The knight was tired, but he walked anyway. Fatigue weighed on his shoulders, ate at his thighs and calves, and pressured his skull. A miserable experience walking at the edge of the world was, with nothing but the flat grasses on the horizon in every direction. It tortured the mind, which in turn tortured the body. Every breath passed was an eternity in the mind, as it screamed for a break from the monotony. It didn’t break. He walked all day until the sun fell low past the horizon, and the moon and stars had replaced it.
He slept where he collapsed in the darkness. The grasses were soft and soothing and provided a more comfortable bed than most patches of ground. He used his white cloak as a pillow, resting his ear on it. Sleep came easy in the quiet of the edge.
The sound was perhaps the most disturbing thing about the edge of the world. The was none. Not a rustle from the wind, the call of a bird. Nothing. A supreme sound the nothing was, taller than all others, eerie and solitary. The knight was a man with nothing but his lonesome sounds in an ocean of silence.
When he awoke in the morning, the knight ate a small piece of the bread and dried meat, and he began walking again, into the infinite abyss of grass that stretched before him, hope resting that there was an end to it, that his memories of places beyond the grasses were true. His heading was west, retreating from the morning sun, as the west was where he remembered the grass’ closest break was.
At the very start of his third day, a few minutes after he had finished eating and started walking, the dot appeared in the distance. He was nearly happy when he saw it, chastising himself that he hadn’t taken the few extra steps yesterday and seen it. His step grew stronger and faster, the laziness of his walk dying on the blade of anticipation. Every step now and the dot grew, slowly, but it grew. More dots soon joined it, and the mountain range could now be identified as a mountain range. Sleep was the easiest it had been that night.
The fourth day passed without reaching the mountains. They grew ever-larger but still stayed far from reach. His night was spent wondering what his plan for the future was. How would he get money? Food? Weapons or Armor? He wanted vengeance on thirteen people, thirteen traitors of humanity, but how would he get it? Who would he hunt first? Whoever was nearest? It didn’t matter. No matter how long it took, he would make sure all of them found their graves, including the Traitor Knight himself. Especially the Traitor Knight himself, he deserved his grave much more than all the others.
The knight saw the village on the fifth day. He had walked a great deal that day, tired and ragged, trying desperately to reach the foot of the mountains, and after the sun had reached its highest point and begun descending in the sky, the village appeared before the mountains, small and humble. The word village may have been too grand a term for it, as there were less than a dozen small buildings, all likely homes for tired farmers to retire to. The knight didn’t remember the village from his first journey, but he had done it in haste and hadn’t cared much for what he was leaving behind. But there was a nostalgia to the village, a calling that he had seen it before.
The sun had ducked just below the mountains, turning the sky from its usual deep light blue to a mellow pink-orange, when the knight finally reached the village. He sauntered into town, not feeling the tiredness of his steps, excited to meet and speak to people other than the self for the first time in a while. Yet the excitement was strangled out quickly.
“Greetings, friend!” the knight called out to a man walking towards him.
The man gave no response, his black beard and mustache betraying no hint that the man had even seen the knight, much less heard him.
“Hello?” the knight waved at the man, trying to earn his attention. But the man drew closer with no indication that he cared, and when the knight saw him pass, he saw the man’s eyes, empty of life, unseeing and unfeeling. The knight froze for near a moment, before he reached out and tried to grab the man. Instead of being blessed with the feeling of warm flesh and blood, the knight’s hand simply passed through, as if the man was made of the air itself.
The rest of the village was much the same. The children running and playing with each other could very obviously feel and touch and hear each other, but the knight was estranged from them. Their voices were warped and distorted as if they were in a cave underwater, their melodies and meanings hidden away from his ear. A woman washed equally ethereal clothing, and another held a sheathed sword equally as real. The knight continued through, hoping to luck upon an inhabitant who acknowledged him.
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The old man sat on a bench, in the center of the village. His aged eyes had outed him when the knight passed, as there was a slight uplifting, a seeing in them that the others were without. The old man had few white hairs on his head, but enough whiskers coming off his chin and lower face to compensate. The knight sat next to him and they sat in silence for a time, just simply watching the ghastly denizens of the village.
“A lovely evening today, traveler” the old man eventually said, his voice quiet and strained, but thick and hard to understand completely.
“What are they?” the knight kept his gaze on the oblivious people.
“My memories, my joyous memories.” The knight looked to the old man now, at his weathered leather face, at his hunched posture and lumpy body not quite hidden by his simple clothing.
“How are you doing this? Magic?” the knight pressed.
“I don’t know. All I know is that one day, this lonely old man was joined by his past. They rose and walked as they had when they had still been alive.”
“When did they die?”
“Some not too long ago. Others, like my father, died what feels like a lifetime ago.”
“This is magic. Perhaps there is a god in your blood.”
The old man finally looked at the knight. “You remind me of someone who visited years ago. Syminor, the greatest of the knights.”
The knight clenched his fist. He tried not to show anger on his face.
The old man continued, “How we cheered for him. Praised him for his mission, loved him. There were only a few of us, but this man, this glorious man visited our village. A village so small it had never been put on a map and was rarely visited by outsiders. Do you know what they call the man now?”
“Traitor Knight,” the knight felt his fist lessen its iron clench as he said the name.
“Aye, Syminor the Traitor Knight. Do you know why I am alone, knight?”
The knight said nothing. There was no way he could.
“A group of men came along, led by a priest of the blessed Lerona. The priest asked us what we thought of the man Syminor, and we shouted our love, as we thought we should. The priest laughed and told us of the death of Elladan. He then declared us traitors and his men put us to blade. They stole our food and murdered my children and their children and their children’s children. A man put his spear through my back.” The old man lifted his shirt, and a horrible wound revealed itself, a hole clean through the man, black and white with blight and puss. The smell of dead blasted its way through the knight’s nose, crashing thickly and overwhelmingly into his brain.
The knight stood up in shock. “How do you live with such a wound?”
“Perhaps it is as you said. I have god’s blood.”
“No amount of god’s blood would save you lest you were a god yourself.”
“Then, Rillim curses me with life. A testament to the evil of good men and the good of evil men.”
“Do you hate the priest? Do you hate the Traitor Knight?”
“I was too old for hate when I was alive. Now that I am dead, hate truly finds no hold. Morose and regret are the friends I now hold the hands of. They are why I spend my days watching my memories,” small tears welled into the old man’s eyes, “I just wish I could truly see even my great-grandson Antolias again. I wish he could hold my hand as he used to. Now I must just watch him play.”
“He was stolen from you. Where is your fury?”
“I am too tired for such a thing. I am content with keeping their memory alive, I think that is why I still live, despite being dead. If I gave in to the rage, I think I would just die, and no one would remember my Antolias. Remembering him is a nobler mission.”
“I am sorry for your losses.”
“Sorry for what? You are not responsible. Even if you were the Traitor Knight himself, or the blessed priest, I am not sure I could care enough. No killed man has had the blessing I have. I get to see my memories real and beside me; I was not the first man killed unjustly and I will not be the last. So, I will be content with the blessings I have.”
The knight stayed quiet. He wasn’t sure he was pleased with the old man’s answers. Men killed unjustly shouldn’t be satisfied with their deaths, cowed in fear of those who did them wrong.
“I will bring you justice. If I find the priest responsible for your family’s massacre, I will chop off his head, as I will the Traitor Knight’s.”
The old man laughed, “An affordance of the living. So desperate to chop each other’s heads off. How do you, traveler, plan to kill the man who killed God?”
“The same way he killed Elladan. A sword through the back.”
“If Elladan was killed by mortal men and women, was he ever really a god?”
“You hold little faith. He may not be as dead as the Traitor Knight would have everyone believe.”
“Dead is dead, traveler.”
“Like you are dead?”
“Just so. Perhaps Elladan is a morose corpse too, watching his memories before himself as he slowly fades to nothing.”
“Elladan would never abandon humanity. Not while he could still move a finger.”
“You hold too much faith, traveler. I grow weary of this conversation. Leave me to watch my memories. You may stay here the night if you wish, but be gone in the morning.”
The knight nodded his head to the old man and walked out of the village. Another night in the open would be a better option than one in a lonely village full of the dead. And so, another night below the stars, with only his own voice, the knight slept. A rougher sleep than the previous nights as a brief contact with humanity had reminded him of the great pain and utter importance of his mission.
The Traitor Knight and his disciples must die.