THE ELDER KNIGHT
THE ELDER KNIGHT
THE ELDER KNIGHT
In the Kingdom of Turtledove, Sir Eric spent a lifetime serving his friend, King Watley. From their youthful adventures to the quiet days of old age, their bond was unbreakable. Eric stood by Watley as he ascended the throne, became a father, though at the expense of his wife, Queen Anne, who died in the delivery. Soon after, he married a duplicitous woman named Deborah, and then mourned the loss of his firstborn son, Domeric, who perished in a tragic hunting accident. Watley’s second son, Asher, was born soon after, while the kingdom enjoyed an era of peace. But when Watley died in his sleep on his sixtieth birthday, the kingdom changed forever.
Watley’s funeral was a somber affair, attended by loyal subjects and old friends. Sir Eric delivered the eulogy, his voice trembling with grief. But the new king, Asher, was absent, as was his mother, Queen Deborah, and the enigmatic Archbishop Pierre. Eric returned to the castle, now occupied by Asher, who sat on the throne with Deborah and Pierre at his side. The old knight pledged his loyalty, but Asher dismissed him from any further service, declaring him too old and outdated to serve. Heartbroken, Eric wandered to a tavern, where he overheard drunken whispers of a royal conspiracy: Deborah was rumored to be a spy from the rival Kingdom of Valentine, and Watley’s death might not have come by natural causes. The chatter grew darker, with talk of an invasion into the small, but prosperous Kingdom of Cavalon, and the dismissal of Watley’s personal chef, Benino, just days before the king’s death.
Seeking answers, Eric sought out Benino, only to reach his house minutes after royal officers had arrived. They were arresting the old chef on charges of sedition and heresy against the crown. Daring, the old knight drew his sword to defend the chef. He fought valiantly against the younger royal officers, but Benino was fatally wounded in the melee. With his dying breath, Benino whispered a cryptic clue: “The field of lilies and roses.” Eric was arrested and taken to the cathedral on Sanctum Mountain, where Archbishop Pierre tried to recruit him to support the new regime. When Eric refused, Pierre revealed his mastery of black magic, summoning skeletal warriors to attack the old knight. Eric fought his way free, but as he fled on his horse, a monstrous hawk-monster descended, hurling him to the ground.
Eric battled the hawk monster through the Jamberry Forest, and their duel attracted a monstrous bear. Together, Eric and the hawk defeated the bear, but the hawk turned on him again, plucked him from the ground, and carried him high into the dark and stormy clouds. As lightning flashed around them, Eric plunged his sword into the creature. The metal summoned a bolt, which pierced the hawk monster’s heart. The electric surge sent both of them plummeting into Dull Lake. Eric swam to safety, narrowly escaping a sea beast that rose from the depths to devour the hawk. Exhausted and battered, the elder knight made camp and dreamed of his past.
In his dream, Eric relived a campaign with Watley as the young King led forces against Valentine’s invaders. He remembered Beckah, a woman unlike any he’d ever known. She was no courtly maiden waiting for a knight’s rescue, but a warrior in her own right, having fled her father’s home to fight against the invaders from Valentine. Their bond was forged in battle, first when she saved him from an ambush, and later when they ventured together into the heart of enemy territory (an ominous stronghold known as the Eastern Tower). Local villagers warned them of the black magic that clung to its stones like a curse, and even the wise old man Bakshi urged them to turn back. But Beckah was fearless, and Eric, bound by love and duty, would not let her go alone. Inside, they fought their way through horrors conjured by dark sorcery. They came upon a frightened young boy—a mage’s apprentice—and spared his life, telling him that this was no place for a child.
At the summit of the Tower, they confronted the sorcerer who led the invasion, a man desperate and sweating over an incantation he could not yet complete. The moment he saw them, his eyes lit with something akin to relief, as if they had come not to stop him but to save him from his own failure. With a single word of power, he cast a spell upon Beckah, and before Eric could stop him, she collapsed, lifeless and cold. Enraged, the knight cut his way back to Watley, bringing only grief and sorrow. The next morning, word came that the enemy was retreating, and the Eastern Tower had been reduced to a blackened ruin overnight, its very foundations swallowed by its own dark power. "Black magic does not serve its master," Bakshi previously warned them. "It devours." Years later, as Eric dreamed his dream of those younger days, he saw once again the visage of the sorcerer. It was twisted and blurred, but shifted in the light until it became the familiar, smiling mask of Archbishop Pierre.
Arising amidst sweat and pants, Eric extinguished his campfire and rose with the dawn to examine his surroundings. He was near a village; he knew that much because he happened upon a small child carrying a basket of lilies. Following her, he came upon the town of Harryhausen, also known, years ago, as the coronation site for King Watley. Trouble was brewing there, as there was talk of strange folk coming and going, including “that sorcerer woman.” There was also “that sorcerer man,” says one villager, but he stopped coming around a few years ago…right around the time the Kingdom’s new Archbishop, Pierre, was installed in the capital. The townsfolk tell Sir Eric their tale: They suffered a terrible draught and a sorcerer came to help them, bringing back the rains that had left their lands. All he asked in return was for the village’s young men to be brought to him, to see if any might be trained as a mage. One by one they brought their young, but each was rejected. Eventually, the sorcerer became more specific about the boy he wanted, and the people realized he was looking for someone in particular. Around that time a Blue Traveler came by, a white mage who walked across the lands, giving advice and rendering aid. He warned the village not to receive the sorcerer anymore, nor to turn their sons or daughters over to him. “He is indeed after one, a boy he trained who got away. I pray he never finds him."
The old knight’s time in Harryhausen was brief, but while there he learned the field of lilies and roses was close by. It was there where Watley took his blood oath as the new King of Turtledove. Sir Eric traveled the field and made a blood oath of his own, vowing to restore peace to the kingdom. As his blood touched the soil, a great tree sprouted, revealing a cave hidden in the trunk. Inside, Eric faced spectral challenges and emerged victorious, encountering the spirit of King Watley. The ghost revealed that Domeric was alive and charged Eric with finding him. Watley gifted Eric a sapphire ring that would guide the elder knight to his godson.
Heading south, the elder knight made his way to the edge of Turtledove’s borders, to the place where the land itself seemed to crumble into the sea. Here, the kingdom of Turtledove unraveled into a scattered web of islands, where the residents moved from place to place by wooden ferries, each one carved with intricate wooden fairies at their bows—an old joke that had long since lost its humor among the weary islanders. Life in the Broken Lands was harder than anywhere else in the Kingdom. Eric arrived to little fanfare and even less welcome, finding the locals wary of strangers, particularly knights of the Crown as he still claimed to be. The people of these islands learned to fend for themselves, abandoned by the Kingdom they were told to serve, left to battle the pirates of Dul Modahn alone.
Dul Modahn’s marauders were no simple bandits; they were ruthless raiders, arriving under the tattered Burnt Orange banners that had come to symbolize terror itself. “You have never seen it rippling in the wind as they approach,” a grizzled fisherman told Eric at the tavern. “You have never watched it rise over your home like the morning sun, knowing that by nightfall, all you have will be theirs.” The words sent a chill through the bones of those listening, but Eric did not stir. He’d spent a lifetime fighting wars, and would not be rattled by tales of foreign invaders. The Broken Lands had been won for Turtledove a century ago, but the people there never embraced their new government, or their King. Though tax collectors came like clockwork, no soldiers ever arrived when the bandits did. No help from the Crown was given when they needed it most, so, in return, no loyalty to the crown was given by the people. They had even abandoned the Sapphire Sigil of Turtledove, designing their own crest instead. Eric’s outrage at this betrayal sparked a heated argument, one that quickly turned into an all-out tavern brawl. He landed the first punch, and he took the last one: By the time the local authorities arrived to break up the fight, he was too dazed to resist arrest.
Thrown into a damp, reeking cell beneath the magistrate’s hall, Eric found himself in the company of thieves and debtors, men who had committed crimes not out of greed but desperation. One prisoner, a wiry man named Medrico, had been arrested for plucking a few ears of corn from a neighbor’s field after the latest pirate raid had left his own lands barren. “Used to be a man could take when in need, if he gave back when he could,” Medrico muttered. “That was the law.” “That was the old law,” Eric corrected him. “Perhaps it ought to be the law again,” Medrico mused, but before the conversation could continue, the doors to the prison burst open. The guards came rushing in—not to discipline, but to release them. Bells were tolling beyond the walls, loud and relentless. The pirates had come again. The Broken Lands had their own way of dealing with invaders. Every man who could fight was needed, even those who had spent the night in chains. Weapons were thrust into calloused hands. Armor was buckled on over rags. “You will fight,” the warden growled, “or you will serve double your sentence.” Medrico took no weapon, but he did not flee. The gates swung open, and the prisoners joined the defense of their home, marching out beneath the dull morning sun as the Burnt Orange banners of Dul Modahn rippled in the wind. Eric fought valiantly, but Medrico fled, catching the old knight’s eye. He followed, only for the both of them to be captured by Dul Modahn raiders and taken across the sea to their labor camp.
The camp was a grim place, a frozen island in the middle of nothing. Prisoners from Turtledove, Cavalon, and Valentine toiled under cruel taskmasters. Eric bonded with Medrico, a Valentine woman named Amoore, and a Cavalon man named Clement. They endured backbreaking labor and the threat of ice magic that turned men into mindless slaves. Eric and Medrico plotted an escape, rallying the prisoners to their cause. The breakout was chaotic but successful, and Eric returned to the Broken Lands with freed captives, earning gratitude of the people. Medrico, however, vanished. An old man among them remembered Medrico as a teller of fanciful tales. What sort of tales? One night, drunk on wine and crying about his lot in life, he spoke of being an exile from valentine, trained to do black magic, without mother or father. Another villager said he nearly brawled with Medrico after he drunkenly demanded to be called “Prince.” He wasn't boasting, but sobbing as he said it. “Called himself the Forgotten Prince… The Abandoned Prince.” Now more interested in him than ever, Eric was directed toward a wood northeast of the mainland, called The Misty Forest, though the villagers warn him that those who go in rarely come out the. “And those that do are too shaken by what they saw to go back in again…”
Eric marched bravely to the Misty Forest, and entered without hesitation. His knightly valor was tested inside, however, as the wood’s magic made it a place full of haunting illusions. Battling demons of the mind, including sights and sounds of his long-gone Beckah, he finally came upon a clearing, in the middle of which was a cozy cabin, and a man—Medrico—chopping wood, entirely content to be left alone. Medrico revealed Eric’s suspicions to be true. He was Domeric, the lost prince. Domeric had lived in isolation, broken by years of abuse and manipulation. He had no desire to reclaim the throne, content to live as a humble craftsman. Eric tried to persuade him, but Domeric’s spirit was too scarred. Yet, a glimmer of hope remained when Domeric saved Eric from royal conscriptors, drafting young men into King Asher’s new war. Eric sensed that maybe, just maybe, his exiled godson might be persuaded to reclaim the Kingdom from those who would destroy it with violence and hate.
Domeric and Eric rallied the villagers, urging them to resist the call to war. Domeric’s impassioned speech inspired many, but others remained loyal to King Asher. The duo was driven out, but their supporters followed, forming the nucleus of a rebellion. As they traveled, their ranks swelled, and they clashed with Asher’s forces. Domeric, initially reluctant, began to embrace his role as a leader. Yet, Eric’s dreams of Beckah drew him away, leaving Domeric to continue the fight.
Domeric devised a plan to breach the castle: a Trojan Horse disguised as a Valentine war machine. The ruse worked, and the rebels stormed the castle. Inside, Asher’s cruelty was on full display, culminating in the execution of a jester and a strategist. Domeric confronted Asher, who admitted that he held no loyalty to Turtledove and hated his father. He belonged to Valentine, as did his mother. Domeric, hardly a fighter, nonetheless stepped forward to defy him, only for the King’s bodyguard, Sir Damar to meet his challenge with a sword. Fortunately, before he could be cut down, the king’s other guard, Sir Owen, turned on him and killed Sir Damar, before demanding the King abdicate. When he refused, Queen Deborah emerged from the shadows, plunging a dagger in the guard’s back. Domeric retrieved Owen’s sword and killed both his half-brother and step mother, Asher and Deborah, ending the cruel King’s short-lived reign of terror.
In the Cathedral within Mt. Sanctum, Eric faced Pierre, who revealed his plan to unleash a cataclysmic spell on the world. Pierre summoned the zombified remains of King Watley, but Eric defeated him. That was merely a distraction, however. Pierre’s true card to play involved his partner in crime, known only as “The Sorceress,” whom he would offer on his vile altar to usher in his final magic spell. The sorceress, Eric came to learn, was in fact his beloved Beckah, not killed in the Eastern Tower so long ago, but instead transformed and warped by black magic, turned into a figure nearly unrecognizable. As the spell neared completion, Eric fought Beckah, pleading for her true self to emerge, warning her that the black magic they were using, at so great a level, would not let them conquer the world, but could potentially destroy it.
Pierre’s spell was supposed to triangulate the sources of magic on the three peaks of Valentine, Cavalon, and Turtledove. Valentine’s peak had already been drained of all its magical energy (at the Eastern Tower years earlier). Turtledove’s peak was nearly done, all that was needed was the sacrifice of the sorceress. After that, Pierre would lead the invading army into Cavalon to finish the spell and unleash his magic over the world. His plan was ruined, however, when word reached them that King Asher was dead and Domeric was calling off any talk of war with the neighboring kingdoms. Frustrated, he took his rage out on the elder knight, crushing him under the weight of his black magic. As Eric writhed in pain, he called out again and again to the sorceress, begging for the remnants of Beckah to reemerge. At last, she did. Seizing the body and the power of the sorceress, Beckah brought down the walls of the Cathedral around them, killing the Archbishop and saving Eric’s life. She collapsed, weakened and dying. The black magic she’d used was consuming her. Eric managed only a brief goodbye before losing her again, this time for good. With the mountain imploding around him, the old knight hurried away, barely escaping before a ruined, smoldering crater was all that remained of Mt. Sanctum.
Domeric’s first act as King was to order peace within and without the land. His second act was to abdicate the throne, believing himself insufficient to rule. In fact, his time in the south compelled him to believe that a single monarch, reigning from so far away, did not allow for the edges of the Kingdom to be helped in times of need. Instead, he ushered in a Republic, where elders from every village, city, and town could assemble to make laws and provide for the common good in the land.
As for Eric, despite his knightly title officially being restored, he too retired, and settled in the newly burgeoning forest within the crater of Mt. Sanctum’s remains. There, amidst the quiet and peace, he lived in a cabin and tended to a garden near Beckah’s grave. Peace was in the realm, and, at last, peace was in him, too.