Eric Smilderbürg's Story

"Hurry, get the Royal family. We need to save them," Eric bellowed, as the Royal Guard scrambled to get their uniforms and equipment on. It had been a complete nightmare, the realm had prospered from twenty years of peace, and now, on a day of celebration, all hell had suddenly broken loose, yet the worst of it all was that the soldiers had been caught off-guard and now a large portion of them were dead, and worse.
The Royal Guard ran from room to room, practically knocking the doors down as they fetched every nobleman in the castle, their excuse was typically, 'we're under attack', which motivated most nobles to get moving; assembling nobles was a slow progress, especially with the younger who could suddenly run off in the complete opposite direction.

"Captain," Johan called, "we can't find Princess Kethyrian or Prince Leric."
"Have you looked in the garden?" Eric asked.
"Ergh... No, captain."
"Quickly, I'll find Kethyrian," Eric ordered and then sped through the hallways and out across the yard towards the soldiers' barracks, his sword hitting against his hip while he could feel the leather straps from his armor digging down hard into his shoulders. Kethyrian had been (at least while Eric had been around) far from being an heir to the throne, so she enjoyed a certain degree of liberty compared to her siblings, plus Eric had never personally had to look after her during his service.

Eric barged through the door, "Princess Kethyrian!" he roared, jogging through the rows of beds. "Your highness!" he called again. Hadn't it been for the occasional tales of Kethyrian spending her time amongst soldiers in the barracks, Eric wouldn't have had any idea for where to look for her.
As he opened the door to the training grounds he found the princess, "Milady, please... We need to get you out of the capital. We're under attack," Eric urged, waving for the princess to come.

The day of Erdenth’s coronation dawned clear and crisp, with the smell of autumn on the air. Kethyrian, who rose with the sun, had always been especially fond of the season of falling leaves and slowly-slumbering things, the richness of color an unintended giveaway to the most prosperous time of year for everyone, from the poorest farmer through the wealthiest nobleman (a designation which, incidentally, was about to belong to her oldest sibling).

None of this meant she was at all interested in attending the fete itself; indeed, she had told Erdenth and her father in no uncertain terms that she would not be present. Both knew her well enough to understand that this was no disrespect to them- she simply had no desire to be swathed in silk and paraded about at the pleasure of other people, like some particularly fine or entrancing trinket. She did not exist for people to gawk at, and she would prefer that everyone was aware of this fact. Her oldest sister Lillia had tutted disapprovingly, but Erdenth had simply extracted the promise of a nice practice match for some time later in the week, a boon she was only too happy to grant.

Presently, the Princess was seated in the equipment room of the barracks, alone for the moment, running a whetstone along the length of one of the regulation blades, the steady rasping sound a strange counterpoint to the irregular exclamations and music strains that carried from the celebration. Her own weapons were sheathed, crossed at her lower back, currently in need of no maintenance.

As she straightened slightly from where she’d been bent over her work, raising the polished steel to sight down its edge with one jade-colored eye, she registered the light clack of one of her beaded strands of hair hitting the leather of her shoulder-guard. Pale pink lips slanted upwards in a smile, and she flowed gracefully to her feet, taking up the naked sword’s scabbard and sliding the blade home with an easy surety. The whole assemblage went back on the wall with the others of its kind, and she brushed off her breeches and leather boots absently, freeing them of spare dust.

It was about then that she faltered in her motion, halting mid-sweep, a wave of nausea passing over her without discernible provocation. Her stomach, mercifully empty, heaved, and she wrapped both her arms around her abdomen, struggling to regain control of her gag reflex. For a long moment, she was painfully incapable of drawing breath, and when they did return to her, their form was scarcely greater than shallow pants, as though she’d exerted herself precipitously by the simple act of standing.

The feeling passed as quickly as it had come, and she stood, perplexed, dropping her arms to hang loosely at her sides. She hadn’t yet eaten today, but this was not so unusual, and certainly gave no cause for that series of sensations. Kethy considered that it might have been a reaction to some kind of magic being worked, but though she was normally perceptive of occasions like those, they had never caused her pain before. Usually, nearby magic was simply a small niggle at the back of her mind, and nothing to be bothered about. Perhaps she was falling ill, a thought which brought a furrow to her brows and a frown to her mouth. She resolved to put it from her mind for now.

Rolling her shoulders, she glanced out the nearest window, gauging the time to be just past midday, which meant that the actual crowning was well over with and the alcohol would soon be flowing in time with the bardsong, likely telling grand tales of her brother’s character. There hadn’t been a proper war in Nallan in quite some time, so most of the stories would probably revolve around the (rather romantic, though she personally didn’t like to admit to such things), courtship between Erdenth and his wife Amaranta. She imagined that both would blush a bit over the indiscretions of their youth, which would have been enjoyable to laugh at, but not worth the trouble of going.

Kethyrian herself was something of an enigmatic figure in court, a shadow-princess that at times seemed to exist only in rumor and by the words of her father and siblings. Her mother had been a different woman than she that birthed the first six of seven royal children, and though Keth’s matriarch had been no less a Queen by the time the girl was born, it was well-established that her family was not nobility to begin with. The scandal, irrelevant as she tended to think it was, still occasionally caused a stir whenever she bothered to put in a public appearance.

Hence the infrequency.

Having decided that she’d go visit the (undoubtedly busy) kitchens to scrounge some spare food from the cooks, Kethyrian was just headed out via the training grounds for the door to the barracks proper when the first of the joyous shouts turned into a frantic scream. The voice, high and feminine, ripped through the air with the force of a tangible arrow, and seemed to strike the Princess in her very soul, rendering her temporarily motionless, paused in the act of casually raising her arms to lace her fingers together behind her head. Lillia.

When her adrenaline caught up to her realizations and she regained the presence of mind to move, Kethy immediately drew both her sword and her dagger and padded noiselessly but quickly for the side-entrance to the palace. The door was ajar, and the sounds from beyond it were those unmistakably of battle, pitched and sudden. There was yelling, though she was too far away to make out the words, and a great deal of wailing, mostly on the part of court ladies, who were by dent of their upbringings almost entirely useless in situations like this.

The Princess strafed to the portcullis proper, reaching out cautiously to push it open, only to be greeted by a rasping, gurgling sound the like of which she had nothing to compare. The door arced outwards, revealing the culprit to be… well, she wasn’t sure exactly what, but the sharp intake of her gasp funneled to her olfactory receptors the scent of rot and death. Its visage reflected this, she supposed, facial features twisted in a terrifying caricature of ferocity, helped by the fact that its greying skin seemed to hang loose from its face, in places revealing putrid muscle or even starkly-colored bone.

It swung an empty hand for her, and she didn’t waste time thinking about it further, hurriedly ducking out of the way and to the side, thrusting forward with her blade. Her shock botched her aim, and she struck only a superficial wound to the side, but it did occur to her that it would be smarter to move the fight onto the grounds rather than out into the hall, since the clamor indicated multiple enemies. Backpedaling, she gained several feet of distance on the… creature, and sank back into a defensive stance, watching to see what it would to.

As the universe would have it, the thing took her rather obvious bait and sort of… shambled in after her, its feet shuffling at what amounted to a moderate walking pace. Could it not move faster than that? She wasn’t sure.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t very intelligent, and attacked in the same pattern a second time. In this instance, she was much more prepared, and caught the offending limb by the wrist on her poniard, lofting it high and out of the way, which opened the negligible guard it had entirely. Her longblade found the mark this time, sliding into the sagging flesh of the throat with a wet squelching sound that had bile rising in the back of her own. To be on the safe side, she removed the blade sideways, tearing through the flesh with less resistance than she would have expected there to be.

The creature collapsed at her feet, but Kethyrian, normally of sharp mind and able strategy, couldn’t really bring herself to shut the door or check to make sure it was actually dead or anything remotely intelligent, because she was consumed by the idea that she had just killed someone. Perhaps something, but she presently wasn’t convinced it made much of a difference. Though her grip remained firm enough, her hands were shaking, a small tremor that eventually ricocheted its way through the rest of her frame.

She might have stood like that for innumerable seconds, were she not roused once more to greater wakefulness by a shout. The man approaching her, she recognized as Eric Smilderbürg, captain of the guard and a figure much too in-demand to normally have anything to do with her. It was this and his words themselves combined that drove her once more to move, and she nodded succinctly, her head nearly swimming with inquiries about her family, the situation, that thing she’d just killed… but now was not the time to ask them, if the urgency in his immediate demeanor was anything to go by.

She followed the Captain to the stables, fortunately not located terribly far from the barracks, but it seemed that they may be too late. It looked as though someone- another guard, perhaps- had made it far enough to start preparing an escape, hitching two horses to a cart, but the corpses on the ground and the other shambling creatures moving about gave evidence to the fact that he had not succeeded. Kethyrian assessed the situation: six enemies, one half-hitched carriage, one horse saddled and bridled, several more still in their stalls and clearly panicking.

“Grab that horse and get on!” she said, pitching her voice with all the urgency of a proper order. From a nearby hook, she snatched a bridle and threw open the first stall she could reach, knowing she needed to be fast about this. It so happened to belong to Erdenth’s favorite stallion, a deeply-ebony animal with a stark-white slash of hair on his face.

“Forgive me, brother,” she muttered to herself, offering the horse the bit and sliding the bridle over its ears with trembling fingers. She could hear the creatures getting closer, and there was no time for a saddle, so she simply leaped astride the equine and urged it forward, past Eric and calling back at him to follow. She wasn’t about to leave him behind, but they needed to get going.

She could only hope that some others would make it as well, but her logical mentality already knew that chances were slim.

What the hell is going on?

"We don't have the time!" called Eric as he got onto the horse, "I'll see to it that she's safe, and we'll meet everyone else at the nearest city." Eric called as the princess kicked the horse into gallop. Every Royal Guard had the escape plan drilled into their minds, and though the Crypts provided cover from the castle and through the streets, it would not help anyone travel any faster as long as they depended on their feet (plus, nobles weren't known for their ability to march).

"Left... Straight... Through there!" Eric ordered as the horse raced through the streets, easily outrunning the cadavers that populated the streets, occasionally they stood in the horse's way and would get kocked out of the way but they still came back on their feet nevertheless. "We're past the market... Head for the Eastern gates, then follow the roads," Eric instructed, he could see the horse's skin was getting slowly cut by the abominations' fingernails, though it didn't affect the noble animal's speed, Eric feared that there would be consequences from the marks.

Eric's hold on the princess tightened as they came nearer to the eastern gates. The body of dead people had become much worse, Eric found himself kicking the heads of monsters that came to close, while the horse whines and knocked away those who came too close. Eventually, he drew out his dagger and stabbed in a desperate craze, Eric certainly didn't want to die by the hands of these monsters, and at the moment, his mind told him to use iron against flesh to break free.

Then... Whether through sheer will or destiny, the horse whined loudly as it ran for freedom, through the gates and along the road. The force of the sudden acceleration almost made Eric fall off the horse, he grabbed Kethyrian in a foolish attempt to regain his balance but it was a last minute response from his legs that made him regain his balance. He gasped for breath as they rode down the road, avoiding getting too close to the few lone monsters that also walked the path.

"Hell's bells... I hope we won't have to do that again."