When Jule recovered his conciousness, the first thing that called his attention was the dampness of the air he was breathing in. The scent of earth and mold managed to remove any sort of sleepiness he might have had.

Once a bit of time had passed, he tried opening his eyes. To his surprise, he didn’t struggle at all, no blinding light or sharp pain welcomed him, he could only see darkness.

After his eyes got accustomed to the darkness, he noticed a small flicker of flame coming from in front of him, barely illuminating his surroundings and creating eloganted shadows.

All around him, the walls were made of hardened earth, the only place not covered with it, was instead blocked by a set of metal bars.

Jule tried to move, but his hands seemed to be chained to the wall with manacles made out of the same metal as the bars. He couldn’t even force a bit of his strength either, his mucles were throbbing in soreness and pain, the extertion of his last battle had pushed it to the point of breaking apart.

He could only struggle for a few moments before the pain became too strong.

“Stop being so goddan noisy” Jule heard a growl from outside his cell, his body jumping in place and a certain point in his abdomen releasing waves of fire-like anguish.

Jule noticed the same man from that night, his absolutely unimpressive appearance that contrasted with his gaudy clothes looked as ridiculous as before. He wore a green oversized overcoat, inlaid with golden inscriptions.

He was resting his back against one of the walls outside his cell, that accursed golden spear laid next to him.

“Who the hell are you?!” Jule shouted at the man, hoping to get some idea of his strength.

The man just snickered and didn’t answer, turning his head the other way.

“Hey bastard!, Do you know who you are talking to?!” Jule felt a vein popping in his forehead, he had never been so openly disrespected and scorned, perhaps only by Parn, but he had a certain inmunity.

The man in the overcoat began to tap his foot against the ground.

Jule remembered how Viscount Dandelion had called the man in their earlier fight.

“Golden Spear, I will only ask once, why is Viscount Dandelion doing this? I am the Heir of the Redshield Dukedom, I deserve to know!” Jule expressed his indignation.

Golden Spear seemed to have finally gotten enough of Jule’s attitude.

He didn’t have a bif fuse.

“You don’t deserve shit, you spoiled brat” Golden Spear turned and spat in Jule’s direction.

“You nobles always talk big, but look where that got you, the mighty Heir of the Dukedom, stuck in a cell, under my jurisdiction…” Golden Spear cackled.

Jule prepared a retort, but just as he was going to day it, Golden Spear interrupted him.

“And I, will only say this once too. I am not like Ice Blade, I will not go easy on you just because you are a little shit... If you don’t stop yapping and being noisy, I will break every single bone in your body, one by one, until you can’t even say your name” Golden Spear said this while glaring at Jule, his pupils slightly repitilian, with small flashes of yellow lightining.

This same stare caused Jule to forget what he was going to say, his mind and body were telling him that saying another word would be a big mistake.

So he swallowed his pride once again, and obediently sat down.

Golden Spear just grunted and turned his gaze away, not wanting to spare Jule another moment of his thoughts.

...

Some time passed in absolute silence, not a single sound could be heard, the only interruption being the ocasional rumble in the ground.

In boredom, Jule began to get some clues together.

The rumbling was probably coming from the still ongoing siege, which meant that they couldn’t have taken him far away. It had been a few days now, so they Royal Army probably had time to use earth scrolls to build some simple underground bunkers, it was a basic tactic.

Jule’s thoughts wandered over to his father, he wondered if he was disappointed that the strategy had failed, he wondered whether he would blame Parn for leaving him alone… He wondered whether his father was worried about him.

Jule had failed, and he had failed stupendously.

All the strongest soldiers in his group had been killed, and the weaker ones were none the wiser, protecting the townsfolk back at the Cathedral. Jule felt a tightness in his chest thinking about these people, he had not known them for long, but they had still sacrificed their lives for him.

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It was a queer feeling, he had never cared much for any of them, they didn’t amount to anything in his eyes…

Yet, he couldn’t help but care…

...

Either way, they were now gone, and nothing was going to bring them back, Jule would have to live with his decisions and their deaths.

What truly shook him to his core, was that he had been captured.

In the heat of the battle, he thought it was a life or death match, yet Ice Blade had never been on the same playing field as him. He had completely forgot that the battle could end in his imprisonment, he had truly believed that he would die.

It was stupid of him to believe so, who would let such a valuable piece slip away from their hands.

Jule wanted to strangle his older self, telling him to escape by any means necesarry, instead of getting drunk on the exitement of battle. There were so many things he could have done.

His mood turned sour as his mind was tormented by the thousands of mistakes he had comitted, even if he wanted to push the blame onto others, they were all dead, there was no one left to blame but himself.

...

As he dug deeper into his self pity, the earlier cockiness and pride he had displayed began to erode, ever so slightly changing Jule. Self reflection was dangerous tool, and Jule had fallen into the trap of drowining in your own failures.

He began to cringe at his earlier words and thoughts, his nonesesical speech about the smart and the foolish, his vain pride, his reckless attitude and his unattentive personality. The space he was in, an empty and dark nothingness, only brightened by a single torch, did not help him at all, as he sunk further and further.

No one knew Jule better than Jule himself.

He knew why he had become so warped, he knew why he had turned out so twisted.

He needed an excuse, he needed a way to explain and hide the loneliness in his childhood, he needed a way to deal with the death of his mother, he needed a way to deal with the endless attention he garnered from his birth.

So he had built a mask.

At first it was but a simple forced thought of his pain being the cost of his nobility, a way to deal with his extreme solitude.

Yet it worked…

And so he began to use it more often, hiding in the comfortable ignorance that laid behind it.

In time, the mask became a wall and he closed himself off from everything… he became the wall and the wall became him.

The wall held all the explanations he needed, all the comfort he craved and it even filled his ego and his thirst for power.

Yet, starting whe he met Parn, the wall had begun to crumble ever so slightly, tiny fragments of it at a time, cracks in his pshyche began to form.

Jule was smart enough to know he was twisted, yet he was also smart enough to become scared of facing himself and the world without this warmth, he tried desperately patching this cracks up, with exucuses, with his extreme behavior.

Yet, everytime he managed to heal the wall, he dreamt of his mother and the wall turned decrepit on its own.

Jule thought he would always be able to hide behind it, he thought that he could deal with anything as long as he had it.

Yet, his mouting failures made him keenly aware, that the wall had become his greatest weakness.

Even so, when he tried peeking at what had become of the him behind the wall, he could only see emptiness, there was no longer anything behind the wall. All the had left was his facade.

He had nothing of his own, he didn’t have anything that made him unique, he didn’t even have a personality left.

He was too weak to protect anything and he was too vain to care about thing.

His delusions of grandeur hid his anguish at the expectations others held for him, his confidence was based on a person who didn’t exist.

And it all came crashing down in a single day, years of work became meaningless in hours.

It was no wonder that his father had never paid much attention to him.

He was a void of a human, and he hated himself for it.

…

Dandelion entered one of the biggest tents in the camp, the tent had some inscriptions to make sure that no noise could leak from inside it.

Once inside, he stared a hole, dug right in the middle of said tent, which lead to some unstable dirt stairs that lead towards his bunker.

He took this route with a calm gait, his mind occupied in other matters. As a rank 5 mind enhancer, his senses were so advanced that he had no trouble seeing in the dark and splitting his mind into various trains of thought.

Once he noticed the flicker of a flame, he pushed away all other thoughts.

Golden Spear, one of the commanders in the Royal Army, and the third member of the commoner trio, greeted him with a weak salute.

Dandelion felt no offense at it, the man was worth far too much to be pedantic over his disrespectful attitude.

He instead turned his attention towards his most recent adquisition.

“What happened to him?” Dandelion asked Golden Spear, a frown forming on his face.

The boy was crumpled up in the side of the cell, his eyes vacant.

Dandelion wondered whether Golden Spear had done something, it wouldn’t be surprising in the least.

He gave a sidelong glance to the man, and as if having expected it, Golden Spear raised his hands in innocence.

“I didn’t do anything to the brat, I was just a little tough on him because he was being noisy and he suddenly broke down. I didn’t even touch him”

Dandelion sighed, Golden Spear was many things, but he was never a liar.

He had honestly expected a little more from the son of that man, his hopes had been sky high after the battle he had with Ice Blade. Turns out, he was just another spoiled child.

He was a very useful spoiled child though.

“Ice Blade has finally recovered all her energy, tie the boy up and bring him out, its time to end this” Dandelion gave the order and watched Golden Spear for a second.

A savage grin appeared in his face and small bolts of lightiningsurrounded his clothes. Golden Spear had always been a battle maniac, and he loved fighting the strong above all. He was probably barely able to hold himself back from just the thought of fighting the strongest man on the Kingdom.

Dandelion thought that is was interesting how the eccentric always rose higher than their peers.

He left Golde Spear to do his thing and walked out of the underground bunker, and further outside his tent.

Guarding the entrance was Ice Blade, another commander of the army and the second of the commoner trio, she was also his personal disciple.

He was very proud of her, and her growth.

He still remembered when she was but a tramp in the street, daughter of poor immigrants from Bentis, they had sold her at the first chance they had. He had found her when the Royal Army raided some illegal human trafficking centers.

With his command over the elements, he realized her immense potential and immediatly took her under his wing, causing much anger and jelousy to his other subordinates.

She had proved them all wrong, and had carved a place at his side thought, becoming one of the strongest soliders in the Royal Army, and a commander of her own section of the it.

“Get ready” Dandelion called out to her.

“This will not be an easy fight…”