Zen

Zen was tired, he had been tired nearly every day since his ascension to the throne. Managing a realm to the best of his abilities had left the thirteen-year-old drained but he shook his head and tried to refocus on the council meeting.

They always dragged on as Duke Wulfen was a very thorough man and Zen struggled to muster any form of interest in the hundreds of small subjects that they had to take care of. He tried nonetheless, this too was a part of being a good king and he would be the best king that this part of the world had ever seen.

“That leads us to foreign affairs,” Duke Wulfen said and took out a bag with letters. “First and foremost is an invitation of King Ignatius from the Perios Kingdom. He wishes to introduce you to your future wife and renew the alliance.”

“Is it wise for me to leave the kingdom in such tumultuous times,” Zen asked his advisors, he had read the letter already before but wasn’t sure if it was a good time for this.

“With the Perios Kingdom renewing our alliance, there shouldn’t be any big problems that will need your presence here,” Duke Wulfen put his concerns to rest.

“Fine, when is that gonna be?”

“The princess’s birthday is in one and a half months, so King Ignatius has requested you to attend it,” Duke Wulfen answered, and Zen nodded.

His mother smiled broadly; she was of course also present as queen regent even if she didn’t do much in the position due to Zen leading the affairs. “A birthday, how nice. I am coming with you, right?”

Her tone was expectant but there was also a hint of fear in it, as if she was dreading that he would tell her to stay behind, which was probably the truth.

She had been like this since his father died, clingy and scared but trying to hide it. He couldn’t fault her for it, each of them had adopted coping mechanisms for their grief, Zen threw himself into work, and Mira acted like she was fine and still the same child, but he knew that there was a lot of pent-up emotion, but his mother’s was definitely the most concerning. She wasn’t bad as long as they saw each other every day but as soon as one of them was away or busy she would start to get moody and if she didn’t know where one of them was, she panicked.

“Yes, you and Mira are coming with me,” Zen quickly placated her, and a subtle wave of relief washed over her face.

“Is it wise to leave the kingdom behind without any member of the royal family,” Duke Greeich asked

“You heard, Duke Wulfen. Everything is fine and I am sure you and the rest of the council will have matters well in hand while we are taking care of the kingdom’s future,” she snapped, obviously annoyed.

Zen sighed, Duke Greeich had implored him that they had to do something about his mother’s increasing fear of loss but the few times he had mentioned it to her she had always gotten angry and stormed off, so he had given up. Was he a bad son for that? Probably. But he couldn’t help her if she wasn’t willing, and his time had better uses than being yelled at by this mother. She always apologized but still refused to talk about the subject.

“It is decided, Lord Greeich. Please make arrangements for our journey and let’s carry on,” Zen ordered. Duke Greeich was visibly displeased but nodded.

The meeting concluded half an hour later and Zen left the chamber with Sir Gavin at his side. “I am gonna die at twenty if I have to listen to one more argument between Lord Wulfen and Greeich,” Zen said while trying to hold back a yawn.

“Your father liked to say that the one thing nobles know how to do best is argue, closely followed by complaining,” Sir Strom said with a straight face. Zen took it as a joke nonetheless and chuckled, the knight was always like this when he was on duty.

“I wonder what Michael is up to,” Zen then said lost in thought. He had visited him in his room twice in the last couple of days and felt a little bit guilty that he didn’t make more time for his injured friend even if Michael would never fault him for that.

“I believe he is in the main training yard. I heard that he requested to train with the initiates,” Sir Gavin replied.

Zen looked at the knight surprised and asked, “Is he fully healed already?”

“I can’t say, Your Majesty.”

Zen decided to go take a look himself and they found themselves at the edge of the main training yard watching a spectacle.

Michael was currently in a spar with three knight initiates that looked each at least two years older than Zen’s friend, too young to be squires but definitely trained. That wasn’t to say that Michael was having problems. He danced around them, dodging their attacks before retaliating and sending one of them to the ground with a strike against his knee.

The other two tried to intervene before he could do more, but Michael was already content with the damage he had inflicted and turned toward the other two. He didn’t even give them any time to react and charged. They tried to hit him in a coordinated effort, but they were neither fast nor good enough to hit the young lord.

Michael ducked under a strike and retaliated by striking the smaller boy in the stomach with his fist. He went down while dry-heaving and was out of the fight for now.

A big grin was on Michael’s face as he went into a close exchange with the last initiate, blocking and striking at a speed that was impossible for a non-augmenting human being to even follow. He kept it up until the initiate suddenly began to slow down. His head was bright red, and he was growling like an animal, but his fate was sealed. With the boy’s mana reserves depleted, Michael surged forward and put the tip of his sword on the throat of the teenager.

He then glanced over to the other boys who were still on the ground, one holding his knee and the other one breathing slowly through his nose while holding his belly. Michael seemingly determined that the fight was over, which the knight in charge confirmed a moment later.

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Cheers and exasperated calls filled the courtyard as the adults present began to exchange small amounts of coins with some more and others less enthusiasm.

“That was impressive,” Sir Strom said, and his voice told Zen that he was genuinely in awe.

Zen looked at the veteran knight with surprise, it was not easy to impress the knight. Only a few of the kingsguard had even managed to impress him, so to have an eleven-year-old do it was indeed unique.

“Do you think I could do that,” Zen asked the knight curiously.

Sir Strom stayed silent while he thought about the question or much rather how to answer but when he finally spoke, he did so slowly. “I believe you might be able to beat three initiates, maybe not in one hundred percent of the fights but you can do it. The impressive thing is not that Michael can beat three fighters who are physically stronger without enhancement and older than him, the impressive thing is that he made it look absurdly easy. He was basically playing with them.”

The knight looked uncomfortable, which is something that one also didn’t see any day from the seasoned knight.

“I honestly don’t think that I could have done that at his age. Most initiates won’t reach the rank of a knight of course but they are not untrained kids, and those three didn’t look like pushovers to me. Michael is truly a talent that only appears once in a generation.”

As Zen listened to the praise the knight commander laid on his friend a feeling rose in his chest that he was utterly unfamiliar with, he was jealous of Michael, jealous of the attention and praise he received.

He didn’t like the feeling, so he pushed it down and approached his friend with a genuine smile. Michael was currently joking with the boys he had just fought.

“I really thought we could get you this time,” one of them said. “I just wish I was as lucky as, Brennen.” He pointed at the boy that didn’t get hit.

“Let’s go another round, this time we will get you,” Brennen exclaimed but his two mates looked at him with a sour expression.

“Do you want to tire me out to win,” Michael asked with a smirk and the boy grinned awkwardly at being caught.

“Maybe we might get a shred of our dignity back if we hit you at least once;” he admitted.

“Oh no, your dignity is mine now and you will have to wait for another day to win it back,” Michael joked and hit Brennen in the shoulder softly.

They laughed together until someone noticed Zen approach and everyone quickly fell to their knees. Zen sighed silently; he would never be able to joke like this with the ‘normal’ people anymore. Even as crown prince, he had difficulty connecting with people on a personal level without doubting their acting but as king, he had lost any chance of real personal connections. That is why he clung to the relationships he had made before ascending the throne as he at least trusted them.

After telling everyone to rise and go about their business he reached the group around Michael.

“You seem to be doing better, Michael,” he said and clapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s still a little bit stiff but having a dedicated healer fuss over you makes things quite easy,” Michael replied happily and rolled his injured shoulder. The other boys looked at them in shock as they talked so casually. They were the children of lowly nobles who tried to increase their influence by getting their sons into the knights of House Merland so the respect for the royal family, they most certainly had been instilled with, was running rampant right now.

Zen was happy that Michael hadn’t changed how he acted around Zen, sure he was doing everything he had to once they were in an official setting but outside of those, he was still the same boy he had met years ago.

“I would appreciate it if you could stop needing medical assistance,” Zen admonished him with a good-natured smile. He then turned to the initiates, who were still standing there like statues, and addressed them.

“You all fought well, I look forward to having you stand at my side once you become knights,” he praised them.

“You are too generous, Your Majesty. We didn’t even get a single hit in. We are ashamed that you had to witness that,” the boy named Brennen answered much more stiffly than he had talked to Michael before. Zen sighed internally but kept his happy facade up.

“Oh, nonsense. It fills me with joy that I have such competent vassals who can give even such talented prospects difficulties,” he said. Of course, it wasn’t entirely truthful, they didn’t look completely bad, but the only thing Zen had seen of them was getting lopsidedly beaten up by Michael which wasn’t a good impression of their talent.

They accepted his praise nonetheless and left shortly after to continue their training while Michael and Zen talked. Zen wanted to challenge Michael to a spar right then and there, but an irrational part of his brain kept him from doing it, fearing that he too would be easily beaten and fearing that the ugly feeling from before would return.

“Now that you are back to good health you will leave soon, right,” Zen asked to get his thoughts away from his weird thoughts.

“Yes, we will leave in two or three days. I want to do some shopping before then though,” Michael said and started into a little list of what he was looking for.

Zen couldn’t help but smile at Michael’s excited shopping list and his thoughts of before were quickly forgotten.

“I wish I could accompany you but there is just so much to do,” Zen said in a break from conversation with a sarcastic chuckle. There was no way that Michael was gonna go out into the city with the assassin still running around.

“Sure, you can come along. The kingdom will not crumble from you being gone from the castle for a couple of hours.”

Zen laughed, being sure that he was joking, and said, “With your tendency to get into trouble I don’t think that my guards would be happy to see us leave the palace together.”

“That is the good thing about being the king, they don’t have a choice,” Michael remarked with a wink. “Anyone would be stupid to try anything with your and my knights being present.”

“I might be able to order my knights around, but my mother is another case,” Zen said without thinking but he regretted the sentence the moment it left his lips.

“Your mother,” Michael was obviously curious, and Zen cursed his attention to details.

“Ah, you know how it is, mothers worry, and we have a track record of getting into trouble,” Zen tried to brush him off, but Michael was clearly not buying it.

“You mean I have a track record of getting into trouble,” Michael corrected him with a suspicious expression.

“It’s not you,” Zen gave up. Michael would think that Zen’s mother disliked him or something if the conversation continued on like this and that was very far from the truth. As far as Zen was aware she had a good opinion of Michael even if they never interacted, the fact that she didn’t enjoy childish behavior was also a positive for Michael who normally behaved quite maturely.

“She doesn’t have anything against you, she is just concerned about us, and the fact remains that there is an assassin after you,” Zen explained, he thought about telling him about the extent of his mother’s fears but decided that it would be disrespectful.

“She is not wrong,” Michael said placated, and scratched the back of his head. “Gotta go alone then.”

“Wait, you are serious? I thought you were just joking about going into the city to go shopping,” Zen exclaimed unbelievingly which caused many to gaze at them with interest.

Michael shrugged, “Sure.”

“Didn’t I just say something about an assassin?”

“With everyone hunting him and with my guard being alert, I will be fine. It is not like I can just call the merchants into the palace that I wanna meet,” Michael brushed off his concerns.

“You know what, that is exactly what you are gonna do. I order you to stay here where it is safe and I will call in the merchants with the wares that you want to look at,” Zen said with a cheeky smile. “That is the good thing about being king, you don’t have a choice.”

Michael smirked but gave in. “Guess I am gonna stay in the palace until I leave back home then.”