The Grand Catastrophe

…

Neia Baraja was awfully tired. For one thing, she was the only squire, or soldier rather, that had scouting skills at her level. For another, her parents were dead, that really sucked.

The capital had fallen, and the people mostly fled. She says mostly, because the vast majority of them had been killed in some way. The paladin captain had managed to escape a fight for her life, from what she had heard.

It was one thing to just end up losing your parents, it was another to basically lose the whole nation. The city had fallen, the armies lay dead, and their only hope lay in a nation of people that didn’t even believe in the same faith as them.

It was a bit eye opening for her, really. Life was harsh, the people around her had gotten even harsher. Her captain, Remedios Custodio, had gotten rather aggressive when it come to any confrontation as of late.

After all, that demoness that they didn’t even know the name of was still running around. She had beaten her. It stung a lot.

Neia shook her head from those thoughts. She looked around the area. It was cold and a damp day today, so she expected their to be more tracks in the dirt around and on the roads. Yet, it had been all cleaned rather well. She couldn’t see anything strange.

They had gotten through the border from Re-Estize to the newly minted Sorceress’s Kingdom of Nazarick. The roads beneath her feet were well made. The border didn’t seem to be patrolled by anything really. In her mind, that meant that the guards were probably in a little fort.

Neia sighed, she then got back up from her crouch, and made her way back to the caravan. As she walked back, only about ten minutes to do so, she thought back to the two other leaders of her nation. First there was Kelart, Remedios’s sister.

She was nice, in a sisterly sort of way. Neia blinked in her mind. That was a rather dumb pun. Kelart was smart enough to know strong divine magic, but not smart enough to trust that her sister didn’t know everything about combat. She kept on telling Neia to just put up with the paladin.

Yet, each and every single time she tried to talk to the woman, she was just screamed at for not being good enough, for being unsure. Sure she was unsure! They were in the middle of nowhere, chasing after a deity she hadn’t the faintest idea she would help them!

Then there was her Holy Queen. She was rather normal, all things considered. When she spoke with her, those very few times when she herself wasn’t busy with scouting or other such duties of a squire, she seemed rather out of her reach.

She sympathized with her abuse from Remedios, and tried to get her personality under control. It didn’t work, but she was trying. She seemed a bit far out of reach, other times. She often made references to different political scenes that no one was privy to, not because it was classified or other such things, but because she was just stuck in the thick of it.

The three of them were rather overwhelming. Neia sighed again, this time out loud and into the open air. When put like that, she made it sound like she didn’t like them.

…

“What took you so long?!” Remedios questioned Neia.

Neia flinched at the raised voice, and the other woman leaned into her personal space. She had been trained to mentally resist this kind of thing, but it was different when it was this woman. The Paladin Captain was a legendary figure. Her very presence normally was rather potent.

When she was angry, it was even worse. The way she stood up, and loomed over her put as much fear into her as her own mother had sometimes done. It was frightening in a way that was hard to pin down. She didn’t like it at all.

Calca spoke up then, her voice even, yet Neia could hear the exasperation in her tones. It was a rather strange thing for her to hear. After all, from what she knew Calca and the rest were all rather good friends.

“Remedios, stop harassing the squires. The way is clear, we can move on,” she said, and Neia got back on her horse as they started trotting into the nation proper.

Their procession was a large thing. With the queen being here, many paladins were needed to defend her. Not that Neia really thought that it was useful. They needed speed, their large size dragged them behind with what they needed and wanted.

Calca herself road atop a horse instead of simply riding in one of the many carriages. Kelart was the same in that she rode a horse. This was mainly to show that the two of them were people, and so that the common man could relate. It was a bit much, in her opinion. It felt a bit fake.

After a beat or two of simply trotting along, she noticed something. The fog was becoming many times thicker. The others noticed this as well, of course. Soon after, the fog had become so thick that she couldn’t make out more than a dozen or so yards ahead of herself.

The others were worse off. She had rather good eyes, they didn’t. Startled sounds, those of the others in the caravan, broke out. Her ears would have twitched at the ruckus of they could.

“Squire Baraja, what do you see in the fog?” Remedios calls out from her horse, and Neia squints as she looks out at the field that the road led through.

She looked through the fog at the surrounding landscape. It was getting thicker and thicker by the second. Though, right after she started her search for whatever was in the fog, she found it.

It was a clump. She blinked at the ground cloud, and tilted her head in both confusion, and the strange sense of dread that filled her when she spotted it. It was a large thing, and her body then started to tell her that she should run.

“Squire, what’s taking you so long? Tell us what’s out there,” the paladin captain demanded, and Neia sputtered out something.

“There’s a big and dense bank of fog that’s more like a cloud,” she sputtered as she looked at the thing drawn nearer.

“What tha-” Remedios nearly blurted out another demand, yet she stopped her as her horse reared back and neighed.

Then they all felt it. They all felt as the thing drew near. Neia grabbed her horse’s reins tighter. Her steed stilled in more fear than wisdom. Kelart prepped a spell, along with the Holy Queen.

All the others in the group tried to calm down their mounts or themselves as the fog thing drew closer. Then, the mist dispersed, and a ghost ship emerged from the fog. Neia blinked, and looked up at the thing, spotting the Flag of Nazarick soon after. Remedios drew the holy sword, and was about to announce an attack, yet she stopped her.

“It’s from the Sorseress’s kingdom!” she shouted, and the lot of them looked up at where she pointed.

…