Chapter 169: Leon’s Story [2]

Leon stepped forward. He closed his eyes and breathed in and reached for his core the way he had practiced a thousand times alone in the dark of the training yard.

He waited one second, then three, then five—and still, nothing came.

No spirit answered. No beast appeared from the vast reserve of mana inside him. Just his own blue energy turning passively around his body like smoke with nowhere to go.

The silence that settled over the arena was the specific kind that happens when a large crowd suddenly realizes something is wrong.

Leon stared at his open palm.

The royal advisor’s smile had gone somewhere else.

"Where is his spirit?"

"Does he not have one?"

"That much mana and no spirit soul?"

"Was the alchemist wrong about him?"

"Is he just a vessel? Just capacity with nothing inside?"

The whispers moved through the noble stands like something alive and ugly.

Leon stood in the center of it all looking at his hand.

’Why don’t I have one.’

The question was acid. It burned through every proud thought he’d ever had about himself. Every morning he’d gotten up before dawn to train. Every session where he’d pushed past exhaustion because he’d told himself it would matter. Every time he’d believed the alchemist had seen something real in him.

Arvendis stood with his magnificent dragon circling the sky above him and looked across the arena at Leon with an expression that was very carefully neutral.

Leon slowly lowered his hand.

He was broken. That was the only word for it. The alchemist had found something real in his core but the thing that turned raw power into greatness wasn’t there. Had never been there. Would never be there.

He was just a vessel...

Years went by like they always do.

The kingdom eventually called for a duel, the kind that ends with a result that can’t be walked back. Only one of them would be recognized as the true prodigy and guardian of the kingdom and everyone already knew which one it was going to be.

The arena was full. It always was for something like this.

Arvendis’s Dragon Spirit roared above him and the golden light it threw across the arena floor made everything look like the inside of a temple. He stood on the opposite side of the dirt from Leon and he looked clean and composed and completely certain about what was about to happen.

Leon lay face down in the dust with blood in his mouth and both his arms refusing to hold him up anymore. His defenses hadn’t been torn apart. They had been erased. Each one met and dispersed with the same unhurried efficiency. Leon had given everything he had to give and Arvendis had looked at everything he had to give and answered it with less than his best.

"AGH!"

He got his hands under him. His knuckles were bleeding. His arms shook so badly they were barely arms anymore.

Then they gave out and he went back down.

The announcer’s voice broke across the arena from somewhere above him.

"The winner is Arvendis!"

The cheers that followed were enormous and immediate and they came from everywhere at once and they meant nothing. They were just noise. The noise of a world telling Leon something he’d already known about himself for a long time.

He stared at the blood and dirt an inch from his face.

High in the spectator seats Aurelia had both hands wrapped around the stone railing and her face was pale. "Leon..."

That night the royal garden was so quiet it hurt.

Leon sat alone at the edge of the marble fountain with his head down and his hands in his lap. He heard her footsteps but he didn’t look up. He couldn’t.

She sat beside him. She didn’t say anything right away. She just reached out and covered his bruised hand with her fingers.

"You seem really down," she said softly. "Are you thinking about what happened?"

The thing he’d been holding in all day finally cracked.

"I’m bad at everything," he said. His voice broke on the last word.

"Leon—"

"I’m not good at anything!" The crack opened all the way. His voice came out sharp and broken and wet with the tears he’d been denying since he hit that arena floor. "I keep trying. I work until I can’t move. I get up before everyone else and I train until after everyone else goes to sleep and I always fail. No matter how hard I work I’m never as good as him!"

"That isn’t—"

"DON’T!"

She flinched back.

Leon caught himself immediately. He buried his face in both hands and sat there with his shoulders shaking. "Just don’t," he whispered. "Please. It is true. I’ve been hearing it for years. From everyone. Every whisper in every hallway."

He looked at the dark water of the fountain. At the distorted reflection of himself.

"He’s the talented one. He’s the prodigy. He has the Dragon Spirit. He’s the future hero." Leon’s laugh was the dry broken kind that doesn’t have any humor in it. "And what am I? What am I for? What was I ever going to be?"

Aurelia couldn’t answer.

Leon dropped his head. Tears slipped off his jaw into the fountain water below. "Please just leave me alone for a while."

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she stood up and stepped in front of him and when he looked at her face the sadness had turned into something frustrated and urgent and aching all at once.

"Why do you keep doing this?!" Her voice was unsteady. "Why do you keep measuring yourself against him? Why do you let what everyone says decide what you are?!"

Leon looked at her in surprise.

"You are not Arvendis!" She looked directly into his eyes. "You are you! Just because he’s better at one thing doesn’t make you worthless! Maybe you aren’t as strong as him in this area. Maybe there are things someone else does better. But that doesn’t mean you don’t matter! You don’t have to be the best at everything to have a place in the world!"