The undead knight removed one of the bandits leather hat and took it alongside the girl on its arms. He carried her for about an hour until they reached where once stood a mighty tower, now broken and abandoned. He started digging around a wall until he reached a few meters below where he immediately broke what looked like a brick. There use to be a hoard of treasures that the royal family couldn't take and they didn't want their enemies to take it for free, tho nowadays most of them had no value whatsoever due to time's toll. He took all the coins he could find the ones that survived at least and some gems and left, he used the leather hat as an improvised pouch and left the ruins. He then proceeded to follow the road to the opposite direction the horses track lead.
After some hours the girl awoke. She could see man on his late forties, with a cared moustache and short hair. He was tending to her, placing wet towels on her head and dressing what remained of her wound. Farther from the old man she could see a piece of rusted armor, that gave a faint aura of dread, she thought it was the fever's fault and allowed her consciousness to fade away.
- Sir, the girl is mostly okay and only with a faint fever. She needs only to rest for a couple of days. Spoke the man trembling in fear.
The knight was bothered, not only the people close to Meridia didn't speak the language but they also spoke a broken cless, a language that was from far north of this land. He couldn't find a single mage in this town not even a cleric and thus had to rely on a physician to heal the princess.
- Tell me, where can I find a mage? Spoke the undead creature with a faint voice that seemed muffed and terrifying.
- You can go to the city not far from here, there you will definitely find a mage. Here, pointed the man to a map he had.
The undead knight looked at the terror in his eyes and took a pair of coins from the pouch and placed them in the old man's hand. He then said:
- Take anything valuable from your house, warn everyone to do the same and leave this place towards somewhere that's not the city I go. Do not follow me nor do you stay here. When the night comes, in a few hours, so will come a monster following my trail and if you stay here, you will be a victim to its jaws.
That said, he grabbed the girl and left. Bought a horse and started riding towards the city in a rush.
The man however, did not heed the words of the knight and instead locked himself in his home and due to this, he sealed his own fate to death.
And so did the night come and with it, the fears that plague our dreams.
The scenary was such a terrifying sight, even the most hardened soldiers would collapse had they witnessed it.
The beast, after killing everyone stopped to contemplate its craft. It remained it from a previous life. The beast saw this sight many a times, where the flame of war consumed the hard work of men.
As the beast walked it saw a kid, or what remained of one, and it got closer. It remembered when the beast was a man, and how he pledged to protect the innocent and the weak, it remembered how he broke that promise mere moments after unleashing his wrath on the battlefield, where he killed a bunch of kids that were dressed in armor.
The light of day once more showed its face, and the beast started to shriek in pain, and only a few seconds after, it started to convulse and shrink in size, until an old man remained that took cover on one of the houses that wasn't either burning nor destroyed. Frail and weak, he looked as he was deranged. He could not tolerate the shining light that bathed the world and shy away from its judgemental gaze.
