Chapter Text
Two knights stood in stark contrast with the sea of fog beneath them. They were decked in the same armor, black and golden all, decorated with an elegant floral pattern. They stood atop a hill, their swords clashing.
“Are you ready to die for your Queen, Bruford?” Asked one figure, repelling the other and pushing them onto the ground, where they fell ungraciously.
“I am an Oathbound Knight, Leda. You and I likewise know the answer.”
The victor of the duel removed her helm and threw it onto the ground. Her longsword was simple, slender, efficient. And crusted with the blood of countless foes. Her eyes were a brilliant gold, her hair glowing brighter still and swaying in the wind.
“Very well. I accept your resolve. Any last words I should pass on?”
“Tell Marina I loved her, of course I loved her. And that I should have told her before my demise.”
The blonde woman’s face grew dark, memories becoming another enemy in her mind, an obstacle between her sword and its target. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
“Tell her yourself, get up.”
He raised himself from the ground, albeit with a heavy effort, and staggered forward.
“You truly are kind, Leda.”
He steadied himself, putting the sword in front of him. She responded in kind.
“To the bitter end.” He said, an image of his own death appearing in front of his eyes.
“To the bitter end.”
He launched himself upon her, but she took a step to the side, and feeling him waste his opportunity, cut with precision in the gap between his helm and his chestpiece. Feeling her sword find purchase in the tender flesh of her opponent, Leda pushed her weight onto it, and fully parted him from his head.
The familiar smell of blood filled the air, mixing with the ozone from the coming thunderstorm. She forced her nostrils to breath in and out harsh breaths of air, feeling her focus waning. She fell on her knees, and threw away her sword.
She cradled the detached head of Bruford, hoping that if she did that with sufficient strength she could bring him back. This was, of course, a delusion.
“To the bitter end.”
She fell on one side, curled up in the manner of a newborn child. The ground was wet and detestable, but her energies were spent and she couldn’t get up. A soft rain began to fall on her, the familiar sound of thunder booming in the distance.
Her, Bruford, and Marina had been sworn as Oathseekers Knight a long time before. Her two friends had ridiculed her for still not having found a cause to which to dedicate her whole self, and somewhat ashamed she had to tell them that the fabled light of the Oathseeker legends simply had not presented itself to her yet. There were orders and factions aplenty, but they all seemed petty and worthless to her, their ideology ultimately flawed.
Bruford on the other hand had readily found and sworn himself to his light, it was that of the waning Moon of Queen Rennala of Liurnia. He had been touched by her tragic story, and had sworn to protect her until death.
Marina had disappeared in the northern lands, and the last they had heard of her was that she was looking for the demigod Miquella’s Holy Tree. She had told them in letters how she enjoyed his ambitious resolve to build a safe haven for the oppressed, and she should have liked to support him.
As for Leda, she walked aimlessly from one mercenary work to another, waiting for that glimmer to appear in front of her eyes.
—
When she came to, the rainy clouds above reminded her at once of her current whereabouts in Liurnia. She didn’t mind getting wet, but she thought that her metal bits put her in danger under the ongoing lightning storm. She stood up with some effort.
She gave a last look at Bruford’s corpse. Among the Oathseekers there was no funerary rite, for they believed their worth to be found in life, not death. And also because of their many diverse oaths, that would have made a universal custom impossible.
She took the head and set it near the rest of his body, then half-remembering a certain prayer or salutation of the House of the Full Moon, recited “May the Moon be with ye.”
—
She descended to the foot of the hill, the large expanse of land as seen from above the sea of fog quickly disappearing from her sight. One could merely see ten meters in front of them in that humid wasp nest.
There stood a man dressed in eccentric sorcerer’s clothes, a mixture of a blue monastic dress and red accoutrements that clashed with the former’s simplicity. On his head was a crown of stone.
“Is it done, knight?”
“Please, I am no proper knight. I am merely a wandering sellsword.”
“I care not. Tell me— is he dead?”
“He is dead.” Leda frowned behind her helm. “The Carian Knight Bruford is no more.”
The sorcerer laughed, his voice made inhuman by the granite of his mask.
“Carian Knight. Don’t make me laugh! He was never properly knighted, for there is none left to do so. He was merely a commoner, playing a dangerous game of make-believe.”
Leda put a hand over the hilt of her sword, as first and last warning to her employer. Normally, besmirching the reputation of an Oathseeker Knight, and even more so an Oathbound Knight, was a crime her Order considered befitting of death. However so far everything he had said was the truth, and she considered if the sorcerer chose his words carefully to be scathing, yet ultimately unpunishable.
He noticed her movement, and put up their hands placantly.
“Or so I hear. At any rate a job well done. Here’s your recompense.”
He took a few golden runes from a pocket inside his clothes, and let them fall in her hands. They rustled with a metallic sound, like jewelry.
“I must be going now. Goodbye.”
Leda looked at the formless golden bits dancing in her hand. They had close to no weight, and whistled still with a sound akin to that of wind chimes.
She looked at them for a long while, not feeling entirely there.
“Please, wait a second.”
The man, already half lost in the fog, stopped in his tracks. He put a hand to his side, where he had holstered his glintstone staff.
“As I said, I am no proper knight. I am a mere sellsword.”
“That you are.”
“As our transaction is complete I am no longer bound by you. We now stand as equals.”
“That we do. Is this going to be an issue, assassin?”
She began to walk toward him, and he took a step back.
“The memory of a fallen Oathbound Knight is worth more than these.” She said, throwing the runes back at him. They fell unceremoniously in the water, where they disappeared. “My comrade Bruford was a strong man. His sword danced in the air, and his heart was filled with righteousness.”
“He was wrong, is what he was. He put himself between us and that wretched Queen.”
“Assuredly so, but the question at hand is different. Do you recognize his bygone valor as a knight? Or are you sorcerers so accustomed to spit on the memory of the honorable dead?”
The man in the stone mask twitched, his irritation palpable even beneath the concealment afforded by it and his long, baggy dress.
“Are we going to have a problem here, murderer?”
She merely closed the distance.
“Very well.”
He extracted the glintstone staff from his side, and began to chant one sorcery or another. Leda was upon him in but a second, and ran him through with her sword. She was surprised to find that his flesh somewhat had the qualities of stone.
As he fell in the water of Liurnia his stone mask cracked. She removed it completely with her hands, and discovered that underneath lied a petrified face, partially lost to a misshapen glintstone growth. One human eye, which was yet spared the transformation, looked at her.
“You— you attacked me!” He painfully said, pushing the words out of his failing lungs.
“You attacked me first, I merely defended myself.”
She left him to die in that swamp, walking away in the fog.
A short time later the call of the Revenants was heard, then a scream, then nothing.
—
“Tell Marina I loved her. Of course I did.”
As Leda walked through the hills, again aimless, the words of Bruford ringed back in her head.
She sighed, then started moving northward.