Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 260: Drumstick

“Tinny tin tin tin

Rinny rin rin rin

Saw me some Knights;

But I know they’re more interested in our sights;

Ha, Vega is a blast, but I think,

I’ll be leaving our lights,

To go see where they slink

That place where all that Armor clinks

I’ma see me their Kingdom

Once I’m there, I’ll be getting a stiff drink”- Old-Man Jones, Nightly Knights (308, 3rd Era)

Sir Boldwick stood at the wall; the cloak on his back whipped with a violent winter wind. The stubble had been growing on his face again. He was due for a shave; then again, he'd been due for a shave for the last two weeks. Alistar had complimented him on it; that and his longer mane of hair, which he'd vowed never to let grow back to the same length, in honor of the man’s memories.

Still, he brought himself to focus. Sharpening as he took in the field below, the Grandmaster was late, but this meeting served a double purpose.

Several new vehicle designs were being tested, one of which his new Knight Errant had a personal investment in; his company, 'Vortex Industries,' had submitted several vehicle design specifications to fabricate. The build quality the Knights had managed was subpar compared to what he was used to. But he knew, with that old-world piece of tech bonded to his student leading the designs, what he saw here today would be vastly different in a year.

Now though?

He watched with a frown as the Pendragons ran circles around the Kingdom’s first set of vehicles. Honking their horns and mocking them.

Change came. That was the certainty of life; for so many years, a banned technology like this in the Kingdom would have been the source of a massive controversy. Now?

The wall around him shook, and his body moved before his mind did, automatically adjusting and stabilizing his posture; that empty sword hand turned, blazing into a saber of fire as he pivoted on his hip, the point coming to rest at a potbellied man with a big grin. Oddly, he had a meaty leg of some kind of bird in his left hand.

Grandmaster Oak.

“Oh? Didja wanna spar? That takes me way back.” The man laughed—the gall.

"You're late," Boldwick pointed out.

“And what’s new? But hey, if it tickles your belly, this one actually wasn’t my fault. Was the Crown. King’s got us all damn busy with meetings lately. This last one went a couple of hours past when it was supposed to be over. Damn dull. Even made me miss lunch.”

Boldwick stared, the point of his fiery sword still pointed at the Grandmaster. Oak smiled wider, lifting an eyebrow. He even raised the piece of meat back at Boldwick, like it was a sword. Clearly, there was a challenge there. The old bastard did want him to try; Boldwick took a deep breath.

There was once a time when a smirk from the man would've made him charge, regardless of the fact that both of them had a full schedule after this. Things had been simpler then, and a faint pain stirred in him as he remembered those times.

The fiery sword vanished in a puff of disappointing smoke. Boldwick straightened his back.

Grandmaster Oak shrugged, then brought the chunk of meat to his lips, taking one big, greasy bite with an exaggerated chew.

“You should eat some more, boy. You’re getting a little lean,” the man pointed out when he choked down the bite of meat he'd taken.

“Not exactly hungry.”

“Bah, you haven’t been hungry for weeks. Even with the lunch meetings we’ve had, you’ve barely touched the catering. I can see it, lad, you’ve dropped a few pounds. Lean doesn’t suit a man. You need a bit more fat on you.”

Boldwick rolled his eyes.

“Hahaha, just as defiant as back then. Well then.” Oak squared his shoulders, his gaze getting a bit darker. "I might as well just get it out. I’ll start with the good. Your little bird sniffed out a couple of groups, and we sent Knights to arrest them. The ones we can’t touch because of politics, we’ve got Luculentus handling. Got our reports consolidated about all the outsiders; damn interesting stuff there. I'm sure you've read the lot of it."

“Of course I have,” Boldwick replied, and a light smile rose on his face. Dame Robin was performing as she always had. It was why he’d taken her under his wing. Just like every one of his pupils—she was a star, and her latest promotion had been well earned.

Beneath them, there was a loud clunk of an engine, and the Grandmaster paused his speech, walking over next to Boldwick and peering down at the assortment of vehicles.

He squinted.

“They seem a bit weak. If I punched one, it’d turn into a wreck.”

“That goes for just about everything you’d punch.”

"Bah, how's that going to charge into a monster? Needs more weight on it, don’t it?”

“Sir, respectfully, we’re not here to discuss the prototypes. Besides, that isn’t their function, and you know that well. They're primarily for transport," Boldwick said, trying to rein the Grandmaster back in. For all his many strengths, Oak wasn’t one for delivering bad news. And from the look on his face, and what he’d said, Boldwick knew what was coming.

“Don’t see why they can’t do both,” Oak said, still hedging around the topic.

Boldwick let him slip into silence, killing the conversation. The pressure of the absence of conversation would provoke him to move on. It usually did. That was actually a trick he’d learned from Dame Robin; the next generation always improved upon the one before. To think, they were sitting here on the Steel Curtain staring at Kingdom-designed cars, of all things.

Boldwick looked past the cars to the wastelands beyond. If he turned from this very spot and looked inward at the Kingdom, he knew what he'd see. The growing farmlands were like flowers in this wasteland. They'd yet to reach the Steel Curtain, but every year those meadows of crops grew; the city nestled deep in their middle added more buildings.

Oak grumbled as he thought, distancing himself from the awkwardness. Boldwick let the awkward silence linger, waiting for his old mentor to cave, and kept his focus on the land around them to occupy his mind.

There would be a day when those fields reached the walls. Then, after that, there'd be a day when they stretched outside these walls, filling the wasteland beyond with greenery and life, replacing the desolate rock with something far greater.

Finally, the silence he’d let brew did its work. He knew his old mentor. And by now, he knew this trick would work on him.

Grandmaster Oak cleared his throat and shuffled uncomfortably, then spoke.

“They say there are giants out there. More than the one you spotted in your reports.”

"Do they?" Boldwick asked with genuine surprise. He’d yet to see that intel.

“It was in our latest communication with the East. We’ve got some ideas of what they’re about, and ain't too sure what to do about it. But yeah, they mentioned another giant. A thing made outta fire that's fucking up the East Coast; worse, like your report, that giant is wandering erratically. That is two giants out there, roaming around, causing trouble.”

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Boldwick closed his eyes. He could see that giant still. Part of him remembered the sound of that curtain of water smashing into his Armor; the tiny pings as it crashed into the metal, trying to break in. The lightning strikes, and the brief glimpse of the monster deep within the storm.

He’d seen a sight like that once before, and back then, it had sent a dagger of horror through him; he’d kept it from the Initiates.

“Thing is… We saw this before. We killed one of them. Hard to forget the rotting mass that hit our city and almost ruined the Kingdom. What are the chances that there are two other monsters out there like that?”

There it was. Boldwick had drawn the comparison in his report, too. How could one not? Especially when he was but a young Knight then, witnessing it bearing down upon the wall, and thinking that it was the end of everything he held dear. That it would break the wall he stood upon now, and turn all of the people he cared about below into rotting sacks of flesh, devouring one another.

“So, the King did something.”

“Did what?”

“This is highly classified; you didn’t hear it from me. Even if that bitch Goddess flies down from the sky and burns you up to get you to say who you heard it from, you say that the wasteland whispered it in your ear, aye?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Mhmm. Good lad. We’ve been keeping a little piece of the Behemoth, deep, deep, deep down.”

Boldwick sucked in a deep breath; his skin went cold, sweat on his palms. Before he even realized it, his right hand was shaking; his eyes snapped to Oak, and the man was looking anywhere but at him.

“That—“

“Yeah. I know.”

“It—it could kill us all—“

“I know, lad, I know. Fucking stupid. Yeah. The Towers at the time insisted on it; not like I had a say in the damn thing, granted. Those old fogies wouldn't ask a Knight Commander his opinion on the matter. They did what they did. Sorry to make you go on knowing that we’ve got something deep down beneath our feet that could kill us all.”

Boldwick tried to say something. Anything. Maybe to insist that they take care of it now, but he found his throat was dry, his tongue didn’t want to work.

Oak set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "It's fine, lad. Fine. Breathe. They did a stupid thing, but they did it smart. Magic seals that kept it locked away; anyway, the King did a thing. Brought in the Arch-Magi for consultation and to get an understanding. It's pure 'death and rot mana.' They put heads together with the rest of the magic folk, and then compared their studies on that Storm Giant they've got in the West."

Try as he might, Boldwick still couldn't find the words to say about that. Already, this conversation was so much worse than he ever would have guessed.

Good thing he didn’t need to say a word. Oak barreled on through, just as he always had.

“They found similar results to the information they have on the storm giant. Where that thing is made of pure lightning and water mana, the giant that hit us was made of rot and death; we don’t have anything yet about the giant in the east… But if one is related to the other, there’s a good chance the third is as well. The odd folks on the East have been requesting we aid them in tracking it.”

Boldwick's fingers clenched, and his breath sped up. Two more Cataclysm-level threats… to have so many back-to-back, with the knowledge that at any time, another one of those sheer forces of nature might approach their walls and ruin everything…

Were there more giants than just the two? How could the Kingdom stack up against either of those? The Rot Behemoth alone had almost been the end of them.

“Did they come from some Rift together?”

At this, Oak paused. “Mhmmm. We see a pattern, aye; it’s possible. But it's odd, ain't it? Such different forces, with the same nature. Could it be they all came from the same place? But it doesn’t quite sit right, does it? Regardless of the why, we gotta work on the practicalities of the problem. We need more information. We might even want more allies. Goddess knows we would’ve had an easier time of it handling that Rot Behemoth with those Magi from Vega at our side; with that same idea, the East might offer us up even more friends to deal with problems. If’n they’re what we’re looking for.”

The cars down below roared with life, the racing increasing; it helped a little. He kept recalling the feeling of seeing the Rot Behemoth, and the cold sweat that even now came over him at the memories. They were different now. The Kingdom had changed, as had he, as had his old mentor.

This information, though, always came at a price. Boldwick squared his shoulders and looked Oak in the eye. The potbellied man puckered his lips and sighed.

"I take it I'll be investigating this Fire Giant, and the east coast?"

“Hit it on the head. Too smart for your own good. You’ll be headed out again. Soon.”

“That is fine,” Boldwick lied.

"Shut it. It ain't. A man needs rest, and you’ve seen too much too soon; swords that don't get maintained break, Boldwick. But there’s not much I can do about it; the experience you have, and the reputation you've earned, put me in an awkward place. The King asked you for this expedition by name. We want to see if those folks to the East can be trusted; they seem strong. But also, they keep more secrets than Vega.”

“So it shall be, then. If your hands are tied.” Boldwick decided to brush past the insistence that he’d been overextended. Exhaustion was there, sure. But he was still the same man he'd been when he first became a Knight; the surface had been forbidden. Now? Well, young him would have keeled over with jealousy if he knew just how much of the world he’d been able to see.

What was there to the East? He’d seen the west, at least a part of it; the desire to see the next horizon had never left him. Not from the very first moment he'd stepped onto the surface.

"Oooooh… Bad choice of words about hands being tied; ah, damn. We’ve fallen off, haven’t we? Er, I regret to inform you that your applications for Erec's special enrollment in the Academy classes have been rejected. As have Colin's."

“Excuse me?”

“Erec is to be deployed with you. As is Colin. You’re all headed East.” Oak scratched the back of his head and looked anywhere but at Boldwick.

“Erec can remain at the Academy; Dame Robin will see to his education in my absence. Sir Able is still within the walls, I believe… So there should be no reason to reject my Knight Errant's enrollment or Able's from the Academy. Why would they need to head east?”

“…difficult times buck traditional norms. The reports of the fighting in Cavern Seven have circulated. The odd power displayed by those two has raised eyebrows; fuck anyone who can wreck a cavern in a fight that shook the Kingdom would do that. The King acknowledged them as a special resource and pushed for Sir Erec and Sir Colin to join the expedition… Along with Sir Bedwyr. Beyond them, the Crown picked out a couple of others—otherwise, you may choose your expedition members within reason to accomplish your missions.”

Boldwick stared hard at the man. The Grandmaster had turned red; the grip on his meat was squeezing the grease out of it, and bits of fat dripped onto the steel wall beneath their feet.

“You just told me a man needs rest, Grandmaster. These are still children. They need far more rest than someone like me.”

"Do you think I didn't argue as much as I could? I did not choose this."

“There are gaps in their formal education. They need time and rest. In a year, they have seen more battle and war than some Knights see in ten. And you’re demanding I bring them along on another expedition so soon? There is no longer a threat of the church facing Erec. I know I pushed for their inclusion in the West, but the circumstances are different now; their needs have changed.”

“Aye. Damn it. Aye. Yet the King has formally demanded it. It must be done. Unless you all wanna get run out of the Kingdom.” The bone snapped in his hand, and the rest of his meat leg fell to the ground. The Grandmaster swore, then gave it a kick, sending it sailing into the wasteland.

Boldwick paused at that; a part of him wanted to fight, to yell, to argue.

But he saw it, the slight tremor in Oak. Those wild eyes. It would do no good for either of them if he kept pushing.

So there was only one conclusion: if the King was sending what he viewed as so much firepower, there was a reason. “The King expects trouble.”

“Aye. Or… we just don’t know. There are inconsistencies with their stories. You’ll have a formal report on your desk of everything, along with your objectives, and as much preparation as we can get you.”

Boldwick grunted to that, the cold sweat the first information had given him now replaced by itchy, burning skin. Hell, maybe he should’ve taken the Grandmaster up on the challenge to begin with. It would've been easier to accept the news if he'd gotten some licks in first.

“Listen. For what it’s worth, I did argue for them to stay. It’s just… They’ve grown too much, too fast. Expectations are being leveled at them based on their achievements—just like they’re put on us all.”

Boldwick didn’t need to respond to that, and from the shuffling and then small rumble of the wall as the Grandmaster leapt off it, Boldwick knew that Oak had accepted his silence. It was a reasonable response to an unreasonable demand. Yes, he wanted to see Erec and Colin grow—Garin too. He wanted to see Gwen and Robin thrive in their own ways.

But it was a dangerous mission. Especially if they were sending them explicitly because they thought they were strong.

Boldwick watched a car stall out below, watched a Knight crawl out of it, scratching his head at what went wrong, and Boldwick sighed. Things took time to get right, but one always hopes they succeed on the first try.

As much as Boldwick trusted his young Knights would do well in any circumstance they fell into, he remembered Alistar. He remembered all of the other bodies he’d seen, fellow Knights who stretched themselves too thin, until, eventually, they snapped after pushing themselves too far.

A saying drifted into his head, one that Oak had actually given him, so long ago on their very first expedition outside of the walls.

Late one night, they’d stared up at the stars. Oak had him memorize all the formations, giving him a picture of the sky above. If he got lost, that knowledge was supposed to guide him; granted, his Armor would’ve needed to fail for that to be necessary, but it was a nice lesson regardless.

He’d said, "Did you know, Boldwick, the brightest stars burn out the fastest? They explode. Crazy, right?"

Since he'd seen Erec, seen how strong the boy had gotten, and how fast, and especially ever since the loss of Alistar, he kept thinking about that moment.

That statement, in his tragic experience, did not only pertain to the stars above.

Boldwick rolled his shoulders and took in a deep breath. He would not let that happen. He would never let that happen again. And if he wanted to ensure the safety of those under his wing, he needed to get them prepared. Soon. He took one last look at the stalled car. He was supposed to keep watch over them and fill out a report. But he’d seen enough.

There were preparations to be made.