The Warden | A For Honor Fanfiction

Decisive Duel

After several more hours, and enough snow to drown in, the Warden and I had finally managed to come within spitting distance of our destination. We had finally reached a point where the snow wasn't up to our ankles, and after one last uphill trek, Herongale was in our sights. The place itself wasn't exactly a luxury settlement. Even from this far away, I could tell that none of the buildings consisted of anything more than a single story. Add on top of that there being no signs of a wall anywhere, along with the place looking like something out of a painting from a hundred years ago, and you had about as much of a backwoods place as you could find.

"Charming place. Remind me what we're doing here again, Warden?" I asked as I turned my attention to him. The Warden, true to his nature, was standing like he was posing for some kind of self-portrait as he took a good look at the place. A modest amount of snow had managed to gather on the tip of his helmet. To be honest, the poor man was covered in the stuff more often than he wasn't.

"There are rumors that an old friend of mine was tracking a group of bandits to the east. This is the only settlement for miles in that direction, I'm hoping to find him." He responded. I nodded, then cupped my hands together to blow into them. Taking the initiative, I took the first steps towards the hamlet. Honestly, I was just happy to be in any place other than Morrowgale. Ever since I was stranded there three months ago, I'd been looking for any chance to get back on the move. That's not to say I hated the place, the people were nice enough, and that tavern keeper had been more than accommodating. But I was a traveling bard, gathering new stories from all over Ashfeld was part of my job. You can't really do that if you're stuck in one little town.

I couldn't help but look back to the Warden, who had followed my lead and began walking down the path. I'd really come to like my new traveling partner. He was much more respectful than other men I had journeyed with. Finding someone genuinely worthy of honor was no small feat in Ashfeld these days, much less someone to genuinely look up to. More selfishly, it was nice that he was kind of a looker underneath that helmet of his.To top it off, Wardens were a goldmine of stories and potential songs to sing, if I stuck around him, I'd probably have enough epics to last me a lifetime.

Entering the hamlet was... unnerving. The entire place was unnaturally uniform, every one of the seven buildings looked exactly the same, even down to how much snow had accumulated on top of them. It looked more like some kind of labor camp than it did somewhere people were supposed to live. The people didn't make things any better, every one of them wore the same heavy furs, the same black face mask covering their mouths, and every last one of them was moving in sync with the others. Seeing them performing menial tasks with such strange efficiency made them seem more like machines than living people. As we continued walking through the place, I noticed that every person we passed stopped whatever they were doing to get a good look at the Warden. None of them seemed to pay any attention to me, but I was getting more worried for my companion by the second. I cleared my throat and put on the biggest smile I could to try and calm my nerves.

"Well, this is quite the welcome." I joked, turning to face him. The Warden didn't respond right away, instead he seemed to be looking from person to person. The creeps didn't even have the decency to look away from him once he noticed what was going on. His pace slowed as he turned to face one of them, I stopped to let him get a better look.

"You okay?" I asked. The Warden didn't turn to face me, but I could tell he had heard me.

"The way they're looking at me. It's almost like they're angry." He said. Angry? Great, not only were they creeps, they were also creeps who didn't like outsiders. I looked over my shoulder instinctively, and was more than a little concerned to find that even more of them had approached from behind. We were completely surrounded at this point, there had to be at least twenty of them just in this one spot. The whole situation was giving me a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I was seriously considering just grabbing the Warden and bolting.