Solomon's eyes gently fluttered open.
It took him a moment to register the familiar ceiling looming above his head.
He instinctively brought a hand to his chest to feel the strong beating of his heart.
His body was wracked with pain, but it hardly mattered to him.
Solomon had won. Nothing could deprive him of that elation.
Not even the metal-covered fist that was coming towards his face.
Wham!
"Ow, fuck!" Solomon's head snapped back as he let out an unconscious curse.
Emmanuel snorted. "Listen at you winging with just that. I should be hitting you twice as hard for that stunt you pulled out there yesterday."
Solomon removed his hand from his nose, bewildered. "I've been asleep for a whole day?"
Emmanuel struck him over the head again.
"Ow!"
"Don't interrupt me. I see I've been taking things too easy on you, so now you think it's okay to put on shameful displays like that. The duel was over, kid."
"Says who??" Solomon asked defiantly.
Emmanuel hit him again.
"Says me, cadet. You think Bernard was the kind of kid who would just stop attacking you just because you were bleeding out?"
"He doesn't really have much of a choice now..." Solomon muttered.
He looked up at Emmanuel, expecting another fist to the face.
One did come, but it was softer this time. Probably because the usually stoic knight was trying not to laugh.
Solomon smiled with bloodied teeth.
"....That's not funny." He lied. "You're in deep shit."
Solomon stopped smiling.
"You killed another combatant after an official duel was completed. That goes against the most basic rule of combat here. And now we have to notify the duke that his son was killed."
"Send tissues." Solomon started trying to get out of bed. Emmanuel pushed him back down.
"I don't know what's not clicking for you. That man is a vindictive, spiteful son of a bitch. When he finds out about what happened yesterday, he will-"
"I don't care." Solomon interrupted.
Emmanuel raised his fist again.
This time, Solomon didn't back down.
"Go ahead, hit me. I don't care anymore. I'm tired of people trying to intimidate me and push me around. But when I suddenly stand up for myself, then everyone wants to act like the fucking sky is falling! It's not fair!"
"You have to understand your position here, boy! You are an outsider with no backing aside from that of a ten-year-old boy!
That's what I'm trying to get you to understand, because what is 'fair' doesn't apply to you here! You have to do everything by the book, and you do not get to make your own rules!"
Solomon fell silent and turned his head to the side.
"…Look kid." Emmanuel spoke more softly in an attempt to quell his budding migraine. "You want to do whatever you want? Gotta do what you're told first. When you get the Patriarch and the other higher-ups to acknowledge you, then you can write your own tickets around this place. Not before."
Emmanuel suddenly paused and turned to the doorway.
"You get that? It doesn't just go for him, Young Master."
Raizel didn't say anything at first. Instead he leaned against the door with a hard to read expression.
"…The Patriarch has made a decision on his punishment."
The tension in the air sat heavily on one's soldiers. Solomon hadn't considered how harsh a punishment here could really be.
He knew of some real horror stories from the conversations he overheard from his upperclassmen. The last thing he wanted was to test the validity of their claims for himself.
That worried Solomon, but he wouldn't regret his decision.
Nothing and no one was going to make him feel bad about killing Bernard. If things worked out poorly, he wouldn't cry. All he could do was take it on the chin.
"The Patriarch decided that his core formation ceremony will be postponed for a year…" Raizel finally said.
Solomon and Emmanuel were gobsmacked.
During training, knights take energy from their surroundings and store it inside of their bodies as a semi liquid core the size of a peach pit.
During the core stabilization ceremony, the core is hardened and becomes useable; allowing knights to use aura to achieve superhuman feats.
Cores have eight stages of advancement and tiers ranging from low, middle, and advanced.
The first stage, Red, the second, Orange, then comes Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Silver, and White.
It's generally believed that use of aura, as well as core formation, is impossible for anyone who hasn't undergone their ceremony.
And yet somehow, two ten year olds were already able to use aura on their own and Emmanuel didn't have the foggiest idea as to how that was even possible.
They could probably make cores all on their own if they put their mind to it.
"…Pft."
Raizel's cheeks blew up from trying to hold in the air.
His express expression was what sent Solomon over the edge, and with one pillar fallen down, the other wasn't far behind.
Solomon and Raizel fell over themselves laughing.
Emmanuel was holding his head as he tried to figure out how two little brats seemed to be hording all the luck in the world.
But he couldn't think with the two of them laughing hard enough to hack up a lung.
So in the end, Emmanuel did the only thing that made sense to him.
He picked up both boys by the scruff of their necks and smashed their heads together.