Chapter 22

Seaweed blood slid down my mint face at the realization that I had nearly died. The ringing noise of the tip of the blade hitting the interior back of Amelia’s helm was ear-splitting. ‘My ear was split!’ I still can’t comprehend what just had occurred, I tried to compose my straw thoughts back into arrangement. It was the serrated dagger I had looted from the hooded man that nearly decapitated me. ‘How did it-’

“You traitor!” Snarled Teka.

Teka vaulted out from the grass plumage, with a grass spear in hand, quick like a spiral dart, he pierced through the squire’s right cheek. The squire screamed in pain and outrage at the score. Teka was still hanging on when the Squire grabbed him with his left hand. He squeezed Teka then pulled him off his spear that was lodged inside the squire’s flesh. The squire hurled Teka to the wayside like an insipid pest.

Teka skyrocketed out from the throw to land roughly onto the stones aways from them. The squire snarled at the grass soldier’s prone form then cursed in agony from the small lodged grass spear that was deep through his cheekbones. “Gah!!!” The man screamed, outraged at the idea of being harmed by a smallfolk.

I was still frozen in my stool, as I watched the squire gingerly touch his recent wound. Then the rage, sibilant in my composure had unbridled within me; like a spark, the rage inside me had reignited my quandary into diving back into the violence. I acted.

I stirred Amelia back into movement, the squire yelped back, still in pain with the thick needle that had marred his contorted look. He saw me then, his eyes went wide when he spotted my still standing knight, with a dagger that was lodged through the helm’s right vision slit.

“How-how are you still standing?”

With my teeth-gritting, I directed the knight mecha staggeringly forward, towards the shocked squire. I had tilted my head away from the serrated edge, whilst peering out of the left vision slit at the squire with a glare that could kill a songbird into silence.

“What-what are you?” The squire, ignoring the pain in his cheek, nervously asked.

But it was for naught, for no words should be wasted on a man such as him. I had considered him a boy at first, with the hopeful passion of a young man, innocent to the whims of an adult. But I was mistaken. My mecha’s grass network was strained from my last tempo settings, so I left it on its normal settings. I had surmised that it was enough to deal with this injured squire.

Chattering nervously, “I-I did it for the Title. For my family...It was a dragon, it’s not often someone in my family slays a dragon. I need-needed it.”

He tried excusing his actions but failed, betrayed by the arrogance of his tone. Like that of a man, who can get anything in life without any repercussions. A scion from a noble house.

“Filthy small folk.” He cursed his injury again, trying to gingerly touch his wounds, then he stared back at me.

“You understand right? I have nothing against you. It was just,I am the most qualified, to deserve the title of Dragon Slayer.”

Seeing his voice had no effect on Amelia’s staggering pace, he reacted with a spontaneous charge. The tackle took me and him off our sols and into the ground, with him above. I tried to push him off, but he managed to grab the pommel of the serrated dagger and pulled it off. He then began to stab the vision slots again and again. I avoided by dodging to opposite side where the dagger pierced through.

The squire then stopped to stare at the not so bloody knife. His face agape in confusion on why there wasn’t any blood. He then used his left hand to lift Amelia’s visor up to see my face, glaring up at him.

“What the mother! Iris be gods!” He looked down at me in horrified agape, a dribble of his blood dripping down from the grass spear lodged into his cheek, to clink on the metal below. Like a man in close proximity to the sick, he jumped off me, aghast on the reveal under the helm.

“You’re not a knight! You’re not even human!” The squire’s face contorted in horror and understanding.

“Give the human a medal.” I snarled.

“You-disgusting, little grass men.” After grasping my charade, the rage of his racism began to seethe out from his expression.

That is when Oona acted then, she flew over from her spot where Sera and the baby were huddled. With the speed of a peregrine falcon, she grabbed the grass shaft of the spear that was lodged in the squire's cheek, and pulled it off him with the force of her black wings, leaving a tear that ended at the bridge of his nose.

“Iris cursed Faes!” The squire cussed, as he tried to swat Oona from the air.

She was dive-bombing the squire with the grass spear. Slashing his face with every swipe. The squire’s wounds from the dragon and his tired frame contrived to make his movement slower.

Which allowed Oona to dodge and dive, harming the squire’s head. Oona looked like she was trying to follow my tactics, of blinding the giant.

Having the squire distracted, I motioned Amelia to stand up with a standing script. Now ready, I had to analyze my arsenal to deal with this scumbag.

“Wink? Peb?” I shouted down below.

Peb was in the waist compartment, it would take him time to go and gather combusting rockets from the arsenal to the shoulder sockets. Wink was at the chest compartment, he had recently been disturbed from his cultivation at the outside violence, He was in the process of returning back to his meditation pose to heal the grass that was strained by the recent tempo.

Noticing that the squire was several meters away from the cliffside, I had an idea. Amelia was staggered slow from the grass network that was barely responsive. With no other choice, I chose the most solid approach. Pushing him off to the cliffside. No second thoughts or moralizing, I continued Amelia’s staggering path towards the squire who was distracted by the fae in the air.

With both gauntlets, I motioned the mecha to push the Squire to trip atop a stone mound behind him. Noticing me too late, he lost his balance from the shove. He tried to step back, to gain back his center. He managed to gain a footing until Oona came in with her last dive bomb which was aimed directly in front of Dravon. She pierced the grass spear right through his right eye, which prompted the squire to retract back from the blinding, tripping into the air, over the stony cliffside.

The squire Dravon of House Drakensgard tumbled and fell into the stony ravine below with a curse undecipherable on his lips.

After a breathtaking moment, I had slumped down on my stool with my knight mecha at the precipice of the cliffside. I stirred her back into a stable footing, several meters away from the edge. I was exhausted all over, my sweat perspiring and mixing with my grass blood that was streaking down my face.

Oona hovered in front of me with a huge grin on her bloody face. The blood was not white like the fae but red of the human. “Never say I don’t help you with anything.” She remarked, peering at my exhausted form.

I gave her a tired grin, then fainted from the loss of blood.

When next I woke, it took a while to settle my thoughts for the aftermath of said battle. We had checked all our injuries, with our priority mainly on Teka, who was gratefully alive but worse for wear. The squire had nearly squeezed the life out of him, breaking a few grass ribs inside.

The fall didn’t help either, but he managed to speak when we pulled him atop a grass made stretcher.

“Is Sera okay?” He asked in his flagging state. Surprised at his inquiry I replied. “She’s fine, she's looking after Art.”

“That’s good. That’s good.” He fell unconscious then. He was awake for the whole endeavor, gritting through the pain as he was prostrated on the stony earth below.

We carried the stretcher that had Teka unconscious onto a remote platform, lifting him and the rest of us to the opened chest compartment of the Knight Mecha. The armored plates had leather latches that tied themselves together, which we opted to use as hinges for several entryways inside the mecha. Being the chest compartment the largest of the entryways.

“What about the dragon?” Oona asked me. Sitting atop the pauldron, which was now considered her position in the mecha. Tilting the analog twig to swivel Amelia to face the buried dragon that was beneath the stone pile. I shrugged.

“What of it?”

“The Title that the human squire was after. Shouldn’t we get it?”

Pondering at the boon that would give me and the grass mecha, fire resistance. I considered Oona’s proposal. Then I remember how avaricious the squire Dravon was for the Title, and how he would backstab someone that had aided him in search for his lord.

From what I recall of the squire, Dravon only wanted one thing and he’d do anything to get that. It was akin to ambition over life. Would I kill an unconscious creature for the boon it would give me? What makes me different from Dravon then? Who had decided to kill to get what he had wanted? Granted the green dragon had attacked us. But would I be morally justified to slay the large reptile?

Remembering the carnage that the Dragon brought earlier in our trek, I was conflicted on the path I had to decide. I recalled I hadn’t gotten any experience from killing the squire. I asked Oona if she had gotten the experience. She shook her head. Does that mean Dravon is still alive? But at such a fall? I doubt he was left unscathed, maybe he was paralyzed, atop a mound of bloody rocks.

Moments of contemplating the dragon and Dravon prompted me to think of the System. Which built to niggle me to choose the path of murder, so I can gain experience and a boon.

“Sink The Dragon Slayer,” I said, testing the Title in the air. I shook my head. I’m no trophy hunter, no player in a game with ambition for power. I am a grass folk, whose only dream is to pilot a mecha; and I don’t have the appetite to hunt endangered species.

Maybe I will regret this later...because the future is a fickle mistress, but I had made my choice. Woe to me, for choosing the course of my conscience, for I am just a simple fair man, mired in the grass that bore me.

I shook my head in the negative to Oona’s query, I then moved on to pick up Sera and the baby. The baby was gratefully not too badly injured, just a few scratches and bruises, which were bandaged up with Teka’s grass bandages. We had powdered willow bark into his hemp milk, hopefully when he next drinks, the mixture would circumvent any uncomfortable pain the baby had received.

After wrapping the baby up, and placing him into the basket that was protected in golden furs. We straddled him back atop his mother’s armor, so he could comfortably doze as he suckled on his milk.

Looking up at Amelia with a huge tear on the center of her breastplate, I had cringed. When we next camp, I will have to patch that up. We went back to the dead form of Tiggart the Teal Knight. After a few moments of inspecting, we decided to loot the Teal knight’s remaining gauntlet and pauldron. We also took the breastplate, greeves, and shoes. I felt bad looting his corpse, for a knight without his armor, was a sad sight indeed.

Onwards we went to the stony paths into the mountain valleys ahead. We left behind a buried dragon in the rubble, an ambitious squire in his folly down a ravine, and a dead unarmoured knight by the steps.

For the journey has only started, and already, I’m full of regrets.