Things certainly feel darker these days. It's surprising how fast the mood shifted.
Night has fallen over the city. Sir Knight walks through the alleyways and streets, like he often does, moving through the ways down many routes he has become deeply familiar with over these past months. It has come to the point where the sound of his rattling, clinking armor, which had once brought fear and uncertainty to the people nervously peering out of their windows at the strange midnight sound, has now become a chime of comfort. Over his time here, the people of the city have come to trust and know him. Many love his presence and are excited by it to an almost obsessive degree, given his pseudo-celebrity status.
But still, now that the night has come, he stands on the street alone and walks by himself.
During his early days, he was banished by Acacia from her home and forced to do these laps as punishment for some transgression against her pride or title — a very minor punishment, as far as noble etiquette goes. But now he just goes on these walks himself; the practice helps him get a feel for the air.
The giant stops, standing in the dark street, looking around himself at the many windows.
The snow is finally beginning to melt. The winter in which he arrived in this place from his old world is beginning to leave until next year. The remaining off-melt runs into the sewers through grates and drains. But that noise of running water is just about the only sound that there is at all in the city.
Usually, even at this late hour, there would be activity of some sort — shouting drunks in the distance, people walking home from late shifts, early trades such as bakers starting their work well before sunrise.
Sir Knight turns his head, looking at the many windows all around him, all of which are darkened by latched and locked shutters, sealing off the insides now, despite having been open and flooding the streets with their light during most of the winter. Now, despite the break of spring supposedly being a beautiful, welcome sight, people seem to be drawing back further and further. There’s a tension in the air that everyone is starting to notice, but nobody can really define it. There are so many happenings taking place all at once across this and every nation that people are all expecting some great hammer to drop on their heads at any moment, but it just never seems to do so. And so, everyone is becoming anxious for the catastrophe to come that they sense in their inner spirits but have yet to see realized in the physical world.
— A single finger presses itself against his back.
“And just like that, you’re dead,” says a familiar voice from behind him, almost offensively breaking the night’s dampening silence. Sir Knight turns his head to look at her. Chicory — the priestess and royal agent sent to babysit Acacia here in this city from the shadows, although she has since been unmasked — stands there, pressing her finger against him. “The princess will be assassinated in your absence as her protector, and all of this will end here and now.”
Sir Knight idly turns his head away from her, looking back down the street toward the darkness ahead of them, wondering if he had seen something there a moment ago. He thought something was moving in the shadows. Maybe it was… no…
“— Maybe, but life has a funny way of turning around on you sometimes, Chicory,” remarks Sir Knight, returning his thoughts to her.
The priestess jumps, hissing and spinning around as something touches her back.
A shadow, manifested by him in the form of a melting soldier, stands there with a dull black halberd pressed against her white, ornate robe.
“…You don’t even need armor for them anymore, huh?” she asks, looking at the shadow that takes the shape of a man holding a weapon but has nothing to contain him. Like the mess of a spilled inkwell, he seems to contentiously drain downward back toward the ground, but somehow, he is continually replenished from above, causing him to appear as an odd distortion of an ever-liquefied person.
“We’re all growing into our new roles,” replies Sir Knight. “The armor they wear is only for presentation these days; they don’t want to scare the city-folk,” he explains, as the manifested soldier lifts his weapon away from her and then begins to melt back down in something akin to a sludge that begins washing away down the storm drains together with the melting snow. As he vanishes down the storm drain, the melting body salutes one last time before vanishing into the darkness. “Walk with me,” says Sir Knight as he keeps going, moving down the winding, tight cobblestone street that is almost too narrow for him to pass through. “So, what’s the word?”
Chicory walks after him, the potions on her belt clinking together lightly like small ornamental chimes. “The war is moving inland,” she explains. “Something spooked the enemy, and they’ve redoubled their efforts,” says Chicory, looking at him. “For some reason, they seem to be in a hurry all of a sudden,” she implies, her hand rubbing her neck — the bruises of which had healed a few weeks ago, having resulting from their encounter with one another down in the dungeon when he had nearly choked her soul out of her body.
“It’s almost as if an insurrection is starting in this little kingdom,” he jokes. “As if the nation was weakening from the inside because of a growing power struggle.”
“Yeah. It’s almost as if…” replies the tanned priestess, watching him.
Sir Knight watches the many shadows of the street as they walk, looking at them shifting and distorting as they pass by, leaking light that drips from windows and cracks below doorways. “Chicory,” starts Sir Knight, stopping. She stops behind him. “What makes you so sure I’m going to help your master with their scheme?” he asks, turning his head to look at her. “I serve Acacia, not the royal family,” he explains. His vision stops where she was, but she isn’t there anymore.
“Dead, again,” remarks a voice from in front of him, a finger pressing itself against his chestplate. She had snuck around him while he wasn’t paying attention. Sir Knight turns his gaze forward, looking at her as she stands there, and then shrugs. “The enemy of my enemy,” starts the royal agent.
“— is still your enemy,” finishes Sir Knight, turning the phrase on her.
Knowing that Acacia was bound to the spirit of the black knight, the royal family had purposefully created a situation in which she would be forced to fall into despair in order to summon him to this world as her protector. They did this because of the war effort, which the Kingdom is losing against the enemy nation of the Empire, in the hopes that this mythical being of ancient legend would turn the tide for them.
The issue arises in that he, nonetheless, is bound to Acacia and that he hasn’t left this city to help the war-effort in the least. In fact, his being here has only caused problems for the nation, as the word of an ascending noble — the youngest princess — vying for the royal throne during a time of war has caused anarchy in all of the highest social circles. He doesn’t care about Acacia’s family, who manipulated her for such a purpose, or the war effort. He has no desire to do anything to help with any of that; his only goal is to get Acacia to her throne at any cost.
Chicory steps to the side as he is about to trample her on his path forward. “And besides, you don’t have a choice,” she explains. “Even if you get Acacia to the throne, the enemy is still going to be at war with us, and we’ll be weaker than ever,” says the royal agent. “So you’ll just have to help us win the war, no matter what. Or will you just let them conquer her newly won nation?”
He stands there for a while, thinking.
The Holy-Church, the Kingdom, the Empire — there are so many factions vying for power already. The world is falling into anarchy.
“You’ve made a fundamental mistake in your scheme, Chicory,” explains Sir Knight as he walks off without her. “But I think you know that yourself,” he says, lifting a hand to wave her off. “You’re a sharp creature.”
The royal family had summoned the Black Knight to help them win the war through their plot. But his goal is not to help them; his goal is to help Acacia.
Acacia wants to get to the throne.
That means his goal is to stand as an enemy, not as a part of the very kingdom he is situated inside of at this very moment.
The knight in black armor gleams at her through his lightless visor. “This nation rightfully belongs to her Majesty Lady Acacia Odofredus Krone,” he says to the agent of the royal family. “I don’t care about the war; all I care about is getting her to the throne and subduing any threat to that goal. I’ll kill the king himself if I need to, and if the enemy nation gets in the way, I’ll destroy them too.”
Chicory looks at him, narrowing her eyes. “This is an official warning, Sir Knight. There are contingency plans in place if you don’t cooperate with us and fight in the war,” warns Chicory. “We have measures in place to ensure that you -”
— A shadowy hand presses a finger against her back.
“- Dead,” says Sir Knight’s voice into her ear as she spins around. But as she turns to look at what touched her, there is nobody there at all.
A moment later, when she looks down the street to where the giant was walking only a second ago, it is empty as well, leaving her standing there by herself out in the middle of the narrow road. Soft light that leaks through the gaps in the gaps between poorly made shutters leaks out over her robe, painting it in stripes of many colors.
The priestess stands there for a moment and then vanishes herself off down another alleyway.
Acacia has yet to make her reveal to the world in person, but it’s only a matter of days now. While everyone already knows the name of the princess vying for the throne, nobody amongst the common people of the nation has the faintest clue of who that name belongs to.
However, when she makes her first public appearance, that ambition will be solidified, and it will lead to chaos within this very city, from which the anarchy will spread throughout the nation like a rot breaking through the surface of its substrate.
Sir Knight’s shadow drifts through the cracks and crevices of the roadwork as he flows along like a serpent crawling through the breaks in the stonework.
This anarchy is going to be exactly what they need in order to disrupt the existing structures of power in order to make space for the young princess to ascend.
In fact, there happens to be a vacancy of power in this very city, left behind by the now deceased Baron Ersteig — a residency, title, land holdings, wealth, and more. It would be best if these things fell into capable hands.
He slithers, sliding and crawling and floating along toward his next stop.
There’s a lot to prepare.
“CATCH IT!” yells the adventurer, crawling back up to his feet after just tripping over some rocks. His head turns to the side, and he screams, ducking his head and covering it with his hands as a bright blob of vivid color blasts over his head, striking the dungeon wall next to him.
He yells, lunging out with his gloved hands toward the shape that has landed next to him, but his palms strike only the bare rock where something was a second ago. The flash of vivid yellow and pink blasts away, his head arching after it.
On an adjacent wall lands the rare-monster — a particularly colorful slime, swirling with an extremely vivid mixture of yellow and pink goo that swirls around in one another.
Magic crackles in the air all around him, and a second later, the wall where the monster is encased in a cage of ice.
“I GOT IT!” yells an excited elf, running over. “I GOT -”
— The ice cracks, and a second later the colorful monster blasts out, landing straight onto her face with a loud slap, knocking her back as fragments of ice fly around everywhere.
Rare monsters have unusual appearances. In the dungeon within the city, thousands and thousands of monsters are killed and hunted every day — goblins, slimes, the undead, and so on. Generally, however, there isn’t too much variation between such breeds and types, at least within the same zone. A green slime is a green slime, and a goblin is a goblin; barring some shading or size differences here and there, they’re mostly the same.
However, every now and then, a ‘rare-mob’ will spawn in the dungeon in place of a normal creature. This will be an unusual variation of an existing monster type, such as a particularly strong and clever goblin, a zombie of a knight instead of a ragged nobody, or, as in this case — a particularly colorful slime with unusual speed.
“BETTY!” yells a terrified voice, a priest running over to the sorceress immediately before she’s even finished falling to the ground. A second later, the slime vibrates and bounces off with terrifying speed.
The priest helps the sorceress up, looking at her face. Usually slimes, even at this early stage of the dungeon, are extremely acidic. An attack on an unprotected person’s face like that will have horrifying consequences in the best of scenarios. Even minor skin contact can lead to severe burns.
“I’m fine,” replies the student sorceress, sitting up and touching her face, as if checking herself to see if that was true.
“…Huh? It didn’t burn you,” remarks the priest, surprised as she turns the elf’s face to the side. The two of them look at the blob of slime, glued to the ceiling of the dungeon and practically vibrating with energy. Adventurers work out from the ground below how to get it down, throwing rocks and firing arrows at it. However, the creature is so gelatinous that all of these bounce back down at the people below, who scatter as everything begins to explode.
A voice chimes in from next to the two. “It’s mutated for speed at the loss of acidity,” explains an elf. The two of them turn their heads to look at Junis. “Rare monsters will often make significant changes to their abilities and skills.” She looks at the odd shading it has as it clings to the ceiling upside down. “Most slimes are omnivores, but looking at this one…” she starts.
“— Huh, Junis?” asks the student sorceress — who also goes to the Fellowbark magical academy here in the city the same as her — as she gets back up to her feet. “Ew. Don’t talk to me,” snaps the caster, flicking out her fingers as if there were something on them. “Go clean some toilets or something. Yuck.” She dusts herself off, lifting her nose as she moves back toward the crowd of hunting adventurers.
The rare-mob has stirred up quite a ruckus in the dungeon, with most people abandoning their usual money-making spots to go after it. Rare-monsters can have extremely prized item drops if killed, or if captured alive, can be sold to scholars.
Junis looks at the girl walking off, the priest looking at the two of them for a moment before running after his friend, leaving her standing there quietly by herself as the slime shoots off to a different wall, just before the piece of the ceiling it was clinging to collapses down. Adventurers run out of the way before they’re crushed by debris and rubble, as the hunt continues with dozens of people all chasing the small monster around in circles but being unable to catch it.
She watches them go at it for a while before digging through her bag for a moment and pulling out a small bag inside of which is one slice of bread and an apple — her food for today. Ever since she lost her job as a maid because of the Baron’s death, she’s had to tighten her budget a little.
It’s only for a little bit longer. She’ll graduate soon. Another few months. Then…
— She doesn’t actually know, what then.
But that’s a problem for the future.
“— vegetarian,” finishes Junis, speaking to herself as she pulls out the apple and holds out her arm.
Immediately, a flash of color launches her way, the tide of people shifting below it as the slime bounces off of a man’s tower shield and launches straight toward her. Junis flies back, her boots sliding over the ground and kicking up a trail of dust as she tries to not fall over from the strong impact against her core. Her clenched arms hold down against something colorful that had launched her way. Looking down at her gut as the dust settles, a vivid flurry of dense color sloshes around inside of her grip, wrapping itself around the apple she had held out, which it had immediately spotted. Junis winces, stumbling back and falling down as she twists her ankle from the surprising force of the impact. The little slime has a lot of power behind it.
With one eye open as she sits there on the ground, she looks at the vibrating creature as it pulls the apple inside of itself. “You’re hungry, huh?” she mutters, wincing as she straightens out her leg and then slowly stands back up.
“She caught it!” yells a voice as people run after the monster, arguing with each other.
“Hey! Thief!” shouts a dark-elven woman, pressing forward out of the crowd. “That’s my slime!” she yells as a man holds out his arm, pressing her back. “I saw it first!” she protests, as people around her start to argue about this statement. Junis looks at the crowd as the chaos of the scene starts to deescalate. Seeing that the chase is over, many are starting to flood back and away toward their usual hunting spots. But some of those with, kindly put, stronger personalities are still here and bickering with each other.
“I’ll buy it from you!” offers a man, pressing through to the front of the crowd. “One-hundred!”
“Two-hundred!” shouts another man over his shoulder, pressing the other man down. “I need that slime for a quest from the guild!”
“A stupid quest?” asks an incredulous and snippy woman in a wide-brimmed hat. “That slime would make an elixir worth selling to nobility,” she fawns, holding a hand against her cheek. She looks toward Junis. “One-thousand Obols, here, on the spot,” offers the alchemist, patting a bag on her hip. The crowd turns into a flurry as they all fight for Junis’ attention as she stands in the middle of the enclosed circle of people.
“HEY!” yells a sharp nasal voice as her classmate from before fights her way through the circle and stands in front of Junis with her back to her. “We’re not going to sell our slime for any less than two, no, three-thousand!” she explains, pointing at them all. “Make your bids in an orderly fashion, or we’re taking this to the guild for a formal auction.”
“Huh?” asks the alchemist, glaring. “You’re not even involved in this!” she yells. People are arguing and swearing as the tension escalates. Things that are worth a lot of money, like this slime, can cause… difficulties in social webs such as this one. Typically, the people fighting monsters on floor one of the dungeon are just poor enough to scrape by. A slime with the potential value that this one has could help someone with a family survive for at least a year. It’s not enough money to be considered rich, unless if taken into consideration by the destitute — for them, it’s an unimaginable sum of money to make at once.
“Of course I am!” argues the young student. “She’s with me!” proclaims the girl, reaching back to grab Junis’ shoulder, but her fingers don’t grab any fabric. Instead, the clunk against a sheet of metal.
The slight rattling of her finger nails scratches out as she slowly turns her head, and the crowd falls silent. The young student looks at the giant made out of black, scarred, and worn metal standing behind her, on which her fingers rest.
“Actually,” growls a heavy voice that mutes the last of the bickering crowd into silence. He lifts an arm, swiping her hand off of himself. “She’s with me,” he remarks.
“…S-Sir Knight…” stutters the student witch, gulping and stepping back toward the crowd that has become quiet as he stares them down from the center of the ring, which seems to loosen its tightness as they all step back a little ways. Everyone here knows him by sight, even if he’s only ever spoken to a few of them, as far as she knows. He has a reputation, most of which is good, but some of which is rather ominous. It’s the armor, she thinks. It just lends itself to a shadowy reputation in the imagination of people. It does look rather… intimidating.
Sir Knight turns his head back toward Junis and nods his head, gesturing for her to go. She makes her way through the parting crowd, holding the slime against herself, which is making no effort to escape her grasp now that it is nested between the soft fabric of her sleeves and dress and is digesting her only apple.
“So?” asks Sir Knight as they walk.
Junis looks at him. “So what?”
He turns his head back forward, looking down the dark street as they walk. “So what are you going to do with it?” asks the giant nothingness inside a suit of dark armor. She looks down at the slime, resting contently in her arms. Even at a stand-still, the thing is constantly jittering and buzzing like a cat that never stops purring. It’s actually rather warm to hold. As a slime, it’s an interesting specimen, for sure. Most slimes are wet and gooey and kind of sickly room-temperature warm, but this one is so dense and active that it almost feels like it was pulled from the oven on some parts of its body. She can only assume it burns through the sugars of the fruits it eats at an utterly ridiculous pace to produce this level of energy.
They bend down the turn, moving down another, wider street as they come off of the main road from the dungeon and toward a side gate to the city. Sir Knight lifts a hand in an idle wave to the guardsman stationed there, who salutes as they pass by.
“Am I supposed to be saluting you too?” asks Junis.
Sir Knight shakes his head, letting her step through first since the two of them can’t pass through at the same time because of his size. “Only if you want your own suit of armor too,” he replies. “I’ll let you march around with the rest of my men.”
“Do I also get a cape?” asks Junis, looking back over her shoulder at him.
Sir Knight passes through the small gate, his hand pulling on the clasp of his cloak to look at it for a moment. “Why?” he asks.
“It’s just a bit much, really,” she replies, shrugging as she walks. “A very dramatic look.”
“What can I say?” asks Sir Knight as they walk down the little path and toward the outskirts of the city. “I put on a great show for the people,” he explains, tapping his chest. “They all love it.”
Junis smiles, looking back forward as they stop in the road and look around the area.
This is good.
“You sure?” he asks.
“Yeah,” replies Junis, kneeling down and setting the little slime onto the road. The stones around it practically buzz, rattling as if a minor quake had hit the area as its constant vibrating shakes the dirt. “Go on,” she says, nudging it.
The slime wobbles in place.
“Doesn’t look like it knows what to do,” he remarks.
Junis scratches her head, looking around the area. “I guess it’s never been outside of its home before,” she mutters, reaching over toward a bush. She plucks a berry from it, holding it in her fingers. The slime tenses up. “Go on. Scoot!” says Junis, arcing her arm back and throwing the berry as far as she can toward the trees.
In an instant, a flash of color blasts away as the little slime shoots into the forest, chasing after the little red dot that flies through the night.
She sighs, watching it go.
The two of them stand there for a while, out by the woods.
“Think it’ll be alright?” he asks, looking into the woods. “It might not know how to hunt.”
Junis shakes her head. “It’ll be okay,” she replies, holding herself. “It can’t stay here. It’ll die,” she says, turning around. “But at least out there, away from this city, it has a chance.” Sir Knight turns his head, looking at her as she pulls a strand of dark hair out of her face and behind her ear, staring out into the forest as the rustling trees fall silent as far off the sound of cracking wood can be heard.
“Don’t you need the money you could have sold it for?” he asks. “You’d have been set.”
Junis stands there and then turns around, walking back toward the city. “Yeah,” she replies, reaching into her bag and pulling out the slice of bread she has left. She looks at it for a second and then breaks it in half, holding it out to him.
His visor tilts to look at her outstretched hand. “You know that I don’t need to eat, Junis,” says Sir Knight. “Thanks,” he remarks, looking at her ration and waving her away with his other hand. “Come on, let me help you back,” he offers, holding out his hand. She’s not showing it, but that fall in the dungeon when the slime slammed into her twisted her ankle pretty bad.
“Just take the stupid bread, Sir Knight,” insists Junis, not accepting his help.
“Why?” he asks as she extends her arm out further, almost smushing the half slice of dark bread against his armor. He concedes, taking it from her and then watching as she turns back around, walking back toward the city on the same limp that she’s been underplaying on the way out. His extended arm drops back down, as she seemingly doesn’t want his help to stay off her bad leg now.
A tendril of shadow leaks out of his helmet, breaking off a crumb of the bread in his hand.
It’s homemade, definitely not bought from the baker.
— Something rustles behind him, and he turns his head, looking at the bushes in the darkness of the forest.
But whatever was there seems to be gone now.
“Must’ve been a rabbit,” he jokes to himself, moving back toward the city but not catching up to Junis, who seems to be walking particularly fast on purpose so that he can’t catch up to her. By the time he reaches the gate at his leisurely pace, she’s nowhere to be seen.
“Miss Krone,” greets the man in uniform, grabbing her hand and welcoming her inside to the rather casual office. He bows his head, holding the cusp of her hand as he gestures into the room. He has a short, very thick salt and pepper beard that is sharply trimmed and waxed. His hair of equally fading darkness is slicked back over his head, revealing two deep widow’s peaks.
“Thank you, Captain,” remarks Acacia, stepping into the office of the captain of the city’s guard, who stands back upright, looking at Sir Knight as the giant in armor bends himself through the doorway at an angle, the floorboards below him screaming through the heavy carpet at the weight being pressed down on them.
“Sir Knight, it's always good to see you,” he greets. “I was surprised to receive your request for a meeting, honestly,” explains the captain, stepping to the side as Sir Knight manages to fight his way in through the door. “Usually I just kind of run into you.”
Sir Knight looks at him. “I’ve been told I’m hard to avoid.”
“I can confirm,” snaps a voice frominside the room as Acacia stands there in front of a chair, not sitting down. She looks back over her shoulder in light offense, as if waiting for something.
Sir Knight walks over, pulling her chair out for her. Acacia lifts her nose, pulling her dress together as she sits down. A moment later, he scoots her chair in toward the table.
“And this is?”
“My lady in charge,” remarks Sir Knight, looking over his shoulder as the captain walks past them both to sit on the other side of the desk.
“What I like most about you is that you know your place, Sir Knight,” says Acacia with a satisfied smile as he moves to the chair next to her, looking down at it warily. He contemplates making a remark about her frilly duck undergarments, but decides that this isn’t the time or place. Maybe later.
Lifting his visor, he looks at the captain, who watches him, both of them asking the same question in their heads as they stare at the chair he’s holding onto, which is very insignificant in comparison with his frame. The captain shrugs, nodding, the two of them coming to a non-verbal understanding that he should just sit and see what happens.
“So… what can I do for you?” he asks, leaning back a little as Sir Knight sits down, as if afraid his chair were going to burst and send shards flying out in all directions. Surprisingly, the chair holds up well and only lets out a few very unusual sounds for a chair to make as he puts his weight down on it.
Sir Knight and Acacia look at one another for a moment, sizing each other up. She nods after a second, affirming her choice.
It’s time. They need to arrange a public reveal to the city, letting them all know that a royal is living in their midst and is going to take over power of this place in the absence of the dead Baron.
Sir Knight turns his head back toward the captain.
“Captain, there’s a lot going on these days, as you know,” starts Sir Knight.
“Don’t I know it,” sighs the seasoned guardsman, leaning back on his upholstered, thick chair. He folds his hands together on the table, leaning in slightly as he hangs his head. “I hate to say it, but we wouldn’t have been able to keep up without you, Sir Knight,” he remarks, shaking his head. “Between the thieves and the wild monsters and the war…” It’s quiet for a moment as he lifts his head, looking not at him but toward Acacia. “Thank you for lending us his services.”
Acacia sits there with a crossed leg, her hands folded on her thigh. “I am merely glad he’s making himself useful instead of causing me difficulties,” she replies, smiling.
“Er… yes,” replies the captain, looking at them both for a moment in confusion. “So, what is this meeting about?”
Acacia takes a deep breath for a moment, opening her eyes that had been closed as she looks at him. “Captain,” starts the girl. “It is my pleasure to let you know that I-”
— The door behind them slams open, striking loudly against the wall. Everyone shoots around looking at the frantic guardsman, who stumbles in, covered in sweat and having lost pieces of his armor on the way here, given his disheveled appearance.
“PRINCESS!” screams the breathless man with his last gasp of wheezed out air. The captain shoots to his feet as the guardsman catches a quick breath.
“WHAT?!” yells the captain, his desk shoving toward them inadvertently as his legs hit it. The old man hisses, fumbling over himself as he grabs his sore waist, stumbling across the room toward the soldier.
“— The third princess has arrived from the capital!” explains the young man, sweat pouring down his face. “She’s at the gates!”
The captain looks around the room for a moment, as if not sure where to look for a moment. “Excuse me! We’ll reschedule!” he shouts, grabbing his soldier as the two of them run out of the office at full speed, the guards quarters outside buzzing to life like an agitated swarm as soldiers begin to run in all directions.
Sir Knight turns his head, looking at Acacia, who sits there with her eyes closed, her hands gripping the fabric of her dress, rolling it together tightly into a rope-like fold that her arms are straining strongly to rip apart as she silently sits there in her chair, her posture not having changed a little in light of this rather sudden news.
— As expected from a noblewoman who was trained to keep her composure in even the strangest of situations.
“Trouble?” asks Sir Knight, looking away from her and across the desk at the empty leather chair.
There’s a scooting sound as her chair rubs over the hard wood floor of the office.
“My older sister?” asks Acacia in a voice that can, at best, be described as calmly venomous. She rises up to her feet. “— She is nothing but trouble,” remarks the youngest princess — forth in the line of royal succession. She takes a deep breath and walks toward the door. “We’re going. Bring your sword.”
“My sword? For your sister?” he asks to confirm that he’s understanding her correctly, rising up to his feet, much to the relief of his chair — if such a thing could be ascribed to an inanimate object.
Acacia stops for a moment, thinking. She shakes her head. “No, you’re right, Sir Knight,” replies the girl, narrowing her eyes as she walks down the hallway through a group of soldiers who don’t really know what to do with themselves. She stops between them, looking back at him. “— Bring your axe,” she finishes coldly as she walks off back toward their carriage.
He watches her go, looking back at the empty office for a moment, before going after her, pressing his way through the surprised soldiers who all recognize him as he passes by.
Royal families can be somewhat more tumultuous than normal ones, he supposes.
