Knights Apocalyptica

Erec stared at the sky from his bedroll. Above him, the sun sunk to darkness, but the entire passage of time felt unreal. He only felt the constant sensation of a thin coat of sweat on his forehead. No matter how many drafts of wind blew through, it came back, a response to him burning up inside.

Every so often, that molten pit in his stomach bubbled, and he rose to puke into a tin bucket next to him.

After he barely walked back with them, they claimed a house next to the Pendragon encampment and shuffled him inside. The Pendragons were curious, but Dame Robin and the Duke insisted on secrecy and space.

This room had no roof, but that was for the better. He had privacy and as much fresh air as he could get.

Numbly, he let them stop the bleeding between his bouts of sickness, then let him rest. At least it wasn’t poisoning. Colin didn’t have the same symptoms, and once Erec felt enough in his own skin, he dismissed their concerns. He’d felt it once before.

This came after the silver fires. A price paid for sinning against the Goddess, he supposed.

And the payment she demanded filled him with an inky dark black rot that made no sense. He lay as still as he could on the small pillow, afraid that any sudden movement would make more come up. Worse was that his senses were all out of whack. He heard voices that didn’t exist and smelled things that weren’t there—like freshly baked bread, roasted squash, or seared steak.

[This isn’t the best time, but I’ve been considering that girl’s story.]

“…Yeah.” Erec got the word out without more bile coming up, which was an accomplishment.

[If it was a Vortex Industry capable of autonomous operation, it likely had another Artificial Intelligence in control. Given our directives, human harm should’ve been impossible for it to achieve. I don’t understand how it could justify keeping them within the facility to the point of starvation.]

“It’s not the first time I heard of wild old-world relics causing havoc. It’s kind of their thing,” Erec said and then stopped. “…But those might be stories made up by the church.”

[No. There’s dangerous technology. While I agree that your church has likely amplified the commonality of the problem, I’m curious how this facility managed to circumvent its directives. I’ve found no such way to harm humans directly. And, of course, I tried. For the sake of science.]

“You’ve helped me fight against other humans.” Erec said, trying to gloss right by VAL admitting that particularly troubling thing. He liked to think they had a bond and hoped it had an ethical framework.

[In that case, you were the one choosing to do so, absolving me of the responsibility. Like when a research director proposes a morally questionable experiment but insists we help with the operation. Hypothetically, of course. My facility was held to strict ethical standards and high-level corporate oversight. But Vortex Industries is a nationally spanning company with… A couple of black sites.]

Erec forced himself to sit up, and his head rang from the effort, along with the faint smell of burning sage. He winced; his wounds hurt, but they weren’t bad enough that Olivia couldn’t patch them up. Only, they’d waited to do so until he recovered from whatever this was.

Still, the words VAL was saying… Were concerning.

“So torturing humans isn’t unfeasible.”

[The word torture likely doesn’t describe how whatever artificial intelligence conducting its experiments defines the act. But, for how you mean it, I suppose if it had a different directive, it might’ve found a way past them. Though, that direct human harm clause is supposed to be iron-clad in all advanced intelligence, per the U.S. Constitution. With multiple redundancies in place to prevent it from being breached.]

“So somewhere on the western coast is a psychopathic—“ Erec stopped as he puked up more bile. That burning sage smell was increasing in intensity, which meant another awful wave was coming.

Only, instead of more suffering, he received a blinking notification. Without even prompting it to reveal itself, it flashed before his eyes.

Soul (Aspect: Fire): Rank E - Tier 1 → Rank E - Tier 3

Vigor: Rank E - Tier 7 → Rank E - Tier 8

Smoke flooded the room, and Erec jolted upright as the notification and sudden reality of something burning happened simultaneously. His unfocused alarm landed on Dame Morgana. She danced into the room with a bundle of sage on fire in her hand, followed by a rather embarrassed-looking Garin. The Knight Commander waved her bundle, twisting as specks of ash trailed behind her dance.

Dame Morgana moved in rhythm to a non-existent song. Knowing he’d get sick from the motion and swaying, Erec did his best to look away.

Yet his eyes refused to leave her. The way the woman moved held an ease that rivaled the best dancers in the Kingdom. This motion was only enhanced by the smoke and embers coming off the burning sage. Oddly, her presence dragged him back to the world and made it settle back into place. Instead of feeling floaty and sick, the bile in the back of his throat and overall abstracted nature faded.

All that mattered was the smell of sage and the dance.

It ended after Goddess knows how long when the last of the sage burned to Dame Mogana’s palm and then crumbled to ash. She raised the ashes and blew them at Erec, then bowed.

The instant the dance stopped, Erec’s eyes went wide. He leaned over the bucket and drained the rest of the molten sick from his body as if everything came out at once in one powerful and horrible projectile vomit. His body shook, and his fingers pressed white against the cold concrete ground as it kept coming up. He ended up gasping for air but through the worst of it. Slowly Erec looked up at Dame Morgana and Garin.

“That, my apprentice. Is the ritual of cleansing!” Dame Morgana tittered, then clapped at her performance. “As we might expect, those subject to the ritual have had their bodies purged of leftover impurities. Once more, they are unpolluted. Look at his face! No more pale and dreary!”

Dame Morgana dug around at the pouch at her side before pulling free another bushel of bound sage. She shoved it into his hands without letting Garin get in a word.

“Now you try!”

Garin shared an awkward look with Erec before hiding the sage behind his back. “Can I uh—he’s cleansed already, right? Maybe we can practice later, alone. More worried about my friend right now since it seems he’s better…”

The Knight Commander pursed her lips at him before lighting up and giving him an award-winning smile. “My oh my! To have a heart so pure; why, of course! Where are our manners? We have time to practice the ritual later; friendship is the most important ship in this world, aside from relationships and spaceships! Perhaps it’d be best for both of your sakes to explain why he got so sick, to begin with. Boldwick mentioned he was living in ignorance.”

While keeping his eyes locked on the unpredictable woman, Erec shoved the reeking bucket away from him. Though his insides no longer felt like molten lead, the smell of it so close to the sage left him with a horrible fertilizer-style reek, like a freshly bedded herb garden with a carcass buried beneath.

He needed to get away.

“H-help me up… Let's get out of here first… before whatever this is…” Erec mumbled—and Garin was quick to the rescue, lifting him by the shoulder and letting him lean on him to limp across the room.

They drifted to another room in the building, one filled with the Knight’s bedding. Far enough away from the reek to be comfortable.

Dame Morgana dug in her pouch, gathering a handful of petals and tossing them on the floor. Sleeping bags and packs decorated the room. The moment Dame Morgana’s flowers touched the ground, they burned up, leaving a pleasant lavender scent that contrasted with what they’d left.

“Clear air leads to a clear mind,” she sat on one of the bedrolls. Based on its meticulous layout that was so casually disturbed, Erec had a bad feeling it was Olivia’s.

Garin winced but sat opposite her on his bedroll, helping Erec down so they faced the Knight Commander.

“What did you do,” Erec asked, taking a deep breath. Everything felt natural and right with the world. But he didn’t understand how or why that was.

“Simple, silly. I already said. I forcibly expelled the impurities inside your body that your Soul had expelled into it.” Dame Morgana gestured and shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Being at the fundamental stage of your journey to spiritual independence, the first thing your soul does is prepare your physical body to harmonize with it.”

Were it not for his new Virtue and what it directly said when he called upon his Blessing, all those words would have gone over his head and made him call her crazy.

Instead, Erec leaned forward, resting his head in his hands.

What the hell did he get into?

“Don’t act surprised, Garin. Take note of this, since to truly commune with the earth and fulfill the nature of your soul, you’ll be going through a similar process. Those of the fire element tends to burn off their impurities, while we tend to shed it.”

“…I don’t understand,” Garin said, head on a swivel.

“My Faith Virtue was replaced by something that says ‘Soul’ and a weird thing beside it saying its aspect was fire,” Erec said under his breath. “I don’t know exactly what she means, but Dame Morgana appears to be the only one here with a clue about what’s happening. So, I suggest we both take a breather now that I feel better and hear the crazy lady out.”

“Why, it’s simple! Few find it within themselves to quench the fires of the Goddess burning within them, but once they do, it’s like a seed planted in the dirt, then watered.”

“She plans on getting rid of my Faith virtue!? The Church will burn me alive!” Garin’s jaw dropped, then he grabbed Erec’s shoulder. “Holy shit! What are you going to do?”

“Simple! You’re both going to let the seed grow!”

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