Arc 2: Chapter 8: The Warlock
I followed the Briar knight into the woods. His macabre chimera moved at a slow, steady pace, allowing me to keep up on foot. He didn’t speak, or so much as acknowledge me.
I wasn’t certain I could keep my measure traveling with that creature for days or weeks to wherever he intended to lead me. He reeked of battlefields and rotting plant matter.
“Where are we going?” I asked after a time, breaking the night’s silence.
“To a meeting,” the Briar Brother said.
“And how far must we travel for that?” I asked.
“Not far,” the fallen knight said vaguely.
I decided it wasn’t worth pressing the nightmarish cavalier for information and followed in silence, still wary of treachery. I hadn’t faced the Briar so long as many of my fellow Alder Knights, and hadn’t learned to hate them to the same degree, but it still felt strange to deal with one without immediate violence.
They’d been the Enemy, for many long and bitter generations. Indeed, they’d taken advantage of the Fall, but they hadn’t perpetrated it. Still, the idea that the Choir might be willing to make peace with the Briar sat uneasy on me. Surely they knew that Nath would claw for every advantage she could get?
Another thought struck me then — had Nath sent this fallen chevalier as some sort of message, or grim jest? A warped mirror of what the Alder Knights had been, and a potential future for me if I kept tiptoeing along the lefthand path? It seemed to fit her sense of irony.
We walked for nearly an hour. The night aged, and a few scattered clouds began to crawl across the starry sky. The woods held an eerie silence. I could see ghost-lights in the distance, but unlike normal they didn’t approach, as though repelled by the foul company I traveled with. Eventually we stopped at an old crossroads, one I recognized as being near the edge of the haunted woods surrounding the Fane. There were villages not far, little more than small hamlets dotting the nearer countryside. Most of our food and supplies came from them, usually collected by Oraeka in the guise of a common traveler.
“Prepare,” the Briar Brother rasped. “They approach.”