Grey knights Parade

Allwind logged in to find himself stood exactly where he had logged out, in the plaza which he had been training in. He had literally started to do his usual stretches, when a group of ten people entered the plaza.

It was a new sight for Allwind, seeing so many people dressed in what looked like fine robes and armour that shone in the sunlight. He paused what he was doing to look at the group as they entered.

They huddled in a group talking to each other, before one of them noticed Allwind; it was a man wearing light grey armour. He slowly walked over to Allwind.

“Excuse me Sir, me and my friends, were planning on holding a meeting here; could you leave?”

The man in armour said, placing his hand on his sword at his belt threateningly.

“Excuse me, but you’re the one who should leave. You’re interrupting me in my daily activities.” Allwind stated flatly, not showing any fear. This seemed to take the man by surprise. The man grunted and turned back to the rest of the group. They went back into a huddle probably debating, what to do next.

Allwind decided to ignore them and continue his warm ups, but it wasn’t long before he was interrupted a second time. This time it was a girl from the same group.

The girl was dressed in a long robe, she walked over to Allwind and smiled. “She’s nice,” he thought when he noticed her.

“Excuse me, can I have a moment of your time? I’m really sorry if my knight friend offended you, but all the inns in the area are full, and we would like a place to talk and wait for our friends to turn up. Could I persuade a nice boy like you to leave for a moment? We shouldn’t be long,” she said sweetly.

“Why? I always train here, and you’re interrupting me. Please leave.”

This seemed to confuse the girl as well, as she went back to the others looking a bit confused. Just then another five people turned up and the mass greetings began. Two minutes later and Allwind was interrupted a third time, this time he got a huge shock.

The person this time was an old male, however this time Allwind knew who the man was. It turned out to be a teacher from his school. The man looked exactly like his history teacher.

Allwind somehow managed to hide his surprise at seeing his history teacher in Royal Road. “No wait everyone plays it, I have even overheard a convocation between the headteacher and a student about how they were playing the game.” He thought as the teacher started talking to him.

“Hello. It seems that I have to apologise for my student’s behaviour,” he started throwing Allwind’s mind in circles, “they were all students from my school,” he suddenly realised,” as his teacher continued “we wanted to have a guild meeting here, but we need privacy for it, I am sorry.”

No one at school knew Alan was playing Royal Road, and he wanted to keep it that way for the time being. So he reluctantly agreed to leave, fearing that his teacher would discover his identity, not only let everyone else know, but the teacher might also remember that Allwind hadn’t done any of his history assignments recently.

“I know you’re a user, and not NCP, you put on a good act.” His teacher said as he walked past him. Allwind just smiled back before bowing to the group he turned to leave as quickly as possible, the others watched him go in surprise.

****

Outside the plaza Allwind had no idea what he should be doing, apart from putting as much distance between him and the plaza as possible. He gazed back at the large group of people from his school. “Maybe I should find Lillian?” He mused as he began walking towards the river thinking about, when he accidently bumped into a person sending both of them to the ground with a crash.

“I’m sorry,” Allwind said as he picked himself up off the road.

“No, it’s fine. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” A female voice said from the side. As Allwind looked at the source of the voice, he found himself looking into the eyes of the most beautiful person he had ever met. She had green eyes, pale translucent skin, pointy ears and long blond hair.

She was wearing green and brown armour with what looked like a bow across her shoulder and a quiver of arrows at her side.

He quickly remembered his manners and helped the lady to her feet.

“Sorry about that,” he muttered not able to take his eyes off her, as four more people turned up.

“Do I know you?” the lady asked “you look familiar?”

“You ok, Merine?” One of the people next to her asked concerned.

“No sorry, you don’t,” Allwind replied automatically knowing perfectly well, who she was. Anyone who went to his school knew, who the person in front of him was. She was the idol of the school, an untouchable queen. It was rumoured that every boy in the third grade had tried to date her to no avail.

“Sorry, I’m looking for Lillian. Your friends are in the plaza ahead they kicked me out so I’ll be going.” He said quickly making up an excuse before the other four became interested in him; luckily he spotted Lillian ahead she looked like she was playing with her friends by the side of the river.

“Ha, there she is,” he pointed and started to head in Lillian’s direction when the unthinkable happened. The girl he had just pointed out disappeared from sight.

~ Splash ~

The sound was very distinctive and loud. Allwind quickly ran over to the edge of the river just in time to see a struggling Lillian being swept into the middle of the river, before being washed downstream.

“This is bad, after her!” The school idol shouted, pushing his back as Allwind looked on dumbfounded. He quickly regained his composure and started to sprint along the wharf, shouting for Lillian to hold on. The two sprinted along the stone quarry after the drowning NCP, as she was carried away by the river. Thankfully the wharf ran full the length of the city, allowing for ships to dock and unload their goods, with the occasional fisherman using it.

That didn’t mean however, that the stone wharf was empty. Far from it. There were people and creates to dodge around, as the two of them raced to save Lillian side by side. Suddenly a large group of creates appeared before the two blocking of the wharf, Allwind had a slight lead and was the first to start hectically climbing over creates. using his agility to boost himself over the creates, he reached the top somersaulting down to the ground.

****

It had been a very frustrating few days for the owner of a certain grocery store; he had bought some chickens off a merchant for a restaurant, and was now going to return them, simply because they were bald and now considered to be cursed.

He had after much effort managed to get the chickens into a crate before delivered them to the wharf. They were currently behind a stack of other creates out of harm’s way. He was now, going to transport them by boat, because the Church of Freya was having a parade to usher in the next Pope Candidate, making the roads in and out of town useless.

It happened while he was talking to a dock hand that he knew. A body that looked human crashed into the floor from the air. The body smashed into the crate with the chickens in sending bits of wood and hay flying, the human rolled on the floor before running off down the wharf, not even stopping to apologise. But that wasn’t the end of the Shopkeeper’s problems. When the dust had finished settling on the ground it revealed five very bald, very angry chickens.

Suddenly another figure, an elf, landed in the middle of the chickens, and sprinted off after the fleeing human. The chickens squawked angrily, flapping their featherless wings, and immediately set off after the two fleeing figures, leaving the Shopkeeper standing there, speechless.

****

Merine was running hard. It was getting to the point where her stamina bar was half empty. The person, which she bumped into a short time ago, looked like a newbie and shouldn’t have been able to run as far, or as fast as he had done. She had set off after him because he looked familiar to her, and she couldn’t let it go till he answered a question or two. So, she had witnessed the boy’s NCP friend fall into the river.

It was after jumping down from the crates that she got another surprise. The boy she was chasing now seemed to be widening the gap between them. Not only that, a group of what looked like chickens had not only joined in the chase, but had somehow overtaken her.

Ignoring the chickens that had overtaken her, she focused on trying to catch up to the boy in front, and then groaned at the sight ahead. There up ahead was the main bridge in Liberty city. It would be easy to save the girl from there, and she was right; on any normal day it would have been easy to save Lillian from the main bridge, but today was turning out not to be a normal day, as there was a parade for the new candidate pope being held. The result was that the bridge was lined with users and NCPs, all watching the parade. They had even managed to block all the entrances to the main road that the parade was being held on.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

****

Allwind noticed the huge group of people standing in his way, thought about giving up when he noticed a boy sitting on a box overlooking the crowd. It wasn’t hard to see how the boy had got up there, so Allwind, not thinking of anything other than saving Lillian as fast as possible, ran up the boxes that would get him past the crowd, and jumped.

****

The parade was going well, in the opinion of the high priest the Church of Freya’s influence was now firmly established in liberty city, thanks to his efforts. When the high priest received news from the central continent that the old Pope, Head of the Church of Freya, had died it came as a huge shock. It was a sad loss made all the more harder to bear as the old pope hadn’t chosen a successor.

This resulted in the parade, which was now taking place, to usher in the new candidate pope.

There were three candidates for the position of pope, all of which were giving the high priest a headache, add to that the fact that two of the three Holy Relics, the church was supposed to process, had been stolen. It left the high priest in a very difficult position inside the order.

The high priest sighed deeply and waved graciously to the watching crowd, at his side was a young boy, one of the candidates for pope, who went by the name of Alveron, dressed in the customary white priest outfit with white hat; he looked the spitting image of a pope. It was just a shame that the boy personality was subservient, if he was more proactive the high priest wouldn’t have to worry about the church’s future.

A second candidate was missing, and so far no one in the church knew of his whereabouts.

The other candidate however was a totally different mould to Alveron; he went by the name of Gease, was a stubborn show off, and was the son of a minor lord from the central continent. He had refused to wear the traditional outfit, and had a set of cloths, custom made by a tailor, just for this occasion. The high priest didn’t like Gease, purely because he didn’t want the church, he had built, to be influenced by the a noble.

Gease was riding a horse in front of the wagon the high priest was riding on, when the world seemed to explode. First a young man seemed to jump out of the crowd, he had blond hair and had somehow managed to execute a flying flip, he seemed to sail upside down slowly across the road just in front of Gease’s horse, some members of the crowd cheered others screamed, as the youth landed on his feet on the other side of the road, before disappearing behind the crowd.

Before anyone in the parade or crowd could react, there was another scream. This one was higher pitched than the last, and suddenly five airborne chickens appeared. But unfortunately they were not as gracefully in their flight as the young boy, and due to their unfortunate timing, they jumped straight into Gease, who was unceremoniously dumped on the road with the chickens attached to him.

They made chaos in the middle of the road, scratching and biting the pope candidate, as yet a third person managed to jump over the road. This time it was an elf. She disappeared just as quickly as the young boy had, while bystanders in the crowd and paladin knights tried to rescue the pope candidate, by catching the chickens.

The chickens, on the other hand, had bigger ideas, and with lots of running managed to evade every attempt to capture them, then fled up the street.

Leaving a very disgruntled high priest standing in the cart, the only redeeming part of the whole affair was that Gease was the one that had been dismounted, and not him.

****

“I can’t believe I managed to clear that,” Allwind thought as he sped up along the wharf. He glanced to the side and noticed that Lillian was beginning to struggle in the water, “there’s no way to get to her from here... unless,” making his mind up faster than he had ever done before, he leapt off the side of the wharf, on to a pole that was sticking out of the water. He had noticed them spaced out periodically, as he had run down the side of the wharf. Now he leapt from one to another moving further out into the river, before diving in slightly behind Lillian.

****

Merine’s day was just getting worse and worse, as she chased after the newbie in front of her. His stunt at the road, which was impressive, had caused allot of problems, which she had luckily managed to ignore, and now the idiot was jumping from pole to pole in front of her, in an effort to get closer to the drowning NCP.

****

Luckily, Allwind managed to reach Lillian before she drowned. He even managed to get her to cling to his back, as he tried to swim back to the side of the wharf, were a few onlookers stood. Even some of the people on the bridge further upstream were pointing and shouting. More problems began from there as Allwind’s stamina bar had finally run out, and no matter how hard he tried, he seemed to be going backwards in the water not forwards.

****

Merine stood there watching as Allwind finally reached the NCP. She let out a sigh of relief before she realised, that the idiot was now moving backwards downstream.

“The idiots finally run out of stamina then,” she sighed again taking the bow from her shoulder, took careful aim, and then fired one of her acquired skill shoots “Arrow line.”

The arrow flew through the air with a thin line of cord attached to it, landing just in front of Allwind, who managed to grasp hold of it, struggling to keep himself and Lillian afloat as Merine struggled to real both of them in. They eventually managed to get to the shore.

“That was close,” a smiling school idol said, as she hauled a dripping wet Allwind and Lillian to the dockside. “Any further downstream and you would have died,” she said, pointing downstream to the edge of town. Newbie’s were not allowed to leave their starting city for four week, so he would have been trapped between a fast flowing river and the border edge of town.

“Thanks,” Allwind replied.

“No problem at least you saved the girl. Maybe I should take up fishing?” The idol replied before frowning, “we have to move, the knights of Freya are pretty annoyed at the stunt you just pulled. Where does she live?”

It took 30 minutes to get the dripping wet Allwind and Lillian back to their starting point, having taken a lot of back and side streets to avoid the remnants of the parade, Lillian had mentioned where she lived, but refused to let go of Allwind’s back.

When they arrived there was a greeting party ready. It was the people who had kicked Allwind out of the plaza. Allwind started to panic when he noticed them staring at him, “this is definitely somewhere I wanted to come back too,” he thought.

“You can relax, they’re friends. We are the Grey Knights,” the school idol said, noticing his panic.

She spent the next five minutes explaining to the rest of the Grey Knights what had happened, before Allwind could escape. They were the ones who had whispered to Merine about the Knights of Freya.

Lillian was still holding onto his back, he said thank you to the school idol for saving them, and was about to leave, when she called out to him, wanting to know his name. He paused, thinking for a moment that he had been found out.

“It’s Allwind,” he replied turning to leave quickly.

“Allwind? I know that name, but where have I heard it before?” The history teacher said, scratching his head, as Allwind promptly disappeared around the corner. looking for Lillian’s home.

“He looked familiar as well,” Merine said, sighing before she urged the group of knights to get on with their delayed meeting.

End?

****

The grass here was tall, comfy and commanded a good view of the surrounding area, it was a completely new experience. In the field outside of Liberty city, the newbie’s went about hunting foxes and other animals. Looking down on their struggles from the high grass were five pairs of beady, bloodshot eyes. They were watching and learning. Their learning soon paid off then an unlucky fox got too close to the tall grass. With a squawk, and a fair amount of rustling, the fox disappeared into the grass, and was never seen again. It wasn’t the only fox to meet its fate near the tall grass.

The Real Ending

Authors notes

well first i hope u enjoy reading the new updates and changes :)

second a great many thanks to Vindrueelsker again, for taking great pains to proof and spell check for me, thanks vin ill send u some imaginary grapes :)