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“No, you are your own man.” Answered Lucian with the force of full rebuttal to his words.
The Flames danced across the face of Gillot as it turned sour. His mouth became slowly agape as eye that might have seemed almost pleading became hardened in the torchlight, “My own man? What in the name of the Gods do you mean with that!?”
Lucian thought about his own words. They had come out quick and with little real thought besides the thought which had sprung into his mind. There might have been fear in this moment what Lucian would have wanted to say. Fear that he would not really know what to say.
Yet he came with some words, “That you are your own person. You are not just Prince Gillot but a young man and Knight who has traveled far. You’ve put yourself up to the measure and found yourself not wanting.”
“Not wanting?” The Prince gave a small laugh to those words before shaking his head, “It is not I myself who carry the measure but my father and his Lords. I am his only son, the one who shall be named Duke. For that reason I am measured by our superiors and the Lady Herself of the right to become Duke. In that I am found wanting.”
“Do the Gods really measure you like that?” Lucian asked firmly as he shook his head, “Gillot, in truth I do not care for these further tidings that your Father had given to me. I do not fight in the realm of the Dwarfs seeking the approval of the man who sits on the Twin Ducal Throne.”
“You might not care but I do. For you to even suggest that my Father’s authority and graciousness does not hold any sway upon you is surely a fool's jest. A Peasant Knight such as you would not know what it means to be Knighted by a Duke!”
“I have demonstrated my thanks to him by fighting in his War. A Good War against the Greenskin who threatened to tear Bretonnia apart.” Lucian felt his heart burn a little. The heat in his chest rising as these truly mortal matters struck close to home, “In truth Gillot I care not for this rivalry of ours. The words I spoke that time over a year ago, declaring our feud, was not because I truly felt offended by those words but that I knew for certain that no blood would be drawn by such an act.”
“What?” The sharp start and end to a single word made it known that the word carried so much more in it than before. A firmness that was simply a protest to the words said, not a demand for them to stop.
“I knew two things, to back down from your words would ruin me as a Knight and stain the honor of all those involved, but also that I would have been required by the code of honor to cut down my fellow man.” Lucian said as he looked into Gillot over the torch light, “I figured out something though, a way to make sure that all get what they want and none shall die because of it.”
