It was a short trek to Ailn’s cottage.

Located in the woods in front of the castle, it was in a sense right in-between the castle and the city of Varant proper. It wasn’t necessary to go through the woods to get to town, but it was possible, and the original Ailn clearly had an easy path to get there whenever he worked the fields with the commoners.

In a sense, its location— relative to everything else—was a mirror of the original Ailn’s place in the world. Not part of the castle, and not part of the town. Just stuck in-between. And while the original Ailn had lived there for the better half of a decade, the new Ailn had never seen it.

Now, he was looking up at it.

It was a little thing of wattle and daub, and ‘cottage’ was a kind word for it; it was really more of a hovel. Covered in snow, and sitting on a barren and ice-slick hill, it struck an impression as lonely as it was cold.

“You weren’t kidding about its size…” Ailn grimaced, taking care not to slip as they took careful steps up the hill. “Was this built just for me?”

“I believe it was originally a groundskeepers’ lodgings,” Kylian said. “Nominally, the woods in front of the castle are meant for hunting. But in practice, they’ve only been loosely managed.”

That made sense. It wasn’t some awful jungle to traverse, but the woods definitely suffered from overgrowth.

“This looks miserable,” Ailn said unhappily, as they came right up to it. “Huh.”

Round the back, there was a wooden pell—like could be seen at the knights’ yard. The pell was old and splintering. Varant’s poor weather had probably contributed, but it was easy enough to see that for a long time now someone had been diligently using it to train.

Ailn found it a bit curious, but they’d get to it later. For now, the knight and the nominal young master entered the cottage completely unbefitting nobility.

“Home sweet home?” Ailn asked.

“Why are you asking it like a question?” Kylian looked at him.

There wasn’t much inside. A shoddy table of elm, surrounded by shoddy stools—and a firepit in the middle.

A hook drooped by chain from the rafters, and over the firepit a small cauldron hung from it. The place had a bit of a sour, acrid stench, and it was clear why: whatever stew had been simmering in the cauldron had spoiled over the last couple of days since its owner had been out.

“I’m questioning if I want to come back,” Ailn said, peering into the mess of vegetables in murky brown. “Actually, I’m not questioning it at all. I don’t.”

“You seem a great deal more materialistic ever since you’ve ‘come back,’ Your Grace,” Kylian said.

“I hate the cold, you know? Must’ve just remembered,” Ailn said. The blanket on his mattress looked awfully thin.

The cottage didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions. For the most part, that squared with Ailn’s impressions of the original owner of his body, but it was striking seeing the asceticism first-hand. He’d expected to at least see a few keepsakes of nobility laying around.

Everything here was functional, if not necessary. Farming tools hung from pegs on the walls, secured by cheap leather straps, but the tools themselves looked pretty high quality: they weren’t rusting and the joints between wood and wrought iron were all well-fitted.

A hoe, a sickle, and a plow all hung on the wall. Ailn picked the sickle up. The balance was good.

Notably, there was an empty peg on the wall and a small chest below it.

“That peg was probably…” Ailn opened the chest. “Yeah.”

Among other things, there was a whetstone. Which made it likely that the empty peg was where the original Ailn had hung his sword.

“I guess the shattered sword really was mine,” Ailn said, scratching the back of his head while he tilted it. “But would I really buy a sword with orichalcum I couldn’t make use of, when I don’t even have meat in my stew?”

He thought back to the wooden pell outside. Maybe the original Ailn had tried to train his holy aura, just like he trained with the sword.

“Kylian, can you strengthen your holy aura through training?” Ailn asked.

“It’s debated,” Kylian gave a small shrug. “Some swear by it. But there’s never been any sort of exceptional improvement.”

Then it was certainly possible the real Ailn had at least tried. The current Ailn’s gaze floated over to the corner of his cottage. A cylindrical stand held a number of wooden swords, many of them rather worn.

“Did you know me as a swordsman, Kylian?” Ailn asked.

“Not much of one,” Kylian said, apparently also struck.

Ailn found himself distracted by them.

It had been a lark to visit the cottage at all—just his instincts telling him he’d find something of worth, even when his intellect said there shouldn’t be anything to find.

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Now he found himself wondering if it was actually this bundle of swords which drew him back to the cottage.

His hands were grasping for one.

In a lot of ways, he’d felt the same yesterday, when he wanted to reach for a pack of smokes that just weren’t there. But unlike those cigs, these practice swords were right in front of him. And the quality of the feeling was a bit different.

He’d craved a smoke. But what he felt now was more like yearning.

So, he walked over and grabbed one. Then he turned to Kylian.

“Wanna try sparring?”

----------------------------------------

With blows of surprising heft, and footwork of surprising alacrity, Ailn had Kylian on the backfoot. He gave the wooden sword a sharp thrust forward; he hadn’t planned it, or even expected it. His body just did it.

Kylian responded with a subtle turn of his shoulder, a sliding parry that ended with his sword at Ailn’s neck.

“Damn,” Ailn said, raising his hands in surrender. “I thought I might actually win for a moment there.”

“At many points, I feared you might,” Kylian said, not bothering to hide the frustration in his voice. “I suspect you could best most of the knights.”

The spar was hard-fought, and both of them were out of breath. Ailn had taken Kylian to the brink—something that, in recent years, none of the other knights had managed to do.

“Come on, man. No need to flatter me.”

“I’m not. I’m one of the Azure Knights’ best swordsmen.”

“Do they say that or do you say that?” Ailn asked.

“I know that,” Kylian said, irritatedly. He spat at the ground next to him. “You must have trained diligently.”

“I guess I must have,” Ailn said, looking at his hands. “And here I thought these calluses just came from picking potatoes.”

“We don’t grow potatoes here,” Kylian said.

Ailn had wondered exactly what advantages—or disadvantages—might come with his new body. When he brought his smoking addiction along from his past life, he started to think there’d be nothing left from the ‘original Ailn’ at all.

But he hadn’t known anything like swordplay in his old life. He knew how to fight, and he felt that experience aiding his swordsmanship, too; but fundamentally, skill with the sword was clearly ingrained into this body before he ever came along and inhabited it.

So, it felt like a fair trade. On one hand, he brought along his vices. On the other hand, he got to keep the original Ailn’s hard-earned skill with the sword. Skill he’d honed in secret, apparently, if none of the knights knew about it.

He respected that. There was virtue in secret effort. It hadn’t been enough to save his life, but it was still worth admiring.

More than that, the new Ailn felt like he understood the original Ailn a little better now.

There was a strong sense of desperation still lingering in those splintering practice swords. Just seeing them had brought it out. But when the detective actually used one to spar, he found himself caught up in the emotion.

There was one thing all the people in Ailn’s life seemed to share in common. They all at least implicitly treated him like a pushover.

Kylian thought highly of his moral character, but never said a word about his capabilities. Aldous and Ennieux each had their brand of condescending down to him.

And Renea... her behavior was hard for Ailn to pin down from their brief meeting. He couldn't tell if she was walking on pins and needles, or treating him like a child. It made some sense that she'd be overprotective. From her perspective, her older brother had miraculously survived.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that, if he were the original Ailn, it would sting—being so profoundly underestimated. And it got the new Ailn wondering about what else this body could do.

“You said I had no holy power, right?” Ailn asked, resting against his wooden sword.

“Hardly any,” Kylian said.

“How do I conjure it?” Ailn asked.

“What do you mean? Are you unable to?” Kylian asked in return.

“I have no idea how to do it. Probably because of my amnesia. Can’t you teach me?” Ailn gestured, turning his palm upward to ask for a small demonstration.

Kylian thought for a long while, presumably pondering the pedagogical challenge. Then he shrugged.

“It’s like asking me to teach you how to breathe, Your Grace,” Kylian said. He manifested holy aura into the tip of his finger. “Once I could do it, I simply could. I never had to be taught, nor did any other knight. You can’t conjure it at all?”

Ailn attempted to manifest it, but unfortunately nothing happened, no matter how much he concentrated. Not seeing any results, he crossed his arms and gave his pensive, thinking wince.

“Should I be able to feel it?” Ailn asked. “Even though I don’t have much?”

“Absolutely,” Kylian said. “All the more because of it. A balding man would have an acute awareness of what little hair he has left, wouldn’t he?”

“That’s an awful metaphor to try and console someone, you know,” Ailn opened his eyes with a frown.

“You truly can’t feel anything?” Kylian asked.

“Well… ” Ailn closed his eyes again and focused.

Not for nothing, but Ailn knew his senses were sharp. So, he figured if he pushed his awareness to its limit, he might be able to feel the divine blessing flowing through him, the same way someone with a good sense of tactility can feel their own pulse.

Unfortunately, he still felt nothing. He relaxed and shrugged.

“Guess I’m even worse than before,” Ailn said.

He didn’t really care, frankly. Whatever hopes and dreams the original Ailn might have had, the detective now in his place was completely unfettered by them. Nonetheless, Kylian gave him a sympathetic look.

Ailn’s offhand flippant remark must have sounded like masked disappointment to the honest knight.

“You should be proud of your efforts,” Kylian said, with a voice so somber Ailn felt guilty. “There is no shame in facing one’s weakness head-on. It is far more gallant to master the blade through hard work, than to rest on the laurels of a divine gift.”

Now Ailn felt really guilty.

“Right. Thank you. I appreciate that,” Ailn said. He didn’t know what to say, and hoped his guilt looked like shy embarrassment. “It’s uh… too much for me.”

“Not at all,” Kylian said, none the wiser.

Still, Kylian’s sincere kudos on the virtues of effort got Ailn thinking about the shattered sword again.

Maybe the original Ailn really had been trying to strengthen his divine blessing. He’d been determined enough to become a good swordsman, after all. It made sense to hope his efforts could rectify the weakness of his holy aura too.

Determination that’s succeeded once tends to think it can always defeat futility.

There were people who tried to grow taller by force of will, weren’t there? The orichalcum dense sword could’ve been aspirational—hanging in his cottage every day like a picture of a Lamborghini.

"Say, Kylian," Ailn started, "could you take me to the northern wall?"