~ [Priestess Dandy and the Hero] ~
The village sprawls in disarray, a patchwork of thatched roofs and cobblestone streets draped in the muted hues of dusk. Screams fill the air, mingling together with black, acrid smoke. Dandy rides into the heart of the chaos alongside Hero, the air thick with the scent of sweat and fresh blood. Having crossed the border into the Kingdom, they’ve arrived in a settlement further to the west. It’s under attack, not by soldiers of the Empire but by roaming undead that have been reanimated by the chaotic magics flooding the world because of the war. “We have to help them,” Hero says. His golden eyes blaze.
Dandy hesitates, a wave of anxiety crashing over her as he’s already jumped off of his anqa, his boots hitting the ground. Her mind races. She feels pain and fear pooling in her gut, battling fiercely against the fact that she knows that they need to help. “But...” she starts, her words choking on the weight of memories that threaten to resurface. She can feel herself leaning back, her anqa looking for instructions as to if it should let her off or turn around and bolt the other way.
“Dandy!” He turns to her, calling her name as she freezes. Dandy’s heart flits around inside her chest, her eyes dancing faster than her thoughts as memories of her childhood and of the monastery fill her mind and her emotions. The old instincts tug at her, urging her to turn back and run as fast as she can the other way from danger. Screams and fire fill the air, her eyes, and her thoughts. The anqa takes a step back.
A hand grabs her wrist. Her terrified eyes look his way as he stares up toward her from down below.
“If you’re going to run,” starts Hero, lifting his other arm to point toward the burning village. “Then run this way with me! I need you here!” She looks toward a group of terrified villagers huddled against a wall; their faces pale with dread as the horde of shambling feet and lurching bodies encloses toward them. “- Dandy!” calls Hero urgently.
Dandy unfreezes, letting out a series of words most unbefitting of a holy woman as she jumps off the anqa, the animal kneeling down to let her off. He claps her the shoulder and runs ahead, drawing his sword free from its sheath and immediately cutting through a shambling body that had begun turning their way. The monster, the zombie, falls in half and begins crumbling into ash as the holy glow of his cut burns through its rotten flesh. Dandy feels the tide turn within her. She can’t simply stand by and do nothing, and she can’t run away — he’s right. But she can run this way too. The villagers’ cries pull her forward, unraveling the knots of fear, her fingers brushing against the staff clasped tightly in her grip. It feels right—an extension of her will, ready to channel every ounce of holy energy she has buried beneath fear.
A rotten face pops out from below a fractured beam of wood, sunken in eyes and broken teeth pressing out toward her.
Dandy screams like a shrill witch, cracking her staff down over the trapped zombie’s head before sprinting around in a half-circle in surprised terror, before following her instincts to keep bashing, the staff thudding down repeatedly until the unnervingly soft skull of the monster gives way. She stands there, covered in grime, panting. The sound of moaning undead fills the air and drifts through the cries of frightened villagers. Shadows converge upon them, a ravenous swarm of skeletal hands clawing through the dirt, their hollow eyes glimmering with a terrible hunger. Her eyes look toward Hero. He makes it look so easy. He’s just gliding through them one after the other, cutting his way forward through easily a hundred of them, slicing through undead with unnatural elegance, the light of his blade creating bright arcs.
— But behind him, a hundred more leak out of the alleyways and the ruins, coming from dark and distant places, converging around the hiding spots people have found within the village center.
“Hero!” Dandy shouts in alarm. But he’s too busy trying to protect the villager there. She feels the shift in energy coursing through her, the call of holy magic resonating like a heartbeat in her veins as she runs, thwacking another zombie out of the way with a strike over its head and pushing another one down with the end of her staff, before clambering over some debris. It’s all happening again, isn’t it? The monsters, the death — they’re always following her. They always find her. First come the monsters, then come the people.
— A warmth pulses within her core, and she closes her eyes for just a moment, not sure if she isn’t about to faint. Dandy plants her staff into the ground, bracing herself against it as a jelly suddenly fills her legs. She opens her eyes again, panting in fear as she scans the area. Faces. Hollow, wet, rotting faces look back at her from every shadow, every corner, and they’re coming closer and closer.
A hand grabs her robe.
Dandy looks down in terror.
It’s just some kid, hiding behind an overturned crate — some girl. She’s covered in blood and ashes, and her face is painted with a death mask of fear. There’s nowhere to run anymore, and the hiding places won’t work anymore.
A crackle fills the air, hissing higher than any of the sparks of flame consuming the village and higher than any scream or wail. Dandy braces herself on her staff and then braces herself without it, spreading her feet wide as she lifts the rod higher above her head. A flickering glow now pools around her, illuminating the shadows with a prismatic wash of light that almost seems to be running down from her hand like water from a broken fountain. Glistening, deeply radiant holy magic seeps like fog down past her and through the legs of a hundred groaning undead that are now within breath, and a hundred more before them. A wave of radiant energy that bursts forth, casting away the darkness surrounding her. The light envelops the undead, exploding outward like the bloom of a new dawn, cleansing the wretches that stagger into its embrace. The moans of the undead punctuate the air, swallowed by brilliant light; bones disintegrate into shining dust, leaving nothing but silence in their wake as they crumble.
Everything cascades in white. The ash, the fire, the faces, the people, the world — for just a brief flash of history, it all becomes as pure and crisp within her vision.
Magic pulses from her, washing through the village in waves. Row after row of zombies falls apart as people shield their eyes from the glory of heaven and others watch in awe as the very same magic that floods the air all around them heals fresh wounds and mends the cuts and burns of the still living.
And then, like the idle sway of a church bell after its last ring, it all stops and falls silent.
The light of the normal world begins to return to everyone’s sight, revealing only a village full of peeping heads and air full of colorful fairy dust that drifts off in the wind toward a grave more fitting than such a place as this. Dandy, frozen, looks around herself as she processes yet another event that she doesn’t understand as she looks at the people who are looking at her. She’s not sure what to do, what just happened, or what they want.
Her eyes travel down to the crate she was standing next to.
Inside it is just an old mirror, facing up her way. The fabric of her robe had gotten snagged on a nail that once held the crate’s lid in place.
Villagers burst forth, their faces shining with relief, and Dandy feels the tension unfurl within her as they grasp her hands, their gratitude evident in tear-streaked faces as she finds herself being lifted up. It’s all happening so fast. Dandy can hardly comprehend their praises, the world spinning gently around her as everything coalesces — the horror, the despair — replaced now with laughter, with joy. Her heart strikes fast, but her breath steadies as she glances at Hero, who stands there always just next to her and nods with a smug look on his face that she would just love to press into the mud so that it would go away.
But as the people throw her into the air, Dandy grabs a hold of him with one hand so that she doesn’t fly too far away.
The battle against their dark enemy has just begun, and she’s proven that she is ready to make her stand now, although maybe not alone all by herself.
— That would be too scary.
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~ [A Fortress of the Kingdom] ~
Men stand shoulder to shoulder, the rattling of metal armor betraying their quivering as they hold onto their halberds and pikes. The night air is not cold enough for it to be anything else, other than fear.
Whispers fill the fortress as soldiers stand there all along the watchtowers and walls by the hundreds. Archers and crossbowmen walk their routes, scanning the darkness with sharp eyes and casters suspend out magical orbs into the night beyond the walls of the castle in the hills in order to illuminate the darkness around them for anything of note, but all they’ve seen tonight is some wild dog. The moon is weak tonight and the single star that drifts in the sky does little to bring them solace. One would think that such a romantic sight could fill an entire legion with hope, but it does nothing except wash them with dread. Because yes, a single star remains aloft, but all the others are gone.
— And that is an idea far more terrifying than anything.
A cool wind presses through the valley, cresting along the walls of the fortress, an odd breeze rising up toward a few who can feel it wicking away the sweat on their faces.
They are in the north-east of the kingdom, along one of the last lines of trade and commerce protected by the king’s forces. To the east, the border has been pushed in and carved back in a manner hinting at full consumption of their nation. The Empire is ruthless in their assaults, out-manning them and dominating in matters of economy and politics. As far as the common man is concerned, the war is lost and the Kingdom has already fallen to the Empire. This remaining window of time that they find themselves stuck inside of is just the instant before a wolf tears out the jugular of an animal it has already lamed in the hunt.
And to the west…
Eyes watch the night, even more afraid of that.
— To the west is the domain of the black-crowned princess, the domain of the Black Knight.
Men speak of him at night, even when they know they shouldn’t. To say a devil’s name is to call him forth, but the dread in their hearts cannot be silenced and they look to their comrades for hope that they might have a notion to dispel the growing fear inside of them. But they have none to share.
“I heard he’s killed a million men in the south-west,” says a guardsman by the gate. “The civil war… they saw him there.” He looks at the gulping boy next to him. “The only reason it ended was because he ate so many bodies; there wasn’t a man left to fight anywhere.”
Another soldier, a fairy, leans over from the barrel she’s sitting on, the tabard of her uniform dangling between her legs. “You know the mountain-city?” she asks, the two men nodding. “My cousin told me that he lives down at the bottom of the Whistling, all the way down at the end of the pit,” she explains. A finger runs across her throat. “They kill people every day, throwing them into the hole for him so that he won’t come up and take them too.”
“He comes at night, you know,” says another man to the side, staring out of a thin window behind a stone wall meant to fire arrows through. “When it’s dark, never when it’s light… He only ever comes at night. They say that the sun is the only thing that can repel him,” explains the soldier, his shaking eyes watching an orb of magical light floating through the darkness. “That’s why he ate the stars. So that it’ll always be dark.” He looks at them, his hand pointing upward, the two soldiers holding each other and the fairy holding herself. “Next is the star that remains, then the sun,” he counts, his face shadowing heavily. “And then… us.”
— A shrill scream fills the air, the fairy kicking her legs and falling back onto the barrel as she squeals, clenching her fists against her collar bone.
There’s a wet, sloppy crunch behind them. The men jump, looking in shock.
But it’s just another guardsman. He’s noisily eating a fat apple, juices running down his face as he chews. “Actually, my brother Harry says he’s an alright fella,” explains the guardsman in a thick regional dialect as he talks with an open mouth. “Just got home the other day. Said they gave him food and water and sent him on his way,” he remarks, shrugging, a grubby finger scratching his stubble-covered chin. “Even made a joke too. Pretty funny guy, I suppose.” He bites back into his apple.
The soldiers look at each other and then back at him as he stands there, just eating.
“…I think he’s snapped…” whispers the boy into the ear of the man next to him, who nods in agreement.
“Come on. You’re saying that the Black Knight,” starts the fairy, who has recomposed herself, pointing at the man with the apple. “- Servant to the wicked, corrupted princess,” she adds, her hand moving as she paints the picture. “Not only gave your commoner-blooded prisoner of war dumb brother food and water — again, the screaming harrow that eats beasts and kings alike — and then he gave him a friendly pat on the ass before happily sending him on his way back home, like he was a lost tavern girl in a monastery?” she asks, crossing her arms in disbelief. “That’s your story?”
“Well, I reckon I don’t know much ‘bout all that,” replies the man. “But, yeah,” he affirms in a positive inclination, nodding in full faith that his story is true. “He sure did.”
“What a load of shit,” she says, the others laughing at the absurdity of the tale.
“Harry?” asks a new voice from next to the apple man. “Same height as you? Dark red hair, lots of freckles, and one really big one on his cheek?”
“Huh? You know Harry?” asks the apple man in a pleasantly surprised voice, turning around and stopping his chewing. A piece of mush falls out of his mouth to the ramparts as he stares into his own warped reflection trapped within a black piece of metal and then lifts his head, craning his neck back to stare at an impossible giant standing there just behind him.
“We’ve met,” says the Black Knight. “Nice guy.”
Five screams fill the night but never carry all that far away, because something swallows them whole.
The next patrol to come that way puzzles, looking around at the empty gate house that should have a team inside of it. But there aren’t any signs of a struggle and he hasn’t heard anything. Maybe their captain has called them out to do something?
Scratching his head, the elf looks around the area, his boot stepping on some slippery mush that he hisses through his teeth in disgust at, wiping his boot on the wood as he goes toward the window and looks outside into the night.
— Into the darkness.
It’s quiet, at first at least.
But then there seems to be some kind of resonation that he can’t identify at first. It’s an odd sound, nothing he’s ever heard before. It’s like a collective, well, a rattling. It’s like heavy pieces of metal clapping together, but then just jangling out in full as if there was nothing nearby to mute them from doing so — bodies, clothes, skin, hair. The sound grows louder, the walls starting to rise in alarm as men raise their voices and call to others, but no alarm is yet raised as nobody can quite figure out what it is they’re hearing.
Because there is nothing to see.
“The hell?” mutters the guardsmen, narrowing his eyes as he stares out in the night. He turns over to the side, waving to a wizard. “Hey. Get further out there,” he orders the man, who nods and then lifts his hand to the projected orb that is floating in the night outside of the gatehouse. The levitating light, pulsing in and out, floats further into the darkness so that it can illuminate whatever is out there.
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But it doesn’t.
The light is obscured as if it were behind something, but it doesn’t illuminate any shape or body, like it would if it were to pass a tree. Instead, it is just… blocked. “What the…”
And then it is blocked some more.
And then just a little more.
And the obscurations move, and the clanking of metal becomes louder and louder and louder, and then he finally sees them when they are already right in front of the walls, of the gate.
Swarms of bodies in black armor, holding long spears and pikes, march forward completely unhindered toward them. There are no engines of siege, no towers, no encampments on the horizon where they would prepare their assault. There is a wave of bodies.
And the sound? — That clanking of metal?
That is the sound a sea of empty suits of armor makes when they march in perfect legion.
“ALARM!” screams the man, turning to the wizard for him to give the signal.
— But he’s gone.
His heart racing, he takes a step back and runs, shouting as the fortress comes to life. Fires begin to grow as torches and lanterns move with a thousand bodies. “THE ENEMY!” he calls, getting as much attention as he can before climbing up a tower, striking a heavy bell with a hammer that lies next to it. The ring of it echoes out around the night, the entire fortress lighting up at once as the other towers signal with their bells that… that they see something too.
He runs to the edge of the tower, looking out and down at the fortress — at the gate that is open.
It’s open?
Bodies in black march through it straight into the first line of inner walls, the perfectly unified stamping of their boots against the ground shaking the walls and the towers and even him from the strength of the vibration that runs through the ground.
But his eyes keep scanning the night as the lights all around intensify, as a group of casters put their strength together and fire a single, powerful, magnificently blindingly bright sphere of light up toward the night, creating a second star for at least an odd minute and the wash of it carries over every face and battlement, every tower and every brick in the central keep and despite all of this, it fails to illuminate just about everything.
The entire outside of the fortress, all four walls of it, are surrounded by marching darkness. They’re coming from everywhere in a number that’s just… it’s impossible. An army this size? Undetected? It can’t be.
He turns around, grabbing his sword from his hip as he runs back to the staircase down the battlements.
And then he stops, listening.
Listening to the clanking of metal that has already begun rising up toward him, step, by step, by step. It’s not just one or two. It’s a dozen, a hundred. They’re like a flood, like blackwater washing the land.
It’s impossible.
It only takes a few seconds, but before anyone can mount any formidable resistance — assuming they even had it in their hearts anymore after seeing the faceless march their way — then it never comes.
Because within a minute flat, the fortress this close to the capital that should have taken months to siege, if not a year or more at least, fell.
He has nowhere left to go and so steps back again, looking out in desperation, only to see the banner rise in the middle of the fortress as the silhouettes march directly to it… no… they’re already there. They’re already up atop its battlements in the very center of everything and together they hoist a flag.
A flag that, as if by fortunate happenstance, flies next to the illuminating orb shot high by the team of casters below, who have surrendered.
And the jagged crown of Acacia Odofredus Krone flies there like a bat, fluttering with its tattered wings within a night that never ends.
He somehow didn’t hear them coming closer. A pair of black metal gauntlets grabs him from behind, one covering his mouth.
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Such things happen everywhere.
The great line of illuminated lighthouse towers that dot the hillsides of the ancient road of Merchant’s Glory, always keeping the night clear and bright for travelers as they have done for generations just… go dark.
The patrols in the safe regions and villages of the land always depart, but they never quite seem to get where they’re going, and when searches are organized… well, those men vanish too, until eventually nobody is brave enough to go out anymore into the night.
The ships that travel down the rivers always arrive at dock, as if steered by ghosts. But their crews are vanished and the men of the harbors fear.
Carriages arrive with anqa and cargo, but never with coachmen.
And every castle and fortress along the way, regardless of its housed host, history, and promise to fight, just seems to cease communication with the capital. Riders never return, doves sent with letters always seem to just fade into the night the moment they leave the windows, and any attempts at magical scrying leave the scryers staring into only infinite black nothingness through their crystals.
And all the while, the people who remain there inside of their homes and places of comfort, they will report hearing noises in the night.
The clanking of hollow metal.
As if the soldiers… as if the armor were marching all by itself.
The world almost seems to become empty
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~ [Far away, a Week’s March to the North] ~
The capital city of the Kingdom of Odofredus Krone sits there, beneath the looming sky that hangs above it, threatening to fall at any time like a burial shroud held aloft only by the hands of those who still remember the voice of the dead.
Here, too, people watch the world in fear for every flitting shadow. Every creak of every door, every hiss of wind that sounds almost like a whisper, every tinkle of glass against glass that reminds of a mourning bell — it all causes everyone to fear.
Word only comes seldom from the castle, and the king who has secluded himself in its throne room. He only ever speaks to attendants and servants, but watches them all with a paranoid gaze that never rests. It is said that he simply doesn’t sleep anymore — an impossible feat — but the people of the court attribute it to his otherworldly royal magic that sustains him. However, the body cannot do so gladly, and they say that it begins to show in his mannerisms and words. Guards march the streets that have been filled with thousands of lanterns that are maintained alight at any cost, and there are strict orders that no house may ever have within it a single dark room with very harsh punishments for those who slack in keeping the darkness away.
Guardsmen walk all along the many lines of walls that weave into one another in varying heights — a maze of sorts, that only the local regiments know the path of. It has many dead ends and traps.
And the people of the capital city do their best to live their lives as they always have done, but now they must do so in the absence of their brothers and fathers. By the day, the number of bodies in the capital seems to decrease. Men are there one day, and the next they simply never return, having been conscripted into the service. Some try to hide it out, but are always found because of the lack of shadows anywhere at all and dragged to their new duties.
A horn signals.
Riders rush through the front gates, always on the alert, pressing forward as an advance guard designed to slow the first enemy push down, even for just a minute, so that the walls have time to fortify. Lances are held pointed forward as golden anqa stampede forward toward the flattened fields outside of the city that are covered in flickers of light.
— Fire.
And the charge slows at the order of a captain, lifting his hand, bringing the stampede of anqas to a slow as the men of the guard look, confused, as march back toward them the faces of their ten thousand brothers.
Legions and regiments from all across the nation, wearing insignias from secret positions so obscure that none ought to know them, and wearing banners of the most prideful battlements in the heart of it all. Thousands of men walk, march, and talk amongst themselves as they just… sort of walk through the night together. One man started in the south, by the border. Others started in the far west, others in the east. Men who ought to have been months of travel apart are now all collected here together and returning to the capital, because as they had been walking through the darkness of night, they suddenly always seemed to encounter another one of their own ilk, and then another, and another. And as if by an impossible happenstance, the army of the Kingdom of Odofredus Krone has essentially been bundled up and dropped off straight at their own doorstep.
The riders look around themselves, confused, as humans and elves, orcs, dwarves, and fairies all return back the way they came, with nobody really interested in going back to where they started.
“Why are you here?” asks the captain, looking down at one of them from his mount. The soldier he stops is wearing the insignia of a sailor. There isn’t a coast worth embarking on anywhere near here.
“It’s dark out there,” replies the man, almost as a joke as he points behind himself with his thumb and keeps walking toward the capital after answering the captain’s question.
There are names here amongst the returnees who had been written off as lost, buried without bodies, and held to be gone forever. Ample such names, in fact.
The capital watch, their orders too confused and chaotic to follow any clear logic, let alone discern any attacker as the menagerie of people is just, well, their own — don’t close the gate or try to block anyone or stop anyone, as some ten-thousand people just tiredly and even confusedly say goodbye to their strange bedfellows and diverge down old, familiar streets to the doors of their family homes to be greeted by the wailing of children and the howling of loved ones as husbands and wives see the ghosts standing before them.
A night of great howling is had around the city as the heavens are robbed of the rescinded prayers given to them for the souls of those who never actually left the world. Yes, the great wailing of a people can be heard all throughout that night in which not a single battle is fought anywhere within the city as the first wave arrives.
And then the next.
And then one more.
One after the other, the full population — at least as many as can still be held as such — are returned to the capital, and when questioned, they can only speak of being spared by the enemy to the west, which all find impossible to believe.
However, the truth is hard to argue with when it is sitting across from and not in an unmarked grave, when it is showing you the gifts and things it was given to survive and thrive on its way back home. Although it is forbidden, the black swords that every tenth person was given so that they could safe-keep each other on the way home are hung on mantles and above hearths, are kept next to beds, and next to doors as signs of protection.
And in a way, the many eyes that look on these weapons find them fitting — the black swords, made out of a metal that looks as if it had died and then returned to this world, as its purpose was not yet complete.
And the men who took them may still feel the same way about themselves, each and every time they look at the hilt and the mark inscribed there within.
— A jagged crown.
When held in hand, the engraving looks like a row of broken teeth, biting into the hand of the wielder.
In that night, some thirty thousand sons and daughters return to the capital, which is flooded with a life it hasn’t seen in such a long, long time.
And it is good.
And the people cry the name of the one who has granted them a sliver of the gods’ mercy in these wretched times.
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~ [The King] ~
“Acacia…” hisses the man through his teeth, staring out of the castle windows toward the city below him as he watches it flood and fill with its own lifeblood. His fingers run across the glass his palm is pressed against, balling into a fist. “What have you done?” asks the man, his feverish eyes staring at every illuminated pinprick in his domain.
It’s gone.
He turns his head, looking back behind himself to the throne room that doesn’t have a single shadow inside it, because of the hundreds of lights spanning every nook and cranny.
The man returns to his throne, clutching his face as lines dart between the edges of his vision. Ascending the stairs, he sits back down and looks down over his court that has emptied out as all of his attendants and all of his men have run into the streets to see once more their returned kin and loves.
He clutching his head with both hands. “You don’t know what you’re doing…” he says, his voice cracking as he starts to laugh, his head arching back and then screaming. “YOU DON’T KNOW!” screams the king, frothing at the mouth as he grabs the next closest thing to him and hurls it down across the room — the full goblet striking the marble floors and rolling, its ruby contents pouring out into a streak as it spins on the spot, a metal rattling filling the empty grand hall until it finally comes to a stop.
And the opening of the goblet emptied out faces his way.
“I CAN SEE YOU!” he screams, looking at it.
Inside of the goblet, is… well… there’s nothing. It’s empty.
Too empty.
“YOU THINK I CAN’T?!” he screams, stomping down the way toward it and smashing his boot down over it again and again. “I CAN SEE YOU! I CAN SEE YOU! I-” he screams again and again and again.
A servant who was walking around the corner hides herself and then quickly runs away before she’s noticed.
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~ [Sir Knight] ~
“Hey, do you ever think about what your family is doing while you’re not around?” asks Sir Knight.
“No. I do not,” replies Acacia quickly and very curtly as she takes a sip from her tea before placing the cup back into the saucer. “Why?” she asks suspiciously, opening her eyes to look his way.
The two of them are sitting in Tatze’s Teahouse, a plate of paw-print-shaped cookies between them.
“Just small talk,” replies Sir Knight, shrugging.
“How unlike you,” says Acacia, a smile cracking on the side of her lips as she takes one of the cookies from his side of the plate and takes a bite out of it, opening her mouth.
— A shadow emerges within the back of her throat, chomping down on it instead.
Acacia shuts her mouth, covering it with the tips of both her hands, looking around the teahouse to see if anyone saw that. “Sir Knight!” she hisses. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes. “I thought it was gonna be funny, actually,” he explains, shrugging with one shoulder. “But then it was already kind of happening when I realized it would be weird, but then I had already committed to the bit, you know?”
Acacia silently glares at him.
“When you think about it, it’s not different from how we met. I was inside your lungs back then too.”
“Sir Knight,” starts the princess, folding her fingers together to create a platform to lean her head on as she leans in and looks at him more closely.
“…Am I helping myself?” he asks. Given her deadpan look, it does not seem to be the case. “Okay, wait. Wait, wait,” he says, sounding almost excited. Sir Knight leans back, wiggling his fingers. “— A magic trick!”
“Please do not do that in public,” she says quietly, lowering her voice.
“What? Oh, no, not that one,” he replies quickly and then reaches out below her woven fingers, pulling a few of them in downwardly toward her palm. “Ta-da!” says Sir Knight as Acacia lifts her head and turns over her partially closed hand, looking at the paw-shaped cookie in it.
She sighs, letting it all give way for a full smile in the end after all, as she looks back at him with an almost pitiful expression, like she was looking at a dog crying after its master failed clown school.
“Eh?” asks Sir Knight, leaning back and holding his hands out to his side. “Not bad, right?”
She looks the cookie over. “The only saving grace of your character, Sir Knight,” Acacia starts, taking a bite from the cookie. “— is that you’re a charmer to a degree that it outweighs your many, many, many glaring, mind-bogglingly blatant flaws,” she finishes.
“I am very lovable,” he agrees, ignoring the rest.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” replies Acacia, snidely content.
He lifts a finger. “That’s not what you said las-”
“— Sir Knight!” snaps Acacia, raising her voice to cut him off. The teahouse falls quiet, everyone looking their way and she sits back down, hiding her face with one hand. “…Why are you like this?” she whispers in a hiss.
He folds his hands together, shaking his head to her sadly. “Well, you made me this way, remember?” he replies. “I’m sorry,” says Sir Knight. He reaches out over the table, holding her shoulder. “But this says more about you than it does about me.”
Acacia sighs, letting her head fall to the side and rest against his hand on her shoulder. “…Is it too late to change the rules of our little game?” she asks. “Maybe I should have asked for a dragon or something instead.”
“I mean… I feel like we’re pretty far in now to just mix it up,” he explains, as she rubs her cheek against his hand. “Better just stick it out now to the end.”
“I suppose that you’re right,” she concedes. “Perhaps next time I shall wish for you to be more gallant and charming.”
He points at himself with his other hand. “Hey, I’m very gallant and charming,” remarks Sir Knight.
“Mm. Yes,” ‘agrees’ Acacia, rolling her eyes but still smiling. “Which brings us back around to your magic trick from last night,” she says, raising an eyebrow.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that in public,” he reminds her.
“We’re not,” says Acacia. “But I’d like to show you the encore.”
“Go on.”
“Cover your eyes,” she orders, lifting his hand from her shoulder and holding it to his visor. “Now watch, as I make myself disappear,” says Acacia, getting up and patting him on the shoulder as she walks away by herself to leave.
Sir Knight sits there, his hand stuck over his visor. After a few seconds, he turns his head to look after her. “I feel like your act is missing the spirit of showmanship,” he notes, sitting there by himself.
Sir Knight watches her go and then shrugs to himself, turning back to the plate of cookies and taking one for himself.
He shoves it into his visor.
An impatient knocking comes from the window he’s sitting at and he looks at Acacia, standing on the other side of it and gesturing impatiently to her sides in a sort of agitated shrug that he interprets to mean for him to hurry up, as if she had expected him to follow after her.
“…Weird family, the whole lot of ‘em,” mutters Sir Knight, getting up from the table that has been modified and cut short to accommodate for his armor by the owner.