The castle tower juts out of the darkness of night like a hand surfacing above the waters of the ocean, attached to a drowning body below which has already been swallowed by the ink. Fire burns from hundreds of lanterns, but the night seems to be darker and denser in these days than it once was only a few seasons ago. Master Croat, the high wizard of the emperor, stares out at the sparse dots of light that hang there. His old eyes wander from one glow to the next, finding that none of them connect to each other. It’s as if the night had slid between every single lantern and placed a separator between them so that their collective shines might never touch and gather in one, whole illumination. His eyes, which have found less sleep in these past weeks than ever before in his life, turn back toward his study. His robe is undone at the top, and his chest is only covered by his long beard. The loose fabric hangs down below the tightly fastened belt around his waist that holds the garment up.
Pulling on his beard in thought, rather than stroking it, the old man plucks free one loose, wiry hair after another that had already become uprooted but not fallen out because of how thick and matted his facial hair had become. Grooming has been of exceptionally low priority in these days. Between the Emperor’s desires for him to research ancient spells and magics to aid the war-effort and his own feverish research into the matter of Herr Ritter and the black-princess, there have been only very few moments of solace for him.
“Boy!” barks Master Croat, striding between many books and tomes that float around him like flies circling a carcass. A young man slumped against a wall he leaned onto for the moment Croat turned his back. He’s sleeping. He jolts together and stands upright.
“Sorry, Master!” apologizes the exhausted apprentice, his eyes carrying the same exhaustion as Croat’s.
“You may sleep after I’m lowered into my grave!” snaps the old wizard, swiping a hand through the air to push a book away that had fluttered his way with open pages, wanting to show him something.
“Yes, Master,” replies the apprentice, having no work. So instead, he grabs a broom and begins sweeping the floors.
Croat puts his hand on a table, covered in glass beads, stones, and crystals of illustrious colors, thickly cut paper cards that are illustrated with iconography of old religions and magical practices.
He’s tried everything he can think of—every trick that he’s learned over his long life, every obscure gimmick from the most recessed corners of the world. He’s tried witchcraft and necromancy; he’s tried demonic magic and the hallows of the spells of ancient faiths — spells from gods who had been repelled back into the heavens and away from the mortal realm. He’s tried every rumor and whisper that his apprentices have managed to gather from their spread around the many nations as they travel and find more tools and secrets for him to make use of.
But everything he does and everything he knows ends up being useless.
He has attempted to break the spell that binds the black knight to this world for months now, he’s attempted everything that there is. But there is nothing to be done from this distance, and while he does toy with the idea of meeting Herr Ritter in person to maybe gain an idea, there is simply no chance of him being allowed to leave to do that. And his apprentices, who have all come close, always seem to be repelled by some sort of odd happenstance that he can’t explain.
One who made it to the city of the youngest princess of the kingdom found himself walking through a shadow that filled a doorway the moment he stepped through it. The end result was that he reappeared on the other side of the world, a year’s march away, in the matter of the blink of an eye. Another apprentice who had tried to follow and observe them from the distance was chased away by haunting voices and shadows that plagued him day and night until his mind broke to reveal the edge of madness. The boy still fears the dark to this day. It’s like Herr Ritter can tell when they’re being followed and observed; it’s like he allows it to happen in part, as if he were a cat toying with its prey.
And perhaps he is. Those hollow eyes that are filled with nothing but darkness, perhaps they are no more than the eyes of a beast that stalks the jungles. They are after all the eyes of the thing that came before all monsters, the eyes of the first predator and hunter the world has ever known.
Even now…
Master Croat looks around his tower, staring at every shadow that flickers behind lantern light and every darkness that hides behind shelves, curtains, and dusty furniture that is stacked full of precarious towers of books and glass vials.
— A floating tome presses itself against the side of his head. He shoves it away, as if it were an annoyance.
Even now, he almost feels like the creature is here watching him as he stands there.
“BOY!” yells Master Croat.
The apprentice, who had fallen asleep again while leaning against the broom, stumbles and trips over it as he jolts together in surprise.
The young man looks up in exhausted fright. “Sorry, Master,” he apologizes again as Croat points an old finger at him that is so wrinkled that the identification of its joints becomes impossible.
“When you dream, he can come into your mind, fool!” says Croat, slamming his hands onto the table. “When you let your head become empty, you create a recess in which Herr Ritter can crawl, like a worm,” he declares, walking toward the terrified young man, who he grabs by the fabric of his collar as he glares into his eyes. “When you blink, when you exhale, you’re creating an empty space where he can be,” says the old wizard.
“Sorry, Master!” yells the terrified boy as Croat pushes him back.
“The monster knows no boundaries,” he explains. “There is no wall that can hold it, no tower that it can’t crawl into,” says the old wizard, pulling on his beard and tearing out a tuft of loose hair as a book presses into his shoulder, only to be shoved away again. “Herr Ritter is already nesting as we speak within the cavities of your heart,” he says, a harrowed look on his face as he looks back at the boy. “He will fill your body like a parasite before making you claw out your own heart and feed it to the monsters that flood the world,” he warns, the boy gulping in terror.
“Woof,” says Sir Knight, almost convincingly so, as he and Junis walk down the street together to head after Acacia and Chicory, who said they were going to check out the underground residences to find some information on the matter.
But the bark wasn’t convincing enough, as a few people on the street look at the elf and the very odd sounding dog for a second, wondering if they had heard right.
Junis’ lips are pursed tightly together, trying to hold down laughter, causing her face to contort in a tense smirk with a flushing red on her cheeks as she walks and does her best to keep it together.
“HE’LL FLAY YOUR SKIN AND DOUSE YOU WITH A FIRE THAT NEVER STOPS BURNING!” screams Croat, the apprentice, sweeping as if his life depends on it. Glass shatters and wood hammers as the old man grabs the table, flipping it over in rage. “IF YOU REST FOR EVEN A SECOND, HE’LL FILL YOUR DOLING MIND AND HAVE YOU MURDER EVERYONE YOU LOVE!” he screams, a froth building at his mouth that drips in his beard. The scratching of the broom is so loud that it might give the impression that its bristles were carving into the floors of the tower from the pressure being put on it by the boy as the shadow of the wizard looms over him. Breaking bottles and vials shatter over the floors as colorful stones fly across the room.
A book nudges him, and he shoves it away.
“HERR RITTER WILL KILL YOU, BOY!” screams the old wizard. “HE’LL DEVOUR YOU WHOLE TOGETHER WITH YOUR BLEAK SOUL!”
“Doggy!” says a young boy, holding his mother’s hand with one arm as she tentatively tries to pull him back. But not really forcefully or convincingly enough that his other arm isn’t outstretched, rubbing the neck of the black dog with a wagging tail that stands to an elven woman. “Nice doggy!” he says, beaming.
“- NOT EVEN HELLFIRE WILL GRACE YOUR SENSATIONS!” shouts Croat, his hands digging into his scalp. His wide, bloodshot eyes look at the crying boy, who sweeps and sweeps faster than ever before. Books spiral around in all directions like an agitated swarm “YOU WILL ONLY KNOW DARKNESS FOR ALL ETERNITY!”
— A book slams against the side of his face.
Croat grabs it, yanking it out of the air. “WHAT?!” barks the old wizard, holding the tome that had been bumping into him over and over again to get his attention. His hands grab either side of its covers, almost tearing it apart down the center as one or two threads from the generation’s old stitching pop.
This isn’t one of his. This is one that the Holy Church supplied his searching apprentices with from their archive of material.
Master Croat’s feverish, delirious eyes scan the page that has opened itself up for him. He looks over the ancient description of a ritual that hasn’t been used in perhaps thousands of years. The paper is so thin that the black ink has eaten through the pages over its lifespan to the point where many of the letters and drawings are no longer present. Rather, there are hollow, eaten-through spaces where the ink had been. It’s like this book has become infested by very particular moths. Pieces of it crumble beneath his fingers, as his hardened eyes soften and soften by the second as he examines the insides of the book. Flipping a page, he looks at the next part of the spell.
And he begins to wonder.
“…Boy…” says Master Croat, looking back at his apprentice, who is ugly-crying as he crawls over the floor and cleans up the broken glass that has fallen around the room. “Get up and bring me a priest,” orders the old wizard, looking back at the book.
“M- master?” asks the apprentice, looking up his way.
“GO!” snarls the old wizard. The boy yells in terror, jumping to his feet and stumbling as he does his best to avoid the broken glass on his way to the door, while floating books begin to furiously hound him, pelting against his body like a swarm of hornets.
Croat watches him leave, shaking his head at the uselessness of young people these days, as he looks back down at the old, white, and gold book in his hands that might have once been illustrious in a bygone day and age but now has become faded and dull.
He strokes his beard, staring at a picture of a half-eaten suit of armor, as the book — more than happy to be of interest, let alone useful to anyone now after such a long time of being forgotten and neglected — turns its next page for him by itself.
Work on the new garrison moves at such a rapid pace that even those who have become acclimated to the new situation in the region are surprised. Within a day, the cratered, fractured landscape is put into order. The massive hole that fills what was once a garden isn’t filled in. Rather, it is dug out even further into orderly spaces where a dense foundation is added that is then lined with brickwork, concrete and a mixture of water-repelling wax blends in order to create a basement layer. It seems a waste to not make use of a perfectly good pre-dug hole, after all.
Soon after that, joists and flooring are added in by hundreds of blackguards, who swarm around the area like an army of ants, creating a new colony. Lumber and stone are brought to the region by the cartfuls, pulled by black anqas that are made out of pure shadow. It doesn’t take long for the basement to be sealed and the ground floor to begin construction. By the time it takes something akin to shape, markings and brickwork have been laid all around the grounds of the former estate for towers and walls that are erected by the minute as the soldiers work in perfect, fully unnatural unison and synchronization to carry and set bricks and mortar without pause or rest.
Walls emerge out of the ground. A structure rises almost as if by itself as onlookers from the city stand nearby and watch the blackguards work by the hour. It becomes almost like an event of sorts as curious citizens set up blankets on the grass of the hills and observe the spectacle. By the hour, structures emerge, and by the next, a full watchtower — a size comparable to any of the capital’s — has risen out of the ground as if from nothing. Carriages pour in and out as they move between warehouses and Sir Knight’s pre-established resource stockpiles without delay. Soldiers in dark armor unload the carriages so efficiently that they don’t even ever need to stop moving, only ever slowing down to a walking pace as they pass by the construction sight as soldiers throw everything off into the waiting arms of others, who pass the materials on to exactly where they need to go.
Perhaps this sight of unnatural efficiency is even a little frightening for many, as the observation changes from curiosity to that of shock as a second tower appears within a few hours, and then a third as the fortress takes up the shape of a triangle and then of another, and another — until the formed diamonds collage together to become the shape of a star — elevated above the ground. Brickwork walls line the hillside exterior of the star-shaped fortress. The towers sit at the base of each prong, which juts out into the world with manned ramparts over which crossbowmen patrol. Siege weapons — massive crossbow-like constructions called ‘ballistae’ are constructed together atop the towers and manned by crews that take only a free second to drape down black banners over the edge of the masonry — depicting the icon of a bent, silver crown with hollow holes in its sockets where precious stones and gems might have been otherwise. While it is a crown, if viewed from a distant angle with eyes that feel fear at its sight, one might delude themselves into thinking that the jagged edges of it are instead the bottom row of sharp, curved teeth of a monster’s lower jaw. This image of a silver crown on the black banner rests on the hilt of a downward facing, white print of a sword. This is the sigil of Acacia Odofredus Krone. These banners appear everywhere her legion is taking control.
It doesn’t take a day, before even the city’s actual engineers and construction teams arrive to survey the land that they expect to be empty and destroyed to assess what can be done for the planned project, but instead find a fully operational and fully manned castle where the location is marked on their maps. The city guard begins integrating with the blackguards, creating a training center here for the new garrison that lives in the heart of this new fortress. Offering a sizable bonus for anyone who signs up, they find significant interest from many people of the city, as well as those from the local region traveling here, who are looking for good work in such troublesome times.
The training of an army — an army of real people and bodies — begins slowly but surely as they fight and learn together with those specters in the black armor that rarely ever speak and certainly never rest.
“So what do we think?” asks Sir Knight, having taken on his armored form again as he walks down a massive, stone staircase at the lead of the group. It winds around the exterior of the stone column that holds up the city. For the first few meters, there is a railing on the exterior ledge. But after a minute of walking, this wobbly death-trap of a safety feature ends, as if the people making it had deemed this process to be fully unnecessary from this point onward.
Massive chains rattle noisily, clinking as they rise and fall. Each link is of a size large enough for a man to stand inside. Wooden platforms full of raw materials from the depths are hoisted up to the city surface by the elevators, which are powered by the watermills below the mountain falls. Sir Knight turns his head, looking as a tired crew of miners sits haphazardly perched on stacks of coal and ore as they rise back up. A few of them are looking over their way from the distance as their two groups move apart from one another in vertical distance. It doesn’t take long before the lifting platform is out of sight, swallowed by the darkness that almost seems to linger above their heads now, like a cloud. Only the loud, rattling of the metal remains.
“Well,” says Junis. “Monsters have been the problem nearly everywhere we’ve gone so far,” she mutters, holding a hand against the stone wall on her left and letting her palm slide along it as if she were holding on. The elf looks toward the right as she descends the staircase, staring at the ledge that leads to an almost endless appearing abyss. “In a place like this, it wouldn’t surprise me if something appeared down here,” she says.
“Where would they have come from?” asks Acacia, walking behind Sir Knight and holding onto his back and cloak, rather than the wall. “The only way to get down here is through the city,” explains the princess. “I doubt they’d just let some goblins sneak through and set up a camp down here,” says Acacia, her voice carrying off into the abyss around them. At this point, even with the lanterns they’re carrying, there’s nothing to see except each other, the stone wall of the pillar to their left, and the ancient staircase that just winds down and around the column as it weaves into the darkness. Most of the time, it sticks to the rock, as if it had been cut from it. But other times it winds off inexplicably, making a sharp turn to the right and floating over the darkness with no wall on either side, before making sharp, winding turns in many directions. Sometimes this goes on for only a minute; other times it seems to go on for hours as the four of them walk with nervous precision to every step as they stick as tightly to the very middle of the staircase as they can. The worst part is one particular spot, that water from the waterfalls above has landed on for countless years. The stonework there is missing; a channel of running water has been grooved through it. The rock is mossy and slippery, threatening to let anyone who loses footing fall into the emptiness on either side, together with the water that simply seems to vanish into the blackness below.
Sir Knight undoes his cloak, setting it down over the slipper ground for the others to step over as if it were a rug. He reaches out, pulling each of them across to the other side.
After a long time of silence, Chicory gets back to Acacia’s question from before. “In times like these, it isn’t unheard of for monsters to manifest in places they aren’t expected,” explains the royal agent. Sir Knight stands there as the last of the group now, looking behind them for a while and up toward the darkness, as if watching something.
— A hand pulls on him.
“Coming,” he says, picking up his cloak and fastening it back on as they continue their descent.
Junis rubs her hands against her long ears as they walk, pressing her palms tightly over them as if trying to muffle a sound. The pressure of the depth is hitting her first, likely because of her sensitive hearing. But after a little while longer, Acacia does the same. Chicory seems more or less fine. If she has any difficulties with it, she doesn’t let it show.
After what feels like half of the day, still on the staircase, they take a break and eat from the supplies that Sir Knight pulls out of his cloak.
“Not looking forward to walking back up,” mutters Junis, looking behind them. Her short, dark hair blows around as the hot winds from below press past the staircase. She braces herself where she sits with wide-spread legs and her free palm on the stonework, as her other hand holds her bread.
“Well, usually down is actually worse than going up,” remarks Chicory, stretching out a leg. “The knees, you know?” Junis nods, understanding. All three of them have sore knees, rather than sore legs. Going downstairs on these uneven, precariously carved, and sometimes wet steps seems to almost require more strain on the joints and bones than it does on any musculature.
“We’ll take the shortcut back,” remarks Acacia, lifting the fabric of her cloak for a moment. “Unless Sir Knight wants to carry us,” she says, biting into her food.
“Why don’t I ever get to be the one who gets carried?” asks Sir Knight. “I think I deserve to be treated now and then too,” he remarks.
A hand rests on his shoulder from behind as Junis leans down toward him. “I carried you when you were a lizard a while ago,” she says. “That counts, right?”
“See?” says Acacia, looking behind herself at him. “Any more of this and you’re going to become spoiled, Sir Knight,” says the youngest princess of the nation. “I need you hardened and tough so that you might secure my every whim and desire,” she says, shaking the last half of her sweetened bread at him.
“Your soulful considerations are deep as this pit, Your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight, as Acacia nods contentedly.
“I hope we don’t have to sleep here on the stairs…” mutters Junis idly, as she thinks. “I roll in my sleep.”
“Don’t worry, Junis,” says Acacia consolingly. “We’ll take the shortcut back through the cloak and sleep in our beds at home,” she explains with a half mouthful being chewed. “Sir Knight will just have to stay here by himself through the night, so that we can travel back through his cloak in the morning and continue where we left off here.”
Junis lets out an awed gasp of retaliation, hitting her fist into an open palm as the idea hits her.
“If that’s the case, why don’t we just let him walk down by himself to begin with?” asks Chicory, leaning back against the stoops behind her and staring up at the darkness above. She only does this for a second, though, before feeling a strange sense of vertigo and sitting back upright again. “We’ll just hop on through when he hits the bottom.”
“You know, sometimes I do feel a little underappreciated,” remarks Sir Knight, looking around at them as they start laughing — maybe only a little at his expense.
Acacia reaches behind herself, putting a hand on his leg. “Fear not, Sir Knight,” she says, smiling as she lifts her nose and closes her eyes. “While I do enjoy the thought of you carrying me to my throne, as I so rightfully deserve, I find it will be far more rewarding if I have ascended to it myself,” she explains. “So I will need to walk these stairs first, if only to prove my mettle.”
“And it is my duty to stay in your shadow,” says Chicory to Acacia.
Junis scratches her cheek, looking around. “Well. I’d feel like a jerk if I went back all by myself, so I guess I’ll just stay here then too,” she says idly. “So I guess we’re all staying here with you, Sir Knight,” she jokes. "If we have to."
Sir Knight looks at them as they laugh at their little game that they’re playing with him before he turns back to look at the darkness below.
There is still a long way to go, as far as the grand pretend game of theirs is concerned.
However, the bottom of the abyss seems to be closer than ever before.
The solemn chanting of a collection of unified voices fills the air as the choir at the heart of the cathedral recites the many prayers of the faith in the form of sacred song, slowly, and melodically. Their words of worship carry around the cathedral’s many winding rooms and corridors, reverberating softly through the stones like the hum of the body of a unified organism.
Light shines in through many stained glass windows all around the building, their resplendent colors bursting within the glass itself as the sunshine bounces around through them. Painted depictions of gods and saints glow, as if filled with their own very heavenly energy. This light is cast out across the insides of the structure, washing over everything from the repentantly bowing people to the harsher, sharper faces of gargoyles that sit in alcoves and corners. The expressions of the latter are contorted and twisted in hissing anger, as if they were offended by the light that touches them.
Sitting there on an inner balcony, the high priest —the sacred head of the Holy Church as an institution — watches the choir standing at the front of the church, ahead of rows and rows of pews that are jammed and packed full of countless people. Uncertain times like these have a way of bringing those who had strayed wayward back to the islands of stability that had always been there within the midst of society, although largely ignored during times that are quieter and more peaceful. When the summers are long and the chirping of cicadas who buzz during peaceful days seems almost as endless as the humming of happy children and the threshing of strong, ample wheat, then people don’t look for security anywhere. In times like those, they hold it to be a given of life. They don’t know any better; having lived in security for so long, they assume it is the default state of things.
However, in tumultuous times, when the crises comes, when the cicadas turn to locusts and the summer heat comes from fires that ravage the world rather than deep, heart-warming sunshine, people instinctively find their way back to the old safeties.
The church is one of them.
Membership has sprung so much that the church is bursting at the seams because of the war. Then, after the appearance of Herr Ritter, fervor has risen within the Empire, whom he stands against to a degree of unimaginable zeal as children scream and cry at night in terror of the stories that their grandfathers had told them, and widows howl like rabid wolves to the moon.
He sits there, watching the choir, as someone approaches from the side. A priestess walks over with folded arms and bows her head. “Your Grace,” she says softly. “Word has come from the war,” she reports. “The Empire has breached the Kingdom's borders. They are pushing into the depths of the Kingdom’s inner territory.” The high-priest slowly turns his head toward her as she speaks. “If things persist, they will reach the capital before the fall of next winter.”
The high priest lifts a hand, rubbing over the string of old, worn beads that sits strung around his arm. “Hazel,” says the old man, looking back toward the choir. She bows her head deeper. “You’re from there, I recall,” he contemplates. "The Kingdom?"
The priestess lifts her head for a moment, surprised. But then she looks back down again. “That was my old life,” she explains. “I am a woman of the faith now,” says the priestess. “My allegiance is solely to the will of heaven.”
He nods, pulling the beads from his wrist and holding them on his lap as he lets them run through his fingers. They have long since lost their roundness, perhaps a decade ago already, the string having been replaced more times now than can be counted. “But your heart is troubled, isn’t it?” asks the old man. “I still remember when you were a girl and came to us, crying about your old home,” he says, laughing. “You stood out from the rest for being particularly… emotional.”
“That was a long time ago, Your Grace,” she replies. “My home is here now.”
“I don’t question that,” replies the high priest. “But I can tell that you still carry a pain in your heart, my child.”
Hazel doesn’t look up at him, continuing to stare toward the floor. “…I don’t agree with the war,” she says. “I don’t agree with our position alongside the Empire,” says Hazel. “But not because they are attacking what was once my home,” she explains. “And not because we are helping push the hand holding a knife further toward a black heart that harbors a beast,” she adds, referring to Acacia Odofredus Krone and Herr Ritter.
“But?” asks the high priest, the beads sliding through his hands.
“Forgive me. I have spoken too freely, Your Grace,” repents Hazel, bowing deeper.
A hand reaches over, resting on top of the hood, covering the back of her head. The choir below carries their song over to the next chant in a line of many. “My children speak to their father with open hearts,” explains the high priest as a man’s strong voice resounds around the cathedral, the others singing in his wake. “Always.”
Hazel lifts her head, looking at him as he sits there. She considers something for a moment as his hand returns to his beads. “…I don’t believe that the gods want us to live in war, Your Grace,” says the priestess. “I think it is wrong for us to side with any faction in a conflict between men, even if a demon has become involved because of the blackness of their hearts.” She shakes her head. “This is not what the gospel teaches us. We should be acting as intermediaries to guide them to peace.”
He sits there quietly for a while, watching the ceremony below as a minister of the faith walks down the aisle of pews, gently swinging a smoking thurible — a metal censer filled with incense — from side to side as he makes his way through the mass. “What do you see when you look down there, Hazel?” he asks.
“The mass,” replies the priestess, Hazel, looking down over the crowd that is packed from wall to wall after a moment. “It’s become full lately,” she remarks, looking back at him as he nods.
“I’m old, Hazel,” explains the high priest. “There are a lot of things that I’ve learned, and many more that I still don’t understand to this day,” he says, lifting his gaze toward the murals painted over the cathedral ceilings. Images of deities and powers from long-forgotten times float there, hovering above the heads of the gathered. “But one thing I have seen time and time again, is that every crisis comes to an end eventually,” he explains. “And when the pieces have fallen and nothing is left standing, people will look around themselves and wonder what they should hold onto in the midst of the ashlands they are now in the heart of,” says the high priest. He wraps his beads back around his hand, taking a moment to make sure they are firmly fastened. “And when this war ends and there is nothing left, I have begun the process of making sure they have one place left to look at,” he explains. “The kingdom of heaven.”
Slowly, the old man rises to his feet. The armored paladins at the front of the balcony stand straight, their engraved and embossed armor clinking. He begins walking away, having one last glance left to spare for her. “We’ve taken the side of the Empire from a stance of politics, yes,” he says, nodding to Hazel. “Because they were always going to win this war, and we must sure that we survive, Hazel,” he says. “The church must survive, so that those people down there will always have somewhere to look for hope at after Herr Ritter swallows the world and takes us into the age of screaming darkness, as he was always destined to do,” explains the high priest, walking past the guards, who follow after him.
Hazel bows her head as he leaves and then turns around, looking back down at the ceremony that is currently underway.
A cloud passes by overhead of the cathedral, dulling out the sunlight and the many prismatic colors of the stained glass. Feeling a chill, she holds herself and watches as the desperate pray for salvation from the horrors that have yet to come to this good world.
“Quack,” says Sir Knight.
“Come on!” says Junis incredulously. “You’re not even trying. That’s clearly a duck,” she remarks, answering this time.
“Correct,” replies Sir Knight, as they continue to walk down the stairs. “You’re up, Chicory.”
A sharp whistling comes from behind them — not from the wind, but from a pair of pursed lips as Chicory mimics some sort of birdsong. They’re all playing a little game together, making animal noises that the others have to guess.
“I’ve heard that one before…” says Junis, thinking. “It sounds like one of the birds from the park.”
“A duck?” jokes Sir Knight.
Junis sighs, shaking her head. “Acacia, what’re those little ones?” she asks, wiggling with her hands and fingers. “You know, the ones who like to scoot around on the grass?”
“…Blackbirds?” guesses Acacia.
Chicory nods. “You got it. Your Highness.”
Acacia lifts a hand. “The queen does not make animal noises for the humor of her subjects,” replies Acacia stiffly, waving them off as she walks down at the front of the line.
“Come on!” encourages Junis. “We won’t make fun,” she promises, perhaps cutting off Acacia’s worries that she can sense.
“Sir Knight,” says Acacia. “Do my turn for me.” Junis groans.
Sir Knight shakes his head. “It would stunt your personal growth, Your Majesty,” he replies, holding a hand against his heart. “As your protector, I must insist that you make funny animal noises, so that you might continue to change and grow as a person,” he says in a solemn, true tone. “You must be at your peak if you wish to rule the nation.”
Acacia stops, looking back up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Do you even hear yourself speak sometimes, Sir Knight?” she asks, huffing up and crossing her arms as she looks back forward. “I must constantly endure such childish nonsense from you,” she mutters, her finger tapping her bicep.
“Sir Knight is right,” says Chicory. “Flexibility and courage are some of the most important skills a leader can have,” she encourages.
Acacia looks back forward, walking down the stairs. “It has nothing to do with courage,” she says in a tone that is almost offended — likely because they saw through her attempt to get out of the potential danger of being laughed at, even if in good company. Old instincts such as these run deep, after all. Not turning back to face them as they continue their descent, Acacia holds a hand by her mouth and lets out a long, protracted exhalation through a rounded mouth.
“An owl!” says Chicory, immediately.
“Wrong,” replies Acacia, looking down at a space where the stairs seem to end. She moves on, repeating the noise again.
“A ghost?” asks Junis, wondering out loud.
Acacia steps down onto what feels like solid ground with a tentative step as they’ve finally reached the bottom. The others come after her, looking around at a large, cavernous series of tunnels that flooding water runs down in many directions. “Please, be serious,” snaps Acacia, crossing her arms impatiently. “Ghosts aren’t animals.”
“What if it’s an animal’s ghost?” asks Sir Knight, receiving only an icy cold look in response from Acacia that makes him lift his hands in surrender. Acacia holds her hand by her mouth, repeating the noise one last time before she really does think they’re messing with her by guessing incorrectly on purpose.
“Woo~” calls Acacia, looking at them as they stare at her. Every second of silence longer makes her feel more and more anger welling up in her chest as the ensnarement she is fighting tries to find a different way out instead.
“A dog!” guesses Junis, hitting her fist into an open palm. “Howling!”
Acacia sighs in relief. “Correct,” says the youngest princess, turning to walk onward, the ripple of icy water that her boot displaces casting out and onward toward the darkness.
A massive metal hand grabs Acacia, yanking her back as Sir Knight jumps forward. A shearing of metal fills the air as steel grinds against steel.
“I’m offended,” says a cold voice from ahead of them.
Someone snaps their fingers. In an instant, light bursts out of a thousand dropped lanterns all around them, the bent and broken metal of discarded things from the surface glowing with almost contrastingly blinding intensity to the full darkness they had been drowning in for so long. One glow jumps to the next, which then jumps to the next as the shine carries across the flooded water all around them down at the bottom of the staircase. Acacia and the others stumble, covering their eyes as the blinding light flashes to life.
Sir Knight stands there, the blade of the sword plunged through his chest from the front all the way through to his back. “I sound nothing like that,” says the familiar voice of a man with a strong accent from the enemy nation.
