Prologue
A lone, horse-drawn carriage sped down an unevenly paved road, flanked by a contingent of horse-mounted guards. The thunder of the horses’ galloping hooves echoed through the night, broken only by the occasional crashing sound of a stone bouncing off a wheel and into the body of the carriage.
A servant peeked out of the carriage’s rear window, looking down the road behind them. To the right was a sprawling riverbank; farther along, the serene, orange glow of the setting sun reflected off the surface of the Xpitol River. To the left rolled gentle, sloping hills, where herds of animals could be seen grazing in the distance. Trees and other shrubbery lined the road intermittently, casting long shadows on the ground before them.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and the only sounds that could be heard were the rumbling wheels and the galloping horses. However, those inside the carriage, and the guards riding alongside it, were blanketed in a thick, oppressive silence, undoubtedly due to the series of bizarre circumstances they had just encountered.
The carriage bore the mark of the Luvierte family, royals from the Rhoden Kingdom. Lauren Laraiya du Luvierte, the eldest daughter of the Luvierte family, sat inside, a pensive look on her face as she watched the scenery roll by through the window.
A young woman of just sixteen years, Lauren had long, chestnut-colored hair, though her current unease seemed to have robbed it of its usual sheen and luster. Beneath long eyelashes lay wavering, ephemeral hazel eyes set deep in her delicately shaped face. She was dressed in a beautiful gown made of powder-blue silk, which was accented by the deep reds from the rays of the setting sun cast through the carriage’s window.
Lauren had attended an evening ball held by the Diento family, serving as a representative of the Luvierte. On her way home, a gang of bandits—at least twenty by Lauren’s count—had been lying in wait for her. Nine of her guards fell back to hold off the bandits’ advances, though they could no longer be seen. Now only the carriage, its five-guard contingent, and one knight remained.
The servant who sat inside the carriage with Lauren was Rita Farren, a chambermaid who served the eldest Luvierte daughter. She had short, red hair and distinct green eyes that projected a strong sense of determination. Rita sat quietly next to Lauren, taking the uneasy girl’s hand in her own.
“We’re safe now, Miss. I don’t see any pursuers, and we’re nearly back to town.” Rita held Lauren’s gaze, smiling at the girl and stroking her hand in the hopes of comforting her.
“Thank you, Rita. You’re… You’re right. We’re almost at Father’s estate.” Lauren smiled and squeezed Rita’s hand back, though her anxiety remained.
Suddenly, the carriage slowed down dramatically, and the horses could be heard whinnying lightly from outside. The carriage driver opened the small port behind him and turned to Lauren.
“I’m sorry, Miss, but the horses can’t keep running like this. We’ll need to go at a walking pace the rest of the way.”
The horses had taken off at a full gallop to pull the carriage away from the bandits’ ambush. Now, it seemed, they could no longer keep up the pace. Even carriage horses had their limits, though the burden on the horses carrying Lauren’s guards must have been even greater.
Rita glanced out the carriage window where she spied a middle-aged man riding alongside them, affectionately patting his horse. His name was Maudlin, one of the Luvierte family’s knights, and he oversaw the contingent of guards accompanying the carriage. Though born a peasant, Maudlin’s talent for battle had been discovered at a young age, and he was trained to be a knight.
Maudlin reached down and wiped away the sweat from his horse’s neck with a towel. Complementing his short-cropped hair and carefully groomed mustache, his well-toned and muscular figure could be seen even through the light armor he wore over it.
“Do you think we lost the bandits, Sir Maudlin?” Rita stuck her head out of the carriage’s window, looking back behind them as she addressed the knight.
“Few of the bandits had horses, so if they haven’t followed us this far, I dare say we should be fine. Pass the message along to the madam.” Maudlin gave Rita a wide, toothy grin in the hopes of putting her at ease.
“In that case, perhaps we can finally breathe easy.” Rita’s expression relaxed as she let out the breath she had been holding. She glanced up the road.
A dense clump of trees stood along one side of the road ahead. On the other, the sloping hills seemed to encroach even closer. The sight of that alone left Rita with an indescribable feeling of being confined. Her eyebrows narrowed as the muscles in the back of her neck tensed.
Noticing Rita’s expression, Maudlin also began scanning the scene in front of them. He seemed to spot something, but before he could get any words out, a volley of arrows cut through the air toward them. The carriage driver screamed as two arrows struck him in the chest.
At the same moment, one of the carriage’s wheels struck a stone, sending the driver’s body out of his seat. Rita, who had been watching through the window, was thrown back onto the carriage’s floorboards. The driver’s lifeless body got caught in the carriage’s wheels, causing it to grind to a halt.
Another volley of arrows flew from the woods, this time striking two of the guards.
“Damn, another ambush?! This can’t be happening!”
The sound of galloping hooves filled the air as six mounted bandits crested the hill and rushed in for the attack. They closed the distance to Lauren’s guards, whose backs were exposed as they defended against the onslaught of arrows, swiftly dispatching two who had been injured by the arrow volley, along with a third.
A bandit galloped toward Maudlin, though the knight used his sword to knock the rider off their horse. Maudlin spotted two men running out of the forest and approaching the carriage.
“Miss Rita, take the reins!”
Brought back to reality by the sound of Maudlin’s voice, Rita hurriedly hopped out of the carriage. She found the driver’s body lying between the front and back wheels, so she shoved him farther under the carriage to prevent him from catching on the back wheels. As she was about to climb into the blood-drenched driver’s seat, a hand roughly grabbed her servant uniform from behind and forcefully threw her to the ground.
Rita’s back hit the earth with a thud, knocking the air from her lungs and sending her into a coughing fit as she gasped for breath. At the edge of her vision, she witnessed yet another guard being surrounded and killed. She also saw a bandit—likely the one who had thrown her down—standing over her with a crude grin on his face.
“Grwaaaaawh!”
Just then, Rita heard a man scream out in agony. When she looked toward the source of the scream, she was met with a sight that defied belief: One of the guards had stabbed Maudlin in the back, right where the plates of his armor met.
Maudlin seethed, his raw hatred for the man behind him apparent in his contorted expression. “Causdah?! Why you traitorous…!” He raised his sword as he turned, ready to strike down the disloyal guard who had stabbed him from behind. However, Causdah merely grinned as he ran his own horse into Maudlin’s, sending them to the ground from the force of the impact.
A handsome man—or at least, as handsome as bandits got—came rushing in on his horse. Upon dismounting in front of the fallen knight, he ran the rest of the way on foot and stabbed Maudlin in the neck. Blood sprayed everywhere, staining the earth under the knight red.
“Go get the lady out of the carriage, and be nice to her while yer at it.”
The handsome bandit’s yellow teeth shone through his sneer as he ordered the others about. The man had a square jaw and long, unkempt hair tied off in the back. His chin and neck could hardly be seen through his untamed beard. His arms were adorned with several old scars, and, in his hand, he held a large, curved blade. He was clearly the leader of the bandits.
Upon hearing their boss’s orders, the other bandits dismounted from their horses in unison and made a dash for the carriage. They tore the door open and ripped a terrified Lauren from her seat.
“Eeeek! Let go of me!”
Lauren resisted with all her might, but two men held her arms down, even as she twisted her body about in an attempt to wrench free. Two other men grabbed Rita and dragged her over.
The bandit leader yelled out to the men holding Lauren, “Better not rip them clothes when ya take ’em off! They’ll fetch us a nice profit when we sell ’em!”
One of the men turned toward the leader as he removed Lauren’s dress. “I can play around with ’er, right, Boss? We’re just gonna kill ’em anyway.”
“What’re ya blabberin’ on about, idiot! I’ve got first dibs, and you all get what’s left!”
Causdah’s expression clouded with indignation upon hearing this. “W-w-wait a minute! I betrayed them, so I should get to go first!”
The leader’s eyes lit up with anger at Causdah’s retort. Then, he rammed his curved blade coolly through the ex-guard’s mouth.
“Gyaugh!” Causdah made a gasping noise as the sword burst out of the back of his head. The other bandits smiled venomously as they watched him fall to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“I never planned to give you a share anyway,” the leader spat as he kicked the man hunched over on the ground. An awful sound erupted as Causdah’s skull cracked, his neck twisting around.
Lauren, who had been watching this all unfold, let out a short scream. A yellow puddle appeared under the young girl, now stripped down to nothing but her corset and drawers.
One of the bandits holding her took notice. “Looks like the li’l lady just gone an’ dirtied herself!”
Hearing this, the rest of the men broke out into crude laughter.
“In that case, I’d be happy to take them soiled undergarments off!” The leader stepped forward and pulled the soiled drawers off Lauren with a single tug. The men stared lecherously as Lauren’s damp, chestnut hair came into view.
“No! Let me go! Rita! Riitaaa!!!”
Lauren thrashed frantically to avoid the men’s gaze, kicking her legs about to get free. The leader ordered one of his men to grab her legs as he pulled down his own pants, exposing himself to her.
“Unhand her this instant! You know what they’ll do to you?” Unable to put up with these ruffians any longer, Rita screamed at the men even as they restrained her. Her efforts, however, only made them laugh harder.
“You best not worry about her,” one of the men holding her down responded. “You’ve got your own problems!”
He grabbed her servant’s uniform and began tearing it apart, exposing Rita’s underwear and breasts for all to see. After squeezing and pawing at her exposed chest, the bandit threw Rita to the ground.
“We’re gonna make sure you and the miss feel reeeeeal good. Gahahaha!”
Rita could smell the stench of the man’s breath as he laughed, pulling down his own pants. She could see Lauren out in front of her, arms pinned to the ground by two bandits, with another man holding one of her legs. The leader of the bandits leaned over her, about to push himself between the girl’s thighs.
Enveloped by the sounds of ear-splitting laughter, and with no one left to save them, Rita and Lauren could do nothing but scream and cry, praying to the gods to help them.
Then, a massive shadow fell across the bandits. A knight appeared right behind the bandit leader as he laid himself atop Lauren.
The knight was covered from head to toe in gleaming, silvery armor decorated in exquisite detail with white and blue accents. On his back was a billowing cape as black as the night itself, almost as if it had been ripped straight from the sky. His face was completely covered by his helmet, the only opening in his mask a pitch-black visor that obscured any emotion his eyes may have held. In his right hand, he held a massive longsword which emitted an eerie, azure light. He looked just like the type of Holy Knight one would read about in legends.
Rita couldn’t comprehend what had just appeared right before her very eyes.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the knight’s sword flashed, sending out a blast of light that seemed to slice through the air, right between the bandit leader and the other man holding Lauren’s leg. The knight took a large step forward and followed through with a horizontal slash, sending out another blast of light that disappeared between the two men holding Lauren’s arms down.
It was all over in an instant.
The top half of the bandit leader split free from the rest of his body. The man next to him, who had been holding Lauren’s leg, now ended at the neck, his head rolling to the floor and facing the setting sun. The men who had been holding her arms down were now missing half of their heads. Geysers of blood spurted out like fountains, spattering the grass around them, painting the already sunset-dappled scene an even deeper shade of burgundy.
The top half of the bandit leader tumbled down onto Lauren. She screamed as she frantically kicked it away to the side. The bottom half gushed blood like an overflowing well, forming a crimson lake on the ground.
The two men who had been with Rita—one of whom was still straddling her, his member exposed while the other held her down—finally realized that something was wrong.
“Wauugh! It’s a gh-ghost!”
It was every man for himself as the remaining two bandits scrambled to escape. However, the half-dressed man crashed back to the ground next to Rita as his legs tangled in his pants. The next thing Rita knew, the knight swung his sword down and impaled the man, leaving the man stuck to the earth like a skewered frog. The silver knight pulled his blade from the dead man and pointed it at the man’s escaping comrade.
“Wyvern Slash!” A deep, muffled voice echoed from within the helmet as the silver knight took a sudden step forward, swinging his massive sword in a horizontal slash.
It appeared to all watching that he had simply swung his sword in the air while the escaping man continued to run away. However, moments later, the man dropped where he stood, his body splitting into two halves, cut cleanly at the waist.
In the course of three blinks of an eye, the entire group of bandits had been reduced to mounds of flesh.
The knight gently shook the blood from his sword and slid it back into the sheath strapped to the back of his armor. He faced the two women, a dispassionate voice calling out from deep within the visor-covered helmet.
“Are you all right?”
The setting sun reflected off the silver knight’s armor, making it look like he was entirely enveloped in flames. Lauren and Rita completely forgot about their own state of undress as they stared blankly up at the knight.
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