"Got everything?" Enide asked. She half-sat on his dresser, her hair pulled back in a bun, and a gun leaning next to her. She looked every bit a vision of beauty, and he wished he didn’t have to get ready at all. If only they could spend all day here together.
Erec sighed and rifled through his duffel bag. There wasn’t much to bring. His axe was with his Armor; both were in the lab. VAL had been performing a tune-up of the Q.A.P. and servos. He’d gotten the physical things, like whatever clothes he’d packed, but that wasn’t the concern.
"I do. Worried about the people behind, though," he admitted to her.
She pushed herself up from the dresser and flowed over to him. She took one of his hands and stared into his eyes. “You did everything you could, hero. We both know you did.”
"We’ll have to hope Lionel and VAL pull through," he said, shoving the duffel on his shoulder and pushing so scrap away from his path with his foot. Since Enide started staying with him, his room had curiously collected more and more random junk.
“ It’ll be fine. C’mon lets go.” Enide went over to the door and shoved it open, hovering there.
Erec sighed and went over to his desk, scribbling out a quick note for his steward not to have his room cleaned. Enide would lose her mind if she ca back and all her carefully collected junk was missing. Small details like that—the dozens of things popping into his head even now… With his whole cavern being rebuilt, leaving now as the lord over all of it felt wrong, especially since he wanted nothing more than to rush out the door and get started.
Those were the things he was worried about. Several more notes to make.
“Co on, hero. You’re taking too long.”
Erec hesitated, looking up at her. Enide was shuffling from foot to foot and glancing out the door.
He raised an eyebrow.
"You're quick to leave. Why?"
“Excited to get on the road.”
He frowned at her. It was more than that. Even now, as he stared, she gave a little shiver. She'd been… eager to throw herself into trouble. Her new car had broken, gotten repaired, then broken again in the ti they’d been waiting for the expedition to begin.
That, and there was the bruise under her eye. She’d gotten into a fight two days ago, betting money with another Pendragon…
Normally, Enide was the one who wanted to sleep in far too long in the mornings. Today? She’d woken him up with an alarm and practically dragged him out of bed.
“Are you alright?”
“Mhmm. Are any of us ever alright?” she asked back.
“Are we going to keep playing around? What’s bothering you, Enide? We’re about to head into the wasteland, and we never know what’s out there. If you wanna talk about sothing, now’s the ti.” He softened his voice, looking into her eyes.
She stared at him. Her fist clenched as she wrestled with sothing inside.
Enide shivered once more.
"I…"
“You can tell anything, my love.”
The tension in her broke, and she shook her head. “Do you ever wonder what sanity is?”
All of what Erec thought this might have been about flew right out the window. "Er, what?"
“I an, what makes soone all ntally there? My er—my uncle, he’s not been himself since we saved him. It’s been months, and he’s not any better. Just wants to sit outside. You can't even bring him into a tent at night, and he screams. I know it was years of being trapped with that horrible thing… telling him things… but… well… do you think he can get back to where he was? Is it possible for sothing to get inside of your head so badly that it just… changes you forever? Makes you… Not you?”
This was… about her uncle? Then again, he wasn’t sure. He knew the man hadn’t been doing well since they rescued him. The Pendragons kept their sick or elderly close to their heart, in the depths of the Pack itself. He knew she felt guilt over leaving him.
Erec frowned as he considered the question. And the odd look Enide was giving him.
Had this really been weighing on her so heavily? Or… was it more?
“I’m sorry about your uncle. The world fucks us over, sotis. Just like the people here, their lives have been permanently changed. All I can say is that I am here for you, Enide. And your family. I will always be here for you.” Those things could change you… But telling her that wouldn’t do any good with how she felt about her uncle.
Enide frowned at him. “I’m… I appreciate that, but it doesn’t make feel all that better.”
“So things can’t be fixed with words, and the most we can do for those suffering is to be a pillar for them to lean on. You, your uncle, our friends.” Erec sighed.
It looked like a tear was forming in the corner of her eye—he dropped his pen, moving to give her a hug.
Before he could reach her, she gave a quick, “Sorry, I gotta go.” She ran down the manor hall, and Erec watched her back as she went, frowning.
She’d been so eager to leave.
Had he said sothing wrong, too, to set her off?
“Damn it.” He said, turning back to the note, trying to rattle off another several things on it. Hoping he hadn’t said the wrong thing to the person who mattered the most to him. Erec sighed, looking at his ssy room, and then followed her out the door. He still had plenty of ti before needing to report for the expedition, so it was best to get started with picking up his Armor.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
A massive steel wall lood in front of him, stretching into the sky higher than any building in the Kingdom. It was hot today; an odd warm streak was hitting the Kingdom as they transitioned from winter to spring. Thanks to the Armor, none of that heat got through to him; he tested the servos as he moved, and VAL ran diagnostics while simultaneously transmitting data packages to its subroutine in the lab.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Once they left the Kingdom, it wouldn’t be long before they ran out of long-term communication options. Both of them wanted to make sure they had everything in place before they went. Erec was already done, but VAL liked to never stop tweaking things, as it was prone to do.
“Did he like the gift?” Colin asked Erec, drawing his attention away from the approaching wall.
They marched in formation, just three of the thirty knights on the expedition. As they got near the wall, Erec wanted to rush and fall out of line. The expedition was a balm to his pent-up soul; he focused on the conversation to distract himself and make the trip feel that much shorter.
“Er. He did. He was a bit more cheerful yesterday than before.” Though Garin had accepted the improved gun, a prototype, he hadn’t wanted to hang out long with Erec, ushering him out. Still, it beat the brooding, upset man that he’d been for the last week.
“About ti; it was inevitable that Boldwick would say no. We told him as much. Perhaps he should focus on his studies in our absence if he wants to push into the ranks of Knight Errant and forgo the normal two years of study; that is where his effort should be directed. Not complaining and hiding in his room. To think such a paltry toy would turn his mood," Colin said with a bit of a forced laugh.
Erec turned his head at the duke’s son; he was wearing his full Cerulean Armor, the logo of the Verdant Oak painted cleanly on the surface. It’d seen so upgrades; now that he was a Knight Errant, he’d gone back to wearing it.
“You say that as if you didn’t spend five nights this week working with VAL on the gun because he was feeling down.”
“Listen, you two are my friends. Even if one of you is being a little whiny and self-loathing, I will go through the effort of trying to cheer you up. Sotis.”
[Don’t give him too much credit. His new wife kept interrupting our work and dragging him ho.] VAL buzzed in Erec’s head.
Bedwyr sighed from their side; out of the thirty Knights attending, only six were Knight Errant. The three of them were the special cases; the other three Erec had yet to really et aside from the briefings, but they’d been chosen to attend since their lead Knight was asked to join the expedition. Boldwick hadn't made as big a deal of them coming as he had for Erec, Colin, and Bedwyr, but then, he had to admit that in the eyes of the Master Knight, they'd skipped foundational training.
In his opinion, training was best done in a practical situation, especially for people with enough power to make the best use of it.
Colin and Bedwyr slipped into a conversation about the wasteland. As Bedwyr had yet to go on an expedition, like most of the other orders, he was full of questions. Colin was more than happy to brag about himself and his experiences out there, and Erec distracted himself by pointing out where Colin was embellishing.
Each step brought them closer until, finally, they reached the looming wall.
Boldwick halted them, then hailed the guard.
Erec's breath caught as the thousands-of-pounds slab of tal that separated the Kingdom from the wasteland beyond rose into the air. Beyond it, wind whistled, and dust flew in clouds, the Eastern wasteland in its full glory. A tumbleweed flew across the road, and stalks of old, dried grass swayed. A dead tree greeted them, its withered branches raised to the sky above.
Erec smiled.
Past the gate was a scattering of cars and trucks. Just as many Pendragons as the trip to the west; one particular beater of a car stood out amongst them.
Enide was standing on top of the hood of her car, waving at him.
He glanced past her, at her car… There was a passenger in her back seat, wrapped in a cloak and lying there… odd.
Another Pendragon catching a ride? Well, nothing new for the traveling Pack. Oftentis, they would double up and share cars, as not all the Pendragons had their own. Either they were young, or damaged their car too much, or, simply put, couldn't be arsed with the maintenance that ca with ownership, and would rather borrow vehicles from their elders as necessary. There was also a certain amount of social capital it took within the clan to own one—still… sothing about the figure stood out to Erec; the way it lay on the seat reminded him of Garin in their dorm room, stretched out on a sofa. That, though, would have been impossible, as sneaking out of the Kingdom would have been insane, even for his friend.
"She's picked up a new boyfriend," Colin observed dryly.
Erec glared at him.
Colin shrugged. “What, it was a joke.”
“You are awful with them; still, that one was low effort,” Bedwyr said from the side. “You’ve seen how she looks at Erec. Those two are in love as much as it gets.”
"If they were as in love as Alexandria and I, surely they'd have married by now."
"Mhmm. Maybe if they ca from insane noble families like yours, they would've been," Bedwyr continued.
Erec ignored it; his eyes remained on the odd, still figure in the back of her car.
He didn’t get that long to stare, however, as orders ca in. Supplies brought out by the Knights and supporting staff were loaded onto the Pendragon vehicles. There was no ‘standing still’; the leading Knight expected each person to pull their weight. Bags of wheat, boxes of pre-packaged als, and drums of water were loaded wherever the Pendragons told them to bring them.
When he got a spare second from the hard labor, he kept looking at Enide. She was acting off and pointedly no longer eting his gaze.
Even when he waved at her to get her to co over, she gave him nothing back.
Despite the cooling of the Armor, it wasn’t long before he got hot and sweaty; at the end, he sat near a truck piled up with barrels of water and wiped sweat off his head.
Then, another leading Knight ca by and told him, Garin, and Colin would be loaded up into the truck they’d just finished filling up—when he looked over to where Enide was, her car had vanished.
She drove off before we even left? With that person?
A burn simred in his heart, and he was… well… surprised. Jealousy? Really?
Maybe it wasn’t that, but more the lack of understanding. Her behavior was simply not like her, but he wasn't given another option. The call ca to move, and he was loaded with his friends into the back of the truck along with one of the other Knights Errant—a woman nad Heather.
Then, with his view of the wasteland restricted to what they saw out of the open back of the canopy of the truck, he settled in and relaxed at the sight.
The formidable walls of the Kingdom receded. His eyes tracked them as, by the second, the wheels beneath his feet brought them further and further away; the vast tract of land stretched, until, after an hour, he had to strain to see those walls.
From there, they faded to a blemish, then vanished altogether.
So far, it was all as planned. The Knights had a good bit mapped in the imdiate area—tomorrow, that was when they hit the unexplored landscape, and were prepared for anything.
The sky above darkened; the truck pulled to a stop, circling with all the other Pendragon cars. Erec and the Knights Errant popped out of the back. Boldwick told them to mind themselves with the Pendragons, not drink too deeply, and past that they were free to go.
The second he got the chance, Erec hunted down Enide’s car.
She sat on the hood, whistling to herself as she cleaned her las-rifle.
Curiously, her back seat was empty.
"Hey," he said.
“Hey,” she said casually, with a smile.
Erec frowned, and she traced his gaze to her backseat, and then suddenly beca very interested in her gun once more.
“Who was that?”
“Who was who?” Enide tried to play dumb, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Erec sighed, padding over next to her… and then paused.
There was a bark.
[Oh. Oh my.] VAL buzzed.
Another bark—then so shuffling. From the trunk of Enide’s car. She froze, her rifle upright, the cleaning cloth stained black in her hand, eyes going wide. Erec hesitated and, instead of moving over to be next to her, moved to the back of the car. Right to the trunk from which the noise had co.
“I uh—you probably shouldn’t do that—“
Erec popped the trunk open.
It was there that he found his best friend, Garin—now hundreds of miles outside of the Kingdom, on an expedition he'd been told not to attend, without even his Armor. He was committing several serious violations of the Knight Codex and Chain of Command… Right now, Garin had a hand clamped over Fido’s mouth, and Munchy was hissing at Erec for daring to open the trunk. Erec couldn't even fathom what he was thinking, nor could he entirely believe what he was seeing was real.
"Ah" was all Erec could say as he stared down at Garin and the animals. “That’s not good.”
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