[center][b][h1][color=6ecff6]T H E G A M E B E G I N S[/color][/h1][/b][/center] [center][img]http://orig07.deviantart.net/5808/f/2011/332/a/7/a785d8bbf26170192769c6950fc0b54a-d4hn3ht.png[/img][/center] Falling. He was falling. He did not know when he realized this. It may have been a second since he left her embrace, it may have been an eon. But when he opened his eyes he realized he was falling from an impossible height. The world below was a smear of colors spinning in every direction as he tumbled through empty air. He was aware of so many new things. A million, a billion heartbeats thrummed in sync beneath him. All the three realms were in his gaze. The leylines, coursing rivers of golden light, stretched across the firmament of the globe like a spider’s web. He knew all. He was all. He looked down at himself. His mind nearly shattered. A trick of the light, an abstract thing of unbelievable angles. His mind burned with fire and he screamed in terror and exultation. He turned away, focusing on the ground below, but he could still see it, in his mind. It had burned its way through. He was terrified of himself, he realized. He was an idea, or the hint of an idea, or the memory of something he had never known, or the shadow of all these things, their inverted reflection, on a still lake at night. He couldn't be real, the man thought. His mind struggled to put all into words, to understand what had been so clear to him before. How could he have been real before this? It... he had had no substance. No weight. He had had mass, the man remembered, his embrace stretching impossibly wide, but behind the mass there had been no depth. It made no sense. How could he be real and make no sense? He tried to look at himself again, at his body of fractured proportions and broken reason, but it was long gone. Replaced instead were limbs and clothes, and the hot flesh and blood that coursed beneath that was all too real. He was impossibility made manifest, the formless given form, and he fell though the sky in fire, accompanied not by the roar of the very air set aflame, but the last whispers of a song’s echo. “…Orders…” It is only when the man breached the atmosphere that he realized how quickly he was moving. The wind buffeted his arms so violently he feared they would be torn from his body. It was like stepping from a calm shelter into a maelstrom of shrieking wind. He was tugged violently into the current, the force pulling, pushing and tossing him in every direction as unseen forces battered his body. For a moment, the pain was swept from his mind while he tried to process all the things he could see. Lush, green forests. Windswept deserts. Towering mountains capped with ice and snow. The blue trails of rivers, winding their way to lakes and seas. [b]Ansus.[/b] His lungs took great heaving breaths, the first of many as plummeted to the landscape alone. His fingers clawed at the void, desperately trying to gain purchase as gravity reeled him closer and closer to the ground below. He sped over bustling metropolis, villages in snowy mountains, a castle consumed by the forest around it, then finally a small village at the edge of a forest, and vast deserts. A long stretch of brown and snowy jagged peaks stretched into the distance. He was directly over the jagged mountains when their peaks rose up to meet him. There was an overwhelming burst of pain, a great explosion of heat and sound, and the man was aware he was yet again falling. A body newly born shattered the mountainside, and with it, his descent. Rocks clipped at his skin and face as he tumbled into the free-fall abyss down its slope. A lake swallowed him. [center][img]http://orig07.deviantart.net/5808/f/2011/332/a/7/a785d8bbf26170192769c6950fc0b54a-d4hn3ht.png[/img][/center] Lilith opened her eyes, wondering what had woken her up. After the horror of the day prior, she'd hardly been able to calm down. It wasn't until long after the knight had brought her to her room to wait it out that she could feel any semblance of normalcy returning to her. Ever since then, her instincts had been telling her to get out of there, as if there were a cloud of danger all around her... if mother had taught her anything, it was that her instincts were seldom wrong about danger. She had spent the night tossing and turning restlessly on a huge bed, fit for noble ponies with the softest silk sheets she had ever had the pleasure of feeling. Still, despite her physical comforts, she had kept waking up, expecting someone—maybe a crazed bandit, or a blood-covered ghost with hooks for hands—to have snuck in to harm her. Eventually, she had finally fallen asleep into a dreamless sleep. Or had it been dreamless? She seemed to almost remember something. She mulled over it before she was overcome by a yawn and took another, fresher look at the room where she had been taken. The room itself was pretty big, easily dwarfing the size of her own room in Eistwater, and had solid, grey stone columns located on each corner. It was decorated with tasteful vases with flowers on small, circular tables at regular intervals along the wall, clearly calculated to fill the empty spaces created between the placed paintings depicting men and women indulging themselves on a huge bounty of fruits, meats, vegetables and wine. Lilith stared longingly at one of the pictured bottles before continuing her assessment, turning to the floor-to-ceiling windows, framed by silken drapes, and a book case twice her hight filled with tomes. A quick glance revealed nearly all of them to be some sort of religious books and papers. It had all the necessities too: a dresser, carved of dark mahogany; a large mirror; a walk-in closet which held a single white robe; a chamber pot and wash basin in a separate room, with a curtain across for privacy. The truly odd thing about the room was the desk opposite her bed. She had glossed over it on her quick look around, but now that she focused on it, there was something odd about it. It wasn’t the desk itself it was on top of it- a brown... was it... leather? Lilith’s eyes widened a bit as she got out of bed and walked up to the desk. She realized it was indeed a leather harness of some sort that lay upon it. It wasn’t too big, roughly her size, actually, and on top of it, was the thing that had caught her attention and demanded her eyes concentrate on this desk... a single, perfectly cut, sapphire. The room’s quiet broke when a set of three patient knocks on the door alerted her to the probable cause of her waking up. She shook her head, turning towards the entrance with a sidelong glance at the harness and sapphire, and called out, “Come in, please!” A young man in a grey robe she recognized as one of the squires opened the door and slowly walked in, looking around and instantly spotting her. "Acolyte Lilith,” he said, “Knight Hierophant Regulus would like a word with you.” Lilith blinked. “Wait, what did you call me?” The squire arched an eyebrow. “Oh!” Lilith quickly ran to the closet and pulled the white robe over her own, much more humble, clothes. “I think I look okay now!” she announced, glancing over her shoulder at the boy. “Aren’t you going to wear the harness the Knight Hierophant got for you?” Lilith blinked. “That’s for me? But... I'm not even sure I want to join.” The cadet shrugged. “May as well bring it with you. And the sapphire.” Lilith looked at him dubiously, but grabbed both objects and followed him outside. The castle was a hub of activity; squads of knights, squires and acolytes would pass them by on patrols so often it did little to reassure her that things were fine. She watched with interest, paying close attention to the time between patrols, and the routes they followed. The way to their location was a veritable maze of corridors. Even her recollection as Regulus guided her to the room last night soon became useless, and much to her chagrin she was completely lost. They eventually reached the barracks and Lilith was escorted straight to the back, to an open courtyard where several drills were taking place. Here the winter snow had been cleared, and Lilith pulled her robe tighter around as the chill set in, wondering how the knights could stand it. The squire looked at her strangely for a moment, before gesturing to the embroidery on the sleeves of her cuff. With much confusion, her fingers skimmed the copper threads. Immediately the cold fell away from her as the threads glowed with magic. It had felt as if someone had lit a hearthfire close at hand. “Oh, now it makes sense...” Lilith muttered, observing the few knights-in-training. The squire snorted and continued to lead her up the wall to the battlements to where she had already spotted Regulus, his autumnal beard and black robe obvious even at a distance. Lilith took a moment to examine the drills, following the knight instinctively and watching with interest the practicing men and women. Their drill seemed to consist of some sort of telekinetic grip on small stones or shards of metal, but the hold was different somehow from what she had seen her mother or the occasional traveling magician perform. It seemed as if each were levitated individually, rather than as a whole, then kept in the telekinesis hold as tightly as possible. The knights would have the pieces fly around and spin under fine control, following set motions and imaginary attacks and blocks, locking them together at times, only to have them separate into several pieces. “Like what you see?” Regulus asked, making her jump. The Knight Hierophant was a man in his late thirties, his red hair tied back into a tight knit ponytail. He had a warm countenance of genial content, and stood a head above nearly every other man there. Lilith jumped. “Oh! Sorry, I was distracted...” Lilith smiled nervously up at Regulus before looking back at the soldiers. “Yes! It’s very interesting how it works. At first I thought they were levitating all the objects at once, but the fine control they display indicates something completely different. I was working on the theory that each piece was controlled by an individual telekinetic hold, which is then used, possibly in conjunction with a tied-in general hold, to form a sword or similar weapon which can then be disassembled for a variety of uses. The use of such a weapon can only be limited by the caster’s fine control and imagination... it’s... beautiful..." Unbeknownst to her, the squire and Regulus shared a hidden look as she spoke. After a moment, the Knight Hierophant gave the tiniest shake of his head to his pupil before turning back to Lilith, a large grin on his face, that did not quite meet his eyes. "It is beautiful, isn’t it? The knight, or blade-caster as we are known, has to manage several things at the same time... it’s an art and possesses a simplicity in its final objective that is an absolutely beautiful thing to see in practice. Where did you learn so much, may I ask?" "Oh," Lilith suddenly found her shoes very interesting. "My mother is the village hedge witch. She taught a few things to my brother and I, but Brian doesn't really have the gift." Then it clicked. What exactly had been bothering her. Why she still felt the need to run. "When can I see them?" Regulus was silent. The weight in her throat grew heavier. "...is she... is she here?" she asked hopefully. “She did a fine job raising the both of you, I’m sure,” Regulus continued after a moment's pause. “But... she likely perished when those bandits razed the village.” Lilith felt the blood run cold in her veins. “R-razed...” Regulus nodded. “There was little I could do.” He sighed. “By the time the Order knew what was happening and sallied out, it was too late.” Lilith looked down at the battlements, a lost look in her face. “A-and my friends?” Regulus flinch. “Some survived... some died. I had heard reports that the local priest had managed to gather several people in his chapel and secure it before they began to burn everything. We found no bodies within the ruins, so we assume they had managed to flee the massacre..." He stopped himself, almost smacking himself to his callousness. He had caught himself repeating the same speech he had given the Knight Commander to a child whose village had been the one attacked. "Look," he told her, kneeling down to bring himself to her height. "There's still a few people who came with us last night, and a few dozen wounder who are still resting under the care of the Knight Asclepi. Tommorrow, once I clear it with the Knight Commander, we can go see if your mother and brother are amongst them." She did not respond. For almost three hours hour she stayed at wall, silently staring out into the lake. Regulus stayed with her the entire time. She did not speak or cry. He did not comfort her or press. At one point, the squire began to remind the Knight Hierophant of the duties he had still to perform, but a sidelong glare from the man sealed his lips. The morning passed slowly this way, the sun coming up and over to its zenith. The silence as still as the distant lake. Then it was broken. "Last night..." Lilith asked slowly, "You asked me a question." "Did I?" Regulus rested the back of his head against the masonry of the merlon, his eyes closed to the world around him. His black robe pooled around him like a puddle of shadow in the midday sun. "I take it you're interested then." She looked at the knights below as the threw shards of their blades into the chests of scarecrows. She imagined each target the face of one of the men who attacked Eistwater. "I am." So he told. He told her how a young mage had been assigned to protect a princess. How that mage grew into a knight, and how he devoted his life to defending his princess. How he would slay dragons in her name and loved all her his life. That the same knight would later found his own order of knights, and they, in turn would guard the land long after his death. Twice the squire brought them food, and the suns sank lower across the horizon until they were naught but bands of red and purple light in the distance. A shooting star shot across the sky, and the lake rippled. Occasionally, Regulus would pause and glance at his student expectantly, and the boy would jump in without heisitation, continuing the tale of the Order. "...it was then, after the siege of Cair Paravel that Knight Commander Aemon moved the Order from its ancestral monastary to a castle built on the shores of Lake Fafnir, near the Shrine of our founder. We have been here ever since, guarding the land and the empire as best we can." "It sounds just like in the old stories and fairy tales."Lilith sat on the edge on a merlon, rubbing her sapphire around in her hands. "Just like Ansur, or the trials of Cinnead, or the Green Knight!" The knights in the courtyard had ceased their training an hour ago, leaving the three alone on the wall except for the occasional patrol. Regulus's squire still stood at attention, though seemed to be fighting back the urge to yawn. " "Except it isn't one." Regulus smiled and grabbed Lilith's shoulders, turning her to face across the lake. "Do you see there on the opposite side? That stone building way in the distant." Lilith nodded; she could just made the square squat building just poking out over the top of the scraggly fir trees. "We know this story to be true, because for over two thousand, the Knightly Harmonic Order of Coquelicot has guarded the-" Regulus's voice froze as he fully brought his gaze around to the shore. "The lamps have gone out," he remarked. The squire peered into the night, staring out across the lake. "Every hour, on the hour. The oil doesn't last long." "So why haven't they've been relit by now?" Regulus waited with baited breath for another minute, then two, staring at the distant darkness with growing unrest. After the third moment, he swore loudly and ran off the battlements, a worried squire and a confused Lilith right on his heels. "Get the Knight Commander! They're after the sword!" [center][img]http://orig07.deviantart.net/5808/f/2011/332/a/7/a785d8bbf26170192769c6950fc0b54a-d4hn3ht.png[/img][/center] The second his body broke the surface of the water was the second the cold truly began to set in. He had not known true cold before that moment. That world of white snow and mountain wind above was but a desert compared to this realm. Here was the birthplace of frost and he relinquished himself to its icy clutches. It rubbed every inch of skin beneath his clothes raw with its unforgiving embrace. Chunks of ice frozen long ago drifted by him as his clothing, now as heavy as lead to his body’s apathy, pulled him further down. The pale light above dimmed with each passing foot, leaving the man curled in the cold and darkness like some primordial womb. A bubble escaped his lips, and drifted in the gloom to the only place he assumed was up, each second feeling like an eternity as he listened to the sound of his own heart thudding against his ears. Each eternity that passed slowed its rhythm, and in turn, his racing mind. Thoughts became clear as the lake leeched the heat from his body. Emotion gave way to understanding. With it, came acceptance. The promise was empty. That’s all the man needed to remind himself. His body broke the surface and ice. He had been aware of the pull. He had always been. Even then. Even now. Aware of the gnawing. Of the emptiness. His feet plodded onto the shore without question. It did not matter where the pull led him. All that mattered was that it did. He followed the edge of the lake for hours, sloshing through the icy the slush the lake washed upon the shore. The cold bit into his skin, hours old, and he hugged his body for warmth. The day sank into the dusk, and a light in the distance heralded him. Directly ahead was a stone building nearly as tall as the trees around him. A domed roof reached for the heavens, and the water of the lake lapped at the back half of the building. Whoever had built this had built into the lake, the man realized. A string of lanterns illuminated the outside, held up by a series of poles. As he suns slipped beneath the horizon, he noticed their dying light upon his body. So much had changed. The snow crunched under his bare feet as the man drew closer, his chattering breath coming as wisps of cloud. It wasn't until he stood before the doorway to the building that he realized he was not alone. Two knights in black robes walked out of their post, their laughter having been muffled by heavy stone doors that sealed the shrine. They stopped, obviously not expecting to encounter anyone outside, then lunged at the knight. The man rolled to the side as he tore a wooden support from the nearby lanterns, then plunged the makeshift weapon into the back of the knight on the left. He twisted it, and the sickening crunching sound of wood could be heard before the knight crumpled to the floor. The remaining knight tried to open his robe in time to free his shards, but the man was faster. He did not need a sword to kill the knight. The knight recoiled exactly as he had determined he would, and the man threw his shoulder forward and pulled her legs in with just the right amount of force to free her from its grasp. He struck out with a closed first as the knight regained his balance, hitting him just above the hinge of his jaw. His mouth instantly sprang open, and the man stuffed his other hand down his maw. A look of shock crossed the knight's face, and the man pulled himself close to him, bit hard upon the knight neck, and pressed his free hand over his nostrils. He would not go back so quickly. He would know why he had been wrested away. He would not be powerless. The man was a chess piece in a game played by gods. He would not be a pawn. The knight tried to make some noise to warn other guards, if there were any but the man knew exactly what he was doing. He was physically weaker than the knight, his body sore and sluggish and freezing, but he had pinned his head under the weight of his entire body. The knight tried to pry his hands away, and when that failed, he beat at him and kicked uselessly. He bit down, but the man did not relent. What was this minuscule iota of pain when measured against the totality of a life? What was one life measured against the fate of a kingdom? “Your orders,” he uttered as his victim stopped moving. He rose to his feet, taking with him a new black cloak. The knight would not need it now. As he delved deeper into in the ancientshrine, he had noted quite readily that it wasn’t all that impressive. There wasn't much to say about the decor. Stone columns, crafted out of the walls, were merely decorative, rather than necessary. The only element not created from the grey stone itself was the floor, which was made out of mosaic tiles. Certainly nothing comparable to many other places he had visisted when he was alive, but still, it had an eerie quality to it that made him pause. There was something there. Something that was definitely not happy. He couldn't tell how he knew... but he could feel it in the stagnant air, permeating the walls and floors. If there was no guardian in here, whatever the presence was, it was powerful and worse than that... it was aware. The man gave a bitter smile and delved deeper into the darkness. "I am alive and you are dead... and how furious you must be at the thought," he whispered to himself. The man kept his eyes focused on her surroundings until the hallway widened out to a much larger room. Empty braziers sat in the corners, and in the center of the room stood a simple altar. Words in a language he did not recognize covered the floor now in gold; novels worth of words. But that wasn't what drew his attention; it was the twenty fist sized stones that lay upon the altar; carefully nestled on pillows of faded felt. "At last," the man whispered aloud to himsef, as he picked up the stone. He released a breath he did not know he held, and examined the familiar object. A thousand facets, an edge like a razor; even in the darkness it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the moon. He placed it down, and inspected another stone, and another. All of them here. All of them perfect. He was whole again. A torch lit the room. "Beautiful, are they not?" [center][img]http://orig07.deviantart.net/5808/f/2011/332/a/7/a785d8bbf26170192769c6950fc0b54a-d4hn3ht.png[/img][/center] "Beautiful, are they not?" Regulus asked, as he blocked the exit with his body. "No doubt a thief like you would make a pretty copper selling them." He threw the torch he was holding into a nearby brazier, and orange light flooded the enclosed chamber. Sparks and smoke snaked the shallow ceiling as the oil roared to life. The knight casually pushed open his robe, revealing the leather harness underneath. "So were they worth killing my brothers outside for?" The man turned to face him, his face till shrouded beneath the hood. The Knight Hierophant was not impressed with the rest of what he saw. Beneath the black robes, the man's clothes hung loosely around him; ill-fitted and baggy. And while his body was lithe with corded muscle, even in this light the Hierophant could see that the man was more than a decade his younger. "I don't even think you realize what you have there," Regulus remarked, holding a hand out to his side. "A knight's sword can take many shapes you know." Ten golden stars detached themselves from Regulus’s harness and arced through the air to form a line in front of the Knight. Each had a different number of serrated edged to it, and they spun slowly on an invisible axis, glinting in the torchlight. “Hardened Steel that have been tempered to straw; hard and very sharp. Having more components or shards than an opponent gives you a major edge. Every one of these stars respond individually to my magic. Together, encapsulated by a single moment field, they form a whole blade—in my case, [i]Zealot[/i].” Each of the stars began to spin at rapid rate, their edges a blur of movement. The image melded into each other almost instantly, forming a long whirring shaft. To his shock, the man held out a hand and the diamond shards lifted themselves off of the cushion and came to rest circling the air around them. The knight's jaw tightened, his face darkening as he slid his foot back in defense, narrowing his body. A small target to strike. "That's a fancy trick you got... but in the end, you're just a petty thief wearing stolen robes." He lunged forward, [i]Zealot[/i] tearing at the air before him. "Now... let's see how you die." The man crossed the distance between them with nary a word, and [i]Zealot[/i] spun with renewed ferocity as it deflected the legendary blade. Regulus fought like a cornered manticore. His blade work was feral and frantic; [i]Zealot[/i] was rarely in one place—or even one part—for long. It clawed at the man’s guard, desperately trying to work through his defense. His efforts were to no avail. Fighting this stranger was like fighting a mirage. The man’s style focused not on power or speed, but duplicity; over half his strikes were feints of some kind or another, and every time the Hierophant intercepted them, he was forced into a more compromising position. Every step forward cost him two steps back. He tried to circle around the man, his blade splitting to attack from several angles, but that seemed to be no challenge for him, who had already pinpointed the location and angle of each piece of [i]Zealot[/i] and intercepted them immediately with [i]Regent[/i], using the remaining diamonds to send the Knight Hierophant skirting back, until his back was to the wall, a piece of [i]Regent[/i] embedded in the wall where his head had been a moment ago. He realized that somewhere in the midst of the battle, they had traded placed. Now it was the knight who stood within the room, and enemy blocking his escape. To his surprise, the man made no move to escape, instead reforming [i]Regent[/i] and taking the same pose that Regulus stood in only moments ago: he was waiting for the knight to recover. Standing up and summoning his magic, the knight noticed that the altar where [i]Regent[/i] had rested had been destroyed somewhere in the exchange; half of it form blasted into fragments across the floor. The man vaulted across the shattered altar and took another swing at Regulus, and the knight caught it on [i]Zealot[/i] once again, preparing to retaliate with superior force. He didn’t get the chance to. [i]Regent[/i] split into two separate parts as it held [i]Zealot[/i], and one of them came through the air towards him. Regulus threw himself back to avoid the blade, but the man had obviously been expecting this. His fist connected connected with Regulus’s face. It was a strike delivered with the strength of one who knew how to fight, and Regulus was thrown backwards over heels as the sharp sound of the blow rang in his ears. He came to his feet just in time to meet another one of the man’s advance. “So,” Regulus said quipped over the sound of their clashing blades. “I take it you're no amateur.” His nose felt welt and swollen, and he could feel something warm dripping down his face. He flinched ad he felt the jagged stone of the altar connect with his leg. That was all the man needed. Two parts of Regent dove through the air towards Regulus, and he pushed himself away from the altar, crashing to the floor in the effort to avoid the shards. “No," came the simple reply. It was taking too long, Regulus though to himself. This man wasn’t just stronger than him—he was stronger than him by an order of magnitude. With over twenty shards at his disposal, by all rights, he should be dead already. So why wasn’t he? He met the man with [i]Zealot[/i] raised to block, but [i]Regent[/i] into two parts once more. They circumvented his blade, and he pulled [i]Zealot[/i] back to block one. The other sliced him just across the forearm, and his hold on [i]Zealot[/i] slipped, the steel stars clattering to the ground. He felt another sting, and his shoulder followed the same fate as his arm, with blood pouring out of a razor-thin cut. Regulus staggered back as more cuts formed on his body, courtesy of [i]Regent[/i], which was flying too quickly for him to catch on to. With his focus gone, he was unable to muster the will to raise [i]Zealot[/i] again. The Knight kept stumbling back, until his back hit the wall. A shard of [i]Regent[/i] shot through his leg and out the other side, taking tissue and muscle with it and Regulus fell to the side with a cry of pain, leaving a smear of blood on the wall behind him.[i]Regent[/i] split and came towards him, a dozen shards of pure diamond. Regulus didn’t get the chance to flinch—every razor fragment of the blade was knocked aside with a shard of obsidian long before it reached him. [i]Keeper.[/i] Knight Commander Arcon was exactly as tall as Regulus, but much broader, his wide shoulders carrying his presence. His hair was a ring of dark iron curls around a balding scalp. His robe was grey. He did not carry a harness. He stood alone. His face bore the expression of dispassion that Regulus remembered so well as his squire. His eyes were cold and distant, his mouth a thin line at the peak of a square jaw. His crooked nose was missing a chunk of its nostril from a fight thirty winters ago. Since they were the same height, it was difficult to tell how much older than Regulus he really was. But if one looked closely, they would notice that the tips of his fingers split into the same tight lines that mapped his face, and that his irises were a burning with winters long years past. He had a certain stillness to him, as though he could stand in the hall forever, watching with disinterest as the stone walls crumbled around him and were overgrown. The Knight Commander spoke in a fluid, resonant tone that seemed to demand attention despite not being particularly loud. “You forget,” he began to Regulus, coming to stand between his former squire and the man who threatened him, “our first rule. You never fight alone." The single remaining piece of [i]Keeper[/i] not scattered to the corners of the room was held aloft before him. He faced the stranger, arms folded in the folds of his robe. "This has been the code of the Order of Coquelicot for a thousand generations. To strike one of our number is to invoke the wrath of all. An impostor in a fallen knight's robes would not know that, stolen sword or not." "One cannot steal what is already theirs." Arcon tried to kill him. He was fast, and there hadn’t been much distance between them to begin with. Regulus hadn’t even seen him dart forward. [i]Regent[/i] wasn’t even reformed. [i]Keeper[/i] angled towards the man's bare neck, the obsidian edge thirsty for blood. Then the stranger was holding the tip of [i]Keeper[/i] in an outstretched hand. There had been no indication of his motion; no flash of light, no blur of movement. No witchcraft or magic. His hand simply sized the blade before it had made contact. Regulus stared with wide eyes. The Knight Commander’s actions told him that he did not believe victory was guaranteed. He was trying to win, which meant it was possible for him to lose. Regulus scrambled to his feet, trying to stem the bleeding of his arm with his good handle while reforming [i]Zealot[/i] before him. “Dot not call me that,” the man said. “Imposter. You think that you can hurt me. You think that you can taunt me with bravado. You cannot. You think that you can win this sword from me. You cannot. Despite all your claims that you are Knights of Coquelicot, your skills are found wanting. And your greatest weakness is that you can never change.” He pulled back his hood. Eyes as blue as as a thunderstorm pierced the brazier light. “I do not suffer the same flaw." He threw away the last piece of [i]Keeper[/i], and held out his hand. “My name is Clarent Coquelicot,” the young man said as Regent shone into life before him. “And you should not have thrown away your sword.”