Winterpuppy has a minion!

Shadow the Darker Matter

He knelt before the prince, who needed the assistance of a stool himself in order to perform the ceremony properly. The prince’s adviser nodded. “Yes. Now you take the sword – no, with the flat of the blade; you don’t want to kill your new knight, do you?”

The prince was still a young boy. Winter was being raised to the rank of a knight in order to personally protect the prince. With the king dead, and the prince Yuki too young to assume the throne properly, the king’s advisers had far more political power – for now. But an adviser couldn’t perform the rite of accolades, no matter how much power and influence they had.

Winter was to protect the prince, the boy-king, with his life. He would travel alongside the royal carriage. Stand at the right-hand side of the throne during public ceremony, and to keep a watchful eye over every soul that approached the budding monarch. He was no longer just a simple soldier, now he was part of the King’s Guard. Protectors of the Crown.

Such promotion wasn’t common; very few knights ever became part of the Guard. And usually, they had been nobles before even entering knighthood. Winter had been the son of peasants; too poor to send their son for schooling, he had only two choices – apprenticeship to a smith or other craftsman – or become a page.

Slowly he worked his way through the ranks. He wasn’t even allowed to wield a blade until after his promotion to squire – and even then, he was mostly handling the weaponry belonging to other, more capable fighters. After several years maintaining the weapons of others, and training in the use of them, the former king saw fit to promote Winter from just a lowly squire, to Sir Winter. A standard knight and fighter for the crown. And now he’d be a Sir. A member of the King’s Guard.

The words of the accolade ceremony eventually tuned themselves out. The flat of the blade touched his shoulders – right first, then left – and finally, touched his neck ever so slightly. Sir Winter, he thought, it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Once he felt the blade lift from his neck, Winter raised his head and lightly took the young boy-king’s right hand into his. “My lord, I pledge myself to thee, my life and my sword.” Winter kissed the signet ring on the prince’s finger gently. Yuki seemed unsure of what to do next, and looked to the adviser who had been coaching him through the ceremony so far. The adviser nodded again. “Now tell him to rise, and hand him his sword.”

Yuki’s eyes brightened, he stammered out the next words of the script with a slight waver to his voice, and presented Winter’s blade to him.

Winter took up the sword, and sheathed it. He was a Guard now, the highest order of knights. Not only that, he was specifically chosen to guard the young soon-to-be King, even among the other, more senior members of the Guard who had served Yuki’s father.

He would gladly give his life to protect the young prince.

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Story by User not found: chesid

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