Chương 588: Chapter Five Hundred and Seventy-Two - Nth Time's the Charm

My friends began examining the room. I took a deep breath, shot one more glance at the fallen knight, and then wandered away. My thoughts felt muddled, always jumping back to the fight we'd just survived. I trusted my friends a lot. They wouldn't steer me wrong... on purpose. One of the walls loomed out of the darkness, the glow of my lightball revealing a mural as I approached, images of knights with swords and shields on the walls of a castle and before it. Each level of the mural was a different story.

People walking towards the castle and the knights... defending it? The castle were always built around a gem, and it looked like the knights kind of worshipped it, maybe? It was all drawn in a very weird way. I had never studied medieval art much, because that wasn't my kind of thing, but I'd seen some in passing in like, documentaries. This was that kind of art. People and figures and animals were drawn with strange proportions and I think there was a lot of symbolism flying over my head.

It gave my eyes something to rest on while I thought. I reached up and grabbed one of my ears. It had flopped down alongside my face to rest close to my chin, and I idly played with the fluffy tip of it while thinking. I had to resist the urge to put the end in my mouth to chew on it. What we'd done to the knight bothered me a little... or a lot. It was weird, because I know, in my head, that it wasn't necessarily any worse than, like, fighting a normal dungeon monster?

If the knight had been a slime, I wouldn't think twice about it. But because he could speak and seemed sad and distressed about something, I felt like there was a big rock made of guilt shoved right in my tummy. It wasn't a nice feeling. So I thought about it. The knight had been really distressed about that Solace thing, but I didn't know what that was. It bothered me a lot, but I don't think that was my fault. The knight hadn't been very good at communicating.

Swinging a sword at people wasn't a good way to establish rapport. I continued to stare at the mural, but it didn't have any clear answers for me, just knights doing knight things. Nothing called Solace or anything like that. Unless... was Solace even a thing? What had the knight said?

'Solace is the freedom given us by our oath and purpose.' And then something like, 'And the traitors took that from us?' I blinked, then spat out the end of my ear which had somehow found its way into my mouth. If I took him at his word--which I supposed I had no reason not to--then Solace was something like... the thing that knights did rather than anything else. It was like if I said that someone took friendship from me. It was probably not literal... only it kind of was?

"Everyone!" Bastion barked, and I jumped, ears springing back up to attention above my head. The paladin was standing in the middle of the room, sword out and eyes fixed on the far end of the hall, towards the one door that led deeper into the dungeon.

"We have incoming." I rushed back, hefting Weedbane as I joined the others behind Bastion.

"What did you see?" I asked"Heard," he corrected. I paid a bit more attention to my hearing, and yeah, there was a sound from the other side of the door, boots on stone. Probably those sabatons the knights wore over their feet because there was a slight clinking noise with each step. They were pretty loud, so it was hard to tell if they were close, but they were getting louder.

"Alright, everyone in position, then?" Amaryllis asked.

"Desiree and I can charge up something strong to take out those at the lead, then we'll have the time it takes them to make it to us to pelt them with more spells." That sounded like a good tactic, but...

"I want to talk to them," I said.

"Really?" Amaryllis asked.

"They've proven plenty hostile so far, Broccoli."

"I know, but... I think we can negotiate? At least a little?"

"That would put us all at risk," Bastion said.

"Not doing it could put us at risk too," I said.

"Can we at least open with a hello instead of lightning and fireballs?" I could tell that my friends weren't all too keen on the idea, but eventually Caprica nodded.

"I don't mind doing things the captain's way." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Fine," Amaryllis grumbled.

"It wouldn't be Broccoli if we didn't at least try." I smiled at her, trying to convey my thanks in the gesture, but then the door into the next area shook, and I refocused on the front.

"Let me get out in front?" I asked Bastion. He eyed me from the corner of his vision, then nodded and slowly stepped aside. By the way he held himself, he was still ready to leap in, so I'd still be safe, and Caprica moved to my other side, shield raised. The door shook again, then was slammed open. Three figures stomped in. At the fore was another knight, tall, in all-black armour. Behind to his left and right were two soldiers, like the ones we encountered in the opening room.

The soldiers had short spears and long daggers sheathed at their hips, and the knight came in with sword and shield in hand.

"More oathbreakers," the knight growled.

"Wait!" I called out before taking another step forward. I held up Weedbane before me, then let the scythe fall. I winced as it clattered on the ground and secretly promised it that I would give it a good polishing later to make up for that.

"We surrender!" The knight paused, as did the two soldiers behind him.

"We surrender," I repeated. I was aware that my friends were doing no such thing, but maybe if I repeated it, they'd not notice?

"Uh, we... we're here to help." The knight's grip on his sword tightened.

"Help? Help who?"

"Uh, you? And I guess the villagers from the town near here. They're worried about the dungeon, your home. It's been acting strangely, and our job is often to find and fix dungeons that have issues. Your core wouldn't happen to be covered by big roots, would it?" The knight flinched a little at that last, though I wasn't sure.

"No. It is not," he said.

"Okay... well, something's weird, right? Something happened, to your dungeon, I mean. To your... Solace?"

"Do not speak of things which you know not," the knight growled.

"Okay, okay, sorry," I replied quickly.

"But maybe... look, before we start fighting, can we at least talk? Please?"

"The traitor spoke as well."

"Okay, we're making progress," I said.

"So, we've established that there's a traitor! Who is that? Who were they?" The knight looked at me, then scanned the room. Some of the tension in his body stilled, though I had no doubt that it could return in a moment.

"They claimed to be knights of the black as well," the knight said.

"Three people, in armour not so dissimilar to our own. They came with dire warnings of a malignant force crawling across the World. Roots, they called them." I stood up straighter.

"They came from outside of the dungeon, right?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"We fought them, as our oath requires, to test any and all who enter our domain. Such is part of our path to Solace. They dispatched us with great ease, proving that they deserved the reward at the end of our trial." I blinked, taking that in. A group of people, three of them, wearing all-black, came in and were strong enough to impress the dungeon's knights. The last knight we fought was pretty tough, so that had to mean that they were strong, at least as strong as my friends and I, but maybe more-so.

And they knew about the roots!

"What did they do?" I asked.

"They reached the heart of our fortress," he said.

"And shackled it. From the moment of that binding, we knew that our oath was no longer valid, that the Solace of servitude was lost." My chest felt tight as he spoke.

"So your Solace," I said slowly, making sure I had it right.

"Was serving the dungeon? Protecting it, testing people, making sure only the right ones got through and get whatever class your dungeon gives?" The knight gave a slow, stiff nod.

"To guard the heart. To be its blade and shield. That was our purpose, and in that purpose, we found Solace."

"And now the heart's trapped," I said, glancing back at my friends for a second before looking at him again.

"Which means your oath doesn't work anymore. You're still guarding something, but it doesn't… feel right." His gauntleted hand flexed around the hilt of his sword.

"We remain. We fight. But... but only because that is what we were made for, it's all we've known. We follow no orders."