Chapter 1: The Persistent Knight
The rain had finally stopped, but the air still hung heavy with the smell of wet ash and old rot. Ser Percivael Stonewise shifted in his saddle, the leather creaking. He squinted at the three paths before him. To the left, the road vanished into a thicket of thorny, aggressive-looking brambles. Straight ahead, a pale mist clung to the ground, swallowing the stones whole. To the right, the path led to the blackened ribs of a farmhouse, a dark smear against the grey afternoon.He consulted the frayed map in his mind, the one he’d traced from the aged chronicles in the Citadel’s library. Here, the scholar-priest had said, tapping a spot with a knobby finger, the ballads speak of a beast with scales of living shadow. A trial for a true knight. Percivael had seen the glorious mural in the Hall of Deeds: a knight in shimmering armor, his lance piercing the heart of a writhing dragon, while grateful villagers wept with joy. That was the quest. That was the song he needed to earn.
The distant, lonely toll of the monastery bell echoed down the valley. A call to evening contemplation. He should be seeking shelter there, preparing his spirit for the confrontation with the profound.
A crow cawed, harsh and sudden, from the husk of the farmstead’s silo. It took flight, scattering droplets of rainwater from the broken roof.
Percivael’s warhorse, a patient brute named Ironhoof, snorted and stamped one heavy foot. The knight sighed. “I suppose even a dread wyrm might seek refuge from the damp,” he said aloud, his voice too loud in the quiet. “A tactical investigation. To ensure our flank is secure for the morrow’s journey.”
He urged Ironhoof down the right-hand path. The closer he got, the worse it was. This wasn’t recent. The black timbers were bleached by rain, the collapsed roof sprouting sickly green moss. But the violence of it remained, etched into the splintered wood and the way the front door lay thirty feet from its hinges, half-buried in mud.
There was no grand beast. No scale, no track, no lingering scent of sulfur. Just the slow, sad drip of water and the sigh of the wind through broken gaps.
Percivael’s shoulders slumped a fraction beneath his chainmail. Another dead end. Another rumor that had curdled into nothing. He was about to turn Ironhoof around, to retreat back to the crossroads and choose the misty path instead, when a flicker of color caught his eye.
Tucked into the shadowed space where a porch step had been, a small form was hunched over.
He dismounted, his boots sinking into the ashy mud with a wet squelch. He approached slowly, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword out of habit. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the shape resolved into a child. A girl, perhaps six or seven. Her dress was a faded, grimy blue, and her hair was a tangled nest of brown. She was utterly still, except for the slight, shuddering rise and fall of her shoulders.
She was clutching something to her chest. A doll. Its yarn hair was singed, one button eye missing, its calico dress stained with soot.
The knight stood there, awkward and immense in his clinking mail. He cleared his throat. The girl didn’t look up.
“Hail, young…” he began, then faltered. “Are you… well?”
It was, he realized immediately, perhaps the most foolish question ever uttered in the history of the realm. She was clearly not well. She was sitting in the ruins of her home, alone, clutching a burnt toy.
She shook her head, a tiny, devastated movement. A muffled sound escaped her, not quite a sob, more like the air leaving a ripped cushion.
Percivael’s grand quest, the epic poem of his life, screeched to a halt. The dragon of living shadow evaporated from his thoughts. All that remained was this small, broken thing, and the vast, crushing silence around her. He could not, in any code he had ever sworn to, simply get back on his horse.
He knelt, the metal of his knee-cops grinding against a hidden stone. The mud seeped through the wool of his hose. Up close, he could see the tracks of tears through the grime on her cheeks. “Where is everyone?” he asked, his voice softer now.
The girl finally lifted her head. Her eyes were a wide, watery blue. “Gone,” she whispered. The word was almost lost in the damp air.
“Gone where?”
She just shrugged, a hopeless little motion, and looked back down at her doll, stroking its scorched hair.
Percivael scanned the ruins again, this time not for dragon sign, but for signs of life. A cold hearth. A scattered cooking pot. No footprints but his own and Ironhoof’s. The bell from the Silver Flame outpost tolled again, a melancholy sound. They would have a spare pallet. Broth. They would know what to do.
“You cannot stay here,” he said. It came out more like an order than he intended.
The girl flinched.
“I mean,” he fumbled, “the night will be cold. And damp. And… this is no place for a…” He almost said ‘a lady,’ but stopped himself. “For you,” he finished lamely.
She didn’t argue. She just sat, a statue of mute misery.
Ser Percivael Stonewise, who had trained to parry a giant’s axe and recite the seventeen litanies of courage, was completely disarmed. His ambition for legendary trials felt suddenly hollow, a boyish fantasy. This was real. This was the heavy, complicated, un-songworthy weight of the world.
He sighed, a long exhale that fogged in the cooling air. He unbuckled his cloak, a heavy grey wool lined with rabbit fur. Leaning forward, he draped it around the girl’s shoulders. It swallowed her whole, pooling in the mud around her.
“Come,” he said, not as a knight, but as a man who saw a problem he could, technically, solve. “The brothers at the monastery will have bread. And perhaps they can fix… your friend.” He nodded at the doll.
She looked from the doll to his face, her expression uncertain, searching for a trick.
“My name is Percivael,” he offered.
She considered this for a long moment. Then, with a stiff, cold-chilled movement, she tucked the doll into the folds of the enormous cloak and slowly, carefully, placed her small hand in the huge, gauntleted one he extended.
He rose, lifting her easily onto his hip as if she weighed no more than his shield. She settled there, a bundle of wool and quiet sadness, her head resting against the cold metal of his pauldron. He carried her to Ironhoof, who eyed the new passenger with bland indifference.
“We’re making a detour, Ironhoof,” Percivael murmured, heaving himself up into the saddle, the girl a small, warm weight in the crook of his arm. He turned the horse’s head away from the crossroads, away from the mist and the thicket, and began the slow, plodding journey back toward the tolling bell, the weight of a child in his arms feeling infinitely more significant than any dragon ever could.
The last of the daylight bled away behind them, and the ruins of the farmstead dissolved into the general gloom. The girl’s breathing evened out into sleep. Percivael adjusted his grip, his mind already turning to the practicalities of broth and blankets, the heroic ballads forgotten for the moment, replaced by the simple, pressing need to get this one small person somewhere warm.