Chivalry

Erinara

After finishing my work on the glyph, Jin and I went to our respective rooms for the night. I wondered if asking his opinion of me and the citadel was too forward, but he seemed to respond alright to it. It didn’t seem to me like he was lying when he called us allies. Sometimes the simplest answer was the most effective, so I decided to simply trust my gut and considered him an ally as well. I changed into a night gown, got into bed and went to sleep for the night.

Next morning I woke up a little bit after sunrise. I got myself ready and dressed for the day. Exiting my room, I began making my way to the dining hall. To my surprise Jin wasn’t here yet. I had expected him to be up ridiculously early as part of some knight’s training regime. ‘Best check on him', I thought. Retracing my steps back to my room I walked to the room on its right.

I knocked on the door. No response. I waited for a couple seconds before knocking again. Still no response.
“I’m coming in”, I announced, slowly opening the door. Golden light flooded into the room from two windows, located on either side of the bed’s ornamentally carved wooden headboard. The sun’s rays reflected off of his armor, precariously placed on a table.
Jin laid in bed, motionless.
“Good morning. Should I come back at a later time?”, I asked.
No response, again. Seriously? Does this guy sleep like an actual rock?
I walked to the side of his bed. He laid on his back, his arms rested over the blanket. I lightly nudged his left arm. Still nothing. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I tried gently shaking him.
“Okay there’s no way you’re still asleep. Do people in the kingdom of crests have such different waking cycles?”, I pondered out loud.
Even if that were the case, surely a knight would awaken earlier rather than later, right?

Wait. Unless.
I reached underneath my mantle, retrieving a small package of paper from within a pocket on the outside of my tunic. A cluster of spellcasting components fell into my hand as I opened it and turned it around. I ground the brittle materials to dust using only the palms of my hands.
I slightly leaned forward, opened my hands and softly blew the fine dust at Jin’s face. By imbuing it with mana and speaking the required arcane words, I activated the spell.

The dust rushed into Jin’s nostrils, quickly dispersing into his body through his airways. Nothing happened for a few moments.
Then Jin bolted to sit upright and started coughing violently, gasping for air in between.
“Holy crap that sucked”, he managed to choke out. Then, taking a deep breath, he added: “Thank you so much.”
“Are you alright? Did the poison resurge during your sleep?”, I asked calmly.
“Well, I woke up to feeling the effects in the middle of the night”, he stated, sounding equally as calm, even between coughing fits.
Unfortunately, my serenity had disappeared.
“Are you an idiot?! In the middle of the night? And you just let it continue? Why didn’t you wake me, I could have healed you then and there!”
“You were asleep though. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Which part of ‘feel free to ask me for help if you need it’ did you not understand?”
If the poison wasn’t as sadistic in nature, he easily could have died. Even then though, he had to have been in agony for hours.
“I was worried your concealment spell might be inactive when sleeping”, he said sheepishly, “it seemed to be important to you.”
My hand subconsciously reached for my face. Just like that, my annoyance had washed away as well. I don’t think anyone else in existence would have thought to consider a matter of my personal comfort over them being ravaged by poison. In a very twisted way, the idea of that was endearing. There was only one flaw in his reasoning.
“Thank you for considering that. You’re still a fool though, Eaglecrest. My room would have been dark, I could’ve reactivated the shadows before you could see me”, I paused briefly, taking a deep breath, “But, for what it’s worth, I am very grateful you’ve thought about my sense of comfort. We’re talking about poison here though, you can’t be that senseless, right?”
He only threw me a weak smile in response.
“I guess you can”, I sighed exasperatedly.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t ‘intruded’ and checked up on you?”, I asked.
“Probably lie around for a bit longer”, he joked, bursting into laughter.
“Yeah, you’re an idiot alright”, I chuckled.

“Anyway, now what?”, Jin asked as he got up out of bed. He wore a short-sleeved linen undershirt and linen pants. This was the first time I actually got to see him outside of the armor. His body was tanned, muscular and powerful, yet strikingly lean at the same time, evidently having been forged from years of physical activity. There didn’t seem to be a single scar covering him, all of his skin was in pristine shape.
He walked to his armor, beginning to equip it piece by piece.
“Sorry, I’ll wait outside. We can go for breakfast when you’re done.”
I quickly entered my room to retrieve the second dose of spell components, depositing it in the same chest pocket I had stored the first package in.
After a few minutes, Jin stepped out of his room, joining me in the hallway.

We made our way to the dining hall, meeting Kayon there. He was in the process of preparing various breakfast meals.
Jin and I talked while waiting.
“Can I ask what’s going on with your armor?”, I began, “it’s much heavier than any other I’ve ever encountered. And yet you’re wearing it all the time as part of training alone?”
“My master, Fyor Eaglecrest, instructed me while I constantly had to wear the armor. It helped my training be twice as efficient. Despite its weight, I have full range of motion in all of my limbs. In honesty, not wearing armor feels more unusual to me than wearing it at this point.”
I wouldn’t have been able to so much as lift the armor without my magic. The strength of shadow tendrils was directly connected to mana usage. And yet, Jin genuinely didn’t even seem bothered by the mass of steel he was casually moving around in.
“Do other inhabitants of the kingdom of crests also wear armor as heavy as that one?”, I asked.
“The only one I personally know of is Fyor Eaglecrest. He even taught me all of his skills and his fighting style, a combination of power and uncanny nimbleness”, Jin explained.
“Nimble? While dragging around the weight of a small house?”
“You’d be surprised. I feel light as a feather in this.”

Kayon arrived with trays over trays of food. As always, the variety was baffling. If it wasn’t the signature style of Kayon to find a way to cook a little bit of everything, I’d say he was trying to show off in front of our guest.
All of us ate in silence, before moving on to our respective work areas. Jin once again joined me in the study where I spent most of my day normally. We were idly chatting about our respective nations and their differences as time progressed. The main takeaways were that unlike the land of warlocks, where power meant almost everything, in the kingdom of crests your social standing was all but decided the moment you were born. With only select few even having a chance of changing out of a predetermined role.