“What?”

My confusion at the citation didn’t seem to ease their sudden hostility at all. A man that had been standing behind the king, donned in pristine white robes with a gold sash and an extravagantly pointy hat came forward. He was clutching a silver symbol in his hand so tightly that it was probably going to leave a permanent imprint.

“This man must be an assassin who has slain the Lord Hero! They must be a servant of the Chaos Emperor!”

He started praying in a low voice that I couldn’t hear.

The tension in the air was so thick that I could’ve sliced a warm knife through it and then served it on bread. I still had no idea what had caused such a drastic turn.

“You’ve got it all wrong! I am Lord Ferillion!”

The king suddenly laughed, I could see the color slowly filling back into his face.

“Ha! We cannot be so easily fooled by your lies foul assassin! We can all see the markings of evil’s taint upon you! I’ve seen many wretched criminals in my day, but none so bold as to brazenly wave their marks about like you!”

It took a moment for me to realize what he was talking about, and it occurred to me to look down at my own hands. I nearly screamed when I saw them. Around both my wrists emanate a black mist of some sort, pitch darkness through which light couldn’t pierce. From that mist protruded two skeletal hands. I instinctively tried flexing my fingers, and the bones responded appropriately.

“How… How could this have happened! Something has gone horribly wrong here!”

“The only thing I see wrong here, assassin, is how could you dare to kill the Lord Hero before he even had a chance to start his journey! Knights! Seize that man!”

The knights broke their ranks and started to circle around the platform with their swords and spears held over their shields. The metal shined menacingly in the sunlight. Tears were starting to form in my eyes. I nearly wanted to fall down and cry. I had been sent here to help these people, to save them, and now they were going to kill me for “killing their god-sent hero”. I tried to think of anything I could do to persuade them.

“Wait!”

I held up my hands, and the knights paused their approach.

“Watch it men, he may have powerful magics!”

One knight with a long red plumage on his helmet called out. I remembered that Johnny had said that he sent a messenger to tell them about me. If he had delivered my class details, maybe using my Telekineticist stuff would sway them.

He had said the knowledge would just be there, implanted directly into my head.

Great.

So why the hell was nothing coming to me?

I thought about teleporting to the left or right, crickets. I tried willing the sword out of a knight’s hand, it didn’t so much as wiggle. It seemed that my powers had decided not to make an appearance today.

Seeing me useless flail my hands about, the knights resumed their slow march toward me. I could only think that I had to find some way to get away from here, then maybe I could find a method to contact Johnny and get him to clear everything up! Surely they’d believe him if he said this was all a big misunderstanding! First though, I couldn’t let myself be captured. If all of those shows about medieval times was anything to go off, then they’d lock me in their dungeons for months and feed me scraps (if I got fed at all), torture me for info that didn’t exist, then probably execute me in town square without a trial. People would bring their families to watch. Good wholesome family excursion to the guillotine show!

As the first of the knights started climbing the stairs toward me I noticed that his sword was shaking. His visor was still up, and I could see that he was sweating like he’d just gotten done running a marathon, and was pale enough to rival snow. The poor guy had probably been standing out here in that metal armor for hours in the hot sun, and now was absolutely terrified to approach me. He kept staring at my hands like they were about to fly off and attack him at any moment. It gave me an idea.

If I wanted to escape, I was going to have to take advantage of their fear and the fact that none of them knew what this “assassin” was capable of. They had been expecting the heroic Lord Ferillion, so I would instead show them the “Dark Assassin”. I could apologize for the act later.

My hands flung out to my sides, stretched out in a “come at me” pose as I started doing random sign language gestures with my fingers. To add to the bit, I chanted a few words of German, Italian, and French that I had heard on TV. The knights stopped in their tracks, and the ones that were on the stairs backed up with such zeal that they shoved a few of their fellows off and onto the ground.

“Be careful knights! He is preparing some sort of spell!”

The priest’s warning to them made them back up even further, which gave me more breathing room, but I wanted a clear path to the gate. I thrust my hand out toward the sweaty knight, flexed and wiggled my fingers, and put as much intimidation and bravado into my voice as I could.

“Seventh Dark Art! Aura of Death!”

The crowd gathered in the courtyard flew into a frenzy when they heard that, and scrambled to get as far away from me as possible. They nearly trampled each other like a mob at an electronics store on Black Friday. The poor terrified knight right in front of me dropped like a rock as he finally fainted from a combination of fear and heatstroke. The rest of them shouted in alarm as they turned to run. I had a clear run to the gate, but I needed to keep the ruse going.

“Fools! You think that the killer of your hero could be so easily taken? Ha!”

I stepped over the unconscious man and walked down the cleared stairs with all the confidence I had trained for the stage. How could I perform in front of an adoring crowd if I couldn’t keep my cool in front of these knights? Both warriors and nobles parted around me like the sea around a villainous Moses. One girl stumbled and got shoved aside, she fell down right in my path. I guessed that she was in her late teens, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She wore a delicate blue dress that hung tightly on her petite body, and had a golden tiara on her head which fell off and clattered on the ground.

She was quite pretty, even with those bright green eyes staring at me with fear. The king shouted out behind me.

“The Princess! Knights, save her! Lord Priest, use the gods’ graces to end that killing curse!

Oh shit. If the priest apparently had the power to end my “curse”, that’d give them the opportunity to work out that I hadn’t actually done anything magical at all. What did villains usually do in these sorts of situations? Bomb threat? I’d already kinda done that with the curse. Hostages?

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Alright. Hostages. I knelt down and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her off the ground and spinning her around to use like a human shield. My boney hand rested gently next to her neck. I faced the crowd.

“Stand back! Come any closer and you will see what I can do to your beloved princess.”

The priest put a sudden stop to the incantation he had been chanting, and the king’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his skull with how much they bulged. The girl didn’t struggle in my grasp at all, but she shook like a leaf.

I hated that I had to scare her like that, but I’d apologize later when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men weren’t trying to tear me limb from limb.

“That’s better! I’ll be taking her with me. So long as I’m not followed, she will come to no harm!”

One particularly fancy knight stepped forward from the crowd. His golden armor glistened so brightly it was like someone had plucked the sun out of the sky and sat it in the courtyard.

“I will hunt you to the ends of the world for this, Assassin. I swear on the honor of the Kingdom of Damadell that your life will end by my blade!”

Oh that's fucking great. The last thing I needed was some knight hunting me down on a revenge quest while I was trying to clear my name.

“And who might you be Sir Knight, to be so bold as to think you can kill me?”

He peeled off his helmet with significantly more dramatic flair than necessary, then tossed it aside, revealing flowing blond hair and a chiseled jawline that could’ve carved stone.

“I am the brother of the very girl that you hold hostage. I am Crown Prince Markus Gordeldin! Remember my name and face well, for it will be the very last thing that you ever see. Speak your name assassin! I will know the name of the man that I am going to kill.”

“I am who I said I am!” He glared at me. “For real, I am!”

I hoped that maybe it’d get through to him, but he seemed to think that if he scowled at me hard enough it might make me drop dead. With his sister in my grasp, it didn’t seem that he was willing to straight up attack me. I didn’t feel like sticking around much long to test that. I shuffled backward toward the gate as fast as I could with the princess in tow.

My luck this time was better, as just outside the gate was an abandoned cart attached to a horse. It was left completely unattended. I got into the seat and pulled the princess up with me, grabbed the reins, and prompted the horses to move with a “Hyaah!”. They moved with startling speed, and I nearly fell backward into the cart when they tore down the cobble road and through another gate. We went into a packed district of an actual medieval city.

Townsfolk dove out of the way when they saw the cart barreling down the street, and I yelled ahead “Fucking move!” as we went. We got maybe two hundred feet from the second gate when the sound of galloping caught my ear. I turned to look over my shoulder to find no less than five knights mounted on horseback giving pursuit.

They were rapidly catching up, as they had actual experience with controlling a horse and I didn’t, and they weren’t hauling a large wooden cart behind them.

My sole training in driving came exclusively from a driving sim game at a local arcade, and playing a certain cowboy themed game once at a classmate’s birthday party. That would have to suffice.

I had to juggle between steering the horse to avoid merchant stands and random pedestrians, and digging through the back of the cart to find anything that might help me out. The princess was screaming bloody murder the entire time, and each sharp turn or near miss just made her go up another octave. We hit a long stretch of straight street, and I opened a crate to find a load of large brown cloth sacks. Just about then was when the lead knight caught up and his lance shot out right for my head. By pure instinct I grabbed one of the bags and used it as a shield. Of course that did nothing to stop the lance, but it did make him miss my head enough to stop him from knocking it right off my shoulders.

When he tried to pull his weapon back it took the sack along with it, which dislodged at just the right moment to go flying into the chest of the knight behind him. It exploded into a cloud of white powder. Blinded by what looked like flour, he rode his horse directly into a cart of produce and was sent flying off when they collided. That was one of five knights down. I hefted another bag from the cart just as I felt a thud, and looked up to find another knight had leapt off of his horse and landed among the crates. While he was still getting his balance I tossed the bag at him and nailed him right in the face.

Another burst of flour filled the air and he fell backward off the cart and onto the road. The remaining three narrowly avoided running him over as they took up flanking positions. Two rode to my left and right, the third came up from directly behind. The two at my sides were lining up their lances to try and skewer me between them, while the third tried his best to jam the rear wheels of the cart with his lance.

I don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered some old comedies that I watched with my grandfather. They gave me an idea. I pulled back on the reins with all of my might, and the horse tried to come to a sudden halt. The two men chose the wrong time to thrust, and their lances sailed right in front of my head and into each other. Both of them were launched sideways off their horses. The knight behind me ran right into the back of the cart, flipping off of his horse and into the crates.

Before any of them had the chance to recover, I got the horse moving again. I took every turn I came across in an attempt to shake them off my trail, while the man in the back slowly collected his senses. We came to a narrow alley, and up head I saw a clothesline strung across the way. I ducked, pulling the princess down with me. The knight was not so fortunate to notice, and while he was using a crate to prop himself up the line took him across the neck. He was ripping away, nearly strung up as we left him behind.

Without any more knights tailing us, we rode through the back alleys in relative peace (disregarding the princess’s hyperventilating). A few minutes later we made it through the last gate just before they started to close it, and were well on our way into the countryside. Eventually the horse had to slow down from its exhaustion, but we were already miles from the city. A few farms and small cottages dotted the fields to both sides of the first road. The sun was still high in the sky, and I could see men and women out working the land.

It was peaceful, a good change of pace from the life-or-death rush earlier. I decided it was probably a good idea to get off of this main road and to find something to cover up my hands.

Something told me that they’d make it hard to get the locals on my side.

While I was thinking about it, I took the time to actually look at them. Everything from my shoulder down to my forearm seemed normal enough, just my usual un-muscular arms. Two inches from my wrists was where things actually changed. There was this sheer darkness, like I had painted my wrists in vantablack. The lack of anything wisped out like a cloud of void, and from there protruded my new skeleton hands. I could still feel the reins clutched in my fingers. I felt the slight afternoon breeze against the bone.

When I touched something with them I could still feel the textures, but by all appearances my hands were bare bone. I couldn’t even figure out how they were still moving without any muscle or tendons, beyond waving it off as “magic!”.

The princess had quieted down, still too scared of me to try to escape or attack, and I was enjoying the lack of screaming. Back home I’d never had a truly peaceful moment like this. I was either working myself to exhaustion or getting tormented by Yuki.

The rare moments that I had some peace and quiet were inevitably ruined in some way, either by my parents forcing chores on me or the discovery of some booby trap left in my belongings.

Saying that the ride was pleasant despite me certainly having a bounty put on my head, and a kingdom’s crown prince hunting me down, might sound a bit crazy. I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. I’d take running for my life over dealing with that little demon any day.

When the sun started dipping below the horizon I found us a small patch of trees to stop at for the night. The whole time that I was tying up the horse and building a campfire the girl just stared at me, first with fear, then a growing glare of pure hatred.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”