I woke to the feeling of a boulder digging into my stomach, and a face-full of armored butt, and as you can imagine, it was not pleasant.

Guess Fijan got something right after all…

Also, who here figured out fully metallic butt armor? How did they research it? How were the measurements taken, before it was made? Are you seeing were I’m going with this?

Why do I care?!

Perhaps the blood rushing to my head is making me delirious…

The man over whose shoulder I was slung, was whistling a jaunty tune, and as I figured a few seconds later, my face smacking against his backside, the buffoon was skipping…

I groaned and tried to roll off his shoulder. This was unwise.

I fell like sack of grain, the unnaturally long distance to the ground. When I landed, I felt like a sack of grain.

“Soil man! You’re awake!”

As I looked up at his form, I realized what I had only noted subconsciously before. He was a humanoid signpost.

Ugh! Tall people!

I’ll stop you right there.

No, I wasn’t short in my past life, I was of a perfectly normal height. Also no, I won’t be mentioning how tall I was. I just think tall people are… odd, from an evolutionary standpoint.

How would having a higher center of gravity help you survive?!

Hmm? Can’t reach tall shelves? Get a stool!

‘Nuf said…

The dude helped me up and we stood face to face for the first time. Even with the helmet on his head, and his face covered with grime, he looked like, if Chris Evans had a glow-up.

He stepped back to assess me in turn. After a few moments, he smiled and extended his palm. “Knight Yero of Nukim, pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Jude” I clasped his hand, “Of the soil.”

“Hahaha” He guffawed, “Good one, Soil man.”

He sobered up, “Master Jude, I’m the knight charged with guarding this part of the forest surrounding the city of Nukim.”

Just you?

“So, I’d like to know how you got beyond the outer wards” He looked me up and down, “… Naked as a cloudless sky at night.”

My hand instinctively covered my jewels.

“Uh… it’s a long story, which I’m willing to tell... provided you can get me some clothes.”

Yero grimaced in thought, but after a bit, he reaches behind himself. I hear a click, and a small compartment opens on the back of his armor.

Cool…

He pulls out a few tightly rolled bandages.

“This is the best I got.”

“ ... ”

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

We walked side by side on the path, a few minutes later. I moved with extra swagger, my Bandage Boxer Shorts TM on full display. I studiously ignored the weird looks Yero was giving me, he wouldn’t understand.

Confidence alone can transform a clothing accident into a fashion statement.

Shortly after, Yero turned to me, “Are you ready now?”

“Yeah.” I sighed, “First off, all I remember of my life, is from a few hours ago, convenient I know…”

I told him a heavily edited version of the past few hours, omitting the whole soul thing and making damn sure, he realized my decision to help him against the monster, came from a place of courage, not foolishness.

“By the way, are creatures like that common around here?” I glanced at Yero. He had stopped walking and was frowning at his feet.

“Yero?”

He looked at me, “Describe that bunker again, please.” So, I did.

He reached into that compartment in his armor again, pulled out a scroll and opened it. I took a look at what was on it. A bunch of lines and pictograms - Oh, a map! With something like circuitry running haphazardly over it.

Are some of those pictograms moving?

I felt Yero’s eyes on me, so I met them, “What’s up?”

“If what you said is true, we’ll need to go back there.”

“What?! I’m not going back there, man! Weren’t you listening when I mentioned the creepy fog, blocking the way back?!”

“I was. However, your story also implied that the bunker was not only broken into, but was used for some kind of ritual. Guess what? The heavy wards surrounding it haven’t been tripped.”

Crap, guess they have some kind of alarm system going… and a security problem.

“I swear I’m not lying!”

“Regardless. We still have to check. This is my duty, creepy fog or no.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

My heart was beating faster now, and I wanted to bolt, but I remembered there were monsters, “What about the beast you fought? What if there are more?!”

He seemed to consider it, then me, “The beast you speak of was corrupted. There is only ever one of those in an area at a time, and making them takes effort.”

“They’re made?!’

“Not exactly, Mr. Amnesia. A corrupted is a mutated beast that usually forms when horrible things have been done in the vicinity of any magical beast.”

“...Like a dark ritual?”

“Depending on the severity of it, yes.” He frowned at me, “From what you told me, nothing too bad happened because you escaped midway, right?”

“Uh… yeah.”

His frown deepened.

This is where half-truths get you, Jude… when a lie would have sufficed.

“I may have downplayed the horror a bit, but I did escape!”

“This is why we’re going back.” He said, his giant hand clasped firmly around my arm. He marched back the way we came.

“Once I’ve confirmed your story, we can return to Nukim.”

I started to struggle, “Hell no! What if the ritualists are still there?! You can’t defeat them alone! You barely won against a chihuahua-sized corrupted!”

“Oh? What’s a Chihuahua?”

“A kind of do- I don’t remember…”

“... You're far too suspicious. A terrible liar too.”

“Look, I’m not saying I won’t follow you back there. All I’m asking is that you consider all options!” I dig in my heels, “What’s the guarantee that there isn’t more than one corrupted running around?! I say, we get to the city, where it’s safe, and call for backup!”

He gave me an incredulous look, “You think you’re making sense, don’t you?”

“Only ONE beast can be corrupted per dark event.”

“Wha-Why?”

“I don’t know! Do I look like a mage to you? Also, I will have backup - I’ll call them in when we get to the beast’s corpse.”

“Wait, you have phones here?” I blurted.

“What’s that, another thing you’ve forgotten?!”

I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it.

I’m playing myself, here. My words aren’t helping one bit.

We reached the small clearing with the corrupted beast’s corpse about an hour later, if the sun’s position was any indication. By this point, I was dead tired, and I collapsed on the ground the moment he released my arm.

I tried to ignore that the corpse was missing bite-sized parts, now.

On the walk over, I’d had the time to think over the situation from the knight’s perspective:

Yero finds monster, sees it’s corrupted, fights it. Finds suspicious guy, suspicious guy tells him a story about a dark ritual, that occurred in a bunker. He checks the scroll(?) to confirm, only to find his perfect circle of clues going hyperbolic.

I honestly felt bad for the guy. But I just wanted water, a warm meal, and a bed.

Or just water. I’ll take that, for now.

Yero was kneeling on the ground, the map scroll lying flat before his knees. He had his finger on a portion of it, but was otherwise just staring at it.

“Hey, you have some water?”

Yero pulled out a small metal bottle from his armor, and tossed it to me, “Don’t let the rim touch your lips!” He hesitated, “You can drink as much as you like.”

I tried to take only as much as I needed and leave some for the knight. I underestimated my need. I only realized something odd was going on when the water wasn’t drained, even after many mighty gulps.

Some kind of bottle of endless water? Magic can be so cool…

I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and kept on drinking. The bottle was unceremoniously snatched from my hand, “Don’t drink it all, it only has so much extra space.”

Weren’t you the one that said, ‘drink as much as you want’?

“Thanks, I needed that.” I wiped my lips, “Have you called your friends?”

“Yes. They haven’t answered.” He seemed contemplative, “Come look at this.”

I followed Yero to the scroll on the floor. He put his finger on a spot on it and suddenly, new pictograms appeared on the map. These ones were also moving.

“Watch the moving icons.” Yero said.

I watched them for a while and didn’t see anything amiss. Seeing my expression, Yero pointed at an icon with the same symbol as the moving ones, except this one wasn’t moving.

“This is me. Observe.”

Keeping his finger in place he turned his head from left to right carefully. I noticed a circle with four points on the outer parts of his icon, rotating from right to left as his head moved.

“Is the rotating circle what I’m looking out for?”

“Yes.” He said, stopping his motion, “Now, watch the other icons’ circles.”

I didn’t take me long to figure out the problem. The other icons were moving on the map, but their circles remained fixed, “They’re not moving their heads?”

That’s virtually impossible. Especially for people on patrol, keeping your head on a swivel is probably the difference between life or death here, “Is your map broken?”

“That’s impossible for reasons I won’t expound on.” He rolled up the scroll, “There’s always at least one conversation happening on the channel. Anyone can listen in on anyone of them, but the channel has been silent since a few hours ago, apparently.”

When and how did you check that?

“Given what the map is implying… The plan’s changed.” He looked at me.

“The only reason I haven’t been harsher on you, is on the off chance that you're actually a victim in all this, but no more. You’re free to come clean when you feel like it.”

He whipped out a coil of rope, “Hands behind your back, please.” My hackles raised; I stepped back.

He’s just doing his job, Jude. Calm down.

I sighed, complying.

With my hands tied, he guided me in a different direction from where we were going, “Uh, not to bother you, but we might be going in the wrong direction.”

“We’re not going to the bunker just yet. Instead, we’re checking on the knight, closest to us.”

Alright.

We burst out of the foliage onto another path in the forest and walked along it for a bit. Yero set a punishing pace, but I refused to complain. A few minutes later, we saw another knight walking ahead of us.

“Lillian!” Yero let go of me and ran forward, “Thank the Domina! What the hell is going on?!”

The knight remained silent, they also refused to stop.

“Lillian?” Yero placed a hand on their shoulder, “Lillian!”

The moment his hand touched them, they collapsed like a string-less puppet. Yero caught them around the waist and gently laid them on the floor.

As I moved closer, I saw the face of the Knight. Her face was deathly pale, and devoid of emotion. My heart dropped to my stomach.

Yero was muttering nonsense, his hands checking for her pulse. He placed his ear to her chest, “No-no-no-no-” He even whipped out some sort of syringe and plunged into her heart, but she refused to stir.

She was dead.

“AAAGGH!”

I flinched, and instinctively took a step back from the grieving man. This was too much, on top of everything else. It had been a deeply unpleasant day already.

So, I sat down on the ground and watched, numb, my arms twisted behind me uncomfortably.

Sometime later, he stopped sobbing.

Wiping his eyes, he closed Lillian’s eyes, then he reached into the gap between her armor and her neck and retrieved a medallion.

Placing the medallion on his forehead, he closed his eyes. When he opened it, he was frowning. He fished out another medallion, this time out of his own armor and placed the two together, muttering to himself.

In a sudden fit of violence, he cut a corner of his palm with a knife he got from somewhere and dripped his blood over the medallion. He closed his eyes again and this time cursed under his breath after some time.

He opened his eyes and stared at nothing for a while.

Unthinkingly, I shifted and the sound of me moving seemed to snap him out of it. He wore the medallion around his neck and turned to me, for a moment.

The look on his face terrified me.

He turned away and began transferring the items in her armor compartment into his own.

As he did this, I found the courage to speak.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Hmm… Her death was quick, painless.” He said tonelessly as he dusted his knees, “You’re sure you don’t know anything about this?”

I shook my head.

“No matter. We’ll find out soon enough.” He dragged her body to the side of the path and rearranged her pose.

“We’re returning to the city, as you wanted. We can’t afford to dally here.” He walked to me and roughly picked me up.

“Whoa! W-What about her bod-”

“I can’t carry her and you at the same time”

“Why do you need to carry m-”

The world blurred.

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

When the world stopped spinning, and I was done puking bile onto the forest floor, I looked up to see massive gray walls, with tall white marble buildings jutting out far behind them.

This was the place I saw before.

“Are you fit to move?” Yero asked, standing akimbo.

What the hell was that?!

“I’ll live.” I picked myself up, “Did we just teleport?”

“... I’d rather not say. Come, there’s no time to waste.” He said, then he marched me towards the city gates.