Reborn as the Black Knight

 

The sun hangs low in the sky, the glowing orb casting long shadows over the remnants of a world shaken to its core by chaos.

Dandy trudges alongside Hero, each step feeling more like an uphill battle than the one preceding it. Her feet — somehow heavier than usual — pound against the ground, warmth brewing around her as sweat trickles down her back, mingling with the dust that has long since settled onto her. The weight of confused despair continues to stir painfully in her chest, together with the stitch in her side. Hero walks ahead, his unbroken gait projecting strength and purpose. It’s like he’s not even confused or bothered by what just happened. His strides are steady, the rhythm effortless as he navigates the uneven ground. She can barely keep up with him, and he constantly stops, waiting for her to catch up. The forest around them constricts like a tightening noose, branches clawing at her. Dandy pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders to keep herself warm and to stop the fabric from snagging, but the chill of shock in her bones remains.

“Dandy!” Hero glances back. “You alright?” he asks, without a care in the world to his tone.

“Fine,” she replies too quickly. Tiredness weaves into her, fatigue that seeps into her spirit and clouds her focus. “Just... keeping up.”

He slows to match her pace as she catches up, a giant’s shadow bending to accommodate her. “Here.” He holds out his arm, an invitation to lean, to rest against. “We can take a moment if you need it.”

“I’m fine,” she protests, stumbling slightly before shifting her weight to climb up a small incline in the forest, clambering over several roots and clumpy outcrops. “Besides. We’re strangers. It would be weird.”

The man, standing down below the little hill, just shrugs. There really isn’t a single care etched anywhere into his face. “I’ve never met a stranger I didn’t like.” His voice is steady, unbothered. She doesn’t understand it. What is he? Who is he? Yes, her mind has processed that she somehow summoned an ancient hero to the world by completing the ritual the elders of the monastery had begun. But… actually seeing him here, talking to him, is odd. He acts like he’s already known her for years, like they aren’t scrambling away from a critical ruin scarred into the world that marks the end of her entire life as she knew it.

Dandy reaches up, grabbing a root to pull herself up the last bit of the incline. But it snaps, and she lets out a sharp yelp, tumbling down a ways back toward the ground, only to find herself caught by the man. A hot pain runs through her ankle. The two of them look at each other. He sets her back upright, lifting his hands up in surrender as she glares his way for a moment for having the nerve to help her again like some kind of asshole. However, after a few seconds of trying to balance herself on her own two legs again, her shoulders slump because of the stabbing sensation coming from her foot that she twisted on the way down. Then she takes a deep breath, willing herself to let go of the stubborn pride that binds her. “Fine. Thank you,” she breathes almost sarcastically, guilt flaring alongside a sense of comfort as she grabs his arm. Without a hint of trouble, he simply marches up the incline she had to scramble up on all fours — in armor and with her in arm — without as much as a moment’s hesitation. Unreal. They reach the top and move head-on a path through the undergrowth, where the world is covered in gnarled roots and tufts of long, wild grass, rising out beneath them. He barely has to push any of the branches and limbs of the forest out of his way — the same ones she seems to get snagged and stuck on every other step. He just sort of walks, and she has the feeling like the forest is always moving slightly out of his way to accommodate him.

Her fingers clench his metal armor as she braces herself against him. The priestess does her best not to put weight on her foot, which doesn’t feel too bad. Nothing broke or sprained. But it will definitely hurt for a few hours. She looks back behind them as they reach the top of a hill, staring out over a peak in the forest back toward the glassed flat lands they are leaving behind. She shudders at memories — watching the last bits of the monastic haven that was her home crumble.

— Maybe if she had gone to the chapel earlier and somehow helped with the ritual earlier, it could still be here. The guilt of her weakness gnaws at her.

Hero nudges her, looking ahead. “I think I see a road ahead,” he explains, holding his hand over his eyes as he looks in the other direction. She turns to stare that way too, but honestly, she doesn’t see anything but trees for as far as her sight lets her see. How crazy good are his eyes? But Dandy nods, forcing herself to breathe through the clenching tightness in her throat as she pushes back her mourning to another time and place.

They trudge on, the ground beneath starting to level out beneath their feet, the trees thinning out as they near a clearing. The sun begins to set after a day of marching, the horizon painted with strokes of crimson and gold, but the beauty of it offers little solace to her now. They step into the clearing, and it unfolds before them — an old overgrown forest road that almost glimmers under the waning light as the dew of the damp air wicks over the stones that mark the path.

“...Huh… there really is a road,” Dandy mutters aloud, hope flaring for the first time that day, the warmth radiating from her fingertips like the first touch of spring. “Never knew this was here.

“It looks pretty old,” replies Hero. “It must have been here for a long time by the looks of it.”

Dandy scratches her cheek, looking around the area somewhat sheepishly. “I guess I didn’t leave the monastery often…” she admits.

Suddenly, the ground vibrates beneath them, and she hears the distant clatter of armor — a rustle from a gathering nearby as figures emerge from the tree line. Dandy’s heart races. She grabs his arm, thinking that more of the black-armored soldiers have come to finish the job. Hero stills, hand tightening instinctively around the hilt of his sword, his stance shifting into preparation. His gaze sharpens, scanning the treeline that bleeds into shadows as he pushes her back a step. “Stay close to me.”

Dandy desperately stifles her panic as shapes emerge from the trees — shiny wolf-motif breastplates glint in the last light of the dying day, soldiers bearing the crest of the Empire, faces stony and hardened by the chaos of the long war.

Relief fills her, and she exhales. Hero, seeing her tension drop, lowers his own hand again from his weapon.

“State your business,” a commander calls, stepping forward, voice strong and authoritative. The soldiers around him shift slightly, hands resting on spears, eyes narrowing, searching.

“We’re travelers heading towards the capital,” Hero responds, not even skipping a beat to consider his thoughts, his voice steady yet layered with an undertone of caution. “We seek refuge and -”

“- State your purpose fully,” the commander interrupts, eyes narrowing, assessing them both carefully. Dandy can only assume they’re here to come to the aid of the siege of the monastery. A little too late, however. A flicker of distrust dances within his gaze.

Hero looks at her and she nods. “They’re on our side,” she explains quietly. “Tell them the truth,” Dandy whispers.

Hero pulls out his blade half way from its scabbard, the shining hilt embossed with a deeply glowing sun in its otherworldly metal — the mark of a summoned hero, carried by each and every one of them throughout history. “My name is not but Hero,” he says. “I have come to rid your world of evil,” notes the man simply and without pause, several soldiers shielding their eyes as a brilliant shine flashes from the spectral metal of his weapon. “Take us to the capital,” he orders, speaking to the soldiers of the Empire’s military — his authority over them given to him by a power higher than any crown or title.

Several men fall to their knees, the captain looking around himself as others step away in unease and others salute. The legends of the heroes of the world are etched deeply into the minds of every child of the Empire, taught to them together with so many other stories of creatures that prowl in the shapes of men, of which there are many in the eastern forests such as this one.

 

---

 

 

It’s astounding how fast things can change, how fast they can go from zero to something just a little bit greater and more.

It has been about half a year since the final encounter with Zero, below the mountain city, since Acacia’s intent to claim the crown was made clear to the world and only a little while longer than that since his and her first encounter right here in this very city he’s moving through today.

Sir Knight walks through the marketplace, looking around himself. “Hey, Sir Knight!” calls a young man with a sword from the side, who he lifts a hand slightly towards in a half-wave. “Still up for helping us in the dungeon later today?”

The giant doesn’t stop, just looking over his shoulder at the young adventurer as he passes him by. “As promised, but you’ll need to beat the boss yourself,” responds Sir Knight, his waving hand turning into a thumbs-up as he keeps going. The boy and his group — all young, starry-eyed adventurers with clothes they haven’t quite grown into yet — celebrate amongst themselves in an excited mess of body-bumps and cheers. The wizard, whose hat is too big for head, stumbles as it sinks down and obscures her eyes — jolted from the collision.

All around the marketplace, people are moving and flowing like the water of a river. There are more people now than he’s ever seen before. It’s teeming. Every single inn and tavern looks like its walls are about to rupture, bursting from the sheer number of patrons and customers. The adventurer’s guild ran out of beds months ago, retrofitting all of their private rooms into bunks and even buying several more properties within the city to house even more.

Adventurers are the lifeblood of the city, of any city. The dungeon is an endless mine of resources for the wealth of the new nation that is to form here. Monsters spawn inside of it nearly infinitely and adventurers are the workers who harvest those resources. Everything from ore to meat, bones, teeth, or even pre-finished weapons and armor dropped by monsters can be found in the dungeon. It alone has the ability to produce just about every resource the city needs — assuming there are strong enough people present to harvest them. This is where the new subsidies for adventurers come in.

“Big guy!” calls a priestess, standing on a fountain, holding on with one hand and waving wildly with the other as she stretches out onto her toes to get his attention.

“Hey Juniper,” greets Sir Knight, keeping his pace.

“What’s the word on floor nine today?” she asks, holding her hand by her mouth as she shouts over the crowd.

“Undead slimes,” replies Sir Knight. “Perfect for you guys to handle,” he explains, knowing the status of the local dungeon inside and out. His soldiers are present on every single floor of it — not engaging unless to save someone’s life in a critical moment. Adventurers are their lifeblood and it is not acceptable for a single one of them to be lost. Compared to a year ago, where young bodies were swallowed by the greedy throat of the world, this is a radical change.

She claps her hands together in a sign of thanks and jumps back down to her group of trainee monks and priests from the holy-church’s acolyte program, the group fighting their way down the stairs into the dungeon.

Interestingly, the dungeon itself seems to be changing and adapting to this flood of bodies. It’s begun altering its monsters and layout regularly, even creating new ones that people haven’t seen before. Currently on floor nine, there are hordes of wandering skeletons; however, pressed together by the sheer pressure of so many bodies, the local slimes have begun housing inside the bones of the undead, creating a sort of new hybrid monster — undead slimes.

Acacia, having a soft spot for adventurers that no other noble has, given her very personal experience with them, has created all manner of programs and benefits to lure adventurers to her domain from other cities. Cost-covered board and housing for people who drop at least a minimum amount of loot off at the local adventurers guild, special privileges and reward programs for regular suppliers in which they can earn free training at either the magic academy — which is now fully under her control — or from the local guard regiment in any skills and abilities an adventurer is able to learn from them. Access to banking accounts at any income level, in order to keep the money safe that adventurers had always kept with themselves, making them easy targets for pickpockets and thieves, whose numbers are all but shattered now. It has the added benefit of tax revenue skyrocketing because there are fewer secret funds sloshing around the streets.

Before all of this began, adventurers were seen as the absolute lowest class of society; they were people viewed as having no skills or talents other than their ability to fight — but then not even in the military or guard, which have some societal holding of honor to them. Adventurers, especially low-rank adventurers, were and in many places still are seen as absolute dregs who were tolerated at best.

But here, in the kingdom of Acacia Odofredus Krone, they are lavished and rewarded for their efforts and offered as much as possible for the results of their work.

For other kingdoms, such an idea seems almost outlandish to the nobles and prideful rich of said nations who have never known what it is to bleed inside a dungeon, to cry and dig through dirt for roots and scraps to eat, hoping you’ll save enough money to sleep in an actual bed even just once this week.

But the results speak for themselves.

The adventurers flood into the city from the nearby regions, young eyes eager to make a future. Their energetic, hard working hands rush into the dungeon — the earliest floors of which have been absolutely flooded by bodies — and they produce results in quite the fantastical manner. Resources are brought out of the dungeon in an abundance never witnessed before. An entire industry has been created of guarded carriages at the dungeon gate who collect the loot from adventurers and sell it for a cut, saving the prior party the effort of having to fight their way through the city back to the busy adventurers’ guild where they have to wait in line instead of getting back to their work.

— Sir Knight lifts an elbow, and a city guard walking past him does the same as the bump in passing greeting.

And from this abundance of raw materials, the local industry and artistry flourish. Blacksmiths and leatherworkers can’t keep up with the demand from the adventuring population, despite their yards overflowing with raw supplies and fresh apprentices. The fletchers and tailors of the city have created a timed system of sleep and shutdowns, so that everyone gets at least one chance to rest while the other stores all remain open. The magic academy is so full that they’ve begun offering free and open public lectures out on the market place for anyone to attend. The holy-church does the same, the cathedral full beyond capacity in every sermon.

The city is doing too well. It’s full.

And so, expansion is, of course, inevitable. With the help of his black-armored soldiers, houses have begun springing up outside and around the city walls by the hundreds each day, given that his laborers never need sleep or rest.

“Sir Knight! Sir Knight!” calls a voice in his ear. A fairy flies up next to his helmet, landing on his shoulder. He knows her. She’s the fairy friend of Mietze, the young adventurer and teahouse worker from Tatze’s Teahouse. “You made it!”

“Promised I would,” says Sir Knight, nodding his helmet to her. “Where’s Mietze?”

“Jasp? He’s waiting back there!” she explains, pointing forward to the side of the dungeon-gate where a young boy with cat ears is standing, leaned against the wall, and eating an apple.

Sir Knight nods, walking through the crowd with ease. Given his presence, he doesn’t really have any difficulties in the surge of bodies that almost seems to divert apart for him. “Surprised you made it, honestly,” he explains, despite this having been their request. “Did Tatze let you guys out for the day?”

“Something like that,” explains the fairy. “We’re out of tea.”

“What?”

She nods. “Yeah. The entire stockpile. It’s just gone. There’s no tea left to sell. Sold it all. There’s so much business, it’s crazy. We haven’t stopped in weeks.”

Is this a problem? Sir Knight thinks, his hand on his helmet, as he makes it to the dungeon gate, crossing over one of the four bridges that leads to the island in the center of the city. No, it’s fine. Acacia’s personal stockpile of tea held inside his infinite inventory inside of the void is enough for four of her lifetimes at least.

“I think I can arrange a small delivery to the teahouse today,” he remarks.

Mietze’s ears twitch as he looks up at Sir Knight, closing one eye. “…Maybe after we take a little break?” he asks in a suggestive tone, holding one hand up in a praying pose, his other one still holding the half-eaten apple. “If I have to work one more shift this week, you’ll need to tell Miss Krone to expand the graveyard too.”

He looks down at the boy. “I don’t think Mr. Tatze would agree with you on the matter of his business being shut down longer than it needs to be,” remarks Sir Knight.

Mietze bites into the apple, grabbing Sir Knight's arm and pulling him along down toward the dungeon. The boy looks back up at him, lifting his eyebrows, chewing on one side of his mouth as he talks. “What’s the harm in a little economic sabotage between friends, huh?” asks the young vildt.

“We won’t tell,” adds the fairy in his ear, lying over his shoulder and kicking her legs in the air. “Promise.”

“You’re making me the bad guy here no matter what I do,” explains the black knight, being dragged down into the dungeon by the two adventurers.

Behind him billow the banners of Acacia Odofredus Krone all around the city that is prospering beyond imagining. It is not often that eyes rise up to look at them, as they have become such a mainstay of everyday life in this new golden age that they are as obvious and overseeable as the pavers that make up the roads or the water that comes from the fountains. They are a simple fact of life.

But day by day, people walk past them, beneath them, around them, and the mark of her campaign etches itself deeper and deeper into their hearts and minds in association with the newfound wealth and splendor everyone’s lives is achieving. Many — most in fact — don’t realize it, but they subconsciously come to associate her image and mark with the ever-prominent goodness developing in their lives.

 

---

 

 

“Here. Here, and here,” says Hase, pointing at the map of the city after scanning it for a moment. Her finger points at an alleyway, running along it. “There’s an old broken door here down below the storm drain that they’ll escape from when you start the raid. The city’s reconstruction a while ago left a lot of weird places that like that,” she explains. “It was cheaper to build over and around a lot of stuff than tear it all down.”

Acacia sits there with crossed arms, thinking for a moment. “Can we just station a man there preemptively to stop the runners?”

“No,” replies Hase, shaking her head. The experienced young thief narrows her eyes, picturing the area in her mind. She’s been there often. “You don’t get it. These rats are sharp,” she says. “If they sniff out any clinks, they’ll scatter the entire nest out before you get a boot through any door.” Both hands run over the map in different directions along the roads in chaotic swirls. “They’ll hit different holes and nests. You’re just spreading them out wider that way.” Hase points at the circled spot on the map. “This is your only shot if you want them all at once. They’re fresh. Inexperienced,” she explains. “They don’t understand how to survive the streets. Headquarters are for guilds, not thieves,” explains the thief, spreading her hands out. “If they were smart, they would’ve already separated,” she explains, pointing out different areas and clusters of alleyways and tunnels.

Acacia studies the papers, thinking. “Can I trust you on this, Hase?” she asks pointedly, looking at the thief who is being awfully helpful. Hase is an interesting case. She’s skittish, clever like a fox, and extremely cautious, but has clad that up beautifully below the act of a scared, frightened and overwhelmed child. She’s spent her life as a thief on the streets of this city, surviving and hustling. She knows how these things work better than anyone. “Or are you looking out for your own ilk?”

“I don’t drink milk,” replies Hase, standing on her knees on a sturdy, cushioned wooden chair, leaning back from the table. She looks at Acacia, who lifts an eyebrow. “This is me looking out for me,” replies the girl, pointing back at herself.

Acacia lightly folds her hands together, leaning in across the table. “And, pray tell, why are you offering me these services?” she asks, knowing that Hase never does anything for free. She can give the girl a place to sleep and as much food as she wants, but Hase will still never stop trying to make an obol more than what she has now. “Perhaps you want to remove your competition?” suggests the princess, tilting her head, a bang of her hair falling past her eyes.

“Please,” replies Hase, crawling off of her knees and sitting on the chair properly, at least for a second until she kicks her bare feet up onto the table, crossing them over the top of the map. She leans back on the chair, rocking on its hind legs with her arms behind her head. “These runts aren’t even close to my level,” she explains, shrugging. “They couldn’t snatch a crumb from the floor of a bakery before I make my way out of there with the till,” says the thief, scratching the inside of one of her rabbit ears.

“You wouldn’t be admitting to criminal activity in my city now, would you?” asks Acacia with a pleasantness that should be terrifying. But Hase just keeps digging in her one rabbit ear, wincing as she scratches too hard.

“No, Sir Guardsman,” replies the thief.

Acacia sighs, looking back at the map — or at least she tries to. The princess snaps her fingers. A black-armored guard comes over, grabbing Hase’s legs and rotating her sideways so that she isn’t smudging the map anymore. “Hey!” protests the thief, being held like a caught rabbit at the end of a hunt.

“Let us skip the games today, Hase,” remarks Acacia, used to this song and dance. “What is your price?” she asks, needing to get this part of her city cleaned up. Hase is the only access she has to this part of the world that lies below the belly of her domain, regardless of how well it is doing.

Hase, holding onto the chair with both hands as the guard pulls her legs up into the air, turns her head toward Acacia. “Your sister. The fluffy one,” says the thief. Acacia tilts her head the other way. “We have business.”

“Machineel?” asks Acacia curiously, thinking back to her older sister, who had come to visit her a while back, together with an entire entourage of guards. It was an entire event that drove the city crazy. Thankfully, she managed to settle her personal troubles with her older sister, as annoying as she is. “What possible business could you have with her?” asks Acacia, shaking her head.

“She owes me a lot of money,” explains Hase. Acacia nods to the guard, who sets Hase back down. “I had an entire crew. I spent weeks training them,” explains Hase. Her fist hits the table as she glares at Acacia. “They went too hot, too fast.” The girl’s ears droop. Her goons came in and cut them out because of some stupid ring. It caused me a lot of problems.”

Acacia sits there with her hands folded, watching and thinking.

She points down to the map after a second, down an alleyway next to the marketplace to a fenced off inner courtyard. “Here?” she asks, remembering an old report she was given a while back.

Hase nods.

The youngest princess sighs, breaking demeanor and rubbing her face for a moment as she thinks about the implications of what has been said here, thinking back to her own encounter with her sister back then. She looks at Hase, who is dangling there, seemingly unbothered and in ‘business mode’, but years of training in the noble court of social etiquette tell her that she’s underselling the incident by a significant degree. There’s no way Manchineel would ever directly promote this kind of violence, but the perfect princess that she is simply doesn’t understand the weight of the crown on her head. Those below her, her guards and keepers… they live in a very different reality than she does, a much darker and loveless world — the perfect princess and her legion of golden knights.

It almost fits in an eerily similar pattern to her own life, doesn’t it?

“I can’t give you my sister,” says Acacia. “But if you want money, it’s yours.”

“No,” replies Hase, crossing her arms, making a face.

“Oh?” asks Acacia, interested now. That’s not like Hase at all. “What do you want, then?”

Hase dangles there for a while quietly, her arms locked crossed as she thinks. Then, after a moment more, she opens her eyes. “I want the ring.”

“Pardon?”

Hase the thief nods. “I want your sister's ring. The one that my boys were killed over. She owes it to me.”

That’s not what she expected. Acacia thinks for a second. “What will you do with it?”

“None of your business!” snaps Hase sharply. “Do we have a deal or not?” asks the girl, holding out an upside down arm toward Acacia. “I’ll set up your operation. You get me that ring.”

“My sister is halfway across the kingdom in her castle,” explains Acacia, implying an entire host of logistical difficulties in such an oddly specific procurement. Hase doesn’t reply, simply holding her one arm out stiffly. Her other arm is still ‘crossed’, like it was before. Acacia just thinks Hase doesn’t know what to do with it in a fit of body awkwardness.

The youngest princess sighs, not having a choice. She has to fix this local problem, before it becomes even worse. “I will find a way to get it for you,” she agrees, grabbing Hase’s turned-over hand and shaking it before leaning back on her chair.

“I’ll get your boys in then,” explains the rabbit girl.

The guard carries Hase back out, upside down, setting her back on her feet outside of the door that closes there, leaving Acacia in the room by herself. After a minute of being sure she’s alone, she finally lets out a long exhalation and slumps over the table, letting her face press against it.

She’s so tired.

Her eyes start to drift closed faster than she can even think about taking a nap.

The door opens again, and she jolts upright, folding her hands together as if they had never been taken apart.

“Your Majesty. The Baron is here to see you now,” calls Junis from the door. “Your other guest is ready and waiting as well,” remarks the elf, holding a silver platter against herself with one hand.

“Send him in,” beckons Acacia, without a hint of exhaustion, folding the map together and placing it to the side as a regal man from the nearby region enters into the room and she has to go through an entire spiel of pretending to be interested in proper etiquette and his request for audience.

She’d rather have half the city executed if it meant she could get some sleep finally, though.

— Heavy is the head that wears the crown. But not because of the crown itself. Rather, the head is just very sleepy and overworked.

 

---

 

 

The world above buzzes with life and energy, but beneath cobblestones and away from the merchant stalls, the air chokes with the mingling scents of dampness and decay. Runoff pours down metal grates and into the deeper sewer passages. Wild and unruly laughter echoes off the jagged stone of the underground that wraps around them like a second skin — the city's underworld is a surprisingly peaceful cloak of silence compared to the anarchy of the city above. A flickering torch sputters against the damp walls, casting trembling light. Shadows leap and crawl more so in the imagination of the children than in actuality, teasing at the corners of their vision. The walls ooze moisture, with thick tendrils of mold creeping like fingers. There’s a collection of forgotten cellars and tunnels here that they’ve filled with broken barrels and discarded crates that act as little homes, adorned at best with dreams woven from tattered rags and stolen trinkets. There is the occasional toy or memoir of past families and lives. But everyone here is by themselves now, together in the group, whether because of the war or because of abandonment of any other form.

“Oi! Give me that!” shouts a shrill girl called Luka, her voice sharp and vibrant, cutting through the tangled murmur of the pack. She lunges forward, snatching a half-eaten loaf of bread that ‘fell from the back of a cart’ from another child’s hands. She’s bigger than him, and so she takes it because she can and because that makes it hers. The other kids giggle, their mirth echoing against the stone like clattering bones.

“You little thief!” protests the boy, the eldest but smallest, as he tries to snatch it back from her. He can’t get close though, as she’s dropped onto her back and shovels the bread into her mouth as fast as possible, kicking him away with her long legs. “You better watch out!” he warns, trying to push her legs away to get his bread back. “— I’ll tell the big man you stole from me!” he threatens.

Luka blows her tongue out at him, spitting wet crumbs his way. “No you won’t!” Luka taunts back, eyes sparkling with mischief. She bites into the loaf, crumbs falling into her damp hair. It never dries down here in the tunnels. “You’re too scared! Baby!” she says, making a face.

“He’s not real,” says another boy from the side of the circle that has formed in the middle of a brickworn platform, a little island of sorts that is in the upper level, just above the sewers. This spot in particular made the best home that everyone has nested together at, because the ceiling here is the floor of a bakery on the main street. During the really early morning when the bakers start to work, their many ovens get so hot that it actually warms up the brickwork below them — their ceiling here. The heat is a welcome gift. The rest of the tunnels are always cold. None of them have any real clothes other than whatever they had when they arrived here. Somehow, they all arrive here. Nobody was brought in. These passages, these tunnels, they have a way of acting as a natural filter that specific people just sort of slip into.

“Of course he’s real, dummy!” says a different girl, scratching her head. She has lice. Well, they all do. But she has the most. “You know the old tunnels down by the sewers? With the big rooms?”

“We’re not supposed to go there,” whispers the boy next to her, with a worried face. “They say that’s where he lives.”

“Shut up,” replies the lice-girl, pushing him away as she looks back at the rest of the group. “I heard that a bunch of thieves used to live there, just like us,” she explains, holding her hands out to her neck. “But he ate them all in a single night!”

Some of the others murmur, others faces falling pale.

“Is that why he’s so big?” asks Luka, chewing on her stolen bread.

In a way, with them arriving here, it’s like how sediment will fall through a storm drain but then clog in a specific place down in the tunnels and piping. They’re like that. They’re sediment. They’re washed things that naturally flowed here, the same as the rest of the sludge, toward a stopping point ordained by the whims of God alone. The orphans and the lost cluster close, huddled under the dripping stones, a mass of disheveled hair and dirt-streaked features.

“Stop talking about him!” argues a boy, hoping to finish the conversation with a flourish of his hands. “He might hear you and come get us next!” he protests.

“He’s not real,” sighs the other boy from before, rolling his eyes.

“No, he is! I’ve seen him!” declares Luka defiantly, sitting upright, her small stature puffed up with bravado, hands on her hips. “He’s always with the princess!”

“You haven’t seen the princess!” argues the boy she stole the bread from.

“I have!” she pouts. “And I saw the big man. He’s not scary at all!”

“Liar!”

“You’re a liar!” argues Luka.

“Oh yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah!” replies Luka sharply, nodding back to him.

The boy leans in, now not being pushed away as the bread has all been eaten and there’s nothing left for him to take. “Then prove it! If you’re not scared of him!”

The group murmurs. Luka looks around them, feeling all eyes on her before she turns back toward the boy. “How am I supposed to do that, dummy?” asks Luka. “I can’t go see the princess!” she argues.

— A solid argument. It carries weight with the others.

“But you can go see the big man!” argues the boy. He points down toward a sewer grate that leads to the passages below into the complex sewer network of the city. “Go down to the big rooms, where the thieves used to live! I bet you won’t!” The other children gasp, eyes gleaming with a blend of fear and excitement as they edge closer into the circle. Luka looks at them all, staring her way and then toward the metal hatch that leads into the dark old sewer tunnels. “What’s the matter? Chicken?” he asks.

“I’m not!” argues Luka.

“Are too!”

“Fine, let’s go then!” she replies, standing up. “You and me. Right now,” she challenges him, planting her hands on her hips as she turns his dare back around on him. The others in the circle let out a series of audible oohs as they watch the bickering escalate.

The boy stops, his face falling flat as he looks around himself now in turn. But his eyes find no escape. “F- fine!” he replies, puffing his chest out toward her. “I’ll go, just to see you cry like a little girl!” he taunts. “I’ll show you that the big man’s not real!”

The two of them, having provoked each other into this mess, both look at the grate at the same time, but then, in their annoyance at each other, let their bravado overcome their fear and march to the grate at the same time.

"Wait, Luka, no! Don’t go!” cries a girl, grabbing Luka’s arm and trying to pull her back. “He’ll eat you! The big man!”

Luka pries her hand off and grabs the grate, pulling it open. She looks at the boy.

“L-ladies first,” he says, gesturing to the dark hole in the stonework that leads down a level deeper.

Luka grabs him, yanking him toward the hole. “I bet you’re too scared!” she says accusingly. “You’ll make me go first and then not come too! Baby!”

That might actually have been his plan. But not she’s preempted him, and he has no choice. All eyes are on them. He can’t have the others think he’s weak, or they’ll take everything from him all the time. “I’ll show you!” he says, looking down at the hole and then sitting down, dropping his legs through it, glancing around one last time before lowering himself down. An audible splash makes it clear that he’s landed.

Luka looks down at him standing there, holding his arms out in a provoking gesture back up her way, and then clambers down after him.

“Wait! Don’t go!” protests the one frightened girl, still up above.

“It’ll be fine!” calls Luka up to them. She grabs the boy by the collar, shoving him. “Come on!” she says. “Unless you wanna stay here like a scaredy-cat?”

Of course, he does not and spares one last glance up toward the open grate before the group watches the two of them march down the lower tunnel and into the darkness. Their silhouettes fade away after a moment.

And then everything is quiet.

The remaining kids all talk amongst themselves, waiting and speculating for a while until a scream comes from down below so shrill and so sharp that they can’t actually tell if it came from Luka or the boy.

“WHAT WAS THAT?!” yells the lice girl.

“THE BIG MAN GOT THEM!” screams a boy, scrambling away in a hurry toward his crate to hide.

A desperate splashing comes from down below, the hatch already being shut by fearful hands. Everyone looks through the grates as a frantic shape runs back toward the start. Luka stumbles through the water by herself, jumping and waving her arms up toward them. “GET ME OUT! GET ME OUT!” she cries, pleading and trying to grab hold of the closed grate. But it’s much, much too high for her to ever jump back toward. Even if one of them leaned down with an extended hand, it’s too far. They’d need a rope. “HELP ME!” she cries, her face pale and terrified as she looks back over her shoulder.

“Luka! What is it?!” yells a boy, looking down at her as Luka looks behind herself and then starts running the other way as fast as she can, without sparing a glance up toward them again.

A few seconds later, a second scream comes from down below, but none of them see anything there. A panic fills the room as the little thieves all hide and scramble, all of them overtaken by their instinct to survive. However, some of them are only aware enough to hide very close by in their crates and barrels just on the platform. The other, older, and more streetwise few scatter immediately down a break of tunnels and passageways, knowing best to escape at the first sign of any danger — even unidentified.

— Those smartest ones scream first, as something catches them. There were things in the tunnels out, waiting.

The walls and the tunnels shake, the underground rattling as some unseen mass moves through it. Then, the last of them — locked in morbid curiosity or frozen in animal fear — fall away and aside from the hatch as it opens from below and a pair of black-armored hands reach out of it from the depths. Then another, then another. A hundred arms and hands crawl out all at once as shapeless soldiers made out of some indistinct wash of nightmares that is neither quite physical nor incorporeal rises through the drain like the brack of the flooded sewer made into a monster with just as many faces.

The shadows flow in, marching through the tunnels from all around the island, crawling up through the hatch that they had snuck in through — having begun the raid via the sewers below, rather than coming first from the street level above, where they would have been spotted coming. As is the said in the word of the propagandists who speak against the jagged crown of Acacia Odofredus Krone, the dark belly of the world is filled with the screaming of horrified children, taken by hands and metal and dragged away in terror.

 

---

 

By the time the raid is complete, the nest of orphans and young thieves who had been brought here by the sheer mass of bodies that had arrived in this city, as well as those from before who still remained, are collected together in a huddled mass on the surface world, where they loathe to be, clutching each other as they are escorted by an inescapable march of black-armored soldiers on either side of the group toward the grounds of some massive estate, where they are lined up like prisoners, waiting to be executed by a headsman.

“THE BIG MAN!” screams a girl, the children all clutching each other in terror as a group, many of them starting to cry and scream.

Acacia sits there, her fingers folded together, as she turns her head to look at Sir Knight, who points at himself, looking around in confusion as the children stare his was in terror. “What did I do?” he asks the general world, receiving no response apart from the screaming of terrified children.

“You’re destroying my public image, Sir Knight,” replies Acacia, letting out a very tired sigh. This operation has been exhausting, but it’s just about done now.

“I didn’t do anything though,” he replies, looking at her as she rises up off of her chair, which has been placed for her in the garden while they waited.

“As is typical,” she replies, sighing and pushing a strand of hair back behind her face as she walks toward the captured thieves and smiles her best kind smile.

The crying intensifies.

— Acacia’s eye twitches, but she maintains her composure. “Hello everyone,” says the princess, looking at them. “My name is Acacia,” she says. “I’m -”

“- Princess!” cries a snotty, terrified girl, grabbing her arm with both hands and pointing at Sir Knight. A troop of guards begins to intervene immediately but backs off when Acacia shakes her head. It’s Luka, who really does recognize Acacia, having seen her before in the distance. “Don’t let the big man eat us!” she cries.

Acacia stares at her and lets out a long exhalation after a moment, but then smiles back at the sea of sniveling faces, looking her way for protection and grace — she likes those looks. “Has he done you wrong?” she asks, looking at the small girl who nods affirmatively, not being able to say anything because of her snotty, desperate panting for breath.

Sir Knight looks around the area, lost, still not really sure what it is that he did. He shrugs, holding out his arms at his side for a second, followed by a heavy clanking as they drop again.

The princess nods, rising to her feet, and then dramatically casts her cloak over her shoulder, striking out a hand into the air toward Sir Knight. “Suffer, you wicked monster!” she commands, her hand outstretched toward him as if she were casting a spell.

Sir Knight looks at Acacia rather blankly, turning his gaze toward the captured and then back at her. Acacia looks at him expectantly, glancing over once toward the kids with a slight nod of her head as if something were obvious here.

Oh.

“Oooh~!” he growls, suddenly clutching his chest and falling over theatrically onto the garden ground with a heavy collapse of his armor. “Forgive me, Your Fantastic Amazing Most Powerful and Beautiful Majesty,” says Sir Knight — perhaps overselling it a little too much — as his armor starts to melt into shadow. “I will never do evil and bad things ever again!” he swears, his body melting into a puddle, followed by the sinking of his hand into the soil as he vanishes and disappears, tendrils of his empty presence floating off into all possible directions.

The children cheer and shout, all of them running toward Acacia with massive eyes connected to freshly opened hearts of the same size as they stare at her in awe and one or two misunderstood crushes. She lets out a dramatic, shrill noblewoman’s laugh, as if this were nothing at all, as they tell her how fantastic and amazing she is, as they should. She appreciates subjects who know their place.

This manor here they’ve been getting ready isn’t her actual home. It’s an orphanage, freshly constructed with her substantial funds. Acacia looks back behind herself at the second guest she had received today, an older maternal woman and a mixed team of helpers and priestesses from the church, who have been tasked with running the place.

— All it was missing was some warm bodies.

After a few exhausting pleasantries, and an exhausting public opening ceremony, and an exhausting after-party and tour for guests, and an exhausting welcoming of each and every new inhabitant — who can’t get enough of her all of a sudden — of the large, regal building that has every amenity a child could need, she finally manages to slink away through a shielding wall of maids and out through a side door. Escaping all of her guards and accompaniments and every other such person, Acacia throws an old cloak up over herself, closes the hood, and makes her way out through the crowd with her head down in a way that feels almost nostalgic.

She scurries, moving through a mess of bodies that are taking part in the opening festival outside the estate, and goes through the city streets and marketplace until she reaches the adventurers' guild and bends down a familiar alleyway.

It’s filled with the same trash, the same clutter, and the same mess as always, and she is beyond thankful for even the stale stench of urine on the wall as she passes it by and goes down a set of a familiar few steps, opening a door that pushes in to touch the bed right behind it. Acacia slumps inside the little closet cellar below the adventurers’ guild that she bought when she first came to this city, dropping off just about everything in a few steps before slumping into the bed that really is the only thing in here, apart from a duck-pattern rug and a stuffed toy duck on the bed. Together with one person, it’s all that comfortably fits down here in the small reclusive little nook that at first felt like a coffin she had buried herself in alive, but now feels like the most comfortable and desirable corner of the world that she would siege any castle or land to lay claim to.

It’s home.

Acacia lets out a long, deep exhalation as she lies down for the first time in days in her own real bed, finally able to drop all pretenses, acts, and appearances as she lets out a groan worthy of the undead and wriggles around lifelessly atop the thick, heavy blankets as a worm too tired and lazy to be capable of actually getting beneath them.

She’s so tired.

The deep exhaustion has been coming in waves. The coughing caused by her illness has been managed by syrups and herbal vapors. However, the core symptomology of the Consumption — the illness that she is plagued with — grows and begins to overtake. Her exotic remedies and healings have begun again, the same she had been given as a child to keep her alive in the house of the royal family. But even they, at this stage, won’t keep her from succumbing to it for all that much longer than she would without them.

“So. How do you feel about little ones?” asks a deep, guttural voice from next to her.

Acacia opens her tired eyes, looking at the stuffed duck that has, in a manner that some might consider disturbing, turned its head toward her. Its beady glass eyes stare into her surprised expression. It’s not surprised because of the talking-duck-thing; she’s used to that. But because of the question. “Exhausted” replies Acacia first, grabbing the duck and holding it against herself as she lets out a long yawn, listening to the familiar ruckus coming from above as people stomp around the adventurers’ guild — perhaps a little too much. When it was discovered that the actual princess — the queen to be — was living beneath it, all of a sudden things got very quiet upstairs. She hated it. After all of this time, Acacia has gotten used to the laughter, the stomping, the shouting and dancing and mess and noise from everything above — the sound of the carts rolling in and out of the storage room. So she commanded everyone to continue making noise.

But now they’re trying too hard. She can tell that sometimes someone is doing it ‘on purpose’.

“You’re quite brazen Sir Knight,” says Acacia, almost a little bashfully, if she could ever admit to this kind of weakness. She smiles, however, and squeezes the toy duck against herself. “Asking a woman such a thing so early into your courtship.” The princess presses the side of her head into the pillow, getting ready to sleep a deep, deep sleep. She can feel it in her bones. Acacia thinks for a second, giving the question maybe just a little more of her time, though. Sleepily, she replies. “Perhaps if things were not what they are with both of our… conditions, I should have liked to one day have little ones. However,” she proceeds, not opening her eyes anymore. It’s a little embarrassing, actually, talking about something like this with him. But he did ask and they are… well, they’re something now — the two of them. Acacia can feel his presence in the room with her.

A firm, strong hand touches her head and her hair, and Acacia smiles, nuzzling against its open caress.

“…Actually, this is kind of awkward now,” explains the man rather plainly. “I was making a joke about lice, you see,” admits Sir Knight. “You know. ‘Little ones’, I was gonna do a whole bit, but then… ah. Never mind…” Acacia opens her eyes again; her sleep suddenly robbed from her for a couple reasons. “It's weird now. See, I think you got some lice here from those orphans,” he explains and she feels the hand pulling through her hair — not in an affectionate way as she has been thinking, but more as an inspection.

The lice are quickly taken care by a full submersion of her head into an infinite abyss for a few seconds, which pulls them all into perpetual damnation. She has little mercy to spare for them.

Sir Knight is banished out onto the streets for a hundred laps around the city. These take much longer than they used to do, given the crowds and the new construction. But the cruelty is the point, after all.