A Knight's Pledge

A Knight's Pledge - Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Dyson was speechless. The Princess of pain and punishment was offering him help? It couldn’t be true! He must still be in his cups, passed out drunk in his own mess. He pinched himself. Fuck, that hurt!

“Am I hearing you correctly?”

She nodded.

“No.”

She looked taken aback at his harsh refusal. She hadn’t bothered to help him the other time, when he had so desperately needed it, why would he lower himself to accept any offered now? Hudson tried to intervene. “Now Dyson, don’t be too hasty.”

Dyson swung around to meet his friend’s unflinching stare.

“Don’t be too hasty?” he bit out, “Don’t be hasty?! Ugh!” He stomped out of the room, Hudson on his heels.

“Dyson, will you just listen?”

He could hear the Princess’ voice from inside the chamber getting higher with accusations at the Lord of Light. He brought his concentration back to Hudson. “Alright,” he said, and crossed his arms across his still well-honed chest. “Speak.”

Hudson inhaled. This ought to be good.

“When the Lord of Light summoned Princess Penelope, he wasn’t sure I’d be able to find you or even get you to understand me. We really weren’t sure what I’d find. The Princess was summoned because we just discovered scrolls about her.”

Dyson’s interest perked up, although he hid it with a nonchalant quirk of his brow.

“What kind of scrolls?”

Hudson’s eyes twinkled, “Prophecies.”

Dyson was ready to scoff at such a preposterous suggestion but refrained as a memory tickled the side of his brain. Something his grandmother had told him. One of the bedtime tales she had taught when he was just a lad. The memory kept skipping out of reach though.

“Tell me,” he ordered Hudson gruffly.

Hudson motioned to some benches in the corridor and they sat down. Dyson tapped his foot impatiently.

“Do you remember the stories our grandparents would tell us?”

Dyson shook his head, “I can’t quite catch hold of them.”

Hudson nodded, “Well, the stories they told are in these scrolls. There seem to be a lot that have already come true and more yet to come, but there’s one in particular pertaining to the Princess.”

Dyson forced himself to sit still instead of shaking it from his friend.

“It seems that her bloodline, on the mother’s side, passes along the ability to cleanse. It doesn’t relate the specifics of the cleansing but it makes reference to the current problem the Realm has and that she is part of the solution.”

Dyson nodded then frowned. “Part of the solution? Not the whole?”

Hudson fidgeted and pulled at the knees on his breeches.

“Yes, only part. It also makes reference to a gallant knight who accompanies her on a quest of sorts.”

Dyson eyed him warily. “What kind of quest?”

“To defeat, to quote the scrolls, ‘the evil Dust Overlord’.”

A flood of memories suddenly hit Dyson at the mere mention of that name. His face blanched.

“Oh, shit.”

Hudson nodded. “You summed it up well Dyson.”

“Oh, shit,” Dyson muttered again. His brain had gone into overload with the information flooding back into it. The history of the Overlord, or what little they knew of it, the Dust Minions and of course the impenetrable Shadowlands. “Ooohhh, shit.”

Hudson gave him time to digest the remembered information before speaking.

“Someone is destined to go with her. Someone with a troubled history. The scrolls don’t say for what purpose though, so it’s a guess at best. I’d think they’d have to work together to make it to, then through the Shadowlands. Their territory spreads through large sectors of the Mortal Realm.”

Hudson fished in his jacket pocket and brought out a tattered map. Before he could explain it, a screech rent the air.

“You want me to do what?”