Chapter 24

I was in the depths holding my breath, large lidless pupils stared at me through the dark haze of the water, with their shadows giving them contrast within the murk. There were so many of them. The horrors made me shudder, instinctively releasing bubbles out from my mouth. I panicked, swimming up to avoid the large shadows stalking me.

The coursing currents kept me deep, as the larger than life creatures try to anchor their fangs into me. I was a fair man, in a small lake, amongst giant fishes. As I was about to hit the surface when suddenly, tentacles out from the depths latched on my leg. More of the feelers grappled on to me with their suckers piercing through my soft flesh. I was losing elevation, sinking like my namesake. I gritted my teeth then swiveled to see a large humanoid face with mandibles, It was Cthulhu.

I woke up screaming. “No! not the tentacles!”

Everyone whirl their heads to face me with weird expressions, some even gleeful in my torment. “Bad dream?” Peb asked. From the looks of it, he also experienced a horrible dream judging from his paler than stone pallor.

“Yes.” I nodded, still perspiring from the after images in my memory.

“Yeah, so many stones...killed,” Peb said, looking gloomily at his hands with guilt. The guilt of a stone man is heavy indeed.

I cringed at the thought. Lucky for him, He didn’t dream of Lovecraftian monsters in the depths ready to swallow you whole. Pray he will never learn the dark terrors imagined in my mind. Granted, his fears are different from mine.

Shrugging off the thoughts sequestered solely in the mind’s eye, I got up to stretch my grass marrows awake. The morning light had alleviated some of the stress I retained from my nightmare. Now that my shudders had stopped from the memory, I ambled off to go eat some greens whilst trying not to reminisce about the taste of fish.

“Sink?” Sera called.

“Yes?”

“Can we go check on that Island?” She suggested, her grassy scarf covering her hopeful smile.

I gave her an open-armed shrug as a response.

“I want to explore the groves and the trees--over there.” She directed, her hands pointing at the island with the petal trees, similar-looking to cherry-blossoms trees. Peering at the beautiful image, I gave a sigh then shrugged to signal her to go ahead.

Sera was gleeful at my acquiesce, even Wink was curious about the idea of analyzing those strange trees. He had been working tirelessly last night and just woke up after me. Teka looked like he was up, doing some less extraneous exercise to test out his muscles. A scheme crossed my mind.

“Wink, you should stay back, and sleep some more. You’ve been cultivating all night. You should rest and let Teka explore with Sera.” I gave Wink a wink, to discourage an argument. Getting the hint with my wink. Wink peered between Sera and Teka, pausing at Teka with a peculiar look, who happened to be turning turnip to my suggestion. After a few moments, Wink then faced me to give me his iconic wink in rapscallion understanding.

Sera, not comprehending the exchange, turned to curiously eye Teka. “I didn’t assume you for the adventuring sort. Are you sure you want to come?”

“Uh, yes! Of course, I’m the adventuring sort, I’m here aren’t I?” Teka nervously replied, questioning himself in his bluster.

My schemes were finally giving me dividends as they both walked off together to find a large enough bark to float them through the water. Seeing the water again, I shuddered. The horrors in those depths, still scar the soul of my memories. Teka glanced back at me as they were about to leave, giving me a strange expression. I gave him a wingman's thumbs-up, wishing him luck on the hardship ahead. I had given him the push, now hit base, Grass Soldier, hit base. Well, not literally, I don’t want to add that peculiar dynamic in our journey, we don’t have enough room for that. ‘Wait, why am I playing matchmaker when I can’t even…?’

“When did you become poddy chums with Teka?” Wink curiously inquired.

“It was a while ago,” I remarked whilst watching those two walk off into their island retreat with a shudder. I then continued with my outlandish lie, “Teka and I, were just pretending to be rivals to cater to your skullduggery.”

“Skullduggery...?”

“-Anyways...You should get some shut-eye for your wink loses allure when red without sleep.”

“Yes... My wink is alluring....” Wink nodded to my wise words. He headed back to his leaf bedding near the campfire that was stoking the heat from its ashes.

“Peb, come.”

“Where to?”

“Oh pebbly Peb, we are going to work, for work is what can save our troubled minds of the past.” I insightfully stated.

Enlightened by my quote, he nodded eagerly, anxious to forget his guilt for the stones. We headed to our mecha, Amelia. I roped up the cockpit to script Amelia to sit down with her legs apart. We started to create wedges, making circular entrances for the bottoms of each heel. After that was done, I went to the chest compartment to gather large grass springs to use as the recoils when compressed.

At a reasonable distance inside the bottom legs, I dragged in two large sticks that were boiled in the shallows by firestones to keep them flexible, they were then wrapped by grass leaves to keep them from snapping. I attached the springs at the top wholistic Peb spun thicker ones around the exterior of each stick.

I poked through rivets from top to bottom so I can add ankle-length branches to hold the grass supported sticks in its compression. With that design the coils would spring the grass padded ends of the sticks to pierce out from the heels with a tremendous amount of force, then would be returned when landing, coiling back by the weight of the return it to be ready to launch again.

‘Pogo Sticks on a Knight’s sols. Why not?’ I gave a chagrin at the image.

I had one more task to do before I could finish this minor project. I climbed back into the cockpit to wire up some grass wires into the jumping script button that was made a day ago. Man, my daily implementation to Amelia is really unprofessional of me. It's like using a prototype and implementing fixes for each bug we accumulated. Well, hindsight is always 20/20 when building something from your dreams.

Back in my hay day, I had a team to brainstorm all the issues that could come arising with advanced tools to help in construction. Ah, well, this Knight Mecha’s vision is mine alone, and no one else. I wonder what all my employees in my company would think of my build.

I shook my head to dispel the memories of my past, not wanting to be mired by the friends and colleagues I had lost.

After the jumping scripts had their physical counterparts connected into their controllers, I went to collect skin-tanned leaves to weave another construct of mine. When Sera and Teka arrived back blushing, the majority of the projects I had started today were completed.

Both Sera and Teka both split up from one another, each was blushing turnips away from the other, ruining their grassy complexion. I twirled my head to Wink, who was dozing off in the morning shade. It’s a pity, Wink would’ve loved to have witnessed that. ‘Ah well,’ I shrugged.

After cleaning up the morning poop of the giggling menace, we all took a bath in the shallow bank. I had to rub the baby’s bottom with my hands, it was awful. Sera had helped me, whilst Oona hovered above to gloat her imperious form. Wink had woken again to then also swim in the shallows of the lake. It was like a holiday on the beach with companions and a large baby who would send waves at me as I tried to swim away from the shadows beneath the shallows.

After we had finished our morning rinse, we headed back to the bank. The giggling menace did not know how to walk yet, so we had to use a large grass stretcher to relocate him. It was Teka and my duty to do so, for we had the strength to carry Art’s weight. The baby looked like a petulant naked emperor, lifted up by the grass peasants of the forest.

We huddled Art back to his basket, then lifted him up into the golden furred backpack that was supported by the interior plates for protection. Sera in her grass-made bikini sauntered past Teka, who was blushing agape at her passing. Noticing that Teka was staring, Wink slapped him on the back, giving him a wink to his embarrassment.

“Okay, employees. Time to depart.”

“You aren’t paying us anything?” Someone said, which I ignored.

“Departure is soon!” I shouted as I roped up into the interior, escaping the belligerence of my employees.

Teka was last to take his spot, after helping Sera into the furry backpack to keep Art company. Wink had relaxed at the chest interior, whilst Peb was sitting in the waist compartment munching on his third breakfast of the day. Oona sat atop Amelia’s pauldron where she usually sequestered herself.

I spoke to Oona then. “Oona, you probably should get inside, or find a place to latch onto.”

“Tsk” As fairies do, then continued, “not enough freedom inside.”

“Ah well, your call.” I shrugged, hiding a grin inside. Activating the Knight Mecha with a tune, I turned on the jumping script, and clutched on my analog sticks, ready to jostle the gang around.

“Strap in! We are launching!”

The grass padded sticks within the legs of the Knight Mecha sprang to launch. With the abrupt force of the motion, Amelia launched 1 meter into the air. Then we landed, jolting everyone. I aligned the walking script to loop with the jumping script, so each foot would spring every time the mecha took a step, recoiling at the same instance with the force of its landing.

“Woohoo!” I yelled out at the opened visor of the helm. Oona grudgingly flew inside so she could latch onto the grass weavings within, to avoid the constant jostling. 2 Meters in the Air. The compression springs really made traveling a lot smoother than I had reckoned. My mood lightened up further when the baby started laughing every time we jumped up into the air.

We were skipping through the valley at such a relatively fast pace, a lot more quickly than the running pace I had set. There was a minor problem with this traveling method, finding a stable place to land. We had landed on a dislodged large pebble that nearly made the Mecha trip to face forward into the ground. But the speed of the spring had launched us back into balance.

I contemplated if I could make a faster and efficient way of traversing the land. ‘Maybe...Flight…’ Now there was an idea I could build upon and implement. I mused on the idea all day as we skipped through the terrain.

We had crossed through more secluded valleys in a span of a couple of hours. When midday approached we already had past the mountains and entered through a small forest beneath.

I wondered about the predators and prey of the forest, who had witnessed my contraption pass by. Must have been something strange to them, seeing a metallic man with a grass plumage on its head and a baby in golden fur behind; jumping and skipping across their forest with no care in the world of the spectators below.

After we had exited the forest, we met a smooth terrain. It was a cultivated plain, riddled with small farmhouses and golden wheat. I could make out a town nearby by the width of the buildings from a distance, maybe 1 mile away. It was clear to me there were humans tending the farms around the plains when we entered the domain. I turned off the jumping script and returned back to walking, so as not to excite any human sentries who might have spotted our arrival.

I set the visor down, and the minor project I had made that was weaved in skin-tanned leaves. The weaving of grass was pleated to the curvature and likeness of a human face. It would not pass in a second glancing, but within the visor, it would be a solid disguise if someone peered into the slits. I placed transparent pebbles as eyeballs for me to look through. I had to add modifications to my cockpit to elevate me to see through both stones. It felt limiting at first, but I got used to it, after a while. The number of things I could see through the transparent pebbles was lackluster, but average to a normal knight covering his face with metal.

“Halt! Who goes there!?” A gruff voice shouted, pausing my movements. We were near the gated entrance of the town. The town was circled by a wooden wall with ramparts, guarded by two town guards at the gate.

“Lieutenant, that man looks heavily armored.” A latter man spoke with a young nervous tremor. The gruff town guard scowled at his subordinate then inspected me for several moments.

“Your name? Sir?”

“Ser Ghras,” I stated, my voice altered by the small microphone that had gravel within it. To make my tenor voice slightly gravelly and deep.

“Where do you hail from? Sir Ghras?”

Recalling my conversation from the squire. “From the Kingdom of Armont.”

“This town of Ebenfurth and the surrounding territory is the domain of Duke Agenchord, which happens to be part of the Kingdom of Armont. And I have never heard of Ser Ghras, in the current Hereditary list?”

“My House was recently anoble, you must have gotten the outdated version.” I countered.

“And what House is that?”

‘Oh, why did I make this stupid name.’

“House of Grass.”

“Ghras from the House of Grass…” The veteran tested the word in the air.

The younger man chortled in laughter, slapping his spear as he made a ruckus. “Ghras from the House of Grass!! Let me guess what the knight is called, the Grass Knight! Hahahaha!”

Surprisingly, my eyes widened, that was a brilliant moniker to go by. “Yes, that’s what I am called,” I confirmed, too late to take it back.

The younger guard howled out again, laughing harder than before, it looked like he was struggling to choose between breathing and laughing.

The Veteran soldier whacked the back of the head of the younger man. “Shut yer trap. If this man is a noble...then you might regret your mockery of him.”

“Sorry Lieutenant.” The man wiped his nose, while he snickered at my newfound moniker.

“So Sir Ghras, judging from the destination you have come by, you might have encountered a knight called the Teal Knight?”

Taking a deep sigh and a few moments before answering his inquiry, I replied. “I was part of the company that was quested to kill the drake in the mountains.”

The lieutenant’s face went grim after my reply. “I could see that..from the colors of your breastplate? What happened to Lord Ligart and his squire?”

Catching the lie in his question.

“You mean Lord Tiggart and his squire. Sadly, they did not make it out of the mountains…” I replied back in sad confidence.

“I see…”

The lieutenant said, his counterpart somber now, from the news of the Teal's Knight's death.

“Come in, then. You can debrief the Mayor on what occurred with your company.”

The wooden gates of the town of Ebenfurth, had opened up to the grass folks inside the Grass Mecha that was oddly enough pretending to be a knight.