That day, Adonis failed to shatter a single sword for the first time before taking a powerful blow from Sian that left him unable to move.
As Adonis trembled, coughing up blood, Sian wordlessly tossed him a bottle of sacred ashes. Adonis pathetically crawled after the small bottle rolling on the floor.
“Pain must be a new feeling for you. Savor it. Savor power.”
Unable to find the strength or presence of mind to answer Sian’s teasing, Adonis reached the bottle and desperately tended to his wounds.
“Kill me…” He groaned under his breath in agony. “Someday, I’ll come to kill you. So kill me while you can. Kill me…”
Sian smirked, looking like he could tell this was just Adonis’s way of dealing with the pain, and kicked him without reservation.
“The stronger you get, the greater the power I can unleash. So hurry up and start entertaining me.”
Still coughing, the boy glared up at Sian. An intense gaze, but not one of hatred…
“Hmm…” Sian blew out a puff of illusory smoke and narrowed his eyes, his voice unusually full of emotion. “A blessed child, eh?”
“What…?”
“I’ve never had someone like you among my pupils. But it does bring back memories… Maybe it’s because I haven’t taught anyone in a while.”
“…”
Adonis didn’t know that, in that moment, Sian was remembering the intense emotion that had spurred him on. A fierce sense of indignation that at this point almost felt wistful to reminisce about. He didn’t feel it anymore, but the memories of how that emotion had once burned in him at all times surfaced clearly in his mind.
How long ago was that…? Sian wondered.
He had been a blue-mantled priest and the King Minor ever since he was born, meaning he hadn’t been allowed to wield his sword of his own will. Despite that, his skill with the sword was even greater than the King Major. He was indeed the strongest Solist in Schwertland.
Sian’s days were spent shackled to his servitude to God, and his only way of escaping that was to become an Enola. Teaching was the sole occasion where he was allowed to freely wield his blade. With the students he raised, he performed Schwertmusik with reckless abandon, the kind not meant to entertain God.
But doing so filled him with regret and self-loathing. In the end, he only fostered his students to comfort himself… Yet in his frustration, he didn’t even notice that this emotion was only meant to mask the terribly cold attitude he maintained toward his pupils. He could tell something was constantly urging him on, but he couldn’t tell that it was his own feelings.
And with Sian still oblivious to the cause of his anger, the situation kept tumbling toward the point of no return. It was only when he had slain one of his students—an immature, inexperienced pupil—that Sian understood.
The pupil had been a Cateyes boy who had only just reached the age of youth. He had brilliant golden fur and looked like he had a promising future as a Solist—and it was this potential that distracted Sian. No matter how promising, the truth was that the boy wasn’t that strong yet.
The sight of another boy hugging his pupil’s dead body was what finally revealed to Sian the error of his ways, condemning the perverse, guilty pleasure he gained from teaching. The two boys had been brothers, likely set to shoulder the kingship of the next generation.
The King Major and the King Minor. Two mirror images: the Joyful Prince and the Sorrowful Prince. Sian couldn’t help but wonder if he saw his own image in that of the next generation’s Sorrowful Prince unconsciously guiding his hand to slay the boy. Was there any meaning to spending a life shackled by the position of King Minor? In his anger, Sian had forced an answer upon a question no one could decide.
What good would telling the next generation’s Joyful Prince about this do?
When had he suffered a wound too severe for sacred ashes to heal?
Sian couldn’t remember. His heart rejected the very idea of remembering it.
He turned his back on the boy cradling the dead body. The boy’s face was filled with the resolve that came from a pained decision. It was an expression that frightened Sian.
“I will inherit your teachings, both for my sake and his. So please…”
The boy had resisted any emotion from entering his voice, which shocked Sian into silence.
“Gaff…”
Without meaning to, he called out the boy’s name.
But the young man tacitly rejected the apology that would follow. To him, Sian was an irreplaceable mentor, incapable of erring. Nothing he could do was a mistake, even if Sian himself saw it as one. Gaff simply viewed it as one more lesson imparted on him by his mentor.
It was all so foolish, but he didn’t see it as something to reject or resist.
“Please, Meister. Continue instructing me,” the boy said.
Now that Sian thought about it, maybe that was the moment when monumental gears had begun to turn.
At the time, Sian’s elder brother, Rawhide, had already assumed the throne, and his precious daughter, Sherry, was maturing. But his wife, the Queen Major, had passed away while giving birth to the child who would serve as the next Queen Minor. There were only two prospective candidates to inherit the positions of the four pillars that would support the country. And now the system of control was trying to force Adonis and Belle to occupy these empty spots.
Back then, however, Sian didn’t know that. Slaying the Prince Minor meant that he had lost his own successor, and worse yet, he’d done it to satisfy his own urges. To please himself, he’d robbed the country of a person of great importance. Was someone who did that worthy of being an Enola?
Sian blamed himself for what he’d done, but many tried to defend him, instead blaming the dead boy, saying he wasn’t worthy of becoming Prince Minor if he perished in such a way. That was King Rawhide’s judgment, as well as Gaff’s. Gaff truly suppressed his feelings, as if he’d felt that this was the first trial he had to overcome to become King Major.