Joran staggered out of the wood, frustrated, sore, and pants torn open. While the wilderness had never been safe, he dearly missed the time when monsters would simply try and kill you. Now, though? Now they were after a different sort of prey. He glowered down at himself. This was the third time in as many months that someone his Lord had sent him to protect had surrendered to some monster. It was also, embarrassingly, the third time Joran had fought, lost, and spent the night being ridden until he passed out. A cold wind blew past, and he winced as it moved over his exposed manhood. He blew sharply out of his mouth and began the long walk back to the Keep. Nothing else to be done but get ready to be scolded yet again. Hopefully this time he'd be allowed to put on pants, first.
Shoulders slumped under his armor, he walked into his room at the Keep and began to remove the clothing he still had on. It turned out that he had not been allowed to put on pants first. The entire Court had thus seen him, covered in the flaking remains of monstrous fluids, in all his glory.
Perhaps,
he thought,
I would've have been less eager to leave farming behind for Knighthood, had I known what the Imperial Mages planned.
It was not a true mystery, what had happened to the woods and wilds of the Empire, though it remained no less a scandal.
In the face of rising citizen deaths to a rapidly increasing monster population, the Grand Light himself, Guardian of the Mountain and Keeper of the Sacred Oasis, Emperor of the Known Lands, had issued two decrees. The first, which quadrupled the number of knights by uplifting some from the peasantry, had failed to do more than hold the yearly deaths stable. The second, whose exact wording was still unknown this far from the capital, directed the Imperial Mages to find a solution to the deaths using any means available. It was one year to the day after that decree, when the moon was full in the sky, that monster deaths stopped. That monsters...changed. And in the three months since that change, Joran had gone from the glory of monster slaying to the indignity of being repeatedly ravaged by monsters who were too-often aided by the nobles and merchants he was responsible for escorting.
If Joran thought about it, allowed a quiet, traitorous thought to bloom, he would admit that he couldn't exactly blame them. Where monsters had once been vile creatures, they now had a strange allure, many almost human in appearance, some notable few more beautiful than any human he'd ever seen. That said, he was certain they were still dangerous. No magic could change the essence of a creature, and while reported deaths had gone to zero entire villages had vanished overnight to join the monsters in the wilds. Again, he could almost understand. Last night, as a monster rode him--the full image of a buxom woman of middle age, were it not for her curling rams' horns and leathery wings--he had, for just a moment, wondered what it would be like to give in. He hadn't. Obviously. Monsters were evil. But...the moment had still happened, and it had planted the thought he continued to pluck out rather than confront.
He shook himself and pulled the lever for his private tub to produce water. A luxury this far from the capital, and near-always cold, but it would do him some good. Scrubbing himself and shivering a little, his mood continued to sour.
Fighting as I am...I fear I will continue to be humiliated. I might even be stripped of my Knighthood and sent back to the farm in disgrace...
Joran finished scrubbing and pushed the lever back into place, stopping the flow of water. Ranged weapons wouldn't help if your own escorts brought the monsters into your camp. Melee weapons had so far proven fruitless, although whether it was a lack of skill on his part, or some fell trick of theirs he didn't know.
Magic certainly still worked, although properly trained mages were almost impossible to find outside of Imperial employ. He himself had no talent for it. He blew out both lamps in his room and laid down on his bed, which was uncomfortably firm on his bruised back.
I have two options to avoid disgrace, by my reckoning. I can either train further in bladework, until even these new monsters cannot overcome me...or I can ask the Witch for help.
Joran stifled a groan. He disliked the Witch, despite her shared loyalty to his Lord. She reminded him more of these new monsters than a respectable woman of the countryside, frankly.
Bladework it is,
he decided.
