Chapter Text
Yet again, she rendered him breathless.
Lestilaut stumbled to Rozemyne’s side falling to his knees as she shuddered and collapsed. Her tiny form hunched over inelegantly and she clutched at her mouth after drinking…was it truly poison?
Lestilaut fumbled for the anti-toxin draughts on his belt with one hand while reaching for her with the other, but her protection charms knocked his hand away. He couldn’t even give her one as she lay there limp and even the horrifying shudders began to slow.
Why?
Why!
WHY!
“Do you hate me so much, Rozemyne?” He hated how weak his voice sounded now. “I don’t understand.”
“…what’s there to understand Lord Lestilaut?” her soft voice broke through the frenetic cacophony inside his head, “aren’t you also fighting for Lady Hannelore? What’s wrong with me also fighting for my family?”
Family?
Lestilaut drew back, curling his hand into a fist against his chest as if physical pressure could calm the turbulence inside him.
Using his hesitation, Rozemyne recovered her feet. Before him, she rose, staggering, covered in grass stains and dirt, her clothes and hair all in disarray, but pulsing with so much mana her eyes shone like stars. Fittingly, she was the most breathtaking he had ever seen her.
“Wilfried! I can handle things here! Go steal Lady Hannelore!”
Oh…so it wasn’t poison.
Despite himself, a tight little knot at the pit of his stomach he didn’t want to examine quietly unraveled.
Lestilaut lept back just in time to see Leidenschaft’s spear materialize in Rozemyne’s hands, cracking with the truest possible summer blue.
She charged him. It was comical.
In the first place, the spear was far too long for her, even the most graceful well-trained lady would have struggled with the length. And then it was clear that for all her knowledge of tactics and strategy, Rozemyne had never so much as done a mock-spar as a child. The spear was awkward in her hand. She had no sense of footing at all, and on her tiny stature, it was like watching a wolfeneil pup trying to fetch a throwing stick twice its clumsily adorable size.
Despite the clear and present danger of the divine spear, Lestilaut barely registered her as a threat.
They…stepped around each other a little. It gave Lestilaut time to think.
Honestly, wasn’t she from a knight’s family? She had that brother of hers from last year, didn’t she? His sword dance had been quite impressive. Lestilaut would have never thought the sister of such a man to have no martial knowledge…
No, Rozemyne had been raised in the temple, hadn’t she? Due to - as far as their scholars could tell - factional conflict. She was then adopted as an archduke candidate, after which she had been attacked and placed under a jureve sleep.
…Family…
Rozemyne was strangely close to her archduke candidate siblings despite being adopted too.
Lestilaut was so absorbed in his thoughts that when Rozemyne reach a little further than he’d judged, he automatically bumped the tip of her spear away with the God of Darkness’s shield. The collision of mana created a shock wave that vibrated through his arm, Rozemyne actually toppled, her spear now gray and drained completely of mana. He batted it away before she could fall on top of it and hurt herself.
Her eyes were however riveted to his arm and Lestilaut followed her line of sight back to where the treasured darkness shield was now glowing gold. Slowly it crumbled away, every feystone, every bit of mana metal. Lestilaut could only gape like an idiot.
Mother was going to be so very angry.
Rozemyne!
No! Lestilaut slammed his eyes shut and immediately began his breathing exercises. No malice was allowed within Schutzaria’s shield! If he looked at her now Lestilaut was going to want to dig his knuckles into the crown of her head and drill them in until she cried like he used to do with some of his more unruly cousins at play. With how frail Rozemyne was that probably constituted actual harm and would have the goddess shield blowing him asunder.
So Lestilaut kept his eyes closed and remembered his tutor’s lessons on calming the mind and rechanneling his anger into self-examination. What went wrong? Where did the problem begin? What could he do to fix it? Where should he proceed now?
Absentmindedly, he caught the spear that Rozemyne was trying yet again to ineffectually swing at him.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he grumbled, still deliberately not looking at her, “and then I’m going to have to protect you, from yourself, inside your own shield.”
“How can you still be in here! Your shield is gone! It can’t…” she squeaked.
“ I hold no malice! Did I not already say as much?” Lestilaut snapped, “Against our expectations, Geduhl has done more to defeat Schutzaria in the last few minutes than had any subordinate of Leidenschaft!”
“You! You’re trying to take me away in a ditter match and sent that brute to attack me!”
“Your shield warded off the Zent’s own guard knights! No matter how strong he is, Lastark can’t possibly equal an entire contingent of the sovereignty’s most powerful by himself! You were never remotely in danger from me or mine!”
Rozemyne fell silent, ashen-faced, and suddenly put on a peculiarly stiff noble smile.
“L-lord Lestilaut…your expectations of me, e-even Schutzaria…”
For some reason, her awkward smile and the unexpectedly wane timbre of the voice immediately did away with any tension and spirit he'd had left in him.
“We are too far in Ewigliebe’s court for Geduhl to call upon Schutzaria.” Lestilaut sighed, feeling his cheeks heat up for having lost his composure so much he’d shouted his direct thoughts to another archduke candidate. “But know that in challenging you in particular, Rozemyne, Dunklefelger had been prepared to do battle with the pillar goddess herself in all her glory.”
Although he had not been quite expecting to sacrifice so much in the process. Lestilaut took a second to ramp down the dread of returning to his mother with nothing but a handful of gold dust where their duchy treasure should have been. But at least in this, it wasn’t much different from the last time he faced Rozemyne in ditter.
“I…am willing to admit that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between us that was not breached by Ordonschnelle...” He said slowly.
He was interrupted by a shriek. “Something’s coming from above!”
Lestilaut turned his face to where a cloud of interlopers had appeared in the sky.
Unacceptable!
Hannelore would be fine. She was an archduke candidate of Dunklefelger after all, and could fell any of their archnobles if necessary. For that day, she was laden down with magic tools of every type that could be found in Dunklefelger. Neither the foolish Ehrenfest lordling nor the intruders would be much threat to her. But then again, who knew what else Rozemyne had under her sleeve? And…and if she truly was fighting for the sake of her family…
There was no time for negotiations mid-battle.
“Rozemyne,” he said firmly, “I hope you are not counting upon these intruders to help your cause. Dunklefelger will defeat them in time. You will not win.”
“We will not give…”
“Please let me finish.” He finally leveled her with a tired glare. She pouted at him. “You will not win…but as I said, I acknowledge my failings. I will not force you to lose either.”
Rozemyne blinked back, the noble composure she had just found falling away again. Like this, she looked like nothing so much as a large shumil.
“…Lord Lestilaut, you mean to say…”
“Call back your people, and I shall call back mine. We shall consider this a stalemate. Let us discuss our truths further under the violet glow of Schuztaria’s moon.”
With that, Lestilaut raised his left hand aloft and curled his fingers in the Dunklefelger military signal for falling back. Deliberately, he walked on his own, out of the divine shield of wind.
He silenced the knights clamoring to his side with a glare and summoned his high beast. Calling Rauffen to confirm their stalemate, he gave his contingent their orders.
None were happy, many looked as if they were going to fight him to reopen the ditter match, but they were Dunklefelger and he was their future aub. When he spoke, they listened. In force, they ascended as one and dropped any of the poor begotten Ehrenfest knights like limp quarry to turn on the intruders who dared disturb their sacred ditter.
Behind him, after a bit, Rozemyne gave the order for her own knights to limp back under her mantle.
Lestilaut finally drew a mouthful of sharp frosty air into his lungs. Hopefully, hopefully, he’d made a sound decision.