Lord August Marciel’s knights arrived in a blaze of self-imposed glory. The red Verquuvan bullhead on a black background, the Verquuvan icon since the founding of the Ecknathroq Kingdom, was proudly displayed on their flags and horse coats. The squad leader even wore a bullhead-shaped helmet that contorted his voice to an inhuman rumbling.
One of his men rolled out a parchment with Lord Marciel’s stamp and held it out for the captain to read. “On the orders of Lord Marciel, the Howler captured by the Verq Bavas villagers is to be taken under the chief breeder’s care at Verquuva Savante. Non-compliance will be met with the full might of the Ecknathroq Kingdom, as per the laws of his majesty the king.” The parchment holder stepped aside, allowing the knight captain to glance over the crowd. Most villagers bowed and trembled, but one met his gaze with uncaring nonchalance. Next to him was the beast in question, glaring at the knights. The captain waved for his men. “The animal is over there. Take her away. As for the rest of you, our horses are tired from the long journey through your inhospitable lands. Do your best to alleviate the slight these forsaken mountains have inflicted upon our honor as proud knights of the Verquuva Voohrdom!” He pointed at Albino. “And bring that one to me. His girlfriend, too. They will care for our needs.”
“S-Sir,” Gordon said, not daring to look at the knight captain, “my daughter is not of age. S-surely there are other-“
“You should know how this goes, old man. Our Lord is a forgiving man. A few nonsensical, useless restrictions here and there won’t bother anyone if they aren’t adhered to. We are your defenders! Now be quiet and do as I said.” The knight captain pulled up his visor and showed the crowd a cocky grin, though only Albino and Fierawr looked at him to see it. “I, on the other hand, don’t believe in second chances. Rebel against my orders again, and you won’t have a head to consider treason with.”
“They came by when I was posing as Lancel, too,” Quionne said in wind-speak. “I was glad to appear male when they chose their company. Such brutes and bastards.”
“Look at their eyes,” Albino answered in wind-speak. “They look terrified. Something happened to make them this way.”
“Must you search for the good in everyone?”
“There is no good here. I am searching for an explanation.”
“Do that somewhere else. The idiots are coming!”
Three knights approached them, their thick armor clanking with every heavy step. They carried chains, gags, metal gloves, and rope enough to mummify Fierawr if they pleased. “Hand over the beast, and nobody gets hurt,” the foremost knight said, looking at Brenda with lust enough to put his prior statement into question.
“I am afraid I have to refuse,” Albino said. Before the baffled men could follow up on their threats, he pulled Fierawr’s mantle from her shoulder where he had bit her. “The law forbids even the Voohr from stealing a citizen’s property. She is mine, now and forever.”
“Stop spouting nonsense!” One of the knights jumped forward to grab Fierawr, but she easily evaded his clumsy lunge.
It didn’t take long for the captain to notice. “What in the name of Lord Marciel are you lot doing?”
“T-this villager is a rebel!”
“Good to know. I did not realize arguing my case by the law made me a rebel.” Calmly, Albino administered a healthy dose of ear scratches to Fierawr and showed the mark on her shoulder to the captain, too. The knights glared at the mark with unbridled intensity. Even Albino couldn’t say what emotions made up their grimaces.
“You bonded with an animal?”
“Does she look like an animal to you?” Albino asked, receiving a glare in response. “And even if she was, since when is that forbidden? After all, we are just stupid little villagers who should be quiet while you twist a knife in our stomach, right?”
“You insolent little- what the?” The knight captain drew his sword, but only the handle left the sheath.
“Good thinking,” Albino wind-praised Quionne, who proudly fluttered her wings on his head. She had dismantled the captain’s sword with her wind elementalism. “The proverbial knife you try to threaten us with, that being your might and power over our choices, was recently put into question, no? Even the king had to step in to restrict your fellow knight’s rampage through towns and villages, for ‘Even though the Voohr is invaluable to our war efforts, his knights are required to act with the dignity that is expected of the title…’ Was that about right?”
The captain kept a poker face until the end, but Albino noticed the quiet gasps among his men. One fumbled in the booming silence that followed Albino’s words. “How do you- Ugh!” Another knight elbowed him in the ribs, and the captain glared at him, but it was too late.
“Good. It would have been concerning if the knights did not know about this… Which only makes this situation weirder. Why does the knight captain allow this unlawful behavior, and why do the knights act on that criminal behavior when everyone here understands what your order would lose if they were found out? Poor Sir Lawrence, being sent to the royal jail for… What was it? Fifty-one years, one for each of the women he raped or demanded to take as his own? I suppose it was a great shock to all of you. Usually, these cases get dismissed, or a scapegoat of low birth is sent to jail instead. The royal court remains wary. A voohrdom without law only spells trouble, so I wonder what would happen if a concerned citizen reported this incident…”
“…” The knight captain rose to his full height, threw the handle of his sword to the ground, and swung his fist into Albino’s cheek with the strength of a charging bull. He represented Verquuva’s banner well. Quionne abandoned her position, dodging the annoyed swat the captain directed her way. “What is one measly villager living in the middle of nowhere, far away from the capital?”
Albino stood up and beat the dust from his clothes. His jawbone was broken. Only his superhuman control over every cell in his body allowed him to talk as usual, though a bit mumbled. “There is more than one path to victory. Bullheadedness is not one of them.”
“Don’t mess with a charging bull,” the knight captain said, drawing one of his men’s swords.
“The more you f*** around, the more you find out,” Albino answered, releasing his hold of Fierawr’s mantle.
The Howler appeared before the startled knight captain in a flash. Albino’s seed contained much of his excess energy. It was easily digested, and this process could transform the body of mortals into something more. Fierawr had demanded his semen a lot. She hadn’t even eaten any meat since Albino had bitten her. Why go for an inferior product when the most gourmet option was there, waiting to be freed from its prison? Case and point being that Fierawr had surpassed a Howler’s typical strength, speed, endurance, and all other physical aspects since the first night she had shared with Albino. Her claw smashed into the knight captain’s armor with a loud clang, sending him a meter backward. He wasn’t the captain for nothing. An ordinary man would have fallen right then and there, no matter the thickness of his armor.
“Rawr!” she said, looking proud of her achievement.
“You fools, get her!” the captain commanded. His knights flailed around, unable to get a hit on the Howler. Again and again, Fierawr evaded their strikes, clawed deep gashes into their armor, and hit them with a taunting ‘rawr.’ “Are you all incompetent? And you, you cowardly peasant, hiding behind your beast!”
“Hiding? Me?” The knight captain shrunk back at Albino’s words. Something seemed… different. His mortal mind couldn’t comprehend it, but Albino had switched to the language of the Albiverse, which always carried a slight factor of divinity with it. On top of that, Albino was no stranger to intimidation tactics. The knight captain and his men stiffened, grasping their weapons tightly. “Fierawr simply wanted to repay you for your… kindness. She is not a beast, at least not purely. You have no right to abduct her.”
“…How long for attacking a knight under the Voohr’s direct command?” the captain asked the scroll-carrying knight.
“Slavery, life-long labor, or execution, depending on the severity of the offense,” the knight said with a bow. Something told Albino that they had recited this very paragraph to many a commoner before.
“Slavery, life-long labor, or execution, depending on the severity of the offense,” the captain repeated, pronouncing each syllable with a deep sneer that seeped into his words. “Wouldn’t you agree, dear villagers of Verq Bavas? He sent his beast on us innocent knights, which is an offense of the highest degree. Execution might not be enough. A long session of torture is in order. Your beast can watch, and your girlfriend too, while we f*** her silly and stupid with despair. Your beast will be taken in by the hound breeder, of course. I promise he will take… good care of her. He had a thing for breaking these disgusting flea-bags. Perhaps she can be broken right alongside your girlfriend.”
Albino frowned at their simplistic attempts at villainy. They probably saw Lord Marciel behave this way and took it as the ultimate proof of power or something. Albino needed to take a moment to snap out of his baffled state.
The knights took that as their victory, and Brenda did as well. She stood before Albino and spread her arms, a noticeable tremble in her voice. “Please don’t kill him! I-I will take his- his punishment instead…”
Albino pulled Brenda behind him. “What are you doing?”
“F-friends stick to-together!”
“Friends also do not sacrifice themselves for their friends. How do you think that would make me feel?”
“Keep out of this, useless peasant,” the knight captain said, backhanding Albino to the ground. Albino grasped Fierawr’s mantle tightly, not allowing her to wreak havoc again. “We are inclined to agree to your proposal, peasant girl. We might lessen his sentence if you comply with our demands.”
Brenda gulped. These were Lord Marciel’s knights. She had evaded their lust because of her young age, but she was almost an adult now, and the time had come for them to look at her for company. Even Albino couldn’t stop them. It was impossible. Brenda didn’t want them to touch her, but if it would save Albino and perhaps keep him united with Fierawr and their child together…
“Even you should not be this stupid,” Albino said from the ground, both sides of his jaw shattered and broken. As he spoke, his face shifted and wiggled around, creeping everyone present out. “The knights swore a sacred oath before the king of Ecknathroq. ‘None shall be our victims who live by the king’s word.’ Well, they attacked me. They plan on harming you. They plan on taking Fierawr away. If we are not victims of their impulses, who is? What more can they do to victimize us?”
“We do not serve the king of Ecknathroq,” the knight captain said, preparing to strike. “We serve Lord Marciel, the reigning Voohr of Verquuva! What does the king know about our struggles? We have sworn our vows, so why did he not keep his promises? He is not the man we serve! Not now, nor ever! We serve Lord Marciel!”
“That much is painfully obvious,” Albino said. He strained his wind elementalism tattoo to the limit, thinning the air around the knights. “Your corrupted sense of morality and loyalty seems to win out over your honor as knights. I pity all of you, but I applaud you for being true to your desires. I believe I should also be honest in turn.” Albino snapped, causing Quionne to land on his head in her large butterfly form. Between her legs, she held a parchment, which Albino now unrolled. They would not win without ploys. “Based on your previous exploits, I have compiled a list of misdeeds the active members of your order have committed. I refrained from adding unproven speculations and accusations since that would be unfair to due process… but the letter concludes with this: ‘Should this letter be sent to his majesty the king, Lord Marciel’s knights will have acted against the vows they swore before his majesty. This letter was prewritten as a precaution before the knights arrived at Verq Bavas, and it will only be sent out if they act according to the bad surrounding their order. Another letter with their most recent slight against his majesty the king will soon follow. Signed, Lancel of Verq Bavas.’ Quite decent for a mere villager, if I might say so.”
The knights were sweating buckets. Everyone knew the royal palace employed people who could separate truth from lies, be the word written or spoken. The knights cautiously eyed the butterfly, planning to kill it and any other messenger creature in Verq Bavas.
“Peasants can’t write,” the captain said, his eyes wide.
“This one can. Most everyone learned how to do it in military service. How unlikely is it for someone to teach me? But fine. I see how you look at Quionne, so allow me to cite more examples from the letter. There is a lot to unpack here…” Albino unrolled the parchment further, skipping the preludes and jumping straight into the squad captain’s section. “Oh, right. ‘Sir Meriwether, forty-one years old, assaulted Zettra, fiancee of Clover from Verq Zaartown, in the year 234 since the Ecknathroq Kingdom’s establishment, just two years after joining the knights and three months since his wife left him to stand at Lord Marciel’s side as his concubine. Proof of this can be found in the Quorus Sect’s records after he confessed his crime there. His subsequent misdeeds are harder to prove, but they are countless. For example, he…”
From here, Albino kept going and going about what they did and to whom they did it. When it happened, where one could find the proof, how even unproven circumstances elude to something that happened, in what way their actions put shame on his majesty’s good name, and so much more. Every knight in this squad got their dues. As did the captains of the other two teams, which would arrive in the coming days. Both of those squads struggled with their prison wagons, and there was a good chance their wagons would have to be left behind.
When he was done, Albino rolled up the parchment and tied it closed. Quionne grasped it in her legs and fluttered from his head. “If they try any funny business like killing our messenger birds or taking Fierawr or attacking you, this message goes straight to the king, alright?”
Quionne fluttered in response, exaggerating her movements so that even the knights could see she understood Albino’s orders. With faces screaming murder, the knights sheathed their swords. The villagers watched the proceedings with racing hearts. They didn’t know what had happened, but Lancel had survived, and Brenda was untouched.
Warren stepped forward, bowing deep to the knights. Dirk and Robert followed, kneeling behind him. “If the great knights of Verquuva would be so kind, why not spar with the villager Lancel? He always seeks to become stronger, and there is no mightier teacher than you, Sirs, anywhere in the entire Voohrdom.”
Albino rolled his eyes. So that was his angle?
The knight captain looked at the trio for a long while before his left eye twitched. He took off his helmet, revealing a gray shock of ash-colored hair. Warren and Sir Meriwether shared a look. “Your name is Warren? Why would we do that?”
Warren lowered his head deeper. “The villager Lancel can keep up with me and my friends for three hours each. We are ex-soldiers, and frustrating as it is to admit, we are insufficient to teach him.”
Sir Meriwether looked at his knights, receiving various nods in turn. “Three hours each, you say? Nine hours is a measly amount for a true warrior’s training. We will spar with the boy because we need entertainment during our stay. Three hours each… You villagers better look after our horses, or your wi- No, your heads will roll!”
“You can keep up with them? What nonsense are they spouting?” Quionne raged in wind-speak.
“Why do you think they said that?” Albino sighed and followed Sir Meriwether to the cawdelli fields. According to them, this was the best place to train. “This is going to suck.”
And suck, it did. Quionne insisted on helping him by fueling her daily life-fire as a newly hatched Albion into him (she didn’t know how to use it anyway). She also thinned out the air around whatever knight Albino sparred against. The life-fire helped because it was more effective at healing him than normal flames, but even that didn’t protect him. The knights were strong, and they fought Albino to underhandedly kill him. Albino used wind elementalism to strengthen his strikes and evade their vicious attacks. Without the thin air, he would have perished during the first session. Sir Meriwether switched with the scroll-bearer, Sir Owen, then came Sir Peter, then Sir Trent, then…
When the second and third squads arrived, they fought against Albino in brutal 3v1 matches for three hours each. However, after nine days of no sleep and broken bones, Albino remained standing.
Greetings and salutations! You have earned my eternal gratitude for reading this humble mortal’s story. If you enjoyed yourself, I will have done my job well. If not… well, there is always room for improvement.
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