Legacy (Daughter of War #2)

Chapter 2: Poisoned Minds

Music is Forest Kingdom from the NieR: Automata OST, composed by Keiichi Okabe. (As you guys can tell, I currently have an obsession with this soundtrack. Just bear with me!) Play it!

Media: Constantine, in case you guys have forgotten what she looks like. She'd have shorter hair though!

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I make my way towards Captain Eldric's office, freshly changed and just out of the bath. The dark red tabard is in my arms, spotless and stainless, just the way he likes it. Still, I'll have to ask him if he wants it cleaned and pressed in the laundry.

The guards right outside his door don't halt me; they raise questioning eyebrows instead, which is enough to force me to stop in my tracks. I heave an internal sigh. Although I pass in and out of here every day, they still ask my nature of business here every time. Perhaps they just like to ruffle me. "Reporting for afternoon assignments," I tell one of the guards. Everest, if I'm not mistaken. Too many fair-haired people around here for me to memorise each and every single one of their names.

He nods at me. I salute him and the rest of the guards. Technically, I'm of a higher position than any of them. However, since I'm still a squire, I have to defer to any senior's orders. Captain Eldric has never mentioned a word of me bring promoted, and I don't dare to press him. He always operates on his own reasons, never taking a single step without careful calculation. If he doesn't think I'm ready to be a knight, then I'm not ready.

Even if I think I am.

I knock on the door—one low, three sharp. The signal that he'd specially coded for me. "Enter," comes his voice through the hunk of oak, slightly muffled.

I ease the door open. Its hinges are rusty and the squeaks rake my nerves, but he once told me that it was just so that he knew whenever any visitor—whether wanted or unwanted—came in. So he'd never bothered to oil the hinges. Even when noble dignitaries were here and everything should have been in perfection.

"Captain, you wanted to see me?" I close the door, hackles rising at the squeaks once more.

"Yes, Constantine." He's seated behind his desk, shuffling through piles and piles of paper. Always busy, always occupied. As usual. His eyes flick upwards to spare me a brief glance, before returning to his work. "I shan't need the tabard anymore. You may have it."

I hold up the clothing uncertainly. "But sir, this is a knight's tabard. I can't have it," I say.

"Just take it," he growls. I don't dare to protest anymore. He waves a hand in front of him. "Take a seat."

I sit down, watching the captain with cat-like cautiousness. The only time I've sat here during my apprenticeship was nearly three months ago, because of the complaints of several squires that I've been too hard on them. Give them what they need to survive in life, and they complain. Humans.

He doesn't speak for a few more minutes. Two minutes and fifty-six seconds, I count, before he is finished with whatever it is he's doing and looks up at me. His obsidian eyes drill into me, as though he were asking for answers to questions he's never raised. Not lifting that unflinching gaze, he reaches for a scroll placed by the side and hands it to me. "Read it," he says.

Curiosity flares. I take it and unroll the delicate material. The script is written scraggily, almost illegible, as though the writer had been in a haste as he had penned this. I scan through it, my head taking in all the words before it's even aware of it.

...went up the Northern Route, stopped by Rutherland for several nights before circling to Coltivest. Areas have recovered nicely, and trade is slowly starting to get back up...