The sun was highest in the sky when the midday bell rang. The clock towering into the sky looked much like the one stationed in Hildenfreide. This bell, like that one, was also a magical construct from the god of time. However, this particular one was much larger and more intricate in its design. It made the one back home look crude and vestigial.

There were nearly fifty servants on The Duke’s estate—the majority being women of varying ages—going about their daily chores and tasks. Some were indentured, whereas others were there by choice, but all preferred it on the estate as opposed to the struggle of living in the city.

After drawing him a bath and fitting him and fine garments, a few of the younger maidservants wouldn’t let up. Bringing Azriel from place to place, he was convinced that, by noon, the young maidservants had toured him through every nook and cranny of the estate. However, Azriel didn’t mind too much; he was pleased to have had the chance to fully take in the scenery and architecture. He was also quite fascinated by the magical lightbulbs that lit every inch of the manor in vibrant white light, the emanations of which gave the rooms, in where the lights hung, a sort of natural coloration, redolent of the sun.

The infatuated girls then led Azriel out to the courtyard where his eyes had stopped upon something that stole his attention—someone who stole his attention—a boy who couldn’t have been much older than Azriel standing inside a circle of dirt, presumably where the grass had been trampled a bit too much.

The boy’s hair was blond like Azriel’s, but significantly different was his face. Where Azriel’s face had a very pronounced Nubinese structure, the boy’s was rather Azurian. He was half a foot shorter than Azriel—a normal height for someone his age—and held in hand a sword made of steel, perfect for his size.

The handmaids tried recapturing Azriel’s attention with a flower garden, but he ignored them. He approached the boy, watching him practice swinging his sword through the open air. Because of who he was, he could not accurately pass judgment on the quality of the boy’s skill. Even had he had a frame of reference, it would have been, to him, like trying to compare a red ant to a black ant.

Approaching the boy, Azriel broke the boy’s concentration causing him to let out an angered moan. Before he could get any closer, the boy turned and indignantly walked away, muttering curses as he left.

Azriel was unsure as to what he could’ve wrongly done or even if he had done something to upset the boy.

He had the sense that that boy was not like the other staff there on the estate. His clothing was unique to the others who wore one of two gendered uniforms. It looked very fanciful and expensive.

One of the entranced maidservants grabbed Azriel to drag him away, leaving him to speculate about the boy’s relation to The Duke. The smiling girl brought him over to a small garden pond and began explaining what kind of fish were in it.

“-Does,” he cut her off, “Does the duke have a son?”

The maidservants all went quiet with their smiles evaporating as though Azriel had stumbled upon a forbidden subject. A few seconds of silence passed, then one of the older girls opened her mouth and spoke in a quiet voice.

“The Duke had a son. His son died to a griffin, and the son’s wife jumped from a window shortly after. They say she did it thinking that they would be reunited in heaven.”

Another girl whispered, “And she did it despite having a seven-year-old son who would be left with nobody.”

Azriel hadn’t conceived of the possibility that someone may be willing to take their own life, commit suicide. The idea of choosing to die of your own volition, risking returning to that place, seemed like a ridiculous, idiotic choice to make.

“That’s terrible. I didn’t know she did that,” whispered another.

Azriel putting two and two together, realized that the boy in the courtyard was The Duke’s grandson, meaning he may’ve accidentally broken his father’s first rule again. He knew he would need to be more careful around the boy to not upset him in the future.

***

The clocktower rang again at five o’clock when the maids were corralled into the manor, Azriel among them. Led down through a hallway and into a dining room, he looked at the astonishing scene before him. The most food he had ever seen in his life sat on platters upon platters atop the longest table he had ever seen in his life.

In each seat rested nobility from around the region, with the head of the table, Duke Tobias prepared to consume his apportionment of the delectable feast. In the chair beside him was his grandson, who looked distant from the people all around him. Nearly fifty people, in all, crowded the table with only a few spots open at the end, farthest away from The Duke.

Azriel found his way to a seat at that farthest point, reasoning that this way was for the best. The less he spoke to the nobles, the less likely he would offend them. Instead, he opted to remain quiet with his head down, eating the food as urbanely as he knew how.

The tactic he had employed was successful for a time. The nobility seemed to ignore Azriel, with their focus being directed to each other.

Azriel listened as the boisterous noble-folk indirectly bragged in favor of their sons sat beside them while backhandedly putting down others. Azriel could tell that they were all quite arrogant and full of themselves.

A few minutes of this passed with Azriel sitting in silence until he heard, “You’ve been very quiet. Where is your family?”

Azriel looked up to see who was speaking, then spotting an adult on the other side of the table. He was smiling, but Azriel could see through it. The man was worse at faking a smile than he was.

“I’m from Hildenfreide… sir… My family are peasants,” Azriel responded, attempting to maintain a courteous manner of speech.

“From Hildenfreide? You mean to tell me you’re from that little trash hole that is so overlooked that nobody could even find it on a map,” the man cackled as though he had found a victim to torment for his sadistic pleasure.

Azriel’s expression remained unchanged. The man’s insults failed to land.

He twisted his mustache, laughing, “Who would’ve known our most amiable host would let this commoner in to stink up the place.”

Like a switch being flipped, the room went dead silent. The Duke stood up from his seat and walked over to stand beside Azriel.

“This is Azriel,” The Duke spoke. “He may be a commoner, but he is a commoner who killed a wendigo at the age of six years young.”

The Duke graciously queried, “Has your son killed a wendigo?”

The ignoble noble’s face went red as he stuttered to respond, but before he could, The Duke spoke first, proposing, “How about we have your son duel this here stinking commoner.”

Azriel quickly stammered, “No, I really shouldn’t-”

“I accept,” the noble wickedly sneered, “I’m sure it was just a fluke. No child could kill a wendigo.”

Another noble chimed in, saying, “Wendigos aren’t even found this far south. The story must be some tale that the idiot commoners fell for.”

The Duke looked into Azriel’s eyes as if he were trying to gauge his story’s validity. Then turning around to stroll out the door, he raised his hand up in the air, held in it a handkerchief, declaring, “Come. Let us find out together.”

***

Azriel held a wooden sword in his hand. The blade’s edge was dull, and where its tip would’ve been, a flat end existed. Across from Azriel stood a confident-looking boy with an intrinsically patronizing glare. The boy was the son of the ignoble noble that had insulted Azriel.

There were some deliberations made on the part of Azriel, for he had to uphold his father’s second rule: succeed but don’t excel. He had to find a way to fight the child without displaying an unreasonable skill level.

The Duke threw his handkerchief to the ground, signaling the fight’s start. Immediately the boy charged at Azriel with his blade poised to strike. Lifting it above him, he swung it down in an overhead chopping strike.

Dodging the strike, Azriel grabbed the boy by the wrist, leaving him defenselessly stuck as Azriel pounded his fist, still holding the wooden sword, into the noble boy’s face over and over until the boy fell unconscious.

Azriel wasn’t sure whether what he had done was sufficient or if he should’ve drawn the fight out a bit, but he figured the longer the fight went on, the higher the chance would’ve been for him to do something people we see as too extraordinary.

His father had made it clear that if he fought in a way unthinkable for others, then people would catch on, but he wasn’t sure where that line was crossed or how close he was to it. He figured the best thing he could do was imitate the brutal fighting tactics of the Red and Blue-banners.

The noble kid’s nose was flattened and covered in blood as he lay slumped over on the floor. His father uneasily hollered, “Adel!” then, running over to the boy and holding him in his arms to nurse him back into consciousness.

Azriel dropped his wooden sword and walked away, knowing this was surely enough to pass The Duke’s test. Stopping only for a moment, Azriel looked back with compunction, bemoaning, “I’m sorry,” then quickly rushing through the crowd and away from the scene.

The crowded nobles were in a state of complete shock at what they had just witnessed. They stood there, unmoving, looking amongst themselves, trying to gauge whether what they had just witnessed was real.

The commoner boy had beaten one of the most promising amongst them in less than five seconds. It happened so fast not everyone was even sure what exact chain of events had transpired, leading to this outcome. The Duke was especially puzzled by how quickly Azriel’s reaction times were. It reaffirmed to him that it wasn’t a mere fluke when Azriel caught the fallen teacup between his toes earlier that day.

Azriel walked away, finding his way to the courtyard where The Duke’s grandson was, once again, practicing his sword swings. Azriel sat and watched in silence as the night pressed on. The kid was so focused on his practice that he didn’t even notice Azriel had been sitting behind him for two hours.

“You fight like you’re afraid,” Azriel spoke with sudden causality that made the boy drop his sword and fall over in momentary terror.

Azriel continued, “I can see it. You fight with fear.”

The boy frowned, opening his mouth as to say something, but Azriel beat him to it, stating, “Me too. It’s best that way because the absence of fighting with fear is fighting with pride and fighting with pride is the worst mistake someone can make.”

The boy scratched his head with visible confusion.

“When you’re prideful, you’ll charge into battle without thinking of the consequences for failure. That in of itself can be a good thing.”

Azriel ground the sole of his shoe against the hard dirt.

“But consider what happens when pride clouds your ability to reason. You lose the capacity to expect the unexpected, doubly so against those who you had to underestimate to prop up your sense of self.”

Azriel looked up into the twilight darkness thinking of the hundreds of situational strategies the Red and Blue-banners employed, which brought him near to the brink of death. The losing side would often have only a fraction of the troops that the other had, yet their strategies could be, at times, so effective that they even gave Azriel trouble.

“We’re all fragile beings. We can die with one well-placed strike. Understand this weakness and build a strategy around that knowledge.”

Azriel lifted out his hand to help the boy while continuing, “Don’t kill off the fear inside you, but don’t let it control you either; only then can you fight with a clear head. The obvious solution isn’t always the best, and if you are filled with pride, you may not see it even if when it’s staring you in the face.”

The boy took Azriel’s hand, pulling himself up and stuttering, “T-Thanks. I will try to remember that.”

Bending over to pick his sword off the ground, he placed it back in his scabbard, then shook Azriel’s hand.

“The name’s Klaus. What’s yours?”

“Azriel.”

He laughed, “Azriel?! That’s a funny-sounding name.”

Azriel blankly stated, “My family immigrated here from the southeast.”

“Wow!” he cheerfully exclaimed, “You must be from the Nubi desert then. Since you’re out here, does that mean you’re from a nomadic tribe?”

Azriel stayed silent for a few seconds while formulating a lie.

“No, my parents were from the city northwest of the Nubi Desert: the cultural center Persistinopolis.”

Azriel had to lie about his heritage to not break the third rule: Let nobody know the tribe of your heritage or the god they worshiped. Things were better that way. People who knew of The Father God were not fond of him or his worshippers.

On the journey to Hilton, Lazarus thought it pertinent to disclose why Ester, the entirety of Hildenfreide, and he himself, were so closed-off to speaking about The Father God. Apparently, outside of the Nubi Desert, worship of The Father God was widely outlawed, and its worshippers were categorically cast out at every turn.

It was commonly believed that when those bearing The Father God’s stigma were allowed to live beside vessels of other faiths, it would be only a matter of time before some calamity, disaster, or plague would come along and wipe out all those not bearing the stigma of The Father God.

Lazarus explained that this belief was a misconception and that it would only happen to cities that oppressed their worshippers of The Father God, as were the effects of the stigma’s skill, Divine Protection. However, no man could do anything to change the world’s view of their people. The belief, the stigma, was too well-circulated, too proliferated amongst the people in the Northlands. It was a candid miracle that Lazarus had managed to convince the people of Hildenfreide otherwise.

“You came from Persistinopolis?! Is it as big as people say?”

Klaus’s enthusiasm was suffocating. He seemed to be very interested in exotic cultures, or at least the ones found in the Southlands.

Azriel aiming to keep his story straight, repudiated, “I’ve not been there. Like I said during the dinner party, I’m from the village, Hildenfreide. I’ve spent my entire life there, and I’ve never seen any other part of the world until literally today.”

As Klaus subdued his elation, Azriel apologized, “Sorry. I wish I could tell you more about it, but all I know about is what I’ve read… and what my parents told me- of course.”

Klaus’s child-like wonder was squelched, but there wasn’t much Azriel could do or say without risking stumbling upon something dangerous. Trying to lighten the boy’s mood, he attempted to console him, saying, “You know if you meet them someday, you should ask them about it.”

The boy smiled before thanking Azriel, wandering off and leaving him to mull over how he would spend the rest of the night. Azriel had undoubtedly passed the Duke’s test, and tomorrow he would be heading to the Azurellione capital, Leonna.