NOVEL NEXT Chapter 47: Outer Appearances
The two of them, Hero and Dandy, ride toward another sunrise after having made camp together again last night, rather than staying in any of the empty abandoned homes.
Dandy said she’d prefer to sleep outside over a house that might be haunted.
And then, apparently being a masterminded manipulator, she had slyly set up her tent next to his rather than across from it. The entire day her face has been red because of the scandal of it all. Has she really become this brazen? If the sisters of the church ever heard of such a thing, they would send her to live in a cloister for the rest of her days — a woman of the faith sleeping next to the hero of all people.
— In different tents, of course. Obviously. But she’s not thinking that far, being so behind in the ways of the world because of her reclusive life that having tents next to one another feels like a really big step for her.
“Are you feeling alright?” he asks.
“FINE!” screams Dandy at him, raising her voice for no reason. She’s not sure why that happened. She’s also not sure why she’s falling off of her anqa, but she seems to be sliding to the side. The priestess flails her arms, shouting in surprise as she slips over.
He catches her, looking down her way. “I think you forgot to fasten your saddle, Dandy,” says Hero, holding her with both arms as her anqa protests to the uncomfortable, slipping saddle that her legs are still locked yeah. “You seem a bit off today.”
She just laughs nervously, not fighting to pull herself back up, so he pushes her back upright with one hand, grabbing the saddle with the other. The anqas stop and he jumps off, securing it below her and then patting the creature on the side consolingly as he heads back, and then also her leg for good measure — it was just at the same height as he passed by.
Dandy screams.
Shrieking, her anqa bolts forward, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Hero stands there, sputtering out dirt and swiping his hands over his face, watching the priestess flail as she’s bolted toward the horizon by a panicked animal.
The man turns his head, looking at his own anqa and the two of them shrug at the same time. Or at least he does; he likes to imagine it does too, though.
— It makes for a good story.
“I’m sorry! I’m so-so-so-so-so sorry!” says Dandy, clasping her hands together as they ride down the way, with him having caught up her.
“I’m fine,” he remarks, lifting a hand to wave her off. She sighs, rubbing her face, pulling and contorting its features. “Everything’s okay, Dandy,” he assures her.
“You should have taken an army instead of me,” she sighs, shaking her head. “I’m sorry.”
“An army?” asks Hero. “Now that sounds like a headache.”
“But…” Dandy looks down. “I know that you’re strong,” she says, looking back at him. “But against an enemy like this… is it really… don’t you think you’re kind of just playing around at a bad time by taking someone like me along?” she asks, shaking her head. “The church has crusaders, paladins, and people who would die for you. Thousands and thousands of them.” She holds a hand over her chest. “What am I supposed to do compared to that?”
“Think about what you just said there, Dandy,” explains Hero, riding on next to her. Dandy does, but she doesn’t seem to find what he wanted her to reflect back on in her own words. Seeing this, he lifts a hand her way. “I don’t want people to die for me, Dandy,” explains Hero. “Wouldn’t fit the name, would it?”
She smiles.
“And you’re safe with me too,” he promises, lowering his open hand further toward her. “I told you when we met. I’ll do the fighting.”
“Then why…” she starts, pointing at herself, still not having taken his offered hand. “Why am I here at all?” asks Dandy.
He tilts his head, staring at her as if something were obvious that she was missing. “Well, a hero needs something to fight for, doesn’t he?” asks the man, and her fingers reach out to go toward his to finally grab them.
Dandy is practically frothing at the mouth at this point.
— Her saddle is fastened well, but she falls off of toward the other side anyway, because her mind is somewhere very distant from her body.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Dandy, the two of them continuing to ride on forward.
Hero opens his mouth, lifting a finger, and then stops, shrugging.
It is an hour later.
The priestess fell off her anqa, literally dizzy from what he said, and got herself quite the bump on her head from the fall.
When she came to again from the darkness she fell into, he was leaning over her, tending to her injury with some medicine and a cloth.
— And then, seeing him so close, she vomited on him.
This is becoming a problem.
Her face as stiff as a gargoyle’s, Dandy stares exactly straight ahead and not an inch to either the left or right, as she hopes to find a river there to drown herself in.
It’s the only way.
Unfortunately, the only thing she sees is a castle. The two of them ride toward it, Hero holding out a hand for her to stay back a little behind him as he goes first. They ride toward the walls, looking at the fortress that is, in and of itself, quite the spectacle. It looks like a powerful node in the region, that must house thousands of soldiers right here in the critical heartlands of the Kingdom.
But there’s nobody around at all.
The two of them enter in through a gate on the east side that is just wide open and look around.
Nobody is around. The only thing that hints that there was ever life here is the fact that there are still boot prints in the mud. However, they do little to help. Dandy looks at them and realizes that there are many that move to specific places and then just stop there, as if the person they belonged to just… disappeared.
More and more them are everywhere — hundreds, probably thousands.
They get off and walk, exploring for anything to go off of.
— A scream curdles the air; a thing charges their way from the shadows.
Hero spins around, grabbing an arm and spinning a body. The man who charged at them, flying through the air and landing on his back in the mud, howling and flailing in terror as he looks at them. He’s a soldier wearing the insignia of this garrison. “It ate them. It ate them. It ate them!” he keeps repeating a hoarse, raspy voice that sounds like he’s been chanting the mantra for days now. The man’s wide, manic eyes look at the two of them in terror.
“Who are you?” asks Dandy, and then stops herself, realizing she’s speaking her native tongue in the enemy nation. “Who are you?” she repeats again, likely with an accent thick enough to make a quilt from. “What happened?”
“Empire?” asks the man in a sharp breath, looking at her as his eyes process, darting from side to side. But then he starts laughing. “You’re fucked. You’re so fucked. We’re all fucked. ALL OF US!” he says, laughing again as he clenches the edges of Hero’s breastplate with the devil in his eyes. “He’s gonna eat you too,” says the soldier, laughing and pulling together as he starts rambling in a frantic whisper. “Gonna eat you too. It’s the star, the star. — It’s the star. He’s gonna eat yooooou~!”
Dandy looks at the man, who clearly is in some form of severe shock and exposure. “Who?” she asks. “What happened?” she asks, digging through her bag for a flask of water to give him.
The man rips it from her hands in a second, the strap breaking. He crawls back and huddles into himself as he drinks every last drop and then looks back at them, panting. “You Empire shits want the country?” he asks, shaking his head, that odd, twisted smile having never left his face. “You fuckers can have it,” explains the soldier, wiping his mouth with his forearm. “You can have it!” he repeats, laughing again. “It’s cursed. We’re all cursed!” He throws the flask at her and Dandy flinches, shielding herself. But it never arrives, Hero intercepting it instead and standing up again as the two of them watch the soldier and then follow his arm that’s pointing not at either of them but past them.
Hero and Dandy turn around, lifting their eyes toward the fortress keep.
There, at the very top of it, billows a banner of a jagged crown that looks like a monster’s set of bared teeth — the sigil of the evil princess and her terrible servant — Herr Ritter.
“You can have it aaaall!” sings the man behind them before crying loudly and crawling away.
Hero and Dandy exchange looks. “They’re going the capital,” he explains. “It’s closer here than her city is.” Dandy nods in agreement. The black-crowned-princess’ siege is further on than they expected.
They’re not in the middle of war.
They’re standing deep within her lines already. That's why there’s nobody here anymore.
Hero takes the flask and gives her his instead in trade, which she appreciates but is also too embarrassed to ever drink from because that would be… they’d have to be married for that to be okay, right?
“Hey, Girly!” calls the soldier as the two of them get ready to ride off again. He’s holding the tips of his thumbs and his index fingers together over his face, surrounding his eyes. “It’s all one thing!” he says, falling back and laughing.
And a chill runs up Dandy’s spine as those familiar words run through her head.
They’re the same words Father Barlow, her trusted mentor and friend, had told her back at the destroyed monastery when they were attacked by… by that entity…
“IT’S ALL ONE THING!” screams the voice after them, as Hero and Dandy ride back out of the fortress.
But instead of continuing to the west as they have been doing, Hero guides her toward the north — toward the capital city of the Kingdom.
Everything seems to be coming to a head there.
“So, don’t you think the presentation is a little at odds with the uh, with the message?” asks Junis. Acacia, sitting there and with a black dog’s head resting in her lap, looks up from the broken, jagged crown she’s polishing. “I’m just saying, you know, maybe some people are getting the wrong idea, is all?” she hints at.
“Junis,” starts Acacia, breathing out a foggy breath onto a giant ruby and then squeaking over it with the cloth. “Has Sir Knight infected you with his nonsensical behavior now too? — at least more than I had already assumed to be the case?” she asks, inspecting the brilliant gem a moment later by holding the bent and jagged crown up against a lit brazier. A shadow casts over her face from the flames, the broken crown’s shade resembling the shattered jaw of a snarling wolf as it casts over her delicate features.
“I just mean — you know…?” says Junis. She holds both hands out to the side, to a row of black-armored guardsmen, standing there with pikes adorned with tattered and stolen sashes and banners of enemy armies. Scarves knitted by wives and the mittens of sons and daughters from homes the men of those legions had left are wrapped around the weapons as claimed trophies.
Acacia tilts her face and then shakes her head, not understanding.
Junis swings her arms out to the other side of the hall chamber, gesturing to a collection of portraits of Acacia delivered by the city’s artists after a declaration that she would buy each and every one of them, under the condition they look flattering for her station. Given such an incentive and wanting to steer toward the safe side so that they would not risk being unpaid, all of the artists exaggerated greatly, and there is a row of a hundred different Acacias. In some of them, she’s sitting on thrones of the skulls of her enemies, and in others, she is storming the gates of heaven itself, with angels fleeing at the sight of the black-armored army behind her as she leads the charge. Junis nods her head forward, spinning her hands around toward them.
“I fail to see what you’re getting at, Junis,” remarks Acacia, returning to polishing the crown.
Junis fails to find words, her arms darting around the room at a varied collection of grim trophies and horrifying sights that Acacia has collected over the span of her campaign. The bones of long-dead monsters of ancient times, grimoires of horrific power that hold forbidden magics, stone tablets of tongues that would curse the reader if they ever tried to speak the secret languages aloud.
“COME ON!” declares the elf, feeling like her point should be obvious. Her hands gesture back toward Acacia finally, sitting there and polishing the terrifying crown as a large, shaggy black dog that is more wolf than canine rests at her heels.
She even points down at her own maid’s uniform. The buttons and clasps are engraved with skulls and sigils.
“Sir Knight, I believe Junis is having conniptions,” remarks Acacia, sounding somewhat concerned. “Will you see to it that she… rests a spell?” Acacia shakes her head. “I do worry about her.”
“EVEN THAT SOUNDED OMINOUS!” yells Junis, pointing at Acacia again. She looks over the room. “Everything around you looks terrifying,” explains Junis. “Chicory brought in some initiates from the holy-church who are training to be priestess’ here in the city, and three of them started crying during the tour.”
Acacia sets the crown back onto her head.
“What would you have me do, Junis?” asks Acacia, pointing around herself at the horrific reliquary. “Leave these priceless artifacts to rot out in the wilds?” she asks, scratching Sir Knight's head as she rises to her feet. The black-crowned princess walks over to the items, past Junis. “These are pieces of our nation’s history,” explains Acacia. “With the villages and cities elsewhere empty, I can’t just leave them to decay.” She looks back at Junis. “Once the war is over, they will be returned to the proper institutions of knowledge that can safeguard them and preserve the culture of our people, even in our more troubled times,” explains Acacia, tapping on the glass that surrounds a sealed, black tome of necromancy. “I will not live in a nation that buries its own mistakes. We need them present, even if they are eyesores, so we can learn to never repeat them again.”
“I…” Junis starts, crossing her arms. “That sounds very reasonable,” she admits in an almost accusational tone. “But what about that?!” she asks, nodding her head to the line of guardsmen, covered in the collected trophies of the enemies.
“Lost items I hope to return to their owners,” replies Acacia obviously, looking at a pair of shawls strung around one guard’s halberd. She touches the fabric. “It’s a simple weave. The material is cheap, not even the bottom of the barrel,” mutters Acacia, pulling on the scarf a little. “These are likely scraps someone hunted every cupboard and bin for to put together anything at all with all of their effort, because they had nothing else to give,” spins Acacia as she examines the scarf. “— A loving soul’s truest attempt at a parting gift for someone they cared the world for.” Acacia shakes her head, gesturing to the scarf. “As if I would just leave this beautiful, precious thing lying in the mud, Junis,” she explains, lifting her nose. “Sir Knight is finding the owners so that it and these other items can be returned to all of them.”
Junis sighs, shaking her head. “I’m just saying,” she says. “It looks a little… evil?” she suggests. “Yeah. It looks a little evil,” says Junis, looking over to the massive windows, obscured by black drapes that hang down like shrouds over a banshee’s haunted eyes.
“Black is my favorite color, Junis,” remarks Acacia, as if it were obvious. She walks over to the elf, grabbing some fabric of her dress and readjusting its position, as it had gotten tangled in itself. “That’s not a statement of character.”
Junis looks at her. “You have to admit though, it looks kind of bad, right?” she suggests in a concerned tone. “I mean, I understand everything you’re saying here, and it makes sense. But when you put it all together, it kiiind of makes you look like a monster.”
Acacia wipes off some dust from Junis’ shoulder and then walks back to the throne. “Please, Junis. I’m a great person, and what’s more, I’m a loving pet owner,” says the princess. “Isn’t that right?” she asks in a cutesy tone, scratching the giant dog’s head. “Yes it is~!”
“THAT’S A PERSON!” yells Junis, pointing at Sir Knight. "And even he looks terrifying!”
The black dog, its leg spasming from the scratching, looks over toward Junis with an indistinct froth dribbling from its lips like spilled ink that stains the floor beneath it.
“Please don’t refer to Sir Knight as a 'person', Junis,” explains Acacia, getting back up. “He might get ideas,” she says coldly, before sitting back down on her chair, which is most certainly not a throne.
Junis grasps her head in frustration, letting out an annoyed scream.
“One time, I asked her if I could sleep inside because of the bad weather,” says the dog, its mouth distorting and twisting in a deeply unnatural manner as it forms the words of a man. “She kicked me out and made me walk in the storm the entire night.”
Junis places her hands on her hips, leaning in toward Acacia, who rolls her eyes.
“He asked me if he could sleep inside my lungs, actually,” corrects the princess, resting her head on her hand. “— Not in my home.”
“Details,” mutters the dog. "It would've been warmer in there."
“…Oh…” says Junis, her expression falling into something very unimpressed.
Acacia looks at Junis. “I appreciate your concern, Junis,” says Acacia. “But the people should fear me,” she explains. “And as they do so, they should do so from inside of their comfortable, secure homes with their fed loved ones,” she says. “Because that way, no man will ever raise his sword against my title, because his brother will tremble at my name, and his own belly will be too heavy for him to rise from his seat.”
“Even the way you talk sometimes…” sighs Junis, her face falling into her hand.
“What would you have me do then, Junis?” asks Acacia.
The elf clasps her hands together. “Maybe we can… brighten things up a little?” she suggests. “Why not show some flair in the lives of the people?” Junis lifts a hand. “Flowers. Maybe we can work on adding a little beauty to the city? It will go a long way toward painting your image as something more… hospitable. Maybe a few more fountains, amenities, and such things.”
Acacia thinks for a time, her fingers tapping against the metal of the chair, her other hand stroking the black dog’s fur ominously.
“I understand, Junis,” says Acacia. “Thank you for your council. I appreciate it. Your idea is good; I’ll have it done.”
Junis smiles, letting out a relieved exhalation now that she’s gotten that worry off of her heart. “I’ll get back to it then,” she says, turning to leave to go about the rest of her work then.
“See you at dinner,” says Acacia.
“See you then!” calls the elf back behind herself.
The sunlight hits her face, a good breeze flowing through her hair and dress with summer’s intensity. A cascading warmth runs along Junis’ body as she makes her way into the city, holding a basket in her hands as she goes to the market to buy a few odds and ends she needs for herself — some cosmetic products and things of a nature that leans more toward personal luxury than a need. She’s always been frugal, having needed to be to survive.
But the little success from before, mixed in together with the wealth she has access to, and that particular spark of a good life that the air itself carries with it throughout the entire city has gotten to her too.
Yes, Acacia has a somewhat… terrifying presence for those who aren’t in the know. Even her estate and fortress, viewed from the market square, look like a vampire’s lair just beyond the old city walls, rather than some romantic palace that inspires faith and hope.
The people are happy, and the city is buzzing and booming in ways it’s never done before. Even with the war, none of it is felt here in the least. Not the fighting, not the lack of supply, not the lack of hope in the future, and not even the mourning of the lost and hurt — because all of the fighting is done by Sir Knight’s blackguards rather than the men and women of the city, who are instead placed into local roles as guards and watchmen.
People are happy.
But there is a tiny undercurrent of rumor and whisper that all of this prosperity is only brought about by an otherworldly power, wielded by the black-crowned princess.
Thankfully, they talked about that now.
Buzzing to herself like a busy, content little bee as she buys another bottle of perfume, Junis stops. A troop of blackguards walks past her, pulling a cart full of dirt and flowers that they’re planting around the base of the many trees that line the city’s main streets and gardens.
— All of the flowers are black.
“…Really?” sighs Junis, looking to her side as a team begins erecting a new fountain in place of the old one outside of the adventurer’s guild — this one is more grand, and a crowd forms as the blackguards work with incredible efficiency, building a massive wall adorned with a mural of men fighting thousands of screaming monsters. “Really?!” she yells.
Junis turns her head, slapping the ornamental skull out of the hands of a blackguard who was about to plaster it into the brickwork. “No!” she warns him, the soldier lifting his hands in surrender.
He leans over to the cart, pulling out a terrifying bust of a raging dragon’s head, looking back at Junis, who is standing there with crossed arms, shaking her head.
The soldier lays the dragon’s head back down and starts pulling out the next decorative item.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” she shouts, pointing back toward the castle, the blackguard quickly shoving the sarcophagus back onto the wagon.
It is later that day, and all of them have gathered for a shared meal.
“Did everyone see the changes to the city today?” asks Acacia, sounding very pleased.
“They’re sure… something,” says Chicory, the others nodding.
Junis sits there, her head in her hands and her elbows on the table, as she looks down at her reflection on the plate she’s hovering over. “I’d like to thank Junis again in front of you all,” says Acacia. “For her wonderful ideas and for being such a great friend,” says the princess, taking a sip from her glass.
Junis lets out a pitiful laugh, not looking up from her place of shame.
Chicory leans over. “Hey. Junis. You need to tone it down a little,” whispers the priestess to her from the side in a somewhat accusing tone. “All of this black and skull stuff is giving us a bad look,” she notes before leaning back.
Junis slumps over, pressing her face against the blank glass.
— The plate is black too.