"Can I try, father?" the Second Prince said. There was pride in his eyes as he looked at the weapon, and there was an emotion that Ludwig knew more than anyone in this room.
Envy.
Ludwig couldn’t smile, thought he wanted to.
The prince’s desire was visible, raw, and almost embarrassing in its simplicity. It wasn’t admiration for craftsmanship. It wasn’t respect for history. It was the childish certainty that power belonged to whoever grabbed it first.
Ludwig kept his expression neutral because smiling would be interpreted as mocking a prince, and mocking a prince was how knives found your ribs later.
"There are things you shouldn’t covet." The Emperor said as he handed him the sword. "But it’s better to learn with trial than words."
The Emperor’s tone softened only enough to make the lesson feel paternal rather than punitive, which made it more humiliating.
He was giving the prince permission to fail.
Ludwig watched the exchange closely, because the Emperor’s handover wasn’t casual either; it was a controlled test of balance and weight, a demonstration disguised as generosity.
The prince went to grab the massive sword with one hand, "You might want to use both hands." Ludwig said.
Ludwig offered it as practical advice, not sarcasm, but the prince’s jaw tightened anyway, interpreting help as insult.
Ludwig could almost hear the prince’s internal narrative: I am being watched, therefore I must look strong. In a hall like this, performance mattered more than truth, until truth suddenly beca gravity.
And once the emperor let go of the sword the weight of Oathcarver made the prince jerk forward. The movent was ugly, uncontrolled, and loud in its own way. The prince’s boots scraped.
His shoulder dipped. His entire body pitched forward as if the sword had decided to punish him personally. For a heartbeat the hall held its breath, watching the edge swing toward royal flesh.
Then the Emperor’s reaction snapped in, fast, practiced, absolute. He didn’t rely pull the sword away; he reclaid the situation, yanking both weapon and embarrassnt back under his control.
The prince’s face flushed, not from danger but from witnessed weakness.
A few people in the room couldn’t hold their laughter. The third price was especially doing all his best to stop his face from contorting. While so in the back laughed till they teared up.
Laughter in a throne room was rare, and that rarity made it sharper. It wasn’t a roar, most nobles were too trained for that, but it spread in suppressed bursts, shoulders shaking, hands lifted to mouths, eyes squeezed shut for a second too long.
Ludwig noted who laughed openly and who didn’t. The ones who didn’t were either disciplined or aligned with the second prince.
The third prince’s restraint was telling; he was amused, but he understood the danger of showing it too clearly. The second prince, anwhile, looked like he wanted to kill the air itself.
"It is indeed heavy." The Emperor turned to Ludwig and handed him the sword.
The transfer carried a different aning now. The Emperor wasn’t just passing an artifact; he was passing a comparison. He was placing Ludwig in the sa sequence as his son and inviting the court to asure the difference.
Ludwig accepted the implication as calmly as he accepted the weapon.
Ludwig grabbed it with one hand, tested the weight, and said to the emperor, "Kinda... but, is it wise to give a weapon."
He did not strain. He did not stagger. He let the sword’s mass settle into his palm as if it belonged there, as if his body already knew how to distribute weight through wrist, elbow, and shoulder without wasting motion.
The reaction in the hall tightened again, shifting from amusent to wary interest. Ludwig’s question was not fear, it was politics. He was giving the Emperor a chance to define the boundaries of trust publicly.
"Are you going to use it against ?" the emperor asked.
The question was delivered lightly, but Ludwig heard the edge underneath. It wasn’t a joke.
It was a reminder: anything in your hands can beco treason if the throne decides it is.
"I still like my head over my shoulders..." Ludwig said.
He said it with a dryness that held just enough humor to keep the exchange from turning into a threat.
He could feel the nobles recalculating again. Ludwig was bold, but not reckless. The Emperor’s mouth hinted at amusent, and that hint mattered.
It ant the Emperor enjoyed competence. It ant Ludwig’s survival odds improved.
"Then there is no need to worry. Not to ntion, I wanted to try carrying that Mace of yours..."
The words landed like a new test. Ludwig’s mace was not a normal weapon; the court had seen enough of it to know it was wrong, and wrong things created either worship or fear.
Ludwig kept his face still, but internally he tracked the risks. Shaming the emperor would be a great dishonor.
"Ah... sure," Ludwig moved his hand to the side, and the giant mace simply appeared there.
The appearance was clean, imdiate, and for anyone who didn’t understand the chanisms behind it, unsettling. One mont there was empty space; the next there was mass, tal occupying air as if reality had been forced to accept it. The sudden density of the object seed to press the room for a breath. Ludwig watched Andre’s eyes widen, not at glamour, but at form.
"What monstrosity is that?" Andre said as he moved his arms forward as if trying to grasp the weapon.
The craftsman’s reaction wasn’t insult. n like Andre lived by asurents and balance. This mace was an offense to both.
"You seem surprised..." the Emperor said as he went to grab the handle.
The Emperor approached with the sa controlled confidence he used with Oathcarver, but Ludwig noticed the micro-adjustnts: the Emperor planted his feet more deliberately, braced his shoulder line, reached with a grip that assud resistance. He wasn’t careless. He was curious and invested.
It was indeed heavy, even the emperor struggled a bit, but he still managed to raise it a few inches away from the ground without using any aura or try for real.
The hall reacted not with laughter this ti but with tightened silence.
The Emperor’s muscles didn’t tremble, but the effort was visible in the way his forearm corded and the way his stance locked into place. Raising it only a few inches sounded minimal until soone would misunderstood what that ant. As in the mace fought being moved. The Emperor had forced it to concede, if only slightly, without resorting to aura. That was raw authority made physical.
The mace didn’t have such thing, the mace wasn’t sothing that refused you moving it. No, it was simply heavy. A simple tool of death and destruction. And most of all, was just an egoless weapon.
Ludwig watched the Emperor’s face as he held the weight at that small elevation. The Emperor did not look frustrated. He looked interested, as if the weapon’s refusal was simply another kind of information.
Ludwig, anwhile, felt the subtle danger: the more the Emperor wanted to understand the mace, the more the Emperor would want to understand Ludwig. Curiosity was the start of ownership.
"What do you think. Andre? Of this weapon."
"That weapon... shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t even be able to carry its own weight. The proportions are wrong, the scale is wrong, the balance is a disaster. As a mace, it’s hopelessly inefficient, more burden than blade.
And yet..."
Andre’s voice grew more intense as he spoke, the language of a craftsman offended and fascinated at once.
Each complaint was specific, grounded in physical law. He wasn’t making a moral argunt; he was describing an impossible equation that still produced an answer.
Ludwig could see Andre trying to reconcile it, his eyes scanning the mace’s head, the handle’s thickness, the way the mass distribution should have snapped wrists and shattered joints. The weapon itself should have crumbled and collapsed on itself if carried from the handle. inconsistent, paradoxical, and completely absurd.
It was like watching a priest confront a miracle and hate it for existing.
Andre stepped closer, his eyes tracing its warped silhouette.
He moved as if the weapon might bite him if he ca too close, but the need to understand overrode caution. Ludwig respected that. It was the sa impulse that drove scholars to open cursed books and warriors to test cursed blades.
"It simply is. Held together by nothing but sheer spite." Andre said.
He then turned to Ludwig, "Would you please allow to study this?"
A notification imdiately appeared in front of Ludwig.
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