Black Knight - Additional Content - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Sorry chapters 5+6 of Black Knight are kind of a total mess now with today's edit to the release of chapter 4. I need to rejiggle everything. I hope to have the finished versions up tomorrow for you! Here's a new scene from chapter 5 for tonight.

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~[A Den of Thieves]~

Hase sighs in relief, sitting on a pillow on the floor and leaning back against the wall, looking down at the empty bowl down between her crossed legs. The chipped thing is stained with a thick, creamy yellow — remnants from the mashed tuber soup.

She’s eaten four helpings now at once. She feels like she’s quite literally about to burst open.

Sitting there, she ponders if she’s going to risk dying to eat a fifth, or if she’ll go to bed. Outside of her few safe hours down here in the den, food and sleep are hard to come by. On the surface, people don’t really have many handouts for her, especially once they see her rabbit-ears.

Most people are fine with the Vildt in just the same way they’re fine with elves or orcs, but at the same time, there are always those who just aren't, and, for some reason, these people seem to have the most prominent voices in the governance of the nation. Especially in regards to the vildt. This trickles down to the general sentiment.

Or maybe it’s the other way around? Maybe she’s confused. Maybe the general sentiment is what brings those voices to power? She isn’t sure.

Either way, what matters is that it’s safe down here. She can get food down here in the Den. She can sleep down here without being terrified for her life. Shutting your eyes on the surface can mean dying. In the city, people sleeping outside get ushered away from public places by the guards, often with very little tact. Those who sleep in the alleyways and dark places have been attacked and killed before, and not always in robberies gone wrong — as if they had anything to take.

As someone without a clear defined place to belong, one is viewed as a prey animal in this city. Those people who live within polite society but still carry an animal nature in their hearts make use of these lost people to let out their base depravity.

It’s not perfect down here in the Den. It’s not perfect, being a thief. She hates the scratchy man. He’s disgusting. But at least this is something for her to do to live. It gives her a way to survive that isn’t available to her up above. Sleeping down here means she isn’t going to get set on fire in the middle of the night while she’s asleep.

That happened to someone outside last week. They poured lantern fuel on his bedding and lit it up while he was in it.

Eating down here means she actually has something to eat, which is why she has to gorge herself whenever she has the opportunity.

— Before this, her last meal was three days ago.

Looking down at the bowl, however, she realizes that, despite her heart yearning for more of the vague, yellowish, overly salted slop, she can’t swallow another bite or this really will be it for her.

Slowly, she exhales and rises to her feet, walking through the Den to the little cot that has been designated for her.

People talk and drink all around the many rooms. There are side chambers for people to gamble or to do other things in. Smoke wafts up to the stone ceilings, where it can ideally drift into a pipe that goes to some distant place. Although not all of it manages to get out, it leaves the entire air with a thick texture that makes breathing difficult and, if you stay down here long enough, leaves a residue on your skin.

But at least it overpowers the smells from the water channels. That’s something.

Hase reaches over to the cot in the corner and climbs in, sticking her legs into the blankets and worming her way inside as deeply as she can. Two nights.

She wanted a whole week. But that’s what it is.

She’ll make the best of these two nights. She’s going to sleep now and then when she wakes up, she’s going to eat another four bowls to try to get to five at once and then she’ll sleep again.

After that, she’ll maybe eat some more and then take another nap.

Her head hits the pillow, her eyes that are focused on a glowing lantern, closing in deep exhaustion as she finds her first real sleep in days, her body crashing into a deep darkness in which not even dreams are produced.

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— Something rattles.

Hase opens her eyes, staring at… nothing. Quietly, her head buzzing in a heavy daze, she ‘stares’ ahead of herself into the darkness, not sure if she’s actually awake or not. After a few seconds of reality have their time to run through her mind, she ponders in her sleep-addled state if her eyes are actually open or not. She’s pretty sure that they are.

Why is it dark?

Rubbing her eyes, Hase slowly sits upright and stares into the black void. She can’t see a single thing. She can’t see the walls, the floor, the room, or even her own blanket. It’s perfectly, totally, and fully dark. Every single lantern and flame is out.

— It’s cold.

And something rattles. Her sensitive rabbit ears pick it up in the darkness.

Reaching around, she feels the wall behind her. Its presence is the only confirmation that she has that she isn’t adrift in her cot on the waters of some endless, black ocean — in the same waters in which the stars of the night sky swim.

What’s going on? Did everyone… did they… did they leave?

This has never happened before.

It’s scary.

The lights are never out down here. The lanterns are always burning, and there are always voices. There’s always something.

But now there’s… there’s nothing.

She opens her mouth to speak, to at least call out a quiet ‘hello’ into the room. But as she opens her dry lips, she closes them again just as quickly, as if the emptiness could drown her if she let out her air.

Hase clutches her blankets.

Something flickers in the distance, immediately catching her attention as it is the only source of any sensation within the void that is the underground room. A flame. A man sparks a lantern, a warm glow immediately radiates outward in a sphere. It’s like he’s in a bubble of warmth and morning glory.

— A shadow cuts through the darkness, the bubble of light being occluded from the side as if someone were holding a hand over her eyes, blocking her from seeing it. But it doesn’t stop her from hearing a sudden scream that then falls very short.

Metal rattles. Boots hit the ground as some people start running. She recognizes the noises. Someone pulls a sword out of a sheath. Somewhere off to the other side of the room, another light starts to glow to life as someone casts a spell.

Screams fill the air as bodies strike one another. The sounds of combat come for a brief moment, and she watches people flail in the dim lighting, as if they were fighting the endless shadows themselves. It’s like every time any of the people make a bubble of light, the darkness reaches into it with a hundred claws, crawling, creeping, and clack-clack-clacking with sharp fingers toward them — far too many to ever stop with two hands and one weapon.

There’s so much rattling metal everywhere.

What should she do?

Fear has overtaken her at this point. Fighting isn’t working for the people across the room, so the next best option is running away. She has good eyes in the dark and great hearing. She can make it to one of the doors easily, even in this darkness. She knows the way. From this cot, it's ten steps ahead and then a sharp right-turn and another twenty steps down across the room.

— Another lantern tries to light itself on the left, in the gambling rooms. Metal rattles.

Now’s her chance.

Hase wants to move, but her body doesn’t listen, and after a moment and a few more screams, she finds herself still sitting in her cot. It’s like she’s frozen there, like her body has fused to the wet fabric she’s sitting on.

She has to.

This is like with anything else.

She has to. Or she’s going to die.

Hase takes a deep breath and screams, her body not entirely sure of the order of these actions as her feet hit the ground, which does exist after all, and she starts running for her life, through the valley of screams, clashing and clinking metal, through volleys of spells, and dying embers that are swallowed by the total void.

Ten steps.

She falls down, tumbling over something that was lying there, and rolls. Scrambling like a feral animal, she turns to the right and runs that way.

Ten steps.

Metal rattles behind her.

Twenty steps. Hase runs as fast as she can, her bare feet slapping onto the cold stones as she sprints. The metal is getting closer.

Thirty!

She reaches out and grabs for the door.

— But there’s nothing there.

Fumbling forward in a half jog, Hase tries to find the door that should be right here. It should be right where she is now. But her arms don’t find anything; her palms never find rest. It’s like she’s not in the room anymore. It’s like she’s not anywhere.

Quietly, she stands there, listening.

The noises have stopped.

There isn’t any screaming, any rattling, any running, or fighting. There isn’t a single sound, apart from her own desperate breathing and the strike of her heart that is roaring in her own ears with unusual strength. What’s going on? It’s scary. She doesn’t want to die. She never got to do anything, not a single thing.

Hase looks around the darkness, fumbling for anything.

And then, her hands find something.

— Metal.

She can’t see it, but she slowly lifts her gaze upward toward where her mind screams at her to watch, to observe, to beware. A monster.

But her eyes don’t see what her hands feel, and her sensitive ears only hear the sound of metal without the normal tones of a body inside it moving it around. It just… screeches and squeaks  as hollow metal moves against hollow metal, like a ghost.

It’s just like…

— Metal rattles from behind her too, from next to her. There’s more than one. There are several of them.

Suits of hollow armor, with no men inside of them, roam the darkness, taking the thieves as prisoners as they go along, unable to be stopped.

Hase hasn’t stopped crying yet and continues to do so as a hand grabs her shoulder.