[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

30| Judgement Day 𝐈 {Part Three}

[TW// moderate blood, violence and threatening language]

Lancelot is put on trial for his crimes and an unexpected turn of events has deadly consequences.

The forest was unnervingly still. Not even so much as a breath echoed between the leaves of the trees. Ari dug her palm to the earth, examining the tread of boots as the red cloaks crawled forwards through the forest surrounding the camp. She told the others to remain silent, to take their place between the trees and to not move so that this would work. Her eyes stayed up through the green in the distance, the faintest dusting of snow covering everything that must have been working its way south from the northern lands.

Lancelot flexed his steady hand around his sword by his hip. He could feel the eyes watching him, and he knew what he had to do. He was not nervous, this is what he knew how to do best, only this time he was on the correct side of the unholy war. But this did not feel right. The Red Paladins did not attack with stealth and he knew it.

He glanced across past the line of people all waiting behind trees to Ari, the gold in her eyes shining brighter than ever before surrounded by the black of paint. She looked almost the same as the day that they met, her silver hair half braided back with those lines of paint striped down from the bow of her lip towards her chest. Many of the others donned similarly placed lines. Lancelot knew that such adornment is supposed to rouse fear in your opponent but he did not need such decoration when he was born with his own.

A hawk circled high up above the trees and cried out its screech to the clouds. Ari stood silently onto her feet behind the cover of her tree, her signal that the enemy was here. She twisted back, scanning between the forest behind her where she knew her fellow Fey were waiting. She nodded once as another signal to them. Let them come, she had said. These are our forests, this is our land. We have the advantage here, they will not win this fight.

Twigs broke in the distance as they realised that they were alone in this forest no longer. Lancelot's heart rose in his chest as his fingers shifted around his sword hilt, listening to the sound of more boots than he could count treading further towards them. There is no feeling that compares to waiting for death in the silence before the first strike. He had for so long been on the other side of this that he did not know too well what it was like to be hunted.

Suddenly the boots stopped in the shallow clearing where the forest flattened ahead. Ari slowly placed her unbound hand to the tree beside her shoulder. She could feel the nerves of her people, their energies radiating so strongly down into the earth. Not all of them were warriors and she knew that there would be bloodshed on both sides of this battle today. She hated it but she had no choice. The Paladins could not be allowed any closer to the rest of the Fey in the camp that they were defending. Ari broke her hand away from the tree before her powers overwhelmed her.