The Forlorn Hope

"I am she." Missol said, warily eyeing the stranger.

"Excuse me, could you say that again?I did not quite understand you." The stranger said, drawing closer. They dismounted and began to draw closer, her hands up as a gesture of good will.

"I am she. The Castellan Missol de Nevadre." Missol said, her wariness now tinged with annoyance

"I am sorry. I just want to make perfectly certain that I understood what you said. You said that you are Castellan Missol of Nevdre. As in the Missol, of the Forlorn Hope which killed the demon king?"

Forlorn Hope? Demon king?

"Yes, I am that Missol, now tell me what you want before I kill you for wasting my time!"

"The legendary Missol de Nevadre." Paladin Taresa said, actually star struck. She removed her poofy hat and bowed low. "Forgive my rudeness! I just did not expect to find the legend out here!"

"Yes, yes." Missol dismissed with a wave of her hand, "You said that you had something to discuss with me? Paladin…?”

"A thousand apologies, I am Paladin Taresa de Costanza." The mysterious woman said, "Princess Elvira bid me come see you to discuss important matters. Matters that I am afraid I cannot speak to you about without bishop Aldebardo with present."

"Am I to presume that these are matters regarding the realm?" Missol said, still wary, but now in a different fashion.

"Indeed! The fate of the world hangs in the balance."

Things escalated rather quickly in a scant few moments. A princess and a legend? Matters of the realm? All things beyond my station and concern. I did not even think Missol and Aldebardo were worthy of such considerations, being the leaders of some backwards backwater cult in the middle of nowhere. I did not expect them to be somebody, never mind a legend.

"And if you don"t mind me asking, who might the young lady be?" Paladin Taresa asked, gesturing to me as Missol picked me up and set me on Lydia.

"My squire, as of today." Missol said as she followed suit and got on the horse. "Loiel Krieger, meet Paladin-whatever-your-name-is."

"Your squire!" Taresa yelped "But in the 10 years since you slew the demon king, you have never taken on an apprentice! Why now, of all times? And why a… demihuman?"

"Because all the other pages presented to me were garbage." Missol said as she urged Lydia onwards. "It will be a long ride. Is there no way we can discuss the details of the matter on the way?"

"I'm afraid not. These concerns are of a sensitive nature and can only be spoken of behind closed doors." Paladin Taresa said, before realizing she was being left behind, and remounted her own steed to follow. " If I might ask, what did you find so appalling about the applicants that you chose no one? Even I, myself, a lady of no low standing submitted myself and was found wanting."

"I just hated you all." Missol said as we began to trot towards the exit. " Do not take it personally. I hate all people equally."

"I see, then I shall not." Taresa said, stunned by the comment "Then I imagine you do not hate the young lady?”

"No, I hate her too." Missol said.

"I also hate you." I said, unable to resist. "I hate you more."

"Ah, the bond between master and squire." The paladin said, taking it all as a joke. "If I may be so bold as to ask…"

"You have already been so bold as to ask me questions of a personal nature." Missol said. " Be quick with your question. If it is good enough, I may even come to begrudgingly respect you."

"I have, well, many of us have grown up with the stories of your valiant storming of the demon king's castle and slaying him in combat. Many of us wonder how much of that is true and how much of those stories are just embellishments."

"You killed the demon king?" I asked reflexively, because that was so out of the pale that I couldn’t help it.

She did mention earlier that there was a long war against the demons and that it did end with the death of the demon king. However, she left out the crucial detail that she had been the one to kill it! I desperately hoped that she was not a big deal.

"How could you not know of the Forlorn Hope that stormed the demon king's citadel and slew it! It is more than legendary, it is history. We would not be standing here today had Prince Alfonso and his Forlorn Hope, of which Castellan Missol was a member, not overcome great and terrible odds."

"What's a Forlorn Hope?"

"A Forlorn Hope is any party sent to accomplish a suicidal goal. It is so called because you have to throw away all hope of getting out alive in order to succeed." Castellan Missol said, tired in ways I could not imagine. "I suppose we could call your little party with Javier to slay the Wheezing Dragon a Forlorn Hope."

"The Wheezing Dragon? Am I to understand that your squire slew a dragon?" Paladin Taresa asked. "If that is your standard, to be capable of killing a dragon just after baptism and communion, I can see why you would think so lowly of us."

"As for your question, paladin…" Missol said, pausing to think for a moment before answering "Whatever you have heard is true. It's all true."

"Truly?"

" No, but after ten years, I'm tired of correcting the record. Whatever those idiot scribes wrote down in their stupid books is the truth, and I will not bother with the particulars."

"Ah… I… I see." Paladin Taresa said, visibly deflated.

By now the sun was on the verge of setting and was painting everything in a purple golden hue. Our path had taken us back down the mountain and we were passing through the ruined village.

"Castellan Missol, I did wish to ask what happened to this village." Paladin Taresa said, marveling at the damage wrought "This place looked like it housed hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, and now it's completely empty, ruined. The damage looks fresh as if it had just happened merely a few days or weeks ago."

" There has been an Atrocity stalking my valley, killing the people of my mountains. It did this." Missol said, and I felt a twinge of guilt, but also confusion. "The danger still looms, and we must be careful."

The cause was right here, in the saddle with you, so why was I being called an Atrocity? Why was she alluding to the cause as if it were something else?

"How many people have you lost?"

"20,000." Missol said, a staggering number that took even me off guard.

"20,000! That's basically all the refugees you took in this past year! And those graves, they were all new! Don't tell me… Did the Atrocity really kill all of your refugees?"

"It killed them very quickly, within the span of only a few nights. Because we could not safely house them all in the monastery, and because none of our villages had much room to spare, we decided to make entirely new villages for them all. Unfortunately, these villages were not fortified, at least not yet. We didn't see much of a point. The mountains have been safe for years. And so when it struck, they were defenseless."

"My God… Why have you not yet contacted us? We could've sent aid!"

"We did, and got no response. We later discovered it was killing our messengers as well. It's a miracle you got this far, alive."

"You mean, it's still roaming the lands?"

"Yes, that is why it's important to move quickly, before the sun sets." Missol began to say, only for a blur to leap out of the forest and tackle the paladin off her horse and to the ground.

She was dragged screaming into the woods.

"Feck, that was just supposed to be a convenient lie!" I heard Missol curse under her breath as she dismounted. "Stay here!"

Missol ventured into the forest following the paladin's screams. Sure, I could follow after her and help. I could also try to kill her while her guard was down. This could be a golden opportunity to escape and get free. Especially if this monster kills her. But if it could kill her, it was definitely capable of killing me. Maybe if I'm lucky she will be severely weakened by the fight, and then I could try killing her. Either way, it was too risky to intervene. The best play was to do nothing at all.

I took hold of Lydia's reins, as well as the reins of the paladin's white horse, and just sat there. I knew nothing of horses beyond betting on them. Riding one, getting them to go and to stop, all that was beyond my knowledge, so I could only sit there. Patiently. Listening to Taresa's desperate screams and Missol's frenzied cursing. This went on for a shockingly long time. Contrary to my expectations, the paladin was screaming for a very long time.

Besides the paladin's screams, I could also hear the sounds of something big thudding against the trees.The noise of the woods, creaking and bending and shivering in response to all the blunt force trauma that they were enduring. Curiously, I couldn't smell a third party. I could hear something that resembled growls, but it was strange, almost alien sounding. I could only assume that whatever was attacking them was big and somehow carried no scent. A monstrous apex predator that had somehow perfectly mastered stealth to the point of leaving no trail and no traces.

Ten minutes in and brief flashes of light accompanied by the sound of thunder joined the fight. Then came the sound of a thick wet crack, like the exoskeleton of a crab being wrenched apart, accompanied by a new, alien smell I'd never encountered before. A high pitched screech from some unimaginable creature pierced the air and echoed through the mountains.

Then the fighting stopped. From the dense brush of the forest emerged Castellan Missol and Paladin Taresa, covered in strange purple-blue ichor, but otherwise unharmed.

"What was that?" I asked as Missol clambered back onto Lydia, and Taresa collapsed on to her horse's saddle.

"That was a demon. It's invisible. Couldn't tell much else." Missol said, drawing a waterskin from her saddlebag and drinking deep. "We found our Atrocity, and the one killing things all over the hills."

"How does something so large move so quickly, and without a trace?" Paladin Taresa said as she found the strength to get back on her horse. "If you lost sight of it for even a moment, it would vanish, and then strike in your blind spot."

"Now we really need to move quickly." Missol said, stabbing her spurs into Lydia's sides.

"Hey, how much of that lie you told was me, and how much of it was that monster?" I asked Missol, just barely loud enough to be heard over the horse so that Taresa couldn't be heard.

"Aldebardo and I made up the Atrocity. You came along and just fit in well, but the demon was unexpected." Missol said as Lydia accelerated from a trot to a run.

"Great."