REWRITE - Black Knight - Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Chapter 13 of Black Knight has DOUBLED in length. New pieces have been added to the start and a whole new ending sequence has been added in the after. I decided that I wanted the Kaisersgrab arc to end at this chapter and not stretch on even longer. =)

Sorry about the delay in chapters, they were because of this rewrite. We'll be back on the ball soon!

_______________________________________

~ [The Cathedral] ~

Screams.

The void consumes everything. It takes into itself the eyes of men, the bones of dogs, and the claws of rats. The true darkness that lies beyond the material world may consume everything from the last falling coin of a robbed merchant’s purse to the first breath exhaled by a freshly born infant. Yet there are things born of the immaterial world that are, in and of themselves, intangible and infinite.

The printing of words creates books, but the meaning extracted when reading those words is intangible. It is not a physical thing, like the paper. The same can be said of a song. The flesh of a body allows the movement of air, but the rearranging of these exhalations allows the creation of something greater than its origins. These are the things that the true darkness of the immaterial plane has learned that it too can consume — and far more endlessly. Material things end. They are finite. If it eats them, it will one day run out. However, as long as there are material things around the world, people, birds, things that scream, then the darkness may consume their infinite creations forever. Men and women can be killed. However, as long as men and women continue to exist, the number of songs, stories, and cries in the world is infinite. The number of things that can be consumed by the void, by the representative of all that is less than one, is boundless.

Screams reverberate around the darkness of the cathedral as shadows waver, ripple, and tear apart in a violent display. The woven illusion of Sir Knight’s Schattenjagd ability breaks and rips like the seams of a garment that is stretched too far and too roughly by bulging, swelling flesh. Visions of a false reality blend with the dim cathedral, with segments of the projected illusionary forest and castle corridors merging with the real stone structure. Church pews twist, rising into the air as illusionary trees sprout from the stones. The stained glass windows of the cathedral rattle from the single howl, the lone scream that fills the air, and the colorful depictions dripping and melting as if they were made of ice on a summer’s day. The inner roof of the cathedral warps, shifting between patches of open sky and concealing ancient, regal brickwork. Flickering holy magic sparks in and out on the darkened upper balcony above, like manufactured lanterns, stemming from the hands of dozens of priests and priestesses who lie laid out over banisters and railings, strewn over the stonework and gargoyles. Most are fully incapacitated, having lost their stamina to the individual illusions, which they were trapped in themselves. However many have maintained their composure and begin re-illuminating the scene.

The overpowering magic streaming out of Kaisersgrab has broken the spell and is melding the depicted illusion together with reality.

In the midst of it all stands Sir Knight down below in his suit of armor, his large hands held out, wrestling with the grip of the Church’s soldier, Kaisersgrab, whose scream is the one breaking the spell and filling the empty night. Wild, cascading magical energy is streaming out of his body in all directions in bright, vivid streaks, whipping like uncontrolled tendrils against the walls of the cathedral, like the tentacles of a newborn kraken, furiously breaching its shell. The unnatural howl shakes the walls, shakes the glass, and shakes the church bell high up in the midnight-tower, sending weak strokes of its gong out all around the city like the chirp of birdsong in an exploding warzone. His heavy, dark armor vibrates and jostles as he grips the man, his fingers not able to hold onto any piece of him for long as the flesh of his body breaks, swells, and grows in a grotesque display. Kaisersgrab swings out in pain, Sir Knight strikes back and the two of them meet in the middle, their hands locked as they both try to shove the other away - two powerful waves of force expanding out from there and rattling the broken stones all around them, crumbling rocks falling from above like winter's hail.

The man standing across from Sir Knight with outstretched arms, their palms locked as they press against one another, bulges and shakes, his legs losing footing as his flesh rips and breaks just the same as the fabric covering. Seams rip — both of flesh and fabric. His head writhes, his face twisting and mangling as the magic of his body rips out through from inside of him as he changes. His fingers, locked within the gaps between Sir Knight’s, press down so tightly from the pain alone that the thick metal of Sir Knight's gauntlets begins to buckle, and the ends of Kaisersgrab's own fingers break from the intensity of his grip, surpassing his own mind’s filters for his body’s limits as his howl continues, froth dripping from his mouth.

“MONSTER!” screams the man through the froth, his teeth falling out of his mouth and clattering to the floor, blood oozing down his jaw as it cracks, his shoulders spasming. Sir Knight isn't sure which of them is being referred to by his accusation.

“WOLF!” screams a voice from the top of the cathedral. Tendrils of energy rip and break through the ornate stonework, breaking banisters and walkways far, far away from the man as his uncontrolled magic runs amok. Several priests fall from the ledges or are hit by falling debris. “WOLF! EVACUATE!” yells the priest, grabbing a hold of the others near him as they run toward the upper doors.

— The doorways crash in as the whipping cascade stemming from Kaisersgrab breaks the stonework around them, sealing many of the exits.

An instant later, as deeply unusual as the sensation is, Sir Knight finds himself flying through the air. The giant crashes against a massive column, breaking through it. The stonework above it collapses, tumbling gargoyles fall, and the walkway above fails as a section of the cathedral is destroyed. Lanterns crash, shattering. Fire spreads, eating its way through the debris and through the questionably real trees that have begun to grow all around the cathedral, the destruction of reality and the illusion both mixing in to one another, like fluids of two colors combining to make an indistinct brack. The illusionary spell cast by Sir Knight mixes deeper with Kaisersgrab’s uncontrolled release, with the trees withering and blackening, their boughs turning sharp and cruel as they come to mimic the forest of Kaisersgrab’s childhood as the transformation completes. Chains rattle all around the false landscape as metal links, wrapped around the trees, intersect in all directions like a spider's web.

Sir Knight rises back to his feet, pulling a priestess out from beneath a burning beam that had collapsed onto her. He sets her against the wall, looking back behind himself and staring at the transformed monstrosity that crashes his way, its twisted visage already only an instant away from him.

________________________________________

~ [Lady Acacia Odofredus Krone] ~   

Level: 05   Race: Human Gender: ♀ Class: Initiate  

Location: The City, Tatze Teahouse

Lycanthropy, the werewolf disease, is a very rare illness that can only be acquired in one of two ways. Either a person is born with it or a person catches it by being infected later on in life. The former variant is survivable, the latter is not.

If her own illness, the Consumption, causes a total blockage of her soul’s connection to magic, then Lycanthropy is something close to the opposite. Under specific conditions, a person’s seal – the barrier between their physical body and the spirit world – opens to an unbearable width. The full flow of the spirit world may enter the inflicted sufferer during these times, resulting in inhuman madness and a change of body. The flesh sunders, unable to contain this much raw power within itself. Bones break and snap, meat rips and pulls, and organs swell and burst over and over again as the sufferer grows in shape and size and becomes a body fully adapted to surviving this much raw magical power that both destroys and heals the flesh at the same time until it reaches a critical stage of development through a cancerous process that must bring with in unimaginable pain and horror.

If a child is born with this illness, their body is still able to adapt and overcome it with some luck. Most die, but some do make it to their adult years, but only ever with great terror and pain, as it is likely that they, in their rages, will have killed and hurt everything around them throughout their lives. Families of children with lycanthrope have poor long-term outlooks.

A child may only be born with this illness if their mother has it, either through being bitten before or during her term, or if she is herself a natural born lycanthrope. In the former case, the mother will always die during childbirth. Babies born under such circumstances, if ever discovered, are killed immediately by the people for the safety of the whole community, if not by their own grieving families.

If an adult is later infected with the illness, however, it is fully fatal. Their bodies did not have the chance in adolescence to grow to adapt to such unique circumstances, and once the first cascade begins, the first release of this wild magic brought on by either a rare moon or a special sense of terror, they are not able to withstand it. They change and transform, but incompletely and inhumanly. While a natural born lycanthrope becomes a werewolf, an infected one becomes an abomination. The process of change never finds an equilibrium and their body simply does not stop changing, growing, swelling, as they become an incomprehensible sack of screaming teeth and oozing meat, totally lost in both sanity and grace in the throes of the change.

Until recently, lycanthropes have never had a kind fate. However, in the past decades, the Holy-Church has adopted a new, experimental program, taking these children from their families and raising them in confined, secretive compounds to become crusaders and paladins of the faith, known only as —

“— Grims,” finishes Acacia, looking at the master of the teahouse as she explains their emergency. The Vildt man sits on his side of the desk in his office with folded hands below his face, having been disturbed from his rest.

“Why have you come to me with this?” is the first thing that he asks in a troubled voice, looking out of the side of his eyes toward the window. “I sell tea, Miss Krone.” He rises to his feet. “In fact, you should leave. Immed -”

“- Mr. Tatze,” remarks Acacia, interrupting him. “Why do you think I am here?” she asks, placing her hands on the desk. She reaches down below her cloak, pulling out a satchel of coins and dropping it onto the desk. “Sell me some tea,” demands Acacia, narrowing her eyes as a coin rolls out of the purse and toward the refined vildt man, who stops it with a finger. Behind them, the priestess and the boy who works here stand nervously and wait. “You and I both know who will be blamed for this incident, come tomorrow morning,” says the girl, who wishes she was a real princess at night.

His hands slam against the table, the coins rattling. “THAT’S RIDICULOUS!” yells Tatze, his ears shooting up as he glares at her in an offended rage.

“Be that as it may, Mr. Tatze,” replies Acacia in a cool, collected tone. “This is the world that we find ourselves in,” she replies, sliding the purse further his way to ease the pain.

For the scholars of the world, there is, of course, no connection. However, in the minds of the people, the connection between lycanthropy and the vildt as a species is as clear as the light of a new day. The vildt are already an admixture of animals and humanity as is. The mental leap from them to the half-beastly werewolf is not far at all. It has been common hearthlore for generations that lycanthropy comes from the vildt. It is one of the many reasons humanity bears a quiet grudge against them. Wives’ tales say the illness comes from childbirth between a vildt and another species, like a human or an elf, which causes a catastrophic malfunction in the body down the line of births as the animal half mixes into the human blood until a problem eventually arises.

The apparent connection is so simple that it simply cannot be dismissed in the eyes of the broad public, no matter what any academy of the magical sciences has to say about it.

A werewolf running amok in the city will be blamed on the vildt. After the failure of the city-guard last time, during the enemy attack and attempt to kidnap Acacia, the protectors of the city will never admit that an outside threat had entered their constantly watched walls a second time. The city-guard and the politicians of the region will support the anti-vildt narrative of the general populace to save their own skins, agreeing that the werewolf came from within the city’s own. Tatze, as an official representative of the vildt in this city, will suffer the consequences of this political disaster together with the community he is obligated to serve.

Tatze’s fingernails scratch against the wood of the table as he grits his teeth. “What do you need?” asks the representative, who has a very difficult line of work for someone in a teahouse.

________________________________________

~ [The Cathedral] ~

The greatsword cuts through the air, slicing through the space where Kaisersgrab was in the second he swung the weapon in the same instant he had stuffed the knocked out priestess into his cloak for safe-keeping, beginning a very unusual collection. His helmet tracks upward, looking at the changed creature that has lept up into the air above the intangible blade and past its long arc, hurtling toward him. If Kaisersgrab was a man only moments before, none of that is visible now in this gestalt. It's bulging flesh is covered in wiry, sharp hair. It's form is covered in dense, heavy musculature. It does not have the natural elegance of an actual wolf, however. The term 'werewolf' comes only from its temperament and not from its actual appearance, which is more akin to that of an infant that had been consumed by a teratoma and continued to grow on for decades, becoming a creature that is by all definitions, 'wrong'.

Sir Knight’s free hand barely shoots out in time in something akin to a fist that slams into the arc of the monster. Kaisersgrab’s body has changed; it’s become a wretched mess of sinew and teeth, like someone had pierced a wolf below its jaw with a meathook and yanked it outward. His legs have broken backward at the knees, the muscle and sinew all over his body becoming thick and tense as overflowing ambient magic pours out of his mouth, ears, and gaping wounds. Teeth press themselves through his arm, piercing the dark metal. A clawed, gnarled hand presses against his helmet.

— A second later, his gauntlet comes free, coarsely ripping off its socketing as the creature dismembers him with ease.

(Sir Knight) has used: [Total Entropy]

The air around him freezes, turning into a full void, and the colors of everything within the space invert. Kaisersgrab freezes for a moment, as a shadowy tendril presses out of the broken wrist, slithering out an awkward distance and into the severed gauntlet that is held in the mouth of the time-stopped werewolf. The fingers spasm, twitching.

The spell fades, and the duration of the time freezing effect runs out.

In the same second as Kaisersgrab’s head yanks to the left to continue ripping off the arm, Sir Knight pulls his newly reconnected hand to the right. His other arm, having let go of the greatsword already, clutches the fur on Kaisersgrab’s torso, and a second later he’s heaved the werewolf over his head, slamming it down into the stones beside him with a violent crash. The monster breaks through the dense, ancient stonework, leaving a small crater where it lands. Pebbles and dust fly out in all directions, rocketing against the faces of many watching gargoyles and priests who duck into cover.

If only Junis wasn’t trapped inside of his cloak right now, he’d just throw Kaisersgrab in there, but…

— A hand grabs Sir Knight from the side, distracting him. In surprise, he turns his helmet to look the other way, staring down at a boy. He's the boy from Kaisersgrab's illusionary memory. "Don't let the monsters get me," pleads the pale faced wretch, iron chains wrapped around him, binding him to the trees of the imagined forest.

Next to him, the stones crack, the brickwork shattering from the impact that presses down into the fractured masonry. Sir Knight’s disconnected hand, hanging down lower than the other on a thread of shadow, grabs the hilt of his greatsword just in time as the real Kaisersgrab buckles his legs, his dense, strong muscles kicking together once at Sir Knight with two very sharply clawed feet. The strike hits him square in the chest, and Sir Knight slides back over the floor, through the young hallucination, his long, black cloak billowing before him from the momentum of the strike as Kaisersgrab spins around, jumping back up to his feet with inhuman strength and speed.

The wolf snarls, froth and drool leaking from his mangled face. Kaisersgrab’s head turns, looking to the side, toward a group of priests and priestesses who have been trying to escape the cathedral in the midst of their fight.

Lycanthropy is a maddening disease. Those who are in its throes simply cannot differentiate. They are like a dog in a chicken’s coop; it will kill, eat, and hunt far more than it could ever want in one sitting, if only because that is what its instincts tell it to do.

“Open the door, OPEN THE DOOR!” yells a priestess, spinning around and hitting her colleague, who had been unsuccessfully trying to do exactly that for the last minute, as the lycanthrope barrels their way, fangs and teeth bared as it lumbers indiscriminately at the next thing that has taken its attention. In a flash of a second, it has already entirely forgotten Sir Knight in its mindlessness, having crossed half of the cathedral in a single bound.

As far as the fight goes, Sir Knight is doing alright for himself, what with not actually having a physical body and all. However, normal humans don’t stand a chance against a werewolf. They won’t even have time to cast a spell, and even if they throw a punch, it’ll be like a baby hitting a giant.

She screams, covering herself.

(Sir Knight) has used: [Shadow Work]

As the werewolf lunges, all around the cathedral, shadows immediately press themselves into the broken sculptures lying everywhere, the shattered gargoyles who had fallen from their high perches. A second before he lands, a dozen, ton heavy pieces of stonework fly straight toward him and collapse onto Kaisersgrab.

Sir Knight, having rushed over in that same instant as his shadows inhabited the now shattered gargoyles, hoists the other priestess into the air and shoves her into his cloak before grabbing her friend who had been trying to open the door. “Wait, wait! Don’t kill me!" he pleads. "I’m just -!”

— And in he goes. The fabric of the cloak pillows as another man is thrown into its infinite storage.

The stones erupt behind him. Sir Knight crashes into the door before he has a chance to turn around, breaking through it and rolling out gracelessly into the street, pieces of his deeply dented and scratched armor falling off of him from the impact. Metal rattles in all directions, colliding against the walls around him in the side street next to the cathedral as sections of his armor fall apart.

His shadowy tendrils reach out, pulling it all back together as he rises back up to his feet, watching the door of the cathedral and readying himself as a hulking, musclebound silhouette makes itself seen beyond the smoke inside the building as it comes his way.

Sir Knight looks out to the side, down the dark street and into the core of the city, where he senses Acacia waiting for him.

________________________________________

~ [Junis] ~
  Level: 05
  Race: Elf Gender: ♀ Class: Initiate  Sub-Class: Maid   

Location: A Dark Place

Screams come from all around her.

“Oh… please…” Junis lifts a hand, smiling a tensely nervous smile. “Please stop screaming,” asks the blue haired elf, as several priests and priestesses find themselves in quite a state of panic. She’s not really sure what’s going on ‘outside’, but they all seem to be quite worked up.

— Or maybe they’re worked up because of where they are now?

Quietly, the elf sits on her chair and blinks, watching them all struggle to move. They all just float around the void, hastily yelling in panic at one another and ignoring her entirely.

She sighs, looking down at the book on her lap that her hands are resting on, and taps her fingers as people start praying around her. Presumably, they think that they’ve been sent to the underworld. Junis shrugs. Who is she to say they’re wrong? Maybe they have been.

She lifts her gaze, looking at the crying priestess above her. “It’s very unprofessional to cry at work,” says Junis, looking at the distraught stranger. “At least wait until you get home like the rest of us,” she says, her blue hair wetting as tears land on her from above.

________________________________________

~ [The City, Streets] ~

Heavy moonlight rips through the flag of the nation, the banner billowing in the heavy winds of the dark night. The cold air is filled with the screams borne by slashing metal and wolfkin as the long, gnarled claws of an unnaturally sharp growth scratch over the barrier’s exterior. Sir Knight’s arm presses back against the weight of Kaisersgrab’s warped body, pushing against the substantial muscle mass that is crushing down on him.

A heavy metal leg kicks out, Sir Knight’s knee crushing into the other man’s gut, causing him to keel over, froth dripping to the stones. A second later, a large, metal hand has grabbed the tuft of Kaisersgrab’s neck and throws him back down the road. The changed man flies, gracelessly tumbling through a stack of barrels and crates, shattering through them as he smashes into the wall of the cathedral just beyond. The creature hangs there for a second before dropping to the cobblestone street, leaving a broken mark in the walls of the grand structure.

The illusionary changes of the Schattenjagd follow them outside of the cathedral. Trees begin sprouting from the stones in the middle of the road. Massive chains wind their way around the alleyways and houses. Impossible corridors from an old castle manifest themselves in the middle of the road with no walls or doors, simply consisting of carpeting and furniture arranged in the shape of uncontained hallways.

Sir Knight looks down at himself and at his sword as the transformed man already begins to stir again. This greatsword is a powerful weapon that he's already killed hundreds of monsters with, not to mention actual people. However, against a thing like this, the two handed, heavy blade is too slow. Kaisersgrab, transformed, is fast and strong like nothing he’s encountered before, like nothing on any of the floors of the dungeon he has been to yet. For Acacia’s plan to work, he needs to keep the man engaged for a little bit longer. It’s just a little bit further.

It’s going well so far, all things considered, but…

— Yellow eyes glow in the distance, watching him. A rumbling fills the air as the wild magical energy lashes and writhes from the enraged creature, whose full focus he has now earned.

This is going to be a problem.

Sir Knight holds the metal hilt of his greatsword and retracts the void energy back into himself, leaving nothing there but a piece of metal in his grip.

— The night erupts with a fresh roar as the monstrosity that Kaisersgrab has become hurtles his way, long, heavy arms and thickly muscled legs pressing off of the ground together in unison as he charges like a rabid animal. At the same time, the vision of a young boy runs out from behind a stack of crates, running past Sir Knight’s twisting hand and into the darkness beyond him. A chain rattles behind him as he vanishes into the night, the bite of the metal mingling with the gnashing of teeth.

NEW ABILITY!   - [Indistinct Silhouette] -

The emptiness of the night is apparent within the gaps between the stars.

Allows you to manipulate VOID energy into different, equally non-existant shapes.

Kaisersgrab’s claws extend toward his helmet. The hilt in Sir Knight’s hand, now bladeless, radiates outward in many directions, shadows growing outward evenly in the darkness of night, out in all directions from the hilt, creating a barrier — a shield — to which the hilt now acts as a grip. He lifts it just in time for the werewolf’s clawed hand to swipe into it. However, instead of making contact and forcing an impact, the monster’s hand simply vanishes into the other side of the barrier, as if he were pushing it underwater. A second later, it emerges again as the swipe moves on, having never lost its momentum as it never made contact with anything at all.

In fury, the beast lumbers his way, claws and teeth snarling, swiping, clawing, and gnashing at the metal of his armor when it manages to get past the shield, at the representation of his manifestation on this plane — as he seems to have forgotten in his mindlessness that the armor is simply a container. The thing inside of it can exist anywhere.

With every impotent strike, the creature becomes more and more agitated, its moonlight rage growing and over-boiling, froth leaving its mouth, tendrils of wild, uncontrolled magical energy slashing around all around it, crushing the street lights, smashing against houses, ripping up toward the sky as if trying to tear the moon itself down from it with reaching, desperate hands that never quite seem to stretch far enough. For an observer above in the sky, the sight might be like that of a hundred drowning hands pressed above the water, fruitlessly reaching for salvation in their final moments.

Sharp whistles fill the air. Sir Knight walks backward, twisting his arm to constantly meet the swiping claws of the creature as the midnight streets come to life. Kaisersgrab barrels toward him with tooth and claw but never makes any more significant contact. The city guards whistle, running around the outskirts of the fighting zone as the two of them collide against one another, sending a shockwave out in all directions that knocks a dozen pikemen down to the ground, sending them tumbling over one another. Loaded crossbow bolts that had already been fired, ideally toward the werewolf and not him, divert through the air and whistle off into the night, their true trajectory remaining a mystery.

They don’t stand a chance. But it’s a problem that they’re here now.

A tendril of wild energy stemming from Kaisersgrab whips him in the gut, and Sir Knight is knocked back, the stones beneath his feet pulverizing as he keeps his footing but slides back several meters, the ring of the impact striking out like a cathedral bell at midnight. A second later, Kaisersgrab has lunged and is on top of him, pressing him onto his back. The shield presses against the wolf’s chest, its feral hand grabbing Sir Knight’s wrist to stop him from using it, the other clawing at the helmet’s visor.

Copying the wolf’s own move from before, Sir Knight presses his legs against the creature and kicks it off, sending it flying in the opposite direction from where he had been heading.

“NOW!” yells a familiar voice in the night as Kaisersgrab crashes against the stones, yelping as he tumbles again in a graceless impact.

A glow fills the darkness as Sir Knight rises to his feet, adjusting his dented and damaged armor. Kaisersgrab rises to his feet, ready for another push, as his animal rage simply cannot be beaten out of him, no matter how hard one tries, as history has proven.

The wolf-like monstrosity freezes, turning to the side to try and move another way, managing only a step before faltering. Quickly, it turns the other way but finds no such thing there either. It’s trapped.

Sir Knight approaches, his cape billowing behind him as he walks, city guardsmen encroaching all around them. A few walk next to him, recognizing him. Others keep their distance and observe from a very careful and cautious distance.

“You always find trouble, don’t you?” asks the man next to him, a guard who had been there during the enemy attack on the city when he arrived.

“This is what happens when you walk through the city at night,” replies Sir Knight dryly. “Rough neighborhood.”

He stops, looking on, as there is a quiet clinking of glassware. “Sir Knight,” says Acacia. He looks at the girl, who is sitting on a bench there in the square with her leg folded over the other. In her hand is a cup of tea on a porcelain saucer. She calmly takes a sip, looking at Kaisersgrab. “I do not appreciate you making a refined woman of my status wait in this cold air,” remarks the girl, her foot shuffling to kick away a few petals of tea-leaves and flowers at her feet.

Kaisersgrab is stuck. “Wolfsbane,” remarks Acacia, calmly sipping her tea. “It has a strong, peppery note,” she explains, swirling the cup below her nose for a moment. “Fresh. There is a hint of old pine and smoke.” She shrugs. “It is rather indelicate for a tea. However…” She takes a tender sip, watching the struggling monster with a quiet joy hidden in her falsely warm gaze. All around Kaisersgrab is a circle of tea-leaves that he has been thrown into. Wolfsbane is a very unpopular tea; however, there is still some demand for it among the more esoteric circles. As its name implies, it is very unpopular with people with sensitive noses and, even more so, with creatures.

– So much so that even a werewolf won’t disturb it. The scholars of the world are in disagreement over whether this is a magical effect or a physical one; however, the fact of the matter is that it works.

Acacia lets out a contented sigh as she watches Kaisersgrab struggle. The beast rampages around in a circle, testing out each and every inch of the ring of petals around him. She holds her cup out to the side, where a terrified priestess stands, refilling her cup with clinking glassware that shakes violently, betraying the utter terror she feels. The sight is a stark contrast to Acacia’s composure.

“– I find that there is something pleasant about it,” she remarks, finishing her previous statement.

The guardsmen next to him look at her calmly sitting there next to a werewolf, then look at Sir Knight’s battered and broken armor that deep gashes, dents, and breaks run through — he had clearly been in the fight of his life.

“Sheesh,” mutters a guardsman on the side, clearly shocked by this scene that, for an outside observer, looks like a total display of utter heartlessness and disconcert at his safety. The reality is that he is perfectly fine; after all, Sir Knight can’t be easily hurt by any physical means. But they don’t know that. “And I thought my wife was rough.”

“Your wife is rough, Gidian,” remarks the man next to him.

Gideon gets elbowed from the other side. “Yeah. In bed!”

“Shut up!” snaps the guardsmen, hitting both of his co-workers, as is extremely desirable in most workplaces, before the three of them look back toward the scene.

“My apologies,” replies Sir Knight, looking at her and ignoring the guards. “I had to walk the dog before I came.”

Acacia smirks with a surprisingly pleasant smile, swirling her tea. The two of them know exactly how this scene looks to everyone around them, but they’re playing a game together, she and him, as they always do. The windows of every house on the road are open now. Soldiers have flooded in from the garrisons, already on high-alert.

Kaisersgrab, unable to leave the circle, runs himself raw and collapses in a paranoid heap in the center of the ring as the transformation begins to die out.

Chains rattle as the illusion of the Schattenjagd connects them to where they are now. The false trees growing around them sway in the night as metal links connect together one after the other, like the foreboding steps of a threat to come, as the circle closes around Kaisersgrab, soldiers moving in on all sides to build a ring around him as everyone gawks.

Hiding behind the crumpled body of the changing monster is the illusion of a boy with a chain around his neck, who suffered the same fate decades ago, covering his face to hide from the monsters that have encircled him, from the monsters that got him. The man next to him, his body returning to its true shape, holds the same posture as it was learned in childhood.

Acacia hates Kaisersgrab as much as she hates Junis, which was a fast escalation; he can sense it. Although, to be fair, he did kick her in the ribs and step on her back. So… he can understand why she dislikes this plan of theirs.

– Sir Knight absentmindedly fiddles with one of the deep scratches running through his armor as he looks back down at Kaisersgrab, whom the guards have begun prodding with their pikes, the braver ones kicking into the circle toward. As threatening as the man was before, as composed and elegant as he might have been, and as grotesquely horrifying as he was as a monster, now he’s no different than the fading illusion of a chained boy next to him. Other guardsmen laugh, slapping Sir Knight on the back, more impressed by his fighting than by anything else.

“Are you sure you don’t need a stable wage?” asks the guard captain next to him, who has tried to recruit him a few times now.

Sir Knight shakes his head, walking past them and stepping over the flowers into the circle. “I already have everything the heart desires,” says the avatar of total emptiness, somewhat sarcastically, kneeling down toward Kaisersgrab amidst cheers and hollers for him to finish the job.

The magic of the Schattenjagd fades. The trees wither and vanish. The rattling chains begin to crumble, their links falling apart and disappearing as they descend toward the ground. The manifestation of the chained, starved, and beaten boy looks his way as his face vanishes, his lips moving to utter a single pleading phrase that makes no sound over the voices of the raging crowd around them.

‘Don’t let the monsters get me’.

“They already did,” says Sir Knight, grabbing the real Kaisersgrab by the scruff and hoisting him up into the air.

– As expected, a loud rumbling comes from down the road. A stampede of boots and wheels thunders through the night. The crowd turns to look at a regal procession that moves down the street, coming from the expensive part of town. An eloquent, extremely expensive carriage with vivid livery and golden trim moves, surrounded by paladins and knights, mounted on armored anqas.

People mutter, and the city guardsmen move to a tighter formation very abruptly, as they seem to realize something. The men gather in neat, professional rows as the captain of the guards barks his orders before joining the troop.

The carriage comes to a stop, and elite soldiers of the church surround the area.

It’s quiet for a moment before the door to the carriage is opened by a servant. A cloud of heavily perfumed smoke wafts out from the inside of the carriage as a silhouette of an old man steps out into the night, looking around himself. He’s dressed in regal, formal robes with a ruby tinge. The dense, floral smoke wafts out around his ankles from the carriage. After a second, the old man, hardly a head taller than Acacia, sees him and begins walking down the aisle that the guardsmen have created, with the paladins on the other side.

It’s quiet. Gold and silver chains rattle as the man takes a step. He’s very old, and his pace matches his age. He moves; the adornments on his vestiges sway for a moment as his other leg catches up, and then he stands for a moment before taking another slow step.

Nobody says anything as the old man, the cardinal — the highest ranking member of the church in this region, not just this city — approaches step by step. After what feels like a long minute, he finally reaches the end of the aisle and stands before the circle.

Quietly, the old man lifts his head, looking at Sir Knight and what he’s holding.

“Welche Sprache sprechen Sie dieses Mal?” asks the old man, speaking in the tongue of the enemy nation, asking ‘which language do you speak this time around’. “- Herr Ritter.”

The giant looks down at him, loosening his grip. “Violence,” replies Sir Knight. He drops Kaisersgrab’s limp body down, letting the battered man fall down at the feet of the cardinal. Before he can say a word or lift a hand, paladins of the church walk in from the side and lift the man up, dragging him away.

The cardinal doesn’t break his gaze into his eyes; his expression is really neither here nor there. He’s just looking with blank curiosity, with a fearlessness that is born of an extremely old age where nothing really matters anymore anyway. After a moment, he turns his head, looking at Acacia, who is still quietly sipping her tea. The rogue priestess next to her stiffens up as pale and stiff as a marble statue as the ranking church elite’s eyes wander over her.

– The old man’s vision is obscured by a large hand that is outstretched, obstructing his sight of Acacia. He turns back to look at Sir Knight.

“The girl will die, just like the last one, monster,” says the cardinal, looking at him. “There is nothing that even you can do,” he explains, shaking his head, his hands resting on the silvered cane he rests his body against. “It would be for the best if you simply left our world again and let things be what they are.” The old man straightens his back a little, not so much to be intimidating, but just because he’s old and he wants to stand upright for a moment instead of in a hunch.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” replies Sir Knight, dryly.

The cardinal dons a glib half-smile. “How often will you return to us, Ritter?” he asks. “How often will you send our precious world into an age of strife for the sake of your own selfishness? And for what?” he asks. “For your obsession with playing make-believe.” The weary man observes him before looking around at the city that they’ve been living in, as if he were looking over a dollhouse.

Sir Knight’s visor looks his way; the giant is still standing exactly where he has been. “This is all make-believe,” he replies dryly, bending down to look at the cardinal from up close. “And as long as there are gaps beneath your beds,” starts Sir Knight. “I’ll be coming back.”

The cardinal turns around, quietly laughing and shaking his head as he returns to walk away. “I’ll be sure to tell the carpenters,” he jokes. “What is your plan, Ritter?” asks the cardinal, walking away very slowly. “You know that this will end just like it did once before.”

“My plan,” starts Sir Knight as the cardinal leaves toward his carriage. “- is to remind you that you owe me a favor,” explains Sir Knight. The cardinal stops, looking over his shoulder. “For finding your lost pet.”

“…Oh?” he asks in a tone that is half amused and half threatening as he stands between rows of extremely disciplined, elite soldiers of the church. “And what exactly wouldn’t you like?” asks the cardinal in a tone that suggests he is humoring him.

“Hard to say,” replies Sir Knight. “I guess I don’t like poetry,” he remarks, shrugging. “But what I do want is something you can help with,” he says.

Acacia’s plan had been set up until this very point.

She had him lure Kaisersgrab out of the cathedral and into the open, where she could trap him with the Wolfsbane that she had acquired from the tea-shop. Mr. Tatze, the proprietor of the tea-shop, as a man of high social status given his position as a representative of the vildt in this city, had contacts who had contacts in the house of the cardinal. From there, it wasn’t hard to send a message his way that one of the Church’s precious creations was about to be destroyed – a creation that is dear to perhaps his most holy presence himself, the high-priest of the church, its leader. This helps all parties.

This was never the case. Sir Knight wasn’t going to kill Kaisersgrab. But it had to look like it, for the cardinal to make his appearance. The church can clean up the mess, keeping the vildt community safe from repercussions. It was a brilliant, on the fly strategy from Acacia. The fact that it worked and that she is pleased about it is presently visible in the pure, radiant smugness of her quiet smile, the form of which could terrify anyone who were to notice it right now.

The plan all along was to bait the cardinal out, to open the door to another new social contact, another rung on Acacia’s ladder to the throne. If they couldn’t get Count Ersteig, who is still missing, then the cardinal is a very good consolation prize. What Acacia doesn’t know, however, is that while she wants to talk to the cardinal over tea to explain her and Sir Knight's situation, he himself has much bigger, much more noble, and much more adulty, responsible plans.

Sir Knight points at the cardinal as he makes his demand for reparation, his marred armor covered in horrific scars and breaks. “I want you to flex your influence to re-enroll my lady Acacia into the magical academy.”

Acacia spits her tea out, spraying a fine mist out onto the spotless white robes of the priestess next to her, who breaks from her frozen terror and instead screams in surprise as the hot tea soaks through her garments.