“People of our grace don’t have to listen to such nonsense, do we, Pepper?” asks Acacia, stroking the dark-feathered anqa’s neck before clipping in a metal hook onto a harness around its neck. The large bird, standing in the back of the alley, clicks with its beak as it tilts its head, pressing its body toward Acacia.

“It’s not nonsense,” says Sir Knight from behind them, his hand pressing against the side of a wooden carriage. It bounces back and forth as he tests its axles. “It’s reality,” explains the knight in black armor, looking her way. “There are very real threats to you out there,” he says. “The royal family, the enemy, the church,” he starts, listing off just a few of them.

Acacia turns her head back toward him. “You befoul my delicate ears with your foolish words, Sir Knight,” she explains, scratching Pepper’s neck. The anqa clicks with its beak, hissing in satisfaction as it stretches out its neck. “It is your job to see to it that I have no enemies,” she explains. “As such, your warning is a waste of your time and my mental resources.”

“He’s right,” chimes in a third voice—Chicory. The royal agent sits on the side of the carriage, her legs propped up on the coachman’s footrest. “In this city, you have a level of protection now because of your fame that is unparalleled, Your Majesty,” explains Chicory. “It would be the wish of the royal family that you cease your nonsensical campaign for a throne that isn’t yours and sit here in peaceful silence for the rest of your days.”

Acacia turns her head, looking back at the priestess. “Chicory,” warns Acacia, staring her down. “I suggest that while you sit on my carriage in my city, standing next to my bodyguard, you take my side on every whim I have,” she explains in a kind voice that signals the harshness of the threat layered just underneath. “I don’t care for your slinking about,” says the youngest princess. “If you are not on my side in the matter of my ascension, then I suggest you leave my presence before my grace runs dry and I have you thrown into the endless void.”

“Your grace is endless, Your Majesty,” says Sir Knight, loading a crate into the back. Acacia lifts her nose, as if not needing to be told such.

“Like all agents of my title, I serve the interests of the royal family as a whole,” replies Chicory. “I do not serve you or your personal wishes,” she explains. “But I am here to make sure that nothing causes disharmony between you and your blood.”

“Mm,” replies Acacia, patting the animal to signal the end of its pampering. She crosses her hands behind her back, walking over to the carriage, fiddling with her fingers that are coated in a layer of sticky dust. All anqa’s feathers are covered in this naturally occurring powder. The fine, grainy residue keeps them dry, as it repels water. “And if I walk up to my brother with a knife in my hand, what will you do?” she asks, tilting her head. “Which of our interests is greater and, therefore, more worthy of the ‘protection’ of your agency?”

“Your brother’s,” replies Chicory plainly. “He’s the king,” she says, shrugging. “You’re not. You’re the youngest princess. Your claim to the throne is beyond all laws and tradition.”

Acacia snaps her fingers. Sir Knight grabs Chicory, picking her up.

“It is unfortunate for me that I have need of you, Chicory,” says Acacia, walking past. Sir Knight, holding Chicory beneath one arm, kneels down and holds out a palm that Acacia steps on, using it as a stoop to get into the carriage with. He gets back up. “So you may accompany me on my journey,” explains the princess. “For now.” Acacia settles in, fiddling with a pack of supplies on the seat next to her before looking in the back of the carriage. It’s a well constructed, expensive wooden structure. It’s not a royal carriage, like the kind her sister had arrived in or one of the extravagant rentals she and Sir Knight had paid for on the odd occasion. Rather, this is a high-end carriage from the merchant’s guild of the city that she had acquired through her connection to the vendor, Kaeufer. The man had practically looked like a ghost during her last visit; the same is true for his young apprentice, who is doing well.

She can only assume that he was hoping for their tea session and that she had forgotten his mistreatment of her during her first encounter with him. She hasn’t.

But she wants that shadow to hang over his head like a guillotine.

Acacia smiles to herself, pleased. She looks back toward Chicory, standing by the carriage. “But you must walk,” said the princess. Sir Knight sets Chicory back down onto the ground.

“Her Majesty’s mercy is beyond recognition,” says Sir Knight, clapping his hands together lightly in applause.

“Consider it a business transaction,” says Acacia, looking at Chicory. “I need you to make my medicine as we travel,” she explains. “And you need me so you can do your job.” Acacia shrugs. “Let us keep our relationship transactional, then, so there is no confusion here on either of our parts as to our standing with one another.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” replies Chicory.

Acacia, not liking the fact that the woman simply agreed, lifts her nose and returns to other work as she crawls into the back of the carriage, getting everything ready for their excursion out of the city.

Sir Knight looks down at Chicory, hiding his visor behind a massive hand, as if that would somehow make him look more subtle. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll help you out.”

“I am trained to march for days without rest if need be,” replies Chicory.

“And I trained to do thirty push-ups at once, but you don’t see me dropping to the floor,” he says, elbowing her lightly. Chicory stumbles, catching herself, his ‘light nudge,’ having been a little too strong. “Sorry.”

Sir Knight, his sword resting on his hip in the form of a single-handed, sheathed long sword, presses his hand against the hilt so that the tip of the fastened weapon touches Chicory’s leg. Somewhat concerned, she looks down as tendrils of shadows crawl out of the empty finger’s distance between her leg and the cusp of the boot, wrapping themselves around the leather like constricting vines. They press and pull the leather, causing Chicory’s legs to move by themselves as the empty gaps between her boots and legs are animated by a living shadow—it’s the same concept as his conjuration of the shadowy soldiers who patrol the city now day and night.

Holding her balance as her legs march for her back to his side, Chicory looks at him. “What can’t you do?” she asks as he turns his head back toward the carriage, looking through the cream colored fabric canopy as a silhouette inside of it stacks boxes around.

“Thirty-one push-ups,” replies Sir Knight, shaking his head and receiving only a vacantly blank look in response from the priestess and from the anqa, which turns its head away and preens its feathers.

Oh well.

He thought it was funny.

 

---

 

The carriage rattles over the stones of the road, rolling on as it makes its way out of the city gates, which are guarded now not only by the city guard but also by the summoned members of Sir Knight’s dark legion.

There’s something daunting about it that can’t really be put into coherent words, as the carriage moves to and then through the massive gate. The metal portcullis hangs over their heads with jagged spikes, giving the whole experience the feeling of breaking free and out of the mouth of a giant that had swallowed itself.

For one reason or another, they had all found themselves here in the city, trapped by it and its promises.

Acacia had ended up here after traveling from the capital in the far north-east with a group of merchants, having hoped to start a new life after her banishment. She sits there at the front of the coachman’s bench, next to a shadowy coachman that Sir Knight had summoned, and stares out into the world beyond the city with captivation in her eyes, as if she were a freed prisoner escaping confinement for the first time in years.

Junis, who is also there, sits in the back with her legs hanging over some crates as she studies from a schoolbook, sparing only a moment to glance back at the city they’re leaving. She had come here from the distant north-west — a rural country — in order to make something of herself at the academy, so as to break free from the generational curse of poverty.

Sir Knight, floating around as a dark smoke in a bottle that hangs from the top of the carriage like a lamp, spares little thought for this place. Of course, it had been the first and only real location he has ever seen of this wide world, which is full of magic and monsters, the likes of which, in his old life, he would have never thought of during his day-to-day monotony. But because of his extensions through his soldiers, who have spread far and wide across the nation, he has experienced a lot of it through their memories and sights. Like a spider with countless eyes spread in hundreds of places, he sees and picks up information everywhere, from all manner of obscure corners of the world. In the cities of the nation, in the villages and towns, his men have been working day and night to establish a presence and a foothold. They’ve been killing monsters that have pestered farming communities; they’ve been protecting traveling merchants from bandits and brigands on the roads; they’ve been pushing in through caves and nests of wild animals to keep the forests near remote communities safe—places where the armies of the nation would never go because they’re too busy fighting the war in the north-east with the enemy nation. In this ignoring of these people, there has arisen a real opportunity to be seen.

There are people in this country who live under a king but see no benefit from his presence. These places are where they’re going now, in order to win their graces for the name of Acacia Odofredus Krone.

In crisis, there is opportunity.

The shadow in the glass swirls around, looking back behind the carriage as Chicory walks on after them, looking in a lost state of bored-amusement as her legs—enchanted by his magic—walk for her.

She’s not really connected to this city like any of them were, but still, he notices her looking back once at the gate that grows smaller and smaller. Perhaps she is wondering if she had taken care of everything that there was to do for her there, like a person leaving the house and questioning if they locked the door, turned off the lights, and so on. It’s hard to say.

The carriage moves, pulled on by the anqa — Pepper — as they head west, at least until they’re far out of sight of the city.

And then, as they move toward a part of the road that is lined with trees and obscured from sight, the carriage rolls toward a hanging shadow that drapes between two boughs—like a sheet hung out to dry—and they move through the void, the carriage pressing through the void as it falls for a second, hurtling toward the light on the other side.

With a loud crash, it lands on the street in some faraway place—at a point his soldiers have marked out and guarded as a safe landing location for their pseudo-teleportation through his cloak. There are hundreds of these all over the nation.

And this one is in the south-east. About a week’s journey away from the city by carriage, in a small river village, pressing against the mountains. There have been news of wild monster attacks here for weeks, and the people are desperate for help, but the capital won’t send any as the region is too desolate and poor to matter to begin with. All resources that could be used here are tied up in the war.

It’s a perfect place to start next.

The carriage lands on a dirt clearing, bouncing and crashing noisily as it makes contact with the ground, the springs of the axles creaking as it settles, together with everyone in it. The anqa flaps its wings, displeased but fine.

This is why they chose a merchant’s carriage instead of something more regal. Traveling merchants use very robust carriages in order to traverse the oftentimes very difficult and dangerous roads of the nation. They’re built for survivability and are perfect to handle this particular method of rapid transportation, which would break a more delicate, but beautiful, design immediately.

They’ve arrived in a clearing in a needle-tree forest of a much darker and gloomier hue than that of the leafy green woodlands outside of the city. A dark, brackish river runs past them, the water not so much trickling as it is gurgling—like a drowning man. The extremely moist, sticky air smells and feels dank and smoky.

After everyone gathers themselves for a moment, the coachman whips the reins and the carriage moves on out of the cave, toward the smoke that rises in the near distance from a small village, deep in a forest that has no infrastructure of any kind, other than the roads chewed by animals or made by loggers or monsters and the occasional, fresh graves dug by the wayside.

 

---

 

 

“Did you hear the news?” asks a man at the bar, speaking to his friend. Zabinayah sits at a table, eating from a bowl of whatever was the cheapest thing on the menu. “They say the northern princess is rebelling,” he says. “Small one.”

The man next to him tilts his head back, emptying his tankard of some sort of rural-ale amalgamation. He slams it down and gestures for the barman to give him a new one. “The last damn thing we need is a civil war at the border too,” he says, shaking his head. “As if there wasn’t enough war in the area already.”

“Father Falklin says that the black knight is following her,” explains the man. “This is bad. I'm thinking’ about heading down south with my family,” he explains.

“Come on,” remarks his friend in a questioning tone, laughing as he hits a coin down onto the bar in exchange for a new tankard. “You believe that hogwash?” he asks. “It’s northern propaganda, idiot.” He shakes his head, starting his next drink before laughing again. “Black Knight,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Ain’t no such thing.”

“But Father Falklin said...”

“Father Falklin is half-senile; you dope,” he says, interrupting. “Besides, you really want to take your family to the coast?” he asks incredulously. “Half of that city is still on fire because of the rebellion.”

Shrugging, the man wipes a hand over his face, dragging a clump of ale froth down into his beard rather than wiping it clean. “The best place is here,” he says. “Nice and quiet.”

“He’s real,” says another voice from the side of the bar. A man, covered in scars and burns, looks their way with just as many empty tankards there as between the two of them. “O Cavaleiro,” he explains, tapping his own face. “I saw him with my own eyes. I was there, at the coast.”

The two of them look his way, with the drinking man pointing with a finger but not letting go of his tankard. “You can’t even see me straight, you old buzzard,” replies the unworried man. “And even assuming I take the word of a drunk and senile old man, why am I going to worry about some man in fancy-dancy-city armor somewhere?” he asks. “The world’s too big to worry about one man.”

Zabinayah finishes his food, setting down his spoon and bowing his head for a moment of thanks. He rises to his feet, grabbing his pack as he turns to the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at the conversation. “O Cavaleiro isn’t just one man,” explains the church inquisitor, returning to his hunt for the heart of the dark princess in order to stop this madness and restore his honor in the eyes of the orthodox church. He nods to the wounded soldier before turning to the door. “He is a monster who is everywhere,” explains Zabinayah, opening the door and walking outside, paying no mind to the laughter of the drunk and hammering his fist on the bar.

Seeing the devil puts the proof of faith into the heart of a man.

But if a man never encounters such evil, he will also never have reason to encounter its opposite.

He has to hurry. It will be a long, weary march by himself to the northern nation and then to even reach the princess, let alone to make it past the shadow-haunting nightmare he chases.

Zabinayah, his rapier at his side, sheathed over crimson fabric in an ornate, polished leather that catches the hot rays of southern sunlight, makes his way back down the road. He knows that this chance encounter here at this roadside tavern wasn’t happenstance. The gods put this conversation here as a reminder that he has little time to dally in such places.

Hurrying, he moves, chasing after the horizon before darkness falls over it and all of them. He will stop this madness, he will kill the devils that plague this world, and he will bring about the peaceful restoration to it that it long deserves—a world free of the horror that is the monster he hunts.

O Cavaleiro, the Black Knight

 

---

 

 

“Lizard,” says the strange village girl in a simple, pleased voice. She holds out her hands, holding onto a bright green lizard that writhes around, trying to get away from her.

Sir Knight stares at the child in a simple dress made out of a monotone fabric that looks like it was once from a sack as she plants the lizard on him. She’s only a few years old and watches in fascination as the lizard scurries up his dark, sun-warmed armor and perches on his shoulder. Presumably, it not only feels safely out of reach here but also enjoys the heat from the metal.

“Mirie-May, you get away from him this instant!” snaps a woman’s voice in a drawl as she runs over, snatching the girl by the arm and dragging her back to a small but keenly observant crowd. “I’m very sorry, your grace!” says the mother, bowing her head to him in a fully unnecessary fashion, as if he were some noble. These people don’t really understand refined social decorum. The only people who visit here are the rare merchants who visit once or twice a year. A noble, let alone a royal, hasn’t set foot in this region in what may be centuries.

Sir Knight turns his helmet, looking at the lizard on his shoulder, before turning back to the crowd.

They’ve arrived in the village, a rural community of no more than one hundred fifty souls that survives off of the land and the river through foraging, fishing, and hunting. There’s nothing of note produced here other than more life. It’s a forgotten backwater by any standards.

The village elder, an extremely decrepit man whose rough skin looks one and the same as the texture of the bark of the ancient trees around them, shakily rises up from his bowing on old, wobbly knees. Living so far away from the world, he is perhaps the only one here who really understands the gravity of the situation. This much is apparent, as he is the only one to bow and show respect to these strangers. Everyone else just looks confused and perhaps angrily defensive—mostly toward Sir Knight.

Outsiders aren’t welcome in such parts of the world.

“Your royal highness,” says the elder in a shaking voice as he turns his gaze, looking at Sir Knight. “We thank you for finding your way to our home,” he says, his head finally lifting up straight after his back had done so. “And we thank you for ridding us of the monsters nearby, but please, we are simple folk. We have nothing to pay you for your goodness,” he explains, looking at Acacia in worry.

Acacia, standing there with her arms folded, shakes her head. “I have no need for payment,” she explains, looking around the crowd. “Your community has been forgotten by the nation,” says Acacia. “I will see to it that, as I take the throne, you are to be remembered from now on,” explains the princess.

“’Remembered’?” asks a sharp voice. “We were good enough to'remember’ when they took my husband for a war that ain’t ours!” shouts a voice from the crowd as a woman presses her way in to the front.

“Vinil!” warns the elder, slowly lifting a shaking hand toward her to stop her from coming closer. His eyes look toward Sir Knight as he begins to lower himself with a bow again. "Please, your Grace, forgive my people for their arrogance,” starts the elder as his shaking body drops down inch by inch as he prostrates himself again.

Acacia reaches out, grabbing him by the sides. “Don’t,” she says, helping him stand upright again. “There is nothing to forgive.”

These people have no clue about how to act around nobility. If anyone from the noble states of the capital were here, this village would have been raised in flames already for the lack of proper decorum being shown. For a peasant woman to speak this openly to a princess would have sent her straight to the front lines of the war together with her husband—and her children, if it were a merciful day.

Acacia looks at him as he stands back upright, technically taller than her, but age and his bones see to it that they stand at the same height. She turns her head, looking around the crowd. “I’ve come to you now, not because of the war or for payment,” says Acacia, looking at the wary faces of these reclusive people. They all look sickly and almost green in the face. Their skin is dirty, dry, and pulled taut like a wrap over bones. “I’ve come to you because my men did not do a good enough job the first time,” she explains. “Are there still monsters here?” she asks. “We’ve come to get rid of them once and for all.”

The village’s problem is a complicated one. Most of the fighting age men and women had been taken to the war effort. Those who remain are simply not strong enough in their capacity to maintain a safe way of life in a place like this. With the lack of strong hands and arms, monsters that had previously been pushed back into the further reaches of the wilds began to probe and reclaim old territory slowly. The forest clearing where they arrived was one such place. However, it is only one of many locations that have been overrun.

Monsters breed quickly and easily. Even if they had cleaned out the forest, without a local presence to keep it clear of threats, it wouldn’t be long before something nestled inside of it again, and perhaps this time it would be something worse.

The elder shakes his head. “There is no need for you to trouble yourself with our small problems, Your Hi-”

“The water’s poisoned!” says the woman from before, calling in and interrupting the elder. “We ain’t got nothing to drink,” she explains. “Ain’t got nothing to wash with.”

Acacia looks at her and then back to the elder, who bows his head.

Monsters have nestled upstream of the river, their presence befouling the water that runs through the forest. Because of this, everything that relies on the river—animals, plants, and people—is dying.

She nods, looking back at Sir Knight.

A small girl runs out of the crowd again. She holds out her hands, planting a lizard on his armor.

“Lizard,” she says.

Sir Knight nods, looking as the small green creature crawls up his armor toward a sunny spot on his side as the girl’s mother comes to tear her back again.

“Lizard,” agrees Sir Knight, looking over at Acacia as she gathers the rest of the information about the situation.

 

---

 

The rolled-out piece of parchment lies on the table, its ends weighed down with some rocks from the ground. Acacia runs her hands over it, pointing to the hand-drawn map of the area. There are no official maps of this place in the city for them to use, as it’s simply too remote. Instead, using some input from the villagers who know this place well, she drew one herself.

It’s rather crude, but it does the job.

“Here’s where we arrived,” says Acacia, pointing at a spot on the parchment that is marked with a splotchy circle. “Here’s the village,” he explains, pointing at a sketch of a house.

“Huh…” mutters Junis, looking at the map.

“What?”

The elf shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Acacia raises an eyebrow questioningly, as if waiting for the elf to say something more. But she doesn’t. “Your men cleared out a camp here, Sir Knight,” she says, pointing at a skull surrounded by many trees. “But the problem is the river. There are monsters upstream of it.” Her finger follows a long line swirling over the map in a serpentine bend toward a cluster of trees, where it vanishes into a dark blob. “Some of the woodsmen say there’s an old cave here. It used to be a mine maybe a century ago,” she explains. “But work stopped, and it was empty, apart from some bears now and then.” Her finger taps the splotchy blob, which is meant to be a cave. “It looks like some sort of creatures have set up here.”

They’re standing beneath the small roof of a freshly built pavilion. All around them comes the sound of hammering and sawing, together with the muttering of many curious faces. Sir Knight’s soldiers, freshly summoned from the shadows behind some hundred trees, work with tools in hand to create a shelter in the matter of hours. They’re running through the village like a flood, rebuilding roofs that were made half a century ago, patching broken walls, and stabilizing foundations that had begun to sag and sink because of the weight of time pressing down over them. While this region had once been a very important place, because of the mine, after it’s production came to an end, everything here stagnated and stayed the same. The people lived a subsistence living, being more or less forgotten by everyone except the tax collector — who never found much to take back with himself from this place except some furs and the occasional trinket pulled off of a wandering monster. Right now, Sir Knight’s legion of soldiers is putting more work into this place in the matter of a few hours than has been seen here in generations.

The small trickle of rain and the muddy ground do little to stop the empty suits of armor, which he has made a little more presentable in their appearance for these village folk than he does during more contentious times.

He has to protect Acacia’s image, after all.

“What I don’t understand is why now?” asks Junis, looking at the map and then around at the sleepy, lost village. “This place has been quiet for a lifetime,” she explains, confused. “So where are these monsters coming from, and why have they holed up here?”

“It’s the war,” replies Chicory plainly, standing there leaned back against a post of the pavilion with her arms crossed. The rain drizzles behind her, down against the trampled grass. She looks up toward the gray sky. “There’s so much happening across the world that wild-magic is everywhere these days. It’s going crazy. So that’s causing monsters to show up in all sorts of places everywhere.”

Junis nods. “I see.”

“…Wild magic?” asks Acacia. “Don’t monsters, uh, you know, make more monsters?” she asks. “The usual way, like animals?”

“They do,” explains Junis. “But what Chicory says makes sense. The intensity of the war is, um, invigorating them,” she explains, scratching her cheek. “Monsters do best when people are fighting each other instead of them.” She points toward the forest. “It’s like how a species of insect will overpopulate if its predators are too busy hunting each other instead of them.”

“Got it,” says Acacia, clearing her throat and placing her hands on her sides. “Sir Knight?”

“Your Majesty?” he asks, looking over her way, his hand still raised.

“Stop playing with lizards,” replies Acacia. “Leave your men here and go clear out that mine,” she orders. “Junis, Chicory, and myself will take some of them with us and move through the forest, clearing out any stragglers.”

He looks at her, turning back toward the bright green lizard on his finger for a second, letting it scoot off of his armor. It runs up the post, resting just below the roof of the pavilion and well out of reach. “Me? All by myself?” he asks.

Acacia lifts a hand, patting his arm. “You’re a big boy, Sir Knight,” she explains. “I have faith in your ability to take care of some goblins or… whatever…” She looks at the others. “- What kind of monsters are supposed to be here again?” asks Acacia.

Chicory shrugs. “The villagers were unclear,” she replies, looking over her shoulder toward the people of the region who are more interested in the soldiers rebuilding their homes, than any of them now. A troop of five men in dark armor walks past them, carrying a massive log on their shoulders. “’Goblins’, was the original word when this place was first cleared out. That checks out for this region,” explains the priestess, looking at the map. “But these newer reports sound different.” She shakes her head. “Hobgoblins, maybe?” guesses Chicory.

“What’s the difference?” asks Acacia.

“They’re bigger and meaner than normal goblins,” replies Junis. “Little goblins are pretty clever and cruel, but hobgoblins are their big, lanky, feral cousins,” says the elf. “They’re rabid.” She looks at Acacia. “You ought to sit this out.”

Acacia looks at Junis with a narrowed gaze that demands an explanation. Junis shrugs. “Shouldn’t you spend your time being diplomatic?” she asks. “Have some tea with the elder or something.”

“Junis is right,” chimes in Chicory, standing up and stretching her back. “We can handle this just fine. It isn’t the place of the princess to be wandering an old, wet, infested forest.”

Acacia looks at them. “You are correct,” she says, receiving a look of surprise in return. “It is not the place of a princess to do so,” explains Acacia, walking past them and down toward the map that she rolls up and tucks away into her belt next to her rapier. She grabs her cloak from the table, fastening it around her neck. “I am the queen of this nation, however, and I rule it by sword.”

— A light clapping comes from Sir Knight, who stands there. “Very impressive, Your Majesty,” he says, his helmet following her. “Powerful words, as expected of her highness.”

“Save your sarcasm for the lizards, Sir Knight,” says Acacia, walking past him. She looks over her shoulder. “Perhaps I will take one with us to keep inside of your jar, so that you might have a friend.”

She seems pleased with this idea, laughing to herself as she walks off through the rain. Chicory silently trails after her like a shadow, several of the soldiers diverting from their tasks and marching off in formation behind her.

“I thought it was funny,” assures Junis, a hand quickly running over his upper arm as she runs after the others.

Sir Knight watches them go and then turns his head up to look at the lizard hanging down below the roof of the pavilion. “And what about you?” he asks.

The lizard stares at him for a while but does not respond before crawling around to the other side of the post.

Perhaps this is for the best.

 

---

 

 

The deeper he pushed into the forest, the stronger the rain seemed to have intensified. Water drips from the canopy all around him, splashing down on the over-saturated dirt. Puddles form all around him, rising in some places as quagmires as he sloshes through the grit. His armor, despite being empty, is heavy and sinks in partially with every trudging step. Mud sloshes through his hollow boots as he looks around the area.

A light chiming fills the air, causing him to stop. Sir Knight looks around the area, listening for the sound that seems out of place this deep in the forest — it’s like a soft, metal wind chime.

He turns his head, finding the source.

A plant grows out of the side of the river, having very few but very long and thick, deeply green leaves that sway around in the storm on the river’s bank. Occasionally, it will dip into the water or into the mud before pressing back upright as it tries to grow. Through some property or another that he can’t explain, it gives off the sound of chiming.

— An oddity of this world, perhaps. He’s never left the city or Acacia’s memories, but there are all manner of things out there in the world that neither of them know.

Pressing on, he follows the small river upstream by himself, the rain washing down his armor as he makes his way forward for a while. The forest around him is thick; the needle-trees, which are different from the leafy oaks all around the city, press together tightly on all sides like the sharpened bars of an iron-wrought fence that locks him in on one side — the river locks him in on the other as he heads down its bending length. Birds sit in the trees, perhaps staying quiet as they silently turn their heads to watch the anomaly move their territory. Or perhaps they’re staying quiet because they know better than to make any attention-attracting sounds in a place like this.

There’s a miasma in the air — a smell.

The river is tainted and carries a deep ammonia to the odors of its water, which seems to get stuck on the shores of the embankment, and the longer he follows it toward its source, the stronger the smell becomes. Even without a nose, he can tell. It’s almost acidic. He’s sure that if he had skin, it would tingle and burn from the odor that has tainted the area like a poison gas.

Soon, the trees on either side of the river make this apparent, as they stand there dead — like propped-up corpses. Rotting needles from their bare crowns and branches float over the mud and the standing water that insects breed in — another reason to be thankful for not having any skin or muscle.

Sir Knight watches a mosquito fly by.

— Apparently they also exist here.

There’s a dark humor to that, which he can’t quite place. But he finds himself distracted, as his foot crunches down over something solid. It cracks, causing him to lurch for a moment.

The giant in black armor looks down at the skeleton he’s stepped on.

It’s small — at first he thinks it’s that of a child. But after looking at the crushed skull for a moment, he realizes that it isn’t human, elf, or anything of the sort that one could classify as belonging to ‘people’ in this world.

It’s a goblin’s body. It’s broken apart and gnawed. His crushing of the skull makes little difference, as all of its limbs are shattered apart. Fragments of the bones are missing. He bends down, picking up half of a femur, and watches as its contents drip out.

It’s not marrow. Rather, mud slicks out from the emptied bone, which has little signs of yellowing. Strangely enough, it also has no signs of bite marks, which would be present if an animal had chewed the corpse clean.

Sir Knight drops it, lifting his gaze toward the bend around the hill that the befouled river flows out of, watching as one or two other chunks of rotting color flow down from it and get caught in the muddy slopes of the rise. They’re pieces of meat, pieces of bodies. Cracked open arms, torn free from decaying sockets, and broken in half. The sinew still connects the halves together. He watches as a broken hip floats by, covered in gristle and fat — but the inside is emptied and dried; the marrow has been pulled cleanly out. Violent buzzing fills the air, even over the sound of the heavy rain, and he watches as holes begin to appear in the mud of the riverside. At first, he thinks the raindrops are creating small impact sites, but then he notices that the holes widen and run deeper. One after the other, by the hundreds, they appear, and then, one after the other, fat, brackish green insects crawl out of their burrows and descend over the carcasses and feast.

By the time he reaches the foot of the hill and begins pressing up what amounts to a mudfall, those pieces of dead goblin have been picked clean, and the insects return to their deep burrows, waiting for more. He wonders what would happen if a living person fell into the water there.

Perhaps this would explain the lack of living goblins he’s seen until this point.

Reaching the top of the hill, Sir Knight finds himself standing in front of a cavernous entrance. Mud drips and runs down the top of it from the melting world the mouth opens into, splashing down into the river as if it were drool.

Poison water splashes around as he jumps down into it and makes his way inside the mine.

Decayed, tattered ropes dangle from the mossy walls like dead parasites still burrowed into the intestinal walls. Here and there lie crates that have been broken apart, or old mining tools that have rusted so much and been covered in so much sediment that they almost seem to have grown back into the very same stone walls they were once breaking open. Moss, ivy, and fungus grow everywhere around him. Then, after a time of moving through the shallow waters of the river’s head, meat floating past him, he sees what looks like an old camp. There are fresh logs that span the river, like a blockade, but they’re broken in the center, having been crushed.

Old pillars and posts jut out of the water. It looks as if, in the distant past, there had once been a series of bridges and walkways all across the mine to make it workable. But those have long since collapsed in on themselves and been washed away. Here and there are embankments, and on them are shelters. They look primitive, not like tents that hunters or adventurers would set up. Rather, they are simple stilt and fur constructions, reaching to about his waist in height at most. Haphazardly places fire locations dot the area near rusted metal, that is partially swallowed by the mud on the embankments, like everything else here. It’s like the cave was hiding its secrets from him — no, it’s like it’s digesting these things.

“Goblins…” mutters Sir Knight, dropping a small, crudely hammer scrap-metal dagger down back into the mud he had picked it up from.

He’s dealt with goblins before in the dungeon.

But monsters exist in this world, not just in dungeons but in the wildlands. They roam and live there, just the same as any other creature. Goblins are a common monster, found in deep forests far away from centers of civilization, where they can hide from soldiers, but still thrive by plundering and pillaging remote outskirt regions.

What he notices, though, is that unlike the goblin camps he knows from his time in the dungeon, these are placed differently. These tents and wooden-stick frames they use to shelter themselves are placed here in several circles.

He pushes deeper into the cave, following the river. There are many embankments like that first one, and all of them have a collection of tents on them — all pushed into tight rings that look like protective walls. It’s like they set up watch towers along the way.

— A foot floats past him, down toward the mouth of the cave.

And by the time the darkness around him is so absolute that there is no glimmer of light left to see anywhere, the sound of the rain outside can’t be heard anymore. In total blackness, Sir Knight moves forward, his hand on his sword as he scans the area.

He doesn’t know much about hobgoblins, which was Chicory’s theory. But he knows when something feels wrong, and here, something feels very wrong.

The river grows stronger in pressure as he walks toward a colorful light.

A small, jagged, multi-pronged crystal juts out in all directions. It’s about the size of his fist and is a glassy, clear red color. It emits a dim light. He taps it with a finger, and a chime reverberates around the passage. The dull, almost musical tone echoes in all directions until it is swallowed by the mud and the water like everything else. Ahead, there is a chamber with more of them. First he only sees a few, but then dozens and then hundreds. All around everywhere, these small, razor-sharp crystals line the wall — something of them holding the impaled bodies of unfortunately flung goblins. The many glows of many almost distressingly vibrant colors shimmer out and across the glossy mud, somehow making it even less appealing. The crimson reds, the sunshine yellows, the spring-washed greens, and so many other colors come together from a thousand lights and create only a muddy, unified brack in their mixture.

These must have been what was mined here in the distant past. He recognizes them. These crystals are used by sorcerers and alchemists for a variety of purposes involving the creation of items or equipment with magical properties. As is, they’re a resource that’s always in demand, especially now with the war going on. He can only assume that this place is simply too remote and too desolate for the economics to pan out for them to be mined and shipped from this region, even under the current circumstances.

A bright green lizard scurries over a goblin’s decayed skull, looking at him for a second before vanishing into the rotted-out eye sockets of the dead face.

The smell in the air is unbelievable, carrying a sourness so bitter that it is causing the carcasses around him to flake and peel. These bodies are freshly killed. But given the nature of this damp, acridly warm place, the decay is so rapid and strong that they’re falling apart far quicker than one would expect. It’s no wonder that the villagers are getting sick from the water of the river if this is where it’s coming from. Decay and bile are floating down it in an almost endless stream. Ammonia fills the air, the smell sharing the space with the noise of a wet, sickly sucking and slurping and the sound of a scream that has screamed itself out, coming only as a drowned whimper.

Sir Knight pulls out his sword, finding not the goblins, but what has killed the goblins that set up shelter in the forest at first, but then later in the cave after they had been chased off

It would seem, however, that they were in this region to begin with because they were on the run, and whatever they were running from to this distant, remote place, had finally caught up with them.

The suckling, greedily slurping sound falls quiet as the goblin-eating-thing stops eating. It sits by the embankment of the river. From its wet, almost moldy body drips a thick, gooey secretion that pools around it and into the water, giving off the smell of urine and musk.

The goblin, however, that it had been eating — alive — flounders as it tries not to drown in the acidic water. Its back legs — snapped in half — are held together within two elongated, razor thin sets of fingers that have more joints than one would expect. Using this grip, the creature holds both of the goblin's legs together. The marrow that it had been slurping from the living monster as it half-drowns drips down a long, thin tongue and onto a sleek body, bloated and gorged with syrup of the same origin from the corpses all around the hole. It slowly turns its head, looking toward Sir Knight.

He readies his sword, having never seen anything quite like it. It rises slowly on two legs, then four — from its front, press out two, long arms that sit at the base of its neck, each connected to long, sharply fingered hands with too many joints. It has tattered wings that sit folded tightly against its bulging, misshapen, lumpy body, like those of a dead bat. Its tongue slithers back into its elongated, sharp mouth. Two front-facing, yellow, festering eyes look his way. It’s a conglomeration of meat. He doesn’t know what it is, but it looks like someone took the pieces of a dragon and the carcasses of many monsters and let them regrow together into a monstrosity. Yellow oozes secretes from its scaly skin, and he recognizes it as having the same tinge and color as the marrow it had been swallowing so greedily but been unable to digest. Across its body are clusters of perfectly cylindrical holes — the same exact ones that he had seen outside on the embankment. Insects nest inside of them, coated in slime, waiting for their turn to eat.

The mutilated goblin, let go, falls into the water and splashes around as it tries to surface, only to be crushed into a paste by a massive, scaled foot. The wet crunch resounds around the chamber, bouncing off of the river that fills with blood and guts, before resounding off of the crystals all around them.

 

 

“Now that’s a lizard…” says Sir Knight, readying himself.

Before he can react, the giant finds himself flung back across the river, his back slammed into a crystal that stabs through his armor from the back, pressing cleanly through the metal. The meat of a body presses against his front, a hand on his head and one on his shoulders, as a long, slick tongue presses down through the slit below his helmet and licks around the inside of his armor, searching for bones to touch.

His knee crashes against its swelling guts, causing a pustule to burst, sending brown, thick gunk oozing down into the river in chunks. Insects buzz out as they begin to crawl out of the living corpse, chasing after the pieces. His hand presses against it, and a second later, it flies back much the same as he had, breaking its bones and ripping open as it catches on the razor sharp crystals. But that doesn’t bother it.

Mindlessly, its sloshing body rises back up to its feet like a sack with pus as its long, elongated neck turns back his way.

“I’m never going to get this smell out,” says Sir Knight, readying himself again.

It’s fast — faster than what one would expect from something of its make and build.

Both hunters move at the same time, his sword swinging, but also being caught by lanky, long fingers that don’t care about being cut as both of their free hands strike the masses of the other — both of them are entities that are unable to feel pain, using the tactics of hunters of those that can, which would lock them in a stalemate.

But it has a few more legs than he does and pushes back against him as it opens its mouth and spews out an endless stream of acidic, vomit-like bile straight over him as he throws its arm back, grabs his cloak, and swipes it over the creature’s grabbing hand. He lets go of the sword, his free elbow cracking down on the forearm stuck inside the void in his cape, severing through the wet, rotting meat. The monster’s thin arm breaks, falling into the cloak as his sword falls to the ground. Grabbing the other hand with both of his, he yanks on it, dislocating the joint, but not before a mass of mindless meat slams against him and pins him to the mud. The force of the body on top of him slides him toward the river. A broken hand holds his head down below the water as it follows old tactics, its tongue creeping back in through his armor, and it returns to its failing search for marrow.

Sir Knight, below the water, looks around himself for a moment. In a sense, it’s not like he’s in a rush. He can hardly drown, after all. A colorful glimmer catches his eye, as a long tongue touches the inside of his cuirass — a purple crystal growing below the water. He breaks it off from its stem, slamming it through the long neck that he can feel resting on him as it slithers around like a snake. It pushes through almost too easily, like there was nothing but mush as resistance. He presses himself upright, ready to throw the thing off of himself, assuming he had fatally wounded it.

— A crunching, wet cracking noise fills the air immediately as he sits upright, looking at the ton of fetid meat that is blanketing him.

The monster’s severed neck, flopping around like a worm from a bird’s beak, hangs loosely, and the gaping, gray, pus-oozing wound fills immediately as from it grows a new arm from the base of the cut — like a new sprout growing out of the stump of its dead forebearer.

The third hand wraps itself around his helmet, pressing him back down into the water as the meat crawls further over him. The tongue slides further through him as it looks and searches for what it knows should be here but can’t find. Water and thick, silty mud fill the armor, weighing it down more and more as a tonnage of weight crushes and presses the buckling metal down deeply into the mud, which is more than happy to swallow it like it had done so much of the past here.

— The armor stops struggling.

The monster, expecting as much from its prey at this point, continues to search and do what it does. Its three hands join in, almost curiously, as it feels around the metal for any sign of meat and marrow to take.

The top half of it falls off the bottom half.

A slab of decaying meat falls into the river, jamming it. Water overflows on the other side of the blockage, carrying a dark stain with it as it flows downriver.

Two yellow eyes on a detached, fallen-off head turn to look at the silhouette standing behind it with a massive sword in hand.

It’s like the shadow of a man painted on a wall, except it’s standing there in place in the center of the room with a massive sword held in its grip. The man has no features and no face. He is nothing except for a blob of emptiness that takes the shape of a person. It’s like a god dropped their inkwell from a table, and on the way down, the splashing black had come together to create a sludge that looks like a person.

 

 

“Could’ve at least gotten me a drink first,” says Sir Knight’s voice from the shadow that is separate from the armor it has escaped out of. The massive sword cuts down, slicing through the body of the monster in one swoop with a blade that isn’t physical. Instead, it presses through the body with no resistance — the same as it does with the armor and the mud below — as it cuts.

Chunks fall off and apart, flowing down the water.

Small, fragile bones poke out from the severed flesh like those inside a fish. But unlike those bones, these move and squirm, feeling around for one another as the thing pulls itself back together as he keeps cutting it apart further and further.

Soon, there’s nothing left but mush, which is one and the same as the mud of the flooded mine.

Sir Knight looks around himself, finding the last thing that remains: a severed head that stares his way with two yellow, emotionless eyes that see or signal nothing but mindless hunger. Then, after a second longer, they don’t see anything as a dense, inky-black hammer crushes them into paste.

He stands there for a moment, observing the area as everything finally becomes quiet for good. Setting his grease- and bile-covered weapon down, Sir Knight looks at his fingers as he grips his hands in and out, as if testing them. He’s never tried ‘leaving’ his armor before. The shadow that he is looks over toward the suit of armor, half drowned and half buried in mud. The tattered, filthy cloak was flowing down in the direction of the water. Maybe he’ll surprise the others with this body. That might be funny, actually.

Walking over with the strut of a proudly bared man, he bends down and puts his hand on his armor, allowing it to slowly demanifest. It returns to the nothingess.

“That went alright,” says Sir Knight to himself, watching as the suit of armor slowly fades back into the void, leaving the mud inside of it behind.

He’d better get back to Acacia and the others and let them know they can move on to the next village and solve whatever quaint and quirky problem they have going on there.

— Something grabs his leg.

Sir Knight looks down at the rail, his thin, gnarled hand wrapped around his leg. Its base comes out of the cloak, floating in the river. It’s the severed arm he had broken off and thrown into the void. Somehow, it seems to have found its way back out. “I deserve this for saying something,” he says, grabbing his sword.

The mud around him shakes and squirms, one hole after the other appearing in the sediment all around him as the gunk that is everything around the river — mud, bones, and bile — all presses and squirms and crawls together. Broken fingers crawl over crushed insects, melting and merging with them as they leave trails of yellow mucus behind themselves like slugs. Pieces of waterlogged skin and muscle tissue squish and compress as they undulate back toward a central mass. In a second, a lump of meat grows out of the wet dirt like a tumor. Teeth press out in all directions where there is no mouth, and eyes begin to bulge and press out either into the mud below that blinds them or up toward the ceiling where there is nothing to see. A mouth screams a wordless scream as it rips open in the side of the meat, and another appears on the other side, and then one more — all of them filled with pockets of organs and misgrown nails and hair. The lump becomes a mass, and the mass becomes a mound, and before he can step back and swing his sword, it becomes a thing that screams out an anguished, breathless howl that never stops.

No longer having a shape, no longer having anything of definition, it bloats and swells as it gorges itself on river water, bulking until its body presses against the walls of the mine chamber. It is a monster still, but it is not a monster that can be named. It is only resembling of a terror that cannot be defined. It is like a beast that chases someone in their nightmares, but is never able to be described upon waking.

“What are you?” asks Sir Knight, looking as a hundred and then some yellow, slit eyes turn his way — some looking from the exterior of the body, others looking from inside of the cavities they sit nested in.

He throws his sword to the side, knowing that this isn’t a fight that a man with a sword can win.

A squeaking, dripping, croaking voice speaks out in a senseless utterance of babbling — like that of an infant that only knows how to mock the noises it has heard before.

Sir Knight’s body begins to melt, his legs — defined as those of a human's — beginning to sink into a puddle that undulates and shifts just the same as the monster he’s facing. Blackness erupts out of him in all directions, tendrils of shadow forming chains and connections that themselves drip and melt like sinew and muscle growing over a skeleton. The shadow the size of a man becomes a shadow of the horrors of one. He doesn’t have to have a form like this. He can be anything, and rightly so, he needs to be something much more specific.

The two horrors drip and form, compressing around each other as they fight for space in the cavern — two bodies swelling in indescribable horror. Piercing lances of black shadow stab and cut deeply into the mess of flesh, but the same pushes back his way with writhing tongues the length of men and scratching claws the size of trees. Mouths ripped open by the dozens squeak and chime as those two powers collide.

“Mmmm-” says the voice, belonging to the rotting thing, as the shadowy monstrosity that he himself has become — a mirror version of it, almost — collides with force. Yellow eyes gaze at him. “- Monster,” it squeaks in a monotone, high-pitched croaning like the squeaking of a door’s hinge.

Two fists collide somewhere within the incoherent mess.

“Small world,” replies Sir Knight, as one after the other, empty, hollow eye sockets appear all through him. “Me too,” he says.

An unimaginable screaming fills the cave, the river shaking and splashing as the world quakes.

 

---

 

 

Holding a cloth over her mouth, Acacia coughs, hacking out a series of breaths in a manner that is certainly not very princess-like. Chicory pats her back as if she were helping someone who had been choking. Acacia leans her head back, pulling in a deep breath of air through a raspy throat and closing her eyes for a second.

“The air is here is really bad,” remarks Acacia. She turns her head, looking at Chicory. “…Why are you touching me, Chicory?”

“It is my duty to help you in any way that I can,” replies Chicory. She pulls open a satchel, taking out a small vial. “Do you need your medicine?”

“I’m fine,” says Acacia, rolling her eyes. “Thank you.”

Chicory points to the cloth, which has red pockmarks on it. “Your Majesty,” starts the royal agent.

Acacia walks a few steps away, waving the woman off and tucking the cloth back into her pockets — which she paid extra for this dress to have. “I will let you know when I need my medicine,” she says, looking back at Chicory, whom she doesn’t really like because of her nature as a spy and also because she had almost gotten her killed down in the dungeon. Such things are hard to forgive. Ever since then, the priestess has gone out of her way to be nice, and Acacia just can’t get over the feeling that it’s all just an act.

“Do you think Sir Knight is alright?” asks Junis, standing there with a parasol and looking off toward the distance. Although there isn’t much of a distance to see through the dense needle forest. The rain drizzles down on it, catching in the waxed fabric spread between several wooden prongs.

“Sir Knight is perfectly capable of tending to some forest goblins,” says Acacia, walking through the woods and listening to a soft chiming. “Listen,” she says, holding out a hand to slow the others. “There’s another one.”

“Ah!” says Chicory, following the sound excitedly. It’s the tinkling, chiming sound of an herb. “Over here,” she says, pushing some shrubbery aside to reveal a small, but very thickly leafed plant that juts out of a deep puddle. She looks around the area. “This region must be under some heavy magic,” explains Chicory. “For this much klimperleaf to be growing.”

“Why does it make that noise?” asks Acacia, looking at it. “It sounds like… bells?” she says. “Very small bells.”

“It’s a filtering plant,” explains Chicory, looking back her way and closing off the bush. She holds a hand against her own chest, breathing in slowly. “It breathes in air,” explains the priestess as she inhales. “When the air passes through the leaves, they filter out any magical residue in the air,” says Chicory, exhaling again. “And then they breathe out the rest like us.”

“Oooh,” mutters Junis, nodding along as she makes a mental note. “So they’re not actually making any noises,” says the elf. “It’s just the crackling of the magical residue inside of them?” she guesses.

“You got it,” replies Chicory.

“While this is all very fascinating,” interjects Acacia. She looks around the area. “We should perhaps return to our hobgoblin hunt.”

Chicory lifts a hand. “Your Majesty,” says the priestess, receiving a side eye from Acacia. “This is the fifth klimpergrass that we’ve seen,” explains the woman. “Hobgoblins don’t give off enough magic from themselves for even one to grow near their camps.”

Acacia shrugs. “It’s like you said. The wild-magic of the war is making things odd everywhere,” she says fairly confidently. Acacia swipes her hair back as she walks. “Let’s focus on finding those hobgoblins,” she says. “So far, I haven’t seen anything but trees and wet grass.” The princess looks at a patrolling soldier. “Anything?” The dark, shadowy suit of armor shakes its head before continuing the search through the forest.

“Maybe we should go send a few soldiers after Sir Knight?” suggests Junis, walking after them.

Acacia sighs, waving a hand in the air and not bothering to turn around. “Junis. Sir Knight could crush a dragon with his thumb,” she explains. “I’m not worried about him, and neither should you be. Let’s find out where those goblins are.”

“Hobgoblins,” corrects Chicory.

“Yes, yes. Hobgoblins,” replies Acacia, covering her mouth as she starts yawning. “…What a boring place,” she mutters, walking through the forest and looking around for signs of any monsters as rain softly drizzles around them. “I can’t wait to go to the n-”

Acacia stumbles, clutching her chest as she falls to the grass, the taste of metal filling her mouth that feels like it’s overflowing with spit. A streak of blood runs down her face as she clutches her chest, the sensation of a burning knife cutting through it. A red splatter streaks out over the grass by her head, where she gags out a throatful of blood.

“Acacia!” shouts Junis, running over with Chicory. Her vision spins, the forest doubling itself as she lifts her head, looking at the other two who are running her way. Chicory is saying something to Junis, but she can’t make out the words. All of a sudden, everything is blurred and muffled. With an almost dreamlike daze, Acacia looks past the other two toward the source of a shaking noise.

A sudden metal rattling fills the air. The three of them stop, turning to look at one of Sir Knight’s summoned soldiers, who has frozen in place and begun shaking violently. Metal clinks and clambers as he turns his head and body, falling against his halberd as he tries to brace himself upright. The pole of the weapon sinks down into the mud. He collapses, the empty suit of armor falling apart into a heap that scatters across the grass. Acacia turns her head, watching as one after the other, the soldiers fall apart, one managing to start a salute before his arm falls off and he crashes together as a pile of lifeless scrap. The entire defensive circle that had been formed immediately around her as she fell breaks apart like the ridges of a molehill as the essence holding them all together fades — as the magic inside of them dies.

Something is wrong.

“SIR KNIGHT!” shouts Acacia, jumping up to her feet, her boot slipping on the wet grass as she pushes the other two away, running as fast as she can off through the forest, her vision and head spinning as she makes her way through the trees.

— Arms lock her from behind, the two of them stumbling forward. “Your highness! It’s not safe!”

“Get OFF!” yells Acacia, jabbing her elbow back into the gut of the priestess as hard as she can to get her to let go. But it’s not enough to phase the trained agent, who just bares it in silence as she tightens her restraining grip.

“Chicory!” calls Junis. “Get back to the village!” yells the elf back at Chicory, who was already in the process of kidnapping Acacia back that way herself anyway.

 

---

 

“Monster. Monster. Monster,” squeaks the voice, repeating itself over and over again in its high-pitched, single-toned squeal, a viscera and gore splatter in all directions. A needle of shadow presses in between a pair of yellow slit eyes, quivering as they watch the point drive in deeper and deeper into the core of their body.

Sir Knight’s horrific shape, having taken the same form as this unraveled thing, presses the blade it wields deeper and deeper into the core of the flesh as he probes around inside of it, looking for something. Tendrils of shadow crawl through gaping wounds and cuts, pressing around orifices and tears in the meat as he senses the core of the creature. All the while, it eats, bites, and gorges on his shapelessness, taking in mouthfuls of his manifested substance, as the only thing it knows to follow is hunger.

His energy makes contact with what he was looking for.

— The heart of the creature.

“Monster. Monster. Monster,” it squeaks over and over again like a toy puppet with a broken speech box inside of its chest. It talks more like a bird repeating a sound it had heard than an actual person or aware thing speaking a word it understood.

Just like he had to done to Junis once, when trying to understand her nature, Sir Knight enters the spirit of the creature — its memories. “Wait… you’re not a person,” says Sir Knight, realizing as memories flood into him. “You’re -”

Everything goes dark.

 

---

 

 

Water crashes on the shore of the lake, being pushed by the rather strong wind there that day.

But it doesn’t know what pushes the wind.

Lazily lifting a hand as it sits on a sun-warmed rock by the water, a bright-green lizard grooms its face, closing one of its round, yellow eyes for a moment.

The sun is warm. The rock is warm. The lizard is warm.

It is good.

— Bug.

The lizard darts forward, running off of the hot surface of the rock and over the sun-warmed sands of the shore as it charges toward a fat, crunchy beetle that had been climbing over a stick.

There is a crunching sound as the shiny beetle shell crackles apart. A squirt of juice pops out in several directions and onto the sands as the lizard tilts its head back and chews as it begins swallowing the tough carapace and the guts inside of it.

Lazily, it stands there in the shadow of the stick, the warm sands touching its belly as it eats. Its tail slides behind it over the shore as it runs, moving over to another rock.

This one is also warm.

It is good.

While it is resting on the rock, a shadow looms over its head. The lizard turns and looks at what obscures the light, but it is only too late before it is grabbed by a grabby thing.

 

---

 

The lizard crawls around the inside of a bag, looking around itself. There are many other lizards here. They crawl over each other, each trying to find the way out and back to their rocks.

But there is no way out. Not until the top opens up and a grubby, green hand reaches down into the bag to pull them out one by one.

Every few hours, one is taken.

Until eventually, there is only one lizard left and one carcass of another that had been crushed sometime during the collection process.

The lizard, not having any bugs, begins to eat pieces of the body.

 

---

 

It has escaped the bag.

When the bag was opened again, the lizard scurried and ran. Now it sits on a shelf and looks down at the thing below it.

A goblin, dressed in feathers and rags, walks around a bubbling pot that acrid smoke rises up out of, floating against the ceiling of the room. It moves from shelf to shelf, picking out all manner of ingredients to throw in. It chews on the body of the dead lizard that it too had eaten from.

Lifting its head, the escaped lizard looks at a collection of human corpses thrown into the corner of the room. There are bugs crawling over them that have been feasting on the carcasses. Goblins don’t build houses like this. But they do take them while hunting through the forests and distant regions.

It runs along the wall, chasing after fat, juicy bugs, which are gorged full of rotting flesh.

It wishes it had its rock back. The rock was warm. It was good.

But this will have to do.

Its yellow eye looks at the fire as it scurries, hiding between the corpses so that it isn’t seen.

It is also warm here.

It is good.

 

---

 

A rock hits the surface, just next to where it was.

The lizard scurries away, escaping as the goblin arcs its arm back, preparing to throw another one.

It has been here for days now, weeks, eating from the rot of the old bodies and from the new ones. It has grown large and fat too, like the bugs it eats. Unfortunately, while it does let it eat larger bugs, it also makes it hard to hide anymore.

A sharp, yellow eye looks up just in time to see the flying stone hurtle toward it.

There is a crunching sound, and it falls off of the ceiling.

A splash emerges as it falls into the bubbling pot, in which the feathered-goblin has been brewing things for weeks now.

It is warm.

The corpse-eating lizard boils apart.

 

---

 

The goblin looks down at the pot, staring with a rather dull look in its eyes as it scratches its head. The water bubbles and boils as the potion it had been trying to make for a long time now reacts to the lizard it had wanted to eat. It was a big lizard, very good meat.

Now it is soup.

The goblin shaman does not care for soup. It likes squishy, crunchy lizards.

Curiously, it watches as the potion in the rusted pot stops bubbling. The frothy liquid inside begins to coagulate, like jelly. There is a hissing sound as the mass that settles on the bottom of the pot begins to burn to the metal.

It tilts its head, looking at the potion that almost seems to… turn into a solid mass.

Two yellow eyeballs float to the surface of the burning sludge.

— And they turn its way.

The goblin lets out a surprised sound, only a second before a mass lump of shapeless flesh breaks out of the pot like over-boiling milk fat.

There is a wet crunching sound as a mouth larger than the goblin crushes down on it from both sides. A splatter flies through the room, the fire hissing as the ooze from a twitching, spasming body dribbles down into the flames. A shapeless, boneless chunk of a head that comes out of the tipped-over, fallen pot arcs itself back, trying to swallow the goblin it has eaten whole. But there isn’t any stomach for it to fall into, and there isn’t any throat for it to slide satisfyingly down like the pieces of a crunchy beetle.

Instead, the thing that was once a lizard chews and breaks the body with its mouth until soft goo flows out from the broken bones.

 

---

 

Goblins run in all directions, screaming and panicking as they escape. Others fight, poking with long sticks and throwing sharp rocks.

But the lizard is too big now. They are like beetles to it.

It snaps its maw, swallowing a screaming creature into itself and listening to its cries as its bones snap and break. It’s only way to eat now is to drink. It likes the soft goo inside their bones.

It tastes like beetles.

An array of yellow eyes look up, watching as many bodies escape into the forest. They run, scurrying like little bugs.

It chases.

 

---

 

For weeks now, the goblin tribe has been traveling day and night, always watching their shadow as they leave their old territory. It is dangerous to move through the hunting territories of others, but they pay tribute in order to cross their lands.

They never tell them about the hunting thing. If they do, they’ll be killed here by the others, who will view them as a danger to their own tribes.

Instead, they travel far, always looking over their shoulders for the meat that swallows.

Eventually, they press deep into a faraway forest that has been forgotten by all.

Following a river, they make their way to an old cave.

It is safe here. The walls are strong. This place is distant. The forest and water will hide their smell from the hunter.

Soon, it will forget about them — if it hasn’t already. They will start anew here instead.

Setting up camp inside the mine, they begin creating encampments wherever they can on the sides of the river. The mud is hungry and swallows them if they let it.

But better the mud than a monster’s belly.

 

---

 

The goblins scream ‘monster’. It has found them. There is no way out.

Arrows pelt the wall of meat that clogs the only tunnel in or out of the cave. Like a plug pressing through a pipe, it jams and scrapes along the sides as it forces itself deeper and deeper into the cave. It swallows anything that touches its mass — the meat-creature. They shoot arrows and magic at it; they hit it with sticks and metal, but it always just swallows more and more. It secretes and leaks out bile that causes them to choke as the air bubble inside the cave fills with a toxic miasma. One after the other, even those who had pushed and run all the way to the deepest recesses of the cave gag as they gasp for breathable air and fall over as something grabs them and crunches their bodies to get at the wetness inside their bones.

It had followed them across the world.

And now it eats.

The water of the cave reminds it of the splashing of the lake.

It even has rocks.

But it’s all cold.

 

---

 

 

It only wants to consume, to take, to gorge — so much so that the monster even eats what isn’t there — meat and tendrils wrapping themselves around pillars of shadow and emptiness. Oozing flesh creeps and presses in and around through pockets of void, indifferent to the very intangible nature of emptiness as it eats even what isn’t there.

Suddenly, contrasting the dull colors of empty blackness, a meaty, yellowed brown shining red blazes all around the room. A screaming comes from incoherent flesh overpowering the crackling of a fatty, dripping mass that knows nothing but a never-ending desire for food and warmth — the latter which it now receives in abundance as fire streaks all around the room.

Yellow and hollow eyes that had been pressed directly into each other turn, shooting toward the hammering sound that comes from the entrance to the cave.

“Sir Knight!” calls Junis, her hands outstretched and crackling with sparking electrical magic. Arcs of electricity dance over the overflowing river — remnants from the first spell she cast just a second ago. The fatty meat of the shapeless monster burns as flames travel across it. “The water!” she yells through a fabric shawl covering her mouth and nose.

Rising heat from dozens of small blazes fills the air, which wavers and dances like the mirage of a burning summer’s day. The super-heating air rushes out of the cave past her, the wind blowing Junis’ wet hair and dress as she holds her hands together toward the mass that begins to reach toward her with hungry eyes that have already lost track of the first prey it is interwoven with. Water from the clogged river sprays out through gaps in the collective mass in all directions in concentrated blasts as the river forces its way past them through whatever gaps it can.

The overflowing river stalls, falling to a trickle as it begins to be sucked into the void. Sir Knight’s emptiness pulls in the river into itself, drop by drop, liter by liter, as, by the second, thousands of gallons are absorbed and pulled into the emptiness.

Junis’ hands press forward, magic crackling around her fingers. A fleshy tendril reaches out to grab her.

 

 

The crystals all around the room glimmer and shine, their overpowering glows being washed away by a deep blue-white purge that takes the air. The color of vividly bright lightning fills the space, and in an instant, the roar of a demon barrels through the water. An arc of lightning taking the shape of a screaming dragon travels through one pocket of void through the other, the water inside of it boiling and crackling as it takes on the electricity. The blue, jagged spear shoots through one pocket of void to the next, pressing through the lump of flesh that begins to smolder and pop as it cooks, its exterior and interior bubbling as heated blisters break apart all over it.

Smoke and steam fill the room, together with the indescribable smell of cooked rot.

It screams and writhes, the mass spasming as electrified water pours over it and through it. Yellow eyes twitch and pop like balloons by the hundreds. Teeth blackened and shatter. Hairs singe and melt into a waxy goo.

And then it all falls apart.

— The river is unclogged.

The spell stops as Junis is flung back, a surge of tons of water crashing through the gaps and into her as the river unjams.

Something catches her, a shape blocking the water from hitting her as she opens her eyes, looking at the shadow of a man who stands there in front of her, the river blasting past his sides as he stops it from washing her away.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Junis!” says Sir Knight, standing there with the river blasting against his back as he diverts the resurging water. His voice is audible over the raging river that roars with a force it hasn’t shown in a long time since the great flooding of ancient days. He stumbles forward, the weakened shadows of his damaged body faltering and flickering for a moment as they absorb more and more water that hammers against his back. Pressing her hands against him as if holding against a door that was being battered down from the other side, she looks at him. Chunks of blackened meat blast past them two of them. “It’s my job to clean messes up!” she yells over the flood that cuts past their sides with a razor intensity strong enough to cut rocks off of the walls of the cave, the water-logged veil over her face falling as she shakes her head, staring into his eyes as she braces herself as firmly as she can against him. Junis says something after that, but the words are lost to the rampage.

Feeling a rumbling beneath his legs as the cave quakes and shakes apart, Sir Knight falls forward, grabbing Junis as he uses the last of his power to drop the two of them into a pocket of emptiness — just as the stones above their heads collapse and the old mine breaks apart.

 

---

 

Junis hurtles through the void that seals up tightly behind them as she plummets, spiraling through the emptiness.

A moment later, she flies out of a second opening, blasting into the real world once again.

Tumbling, she rolls over grass and dirt until coming to a stop a moment later.

“Sir Knight!” calls the elf, looking around herself as she shakily gets up to her feet. She’s in the village. People look her way in confusion — very likely wondering where she came from.

The world rumbles, quaking and shaking. People scream and panic, grabbing hold of whatever or whoever they can, as a rumble rocks everything around them. A roar of a dying leviathan carrying off toward them, coming closer by the second.

Before anyone has a chance to walk more than a pace away, a wave of water rushes down the river. Trees and rocks hurtle through the mess as the shore is torn apart by a surge of water that forces its way down from the mine. Docks and boats are torn apart from the force of the flash flood that splashes water all the way to the houses they stand at.

Like a purge running through a clog, the forceful rush of water carries away all of that debris and rubble to the far off distance as the river continues its way to the ocean. Large insects buzz as they drown, unable to fly away as their holes are flooded. The brackish yellow water washes through the world.

And then, just as quickly as it came, there is a silence that follows just as quickly as the river returns to a powerful but normal run. However, now the water is contrastingly different in color, shimmering with a bright, almost transparent blue that catches the weak rays of sunlight coming to shine down on it as a morning sunrise comes on the horizon.

It’s clean once again.

“Lizard,” says a growling voice from next to her ear. Junis turns her head, looking at a black-scaled lizard that sits on her shoulder. Sir Knight, who seems to have taken on a smaller form. She can only assume that he’s run out of energy and needs to recover. She sighs in relief, holding a hand against her chest as she turns to look back at the water as the villagers run out of their houses, hurrying toward it, almost not believing their eyes. “Missed that last thing you said in the cave,” says the man. “Water was too loud.”

Junis stiffens up, standing straight again.

“Junis!” calls a voice. She looks, turning her head toward Acacia, who stumbles over. “Where’s Sir Knight?!” asks the girl, grabbing her dress as she looks at her in panic.

Junis stares at her for a second before grabbing the lizard from her shoulder and placing it on Acacia’s head. “Right here, Ac- I mean, Your Majesty,” says the lizard.

Confused, Acacia looks up at the lizard’s tail, dangling down between her eyes. “…Sir Knight… I was so frightened for you,” she says in relief, wiping her face with a hand. After a moment, Acacia puts herself back together. “…Why are you a lizard?” she asks dryly, moving on to the next point of order.

The lizard on her head crawls to turn the other way, lifting its head to look at the sunrise, coming on the distant horizon above the crowns of the needle forest. Closing his eyes, he basks in the glow of it for a moment before answering. “It all started back when I was a boy, you see,” begins Sir Knight.

— Acacia grabs him, holding him between her fingers.

“Sir Knight,” she warns sternly. “You dare not only put me into worry for your safety, but then go so far as to utter your sarcastic nonsense after I show my relief at your well-being?” Acacia narrows her eyes.

The lizard, dangling between her fingers, swings its legs around as if it were trying to walk. “That sounds like me, yeah,” replies the growling voice of a giant that doesn’t fit in the slightest to the tiny, scaled body it is coming from.

She lifts her nose. “Junis. You may keep this slimy little creature for now,” she says stiffly, dropping the lizard into Junis’ palms. “Feed it to the birds for all I care.” Acacia turns around, walking off with her head held up and away to look at anything else.

“…I will,” replies Junis quietly after her, before looking down as something tugs on her dress.

A village girl stands there, pointing up to her hands. “Lizard,” says the girl, holding up a bright green one she had caught in the forest. “Trade.”

Junis folds her hands together into a loose ball, held up and away over her shoulder. Inside her grip scurries around a small creature as she shakes her head.

 

---

 

It takes some time for Sir Knight to recover his strength — just the same as it takes for Acacia to recover hers after the bout of her illness struck her because of the toxic air that has been infesting this region.

The river water is safe and clean now, and with its purification, the forest around its entire length seems to slowly recover again. The dark trees almost seem to become brighter and brighter by the day, as if they were flushing themselves free of the dark sediment that had been pumped through their cores. The fallow grass stiffens, and the birds — who had fallen quiet for a long season now — finally begin to sing again.

The villagers — destined to die even despite this, because of their contact with the undead monster’s poison — are saved by Chicory, who makes one batch after the other of a powerful anti-toxicity potion using the klimperweed that had grown around the region because of the presence of the monster.

Without it being here, they would have died shortly, as there isn’t enough magic to sustain their growth. So it is best to make use of them now, while they are here.

Soon, Sir Knight has enough strength to change out of the shape of a lizard and into a dog, and then into a man, and then, finally, after three days and as Acacia recovers after taking more medicine, he is able to return to his suit of armor.

His strength is tied directly to Acacia. If she is sick, he is weakened. If she dies, so does he. They’re one and the same; both of them are connected to the endless void that lies below everything there is. When he was hurt, she was hurt, and when she was hurt, he was hurt.

“Yuck!” calls a voice from the river. “You stink!”

Sir Knight, sitting in the river, turns his head, looking at a village child standing there and holding their nose.

“Pay the child no mind, Sir Knight,” says a voice from behind her. He looks back at Acacia, who is standing behind him in the river with a brush in hand, which was actually meant for grooming their anqa, Pepper. Her sleeves are rolled back, and the bottom of her dress is folded up and pinned high to stay dry as the water of the river runs to her thighs. She holds the brush with both hands, scrubbing his armor clean. The armor still carries the smell of rot with it, which seems to have seeped into the metal almost. “I shall see to it that it and its entire family are thrown into the dungeon after my ascension to the throne,” remarks Acacia idly. After a second, feeling him looking at her, she grabs his helmet with both hands and forces it to look straight ahead and away from her again.

Sir Knight looks back forward toward the distance. “Your heaven-given mercy knows no bounds, Your Majesty,” he says as she scrubs a chunk of mud out of the gap between his neck and shoulder. “But let’s not do that,” he says. “We’re not evil, after all.”

“Your growing brazenness to question my methods will have you thrown into the hole with them,” she warns, pressing the bristles down tighter as she fights against a hardened chunk of what is hopefully just mud. “If I choose to rule as a blood-thirsty tyrant, it is your job to do nothing else save to fetch my overflowing goblets.”

“Sure, sure,” says Sir Knight, shrugging. “I’m just saying that maybe it’ll be easier to raise popular support for your ascension if you don’t threaten to throw children into the dungeon,” he remarks, looking down the sparkling river.

An audible sigh comes from behind him, hands resting on his back. “You’re a fool, Sir Knight,” mutters Acacia.

The two of them stay there in the water for a time, watching the distance as a family of ducks swims by, splashing and quacking as they go.

Within a week’s time, Sir Knight’s legion has been resummoned. The village is not only repaired and brought into full thriving, thanks to the restored waterway and rebuilt infrastructure, but is brought into a worldly focus again as a few hundred soldiers clear a several-kilometer-long path through the forest, making a road that winds on for days until it connects to the main road of the region in order to allow traveling merchants access more readily to the distant village.

Meanwhile, hundreds of soldiers are working on the collapsed mine, toiling day and night to clear out the rubble.

Acacia works out a deal with the elder of the village to once again reopen the mine. The people of the village may choose to work in it if they wish, or simply live their lives in peace now as sustenance farmers since the river and forest are once again healthy. Most of the village men choose to work in the mine, however, given that the pay involved here is beyond what they could ever earn here otherwise.

All shipments of the magical crystals, used in so many different applications, are to be sent not to the stockpiles of the nation, but to her own personal collection. She will need them as she grows her army and resistance against the capital.

After two weeks have passed, the forgotten, remote village is unrecognizable and in a state of quality and standards that even its original founders had perhaps never imagined. The ancient houses have been rebuilt with strong timber-frame and brickwork, with masterful craftsmanship. The dirt paths have been cobbled and paved. Fountains sit adorning many corners and open spaces, together with a statue of herself — of course. Chicory has worked with many of the village’s youngest, doing what she can in the limited time to teach them to make simple healing salves and ointments from the forest’s plants, and Junis — much to Acacia’s distaste — continues to give her lectures on the subject matter of the coming exam back at the academy in the city.

Finally, after everything, they are ready to go back home.

The village, as small as it is, swears its allegiance to her — the only royal who has ever seen, let alone helped them. To protect it and her interests, Acacia leaves behind several of Sir Knight’s soldiers.

On the morning after, Acacia, Sir Knight, Junis, and Chicory load back into their carriage and ride on down the road that hadn’t existed when they first arrived here.

This was a rather eventful outing, considering it was their first. But that’s just what it was — their first.

The nation is full of hundreds of such forgotten hamlets and villages, all in need of help that the capital can’t manage to give because of its occupation with the war effort against the enemy nation. But she just so happens to be here to do so, right under their noses. Just like they did here, she will earn the support of the people who yearn for a strong hand to save them and guide them forward through an uncertain future. She will earn her title as queen not through a march on the throne itself but through a flooding of her name being chanting on every isle of land around it from the south to the north of the nation. She has no need to walk those stairs up to that final seat.

The people themselves will lift her up toward it.

The carriage rounds a bend in the forest, out of sight, and then vanishes into a black portal that opens up between some trees as it moves toward its next destination on the campaign of the black-princess.

A lizard sticks to the fabric exterior of the carriage.