Darlington watched the scene below and felt something stir in his chest.
Interest. Curiosity. The slow, steady hunger of a mind that had always sought to understand, to categorize, to use.
"All this is data," he murmured, his eyes fixed on the two men sitting across from each other on the blood soaked sand. "Data that I will need to feed to Lancelot. To make him grow."
His gaze shifted to the distant figure of Lancelot still locked in the confrontation with Galahad, still held at bay by Tristan's grip, still waiting. The blood-red blade pulsed in his hand, reflecting the grey light of Valhalla's eternal sky.
"His power, though still uncertain, needs to be stronger." Darlington's voice was clinical, detached. "Which would mean..."
He paused, considering.
"On-standing training. Since this is an active warfare, this battle the way I'm seeing it is just the beginning."
His fingers drummed against his invisible platform.
"I need my only card to stay alive. At least long enough until I can find my path of revenge against those filthy gods."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"Ten times. No a hundred. No, fuck it." His eyes burned with something dark and absolute. "I'll pay my grief a million times greater than anything. A million times greater than everything."
His mind shattered.
The battlefield vanished. The grey sky dissolved. The sounds of war faded into silence.
And Darlington was somewhere else.
A classroom. White walls. Fluorescent lights that hummed with a sound like trapped flies. The smell of chalk dust and old paper and something sterile.
Darlington sat in a chair younger, smaller, his school uniform pressed and neat, his hands folded on the desk before him. Across from him, a man leaned back in his own chair, his arms crossed, his expression caught between concern and disapproval.
His name was Wilson.
His hair was white but the pure white of age or stress or something else. His body was buff, the body of a man who had once been an athlete and had never quite let go. His eyes were sharp, intelligent, probing.
"Why did you do it?"
The question hung in the air like smoke.
Wilson leaned forward, his voice hardening. "You really beat them. Mercilessly. Not just you your friend Hyacinth did the same."
He shook his head slowly.
"That's wrong. To take the law into your own hands when a form of order exists why try to control the outcomes? Reporting could have easily solved everything."
His eyes narrowed.
"But you decided to remove a kid's eye."
Darlington laughed.
It was not the laugh of a child caught doing wrong. It was not nervous. It was not defensive. It was the laugh of someone who had already considered every possible response and found them all lacking.
"I live by a certain principle," he said, his voice calm and clear. "A principle I don't break. No matter what."
Wilson's eyebrow rose. "And what's that?"
Darlington met his eyes.
"Whatever is given to me, I'll repay it a thousand times. Grief will be repaid. Happiness will be repaid. Pain will be repaid. Everything will be repaid."
Wilson was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, almost gentle.
"Okay, I get that. But you have to know this world is a world built on order. You broke the order of this world."
Darlington's expression didn't change.
"There is no order."
The words were simple. Absolute.
"The order you refer to is peace. Simply because peace exists doesn't mean it will be permanent. You find confidence in peace."
He tilted his head, and something in his eyes something old seemed to look through Wilson and beyond him, to something the teacher could not see.
"So I want to ask you, sir..."
His voice dropped to a near whisper.
"What will happen when this peace is stripped away from you?"
The classroom was silent.
Wilson opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
No words came.
His face was blank not with calm, but with absence. The absence of any thought that could counter what he had just heard. He sat there, a grown man, a teacher, a believer in the order of things and he could not speak.
Because he could not think of anything to say.
His ideal had been broken. In that moment, shattered to pieces by a child who understood something he did not.
Darlington watched him in silence, and said nothing more.
The battlefield returned.
Darlington blinked, disoriented for a moment the classroom replaced by grey sky, the fluorescent hum replaced by the clash of steel, the sterile smell replaced by blood and sand and death.
He shook his head, angry at himself.
"What's all this about?" He pressed his palms against his temples. "Why am I remembering all those useless memories?"
He forced his attention back to the scene below.
"I'm where I am now. And I have to do something about that."
Below, Sir Palamedes and General Titus sat apart from each other.
The distance between them was small the space of a conversation rather than a battlefield. Around them, the other knights stood frozen, watching, waiting, their weapons ready but their hearts uncertain.
Titus studied Palamedes with new eyes.
"A war of the mind, then?" He leaned back slightly, his posture still relaxed, still unbothered. "That's an interesting choice."
Palamedes did not smile. Did not frown. His face was a mask of calm, the unlit cigarette still resting between his lips.
"Your kind," he said quietly. "A war of the mind."
Titus's eyebrows rose.
"My kind?"
"Those who kill with words before they kill with steel." Palamedes's voice was steady, unhurried. "Those who break the spirit before they break the body. Those who sit on a battlefield and talk because they know they have already won."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Titus laughed a low, rumbling sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
"Oh, I like you." He settled more comfortably, crossing his arms. "Alright then. Let's play."
The war of the mind had begun.