[WP] A menial job in an unlikely location

...

Watch the outpost. Wait for our signal.

That was what Vorm had been told to do, and on his honor as a Holy Knight, Vorm would do just that. In fact, should his honor be at stake, he'd wait and watch all day and everyday with not so much as a single question asked aloud, but that was just the trouble of the matter.

How long can any man, truly stand and watch a place, before they start to feel the pull of curiosity?

The Seventeenth Outpost of the Southern Territory's Capital Highway: that was what the map clearly stated this location was, or had been. If not just the map alone for instruction, the several wooden signs in varying degrees of repair (or lack thereof) provided a fairly clear picture and history. Enough of one that Vorm certainly felt confident he was in the right place, as were the other two-dozen or so nights that had been ordered alongside him, but it almost seemed a bit... much. Truly, there was little better in the way of explanation or description he could find for the feeling this assignment seemed to associate with.

So far as he knew, scattered out and about the woods which bordered the Highway, positioned so that no watching eye might easily detect them from the roadside, they had the entire base of stone surrounded. At least two dozen of the most famous Peacekeepers in the Country, and for... well, just what, exactly? Heretics? Bandits? A stray beast of the Western lands?

Vorm wasn't entirely sure.

He'd been told to stand and watch: to wait for the signal and then engage in battle with the enemy. Further instructions, descriptions or explanations, were apparently not for his lowly ears. Especially not when the parchment and orders demanding this task were stamped with a High-Bishop's Wax and Seal. Rank of that nature was the type you followed without a word in edge-wise.

Still, if this wasn't a rather dull job to be holding, Vorm was back on his father's estate picking rhubarb. His sect of the Holy Guard had been pulled off a rather exciting looking Goblin hunt, and though the original order's sounded quite exciting under the premise of what appeared to be a rather secretive mission: This was anything but.

There was absolutely nothing happening. For hours and hours, early morning into late afternoon- that hadn't changed.

All around him, the cool shade of the forest seemed to embrace stillness. Distant birds might have their chirping melodies, small animals might run along the forest floor or scamper about the trees and branches, but nothing else moved. The wind was still, the air was still, the road was empty- and therefore still, and the outpost almost seemed to be abandoned.

He'd never say it aloud for fear of heresy, but Lords and light, for a secret mission, this was perhaps the dullest assignment Vorm had ever received. The only exciting portion of it had been meeting his Superiors and being briefed. Several of them had been of the Holy Knight's most esteemed ranks, shouldering the famous Longbows of Light. For men of such faith and fame, Vorm had thought they were a rather frosty bunch, but perhaps that only served to build up the mystique about them.

Rumors held and passed about, that to learn the way of those weapons, such men were forced to train everyday. That as children they were hand-selected and placed in rigorous competition and practices of no small consequence. That they were taught secret magic arts, held to only the most devote of the Church: given the ability to clear their mind and focus so intensely that the passage of time might slow. So much so, that each spin of the arrow might be visible to the naked eye.

Vorm wondered what that might be like.

Standing here in this still forest, he rationalized it must be something like what he now observed. If nothing seemed to be moving, perhaps that was what it was like to watch the seconds slow themselves to moments. Perhaps it even came with the prickling along his neck, beneath his armor.

As of that very moment, goosebumps were forming with a very uncomfortable sense of instinct that proclaimed "wrongness" about Vorm's current circumstances. The road was empty though, the Outpost of the Seventeenth was just as quiet as it had ever been. No one moved along the tower, nor the walls, nor the closed and barred gates. There was no sound, no movement...

No scampering of animals.

No call of birds.

The sound of a single branch cracking, not even so far as five paces from Vorm's back, was the only warning he had to draw his sword.