The Dread Knight's Rage

Everett was abruptly woken up when his head smashed into the cold stone floor.

He grabbed his face, expecting an incoming nosebleed, only to hear the small clink of metal.

"Uuoohh..."

Everett slowly sat up, staring at his hands in wonder.

They were covered in a mysterious, snowy-white armor. Bright blue gems adorned various sites, including the backs of his hands, shoulders, knees, and chest.

He reached for his face and pulled away a sleek mask of white and gold. The eyes shone with the same azure glow as the rest of his new threads.

Everett swallowed, a horrible feeling of dread suddenly coming over him.

"Wait, wait, wait..."

Everett held out his hand and called his sword from within his soul.

When the weapon appeared, he released a huge sigh of relief as he held it close to his chest.

"Oh, thank shit... You’re still awesome."

After avoiding the worst-case scenario, Everett finally got up from the ground and looked around his empty room.

Even before he exited the room to look for others, he was surprised that he could already sense that there weren’t very many people in the spire.

When it came to using senses, Everett was probably the worst at it out of all of his siblings.

He usually had a hard time sensing things that were more than fifty yards away from him. Compared to Dakota and Solomon, who were practically bloodhounds that noticed everything big or small.

Now, it felt as if he was of the same ilk as them. If he concentrated, he could feel the individual fibers on his blanket, the coolness of the glass windows, and the warmth of the living room fireplace.

He could even feel... People? Strangers at that.

Everett’s armor gradually disappeared as he wandered down the hallway. The closer he got to the kitchen, the better he could hear what sounded like a conversation between a tired man and an energetic woman.

"What are you going to make? Is your body experiencing any particularly new cravings?"

"Just... Something to wake me up, I guess. Seeing as how I didn’t get any sleep..."

"Does being brought back from the dead make it difficult to sleep? Are you having things like night terrors or sleep paralysis? Do they bother you frequently?"

"...No. Scholar girls with chipmunk cheeks and wheelchairs do, apparently."

"Fascinating! ... Hey, wait a minute.."

Everett turned the corner into the living room with his brow already raised sky high.

The first thing he saw was some guy he didn’t know cracking eggs into a bowl with a plate of fruit nearby. Beside him, very close to him in fact, was a young woman whom he also didn’t know.

... But he really wanted to.

"Woah. Babe, aren’t you a hell of a way to start the day?"

Everett slid across the counter, only coming to a stop when he neared the edge.

He propped up his amazingly chiseled jaw in his hand as he gave the unknown girl a flirtatious wink.

"What’s your name, beautiful?"

The young woman looked both ways before slowly pointing at herself.

"Yes, you." Everett’s smile became wolfishly large.

"It’s... Liora. B-But my family just calls me Lia."

"Lia, huh? The names Everett. I gotta tell you I was real hungry when I woke up, but now it seems the sweetest thing around here has to be you."

Lia slowly backed away like a frightened doe. "A-Are you like... from a cannibal race?!?"

Everett’s jaw slowly fell open. "Am I... What?"

"I believe you should know that I do not taste good! I frequently forget to wash my hair!"

Everett hadn’t actually remembered to look in the mirror since he had woken up. He briefly considered the rather horrifying possibility that he had become ugly.

He snatched a spoon from nearby and brought it up to his face, sighing in relief when he realized that he was still beautiful.

"Nice of you to finally rejoin the land of the living."

Everett finally glanced at the strange man before him, uncertain whether or not he had just been hitting on someone else’s girl without knowing it.

The guy was attractive, he would admit that. Possibly the biggest threat he had ever encountered outside of his older brother.

But Everett was still confident that he was the one with the upper hand, because... Well, just look at him.

"Oh, sorry, man... Is this your-"

"Manwhore. It’s me- Raizel. Lady Yari resurrected me."

For a brief moment, Everett forgot all about the girl in the kitchen with them.

...That moment was very, very, brief.

"Oh... Lucky you, I guess." He turned back to Lia and grinned at her again. "So, gorgeous. What brings you to-"

"She’s Xu’s daughter." Raizel began to whisk without looking up.

"Don’t care- So, anyway, like I was saying, you don’t happen to have a boyfriend, do you? I mean even if you did... I can keep a secret, babe, don’t you worry."

Raizel was actually very grateful to Everett in that moment. This was the first time he’d heard Lia go quiet since she left him to go to the bathroom at nearly two in the morning.

"O-Oh, me..? W-Well, no, I don’t really have... I-I mean I work so much at the Magic Tower that I.. k-kinda don’t leave my lab a whole lot."

Everett tipped Lia’s chin up so that he could stare directly into her eyes.

"A lab, huh..? You’re gonna have to give me a private tour sometime. Though I doubt there’s anything in there more fascinating than you."

If Lia turned any redder, she was going to be mistaken for a cherry tomato.

"I-I think I’m just going to go to sleep since I have enough notes and I’m kind of nocturnal anyway..! It was super nice to meet you, so bye!!"

When motivated by fear or discovery, Lia could move very fast in her chair.

So fast in fact that the only sight Everett could still catch of her was the fleeting trail of blue left in her wake.

"...She totally wants me."

Raizel snorted. "Yeah, well, you can keep her. Just make sure you have something to plug your ears with nearby."

Everett lunged off the counter and stretched properly for the first time.

"Hell, how long was I out for..? I feel all stiff."

"Sleeping for more than three days at once tends to do that to a person."

Everett seemed shocked that it had actually taken him that long to reach Clarity.

It had certainly felt that long... but there was no way to tell if he was just going crazy from the stress of it all.

"That’s a bit embarrassing..." Everett rubbed the back of his head. "It must have taken the others a bit too, huh..?"

"...Yeah."

"I can’t even imagine what it was like for little Kota’. Growing up the way she did and stuff... I bet that was a lot to unpack."

"...Yep."

"I’m proud of her for solving her own issues quicker than I did. The kid’s got real guts. Acknowledging every part of who you are without judgment is a lot tougher than you think."

"Is there any part of you that feels like you’re going to get your butt away from my eggs?"

Everett rolled his eyes as he slid off the counter, his next move intending to be goading Raizel into making him some eggs and fruit.

But that was when he noticed the sheathed sword on Raizel’s hip. A simple katana with a smooth black leather finish on the handle and sheath. A simple black and orange tassel hung from the butt end of the weapon.

"...Cool sword."

Raizel glanced at his hip once before he went back to cooking. "A gift from Lady Xu."

Everett nodded nonchalantly, already experiencing the generosity of the knight commander firsthand.

"...Mine’s better though."

Raizel put down the whisked eggs before he could even heat them to be cooked.

Once again, the kitchen became deadly silent...