The Brave and the Broken (and those unspoken, in between)
The Black Knight
That day, Reidhammon of Schiltigheim walked into a village that didn’t exist on his map.
Reidhammon was an adventuring knight.
Most people didn’t understand what that meant. Hell, sometimes he didn’t, either. But the kind that did understand were the monsters that lurked in the dungeons across Panacea, and they understood him well enough. Enough to run, or to call for help. They understood that when a tower of muscle clad in black iron walked into their lairs, the black knight was not here to play tea party.
Not unless the tea was blood, and the party was already in full swing. Then, he might consider.
But the people below him were not monsters. And so he prayed that, just once, they would understand him, or at least the words he had to say.
“Evacuate! To the south exit! I shall delay them!”
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two hours before his awakening
Lepius
Is this... the end of my village?
Below them, a moment of silence lingered before the shifting mass surged as one. Above them, the priestesses stumbled out of the healing quarters, held up by the injured that could still walk.
Lepius caught his mother’s eye as she emerged with Andura.
There was a wild fantasy he entertained: he would wade into the besiegers outside, staff in hand, he would curse them and empty his body of mana, and then he would die. Of course he would, but his sacrifice would give them a chance. Just a small one. But then his mother gave him a look, and that look tore right through the fantasy.
No matter how many he'd kill, or how painfully he'd die… they would be alone.
Father, he thought, you shall be the martyr today.
“I wish I could stay aside you and give you support, Sir-”
“No. You would be slowing me down. And that is dishonourable. Stick with your family, and go, go evacuate.”
There were still flashes of light outside, and now they were closer to the windows.
“I wish we could've met under better circumstances.”
“Ah, I disagree. No better place to make an acquaintance than on the battlefield. But be well, I shall give it my all. Perhaps we will meet again.”
Only now, at their parting, the magnitude of all the knight had done came to call. There were so many things he could say: ‘thank you’, and ‘how I will remember you?’, or ‘you are a hero, sir’. The knight didn’t even know his name. But he ended up not saying any of them, for he didn’t trust his mouth to deliver it the way he wished.
Instead, he found himself on one knee.
Humans liked doing this, didn’t they? He had seen a young boy do it to a knight once.
“Thank you. This is not your fight, but you came here to save my people anyway. I cannot thank you enough, Sir Reidhammon of Schiltigheim.”
He felt Reidhammon’s fist bump his shoulder. And then the man in black iron was off, faster than his eyes could track, faster than a man wearing such heavy armour had any right to be.
“Mother! Andura!”
He hurried down the stairs to the southern exit, slipping through the congestion. But so did everyone else, and then he found himself entrenched and pushed on by all sides. He tried to back up the way he came, but a body had already replaced empty air, and a hundred more behind that one.
And suddenly he could not move.
There was not even enough space to raise his arms or his staff, and after a minute of struggling, the eager panic above swooped down. It smothered him, choking his rasps for air.
He could not hear his voice, so he screamed it louder, then louder: “Mother!”
Am I to die here?
Would his own people crush him, end his life only as he started? He forgot about Mother, about Andura. Everything had shortened down to breathing, pushing, shoving, all to the exit.
Somewhere in front, a tiny light shone through the bodies. It was the end of this tunnel of grasping hands, and he tried to shove his way forward, but the crowd ahead resisted him.
No one was getting through.
There was a good reason for this. Lepius knew it, for he came often to train – the back exits were small, barely wide enough to fit two or three at once. It would halt a horde of animals in its tracks.
“No… one… one at a time, don’t-”
Then, a fog descended onto the crowd.
When he breathed it in, his throat constricted, and he found it even harder to take just an atom of air. It had to be a mana-construct, a fog of magic. And as more dryads breathed it in, they all began shoving harder, their eyes wilder, all under the command of the mana of desperation they had summoned. This was their fog.
He felt an elbow shove into his windpipe.
No…no… please…
And suddenly a sinister voice spoke in his head. Had he heard it before?
“Focus and drain these bodies of their mana it will kill them and be useful heheh.”
He cringed away, swallowing the bile, and forced the voice down.
No… no… don’t let me… I’ve still wanted to-
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Help… I can’t breathe…
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No… no… let go of me…
Hands pulled him in every direction.
He couldn't even say a word, and his mouth was full of them: "Mother, Andura, I’m sorry, I love you." His vision danced in tune with the rising crescendo of cries and screams from around him and the lights outside flickered with mana and the world darkened more if it was possible and-
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
And then there was light.
Bright light, bright enough to sear his dilated eyes, accompanied by a rumble as something collapsed.
He saw a black figure standing in the light. How beautiful the knight was.
Reidhammon had read the room well, identified the problem, then solved it. The entire back wall was rubble. There was a flash and he was gone again, and the clash resumed far from Sanctum.
Everyone asked the same question in their minds: "Is that… our way out?"
The thought barged into reality.
And as one, the crowd charged forwards. The shock gave him a second to breathe, before the storm behind him shoved and pushed forward, fuelled by the sunlight. There was little he could do but place one foot after the other, and before he could question why the floor was so soft, he had made it out onto the hill behind the temple, where he collapsed.
He felt drunk just by moving his arms and breathing. Finally, he was alone. No one to trap him, no hands to grab him.
Freedom.
Again and again he stole big gasps of air, holding it deep within him, too scared to let it out. The shuddering in him slowed when he saw the remnants of his village scatter to the wind, tumbling down the hill and onwards and away, away from the world they knew.
He must've been the only person to turn back, and that was to try and catch a glimpse of Reidhammon. But his eyes landed on something else instead. The floor. The soft floor made of bark - the bark of dryads dead and clambered over.
His staff clattered to the ground.
All he had inside him spewed out as he threw up on the hill: Father and Rosemary, the cruel voice, the burning groves. He thought of his feet, so carelessly stomping over the anguished dead, and more came up, yet it didn't seem enough, for it all seemed bottomless, and no amount of retching could bring it out from him. Those memories had settled somewhere, and nothing could remove them anytime soon.
There was a hand grabbing him that he barely felt.
“Lepius, oh, Lepius! Lepius…”
Andura curled herself into him. There was not an inch of her face dry, nor any corner of her eyes white. Red, red, red. Sap and more sap, and there was no need for explanation - Mother wasn't with her, and he heard no calls of “Lepius, where are you!” or “I’m here, Andura!”
Those would be the last things she would say. Even if she couldn’t speak, he would hear those words, hear the mana.
Mother, he sat on his haunches, Mother, what are we to do without you? I… And he glanced to the victims of the stampede, the pulped faces and ruined bark, and he threw up again. Andura kept weeping and couldn't talkto him.
Then another fantasy grabbed him.
He clawed his way to the first body and brushed the hair out of those eyes. A weak hand was pulling him back. The wind blowing, the sounds of battle, the rumble as a Sanctum wing collapsed - they all clamoured for attention, but nothing could tear his eyes from the body.
What little left of its face was the same shade of bark, but the eyes were blue. It was not Mother. He tried again, a different body. And again.
And after pulling and pulling to no effect, Andura simply collapsed onto him, her stained bark against his. They fell to ground together. And there they lay, a tangled mess of bruised limbs, of tears and vomit and sap.
Andura took a long breath, but even with that, her speech came out jumbled, “Please, please, that’s enough, come on, let’s go. Let’s go, Lepius, come on.”
“Mother…” he said, “Mother… where’s Mother… I didn’t get to say…”
“I know, I know, but we have to go… it’s not safe here.”
Later, he would be aware he was slurring, “She’s… she’s gotta be here somewhere… help me, help me, Andura-”
Andura pulled his forehead to hers. The cool bark startled him, and only then he realised he was burning. The cold slowed his searching hands. And soon he recalled the other senses - the heat of the sun, the soil beneath his hands, and then that Andura, his sister, was still alive and well next to him.
She stood and picked up the staff.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“… okay.”
Mother, I’m sorry, I love you.
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Reidhammon
When the vanguard behind the invasion climbed up the topmost step to the Sanctum, he was waiting for them.
He knew he was the problem of the day - not the elders, who had admittedly put up a good fight for a handful of wizened trunks. Their bodies were strewn about the steps. For all the timelessness of their village, it seemed that they had forgotten most of their magics, and so were bestowed the meagre attention the invaders would grant them.
He warranted much more, and they knew it.
Here they came.
Behind the visor, his eyes burned as he tracked those approaching. From afar, an amateur would’ve mistaken him for a statue. Only the keen would spot his gauntlets tightening ever so slightly on the hilt of his two-hander, or the miniscule rise and fall of his breastplate.
There were only three, but his eyes swept over their equipment again and again. Not any ordinary group of ruffians, indeed.
One of the three, the hooded mage, said, “Step aside, adventurer. Only the tree devils must die.”
“I prefer knight.”
Another stepped forward, and clad in gold and purple, he would not have looked out of place at the head of a grand host. His speech was refined, like aged wine.
“Then shall it be a duel, wretch?”
Reidhammon snorted, “Are calling yourself a knight?”
The final one nocked an arrow and interrupted the pleasantries. How impolite.
“We don’t have time for this. They might be escaping. Harlequin, start collapsing the Sanctum.”
“He might be pretty under that visor…”
“Harlequin!”
“Fine. I’ll collapse the walls.”
If his visor were open, they would’ve seen him smirking. “Been there and did that. Your quarry is out of your grasp.”
While the bowman sputtered, the hooded mage turned to the temple, eyes glowing. Then they widened, shifted off the knight, and onto the bowman, “The back wall is collapsed, damn it, no life signatures in-”
There was a flash, a pitched squeal, and an amulet shattered, then two. He cut the noise silent. If one had blinked at that moment, it would've seemed as if the sword had never moved.
Reidhammon chuckled, “Oops. That wasn’t very honourable of me. My apologies.”
The gold man fumbled with his sword, “He just… he just… Harlequin?”
“Muscle memory, I’m afraid. You don’t lose your focus, not even before the fight.”
There was silence for a moment, made louder by the slow drip drip of blood.
The bowman whistled without taking his eyes off Reidhammon. Behind him, what looked like a small army straggled up the last of the steps, the soldiers garbed in purple standing at attention once they then surrounded him. The insignia of a kingdom shone from their armour.
He raised an eyebrow. They didn’t even bother to hide the crossed sword-and-fang, huh?
The soldiers levelled their halberds towards him, all at once. Even under his shadow the tips glimmered – ah, they had enchanted metal, and that would be a little tricky.
But there were more than melees, too.
Tucked behind the frontline were their archers, those arrows held aloft glittering similarly so, and further beyond he could feel the ebb and sway of mana as it circulated around their mages. The current shoved him, whispered in a despairing voice, “Look upon us, you fool. Turn and run.”
His hands flexed on the hilt. He took one deep breath, then a couple more, and already the voice of the bowman was receding to give way for calm wind.
They want to distract me to disrupt my focus?
Good try.
But even so, for the briefest moment, he allowed the mana to whisper his focus away. Everything he could see and taste and smell – all the senses offered to him the world untarnished, and goodness, what a day it was. There were no clouds. Below his boots the grass crunched pleasantly, and a brisk wind carried away the smoke and foulness and brought the reminder of forest pine to him.
Then it was all gone.
He tuned out the whispers. Already the mana he wielded was clustered and reaching out for him. There was so much lingering in the Sanctum. And they were all those last emotions and thoughts: the imaginations of children, the saviours women and the elderly dreamt for. All of whom deserved protection. All of whom deserved honour.
After all, was there any person who didn't dream of a hero when in danger? An honourable one?
The mana from those dreams and imaginations scrambled to him, to the golden beacon of honour, and they cried: “Here we are, so show us honour, glorious knight!” And of course within him was his own vast wellspring, and he didn't know how deep it could go, or if it would run out. All that he knew was he could never turn from honour, no matter who stood behind his blade and whom in front.
He wore black armour for a reason. Anything else would shine too brightly and place his opponent at a disadvantage.
That wasn’t exactly honourable.
From a dull black, his plates and pauldrons brightened as if freshly oiled. The dried blood sloughed off into dust. Somewhere, the bowman started shouting, and the halberds advanced. So came the arrows tipped with flames and ice. So came a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky.
But that did not deserve his attention.
At his feet was a kneeling dryad, her bark tanned and the leaves of her hair the luscious red and yellow of fall. There were laugh lines etched from a life well lived. In her arms was a little sapling, and after those wide eyes took him in, the sapling giggled. The mother looked up at him. She did not speak a word, no, her eyes were enough.
Thank you. For giving us a chance.
Behind her sat hundreds more, all the ghosts made from their final dreams, and that was what these fools who loved to play with fire and ice did not know. Nothing stood stronger than a people once united. Everything was coming together, all the mana and hopes and dreams, all funnelled into the tip of a two-hander, and he knew that he would never be stronger than he was now, amidst the souls of the thankful and the damned.
He was no mage, nor a creative man. There was one thing he could do, and he did it well. His sword became warm light, and mana shaped it to his instrument of justice: a blade twice as tall as he was.
There were hands of bark holding the hilt with him, hands pushing him up to the sky.
There it was.
“Honour,” he said.
Reidhammon raised the light.
It was a good place to be a hero, and it was a good day to die.
The world exploded.
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Reidhammon was an adventuring knight.
For him, that meant something simple: he was a man who knew three things. He had to know how to fight. He had to know honour. And finally, he had to know monsters, and over his years wandering as an ‘adventuring knight’, punching beasts and saving damsels, he knew plenty of monsters.
And this village had been chock full of them. Now, it was empty. His honour here was done, and it was time for the next monster.
That day, Reidhammon of Schiltigheim left a village, and he was the first human to remember it.