Launcelot shifted in his seat, setting himself for an extended talk. Under his armor-laden frame, the seat protested loudly, but it valiantly held on. One day, Li noted, he would replace all the old and failing things in this house with brand new versions. Although he did have a certain fondness for the disrepair – it added a bit of a rustic sense to the farm and the cottage. 

"You are a foreigner, unknowing of the histories of our lands," began Launcelot.

"I know more than you think. I'm more scholar than farmer, if I say so myself, and I've read up on this land's history."

Launcelot shook his head, his blonde curls wiggling with the motion. 

"What I say has been uprooted from the annals of history."

"That, too, I already suspected."

Launcelot raised a brow, and Li continued. "All I'm saying is, you don't have to treat me like a foreigner. Speak your mind naturally."

"Very well." Launcelot's jaw began to set as his eyes narrowed, his mind beginning to wander into the past. "I lived in the capitol when I was young, for my mother sent me there to receive my education, as all noblemen should. From when I was a boy of ten to a man of eighteen years, I boarded at Veritas, a premiere institution that opened its esteemed gates only to those of noble blood."

"Interesting," said Li. "Veritas?" 

He scoured his memory until he happened upon one small little page in the historical texts that Aine owned. It was a little excerpt describing how Veritas, beforehand exclusive to those of noble blood, had been rebuilt from the ground up and opened to anyone capable under the duchess's reforms. 

"This duchy was founded in 1020, and if my memory serves me correctly, then Veritas ceased to be a private institution exactly a year after. The first anniversary of the duchy was its re-opening. The math doesn't add up. You're far too young to have attended it. You'd have to be almost thirty."

"And that, I am," said Launcelot, smiling a little bashfully. "Or rather, in a month, to be more exact. I will make sure to invite you to my birthdate celebration."

Li looked at Launcelot. The man had impeccably flawless skin. A little tanned from working under the sun, for sure, but it showed zero signs of wearing. His features were the very spitting image of youth, sharp as if chiseled out of stone and positively bursting with good-looking healthiness. With how big, almost child-like his smile was, it was easy to think him barely twenty. 

"You don't look like it, if you don't mind me stating the obvious," said Li.

"And I am certain many say the same to you. You do not look a day over twenty, though I suppose it may be partly due to us hailing from such different lands. Though from your actions, your mannerisms, your talk, I sense we are near the same age, no? Though I suspect you are older than me."

"In a way, you'd be right." Li had previously been a little over thirty in his past life. Just the right age for him to have worn away the lust for life that burned in his early twenties, right in time for his jaded outlook on his hopeless world to start settling in. 

But now, with how fundamentally his mind had altered, there were times he felt immeasurably older.

"For you, it is your wonders of your eastern blood. For me, it is elven heritage."

"You're elven?"

"Perhaps a little drop of elven blood would be more accurate. The first Lakely, perhaps two centuries ago, was an elven man accepted into human society for his exceptional building talents. He built almost the entirety of Riviera up as well as much of the capitol's wondrous architectural wonders. If you ever stop by the noble estates, then do give the Lakely estate a visit. It is a magical spire of wondrous design that cannot be missed."

Launcelot spoke with evident pride for his bloodline, though it was quite a curious thing that he was not a builder of some sort if he revered his noble house's talents. Regardless, this was a matter for another time.

"I think I've seen it already, and it does stand out among the rest of the mansions," said Li. "But back to your education. I'm assuming something happened to it."

"My education itself faced no challenges. I graduated from Veritas the year before it closed its gates in. My major is in military tactics, but I do have a minor in engineering, so if ever you need plans drawn up for some ambitious project, then feel free to call upon me."

Launcelot laughed before growing somber. "But yes, it is in my schooling that I uncovered some dark lurking beneath the gold of the crown.

In my eight years in the capitol, I befriended a young girl, a half-hero, though I suppose they were called mutants at that time."

Launcelot grimaced at the word 'mutant', and when he continued speaking, the grimace remained.

"She became my dearest friend. We were inseparable and she, fiery-spirited as she was, always getting into scuffles with the other girls and boys in the streets, always escaping from the clutches of patrolling knights, wished to become an adventurer, and I too with her.

But she was far, far stronger than I. Her power, illustrious and destructive as it was, made her seem to far from me, so unreachable. Thus, when we were fifteen and she asked me if I wished to withdraw from Veritas to follow her into adventurer's training, I did not."

"Standard case of rich guy can't abandon his position to be with his poor lover?"

"No. I used every justification I could. I had too much to lose joining her, I told myself. I could not throw my life away as an adventurer when I had the Lakely estate to tend to. I could not disappoint my mother who expected so much from me. I could not this, I could not that.

In the end, I was simply a coward riddled with insecurities. I simply believed myself too weak to walk her path."

Launcelot's gauntleted hand balled into a fist, the creak of metal ringing through the confines of the cottage.

"I will regret that decision until the end of my days."

Li let the nobleman pause to collect his thoughts. The fact that he was an adventurer now without his friend at his side could only mean that an unfortunate fate had befallen her. 

"What happened to her?" said Li. He did not want to press Launcelot, but he could tell the shielder was a man of strength. There might have been a time, a younger Launcelot, perhaps, that would have grieved, but now, enough years had passed that, though there was pain in his expression, he carried himself with composure.

"I am not sure. That is the terrifying part." Launcelot took in a short, halting breath. "I graduated. I regretted my decision. I underwent adventurer's training despite my mother's protests. I saw her again, but she was an adventurer no longer. She was a hero of the then newly formed Ascendant Order."

"Had she changed any?" Li asked the most important question. He knew the duchess had some ability to alter the minds of others. Alexei had confirmed that much, though it was not a given that Li could trust the vampire's thoughts entirely. Not because the vampire was not trustworthy, but because, from what he could glean, the vampire only had secondhand knowledge that could have been unreliable.

At the least, the only thing Li could hypothesize was that the duchess could not control Li or affect him in any way. If she could have, she would have, as simple as that. She simply had no ability to do so. But still, it would be prudent to know this information.

"I would like so very dearly to say no." Launcelot's jaw set. "She was entirely the same. She was happy to see me. I talked to her for quite a while, and she was much the same person. Just as happy and confident and forward-looking as ever, though now, she believed that the Ascendant Order was the best way for her to feel the thrill of fame and adventure and battle, and it did make sense.

There was no lack of foes for the order to fight and heroes were starting to become respected even moreso than adventurers. It felt as if I had simply been left behind again, unable to catch up with her, and now, the bridge was one I could never cross for I lacked any heroic power to match her.

The way she drifted apart from me felt natural. Believable."

Launcelot raised a metal-sheathed finger. "But there was one thing that drove me to suspicion. I knew that she held a star shaped birthmark at the small of her back. I saw no such mark then. That led me to explore. The Lakelies built many of the royal buildings, including the Noonspire that the Ascendant Order and Arcana use.

I reviewed a few dusty but usable blueprints to access the Noonspire through the sewers. I came upon the lowest level of the spire, a former dungeon sealed off once it came under the duchess remodeled it, and there-"

Launcelot shuddered, and Li blinked. It was unlike the shielder to ever shudder, experienced and strong as he was. 

"I saw her. Encased in a bag of flesh. I scrambled to free her, but then I saw another of her, just the same, encased in another bag of flesh. Then I saw others that I knew not of. Countless others. All in these bags, all sleeping."