for TakingTheHeat for something he believed she could not possibly have done. A week later she was killed by a werewolf. He became a monster hunter and a fervent hater of werewolves because of that and even calls her name when he's raving in fever years later. [[spoiler:Too bad she never loved him, feigned her own death, the werewolf was her accomplice, and she's the villain of the story.]]

* MagicKnight: Veres feels comfortable with both his magic and his sword, and uses both to deadly effect. It's implied that most monster hunters are {{Magic Knight}}s, as even if one of their talents won't work on a [[OurMonstersAreDifferent darkling]], the other will, and they need the extra reflexes and HealingFactor magic gives them.

* MeaningfulName:
** Shelena at one point snarks that Gloom must be named thus because of his pessimistic character. But no, turns out that apart from breathing fire, Gloom can also breath a black, fog-like substance Veres calls "the Darkness".
** Veres is short for "veresk", the Russian word for "heather". The dryads call Veres "Heather's Whisper". For them, the heather is a symbol of death and the otherworld due to its tendency to grow on barrows found near old battlefields. Yes, Veres likes to claim he's a battle mage, and he is, but as it turns out he's first and foremost a necromancer.

* NatureSpirit: The dryads are a OneGenderRace of nature spirits living in the dryad half of Ash Grove ("ash" as in the ash tree). They basically function like any normal kingdom, with a chosen dryad acting as TheHighQueen and their army being an Amazon Brigade, but due to their small population they share a spy agency with the elves next door. There's a wide-spread assumption that killing the tree a dryad uses as her home kills the dryad, but as protagonist Shelena explains, that just mightily annoys the dryad, who can just move into another tree but is likely to make life rather unpleasant for the perpetrator.

* NotDistractedByTheSexy: Since Shelena [[ShapeshiftingExcludesClothing has to shed her clothes before transforming]], she ends up running around completely naked in front of Veres and Rest several times. She notes how Veres stoically ignores that fact while Rest, being a teenage boy, [[DistractedByTheSexy has some trouble doing so]].
* NothingButSkinAndBones: Played seriously ''and'' [[PlayedForLaughs for laughs]] with Veres, who becomes nothing but skin and bones after being beaten almost to death and taking weeks to recuperate enough to even be able to eat on his own. Additionally, he uses a long-term healing spell on himself that [[HyperactiveMetabolism accelerates his metabolism]], turning him into a BigEater and creating a RunningGag where Veres eats all the party's food without ever looking any better. The spell wears off towards the end of the book, culminating in Shelena's assessment that [[LoveEpiphany he ain't all that skinny anymore]].
* NotSoStoic: Veres usually never lets himself be provoked to anything more than a deadpan snark on the side but proves to be not entirely immune when Shelena decides she's in a bad enough mood to ignore any warnings and digs around inVeres' past, laughing to his face. She earns a not so stoic fist to the face.
* OlderThanTheyLook:
** Shelena casually mentions being at least twice as old as she looks, which is somewhere in her thirties. Justified as she is a werewolf.
** Mages in this book can, through the help of magic, live up to two hundred years but look much younger than that. Shelena does the maths and comes to the conclusion that battle mage Veres is probably about the same age as her if not older, but also looks about the same age as she does.
* OneGenderRace: Dryads are a females only race, leading to their ruler being TheHighQueen and their army an AmazonBrigade. It's not really explored how new dryads are born, but seeing how they're {{Nature Spirit}}s, they probably don't need men.

* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: They're called gnomes, but technically, dwarves is what they are. They have a very detailed family structure and are organized in clans, considering relatives as "close" up to the tenth degree. They are known as merchants and great craftsmen, especially when it comes to metalwork and gems, and for their alcoholic brews, which they love. Not huge fans of trolls, with whom they enjoy bashing in each other's skulls for recreation.
* OurElvesAreBetter: The elves of Ash Grove are pointy-eared humanoids who can interbreed with humans. They're usually slimmer-built, stronger, more agile and longer-lived than humans and are [[CantArgueWithElves absolutely convinced of their superiority]] over other races, a sentiment that said other races don't really share, calling the elves derogatively "the pointy-eared ones". Those living in Ash Grove utilize some kind of nature magic centered around an artefact known as the Staff of Fertility to make their city look like it grew naturally.

* ParentalSubstitute: Rest spent most of his life as a poor kid nobody wanted to take care of and constantly kicked out of every apprenticeship he tried. Then Veres came, said that the boy had a magic gift and took him on as his apprentice. At the end of the story, another wizard mistakes them for family and Rest proudly answers that they might not be, but Veres is like a father to him.

* PregnantBadass: Liara is pregnant with her second child and an asskicking battle mage. Her husband tries to make her stay at home at least until the child is born but she insists on fighting, and the fact that she's expecting doesn't slow her down in the slightest. [[spoiler:Deconstructed when she dies in the final battle, buried under the ruined wall. The child, obviously, dies with her, and her grieving husband promises to himself that his living daughter will not become a mage under any circumstances.]]

* SecretSecretKeeper: Bard Hraik has figured out that Shelena's a werewolf, but keeps it to himself, as he likes her and doesn't want to see her lynched. She doesn't realize that until he alludes to it in one of his songs.

* TallDarkAndHandsome: [[MagicKnight Veres]] is, according to Shelena, dark (black hair, olive skin) and tall but [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial decidedly not handsome]] as she's [[HasAType not attracted to this type of men]]. After spending a lot of time together and Veres healing after being beaten almost to death, though, Shelena [[LoveEpiphany has to admit]] that he ain't all that skinny anymore and most certainly handsome. He even turns out to be a match for [[FirstPersonSmartass Shelena]] [[TallDarkAndSnarky in snarkiness]].

* TheVamp: [[spoiler:Tairinn.]] The only reason she approached Veres, slept with him and generally played his girlfriend was to get her hands on [[spoiler:his writings about werewolves and their origins and magical capabilities]], secretly laughing about Veres' moral integrity. It worked because of her innocent, alluring dark-haired looks. After having [[spoiler:latched onto another man and faked her own death]], she tries that shtick on Veres ''again'' in the finale, because she still hasn't figured out everything insinuated by his thesis, using her sex appeal to lure him to her side. [[spoiler:This time, though, Veres sees through it.]]

* InsultOfEndearment: Shelena dubs Veres "the sorcerer" before she learns his name. Thing is, that's an in-universe insult as it implies charlatanry and Veres is a formally trained battle mage. The fact that he hates it at first only spurs Shelena on, though, and she continues to call him "sorcerer" even after they've become the OfficialCouple.

* CoversAlwaysLie: Zig-zagged. The cover shows Shelena, Veres and their weaponry as they were described in the book, although it gets Shelena's age and skin tone wrong, as it does Veres'. That's probably one of the only cases where the foreign edition (Polish in this case) got the cover more true to the book than original, as it shows Shelena with olive skin.

* TransformationHorror: [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Shelena]] describes her transformation from human to wolf and back as non-painful but horrifying to look at, as her bones have to change their structure and function and all of this happens in the open. She likens it to watching someone being turned inside out. Rest doesn't manage to look away quickly enough the first time she transforms in his presence and has to make a dash for the nearest bushes to vomit up his breakfast.

* FakeOutMakeOut: While they are investigating Lliotarel's chamber, Shelena notices that they are being watched and immediately drags Veres onto the bed and pretends to kiss and undress him. She counts on the observer to assume there was some residue of the love potion someone planted in Lliotarel's secret food stash, which Veres immediately sampled. Veres is alternately freaked out and angry as he's got a hard time believing it's not just another one of Shelena's games until he finally catches on.

* RedHerring: [[spoiler:The mayor of Displacing]] is suggested to be more than meets the eye - among others, there are subtle hints that he might be a [[spoiler:werewolf]]. Whether he is or not is never resolved, and after the team leaves Displacing, he's never mentioned again.

* MyInstinctsAreShowing: Werewolf Shelena has to constantly fight her wolf instinct to growl when in danger while she's in her human form and among people. She lets it run freely when alone or with her companions, bus as Veres points out, she becomes careless and lets her claws and teeth come out a couple of times without meaning to.

* MagicMushroom: During their stay with the [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]], the party are presented with a pot of pickled fly agarics. Suspicious that the trolls are trying to pull something funny -- also, the stuff looks disgusting -- , Shelena declares that since Veres is [[BigEater always hungry]], he may have the entire pot. Eating it all makes him so sleepy, he cannot attend the trolls' grand spirit ceremony, but scrashes it midway behaving like he's either possessed or hallucinating. Turns out, the trolls never meant to poison the heroes. Instead, fly agaric is a rare delicacy for them and that was the last pot their leader had stashed away and it wouldn't have had any major effects has Veres not eaten the entire pot.