Ignite the Sun

"Joining and quitting the Order is bound by quite strict rules described in our codex." Greg explained. "It was something Nickolas wrote down with the first members of the round table when the invasion just started, so some of the rules lack the hindsight that we have now."

"Can't you change the rules?" Calen asked. "Just gather everyone and vote on the ones that you want to remove, if you make it a collective decision no one will get mad."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple – the codex is something that shaped our organisation since its Inception, some of our members consider it to be almost holy, the only constant in a cruel and corrupted world. Just a suggestion to change it, no matter how small, might cause a mutiny."

"And that holy set of rules allows people to be complete assholes?"

"It does not – but it also is very specific when it comes to joining and leaving the Order. There's only one way to join, and it is to swear an oath and be knighted under the dragon statue in the main keep. We have more ways to leave or be thrown out of the Order but they're also limited."

"Do people leave the Order often?"

"No, but it did happen a few dozen times – voluntary leave is possible when a knight is crippled and doesn't have enough aura to heal themselves they can request a discharge on account of no longer being able to uphold their oath. This one happened only once, as usually people like that decide to stay and play a mentor role to the recruits."

"What happened to the one guy who left?"

"The Order helped him move to Mountainfall and set up a woodworking business, I believe his shop is still being ran and operated by his great great granddaughter."

"That's rather nice of you – is it the only way to voluntarily leave the Order?"

"Yes, otherwise the oath would be pointless – the only time you can forsake it is when you can't follow it for reasons completely outside of your control. The other two ways involve being thrown out, but they're also very strict when it comes to circumstances when they're applicable."

"The more common of the two involves being stripped of your knighthood on account of the person breaking their vows." Alfred expanded on the topic. "It must be proven beyond any reasonable doubts that the person in question indeed broke their vows with the intent of doing so."

"What happens when they break the vows without meaning to or by accident?"

"They are given a punishment and a way to repent, the severity of which is decided by how heavy their transgression was and can be as light as a few months of night shifts or as heavy as being stripped of the title anyway, and put as a recruit once more, forced to go through the full seven years of training program."

"What about the other way to throw out people?" Isara questioned.

"It's a vote involving every member of the Order." Greg stated. "It was put in place for cases which the codex didn't forsee, but it had to be severely limited to make sure the leaders don't just use it to throw out anyone they want, considering their usual following."

"Limited how?"

"The vote has to be unanimous – every single member, bar the person who's being voted on, has to agree that the person should be expelled from the Order, which means that if the guy has at least one friend or follower or even someone who doesn't hate their guts the decision won't go through."

"Has it ever happened?"

"No. There were seven votes in our history, but not a single one went through – the closest we got was two votes off on account that the guy has two sons in the Order."

"So what you're saying is that it won't work no matter what?"

"Unfortunately Alexander is a commander, and is therefore in charge of a unit of knights – while there were only five people willing to work under him, even one would be enough to make the voting completely pointless."

Isara silent and rubbed her chin as she thought about something.

"Is the codex something secret or can we perhaps access it?"

"Do you mean the original or a copy?"

"Copy would be enough, I just want to read the exact rules."

"Then I can get you one once we get to the Order, every knight has a copy and it's not really a secret – if you wanted to see the original we would've needed to get some permissions, but with a copy it's quite easy." Greg looked at her with a curious expression. "Why do you want to see it though?"

"To check whether there's some weird wording which would allow us to interpret the rules differently."

The devil shook his head.

"You're welcome to try but I can tell you it's pointless, the rules are written in an extremely straightforward way and many have tried to find something in them only to fail miserably. "

"Every rulebook has loopholes, you just need to know how to find them – and with all due respect you literally said a few minutes ago how dumb the members of the order are."

"That's a fair point I suppose." Greg chuckled."Although if you want to find something that could work on Alexander you'll have to do it either before the tournament or wait until it's done, since no legal proceedings can happen during open events such as this, especially when the accused is a part of the event."

"I said that I hope he doesn't get elected, but realistically there are no chances of him getting enough votes, so you don't really have to hurry that much." Alfred assured her.

"What would happen if we got him removed before the tournament?" Calen asked.

"Not much right after outside of him getting the boot, the aftermath would have to wait until after the new round table is chosen. After that is done the new leaders would have to choose someone to replace him as a commander since the number of those is determined by our overall population."

"So like, if half of the order was to suddenly disappeared but all of the commanders remained, would half of them lose their position?"

"Sort of, but not really – they would become inactive commanders, retaining their authority and privileges but they wouldn't have any subordinates until the order would grow enough to accommodate additional units or another commander lost their life and a position opened up."

"I'm guessing something like that happened before since you have such detailed contingency for situation like that."

"I wasn't part of the Order back then, but it's a rather infamous story, one where they got too confident and attacked the Serakhiin directly."

"Someone did mention that before, but they didn't get into details from what I remember."

The devil nodded

"No wonder, this topic is a big taboo in the Order and resulted in the only annex to the codex that was ever created. I spend two centuries with those people and still don't know the complete story – in fact at this point I don't think anyone who wasn't present in person during those events has no idea what actually happened."

Cassian and Calen looked at each other; sir Vandrel always told them it was important to embrace your failures instead of running away from them, and it was hard to imagine he told anything else to Nickolas.

Just how bad were those events that he refused to talk about them?

"If you want to learn what actually happened back then you should try your luck with Nickolas, he wouldn't tell us much but from my understanding the two of you are the closest thing he has to family – if he doesn't talk to you he won't talk to anyone."

"To be honest I'm kind of surprised about that." Isara admitted. "Nickolas might have been dubbed 'the Pureheart' but he was absolutely the type of person who would settle down with a girl the moment he found one, weird that it hasn't happened even though five hundred years has passed."

"Master said that in the early years of the invasion he was too occupied with survival to consider such things." Alfred explained. "Once the situation stabilised he realised that he was too enhanced by the aura to try to lead a normal life, and finding someone who could match his extended lifespan has proved fruitless so far."

Cassian nodded solemnly.

"It's one of the reasons knights usually marry young, when they can still lead a relatively normal life. Of course this comes with a downside of potential growing attached to someone who can't hope to match their extended lifespan, and an inevitable heartbreak." Then he added quietly. "And there are many other ways in which mundane people can't match them..."

"We should help him find someone!" Isara suggested out of nowhere. "I'm sure we can find him a nice mage or maybe even a spirit."

"I'm not sure that's the best Idea."

"Eh, what's the worst thing that could happen...?"