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TRAS Chapter 54: One with Nature
🕑 Added 2025-01-11 07:43:24 +0000 UTCAiln hated his damn cottage.
It had been a day since he’d been expelled to it, and while Kylian had brought him some dried meat and fruits, he was still hungrier than he was used to.
And he had a bigger chip on his shoulder.
Those first few hours spent freezing in the cottage, brooding over the Knight Commander, his older brother Sigurd, had rekindled a sense of obstinacy in Ailn that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Frankly, any hard-earned acts of self-sufficiency would likely go unnoticed by the outside world—after all, being self-sufficient was what the original Ailn had been doing all along.
Ailn respected that. And even though he’d grown used to the higher-quality food afforded to the central members of the eum-Creid family, somehow, he felt like it would bring more shame to the original Ailn’s legacy if the knights saw him constantly begging Kylian for scraps.
For now, he’d take a moment to reacquaint himself with the survival skill he’d apparently possessed in his past life. Then, he’d augment those skills with the instinctive sense of the forest that this body seemed to remember.
He’d done much the same with his swordplay. The detective’s general sense of combat mixed with the original Ailn’s mastery of the sword—there was a merging of worlds there, two individuals’ experiences coming together as one to form something new.
It was hard for Ailn to express just how curative it felt, when he achieved this kind of synthesis. After all, it wasn’t just about finding solidarity with the original Ailn; it was also about reclaiming the instincts—bordering on memories—from his past life, the ones that the young god had taken from him.
Even now, as he carefully set deadfall traps along game trails, he found himself wondering just what circumstances drove him into a survival situation back when he’d been the detective.
“Dammit…” Ailn mumbled, as he looped back around to his first trap. He’d either set it too close to the trail, or the trigger had been too sensitive. He lifted the rock to see the berries he’d laid as bait, crushed underneath.
He stayed there a while, knelt down in frustration, his stomach rumbling all the while.
Did he really have the time to be doing this right now, with Renea being disinherited in a month?
The honest answer was, Ailn wasn’t sure. Between his main mission and his promise to take care of Renea and treat her as his sister, Ailn was still figuring out if he could even thread that needle.
He’d caught wind of the fact that Renea would be sent to a convent all the way in the west—within the ark-Chelon territory.
She’d probably be safer there, right? Just how much did the original Ailn expect of him?
He didn’t know. At the moment, he was just a man setting traps to get food. If nothing else, it would help clear his mind. Catch a squirrel, eat a half-decent meal, and get a good smoke in—after that, Ailn could make a proper decision.
It was true that he could just shamelessly ask Kylian for meals and turn his attention to the reincarnators entirely. But something in his gut told him to see this lark through.
Hours later, however, when the sun was already starting to dip—Ailn still hadn’t managed to catch anything. A few of the traps suffered from sensitivity issues: oversensitive like the last one, though more often way too stiff.
As far as Ailn could tell, though, the main issue was that all of them had apparently been too obvious. For about nine of the traps, the trigger and the bait were both completely undisturbed, despite multiple sets of tracks coming right up to them.
Back at his cottage, Ailn turned over the clay pot where he’d stored Kylian’s given provisions, and shook it. He smacked the bottom of it a few times just to make sure.
Yep. Looked like he was going hungry tonight.
_____________________________________
The castle’s atmosphere was tense, to say the least.
It wasn’t merely between the noble siblings—the knights themselves had formed implicit factions behind each sibling.
That said, it wasn’t quite correct to call one the ‘Sigurd faction’ and the other the ‘Sophie faction.’ Actually, neither of the two were popular, because both had rather noticeable flaws—and the pits of their personalities seemed to overlap like a barren valley between two jagged mountains.
Sigurd was domineering, while Sophie could be selfish. When it came to the management of the knights, Sigurd’s strictness and inflexibility to the letter of the law could be alienating; Sophie typically didn’t know the law and didn’t care.
Sigurd could be cruel, but Sophie certainly had her mean streaks. More than that, she was immature—the kind of immaturity the minimum age for headship was meant to prevent.
Recently, she’d further strained her relationship with the knights during her first bestowal ceremony as herself. Before, she’d had to mimic not only Renea’s voice, but also her deep sense of compassion.
But now…
“You did what?” Sophie had asked incredulously more than once as she’d listened to the knights’ sins. “Why?”
Sometimes she even failed to stifle laughter. “Snrk… Only an imbecile—pffft… ahem. There is none.. haah… among us without fault…”
The consensus among the knights was thus: both siblings had a talent for being unpleasant, so it didn’t matter much. Nor was Sophie’s eventual ascension to headship ever in question. The real contention lay in her immediate assertion of ultimate authority, and the divisive issue which had spurred her to it: the disinheritance of Renea.
Kylian was almost certain there was no precedent for such an early transfer of administrative power—at least, not without the involvement of death. Saintess Celine had indeed become the official head of the house at just nineteen, but that was only because everyone older than her had perished.
The primary reason Sophie garnered so much support from the knights was their fondness for Lady Renea and a strong sense that disinheriting Renea was kowtowing to the imperial family.
Those who sided with Sophie were simply sick of the duchy of the silver wolf being treated as if it were nothing more than the empire’s hound.
Renea’s disgrace was being politically co-opted. It made for a fine political prop—an excuse to force the eum-Creids to follow their will, or else see a harsh reduction in their military subsidies.
Rather than truly materially gaining from it, the imperial family—apparently, chiefly the third prince—desired to flaunt that the ryu-Genises were the masters of the eum-Creids.
This sort of gamesmanship was unfortunately more common in times of relative safety, when Varant was doing an exceptional job of defending the empire. Even the imperial family was prone to forget the sheer devastation that could be wrought by shadow beasts. Celine’s strong leadership had ushered in an era where Varant thrived, but this only made the imperial family grow more entitled and abrasive.
Neither the knights, nor the denizens of the eum-Creid duchy mattered to them. Should their minimized subsidies lead to collateral damage, the imperial family cared not so long as the northern wall did not outright fall.
To them, the duchy itself was nothing more than a bulwark, and the lives of those in it were mere cracks along that wall.
Hence, the relationship could never truly be equal, despite the empire’s reliance on them to guard the north.
Sigurd was not acting arbitrarily when he decided to disinherit Renea. He was likely under pressure from the third prince to ‘uphold the honor of the eum-Creids,’ or else face a reduction in funding.
To Sigurd’s mind, even a moderate loss of coin translated to fewer resources, reduced capacity, and more dead knights. Renea had given him no reason to fight for her, much less sacrifice—even indirectly—the lives of loyal knights.
The Order didn’t lack for knights who agreed with Sigurd’s basic reasoning. Even though their Knight Commander’s hypocritical mix of stringency and absenteeism rankled them, his reasoning was straightforward and perfectly defensible—unlike Renea’s actions.
Kylian, normally quite at ease even in the face of political tension, felt a headache coming on. The biggest issue was that no arbitrating body existed which could settle Sigurd and Sophie’s dispute.
At least not within Varant itself.
It was a matter of the family register, so the knights had no say. By law, Sigurd was entirely in the right. But Kylian had a strong feeling Sophie might literally physically block any carriages that attempted to abscond with Renea, should she fail to persuade the bishop and the official notary to reject the disinheritance.
As Saintess apparent—and as one that was exceptionally, unbelievably powerful—her will, and her will alone had sway that couldn’t be dismissed.
She was not the head of Varant. But she was its most important figure. A lesser man than Sigurd might have caved in by now, but Kylian knew Sigurd never would.
The issue would likely resolve in one of two ways. Either Renea would tell Sophie to step down, or the imperial family would. When it came to the empire’s noble lineages, the imperial family had the final say—and when it came to high nobility, they would exercise that right.
In the midst of all this turmoil, Ailn, banished to his cottage, had been all but forgotten. Even Renea, the girl at the heart of the conflict, had been confined largely to the lord’s chamber and faded from the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Kylian, however, had no place in the lord’s chamber, whereas the only obstacle to Ailn’s cottage was inconvenience. The normally shameless noble son had been oddly adamant in refusing a surplus of food parcels, and Kylian was simply checking in on his welfare.
By early morning, the crackle of fire from within the cottage could be heard.
“Ailn, the food you took would hardly have lasted you through the midday prior,” Kylian said with some concern, as he heard Ailn’s voice bid him come in. Entering, he noticed Ailn splayed out on the floor. “I wasn’t aware you knew how to forage.”
Next to Ailn was an unrolled piece of wool, with half a handful of berries, an acorn, and some sort of plant or fungal growth that looked rather suspect.
“Is this moss?” Kylian asked wearily.
“...Technically a lichen.” Ailn rolled over miserably, seemingly intent on preserving calories. “Reindeer eat it.”
“It doesn’t look fit for human consumption,” Kylian said.
“It’s okay if you boil it,” Ailn said, though he certainly didn’t look okay.
Kylian threw a pouch down next to the ailing Ailn.
Before his accident, Ailn had led an agricultural lifestyle. After the inquisition, Kylian had wondered if Ailn would return to it.
He moved rather purposefully these days, though to where Kylian had no idea. But it was evident that, whatever he was doing, he had little time to return to a way of life that made such strenuous demands of his time.
Now that he was forced back into his cottage, he definitely looked a little pathetic. Yet, Kylian had expected him to act a little more… unseemly.
His foraged morsels, sparse as they were, still came to more than Kylian would have managed.
Moral victories weren’t edible, though.
“I’ve brought some dried meat and cheese,” Kylian said. “Even if you wish to win your meals with your own hands, you should eat enough to maintain your energy, first.”
Ailn eyed the pouch almost resentfully.
“...I’m fine for now,” Ailn said, speaking like a dead man. “Sometimes… hunger is what you need to spur the mind.”
Kylian frowned. “Don’t be so stubborn.” Then he noticed what Ailn was holding in his right hand. “You truly saw fit to smoke even while starving?”
“I was smoking because I was starving,” Ailn said.
“If that were the case, then you’d cease smoking when you were well-fed,” Kylian sighed. “Is this really the time to battle nature, at any rate? When your sister is less than a month away from being exiled to a convent hundreds of miles away?”
“What difference could I possibly make?” Ailn asked lamely.
Kylian picked up the pouch he’d let fall to the floor, and dropped it again on a scowling Ailn’s face.
“I don’t know. But you may as well feed yourself and find out,” Kylian said, with a hint of annoyance. “...I’ve seen you pull off something extraordinary when you were at your very best. I would be remiss to let you do any less than that at such a dire time.”
He furrowed his brow. “Especially when this sudden onset of asceticism is so inexplicable.”
Ailn said nothing, as he turned over away from Kylian.
“Ailn, are you truly just going to let your sister slip away like this?” Kylian pressed the back of his thumb against the bridge of his nose, his sigh heavier, harsher in its tones.
“...She’s safe isn’t she?” Ailn asked. “You could do a lot worse than getting thrown in a convent.”
“Do you not… have a score to settle with your older brother?” Kylian asked. He was trying his best to prod Ailn on, even if he had to appeal to his pettiness. “I saw how you thrashed unhappily in that pile of snow. Surely, you’re not satisfied.”
“I had a full stomach then,” Ailn muttered. “Things were different.”
“And you can have a full stomach now,” Kylian raised his voice in a controlled manner. “You realize I spent my own coin on the food I brought you, don’t you?”
Kylian stifled the urge to kick the noble son wallowing on the floor. These infrequent bouts of uselessness were Ailn’s worst trait. Well… Ailn had many poor traits, truth be told. Still, these lapses of will were near the top.
He truly could not understand why Ailn wouldn’t simply take the food he’d been given. It was the exact opposite of when he’d begged Kylian to acquire him tobacco.
In retrospect, that had been far more respectable. As much as it perturbed Kylian that Ailn was so reliant on tobacco to function properly, he had at least been sincere in his endeavor to return to a clear and lucid mind.
Now he had the means, and simply refused to take advantage. Kylian could extend a great deal of patience for illnesses of the body, or even the mind; this was simply a defect of Ailn’s personality, and one he could not comprehend.
“Ailn, this is no time to—” Kylian started.
“...I need books from the ducal library,” Ailn said, interrupting him. “Or at least from the barracks, or Cairn, maybe.”
Kylian blinked.
“Books?” Kylian asked. “What books?”
“Family histories… are probably the best. Sigurd seems fairly honor-bound, so he’d respect precedent,” Ailn said. “Most important is anything related to disinheritance… or headship assumption. If we’re going to rule-lawyer our way out of this, we’re more likely to find a way to make Sophie family head early, than to get Renea off the hook.”
Ailn pushed himself with exaggerated effort back to a sitting position, leaning against the chest which kept most of his possessions. Warily, he took a piece of the lichen he’d apparently boiled and chewed on it grimly.
“I’m surprised to see you so adamant,” Ailn said. His tone was measured. “Objectively, because she lacks the divine blessing, Renea isn’t that important to the duchy. Are you really willing to interfere with the family headship over something this trivial?”
“I don’t find it trivial at all,” Kylian said. There was no doubt on his face, nor hesitation in his tone. “I serve the eum-Creid family as much as I serve the duchy. And the health of the duchy is not wholly detached from the well-being and happiness of its ducal family.”
“Is that really the reason?” Ailn asked.
Kylian gave it some thought. “...It’s the justification, at least.”
