The Distinguished Mr. Rose Chapter 76: Chapter 75: Night of the Living Dead

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Chapter 75: Night of the Living Dead ——— Nameless Paladin The time is currently twenty-three hundred hours, fifth day of Arboursmonth, 783 A.D of the Imperial Calendar. We have made great progress into the lands untamed. Sir Renaud the Peer of Stratagem has ordered us to make encampment here for the night, right on the border of Sleeping Hollow. I and the others of my regiment obey, but I must admit there is an unease that chills my spine, growing colder the longer we stay. This land is both somber, and haunting. To witness personally the graveyard of my fellows gives me no joy; and yet there is a certain beauty I cannot fully explain. The endless field of shattered blade and armor, the gentle stillness where once battle raged to deafening heights, and the two suns casting all in a sanctified violet hue… I am not a poetic man, but how can a paladin of Francia abstain from feeling such emotion rise within them when met with proof of our seniors’ honorable sacrifice? I was not yet of maturity when his late Holiness, Pepin the Depraved Sunderer of Heaven and Earth, left for the Woods of Alberon to seek aid from the Beast Lord. Man and Creature have warred against each other since time unknowable; however, when faced against the rising demonic tide, even our bestial neighbors found themselves waning in territory. The emperor was strong, but he felt his limits then. His solution to ending our plight was to form an alliance with the ageless predator. I remember how our people hesitated at his proposal, for how could we be certain that such an ancient thing would turn friend, rather than foe? I doubt there exists a soul in our nation who hasn’t heard the old fairy tales. ‘Beware that which lurks unseen, the scourge, the bringer of night’, the nannies would sing to us. ‘The ancient one is always watching. It snatches those who misbehave, and devours naughty little children with a snicker-snack of its teeth. Good kids listen to their parents. Otherwise, you just might find yourself spirited away to the Beast Lord’s domain.’ Even as a full-grown man well into his twenties, I still shudder at those stories. The Beast Lord is a being unfathomable to us of the Lord’s children. Yet, his late Holiness was undeterred. He commanded that my seniors accompany him and spoke confidently of his inevitable success. I was but a young trainee. I didn’t dare to question nor pry deeper into the motivations of those above me, but I couldn’t help but feel something was amiss. It was as if someone had lulled him into undertaking this dubious quest. How curious, then, that I would now retrace the steps of my departed fellows. I was not forced into joining Expedition Argo. Quite the contrary, I volunteered despite the uncertainty of our mission. Why? I am not sure myself. Whether the Beast Lord even exists at all cannot be known for certain. I do not care to encounter it, nor am I naive enough to believe that a solution to slaying the demons for good will somehow be found in the elder woods. The other paladins among my troupe share the same sentiment. And yet we march nonetheless. We come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some belong to Sir Ganelon’s faction and were ordered to assist his nephew, while others are like me: led on by a momentary lapse in judgement. Or perhaps it is curiosity? To see the wider world, to explore that which lies beyond our borders. Regardless, we are here now, and so all that is left to do is survive and see that which the morrow brings. My duties for today are simple. I am to set up the campfire, and so I jump onto the supply carriage and bring out the logs already stripped of ridges. Normally I would also need to assemble a pit, but those curious otherworlders summoned by our Lord have already constructed a number of our facilities. It is a strange thing to watch their magics. They do not need to chant or pray, nor do they rely on the crystals from which we draw power. Instead they merely conjure objects from thin air. It is very