Bog Standard Isekai

Brych was looking forward to seeing Talra again. Not that there was anything special about the small town that made it worth seeing. They’d slept in a dozen better inns and gambled in a dozen better taverns since then, but Talra was the first. It was the first place he’d ever gone as a knight-at-arms. And now it would be the second place he went as an actual [Knight].

He was a [Watchful Knight], actually, although the new perception Skills felt sort of redundant with Brin in the Lance. The one he was most hopeful for was [Estimate Danger]. It didn’t do much now, but it was a leveling Skill, and Cid thought he remembered that it would eventually upgrade into something good. Those noble families always had big Class and Skill encyclopedias, and even though Cid hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, he had already sent letters home asking for all the information they could give him about everyone’s new Skills.

Brych hadn’t meant to read what Cid was writing in his letters, of course, but his senses were hard to turn off. You could close your eyes, but you couldn’t close your ears. If Brych’s ears picked up the twists and turns of a pen against paper, then his mind would paint him a mental picture as clear and readable as if he were peering over Cid’s shoulder. That’s what it meant to be a [Rogue]. No, that’s what it meant to be a [Watchful Knight].

He was the first to notice the smell of smoke, and he knew right away what it meant. Other people smelled smoke and just smelled smoke, but smoke to Brych was a hundred layers of flavor. He could tell when it was just wood burning and this wasn’t that. He smelled burnt fabric, varnish on wooden furniture, paint, hair, and a dozen other things. All those smoke-smells together meant that whole houses had burnt down.

Smoke could carry a pretty long way. They were still ten miles away from Talra. Did he dare hope that the fire was somewhere else?

He hoped Awsta was alright. That was the real reason he wanted to see Talra, wasn’t it? For that girl he’d met one time and then kept thinking about for months afterwards. How pathetic was he?

He’d made a terrible impression. In his defense, none of the girls in Fortmouth had ever been shy about telling short, ugly Brych to get lost whenever he was bothering them. The fact that Awsta and her friend whats-her-name hadn’t told him where he could stuff it had felt like an invitation. It wasn’t until Brin had rescued the poor girls that Brych realized that no one told a knight-at-arms to get lost. They told you ‘Thank you, sir,’ and ‘As you say, sir.’ And that was it.

He’d learned in the meantime the right way to pick up girls; Hedrek had shown them. You were just supposed to wait and let them approach you.

He wanted another chance with Awsta. He wanted to show her that he wasn’t the way that he had accidentally come across back then. He looked worse now, to be honest. His armor was cracked, pieces were missing, and his arm was still in a cast. Far from the heroic [Knight] he wanted to show the world, but would she care?

He looked at Brin, who hadn’t noticed yet. Brin’s range was usually way farther than Brych’s, but smoke carried a long way. Hopefully the wind was carrying it all the way across Talra from Arcaena. The war was on, after all, wasn’t it? That’s where the fighting was.

He kept watching Brin, and Brin noticed and scratched his eyes, but didn’t meet Brych’s gaze for more than a few seconds. For all that he was a murder machine, Brin could be weirdly bashful sometimes.

They rode and the smoke smell grew stronger until he started to think that some of the other guys might pick up on it. Anwir had pretty good senses.

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Marksi was the next to notice. He tried to pull Brin away, to get him to change his course. Brin patted the dragonling absently, but didn’t move to change their direction.

Brych watched Brin, and he knew the Second that Talra got within range of his Invisible Eyes. He was keeping his face still, trying hard not to show what he was seeing. Cool as ice, this guy, but he couldn’t hide from Brych when they were riding together this close. A few of the subtler, stranger senses told him that Brin was thinking.

He was thinking really hard, harder than a person should be able to think.

A few minutes later, he casually moved his horse ahead and then he and Cid went completely silent. He was using some sort of [Illusionist] spell so they could have a private conversation while pretending that’s not what they were doing. Brych couldn’t actually read what they were saying. From another direction, he could read their lips, but from this direction all he could see was the tense of muscles from the backs of their necks. All that told him was who was talking and gave him a slight feel for their mood.

The mood was grim. Whatever Brin was telling the Prime, it wasn’t good news.

Brych cursed, and when Meredydd asked what was wrong, he didn’t answer.

They rode closer until they were only a mile away. For the others, it was just a dark smudge in the distance, but from only this far away Brych might as well have been walking down the street in the center of town.

The ash was cold but the dead were laying on the street and not yet rotted. This was recent, maybe only three days ago. And the dead… they were different than he expected them to be.

He knew what it looked like when an enemy force ran through a civilian area and killed targets of opportunity while focused on a military objective. It didn’t look like this. There were too many wounds; the injuries were too extreme.

He looked at Brin again, and this time the Second looked back with recognition, understanding why Brych had been staring at him.

Brych shook his head and opened his mouth twice before finally just asking, “What is this?”

There was a faint weirdness in the air that told Brych that Brin was blocking sound from the others. “Undead don’t act like this. They’ll eat you if they can, but they won’t toy with you beforehand. A human army did this.”

That’s what he was seeing. The villagers… had been toyed with. He told himself to stop looking. He didn’t want to see more. He didn’t…

He saw her. Awsta. For some reason, she was still clutching a chunk of moonstone in one hand.

He shouldn’t have kept looking. He’d often wondered what the army of Arcaena looked like. Now he knew. They were rotten to the core.

Before they got too much further, a [Scout] from the Order met them and called them to halt.

“Sirs, your orders have changed. You are no longer to pass through Talra. You are to proceed immediately to the staging grounds at Aberquay.”

“What happened here?” Brych asked.

The [Scout] paused, looking at Brych. “With your Class, sir, you already know. In the end, it was the Queendom that started the war. They came over the border all at once, with no forewarning and no official declaration. A hundred smaller bands, they killed everyone they could before retreating back over the river. Five other villages look just like this.”

Brych wanted to ask why no one had done anything for the bodies, but he didn’t because he knew the answer. [Estimate Danger] was telling him that no one in the Lance would survive going on a stroll through that town. Whether it was traps, poisons, or curses he couldn’t say, but not even Brin’s stupid regeneration would save him.

Cid asked, “Why weren’t these villages protected?”

The [Scout] looked green, obviously as troubled as Brych himself. “Begging your pardon, sir, but who would kill Commoners? She easily could’ve captured them and brought them over to her side, but… and besides. These villages were protected.”

Brych noticed it next, on the other side of the village, towards the mountains. Huge rents had been torn in the earth, and there were glints of metal shards, broken pieces of weapons and armor. Someone had been protecting this village, maybe a group of [Knights]. Real, experienced [Knights] and with his new Class he was starting to realize what that meant. They’d held all this power, had time to learn to use it, and then fallen. They’d failed.

It suddenly hit home to him that they weren’t in for another fight against goblins. He’d sort of expected a fight against legions of mindless undead, like from Brin’s stories. The undead legion was there, of course, but it was in turn directed by a human army. An advanced, powerful, ruthless army led by a [Witch Queen].

Cid clapped the [Scout] on the shoulder. “We’ll make them pay, I swear it on my honor as a [Knight]. To Aberquay, you say?”

“Yes, sir,” said the [Scout]. “I say report to the staging area, but fighting has already broken out. ”

“Fighting? Then–”

“Yes sir. The Great War of Arcaena, they’re calling it. Expect to be sent to the front.”