“Ah to be free.
Lonesome this road may be.
Filled with festering critters,
And things I can’t see.
But I will say this; aint no thing glitter
In these wastelands,
Like Vega
Place got you emptying your pockets on command,
Aint no place like it, neither here nor there.
- Glittering Vega, Old-Man Jones, (302, 3rd Era)
After a little less than an hour of rushing across the wastes—they joined Dame Yuvia and the rest of the Knights. Sure enough, in the distance were a trio of figures, the silent monsters mentioned over the communicator. They were oddly human-like. The main difference was their elongated limbs and feet that ended in a wheel—and, of course, their ‘hands’ had fingers made of blades. And they had seven fingers. Their skin was a moltted brown that ranged into orange.
After arriving—the figures continued as they had been. They stared at the humans, still statues on the horizon.
“They’ve been like this since we encountered them, ma’am.” The Knight Errant confirmed for Yuvia as she collected her thoughts upon arrival. “Stare’n. We haven’t approached them after ensuring they’re not making any noise. They’re not. Still, quiet, and they like to stare.”
“Fits the bill,” Yuvia said. “Think we got lucky. We’ll report to the main encampment and let them know we spotted silent ones—it’ll look good for us all.”
“…Why aren’t they attacking?” Erec couldn’t help but ask, watching the monsters. In every encounter he’d had with these creatures—they only sat like this when preparing for an attack. As if they, too, were waiting for orders. Given their association with the White Stag, perhaps it was as literal as that. They didn’t have permission to engage. Which meant, eventually, they would begin the assault.
“Who cares,” Yuvia said. “I’ll be getting Lieutenant for sure—“
One of them began to move; the rest followed. Erec braced himself, but they were moving… Away. They were moving deeper into the wasteland, further from where the main army or other scouting parties were.
“Fuck.” Yuvia said, glancing at them all. “You—“ She pointed to Colin. “—go back to the centuria and get their asses moving. The rest of us will pursue—“
“We’re supposed to withdraw and report what we found,” Erec said carefully.
“Are you in charge? No? You’re just a damn initiate—you don’t know how these things work, so close your mouth and fall in line.” Dame Yuvia practically shrieked as she traced the moving enemies in the distance. Colin ran back towards the camp—and Erec took a deep breath.
He didn’t feel good about this. But the Knight Errants seemed too intimidated to back him up—Garin gave him a look asking if he should dig his heels in too, and Erec shook his head.
This might not feel right, but part of him despised the idea of letting the monsters get away. It concerned him that he couldn’t pinpoint where the feeling came from.
Dame Yuvia being out of her mind aside, if they could get something more valuable than a sighting of odd monsters, it might help in the hunt. It might make it so that more people ended up surviving this thing.
Maybe.
Soundlessly, the Knights plodded along after Yuvia—marching to keep up with, but not gain on, their enemies. For creatures that moved on wheels, they didn’t seem to move too quickly, and with just a bit of effort, they kept a comfortable distance away to trail the monsters.
Every now and again Yuvia communicated with the centuria as they hastened to meet them in the field—before they did, the soldiers managed to deploy a message of the sighting and their intention to monitor the situation to the main army. Through the chain of communications, they’d at least been able to inform the main host of their discovery and course of action.
That was a relief, given the alarming nature of chasing the monsters.
Mile by mile, they dove deeper into the wasteland.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
“They’re just sitting there,” Garin muttered darkly as he and Erec rested on a boulder—watching the monsters far away; as the sun began to set, the monsters had halted. After trailing the things for miles, they’d been dragged into rockier terrain. Behind them, the centuria had set up for the night, their fires blazing away.
At this point, there wasn’t a way to easily conceal themselves tracking the creatures with a hundred soldiers at their back. So, Dame Yuvia hadn’t bothered—stationing her watcher Knights away from the resting soldiers and tasking them with trading shifts to keep an eye.
They were to be ready to engage the enemy at a moment's notice.
It wasn’t just the Knights. As Erec had passed through the centuria’s encampment, he saw the tense edge everyone held. Nobody was happy with how far they’d gone from the main army.
Apparently, several scouting squads had encountered the same thing, finding small groups of silent monsters. Another group was also tracking one on their own initiative. The higher-ups were trying to determine the best response and delayed orders for them to retreat. They were being led by the noses to several places—but was it a feint? A way to split their focus for a directed assault?
Or were they being tricked into an ambush?
Dame Yuvia positively denied such a thing—claiming that the level of sophistication displayed by these silent creatures was far below such tactical plans. She claimed that they could attack, sure. She even admitted that they were known to wait for more of their kind to gain an edge. But she insisted that advanced strategies like an ambush were obviously beyond the White Stag’s capabilities.
Erec doubted it. So did everyone else they were traveling with.
Watching the monsters patiently wait in the darkness a good distance away didn’t make that nagging sense of worry disappear.
He almost wished he still had that gun, just in case.
If only Gregory hadn’t burned the damn thing. The quantum accelerated processor was untested, but hopefully, it gave enough of an edge to enhance him in combat to deal with anything that might happen. All he needed was an edge to fend off an attack and make an opportunity to pull his friends away with him.
“Garin, if something happens, you run, alright?” Erec said.
“What? No, I’ll fight.” Garin said, almost angry. “What, think I’m not good enough to deal with something coming my way?”
“It’s not that. I have a bad feeling, is all.”
“No, you don’t think I’m on the same level as you are.”
“Is that wrong?” Erec said, realizing a second too late the harshness of his words. “It’s—I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You got your shoulder blasted apart and have almost died how many times, Erec?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh really?” Garin asked. “It isn’t like that? Do you think watching my best friend throw himself into fights and come close to death time and time again is easy? But am I here telling you to run if things get out of control? No. Because I know you, and you’d never—Trust in me. I might not be as strong as you, but I can manage myself.” Garin damn near shouted towards the ends before slumping next to Erec, his anger tangible.
Ah. Erec felt terrible, especially as he realized what he’d implied. The meaning that dwelled beyond the words. It was the same sorta crap Bedwyr’d spewed at him. The same feeling must’ve been rotting away in his friend for months now.
“Nothing’s changed between us,” Erec said after a long while. “I don’t mean to make you worry or feel less than me… If I didn’t have this power, I’d have died. It very well might be the reason I will die—but it’s… like a handhold, a thing to pull myself up by. Get me where I need to be…”
“I know that. But fucking apologize, alright? You can’t say shit like that without a sorry.” Garin fumed.
“I’m sorry,” Erec said sincerely. “I don’t wanna make you feel like Bedwyr’s made me feel. We can—train or something, I’m sure you’ll have an ability to make you shine sooner rather than later, and then we can be on equal footing again—“
“I don’t need that. But thank you. Compared to the rest of our class—I’m doing just fine at the moment. I intend to improve to keep up—don’t get me wrong. But we can’t all be exceptions to the norm like you or Bedwyr.”
As they slipped into silence, Munchy squeaked from inside his friend’s Armor.
Erec looked up at the stars.
Did he really just get put on the same stage as his brother? He’d expected it to—well, not hurt as much. It was like Garin jammed a dagger into his heart, but there wasn’t hate there. Garin had an almost resigned and defeated attitude about the whole thing. Maybe that made it hurt a little worse, but… It likely wasn’t completely from a place of envy, and whatever his friend was feeling, Erec understood too well.
He also knew that he couldn’t be the one to take that pain away.
I’ll do better. He stared at his friend quietly, resolving himself to fix whatever had been fraying there the best he could.
“…Wait, was there five of them before?” Garin asked.
Erec’s eyes snapped back to the monsters—sure enough, now there were two more. Still as statues, almost hard to see in the black of the night, but the group had expanded ever so slightly. Meaning that two of the damn things had slipped in somehow—with the damned rocky terrain, it was hard to see all of the potential hiding places or if there was some tunnel system.
Erec picked up his communicator to give Yuvia an update and, by extension, the main army.
His gut dropped as he watched them.
What game was the White Stag playing?