The Runaway Paladin and the Half Fae Duke

Sien hadn’t spoken a peep during their stroll through the woods, causing Ritt to worry a little bit. But when they came out of the treeline just a short distance away from a small town, Sien turned around like he was bored, and pointed to a distant set of stalls.

 

“Feel like getting some food? This town actually has some pretty decent stalls.”

 

Ritt quickly nodded yes, and Sien continued strolling along, crossing his arms behind his head like a rebellious kid would. Ritt stared over at Sien as he followed him, looking from Sien’s hand to his own. Sien had been holding his hand when they walked together so often these days that it felt strange for him to not be doing it now. They were still close together, only a few steps away, and yet for some reason Ritt felt like some kind of distance had grown between them, and he couldn’t quite figure out what might have gone wrong.

 

Sien was correct as it turned out, and although they didn’t have as many stalls as you might have found in a larger town or city, the town’s stalls had excellent choices of food. Many of them were a mix of various fruits and breads, and even the occasional pastry showed its presence, so even Sien, who despised cooked meat, could enjoy a wide selection of dishes. Sien grabbed an interesting looking pie that seemed to be packed with some kind of berry jam and little bits of fruit, and Ritt chose an overly large drumstick from some kind of common lizard monster that he’d heard people often raised on farms there. And when Sien went to pay, Ritt was amazed how different the currency looked than it did in Brisillica. It wasn’t like Ritt had ever truly used money on his own before, having had no real reason to what with everything in his life having been taken care of for him after becoming the Paladin. However, he’d at least seen it enough, whether it be catching sight of the guards betting between themselves, catching thieves, or having people offer him stacks of it as bribes, so he was pretty sure he remembered it well enough.

 

He waited patiently until the two of them had settled down comfortably in the shade of a nearby tree, turning the question over and over in his mind again until it was finally time to speak.

 

“You don’t use sheets as currency here?”

 

Sien tilted his head, looking absolutely confused by Ritt’s question, but after thinking for a moment and taking a little bite of his pie, he pulled out a few of the small triangular coins that he had in his pocket and showed them to Ritt.

 

“No, we use 'trindles' in Gossica. What the heck are these ‘sheets’ you’re talking about?”

 

Ritt lightly poked and swept the tips of his fingers against the odd, dark green coins that were only slightly larger than the size of his fingernails, feeling the grooves on their slightly rounded corners, and the letters that were printed on top of them.

 

“Mmm… All I’ve ever seen used for currency before was thin metal sheets, the size of a hand. Are these ‘trindles’ perhaps made out of some kind of stone?”

 

“Eh, well it’s more accurate to say that it’s made out of a gem, but yeah, it’s pretty stone-like anyways.”

 

Sien dumped the trindles onto Ritt’s thick thigh, continuing to eat his pie as he thoughtfully watched Ritt marvel over them.

 

“It’s pretty crazy that you guys used metal for yours. We would never use those here, for a variety of reasons... Wouldn’t it melt or get messed up and bent or something?”

 

“Well, they were usually made out of very tough and precious metals, but… Yes, that did indeed happen with some of the lesser metals sometimes.”

 

There had been plenty of cases of criminals painstakingly melting down the metals used in the sheets to hide them and smuggle them away, only to try to remake them later and fail at counterfeiting the symbol that they should have had on the front of them. There were also quite a few tales of young mages who weren’t careful during their magic usage, and ended up melting all of their hard earned money by accident, or swordsmen who'd had a few spare sheets on their person while sparring and noticed later that they'd become misshapen.

 

“Yeah, I figured as much. Seems like our money is a lot better than yours! You’d have to be really really strong to mess up one of these trindles. They’re fireproof and everything, too.”

 

Sien, with a proud look on his face, reached over with his free hand, carefully arranging four of the trindles into a much larger triangle, and then pulled out a new type of trindle out of his pocket, one that was double the size of the others and had different letters on the front.

 

“See, so the system is, you get four of these trindles, enough to make a triangle, and that equals to one of this 'trindet' here. There’s a whole system with about five different tiers you work up to. Buuuut your average person would really only ever deal in trindles and trindets, really, so it doesn’t really matter if you know about the other ones for now.”

 

Ritt nodded along, terribly interested. He never truly had the chance to learn the money system in Brisillica, so he was actually quite grateful to get to learn about how it worked in this new place with Sien, even if he doubted he’d ever have the opportunity to use it, just like in his last life. Common everyday knowledge was still worth knowing, even if it would never end up applying to him. After all, should things go awry and he needed to know it one day, wouldn’t he be grateful that he’d learned it before he ever needed it?

 

Sien watched Ritt closely, observing how determinedly Ritt seemed to be fiddling with the coins while muttering to himself what he’d just been told.

 

“Do you... like ‘em or something? I can give you some pocket change if you want it, you know; I may not act like it, but I actually have a bunch of spare money lying around that I’m not using. I might as well give it to you.”

 

Ritt looked up at Sien blankly for a moment, and then cracked a small smile as he giggled. For some reason, even though his words weren’t nearly the same as theirs, Ritt imagined Sien as one of the many haughty and overly rich nobles he’d met in Brisillica's palace before he died, who loved to brag about all the money they owned and would often try to buy his favor by offering him some. Thinking of Sien with their chubby bodies and overly flashy fashion-wear was almost impossible to conjure up, and what Ritt’s limited imagination could manage was positively absurd to see.

 

“No no, I’m alright. I’m just happy that you taught me about it, so I’m doing my best to learn. ...It’s the first time anyone’s ever done something like this for me.”

 

Even though he was enjoying the happy scene Ritt was making as he laughed, Sien couldn’t help how his brow crinkled a small bit in disbelief at Ritt’s words. He lowered the remnants of his pie, almost forgetting it as he doubtfully confirmed what he’d heard.

 

“What? Nobody ever taught you about stuff like this before?”

 

Ritt nodded for a moment with a pensive face. Yes, most common sense things that almost everyone should know had never truly been taught to him. While with his family he was an unwanted afterthought whom they didn't wish to waste their time on, and after the age of 8 he was a tool, a man-made monster to be used, and a monster didn’t need to know what humans did.

 

“Mmm I suppose they did teach me how to fight and use magic, and a bit about how to lead... Although leading didn’t go so well since I was never very good at interacting with people.”

 

“...And that’s it? That’s all you ever learned how to do?”

 

Ritt straightened up a little, a bit embarrassed. Perhaps he hadn’t gotten many opportunities to learn, but he didn’t want Sien, whose opinion mattered very greatly to him, to think that he was some kind of unlearned idiot. He felt the need to defend himself a little bit!

 

“W-well I also learned how to write a little, enough to send back reports! And… And I learned how to ride a horse? Maybe not very well, because the horses didn’t particularly like it, but at least I know how to do the basics of it!”

 

Seeing Ritt slightly puffed up and defensive like that was dreadfully cute to Sien’s eyes, but his concern easily outweighed it all and won over. He didn’t like the picture of Ritt’s life before he’d come to him that was forming inside of his mind. He’d already had some grim expectations of what might have occurred, knowing that Ritt was a man-made monster, but he’d been hopeful that it was perhaps more of a recent development than what his words were suggesting.

 

“...How old are you, Ritt?”

 

Sien’s hands clenched, slightly mashing the remains of his pie. There was a small hope that perhaps Ritt, whose body wasn’t quite like a human’s, was actually much younger than one would presume by looking at it. Hadn’t Sien heard of some races who grew up quickly? There were already plenty of animals and Fae who he’d heard of growing to adulthood too, in only the span of a few years. Perhaps the mad mages who’d created Ritt had also done something to mimic that type of growth in him. Yes, it was far from something good, but if it were the case then it might just have been a small blessing for Ritt.

 

Ritt tilted back his head in recollection, taking a nibble at his previously forgotten drumstick of meat as he did so, and then mumbled thoughtfully.

 

“I’m 24… No, I suppose I’m actually 18, aren’t I…?”

 

Sien’s face crumpled, his hopes quickly dashed. His wishful theories had been all but disproven, and Ritt had indeed grown to adulthood without being taught what even the average child would know. That being the case, it was clear that something must have put Ritt down this abnormal path early on in his life, before he could even really learn anything. It was even possible that Ritt had spent his entire life in the clutches of the inhumane mages, suffering their sick experiments, and that idea made Sien’s stomach churn.

 

He’d always thought that Ritt was overly naive and kind, and now that he vaguely knew the reason, he almost wished that he didn’t.

 

Ritt noticed the odd pained look on Sien’s face, along with the veritably crushed pie that Sien had once looked like he was enjoying, and immediately wondered if he’d perhaps done something to displease him.

 

“Sien? What’s wrong? Did I… maybe say something bad?”

 

Sien’s gaze reluctantly followed Ritt’s, which had been constantly peeking down to the smushed pie fragments in his hand, and brushed off the remnants of the pie onto the ground with a scowl. He felt awful. He felt absolutely awful. He felt awful enough to want to go to Brisillica and kill every single mage that he could find. But seeing the sad puppy-dog look on Ritt’s drooping face made it obvious to Sien that he couldn’t possibly leave Ritt out of his sights for as long as that would take, and the idea of dragging him back to the country that he’d so desperately worked to escape from was definitely out of the question. If he wanted to get his retribution for Ritt, then he’d need to go about things in a different way.

 

Sien stood up with grim determination, offering his hand towards Ritt.

 

“Come on, we have to get to the palace.”

_____

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