So many years ago, in a cottage built by two knights and a squire—with what little leisure time they had—Duke Aaron, still a young man in his twenties, was starting a fire.

  “Now, shall we indulge?” Aaron said. “What a quarry! And what a way to catch it. Has the duchy ever seen such a master hunter as I?”

  They had caught an elk. Aaron was perhaps the only knight in the duchy fine enough with a bow to hunt one.

  Lacking even herbs to flavor it, Aaron nonetheless prepared a haunch for roasting, driving a spit through it.

  Dame Elise wrinkled her face. As Aaron's junior knight, she was a few years younger. Many in the castle considered her the young duke’s handler.

  “Would you truly call anything about this hovel indulgent?” she asked. “We lack even chairs.”

  “Then we shall bring them next time. Sit on the floor; do you think you’ll always have comfortable seating while patrolling the northern wall?” Aaron asked.

  “I do not wish to spend my time away from the northern wall by imitating the struggles of the northern wall,” Elise said.

  “What say you, Fontaine?” Aaron asked. “Is this lodge not its own slice of heaven?”

  “I would not dare to object,” the young Fontaine said. He was eleven, and still a squire. Still quite unused to spending so much time out in the cold, he kept himself warm by playing with the hunting hound.

  Between the three of them and a dog, the cottage that would one day become Ailn’s was quite cramped.

  “That is how a polite child says no, Duke Aaron,” Elise said. She didn’t seem nearly as unhappy as she suggested, however. Elise had helped construct the cottage; and now she was helping Aaron prepare roasted elk. “Your mother has begged me to redirect your effort and industry toward more noble pursuits.”

  “What is more noble than catching your own meal?” Aaron asked.

  “The head of the eum-Creids not only does not need to catch their own meal,” Elise said with a click of her tongue, “but it is also a prodigious misuse of their time.”

  “Dame Elise, do you ever get as exhausted speaking your lectures as I do listening?”

  “...See if I help you ever again,” Elise snapped.

  Aaron just laughed as he set the spit to the fire. “I jest, Elise. I doubt I shall ever be the head of the family. So long as someone forces my mother to eat her vegetables, I believe that woman will be around ‘till the end of time.”

  The young Fontaine felt rather awkward to laugh at the Saintess Marianne’s expense, but Elise cracked a smile.

  At the time, it simply seemed the course of things that Aaron had a good relationship with his mother. Now that Fontaine was an old man, he understood what a blessing it was.

  “Don’t act a braggart to your fellow squires, Fontaine,” Aaron said, passing him a freshly roasted piece of meat, “even if the duke himself treated you to Varant’s grandest feast.”

  “Are we… we’re truly eating with our hands?” Elise clicked her tongue again, but seemed at ease to pinch off a piece herself.

  Taking a bite, Fontaine was shocked how good it was.

  “It’s fantastic, Your Grace,” Fontaine said, with wide eyes. Back then, the two knights found it funny he’d been so taken with unseasoned meat.

  But even to this day, Fontaine remembered the elk they had that afternoon as the tastiest meal he’d ever had.

  Now an old man, he longed more than ever to return to that time, even just to visit. If only he could see Aaron and Elise once more, he’d be tempted to give what little time remained in his life.

  For the young Fontaine, it was the last happy memory of his childhood; just a few months later Varant would find itself beset by a long era of misery. Saintess Marianne was grievously injured in battle, and Duke Aaron eum-Creid took on the headship of the family.

  Ailn and Sigurd’s duel had become the kind of spectacle the denizens of Varant always felt so deprived of.

  The shouts from the galleries were enthusiastic, the volume loud, and the seriousness of what was at stake had been almost entirely forgotten. The Order of the Azure Knights in particular had a strong emotional investment: almost all of them enjoyed seeing Ailn’s face clocked.

  That’s why they were currently panicking.

  ‘Break his nose, Your Highness!’

  ‘His Grace knows not what it means to be a knight!’

  ‘You can’t lose Your Highness! The knights believe in you!’

  Meanwhile, for the rest of the eum-Creid family watching on the mezzanine, the duel had become excruciatingly embarrassing.

  “The two of them look like sweating pigs!” Ennieux moaned. She was pulling rather nervously at her own hair, a habit she’d had to overcome as a child. “Who would ever accept either of those idiots as duke?!”

  “You shouldn’t say it so openly, mother,” Camille said. Her smile was rather thin-lipped as she patted her depressed brother on the back. “Though I do find it rather disgraceful for both to throw their swords. I cannot imagine why they would ever do that.”

  Renea’s face flushed a deep red. She had a sense of propriety almost as strong as Ennieux’s. And though she was relieved to see both her brothers had dropped their swords, the release of tension left her with ample room to fully embrace her rising mortification.

  Of course, she still hoped desperately Ailn would win, so she forced herself to watch.

  “That blow fractured Sigurd’s nose,” Sophie said, tugging at her sister’s sleeve insistently. “Do you see? You can see the crookedness.”

  “Y-yes, Sophie, I believe you’re right,” Renea made a squeamish face, and held her arm protectively.

  Sophie found it all very exciting. Her prediction had been completely wrong, but that only made the duel all the more captivating. Indeed, her eyes lit up like a child’s as—for the very first time—she felt the joy of witnessing an upset.

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  Down in the arena, Ailn was attempting to close out the duel.

  Sigurd had fallen for a classic trap: he’d only prepared diligently against an opponent who had prepared obsessively—and who had nothing left to lose but his life. Ailn’s efforts had been singular in focus: honed for one purpose, driven by an intensity that could only be sustained short-term.

  While Sigurd sparred more often, Ailn chose his opponents better—and enlisted Kylian to meticulously document Sigurd’s habits.

  Sigurd intensified an already difficult physical regimen across the board: doubling his laps and drills, refining his strikes, and even donning heavier armor in training. Ailn, meanwhile, focused on just two things: cutting down his ten-mile runtime and packing on at least fifteen pounds of muscle.

  If anything, Sigurd’s extra efforts had been counterproductive. Aimlessly increasing his sparring against weak opponents only gave Kylian more information; his workouts, while grueling, were ill-suited to the energy demands of the duel.

  And in the end, he hadn’t visualized the fight every single day like Ailn had.

  In Ailn’s mind, he faced an imaginary Sigurd again and again—before sleep, in his dreams, and even just after waking. He collected the prey from his traps, thinking about cornering Sigurd. He prepared his dinner, thinking about victory.

  Sigurd had trained like an exemplary knight—while Ailn had trained like a temporarily embarrassed champion.

  With a twist of his torso, Ailn, whose arms were around Sigurd’s neck, shoved his face into the dirt.

  “How’s that dirt taste, Sigurd?” Ailn asked. “I bet you thought… it was a metaphor.”

  “Want a title, do you…?!” Sigurd snarled out, trying to force himself out of Ailn’s near-decisive chokehold. “What the… hell… have you ever… done for this duchy?!”

  “Mad about it?” Despite his advantage, it also took Ailn tremendous effort to speak. He swung an elbow into Sigurd’s ribs. “Then… invent… democracy…!”

  Sigurd’s greatest weakness was perhaps his inability to ignore witless provocation. It was too critical a moment to waste energy, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from screaming in frustration.

  “Democracy?! Are you—” Sigurd screamed out. “For inheritance?!” He was apoplectic, and with a burst of energy managed to force Ailn’s arm off just enough to pull forward and slam his head back into Ailn’s face, the mild force augmented by holy aura. “Do you ever… think?!”

  It still wasn’t a particularly strong blow, but it was enough to give Sigurd a moment of distraction to use his newfound leverage. “Your ignorance surpasses even Sophie’s!” Sigurd yelled out, managing to grab a good foothold and throw Ailn’s weight forward.

  “Sophie’s—?!” Ailn balked. It was the first barb to get under his skin all fight. Distracted, Ailn failed to resist Sigurd’s throw overhead and slammed to the ground.

  Up in the mezzanine, the expression on the holy child’s face was looking rather dark.

  “They’re boors, Sophie,” Ennieux said lightly. “D-don’t take it to heart—eep!”

  Sophie let a small flash of holy aura burst over her palm. Consolidated, and therefore enough to kill a man, she spoke very quietly. “If both think me so ignorant, then I shall happily duel both of them when I’m of age.”

  “They both already gave their word they wouldn’t oppose you…” Renea said.

  “I wish to prove my merit,” Sophie said. “Why should I be blindly accepted as the head?”

  “Sophie, you can’t force them to duel you.” Renea was upset to see Sophie using her holy aura so frivolously. “You will become a duchess. Not a gladiator.”

  “... We shall see what the family charter says,” Sophie replied ominously.

  Unaware that their thoughtless words had inspired Sophie to a newfound respect for research, the two brothers below entered the last desperate phase of their contest: they were both exhausted, and knew they had to end it soon.

  "What do you know about rule?!" Sigurd bellowed, unleashing a furious, aura-charged punch aimed straight at Ailn's face. Ailn barely rolled out of the way, flinching as the force shattered the tiles beside him. "What do you know about leadership?!"

  “That one would’ve killed me…” Ailn muttered, his breath ragged, dodging another brutal swing. Beads of sweat ran down his face as the memory of the original Ailn’s death flashed through his mind.

  Ailn's earlier success had partly hinged on Sigurd's hesitation—the man didn’t actually want to kill his younger brother. The warnings Sigurd had continually given Ailn were proof enough: if he had really intended to kill, he wouldn’t have bothered.

  There was a stark difference between accepting death as a risk and persistently engaging with lethal intent.

  But now that Sigurd had seen Ailn’s skill for himself, that hesitation was gone. Holding back any longer would mean certain defeat.

  Ailn had hoped he could steal a win before Sigurd reached this level of commitment—and desperation.

  It was now or never.

  Both brothers scrambled to their feet, adopting striking stances.

  “What an unorthodox manner of pugilism…” Fontaine drawled. It had been far too long since he’d engaged in physical contests himself, yet he’d found with age his eyes only ever became sharper. “The young master’s stance is so narrow, so what empowers his strikes?”

  “It is ugly and unsightly,” Camille said. She turned away disdainfully, not even realizing she’d slipped into a grimace. “We are knights. Not knaves. Duels should be fought with swords.”

  “...I’ve warned you many times that a knight’s combat desires for more than just swordplay, Dame Camille,” Fontaine chided.

  Ennieux just stared at her daughter silently for a moment, having hardly seen her speak so emotionally. Then she recoiled at the notion of her daughter engaging in fists.

  “They teach you fisticuffs in the Order?!” Ennieux cried. “What if Camille were to lose a tooth from being struck across the face?”

  “...Quite right,” Camille said, sullenly glancing at Fontaine. “I would rather a blade’s scar across my face to display my honor, than proof I’ve engaged in the violence of curs.”

  “Camille!” Ennieux fumed. “You should not get injured at all!”

  Fontaine sighed, as Ennieux began angrily lecturing her daughter. Returning his attention to the fight, he wondered if the Order of the Azure Knights may need to revamp its combat curriculum.

  The young master Ailn kept his head in constant movement. The motion seemed erratic and haphazard, almost meandering. And yet His Highness Sigurd’s blows consistently missed with the narrowest of margins, and Ailn would always respond with a weak, timed strike from his left hand.

  Ailn’s movements, Fontaine realized, had an intentionally desultory appearance—meant to provoke Sigurd while simultaneously flummoxing him into mistakes.

  He had apparently found a way to predict when Sigurd would use the divine blessing, and take advantage. Whenever Sigurd manifested his aura, Ailn used the small opening to strike more fiercely, alternating between blows to Sigurd’s face and body.

  Seeing Ailn’s newfound confidence roused something in Fontaine’s heart.

  Truthfully, he had been baffled and somewhat disappointed to see the kind Ailn turn so ill-mannered and irreverent overnight. Even now, he felt an inexplicable sense of loss.

  But now Fontaine found himself in great admiration. It was not merely that the young master had gone and amply justified his swagger; Ailn's easygoing attitude struck a familiar note. There was something nostalgic about it.

  “Challenge me when you can carry the lives of the knights on your back!” Sigurd roared. After minutes floundering, he’d finally grazed Ailn’s chin enough to stagger him. “Aspire to dukedom when you learn what nobility truly means!”

  Ailn looked as if he were about to crumple. Then, imitating Sigurd’s earlier trick, he struck him with an unexpected uppercut.

  “Do you ever stop lecturing?!” Ailn shouted. He threw another quick left-hand, following this one with a right across his body.

  Up in the mezzanine, Fontaine's eyes widened. The young master’s choice of words now finally fully woke his long-dormant memory.

  Ailn reminded him of the old duke, his dearest friend… as he'd been before the tragedy of his mother's death.

  He was exactly like Aaron.

  In the arena below, Sigurd faltered from Ailn’s last set of punches, yet threw an unexpectedly fierce cross in almost immediate response.

  “Learn… what the name eum-Creid means!” Sigurd roared. Ailn staggered.

  Then, seeing this last chance for victory, Sigurd, legs weak and eyes still hazy, threw one final punch with all his might.

  Ailn timed a perfect counter, dodging the punch with such fine movement that Sigurd’s fist seemed to slip over his face. Then, he landed a destructive blow on his brother’s jaw.

  Sigurd fell to one knee.

  “Holy shit, Sigurd,” Ailn said, looking like he could barely stand himself. “Learn to shut the hell up.”

  …’Exactly’ like Aaron was perhaps an exaggeration.