Author Games: A Knight's Valor

Group Seven: Aloïsa Beaumarchais, Keiko Kenemoto, Zenith Nadir

My dear Jo,

It's odd how people say that trust is the most essential ingredient for a lasting friendship. Perhaps that was partially the reason why we drifted apart, besides the events that happened on that day. Did we ever trust each other, Jo? Fully trust each other? I always thought we did, but now, looking it over, I feel obliged to voice my opinions and say that trust was never a virtue we valued.

~

Aloïsa Beaumarchais was a girl with a dream, a hope, a destiny. She was waiting for her time to shine in the tournament, for members of the Royal Family to notice her and hopefully consider her seriously as a possible knight. To her, trust was a mandatory requirement for her desired job, as proven so by the second challenge - how else would chosen knights be able to protect their rulers? She viewed the quality as a necessity, something that she had to possess for the sake of the greater good. In short, trust was required to maintain the balance between good and evil on the earth.

Zenith Nadir was a boy trying to start over, to find a new beginning and leave the past behind him. He was a smile in the darkest of times, even his own. Yet just as shadows are created by light, there was a churning fury inside of him that would snap if provoked, a raging fire that had ignited since birth and was only kept at bay by the desire to create his own genesis. To him, trust was chaos - an angel that fell in love with a demon; morals of the righteous and lies of the wicked churned together. It could produce the strongest bond of friendship and love that the earth had ever seen, yet just as easily, it could strain the relationship of said friends in a millisecond. In short, trust could not be trusted, for it could shatter the hearts of those it once brought joy and harmony.

Keiko Kenemoto was a girl living in her own fantasy, caring only about today and never thinking about tomorrow. She was here on a whim, a decision made without care with only the goal of enjoying her stay in the capital city in her mind. To her, trust was a ladder. Many who tried to climb it had failed and never got to try again, for moral depravity of mankind had always destroyed the fragile lines of faith that had been established. And when the line was destroyed and the climber falls, it destroys them, breaks their spirit in two. Some of the lucky ones may be able to mend the shattered threads of trust over time, for the cling onto their goals and grails, unaware that it was simply all an illusion. Once trust between a person is broken, only the gods above could restore it. In short, the ladder of trust was real and frail, but the most important thing of all was the climb.

The climb was all there was.

And now the three of them were climbing together, on a ladder weaved from their united hope for success. Yet, like all ladders of trust, the material of hope was delicate, even more so by the plethora of lies that was emitted every minute or two from Zenith Nadir's lips. He was the one down below on the ground watching Keiko scour the rock wall with a blindfold secured around her eyes. His task was to deceive and lead the Alian girl astray, while his competition above would attempt to guide Keiko in the right direction.

Zenith knew what he had to do but that he didn't necessarily have to like it. He rubbed both of his hands on the fabric of his pants and licked his lips. High above them all, the fiery ball from the sky beamed down heat with such intensity that his throat had grown hoarse and raspy from a short period of time, and his lips were becoming cracked and blistered. He sighed, knowing that there was nothing he could do than to complete his job and hopefully not be hated by his two teammates by the end of this. The man tilted his head up and squinted, surveying the position where Keiko had stopped, panting. Zenith chewed his lower lip nervously while mentally calculating the Alian knight's chances of reaching the top - by the rate she was going now, and Aloïsa's ongoing support from above, he hypothesized around 72%. Of course, the percentage of success was so high because he hadn't uttered any lies yet ... but that was about to change. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a voice from above cut in.