Black Knight - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

~ [Somewhere Dark] ~

It’s dark.

Junis, the elf, looks around herself. “H- hello?” she nervously calls, her voice echoing out into nothingness until it eventually fades away — swallowed, by the void. Confused, she turns her head. Her feet feel like they’re standing on something solid, but then, as soon as she thinks about it, the substrate beneath her seems to vanish. It’s like she’s in an odd dream. “Anyone?”

She feels her body become weightless. Her hair and her dirty clothes begin to drift, floating around as if she were underwater.

“Hellooo?” calls the deeply confused elf. Blankly, she turns her head, watching in clear confusion as what looks like… a piece of cherry cake floats past her. “…Huh…?” She tilts her head, looking to the side. Loose coins, splinters of wood, rocks, and dirt all float through the nothingness. She identifies what looks like a horrifyingly large collection of knives and metal that look like they are of goblin make and mark, just… hovering there in a condensed ball of sorts.

— Something bumps against her head, and she grabs it, looking at the empty glass flask from some medicine.

Junis lets it go, looking around as she comes to a somewhat terrifying realization.

Since there is nothing for her to touch, she can’t move.

Her throbbing feet find nothing to press against. Her hands find nothing to grab, so she could pull herself anywhere. She’s just freely floating in the middle of nowhere, and because of exactly that, she’s trapped — suspended in midair.

The elf begins to panic, as one would be right to do, as she tries to figure out what’s just happened. A moment ago, she was in the estate with Sir Knight, and then he…

— Her eyes go wide in horror.

“WHAT IS THIS?!” screams the elf.

The darkness around her seems to react to the odd, off shades of blackness condensing together into streaky, long shapes that begin to swirl and move. It’s like she’s beneath the ocean, staring up at the rippling disturbances above her head. Except they’re on all sides — above, below, left and right, and everything in between. The disturbed darkness moves, undulating and squirming as many hundreds of protrusions shoot her way.

She screams.

“Please stop screaming,” says an annoyed voice; she recognizes it as belonging to Sir Knight.

— The manifestations of shadow all form together into tight bundles. Long, whip-like appendages made up out of condensed nothing reach around the space, grabbing this and that, including her.

A second later, Junis finds herself simply sitting down onto an old wooden chair that had been floating here somewhere, with an old school book set onto her lap for her to read, as it was likely the first thing the shadows found.

“Stay put for a bit,” says Sir Knight. “I have to do something. I’ll explain later.”

“Wait!” calls Junis out to the shadows all around her, but as soon as her voice leaves her mouth, they have all already dissipated and vanished back into total nothingness.

Nervously, she lifts her head and watches as a live, green slime — a monster from the dungeon — floats by overhead, perfectly content to wiggle and jiggle in free-form floating for all eternity.

Quietly, she lowers her gaze to look at the book, which so happens to be from the course she hates the most.

Sighing, she opens it up and looks inside, realizing that it’s Acacia’s old copy.

_______________________________

~ [Sir Knight] ~

Sir Knight manifests himself together back into the shape of his body, standing in the middle of a large atrium upstairs.

He looks around the room. It’s totally destroyed. The glass ceilings are broken, and shards lie scattered all around the space. The walls have deep cuts and scars on them. The tiles are shattered in many places, and all around the chamber lie scattered the broken pieces of many suits of plate-mail armor.

His soldiers are dead.

Well, as dead as something that was never alive can be.

He turns over the helmet that he’s holding. The metal has been cut —  No, the jaggedness of the opening makes it look more like it’s been ripped. He walks, his cloak sweeping over the broken armor, recollecting it as he moves to the many laying there in a pool of blood. Sir Knight bends down, turning him over.

It’s the chief of security for the estate. He’s dead.

The wound through his chest is extremely thin and precise — a rapier.

He rises to his feet, looking around. This was the enemy, for sure. He can sense it from Acacia’s thoughts. She’s not here anymore.

Sir Knight turns his head, looking out into the courtyard from above.

His body fades away as the shadows that he becomes glide over the floor and walls, shooting off into the distance, toward where he can sense her presence.

________________________________

~[Junis]~

“Huuuh?” says the elf, speaking out loud to herself. She has to. The silence in here is so total and absolute that she can hear her own body, and it’s deeply disturbing. She presses her face closer to the book, looking inside at the answers scribbled into the margins below the questions. “She didn’t know that?” asks Junis, eying over an answer to a very easy question. “It’s so simple, though!”

She flips the page, looking at the next one.

It’s a book on the nature of defensive and healing spells. It’s an unpopular category of magic in the academies because being aggressive and offensive is seen as a popular trait. Honestly, the defensive spells are sort of the go-to for the unpopular class members who see it as their way into a group through the merit of them being needed.

It’s socially unacceptable to say, but the simple truth is that the defensive magical arts are loved by the unpopular and the weirdos because it lets them fit in.

She looks at the answers that are clearly very wrong. “How did she even come up with this one?” mutters Junis, flipping the page again.

A good chunk of the answers are, honestly, clearly very wrong. However, they are not short. The margins between sections, meant for answers, are full to the brim with text in very small hand-writing. The answer itself is usually wrong, but there is so much effort put into the explanations and concepts given by the writer that she honestly believes that Acacia was writing this stuff with full, true confidence in her heart that she knew what she was talking about. They’re confident. These are the direct answers of someone who studied hard.

— But somehow, it’s just all wrong anyway.

It’s honestly a little impressive.

Junis lifts an eyebrow, flipping the page.

How can anyone be so confident and so absolutely wrong about everything? It’s not even natural at this point. You’d think with the effort she put in, there would clearly be at least one right answer somewhere.

But…

“Huh?” She flips the page back and forth again, looking at it.

The next one has fewer lines per answer.

She flips the page.

The next one after that resolves most questions in single sentences.

And on the page after that, only a few questions are answered at all, oftentimes with a single word or a lost question mark with no further context.

Then the book is blank. It’s empty. There’s nothing there below the questions. No answers come anymore. She runs her fingers over the paper, feeling the rippled texture of the scattered spots that had gotten wet where droplets fell and dried.

It’s clear that the owner had given up.

Junis purses her lips, flipping through the rest of the pages, but there isn’t anything there.

She closes her eyes and closes the book, thinking for a moment. However, her mind returns to where it started after a moment.

The elf nods. She did the right thing. Acacia was better off not being at the academy. At least, so she thought. But now the girl seems to instead be in league with what she can only assume is a demon.

Sir Knight.

What kind of terrible luck does that girl have? It’s beyond normal. It’s like she’s cursed for her life to have gone this far off the beaten path.

Junis looks around herself at what she, perhaps fairly, assumes is some layer of the underworld. Is she dead? Or is she just trapped? What has Acacia gotten herself into?

Examining the area, Junis bends over and looks at the bottom of her chair. Someone has scrawled into it with what looks to have been a pocket knife of sorts.

‘I was here’ signed with what looks like a child’s drawing of a rabbit.

Odd.

Her hope is that it was made on the chair after it was put here, as that would indicate that she might be able to leave here again.

Junis sighs, sitting back upright on the chair.

Immediately, she jumps back against it, yelping in surprise at the sight of the ‘man’ standing in front of her without her noticing. The darkness has taken shape, forming an avatar of something or nothing. It’s hard to say. What she can say is that something in the shape of a man stands before her.

A hand roughly grabs the collar of her outfit, scrunching together the black ribbon below her neck. “What do you know?” asks Sir Knight’s voice, almost lifting her out of the chair.

— Junis screams. A hand covers her mouth.

“I am not going to ask twice, Junis,” warns Sir Knight. The void around them ripples, disturbed as an energy moves through it. The items — the daggers, the coins, and everything else — clink as they are shaken. “What do you know?” he asks in a threatening tone, looking her in the eyes.

“Know about what?!” she yells, grabbing his hand and pulling it off of her face. “I don’t know anything about the undead!” shouts the elf, holding her hands together before herself. “GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU MONSTER!”

(Junis) has used: [MAJOR LIGHTNING]

Vivid energy glows around her hands, crackling wildly with chaotic force, a powerful glow radiating out in all directions for a brief second as the power of a critical explosion builds, ready to lash out in an instant as -

— Sir Knight simply holds his palm out in front of her hands. The spell pulls into him, vanishing as if it had been swallowed by a whirlpool.

Spellcasting: FAILED [MAJOR LIGHTNING] has been absorbed.

Shadows reach out from the sides and behind her, grabbing hold of Junis’ arms, legs, and body, holding them, and restraining her against the chair. “This was an ambush, Junis,” says Sir Knight. “I find it funny that you of all people were here for it.”

Junis shakes her head, her eyes wide in terror. A shadowy hand is covering her mouth from behind. “Let me make this very clear,” he says, bending down to look into her eyes. “In here, in this place,” starts the shadow, gesturing to the emptiness all around them. “- Nobody will ever hear you scream,” warns Sir Knight. “What. Do. You. Know?”

Now, obviously, he’s not going to hurt her. He’s not a monster, after all. But this is a serious situation, and Junis is kind of a total asshole if Acacia’s memories are anything to go by, so he feels pretty justified in at least terrifying her.

Honestly, he doesn’t really mind her that much. But Acacia’s feelings have imprinted on him, and she really, deeply dislikes Junis on a base level below animal feelings and human rationality.

“I don’t know anything about them! I swear!” she yells.

Sir Knight looks down at her finger, held out to the side and still able to move since only her wrist is restrained by a shadowy hand. A glow of magic surrounds it.

She’s a talented caster after all, a very bright student.

— He turns his head around, looking at the dozens of flying daggers she’s enchanted behind his back to fly straight toward him.

A brilliant plan.

…If not for one fatal flaw.

Sir Knight looks back toward and shrugs. The blades fly straight through his body from behind, cutting nothing, as if they had passed through thin air. Junis yelps, the chair scooting back just in time as they all land where she was sitting a second ago.

“Okay,” he says. “I don’t know how this works since I’ve never done it with anyone except Acacia,” he says as Junis looks up his way in horror and, as always, misunderstanding. “Hold still,” says Sir Knight, as creeping tendrils of shadow eke toward her ears and eyes.

He enters her memories and mind, digging into them just as he had done with Acacia when they first met.

___________________________

~[Sometime in the Relatively Recent Past]~

“The youngest princess?” asks a hushed voice. “In my city?” It’s the count himself, the master of the house and the domain as a whole, speaking. He has a silver knife in his hand that he is wiping clean with a fine cloth. Red streaks leave the metal and stick to the fabric.

“Yes, Master,” replies the chief of security with a bowed head. “Royal messengers have arrived in the night, alerting us to her presence.”

The count jumps to his feet. “We must prepare a grand ceremony at once!” he starts, looking around in a panic.

“Master,” starts the chief of security. “We mustn’t,” he advises, handing over a letter with an ornate stamp on its exterior. “Her presence is to remain a secret at all times for the populace. By direct order of the royal family.”

The count takes the letter, reading it over. “I don’t understand,” he replies.

“It seems that she has been disowned, Master,” says the man, shaking his head. “Her title of ascension has been formally revoked, and she has been cast out of House Odofreudus Krone.”

The room is silent for a while.

“…And they just let her leave?” asks the count, somewhat taken aback. “Just like that?”

“It would appear to be so,” replies the advisor.

There’s a smug scoff for a moment, before a smile grows over his face. “The royal family has grown weak, it seems,” he says. “Just a generation ago, they wouldn’t have hesitated to trim a weak branch.”

“What would you have us do?” asks the advisor.

The count thinks for a while, looking down at his latest solved problem. There is a fresh corpse on the floor that he steps over. After a minute of thinking, the man smiles, looking back to his advisor. “Arrange a wedding. In secret.”

“Master?”

The count shakes his head, shrugging. “The princess might have had her title revoked in form, but it remains in blood,” he says, opening his hand to let the soaked, red rag flop to the floor.

He lowers his gaze, looking at the maid, who is down on her knees, scrubbing everything clean and not lifting her head.

“I will marry young Miss Odofreudus Krone and, as her husband, lay claim to her title to the throne,” he says, before then laughing and shaking his head. “It’s love at first sight,” he says, laughing louder.

“Respectfully, Master, what will your wife say to this matter?” asks the advisor.

The count stops laughing, his expression falling stiffly cold as he looks back at the man, a silence hanging between them. “Ideally, nothing, Regmond,” says the count.

The advisor nods his head. “I understand, Master,” replies the man, his hand resting on the engraved shortsword on his belt. He turns to walk away. “And this?” he asks, looking back at the maid, who is silently scrubbing away in the middle of their conversation, not stopping her work for a second even at this question as she scoots forward a few inches on all fours, rubbing her cloth over the bloodied spots on the marble.

— Her head presses down as a shoe steps on it from above, shoving her face down against the floor. The bloodied rag that the count had dropped compresses between her cheek and the cold marble, red squeezing out of it.

“She won’t say anything, right?” asks the count, waiting for a response.

But none ever comes. The maid, knowing better, does not affirm anything. This is one of those noble games. By answering his question, she would be saying something. Junis remains perfectly quiet as he grinds his heel down onto the side of her head for a moment.

“Clean this up,” he orders, taking his shoe off of her head and walking away.

Junis, without saying anything, returns to her work, her face and maid dress covered in blood.

She doesn’t look at the body as she cleans around it, nor does she look at it when the two guardsmen come in to carry it away.

This job is important. It was scary at first. It’s still scary now. But she’s become sort of numb to the terror of it. She just cleans. She comes here when she doesn’t have to be at the academy, and she cleans. That’s it. The first time she saw a body, she almost didn’t make it out. But because of her ability to read people and gauge situations, she understood that the other maids were perfectly quiet about the matter and that she should be too.

She doesn’t look out of the window or anywhere else except the floors.

The princess, huh? That girl is going to be in for a real rough time when the count gets her.

Junis sighs.

It must be nice to be a princess and never have to work ever.

___________________________________

She just cleans.

It’s just work. This is what it is. There’s nothing else for her. She has to work so she can pay for her tuition at the academy. She has to study hard; she has to do everything she can to pass her classes and graduate so she can leave here, so she can run away and never return.

Nobody will ever believe her or anyone else about the count. There’s no stopping this. The only option is to get away or to fester in it forever until it’s her turn. All the maids ‘go’ eventually, one way or another. Sometimes the count drinks too much, and his eyes wander. Other times they see things they shouldn't, and sometimes they say something.

— All of them are replaced eventually.

Junis scrubs the floors as the guards drag the body of the dead girl away. She’s just someone who went missing at a social event and was never seen again. It happens now and then. People will wonder and ask, and the city guard will deploy patrols to look.

But they’ll never find anything.

Quietly, Junis scrubs.

Her hands hit the desk, and a letter falls off.

She places it back on the table, never looking on purpose. But somehow, her eyes read the line.

‘Miss Odofreudus Krone has enrolled in the Fellowbark Magical Academy’.

That’s where she studies, too.

____________________________________

Junis looks around the new students, examining them with cold, dead eyes from a distance. All of them are awkward in their own ways; they are just starting their final stage of education now as they grow to be proper adventurers. But there are different forms of awkwardness.

She carefully observes them, eyeing the girls in particular and their habits. She skims over the orcs and the elves and everything that isn’t human until she singles out a few to observe.

A noble will have easily identifiable habits and ticks that a commoner won't, even if she is in disguise.

“A- Acacia?” asks a voice from the side, another new student.

…Huh…

A girl with short, strawberry tinged hair turns her head to look at the person calling her name.

…That can’t be, can it?

“Yes?” asks the girl. She’s small and scrawny. She’s a bony thing with pale skin and a build that most definitely does not indicate a noble’s childhood of abundance and health.

Junis leans against the wall, listening for a while as she can’t quite understand something very obvious.

She’s using her real name? Her full name? The princess in exile is actually calling herself by her full name in public — her real, actual, identifiable name?

The elf stares in disbelief.

Is she stupid?

Is she not even trying to hide?

___________________________________

“The war?” asks the count. “I need my men here,” he explains. “I don’t care about the war.”

“His majesty insists, Master,” replies the advisor, bowing his head. “Not just the men. But the graduates too.”

The count hisses between his teeth. “Tell him we’ll begin foreign combat training immediately,” he replies, locking his fingers together. “It will take several months.”

“Will we be?” asks the advisor.

“No,” replies the count. “My bride to be is doing well?”

“She’s located a home and is studying at the academy as reported,” he replies. “However she is… untalented.”

It’s quiet for a time. “Perfect,” replies the count. He looks his way. “I cannot force her if I want to take the throne,” he says. “I need her to willingly let me do so.” He waves him off. “Let her fail. Let her become destitute,” he explains. “After our spoiled princess has experienced a little bit of real life for the first time, well…” He shakes his head, shrugging with his hands held out. “A charming, dashing count will come to save her from being dragged under the water.” He looks at him. “You will see to it, I trust.”

“Yes, Master,” replies the man.

Junis scrubs.

_____________________________________

She’s actually really nice.

Junis watches her from a distance, interacting with the other students. Acacia is terrible at everything. Even for their first classes, Acacia is pretty awful at every subject. But her class likes her because she’s nice.

The elf doesn’t really know what makes her think this, but she realizes that Acacia seems… okay. It’s mundane, almost. They never really interacted with each other. She and her are in different circles, and she sees to it that it stays that way. They’re being watched from a distance. But Acacia, despite being a true princess, is just kind of normal. She’s a bit awkward and weird, and it looks like she tries too hard.

Junis looks down at her notes.

— There’s a red streak on the paper.

She quickly slaps the notebook shut before anyone can see it and rubs her hands over her clothes, wiping off some dried blood that was stuck somewhere.

If she herself can graduate, then she can get out of here. If the draft for the war affecting the student graduates is true, she’ll be able to join the military. It’s not exactly her dream, but at least she’ll be able to get away from here.

Acacia won’t be able to do that, though. Even if she somehow passes, which she won’t, the count would never allow her to. His plan is already in motion. It’s only a matter of time now until he feels like it’s time for him to make his move and swoop her away.

He can be an extremely charming, confident, and assertive man. He’s a public figure, after all. However, nobody really knows what happens in his house when those doors close. It’s not something that she could ever do anything about, something she could ever stop.

Junis looks up at Acacia, sitting by herself.

…But what if the plan didn’t work as expected? She can hardly directly warn Acacia and tell her to run without getting caught, but what if the situation escalated because of unseen factors? What if Acacia decided to not only leave the academy but to just go, to just go as far away as possible in the middle of the night?

But how can she do that without ever directly speaking to her and making it obvious?

Junis’ fingers tap the closed book. She’s not sure what this is, honestly. Maybe this is just her trying to feel good, or maybe this is her way of getting back at the count for everything, or maybe it’s something else entirely. Who can say.

But Junis gets her idea.

She leans over to her classmate, gesturing for them to listen as she whispers.

“Hey! Did you hear about Acacia…” she starts, seeding the first rumor that she can think of.

___________________________________

It is months later.

It worked.

Junis walks to school. Her head isn’t held high or low; it’s just kind of there. Her eyes and expression are as blank as they always are, whether at work or outside of it.

Her plan to get Acacia to just give up and go has worked. The count is currently away on business, so it couldn’t have been better timing. Maybe if one or two things go missing in the estate, they’ll lose track of Acacia entirely for now.

Does she feel good? No. No, she doesn’t.

Junis, walking on her lunch break with her classmates behind her, walks through the park, seeing Acacia sitting there on a bench by herself. A chill runs up her neck. Why is she here, out in public? The girl needs to go.

“- Acacia?” calls her voice. Acacia blinks, turning her head to look, and quickly tucks away the vial. “It is you! I thought I recognized you,” says Junis as the giggling clique approaches her.

__________________________________

“- She got a man,” says a girl across from her.

“Heeeh? Acacia? No way!” says another voice at the lunch table. 

Junis looks at them. “You all seriously have to see this guy. It’s insane!” says the girl from before. “You know that big guy everyone is talking about? The huge knight from the attack?”

“Him?!” ask two others at the same time in shock. “How?!”

Someone waves in from the side. “She must be putting out like crazy to snag someone like that.”

“Acacia?” asks someone at the table. “Can you imagine?”

"Well, it fits the stories that I’ve heard,” laughs someone else.

Junis sits there, quietly eating her lunch.

This is a problem.

Some psycho adventurer swooped in while Acacia was broken down and wooed her before the count managed to do exactly that. What would some bruiser possibly want with Acacia other than the obvious? She’s going to get hurt in a bad way.

She has to get him away from her. Fast.

______________________________________________

~ [Somewhere Dark] ~

Sir Knight removes himself from Junis’ memories, the shadows releasing her from her binds.

She doesn’t know anything about this particular kidnapping. The count and his plan have nothing much to do with what has actually happened here and now. The bodies that were made into undead were for sure his fault, but the actual making of the undead was less so.

The enemy used the grim circumstances to their advantage.

“Well…” says Sir Knight, looking at the blue haired elf who is sitting there and ugly crying in a very severe manner, possibly because of her resurfaced memories or possibly because she’s been imprisoned, threatened, and mildly tortured by an avatar of the infinite void after almost being eaten alive in the mud by an undead horde.

It is very difficult to nail down exactly. Such social nuances are very delicate.

He stares at her as the fresh memories conflict with Acacia’s memories of those events. Neither side of them is hardly pleasant. In fact, Junis’ memories are far more stale and to the point than Acacia’s, which are loaded with extra vivid imaginations of invented scenarios and desires that never actually happened.

Junis’ memories are very linear in comparison.

“I think that this was a valuable learning experience in the field of social communication,” says Sir Knight, looking off into the distance.

He’s getting closer to Acacia.

They’ve almost caught up.