Starriver City laid sleeping beside its eponymous water that drifted along through the city's canal network and out toward the pastures far away. A meeting place of the peaceful folks of all walks of life, from the sprawling humans to the noble elves and even the peaceful variants of primitive orcs. It was a complicated city, with complicated problems.

In the night, the city was calm, but not quiet. Even evil learned to conduct itself in relative silence. Many people were unwise to the true nature of their neighbors, or those who lived in the austere mansions of the noble quarter. If they could learn that truth, there would be misunderstanding and grief. If anyone saw it without the proper training to hand it, they would be cursed somehow just by knowing what could happen in the hearts of every creature.

Those who kept the darkness segregated into the lonely night were the Knightguard. They were the proud defenders across the whole of the region, and the Starriver City Knights defended the people in the day and during the night. The patrolmen of the nightly hours dealt with far more danger than the men who were paid to stand at street corners in shining armor during the day, but they held no anguish over their positions. The pay was good and kept their families fed and sheltered, and it kept their city safe by their own hands.

Johan von Claus was one patrolman, walking through the streets at night, an apprentice knight with incredible talent. His position was placed in trust, rather than as a languishing role of punishment some saw it to be. To be a knight after dark meant facing criminals directly, whether with a sheathed sword or the will to drive cold iron through a belligerent foe. In the end, they had to see justice be served, either by a straight blade or iron shackles.

Despite his pounding headache, he kept up his patrol. Each sound that he heard in the dead of night, he heard double, first when it reached his ears and then again when it sank into his pounding brain. Even the clatter of his blade at his side had too much impact as he held onto it to keep it from clattering around. A knight with one hand on his sword was not a pleasant sight for any freely wandering person in the dark hours. It meant he was looking to use it.

Johan was as disciplined as any other and continued his duties regardless of his headache. He would walk forward even if he had no legs to stand on, and he would fight even if his arms were gone. That was the resolve he had been trained with and raised with. First, out of desperation, to go hungry with pride so that his younger siblings could eat in his stead, and so his parents could work an extra day to try and feed them all again. Being a knight meant those troubles were far and distant to him. All he had to do was walk in darkness to keep his family in stable living.

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One sound irked him the most. It seemed to come from nowhere and split into his ears like a stake driving into the ground. It was the unmistakable sound of a struggle and a cry for help. The second time he heard it, he knew it was muffled. An active conflict. For a moment, his headache faded away as the presence of something more distressing held over his mind. His duty outweighed the pain.

He charged into the alley and followed the noise to the scene of an ongoing disturbance. A sickening display of an awful power struggle was before him. He drew his sword, and its metal voice preluded his own unwavering command.

"Halt!" he shouted. "I am a guard of the Starriver City knights, I command you to halt at once!"

He could see, faded in just barely by the lights from the stars, the victim curled on the ground with a man hovering over him. The boy was at 8, or some other terribly young age, and his attacker was much older. He had the boy in a grip by his shirt, which he was forcing off with one hand while a knife was visible in the other to keep the boy under threat. Johan could see by the man's ears and fair hair before he even turned to confirm it, that he was a half-elf.

The man let the boy slip away from the distraction, and the young lad ran off into the dark before Johan could call him to his side. When the errant man stood up, he revealed himself as fully exposed from the front in a shameless way. His intentions were laid as bare as his crotch. All of his wild desire warped into a passionate hatred in an instant towards Johan, whose headache returned to pester him.

"You bloody idiot," the man said. "Do you know who I am? Who you're dealing with?"

"A pervert," Johan answered.

"A nobleman!" he retaliated. He waved his knife as he spoke, like a conductor to control the tone of his voice, as he shifted to a devious controlling tenor. "That's right. You speak to the son of the man who helped build this magical city. I am beyond your mere concept of justice or law. I exist at a service far above your peasant station."

"No," Johan refuted. "You live by the law as everyone else does. Noble or not, there is no excuse for what you've done. Only justice remains."

The nobleman smirked deviously, and the very sight of his wicked grin twisted Johan's mind with further painful collapse.

"You'll be the one," he warned, "inciting justice if you turn me in. I shall use the weight of my word and name to crush you and your entire family like bugs!"

The man was walking forward with a knife out, and Johan could only hear a screeching pain in his ear. He did not see the political background of the foe before him or hear his threat that went beyond thuggish violence. As a knight, he had a duty to live so that he could protect others. So he took up his sword and struck the villain down. He enacted an ultimate justice, he fulfilled his duty through his own sufferage of pain…