We were walking through the graveyard, past stone sarcophagi and shriveled weeds, when the odd feeling of unreasonable happiness finally faded away, and I felt halfway normal again between exhaustion and the dulled pain. The wolf had given me some weird grass to eat and apparently, it was working wonders.
I feel a bit woozy though. Weee…
Since the wolf knew this place very well and I was both injured and still not entirely sure of which direction led where, I wagered he could take the lead. It was more than convenient that supposedly the “correct” way to enter and leave this godforsaken testament to the mortality of great men and women (and myself) led right back the way I came from, and he grunted in objection only once when I suggested a small detour to pick up Pim.
Going through my initial route, the deep swamp, was, and he made this quite clear to me when I told him about it, “Unnecessarily roundabout, disorientating, and a damn good way to get yourself killed in a thousand and two horrible ways”. The giant fish was apparently only one of the more moderately dangerous creatures that lurked beneath the unending muck.
“So, let me get this straight.” I started. “There’s a worm that lives in the swamp that can bite through metal armor and liquefies you from the inside out?”
“Mhm.”
“And a snail that when stepped on stings you with a barbed spear that has poison so strong, it makes you spit fire out both ends?”
“Mhm.”
“And then there’s a tree adorned with skulls, except it’s not a tree but some sort of monstrous beast that can move its trunk like a leg and suck your soul out of your eyes if you look at it for too long?”
“There’s worse out there.”
“Such as? I mean, what’s worse than burning alive or being eaten from the inside out, being drowned or having your soul sucked from your eyes? Nothing, right? Right?”
“Quiet.” We both stood still, listening for sounds on the wind.
He’d do that every now and again and we’d both wait for a few minutes until the coast was clear. Half of the time I was convinced he was doing it to shut me up.
I really couldn’t help it, talking and talking and just asking things, asking anything at all. The happiness I felt before was replaced with a mounting dread and nervousness I tried to talk away. We weren’t quite out of the frying pot yet. Frying pan. Whatever.
Also, he was the first person who could reliably tell me anything I wanted to know, and I was going to take advantage of it. There was still a lot that I didn’t understand about this place and the questions bugged me like a gaggle of particularly resistant bedbugs.
The other half of the times, something did jump out. Mostly just a giant flea or two, which were quickly shooed off by the wolf or squished into pulp when they made the poorer choice of “fight or flight”. They were attracted by the smell of my blood, so he claimed, and that it was only a matter of time until one of the hosts showed their face around these parts as well. Which is why we tried keeping as steady a pace as they’d let us.
“Sooo, you’re a wolf.” I tried starting a conversation as nothing appeared and we started moving again.
“Mmm.”
“What does that mean? You’re not an animal, so is it your name? A title? A job, a…”
“I cannot tell you that.” He responded briskly.
Was it really that important? Why couldn’t he tell me?
“…because of your duties?”
“If I were to tell you I was bound by oath to never reveal my name, station or mission, would you stop asking?”
“Well… yes?”
He turned to face me. “Then starting now, you may treat it as if that were the case.”
Wow. Ok, I get it, bit of a sore topic. Not that I cared at all really. Nope, not me! Not knowing kind of added to the mystique surrounding this knight and while it didn’t exactly make me more comfortable around him, I wasn’t about to order him to tell me his life story. I probably could. He did swear an oath to me as well.
Would that cancel out his other oath? Wait, if oaths are always binding, what happens if you take two conflicting ones?
I was still pondering the question when we arrived at a part of the graveyard I was starting to recognize by the shape of the mini cathedrals.
Pointy one. A few smashed ones. Round one. Gemstone one. Another few smashed ones...
“Pi–im!” I called out.
“Shhh! Are you insane? Be quiet!”
Ah, right. Flea-host territory. And also, the chanting procession. I should probably shut up.
“Yeah, what he said.” A small voice rang out from within one of the smashed sarcophagi. It was Pim.
“Sorry.” I whispered to the wolf, then walked over to the stone coffin.
“Hey, it’s me, Rye.”
“Oh.” He whispered back. “Welcome back Rye, oh weakest of knights.”
I winced slightly at that. The wolf chuckled, which always sounded a bit ominous the way it reverberated within his armor.
“Yeah, that’s me. I got someone to help me lift your lid.”
“My… lid?”
“Yeah. Oh, right, you probably didn’t know yet, but you’re stuck inside a stone coffin.”
“A coffin?” He didn’t sound very convinced at all. “Are you sure you’re the right Rye? You sound reeeally weird. Like, better-weird.”
“I–just… gah, wait and see.” I turned back to my companion. “Wolf, open the sarcophagus.”
“That would make a lot of noise. And I don’t see how that nor whoever is stuck within would help us.”
What? There’s a child stuck in there. How can he be so heartless? Of course a child isn’t gonna help us, we have to help the child. That’s just… well… that’s how things are!
“There’s a child stuck in there.”
I tried to emphasize it in a way that made it clear how not helping would make him come across as either someone who hated children or who was just kind of an ass in general. Either I was bad at talking or he was bad at picking up hints because he didn’t seem very impressed.
“And?” he said.
My impression of him took a dive.
“Just do it. It’s right, it’s good, it’s what we’re here for. Do what I ask. Now. Please.”
He stared at me for another few seconds before motioning towards Pim’s stone prison. After some inspection of the stone in question, he got to work.
I took in a deep breath, trying to calm myself, to be calm like the ocean.
Chivalry is dead.
It’s ok, don’t worry. Not everyone likes children. Pim’s probably safer on the inside of the coffin than on the outside but leaving him stuck in there would just be unusually cruel and not a decision I could live with.
I failed to fully calm myself. I still didn’t quite have the picture of what an ocean was. It was obvious to me that it was where you could find crabs and stinking green weeds, sand and other coarse things, but that was roughly where the reasonable cut off into a shamble of smells, sounds, flickering pictures and stray emotions.
I… didn’t know what to do with the chaos, so I shoved it aside. It wasn’t bad per se, not a case for the box, just… distracting. Making me feel feelings I could really do without.
Feeling hungry.
Feeling cold.
Feeling sand between my teeth and the discomfort of not knowing bubbling beneath.
With a grinding sound, the lid started sliding off. The wolf was straining under the weight, but he managed to move what I thought was easily a five- to six-hundred pound slab of stone. Which would have been pretty cool if he weren’t huffing and panting like an old man.
I wonder if under his helmet he looks like an actual wolf and that’s why he doesn’t want me prying into his past. It would be pretty weird but between the horrors I’ve seen, I think I’d be ok with it. I wouldn’t trust him around a herd of sheep, but that’s about as far as I–
“GethimoutnowIcannotholdit!” he said, almost too quickly for me to understand.
Oh, right, shit. Focus.
I plunged my left hand into the opening at the side, feeling around for any sign of Pim.
“RYE, RYE, THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRD IN HERE. IT’S COMING, HELP, HELP!” He cried.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“No! No, it’s just me, just my arm, it’s fi– AGH!”
I pulled my hand back as a sharp pain spread through my fingers in spite of leather gloves and metal gauntlets. The little shit bit me!
“You bit me!”
“I–I didn’t, I mean... s–sorry?”
Just for that, I was going to revoke George-petting privileges in the future. But I couldn’t let the anger stay and let it flow out my nose. I had a child to wrangle, and this time, I was going directly for the scruff.
“Hurryuphurryuphurryup!”
The lid tilted a bit more away, giving me more space to work with. I shot my arm down, roughly where I was hearing Pim’s voice coming from. I caught him by what felt like a cloth collar of sorts. The wolf was buckling and probably turning every shade of red and purple at the same time, so I wasted no time and yanked the child from his tomb.
Be free!
He was unusually light, even for a child, and I was expecting him to pop up looking like a skeleton, underfed as he no doubt was from living his second life inside the confines of a sarcophagi.
What I didn’t expect, as I held him up triumphantly with a shaking hand, was a child dressed in what I could only describe as a luxurious, albeit tattered and scuffed set of robes. I probably should have, considering this was a graveyard for kings and queens. No, wait, that didn’t quite sit right in my mind. Did this place even have real kings and queens? Questions for another day.
What I also didn’t expect, as I stared into the face of a very guilty looking child, were two big fuzzy ears sitting on his head, like those of a fox.
I blinked.
Nope, still there.
I blinked again.
“H-hullo.” Pim said sheepishly. “Sorry for biting your hand.”
He picked his teeth nervously with what on first glance looked to be very sharp nails but were obviously not, and in doing so, his mouth revealed rows of even more sharp, triangular teeth.
“Uh.” I uh-ed, completely at a loss for intelligent thought. “Wolf, I think something’s wrong with my child.”
“FFHFGSHSFSSSSS!” He said and with a thud so loud and heavy I could feel it make my heart jump, he let the lid fall to the ground.
“W-wrong? It was an accident, I swear! I didn’t mean to bite you, I just… got scared.”
The wolf was wheezing and coughing in the background. That took more out of him than I expected. He looked up at the child, then at me, still struggling to catch his breath.
“Nothatisnormal. HeisBekki.” Bekki? That word again.
“What does that mean, being ‘Bekki’? Is that bad? Is it a disease? Should I put him back?”
I was holding him a little further away from me than was polite, but I wasn’t going to risk what happened to the old lady to happen to me as well. The mail around my neck was torn and he could bite through the rest easily enough.
“No!” Both of them yelled, making it a very clear point that I’d somehow said something very wrong. Ok, ok, I get it, it’s not a disease.
“I’m not bad!” Pim said.
“He’s right.” The wolf had finally caught his breath.
“So, what does it mean?” They both looked at each other like I was the idiot here.
“Well, where to start?” The wolf cleared his throat. “Ever since before the confluence of races, Humans and Bekki were–“
“Uh, I hear a lot of voices.” Pim said.
The wolf looked a bit taken out of it, having his story be so suddenly interrupted.
“This child better not be insane. I refuse to burden ourselves with a child that hears voices or claims to be talking with ghosts.” He said.
I caught on a bit quicker than he did.
“He’s not. He can just hear really, really well.” I let him digest that as I sat Pim down on the ground so I wouldn’t have to hold him. He immediately fell over. His legs were too weak to support his weight.
“Shit.”
“They’re coming closer.” He was getting more and more anxious by the minute, his ears flicking this and that way. The wolf, finally, realized what Pim was talking about and shouldered his greatsword.
“Where from?” He asked. Pim pointed right. Then he winced, before pointing left as well. Then behind us. Then in front.
“F-from e-everywhere, kind of?”
“Double shit.” I said, looking around.
I couldn’t see anything, of course. My dim light extended only seventeen feet by now, with a circle of about five feet of bright light within it. I couldn’t even hear what Pim was picking up, but I trusted in his abilities to hear things from afar and accurately at that.
“The kid must be mistaken.”
“He is not.” I looked Pim over. Yeah, he was very spindly and weak, as expected. “Can you run?”
“I… no.”
“Ok. Well then.” I picked him up, his sharp teeth way to close to my neck. I pushed the fear down and at the wolf trying to object again, I looked him straight in the eye – or visor, rather – and shot him a glare.
“Tell us where you hear the least amount of noise, Pim.”
----------------------------------------
Come hail or hellfire, I am not letting this child go!
SCREEEEEE!
No! NEVER!
I kicked the flea host in the head while attempting to scoot further away while lying on my back. It tried to smash my leg in retaliation, but I tucked them under my chin, and it missed by mere inches. The attack impacted the cold stone floor with a crunch and I managed to back up a few feet, clutching Pim in one arm and nothing much in the other, owing to the fact that, well, it hadn’t miraculously un-shattered itself over the past few minutes.
Real pity, that.
“Fuckfuckfuck!”
Sounds of grunting, fighting and screeching echoed from behind the flea host, the wolf having run into some… issues with his own fight. To be fair, he was fighting two at once and while he did seem fairly strong and well equipped, I wagered that his sword was probably better used to smash than to cut.
It still kind of felt like a mistake or a betrayal of some sorts on his end when he had let one of them slip past his defenses, allowing it to head for Pim, a child incapable of moving, and me, an under armed (Hah!), exhausted, and crippled amateur fighter.
“Getupgetupge–“
I was quickly becoming a non-amateur at running away though.
A wide swing slammed into the back of my chest plate as I attempted quite poorly to stand up without using my arms. It knocked me back on the ground and the whole shebang started anew.
Stop. Going. For. My. Kneecaps.
I wasn’t ashamed of admitting that I wasn’t really cut out for fighting. I probably had some experience in my past life, judging by how I was still alive despite the ludicrous amounts of close calls concerning death. But I’d mostly put it down to undeserved luck and my frankly unfair amount of armor compared to most everything else.
“Ack!”
I dodged another slam by a finger’s breadth. It was quickly becoming clear what the outcome of this morbid version of whack-a-mole was going to be. I couldn’t do much, except stall.
And so, I did, shuffling and scooting and rolling away in the most undignified way possible. Half of those maneuvers involved some form of knee-jerk reaction to get away from the increasingly frustrated hammer-blows of the host while the other half involved an unsettling amount of involuntary contact of my mangled hand with solid objects in an attempt to leverage my right elbow.
“Shit! Help!” I yelled.
The back of my head bumped into something hard. The flea host’s figure loomed over us, already winding up for one last overhead strike.
This is it. I’m out of breath, out of space, everything hurts. This is where I die. Again. I know I’ve thought that a lot these past few days. I stand by every instance. At least I can die knowing I accomplished something. I–
A blade bored right through the host’s guts from behind. It stood still for a moment, paralyzed and lightly gasping. I looked cross-eyed at the long, red rusty blade half a foot away from my face, panting heavily. Then, its lifeless body fell away to the side, revealing the wolf standing right in front of me as the fleas scattered in every direction.
G-guess it was kinda sharp after all?
The light reflecting off of the shinier parts of his armor only hinted at the rest of his tall frame obscured in the dim light and for a moment, I would have easily confused him with a painting. He immediately got bonked over the head by one of the other two flea-hosts of course, but instead of crumpling to the ground, he stumbled two steps to the side, grumbled and turned around to face them again.
Despite having just almost died and despite the unwarranted feeling of betrayal still reverberating within my heart, both me and Pim watched slack-jawed as he began to methodically parry every hit, cutting arms and legs in turn.
“P-p-pim? A–any other loud things approaching?”
“Wow.” He said, completely captivated by the dance of death.
Sqek said George, who was being carried by Pim. He was breathing fast, and I didn’t like the way he wasn’t moving as much as before, even if he hurt his leg. I was worried, but I couldn’t reserve all of my considerable worry-potential just for him.
“Hey! Hey Pim! Pim the third!”
“Wha-? Oh, s–sorry.”
He scrunched his face up in a grimace that I can only imagine was supposed to look like his was concentrating really hard. However, revealing his very, very sharp teeth so close to me had the opposite of a reassuring effect. I was still not sure of the implications of it being normal. Or if it was normal at all.
“From behind. Lot’s of scrr– scrr– and then a bit of shuffling.”
Fleas and hosts then.
“Also, I think I can hear singing again.”
Ah. And the procession. Shit.
I gathered what little lower body strength I had left and stood up. By this point, that itself was a grand achievement for me. I may have been lowering the bar bit by bit, but it was only fair considering that I was growing able to do less and less. It sucked. It really, really sucked.
When I stepped forward, I noticed that one of the flea hosts was already lying on the ground in what looked to be a shallow pool of blood.
“Wolf. More. Where to next?”
“Hnnggghh! Wait. One. Bloody. Moment.”
“One.” said Pim. Either he really just needed exactly one moment or Pim was a wizard that could see the future, because just as he finished saying that the wolf side-stepped a heavy blow and decapitated his last standing adversary cleanly at the nose.
“Huh.” I added, always a boon to conversation. Fleas began falling off the dead body in droves and with a few stomps and swishes, he had scattered them all.
The wolf huffed, catching his breath as he looked back where we had come from. He turned back forward and started walking. I followed, because evidently, he was still the person who knew where to go.
Also, he’s got a big sword. I should probably stand closer to him next time.
“This place got worse since I last saw it. What happened?” he asked.
I shrugged, partially because I didn’t really know how it had looked before and partially because I really hadn’t been paying attention to any details smaller than a flea the first time I’d snuck along here. I didn’t even have bright enough light to notice all the corpses lying around, even though I distinctly remembered bumping into things lying on the road on more than one occasion.
There were… a lot of corpses strewn about. Flea hosts and what looked like people in once-fancy robes in varying states of decay.
Also, on the way back I was… not exactly in the right state of mind. Something about being lonely and under a lot of pressure, talking to animals and finally going completely cuckoo, I guess. But still, I didn’t quite trust that explanation.
“We’ll have to take a detour.” The wolf finally said as he turned right at the nearest intersection. “But that brings problems of its own.”
“H–how so?”
I don’t think I can handle any problems more dangerous than mopping the crusted dirt and blood off my skin.
With an actual path opened up that would lead back to the temple, I was starting to look forward to all of the immeasurable luxuries I’d indulge when I got back. Like clean water. And a relatively dry and very safe place to sleep. Some food, maybe.
Gods, I’m starving.
“Well, first off, we will still be able to leave the same way as before.”
“That’s good. I think. Maybe.”
He hadn’t told me about exactly how he was intending for us to leave this godsforsaken dump. As far as I knew? I’d find out when we got there. As long as it didn’t involve wading through waist-high swamp water again, I didn’t really care about the how.
“Secondly.” He said, peeking around a corner. “We will have to go by the wardens’ hut. They are… alright folk, but even they will be upset after you stole their keys.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” I blurted out, entirely too happily, before realizing that I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all.
Please just ignore me.
He didn’t.
“How so?” He waved us past. The coast was clear, as far as I could see. He was probably a better judge on that than I was.
I wonder how he gets around without any light?
“Well…” I absentmindedly kicked a Pebble to the side. It cracked off a gravestone, leaving a tiny, white mark. “They won’t bother us too much. I think.”
“You think?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How sure?
“Very. I think.”
“Truly? Did you have a nice conversation over dinner and make merry with them while I was left in a hole to drown?”
Hah, I wish. At least that’s one thing I don’t have to feel guilty about. Just that I slept on the way there, that I failed to do anything to save that one person at the other end of the canyon, that I’m a murderer, a demon, that…
Maybe now was the time to come clean, to confess. While I hadn’t killed either of the wardens personally, at least one of their deaths was indeed my fault.
I couldn’t muster the courage.
“No, well, you see…”
“Listen. I won’t judge your methods. In the end, everything turned out just right after all.”
“…they’re all dead.”
He stopped walking for a second or two. I think he needed that moment to process what I’d said. Was it the right thing to say, was it wrong, was he just surprised, was he disgusted, would he judge me? How would he judge me, did he know what I’d done, could wolves actually read minds?
Even staring at him for half a minute, I had no idea what was going on behind that blackened visor.