“Ah, I am!”
Leifr snapped the reins to catch up to Fiore, both his steed and the hauling horse trotting along. Leifr opened his mouth to speak, but seeing Fiore look around so seriously and then nodding to himself made Leifr hesitate. Was it rude to disturb someone so deep in thought? It was, wasn't it. Leifr decided to wait a few more moments and looked around with Fiore in search of any tools, supplies, or useful objects that remained in the abandoned camp. When Leifr deemed that they both were out of earshot of Lyrisa and Alleruen, Leifr inhaled and exhaled deeply as if to steel his nerves.
“Sir Fiore,” Leifr spoke with a more solemn tone than usual and his usual smile was gone, replaced with a worried, but cold expression. Although he tried to keep himself from seeming hostile, Leifr's body was tense and ready for the worse-case scenario.
“Before the bandits struck, you said something to your sword,” Leifr tried his best to smile, but even he could tell that his expression was not one of warmth. Still, he tried forcing his face to soften. “To be honest, I didn't understand because it was so sudden and the bandits attacked immediately after, but I became sure of it when I saw you use the blade.”
Running his hand through his hair nervously, Leifr digressed into a story in an attempt to explain why he was suddenly acting like this:
“I try my best to be a man that would be remembered for his kindness, milord, but I have been told this phrase by my father ever since I could remember. It's been carved into my mind so that I would never forget.”
Leifr looked up at Fiore and spoke calmly with a small smile,
“'Before you are the man Leifr, you are my son, a noble of the great House Forbannet.'” Leifr chuckled after saying that phrase, but quickly picked up from where he left off, “Sometimes I am torn between being the man Leifr and being a Forbannet noble. But even now when I am not anywhere near their influence, I am a noble still.”
Leifr's right hand released the reins on his warhorse and slowly moved towards the handle of his strange, cursed blade where it remained hovering above it. An unpleasant feeling of a large, slimy mirage wrapped around Leifr's hand and tried pulling it down to the handle. It was as if the blade felt that a battle may happen and was using an hallucinatory tongue to pull Leifr closer. Still, Leifr tried to give a wary smile to Fiore and managed to keep his hand from touching the wretched sword.
“Sir Fiore, as a Noble of the Forbannet House I must ask you: How did you come to possess Lord Radek's fabled blade, Exalia?”
Leifr didn't want to give too many information in case Fiore was a bandit who had stolen the blade, but he was positive that the blade resting on Fiore's waist was the treasured rapier of Lord Radek, a vassal of the Forbannet nobles who lost his life to a northern bandit raid three years prior. When the levies arrived, they were too late. They recovered Radek's body but could never find Exalia among the ruins and it was presumed that the bandits had taken it. Yet, for some reason Fiore has it. Though they weren't well-acquainted, Fiore was a friendly presence. Liefr did not want to believe that Fiore took it from Radek's body, but he steeled his mind against the other explanation.
That Fiore had actually...
