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TRAS Chapter 100: The Three Ls
🕑 Added 2025-04-27 19:03:33 +0000 UTCWhen Sigurd came to, he was riding in the carriage of state. Across from him sat Sophie, staring sullenly out the window as they returned to the castle, clutching the new puppy that was supposedly meant for Renea.
He owed her his life. Possibly all the knights at that watchtower did. And for all the friction Sigurd felt toward his sister, he was not one to leave gratitude unspoken.
“You saved my life, So—” Sigurd began.
“I don’t like hearing about being replaced,” Sophie interrupted him, hugging the puppy tighter. “I don’t want to hear it ever again.”
“...Alright,” Sigurd said. “I won’t.”
The carriage ride continued in silence. They were siblings cut from the same cloth. Complex in their emotions, perhaps a little too simple in how they expressed them, yet not always completely honest.
They said what mattered. And that was enough.
Sigurd understood now. Sophie, for all her immaturity, worked as hard as anyone to protect Varant.
She could’ve easily become a tyrant with her sheer strength. Yet she did not. Though she sometimes spoke foolishly, her restraint was already proven.
Sophie was not his enemy.
No.
It was Ailn.
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Home sweet home. Ailn wasn’t sure he was quite as eager to be back as the rest of his retinue—Sussuro was just so much warmer—but he didn’t hate the sight of Varant’s granite walls.
Safi was shivering from the cold and excitement at the same time. Her dad had packed her the thickest fur coat he could, and she threw a wool cloak on top.
“Wow!” Safi’s neck craned back to take in the tall walls. “It’s a real walled city! It looks just like the generic pre-renders!” Her feet were excitedly tapping in her stirrups, her hand over her eyes as she rubbernecked this way and that like a bona fide tourist. “I wanna see it from a bird’s eye view!”
At the sight of the new duke, the city’s guards bowed and stepped aside, letting them in without much fuss.
“Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s any way to get that view,” Ailn shrugged. “Magic maybe?”
“It’d be pretty dangerous, but yeah!” Safi replied, though she wasn’t paying much attention to him.
“Could you do it?” Ailn asked.
“Ummmmm, I’m strong enough, but I’d probably die!” Safi said brightly, her eyes twinkling. She glanced down a shady alleyway and gasped with fascination at the sight of two roosters in a cockfight, bettors crowding and cheering. “It’s so rustic!”
Renea’s eyes crinkled with discontent at Varant being called rustic.
“W-well, we’re still at the city outskirts, you know…” she mumbled.
But Dartune wholeheartedly agreed with Safi.
“Indeed, this is what I missed Lady Fleuve,” Dartune nodded. “You’ll find no such excitement in Sussuro’s muddy malaise.”
“That’s really mean!” Safi chirped. “But sure!”
The last half hour to the castle seemed to stretch on forever, the way that the end of a trip always does.
There, waiting for them at the castle gates, were a host of knights looking terribly uncomfortable as they kneeled in reception, while the two exceptionally divine siblings were standing—looking none too happy.
What was Sophie so upset about? Her face was so blank it looked like it had been scrubbed with snow, and yet her eyes were bloodshot like she’d been in a grueling staring contest. Ailn had figured out a long time ago that Sophie was a girl who masked her loud feelings with muted expressions; it wasn’t the angriest he’d seen her, but it was a little unsettling how hard she was working to turn the volume down.
Sigurd… It was immediately apparent who his anger was directed at.
He was just staring at Ailn. The kind of stare Ailn could feel all the way from the bottom of the hill.
Renea’s hands started fidgeting with her horse’s reins nervously, while Kylian’s shoulders tensed.
Even Safi seemed to have picked up that something was wrong. Extremely averse to social tension, her eyes began to dart around wildly.
“We bid you return, Duke eum-Creid,” Sigurd said flatly. “Did you enjoy your excursion to Sussuro?”
“...It was alright,” Ailn said cautiously. “A lot got done.”
“Did it?”
“That’s what I said, yeah,” Ailn shrugged.
He got off his horse. Maybe being literally looked down upon was agitating Sigurd, making him more prickly.
“Let me be straightforward,” Sigurd growled. “You are not fit to be the duke.”
Ailn blinked a few times. Sigurd wasn’t exactly one to beat around the bush, but even this was a little blunt for him.
His eyes darted toward Sophie who… barely seemed to care. He wasn’t getting anything out of her. Then he caught a glance of Camille, kneeling just behind Sigurd, resentment clear on her face.
Was it a family thing? Had something happened… at the northern wall, maybe?
He heard Renea, quite a few paces behind, frantically whispering just loud enough for Ailn’s ears. “Don’t escalate Ani, please, don’t escalate…!”
“Fit or not, the duke is what I am,” Ailn said, raising an eyebrow. “And I’m not really interested in having this conversation right now—”
“The Azure Knights risk life and limb every day,” Sigurd said through gritted teeth, “while you journey for pleasure.”
The tension in the air took on a note of shared dissatisfaction—the kneeling knights shifting in subtle, restless agreement. Their eyes peered up, eager to see how this battle of words would play out.
They were silent, but the unintentional coordination of their body language raised its own kind of clamor.
“You know,” Ailn replied, keeping the irritation out of his voice, “before I became the duke you were always stuck at the capital.”
“I was fighting for the knights,” Sigurd said coldly. “Anyone who’s fought at the wall knows the importance of provisioning.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Ailn asked.
“You went on a treasure hunt using the knights’ welfare as an excuse,” Sigurd snarled. “Don’t compare us! ‘Those who bear no load wear duty like raiments!’”
Ailn held back an aggravated sigh.
Sigurd had successfully gotten him tilted. With everything he’d been worrying about, completely unseen, this was the kind of blow that was exceedingly, yet accidentally unfair. But Ailn’s conscious mind latched onto something else.
“Wherein lies your results, then?!” Sigurd’s voice began to rise in volume. “‘Intentions make the prettiest excuse!’”
“You know, Sigurd, I couldn’t exactly send this information in a missive, but I procured something pretty important—” Ailn began.
“‘The cleverest prince starves his people, feeding them nothing but words,’” Sigurd spat, interrupting Ailn. “I underestimated you, Ailn. That is the truth. That does not mean I misjudged you.”
Ailn’s eye twitched.
His new older brother had been throwing barbed proverbs at him since the moment they’d met.
At first Ailn found it amusing. It was entertaining to bait Sigurd with aphorisms he couldn’t possibly have heard of, and see just how badly they got under his skin.
But Sigurd just kept coming. He was relentless and determined to strike Ailn speechless, and the truth was Ailn’s well of sayings had nearly run completely dry.
Before Ailn knew it, he’d gotten attached to his winning streak. His record in their verbal spars was perfect.
“If… thine lips have nothing kind to speak,” Ailn gritted out, “the mouth should say nothing at all.”
“...Really, Ani?!” Renea hissed from behind him.
It was the only thing Ailn could think of. Ironically, because of just how much he was carrying on his shoulders, and how much he’d done on the trip to Sussuro, his mind simply wasn’t running at full capacity.
Sigurd scoffed, his face bitter and his tone condescending.
“I have not yet the recourse to strip you of your position,” Sigurd uttered in a low voice, resuming his tirade without even acknowledging Ailn’s weak retort. “But I will find a way. And if not, whence the next festival arrives, I will not hesitate to duel you… and return the humiliation you so gladly delivered onto me.”
He stepped in closer to Ailn, his eyes cold and unflinching. Sigurd only had a couple of inches on Ailn in height, and yet he made certain his attitude was as imperious and towering as possible.
“I prefer to show you mercy, Ailn,” Sigurd said flatly, “and let you cede the position yourself.”
Here, in front of so many knights, and even another family’s noble daughter, Sigurd challenged his younger brother, the duke, as directly as possible. “Give me a single reason you should be duke, Ailn,” Sigurd said. His voice was harsh. Confident and resonant, and yet dripping with a certain kind of sincere anger. He seemed convinced there was no answer, and yet truly wished to know if there was. “Tell me what makes you a worthier duk—”
“You want to know the difference between me and you Sigurd?!” Ailn snapped.
Completely caught off-guard by the ambush, Ailn let his anger take over. Armorless without his smarts, knocked off his quick feet and left floundering, he started saying the first things that came to mind.
“...Tell me.”
“There are… three things I’m capable of that you’ve somehow never managed to learn,” Ailn said, letting every modicum of frustration seep into his voice. “Three things I’m not certain you’ll ever learn.”
He snarled. To anyone listening, he must have sounded completely disgusted with his older brother’s alleged deficiency.
“Then…what… are they?” Sigurd’s teeth gnashed.
“I know how to live, Sigurd,” Ailn said.
“...What?” Sigurd’s eyes flickered with confusion, then wrath at this baffling non-sequitur. “Still you mock me?”
“You’re content to go through life as nothing more than a role, Sigurd. But not me,” Ailn lectured, having no idea what he was saying. “That’s not living, Sigurd. That’s just existing.”
Sigurd’s hands clenched and trembled.
“You know what else I can do, Sigurd?” Ailn went on, in a steady tone. “I know how to laugh. I don’t think anyone in this entire castle has ever seen you laugh unless it was full of scorn. Must be pretty damn miserable.”
Ailn was a firm believer in using the moral high ground as a tactical location to plant one’s feet.
The entirety of Sigurd’s body seemed to shake with sheer rage.
“And I know how to love,” Ailn said quietly, as if it were the most profound thing in the world. “I’m not just the head of this duchy right now. I’m the head of this family.”
Acting as if he’d already won, he walked right past Sigurd, stopping only to leave one last piece of parting advice. “Live… laugh… love, Sigurd. Challenge me for the headship when you learn how to do that.”
The air was still.
Not a soul uttered a word, such that all of Varant seemed to quiet.
And the proud knight commander Sigurd eum-Creid fell to his knees in defeat.
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Sigurd’s recent brush with death had fundamentally unsettled him. Like a poison that works upon the nerves, he’d been left with shuddering limb, and a palpitating heart.
And yet Ailn’s words seemed to grasp that very same heart, stopping all its motion.
Had he ever lived?
A lifetime of duty was slowly being re-examined by his shaken mind, the pillars of his identity struck with such force that their integrity now seemed uncertain.
He was not a simpleton who’d never questioned his life’s onus. Yet, he had never truly considered it—never believed there was any meaningful alternative.
Was his brother Ailn not the embodiment of a different path? One that was not so stringent and painful… one perhaps filled with—
“Truly, Sigurd?” Sophie asked, scoffing for a moment before breaking into giggles of pure disbelief. “This is absurd.”
The tapestry, where he was presented as a jester, came to the front of Sigurd’s mind. He thought about how intensely he had responded to Sophie’s mocking comments—the words of a teenager—and sought to prod at her emotional bruises which he knew hurt the most.
Had he… ever laughed?
“W-what did you do to him, Ani?!” Renea asked, as she passed by on her horse.
“You think I know? Let’s just go,” Ailn replied. He seemed just as confused. “Get a knight to grab my horse. We need to get out of here before he starts lecturing again.”
Though his siblings were openly discussing him as if he were a pest, Sigurd paid them no overt mind. He once again thought about how he had treated them.
How he had confined Ailn to his cabin, and continued the policy of limiting how much he could ever see Renea.
How he had refused to acknowledge Sophie as a sister because of the festing bitterness he still felt toward the circumstances of her birth. How he had rejected Renea, because of the pain lingering from their mother’s death.
He saw with stunning clarity the mistakes of the generation before, and how he was on the inexorable path of continuing them.
And as arriving retinue proceeded past, and the knights in reception were dispersed by an impatient Sophie, Sigurd continued to kneel there in contemplation, the blow as profound as it was stunning, his thoughts slowly turning to Ciel Blanc, still waiting in the mountains of ark-Chelon.
Had he ever loved?
