The steady rhythm of slow, trotting footfalls thrummed within the natural basin formed between two steep and tall hills. One boot struck an unexpected rock, which was sent skittering and clacking across its many hundreds of fellows, creating echoes of its sound which were much louder than what such a small stone should be capable of. The soldier at the front of the group paused and whirled around to glare over his shoulders at his companions: a group of rougher-looking and more swarthy fellows than he. He pointedly pressed a single gloved finger to his lips, causing the other seven men to roll their eyes and grumble under their breaths. The lead soldier sighed with bone-deep exasperation then–not for the first time that day–before turning back to continue on his way.

It had been a day or so prior that the Lord Mayor had ordered his men to spread themselves out in every direction, with the task of seeking any new routes leading near to the center of the territory where the Castle of the Count and the Countess resided. This soldier knew not why the Mayor would seek unseen paths into the territory of their Lord Count, and it made something in his gut stir with unease, but he was sworn to his service and therefore could not refuse the order.

And indeed, this was not the first edict in recent memory that had left him, or his fellows amongst the House Guards for that matter, ill at easy. The ranks swelling up with an influx of rough-looking and uncivilized brutes of unknown origins had already caused a great deal of dismay and worry among the highly-trained local Coronton soldiers, who now found themselves outnumbered four-to-one by these rambunctious strangers.

The city of Coronton sat just along the border Petrice shared with the Barony of Otkorn, Southeast from the Castle at the center of the County. South of the Castle lay a row of mountains, similar to the ones which encased the territory on all sides, and near to which the already tall and steep hills turned into craggy slopes of rocks and sand for several miles. It was into this rough terrain where this soldier and his men had made their way, up until they had come across an odd trench, one which was deep, round and winding, and which had continued on for several hundred yards from where they had entered it and which threatened to continue on further still.

The soldier looked about with a nervous sheen of sweat dripping slowly down his furrowed brow. It had been within the last half-hour that he had realized that this trench was taking them more Westward than North– towards the No-Man’s land. While traveling on foot, it would take several tens of days for them to reach the wastelands where the Monsters roamed, the path that they were on showed no sign of changing its course, and sometimes those vile creatures were known to wander towards civilization if left to their own devices. With every step this motley company took West, the threat of stumbling upon some horrible and dangerous Thing grew ever greater.

“Lord ‘ave mercy, what are you lookin’ so spooked fer?” Came a shout from the back of the procession.

A small chorus of chuckles arose from across the group, but another pointed glare from the soldier at the front smothered them back into silence once more. The other men shared both skeptical and exasperated looks between each other.

“...You were fine not ten minutes ago, what’s got your guts in a knot now?” Another man complained quietly, although this time his voice was threaded with an undercurrent of his own anxiety.

The head soldier came to an abrupt halt, and therefore forced the men at his back to a stop in their tracks as well. He peered over his shoulder towards his men, while with one hand he gestured down at the dirt around them.

“Look at this.” He said, still keeping his voice somewhat hushed. “Does this all look… natural to you?” To which the thugs all peered about and squinted down at the soil in confusion, although with little enthusiasm.

“This isn’t about those ‘Monsters’ you Petricians ‘re always goin’ on about, is it?” One man asked. When the soldier did not reply, this crude querent let his shoulders sink, as if exhausted by the very notion, before he continued. “Look, ‘ave you ever even seen one of these ‘Monsters’ before, boss?”

The soldier remained silent, but narrowed his eyes at the man who had spoken. Then he turned his head up to the sky. It was gray as always, but it appeared then to be slowly descending down towards the earth as a blanket of misty fog settled across the surrounding terrain, obscuring their already narrow view of the path ahead.

“...We’re going back.” The soldier said then, in a louder and more decisive voice than he had used up til then. “About face! Now!”

Some of the men openly groaned or cried out in protest, while others grumbled about how they had come so far only to turn back now. The lead soldier paid them little heed. The moment he had turned his back, a horrible feeling had swept over him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight, a cold and shivery feeling ran down his spine, and his stomach threatened to upturn itself for a brief instance before reluctantly settling once more.

As the other men slowly trudged around and began to dejectedly march back the way they had come, one of the men who now stood as the last in the line, and therefore was the closest to the commanding soldier, glanced back at him and noticed his newly-pale visage.

“Boss..?” He asked. “Are you feelin’ alright?”

The soldier shook his head, then. “I’m fine, I-” But as he raised his head to meet the other man’s gaze, he found that the ruffian in question was no longer looking at him. The man was currently staring just over his shoulder, back down the way they had just been headed moments prior, into the veil of fog that covered the path fog. His eyes were blown wide with shock and trained on something the soldier could not see.

“Private..?”

The soldier directly addressing him managed to shake the swarthy underling from his stupor, and their eyes finally met. Now both of these men wore matching expressions–pale, shaken and unsure. The rest of the company had walked a few paces further before they noticed their fellows lagging behind, and they paused and turned back to them.

“Are we leavin’ or what?”

“Y-yeah! We’re comin’!”

With that, together those two men ran at a jogging pace in order to catch up to the others. As they went, further on and deeper into the steadily-thickening cover of fog, a pair of eyes remained locked upon them–eyes that would have appeared Human, but were much too large, bloodshot, and… strange.

----------------------------------------

You would not have thought, at a first glance, that this was a meeting between a Count and Countess, a husband and wife, or two such equals with any shared regard between them. For Niklas stood stiffly at the doorway, staring at the floor in a pose most withdrawn, while his wife sat behind her desk across the room from him, glaring at him menacingly through the polished surface of her mask. Niklas cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head awkwardly in the silence, quite evidently waiting for the Countess to make the first move. Uldred sighed in resignation before she gave in and spoke.

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“For a man in the seat of the Count to abscond alone, without warning, in the middle of the night...”

Even though he had been bracing himself for it, his Lady’s scolding tone nonetheless caused Niklas to wince.

“...and let me remind you, Count Niklas, that you had not yet even resided in Petrice for longer than six months before you disappeared suddenly, and without a word!”

As she spoke, and her voice continued to grow louder, Uldred also steadily began leaning forwards onto her hands which were laid flat upon the desk. Soon she was not even resting in her seat anymore, but rather leaning entirely forward over the desk, whose wooden surface was creaking beneath her weight!

“What was I to think, pray tell? For all I knew, you were never to return. Stealing off into the dark and abandoning me to clean up the mess you left in your wake!”

After a brief silence she realized how tense she had grown, and her desk groaned in relief as she righted herself before falling back into her large chair, from which Niklas heard a distinct crack as she did, but which Uldred chose to ignore as she continued.

“I stood upon those battlements, waiting for some glimpse of a lone horseman coming down the road. It was all I could do! We have no footmen to send on a wild goose-chase searching for their lost Lord.”

As she spoke Uldred unthinkingly reached beneath her mask to rub at the center of her brow, her knuckles causing the mask’s gleaming face to lift a little as she did so. So when she peered back up at her husband, expecting to see a small and quivering figure, you could imagine her surprise when her gaze met his gleaming and doe-eyed stare.

“...what is it?” She asked then, suspicious and unsure of this reaction.”

Catching himself, Niklas cleared his throat again and shook his head then as if to clear it. “N-nothing. It was nothing.”

Uldred narrowed her eyes then, and one of her gloved fists slammed against the surface of her poor old desk. “What?” She growled with such force it nearly caused him to leap out of his boots!

“Well, I-I had simply realized…” Niklas stammered in reply. “Th-that this was the first time I’ve ever heard your voice! Without the mask in the way, that is!” And as he explained this he gestured up at his own face, as if to guide her understanding with his hands as well as his words.

To Niklas’ eyes it appeared that she simply stared back at him for a long moment, unaffected and uncaring. He could not see beneath her mask to know how she had turned beet-red at the realization of what she had just done.

“...It is a b-beautiful voice, might I add.” He added.

He had scored a critical hit.

Uldred suddenly slumped, with her head now limply resting upon the palms of her hands. Niklas broke out into a cold sweat as she deflated before his eyes. From his point of view, he saw himself as a doddering little man who had just distracted his hard-working wife from serious affairs just so he could pay her a woefully lacking compliment. He quickly began to stammer out a panicked apology, one which she thankfully could not hear over her heart, which was beating quite loudly inside her burning, tomato-colored ears!

“Enough!” Uldred cried out again, mercifully interrupting the stumbling torrent of words that Niklas had been releasing in his panicked state.

Now it was her turn to stammer as she spoke again, so unsettled was she by his unexpected compliments. With one hand she gestured in the direction of the courtyard. “Th-this is your mess out there–that Moot! I cannot save you from it.”

Now it was Niklas’ face which turned serious and determined, and he stood with a bit more rigidity, like a soldier called before a commanding officer.

“You on your lonesome will have to go out there and convince… those people of your innocence. The taxation, the issue of Coronton, all of your meddling, it will be your burden to bear! And I will be frank: I do not see you coming out of this with your seat intact, at least not without God Himself acting in your favor somehow”

Niklas grit his teeth at her blunt words and furrowed his brow as he contemplated the worst possibility. And what if I am to be forced to return home, mere months after my ascension and departure, because I was dethroned in record time due to sheer incompetence? My career would be over–I could never recover from such a disgrace. I cannot allow this to happen!

Drawing himself out of his thoughts, he then took a step forward towards the Countess and dipped into a bow, one which was small but nonetheless rigid and dutiful, like his knightly ancestors before him. There was no trace of a stutter in his voice when he next spoke, and his voice rang clear and sure. “I swear to you, Countess Uldred, that I shall overcome this plight! This minor issue will be resolved posthaste, and then together we shall lead this territory into such glory days as it has never seen before!”

Uldred was most taken aback by the heavy undercurrent of responsibility in his words and in his tone. Indeed, for the first time since she had met him, he now appeared like a true example of Nobility, in both his actions and spirit!

“Y-yes well… see that you do.” Uldred managed to reply, waving a hand dismissively. “N-not that I care if you get kicked out–I mean… it would just be a shame. To have to be wed again, I mean!”

Niklas had to stifle a laugh then, for in that moment the prickly Countess had appeared inexplicably cute as she yammered on, obviously unsure of what to say. As the smallest humorous exhale escaped his lips, a sharp violet glare shot over in his direction, causing him to cough vigorously into his fist to mask his amusement! He then realized something with a start, and he returned Uldred’s angered gaze with a confused one of his own.

“W-what?” Uldred asked, a bit unsettled.

“Oh no, it’s just…” Niklas mumbled aloud, realizing that the subject of questioning that he had been dreading this whole day had not yet come up during Uldred’s scolding. “...I had thought that you were going to ask me what has happened to our Seal..?”

At his words Uldred herself was struck with a bolt of realization herself. She scrambled about with her hands as she feverishly searched for perhaps the most important item in the entire Castle, one which she had not even thought might be missing until now, despite the copious amounts of documents that she had been working over for the last few days!

Unable to hold it in any longer, Niklas burst out into a hearty belly-laugh, one that could not be stifled even by the full weight of Uldred’s heaviest glare, and which caused Lady Merida, who had been waiting just outside the door, to jump in surprise!

“Wh-where is it?!” Uldred demanded of her husband then, who was now nearly doubled-over in uproarious cackling!

Finding an opening to speak through his irrepressible glee, Niklas wiped the tears from his eyes and replied. “I… I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you after this meeting-thing!”

He then took the opportunity to crack open the doors behind him, which he then slipped through quick as a flash, just before a heavy old leather-bound tome crashed into the wood where his head had just been! Now alone, the discombobulated Countess clasped her hands to her head and released a guttural roar full of a terrible anger, the sort of rage fueled by the emotion called embarrassment that Uldred had never quite felt so keenly before Niklas had unwittingly thrust himself into her life.