Kal’s gone…? That can’t be right… someone as uptight as him wouldn’t just up and disappear. Ah, yes! He always wakes up early and does training in the morning, he probably just got too into it and hasn’t come back yet.

“Are you sure he’s not just training Damien?”

That has to be it, there’s no other explanation. Kal pretty much every morning is awake before the both of us usually swinging his sword around all sweaty. I could never understand doing those same movements so many times over….and over again.

(Damien) “Of course I checked! Even a portion of the knights and the Dragoon are missing. I knew something else was in that forest! It was faint so I thought it was harmless.”

Something...else? It was strange that we only found villagers…I knew it, something was luring them there for some reason. Maybe it’s a man eating monster!? No… that doesn’t make sense… We found ALL of the missing villagers… none of them were missing. Why would you lure that amount of people into one spot… and do nothing with them? What am I missing… There has to be something important that I don’t know.

Regardless… we need to find out missing people and try to extract them from the forest, hopefully unharmed. With that thought I reach the camp and gather a small band of knights to go with me and Damien into the forest. If we brought too many of the knights it would be too obvious and harder to move around unnoticed.

The knights had all gathered in the same spot where we found the villagers? And they’re just… partying? This doesn’t make any sense!? Even Kal! He’s way too uptight of a person to start chugging alcohol from the barrel… and by barrel… he’s literally...holding up a keg and drinking it...

(Damien) “It’s faint… but I can feel magic being used nearby… I’ll need you to cover me while I find the source.”

Even Damien! He’s acting surprisingly reliable now… Well, we can just wait it out until he find… Uhh… nevermind...I guess we can’t wait.

Shortly after Damien started to concentrate to find the source of magic. The knights all stopped partying and came towards us. I guess him searching gave our position away. Either that or having a group of shiny knights during the day wasn’t the best idea to be inconspicuous.

“Hold them back as long as you can! I’ll take on Kal and the Dragoon, don’t let them near Damien!”

The knights and I all reveal ourselves from our… hiding place… and charge in. The first person I need to take care of is Kal, I’m most familiar with him and his fighting style. Grabbing my chain from my bag, I draw my short sword I close the distance between us. .

Kal raises his shield to meet me as I close in on him and he motions a shield bash. I jump onto his shield and throw my chain, wrapping it around his foot as I try to throw him off balance placing all my weight onto his shield. Damnit! How strong is this guy!? He didn’t even budge!

Despite putting all my weight into the kick to his shield, Kal still flings me into the air, as if I weighed nothing at all. As I fly away from Kal the chain eventually stops me and I pull on it to propel myself back at Kal, making him lose balance for a moment. Somehow… he was still able to swing his ridiculously large sword at me with one leg being pulled up by me.

Desperately swinging my sword to change my trajectory, I scrape by it’s side as I descend towards Kal. As I pass over head I let go of the chain and throw a bag of Somanilla Pollen knocking him out before tumbling a few feet away. With a loud thud Kalibur hits the ground unconscious, thankfully this stuff works like a charm still! One down… one to go!

I begin searching around for someone what would be called a “Dragoon” … damnit why didn’t I ask what he looked like! I finally spot someone spot a suspect. He was a fully armored man carrying a large battle axe, he was fending off several knight at a time and was doing well. What else stood out? The fact that his helmet… had dragon’s wings coming out from the side and his armor looked like scale mail… He’s probably the Dragoon, right?

As I run towards him, he notices me and swings his axe directly at me. Unable to change direction quickly enough I use both swords to block his axe, the force of his attack dragging my feet through the dirt…

Wait… that sound was…!? This is bad!

Finally I stop his attack I push his axe away and swing my short sword down at him but he steps back does a full 360 turn swinging his axe again!? Jumping into the air I receive his swing again knocking me away from him. Breaking my long sword with his attack.

I JUST bought that! As I get blown away I drop my now broken sword and fling a dagger at him before I hit the ground. I don’t have many weapons I can use from a distance right now and if I get close I can’t block his attacks or he’ll break all my swords! I should try that… if it works I should be able to get through this… if it doesn’t… no it will work… it HAS to work!

Picking myself up again I draw a fresh sword and ready myself, the rest of the fighting seemed to have stopped and knights are watching our fight. Running at the Dragoon once again I throw another dagger that gets knocked away and slash at him with my long sword again.

Raising his hand he meets my sword with his gauntlet and swings his axe at me so I jump into the air hitting it with my sword, vaulting above the attack. Once I roll above the swing I bend my knees and freeze the air below my feet, to give myself some impromptu ground to move midair. Not giving him enough time to react I spin my body around and kick his head knocking off his helmet.

The force of my kick causing him to turn his face away from me the dragoon somehow grabs onto my leg and flings me away like like a dust rag. Using the same technique I freeze the air under my hand and twist my body and and flip backwards catapulting myself back into the fray.

Unfortunately since it’s a technique I just started using, I’m unable to do much more than increase the pressure on the Dragoon and take control of the flow of the fight. This guy is ridiculously sturdy though! I lost count how many times I kicked his head before he finally falls unconscious.

Eventually I knock out the Dragoon and Damien comes back to help.

“You’re late Damien! … what… is that thing?”

Damien came back holding a small human by… it’s...wings!? Pixie? Faerie? Flying midget!? No it has to be a faerie.. Definitely a faerie.

(Damien) “This whole thing was this little bugger’s fault.”

As he talked Damien started to poke it’s stomach. What...is he doing…?

(Faerie?) “Hey! Stop that! And I’m not a THING or a BUG I’m a Faerie!”

Fair enough… hehe… Faer enough! Get it? My joke falls on deaf ears…

After capturing the Faerie we ask her circumstances. She was very lonely in the forest, and saw all the humans in the village. So she decided to be friends with them, but had no idea how… show she used a spell to bring villagers here to have fun and party. Quite the reason to do a mass abduction.

Damien assured us that she was telling the truth, and the villagers ACTUALLY welcomed her!? One of the trees in the village was taken over by her and they all … party at night… together… You know what? I’m done, even the grandpa’s and grandma’s are drinking and singing now. This is just too much.

Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with them for long, the next day we marched towards the first Fort where we were to drop off supplies. The knights seem to treat me differently now, they don’t have that cold stare. They even start conversation with me, the trip was fun.

We didn’t make it far enough and ended up camping out even though we could see the fort in the distance. It’s not good to march out in the darkness like that, all kinds of things can come out of the woodwork. Everyone set’s up some tents and we have dinner before retiring to our tents for the night.

Closing my eyes I drift off to sleep again… Only to remember another time… Memories of who I was… of my family that I left behind that day. Memories I tried to push into the back of my consciousness.

One day, Mia started acting strange. She was always happy, full of energy every day… She was like a light that broke through the darkest night. But lately, her smile has become faint, almost as if she was forcing herself to smile.

Is she being picked on at school? Maybe I’m forgetting something important? Whenever I asked her if something was wrong… she would just smile at me and tell me she was fine. What is she hiding from me? This thought plagued me for weeks before I did it… I’m not proud of what I did… but I did it…

I snuck into her room when she was at school… and read her diary. She… the entire time was suffering… without telling us. Everyday… her smile was a lie… a lie she told herself… a lie she told us. When no one was around she would cry…silently into her pillow. She missed our parents…my wife… how things used to be.

Although I thought I hid it well… she knew… knew how hurt me and Kenny were. So she did the only thing she could think of. Smile in front of us, be happy in front of us… in hopes that we would revert back to a happy family, before all the death.

Unable to hold back the tears that day… I cried… my poor sister, she had been suffering for so long… but put a brave front for us. She was deathly afraid that I would die too, yet she saw me off with a smile. Every, single day...she did her best… As I read the entries each day, the guilt slowly consumed me.

I’m a failure of a brother…Mia…Ken… they’re suffering each day, and I don’t know what to do for them. Silently, I close her diary and leave her room with a heavy heart. I have to work harder for them…they’re… all I have left.

(Knight?) “NIGHT RAID!”

WHAT!? Jumping up I grab my sword and rush out my tent to see small green… midgets? Alright who brought the mini green with them. Or is the circus in town and they ran out of blue paint.

(Knight) “Goblins! TO ARMS!!”

OOOOooo… they’re...Goblins!? Drawing my sword I charge in at a nearby goblin and slice through it’s neck beheading it. Huh? As soon as I killed the first goblin… the rest ran away? We gave chase until we saw them run towards the fort…?

(Knight) “No need to clean them up, the fort guards will clean them up.”

...Will they? Those goblins, didn’t seem that dumb… They were at least smart enough to attack in the dead of night, and retreat as soon as things got dangerous. My gut is telling me something's wrong… REALLY wrong.