For the past four years, David had trained. He had been training since the day he arrived at the Fangbreak Bastion, but its purpose now differed from what it had been.

  When he arrived, he was still feeling the aftereffects of a tragedy. He sought to pour himself into training and learning, to forget the outside world, and his past. He sought to train until he forgot his rage, and the events that birthed it. Especially after the news he’d received.

  He’d not been told to his face, but he had good ears. The caravan of people leaving Eidrahm had been attacked. The dragon-knight scout who had followed it had been separated and unable to find any living remnants of it after his battle. Just a battlefield.

  The news nearly broke him, and he let his rage rule him once more. He started to take risks, do things others would consider suicidal, all for greater power. He threw himself into training until his bones were broken and his muscles were torn, healed himself, and did it all again. He interacted little with his fellow cadets, and was somewhat disliked, but excelled in his classes.

  He wore himself out studying everything he had access to in Fangbreak’s library, every day. And when he was so mentally spent that he could barely think, he threw himself back into physical training. It began to cut into his sleep, his health deteriorated. He kept going.

  It took him throwing himself into a hand-to-hand with an adult wyvern on a dare (and nearly dying) to make him realize he needed help. Fortunately, he didn’t have to go through the process of building up the courage to ask for it, the instructors intervened. The order’s healers weren’t limited to healing the body, they could also heal the mind, it wasn’t uncommon to need it in their line of work.

  It took time, months of guidance, for him to be... somewhat normal again. The damage would not be undone so easily, or quickly. It would never fully fade, or so the fading memories of other lives told him. He wasn’t na?ve enough to delude himself into thinking he would ever return to what he used to be.

  He merely tried to get better. Eventually, upon the end of his second year in the order, he was made a squire to another knight. It was a short squire-ship, the other knight, commander Irvendael, an elven paladin of Avaniss, their goddess of justice, merely wanted to test him. He’d heard of David and wanted to see if David was worthy of being a knight, and stable enough to not martyr himself for no reason.

  Irvendael certainly tested him. They visited plague-ravaged cities, a war-torn kingdom, dragon-infested mountains, and more. They fought creatures that David would never have battled without a battalion of knights at his side, by themselves. And they survived.

  By the end of their journey, he’d been officiated as a Knight. There was no fanfare, no mysterious apparitions or crowd of proud people, he was merely handed a ring and medallion and told “Welcome to the knighthood, brother.”, and that was that. He was a knight.

  In hindsight, he ought to have sought help immediately upon arrival, and he greatly regretted not having done so. He did not regret what he had learned from it, however. For it was because of this that he had been trained by a knight he now admired. His journey with Irvendael had given him valuable experience and forged him into what he now was, its value was unrivaled by any piece of equipment he could have acquired.

  Time passed since his knighting, and still he continued to train. But now it was no longer just him, he had squires of his own to train; to train for the day when they might face some beast or another that required them to excel. On his fourth year since joining the order, he and his squires set out from Fangbreak at the behest of a Gildarian noble on the border between the Kingdom of Gildar and the clan-lands of Sagresh.

  The noble, a Viscount, had a bit of a monster problem, to the point entire villages were disappearing. He had requested aid from his king, who had sent a battalion of his personal monster hunters to their death. Not a single one of the fools had returned alive.

  Thus, of course, the logical solution to his problems was to request aid from... adventurers. He had requested aid from adventurers, perhaps under the misguided belief that the dragon knights would be expensive for his king to hire. They too, had failed. Only then had the viscount requested their aid. David and his squires had been the response.

  They were to scout the land for any clues as to what their quarry might be. Their first destination; a village known as Cederburg, the place the adventurers had first gathered.

  “You know, sir, I still don’t understand why the good viscount decided to hire adventurers over us.” Said Roderick, his half-elf squire. He was currently sitting atop his horse, even though they’d stopped for a break, whilst David and Olga, the other squire, ate some trail rations.

  “Hiring adventurers was not a bad idea... or it wouldn’t have been where it not for the lack of information.” David began. “Adventurers are capable, they probably do more combat than even we do, thanks to their dungeons, and are highly skilled. They are not as well-trained as we are, but they are still highly capable. The problem, however, lies in that those are the higher echelons of adventurers.”

  “The Adventurers divide themselves into ranks. At the bottom, we have copper, the level one to ten fools that have only just started. Iron is ten to twenty, not much of a change. Then, there is silver, level twenty to thirty, fairly experienced, and what you’d count as. Then gold, at thirty to fifty, dedicated and far more experienced, and often highly talented.” David continued before he was interrupted.

  “You’re a gold, then?” Olga asked, the half giant reclining on a tree as she listened. David himself did not have a quantifiable level, something that had greatly confused the order’s scholars, so his ranking was entirely derived from that of the strongest opponent he’d been able to beat, this being a gold-rank knight he’d dueled after a disagreement.

  “Yes.” David stated. “Moving on. Above gold, there is platinum, fifty to eighty, these are the ‘old monsters’, guildmasters, and prodigies that you call in when you really want something dead. Above them, theoretically, is electrum, which is all the way up to one hundred. And even more theoretically, there's mythril rank, high above the rest.”

  “What happened here, is simple. The Viscount posted a request to the guilds, mentioning missing villages and... little else. There was no information other than that. The more experienced adventurers look at a request like that and go ‘not worth my time’, because it’s not. A request like that could be anything, from a legendary monster that decided to climb out from a dungeon’s depths to a simple ghoul nest that some silvers could deal with.”

  “Evidently, it’s not the latter, sir, seeing as the adventurers that accepted this request were silvers, irons, and coppers.” Roderick stated.

  “Evidently.” David agreed, standing up and dusting off his armor. “Alright, let’s get going, we want to get to the village before nightfall.” David got back on his horse; Olga got back on her giant boar, and they set back onto the trail.

  It was a good day for journeying. The trees were proud and tall, the leaves whispered softly, and the sky was clear and bright. A very good day. The fact that there were no interruptions to their travels from any bandits or creatures certainly helped to keep that opinion. Even as the sun began to fall, the day remained a good day.

  They arrived at a mostly empty inn and tavern. Hushed voices and empty seats where there should have been riotous laughter, lively conversation, and plenty of people made the tavern feel rather eerie. Still, it had everything else you’d expect of a tavern. Some folk sat around a table playing dice, a fellow dressed in a black hood and cloak sat in the darkest corner of the tavern, smoking a pipe, and what must have been the village beauty, already flirting with Roderick, the lucky bastard.

  “Right, Roderick, go and find us a table while Olga hitches the mounts, I’ll go talk to the Innkeeper.” David ordered as they entered the tavern.

  “How can I help you?” The innkeeper asked, overly long mustache waggling ridiculously as he spoke.

  “Three rooms and the tavern’s specialty for three, if you would.” Said David.

  “Very good, that’ll be a silver and three coppers.” Said the innkeeper, David placed down two silver coins. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to be a dragon knight?”

  “I am, those two I came in with are my squires.” David stated. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the adventurers that gathered here decided to go from here, would you?”

  “Tillega. One of the first villages to disappear. The most recent is Osterville, but I figure that could just be monsters leaking out from the Crimson Fjord.” The innkeeper stated. “Here’s the keys to your rooms.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate the information.” David said, departing for his table and watching a group of six hooded individuals enter the Inn.

  They spoke relaxedly, waiting for their meals and drinks to arrive, basking in the day’s good quality. A quality that was promptly ruined the moment he took a sip of his drink. It was poisoned. Likely by one of the hooded figures, the one who had bumped into the tavern lass who had delivered their drinks. He kept his expression controlled, unchanged from what it’d been before he took a sip.

  “I need some air.” He loudly announced to his group, standing up abruptly and departing the tavern. He waited behind the stables for his suspicions to be confirmed. The hooded figures emerged from the tavern shortly. He walked into the forest, making sure to make an obvious trail deep into it, then he hid behind a thick tree. The assassins followed his trail.

  “The trail ends here.” One of the assassins gurgled as they reached the trail’s end, just a few feet from his tree. “Search! He must be nearby.”

  They burst into motion. He bid his time. The approach of one of the assassins was the cue he needed. They hadn’t seen him, not even as he grabbed one of their comrades and shoved a dirk into his heart. He sat the corpse on the tree’s root and moved, a dagger in his left and his sword in his right hand. He severed one’s carotid as he passed, another’s right wrist was slit, alas his thrown dagger failed to wound any, as it was parried by its target, lodging in a tree.

  He pulled his shield from his back and entered a defensive stance, his blade shining faintly with magic. The weapon still brought memories of his past, even though it had changed so much in the time since it first came into his possession. The greatest change was obtained when he killed the dragon, the blade’s silver metal gained lightning-like blue streaks. All but that were purely cosmetic, that one let it be wreathed in lightning. It was what was known as a ‘wild enchantment’, manifested naturally, and it was one he had no need to use in this fight.

  He deflected a descending blade upwards, using the momentum of the impact to disembowel his opponent, cutting through cheap leather armor as if it weren’t there, then whirled and bashed another with his shield before bringing his blade into a swipe. It cut into his foe’s neck, and the assassin dropped with a wet gurgle as its neckbone was severed. The remaining assassin dropped from above, trying to get at his head, he sidestepped and took the assassin’s head off with a single blow. They’d been much too slow to be of any use against him.

  “Copper, you’d think assassins would be smart enough to know when a contract is infeasible.” He muttered as he retrieved his dagger. He returned to the tavern with nary a glance towards the corpses.

  “Another assassination attempt, sir?” Roderick asked upon David’s return to the table.

  “Yes. Coppers.” David stated. “One of these days, they’ll send someone competent, and I’ll finally find out who it is that wants me dead so much.”

  “If I may ask, which poison did they try this time?” Rodrick asked. Over the past years, David had rapidly developed a resistance or outright immunity to many poisons and learned to identify them. He owed it primarily to the order’s toxin training, but also to how often he got poisoned by would-be assassins.

  “Noxious Lotus. You’d think they’d have figured out that that one doesn’t work on me, seeing as it hasn’t worked the past thirteen times it’s been used.” David shrugged. It was likely that the assassins all belonged to different organizations, seeing as the different groups were liable to try the same strategies.

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  “Another gold for me, Olga ma’am.” Rodrick said, and Olga flicked him a gold coin. “Were they at least skilled fighters, sir?”

  “I don’t know, the gulf between us is too vast, and I didn’t have to go all out because I caught them off guard. Honestly, all things considered, they were probably fresh recruits for whichever organization they are a part of.” He concluded. “Anyways, we ride out for Osterville tomorrow morning, so use the chance to rest while you have it.”

  “What’s in Osterville?” Olga asked. “I heard it’s close to that bloody caldera, are we going there?”

  “No. Osterville is one of the most recent mass disappearances.” He said as he stood. “I’m going to my room; I’ll see both of you in the morning.”

  They departed early next morning with utmost haste, temporarily held back only by a desire for breakfast. Once that was fulfilled, they set out with their steeds at a gallop, in hopes of not letting their quarry get too far ahead. They passed through several deserted villages on their way to their destination, never finding any trace of a scuffle.

  “It’s like they all up and decided to leave...” Olga said as they passed through one such village.

  “With all due respect, Lady Olga, they would not have left their belongings if they had left of their own will.” Said Rodrick.

  Their journey continued perfectly from there, but David couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. There was no resistance, the wildlife was cowed, even the bears refused to so much as look at them. There was no birdsong, as if the birds were constantly hiding from some predator or another. The very wind seemed ominous, whispering doom in their ears.

  The first signs of a scuffle consisted of a jumble of footprints and blood splatters in the forest near their destination. It was fortunate they’d taken the detour. Weapons and armor lay bloodied and discarded within the circle of prints that had once been a battle formation. There were no signs the corpses had been dragged away, though there were imprints of bodies on the ground.

  There were footprints leading away from the battlefield. They chose to follow one trail. What they found at the end of it was worse than they could have imagined.

  “What the fuck is that?” Olga asked at the sight of the scene before them. David, too, had asked that question and started going over what he knew in search of an answer. The scene before them was a nightmare, but the monster orchestrating it was perhaps the worst part.

  The monster was a demon. More specifically, a humanlike demon that radiated charisma and attraction, a seducer. There were several variations of seducers, succubae, incubi, and lilitu were just the most common, fortunately it appeared that the demon before them was just an incubus. He could deal with that.

  “Olga, cast harden will on us. Roderick, use the portal scroll, get back to fangbreak, tell them we have a demon infestation. Likely a breach.” David ordered. He dismounted and began to gather his equipment, searching for anything that could help against a demon. He felt the cool caress of magic reinforcing his willpower and saw Roderick teleport away from beside them. He expected that reinforcements would take some time to arrive.

  “Alright, looks like the incubus has some people in cages, we’re not going to let that continue. Olga, I want you to support me from afar with your magic, use frost spells primarily, as you’re not a cleric.” He ordered and began to descend the hill they were on.

  “You expect to face more than the single demon?” She asked.

  “Demons never fight alone, nor do they fight fairly. I have never fought them before, but I know this for a fact. It is the one thing every single book in the Fangbreak library that mentioned them agreed on.” He said as he unsheathed his seax and pulled his shield from his back and onto his left arm, still approaching the demon. He did not run, he kept his shield at the ready and his senses honed, searching for an ambush and continually approaching his target.

  The demon noticed his approach and stood from its bench, pulling a scimitar from its hip. He refused to see the demon as anything other than a pest to be exterminated. He didn’t stop the sneer that overtook his features when it began to speak, the demon certainly noticed it, seeing as he hadn’t kept his helmet on.

  “-Have you been listening to anything I said, mortal?! Heed my demands, kneel!” The demon continued. David felt a wave of charisma magic slam into him as he approached. It slid off of the shield that was his will. The demon lunged, closing the distance between them at speed to stab David.

  He batted the telegraphed strike aside with his sword and slammed his shield into the incubus, pushing him back. A spike of ice shot over his head and stabbed the incubus in the shoulder, it dropped the scimitar. It was his turn to lunge; he smacked the incubus with his shield again, letting the incubus stumble back from the impact, and then stabbed it through the heart. The demon spent its final seconds flailing at his sword’s point as it vented lighting into his veins.

  “Weak.” He spat. “Must not have been a very high-ranking demon. Probably just some demon lord’s spoiled brat, or a random grunt.” A wheezing laugh from one of the cages drew his attention. A heavily wounded lizard-kin lay upon the floor of the cage. He was garbed in the classic armor of the Shallarn demon hunters.

  “A dragon knight...” The injured lizardman wheezed. “Oh, that demoness is... so fucked now. This was her worst case...” David approached the lizard’s cage, breaking the door open with a shield slam. He slipped a healing tonic from his pouch and kneeled.

  “Drink” he ordered, offering the Lizardman the uncorked tonic. The lizard obliged. The lizard was old, that much was evident. His scales were a dull green, and the ridges that served as his brows, and those that descended towards his back, had grown smooth where once they’d have been sharpish. He likely wouldn’t survive his wounds without the tonic.

  “Thank you, dragon knight.” the lizardman said after his wounds had healed and he had stood and stretched. “I suppose you’ll want information?”

  “I will, yes.” Said David. “But first, introductions. I am David Armodson, of Eidrahm. My companion over there...” He gestured towards Olga. “Is one of my squires, Olga Gunarsdottr.”

  “Helor of Dargatz, demon hunter.” The lizard said. “I was passing through this land when I felt demonic energy and chose to investigate. I found a demon baroness and her retinue. She’s stronger than I am, level forty-eight, I’m at thirty-two. Her retinue was nothing special.”

  “And I assume you attempted an assassination, and she survived, and she chose to hand you to an iron-ranked demon instead of keeping you close? Makes sense, she likely knew you wouldn’t be recovering and wouldn’t be a threat, so she left you with one of her weakest, to die.” David deduced. He gestured for the arriving Olga to liberate the caged people.

  “Actually, she repeatedly stated that she wanted me kept alive. Likely to torture me later.” said the lizardman. “I assume you intend to slay her?”

  “Yes.” David responded. “I intended to wait for the others to get here, but I assume that she intends to capture as many people as she can and then return to whichever territory of the Pit she originates from. Where she can sell them as slaves. If she feels harried, she may yet choose to hasten her return, I cannot allow that.”

  “Good. Neither can I, may I join you?” The lizardman asked.

  “You have your skills and your equipment, seeing as they left it on you, and you’re trained to kill demons. I see no reason to say no.” David said. They sent the rescued civilians and adventurers on their way and departed in search of the demonic baroness.

  They didn’t have to search long, Helor had a skill that allowed him to detect demonic energy, and the baroness was an impressive repository of it. She had made a big mistake, choosing to leave members of her retinue behind at intervals to guard her captives. The result of this mistake; she’d left herself practically unguarded. Her sole guards were the imps she was using as infantry, and these weren’t very strong imps.

  They ran ahead and prepared an ambush. Olga would cast the Polar Storm spell, to whittle away at the imps. Helot would rain arrows from a distance, until David engaged the demoness. David would charge through the polar storm and to the center of their formation, where the baroness was commanding from. When he engaged the baroness, Helor would flank and join the fight.

  The start went off without a hitch. Olga’s Polar Storm engulfed the entirety of the Imp battalion’s front ranks. The demons started falling like flies. He slammed his helmet onto his head, readied his shield and prepared to charge, empowering his muscles with magic. He burst into motion, running through a tree and into the storm, and through it. Imp after imp was knocked aside as he charged through their lines.

  Those he hit directly would never get up again. He charged until he bashed into the demonic baroness, sending her sprawling, though she recovered quickly. “A dragon knight! I know a few demons who’ve always wanted one of you, you’ll fetch a high price indeed!” Said the demoness, a succubus, its charisma magic was already brushing past his shielding willpower, searching for a crack to exploit.

  “You’ll never get that chance, fiend. I don’t intend to let you return to the Pit of the Abyss, you marched into this realm, and you will die in this realm.” David declared as he dashed forward with an upwards slash at the demon’s throat. The demoness deflected; David blocked the retaliation, the impact sent shivers down his arm.

  The demoness entered into a combo attack with its glaive, David blocked them all. His energy was steadily dropping from his enhancement, but he had time. His attacks were deflected again and again, but he had a plan. His blade had gained an enchantment when he slew his first dragon with it, and he was going to use it fully. With a thought, his repository of energy gained an additional drain and the blade wreathed itself in crackling thunder.

  When his next attack was blocked, the demoness screamed, a scream rivaling a Banshee’s own. Nearby Imps clutched their hands to their ears in pain, his own ears began to hurt. Helor dashed in behind the demon, stabbing at its neck. But the demoness whirled, dodging the attack and decapitating Helor in a single brutal cut from its glaive.

  David saw red, his rage rattled its chains. A badly deflected slash of the glaive, now glowing faintly, bit into his leg, cutting through his armor, and he tapped into his rage. He felt his armor strain as if his muscles were growing, likely a figment of his imagination. He heard the cawing of a flock of ravens, flying over the battlefield. He blocked cut after cut, the demoness growing faster, and sloppier, with every attack.

  A stab went through his shield, cutting into his arm. He roared in his pain and fury. He stabbed forward, pouring more power into his blade. The demoness dodged, the blade’s energy unleashed in an electric arc that burnt at the fiend, charring through the enchanted robe it’d been wearing, and charring the skin of its left arm, though it was still usable.

  The glaive’s blade descended from above, David dodged, throwing the remnants of his shield at the demoness as he did so. A spell began to build in his left hand. He stabbed forward again, the demoness tried to dodge. The fiend met a wall of ice, rather than empty air. His sword cut into its torso, stabbing through where a kidney would be on a human. The demoness dodged the pinning attack, dodging away from the blade and forcing it to cut out through the demoness’ side.

  A blast of magic sent David flying, hurtling into a small group of imps, who found themselves crushed beneath his bulk by his momentum. He recovered in time to receive a continuous beam of flame to the chest; the beam rapidly began to melt into his cuirass. David threw his seax, empowering it once more, and the blade cut through the demoness’ arm, severing her forearm. The spell cut off.

  His hauberk was ruined, and he’d definitely have a new scar if he’d gotten burnt. He traced a few arcane sigils into the air with his left hand, the magic he poured into it manifesting them as his fingers moved, a muttered incantation and a flick of his hand was all he needed to blast the demoness into the ice wall with a beam of arcane thunder that seared into her even as the ice wall crumbled from the impact. The demoness would definitely never get rid of those scars, assuming she managed to escape.

  He shook his head, why had he begun to think of it as a her? As a person? It didn’t matter, her time was short anyways.

  He marched forward, drawing one of his dirks as he approached his fallen enemy. The ice had shattered from the impact, but still the demoness stirred. He felt her probing at his mind, his willpower, and she’d found a crack. “Help me!” Ingrid, his sister, demanded from where his foe once stood. He slowed but continued to approach; he knew it wasn’t Ingrid, but demons often had a few tricks in reserve just for situations like this.

  “Don’t do it, son!” His father spoke, he ignored it and continued onwards, memories rising to the surface as he remembered the last time he’d seen his father. “You wouldn’t hit your mother, would you?” his mother asked, the demon’s voice leaking into her own as the illusion began to fail, he lifted the blade and prepared to stab. “Please, Davi?” Runa asked, he hesitated as the illusion intensified, becoming far more lifelike and dredging up far more memories, but his blade descended anyways, pushed by another’s hand.

  He collapsed onto a boulder of ice. He ripped his helmet off and set it on his knees. “Thank you.” He said to Olga, who stood by him.

  “For what?” She asked.

  “For pushing the blade down. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it myself.” He spoke.

  “I did not do it.” Olga stated, clearly befuddled by his statement.

  “Then who?” David asked. Nobody answered. A raven landed before him; his sword clutched in its talons. It was a very large raven, larger than even the eagles of Fangbreak mountain. It cawed at him, as if asking a question, and hopped forwards and onto his legs, letting the blade drop.

  He felt a kinship with it, a bond, like that with a familiar or summoned creature. The Raven hopped onto his shoulder, and it became ever clearer that this was not a normal bird. Its beak was longer and wider, and the edges were jagged, forming protrusions akin to fangs or serrated teeth. The beak and talons had a metallic sheen, like a blade. The raven’s feathers were nothing special, though they were patterned like a night sky.

  It was the eyes that most gave him pause. Black eyes with an emerald shine, a glow, that seemed to hold boundless intelligence. Not that said intelligence was being used much. Not even by the beast’s smaller brethren, who’d already descended upon the battlefield to pick apart the corpses.

  He placed his helmet back on his head. “Olga, give me a health tonic, take a mana potion, we’ll go wipe out what remains of the demons, then teleport back and let the others deal with the cleanup.” His wounds knit together in minutes upon taking the health potion, and they set out to finish the job.

  ..................

  It took three days to track and destroy all of the demons, and by that time their reinforcements had arrived. They’d arrived far faster than expected, having chosen to fly out on wyverns. Conveniently, they’d chosen to land upon the obvious battlefield, which David and Olga had returned to by then.

  A procession of knights now approached their position at the edge of the battlefield, near a cave where Olga had chosen to store the frozen remains of the demonic baroness. The knight at their head was one that David would recognize anywhere, and one of the few of them who had battled demons before.

  “Knight Commander Irvendael. Knights Varen and Curtis.” He greeted. “It is a pleasure to see you all here.”

  “You look like shit.” Irvendael deadpanned.

  “Yes, well, we did stop the entire demonic invasion by ourselves, me and Olga, that is.” Said David.

  “The entire invasion, boy, were you not supposed to only scout?” Curtis questioned angrily. He’d always been far too inflexible, in David’s opinion.

  “Yes, those were our orders, but the situation did not permit that.” Began David. “The demon baroness, whose remnants are in that cave, was soon going to begin a retreat to the pit, taking all of the civilians she’d captured with her. I could not allow that to happen. It was a close fight, but the demoness appeared to specialize far too much into beguiling her foes for her to beat one such as me.”

  “You won, the demons are dead, and you remain in one piece. This is good.” Spoke Varen. “Return to Fangbreak, we will complete the cleanup.”.

  Fangbreak welcomed their return with great fanfare.