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It was all quiet in Castle Town on the eve of the festival. Lancer had put on a parade while Ralsei had been out with Kris and Susie and tuckered out the vast majority of his subjects. Aside from some construction work still ongoing in the upstairs castle, not a creature was stirring. Seam had retired from his seap long ago, the Love Dojo’s heart-shaped doors were closed, and the Mikes were taking a well-deserved break from Mike-ing for the night.
Even the sound of meats and fruits being strategically installed throughout the castle walls on Queen’s orders was just regular and rhythmic enough to rock Ralsei to sleep. Not that he needed the help, though—he’d scarcely had the energy to wash the blood off his cheek before he’d collapsed in the middle of his barren room. At his head, the distressingly grinning Ice-E cryptid plush, which was by process of elimination the best piece of furniture in the room, welcomed him to his long-overdue slumber. In his arms, the little himself-shaped plush doll Kris had won for him laid over his heart.
Before sleep took him, Ralsei wondered what Kris and Susie were doing right now. He knew so much, but there were still things the prophecy didn’t tell him. He would trade everything he knew just to know what he didn’t know right now.
Unbeknownst to him, if he could have known everything he didn’t know at that exact moment, he would have learned just how much danger he was in.
A cold wind ruffled his fur, jolting him out of his several seconds of slumber, and the next thing he knew, there was a very familiar notched blade pressed against his throat.
The shadows in the room seemed to have congealed into a shape. A shape with arms, legs, snowflake-arm antlers jutting from a slit-visored helmet. A hand hung over his head, spidery talons outstretched, a hole bored through the palm through which he could see its single leering white eye.
The Roaring Knight had appeared.
Before he could even cry out, a sweep of the Knight’s terrible black shard had reduced him to a pile of fluff.
He woke up somewhere cold, where the ground was hard and craggy. The powdery soil beneath him was coarse and smelled of old dust and expired chalk. His body hurt from tip to toe, and a chilly wind touched the unusually naked fur of his throat.
His paws leaped to the scarf that was no longer there. He was so used to having it on that not having it felt as though he’d suddenly shed his fur.
A strange snuffling sound met his ears from nearby. It was hard for him to see, for some reason—his ears and nose worked fine, but his eyes were another story. He had to squint, and even then, the world was still a mess of black-on-black blurs and faint starry lights.
At last, he discovered a blotch of pink, fluttering in the air. His scarf! Picking himself up on weary, throbbing paws, he lurched forward and reached out to take it. He wrapped up one paw in it and pulled—and it went taut. Something else was holding it in place.
A terrible rasp of a voice stung his ears so sharply he could taste it like bile in the back of his throat.
“No… marshmallow…”
Something pressed against his chest and shoved him backward, hard. His bottom hit the ground and the scarf dangled in the air, like it was taunting him.
He heard more sniffling, long and deep drags of muffled breath. Its pace grew erratic, frantic.
“No, no… No… marshmallow. Wrong… scent…”
He opened his mouth and tried to speak. “U-Um, that’s my scarf,” he was about to say, “and it smells like marshmallows because that’s what I smell like,” but the words all jumbled up in his throat and came out in a little bleat that was swallowed up by the sound of fabric tearing.
He saw two smaller pink blobs settle to the ground. A shadow shimmered and wavered; a white star blazed, staring into him.
He couldn’t see, but he knew what those vague impressions added up to. What was the Roaring Knight doing with his scarf? This wasn’t in the prophecy. The Knight was supposed to duel with the heroes strife by strife, not kidnap them while they slept—
The Knight crouched down on all fours in front of him, spidery fingers crawling up him until they found his shoulders. Its helmet came close. Its eye narrowed to a slit, then closed altogether.
It lifted its head and sniffed him. He didn’t know what to do about that. Suddenly, he didn’t know how to act anymore, and Kris wasn’t here to tell him what to do. He just felt the puff of its cold breath against the tip of his snout. He didn’t know why the Knight was so preoccupied with his scent, but he knew how the Knight’s breath smelled—like expired meat and sour milk that had been left in the freezer too long, whatever that smelled like. It made him cringe.
“Wrong,” the Knight hissed. “Wrong… scent!”
Its spindly claws scythed out and ripped off a good chunk of his green tunic and pressed the ragged swatch to its face. It took another long draught, then tossed it aside. “No! Wrong! Wrong!” it howled, raising itself up on its legs and stumbling drunkenly backward. “Marshmallow… wrong!”
Ralsei took the opportunity to run for it, but didn’t get far before a cage of black blades erupted from the ground in a tight semicircle around him, leaving him nowhere to run but toward the Knight.
It loped toward him with a shambling gait, shoulders slumped forward, head bowed. “Butterscotch… boy. Cinnamon… jacket…”
Ralsei’s heart pattered against his chest. “U-Uh… I have some cinnamon back in the castle,” he told the Knight as it loomed over him. “I could… sprinkle it on myself, if that helps? Just, uh, let me go back and I promise I’ll bring myself back here so you can keep me captive!”
He reached up to adjust his glasses—they must have gotten askew, and that was why he was having so much trouble seeing right now.
His paw pads pressed under his lop ears without meeting any resistance of feeling even a trace of his glasses. No wonder everything was so blurry!
“Only I need my glasses so I can read the labels on the spice rack,” he added.
His back struck the wall of blades. His cheek smarted, the pain as red as the stain that same cheek had worn earlier that night.
“No glasses!” the Knight hissed, rubbing its hand. “Boy… does not… wear… glasses!”
“Well, some boys don’t,” he said, “but I do. My vision is all blurry without them.”
The Knight stooped over and cocked its head, or at least he thought it did. It stared at him with an inquisitive blur of an eye.
“Stinky,” it hissed.
“Y-You might not like marshmallows, but I think they’re nice. I—I think it’s nice,” he repeated, forcing a little more bravado into his shaking voice, “that I-I’m Ralsei, and Ralsei smells like Ralsei and not… w-whoever else you’re looking for!”
He braced himself for the Knight to put him down again.
He squeezed his eyes shut and waited.
Eventually, he got tired of waiting and opened them. He could just barely see the Knight loping off toward the spot where they’d dropped his scarf. They sat down, their back turned to him, and started ripping the scarf into tinier strips.
While the Knight sulked, Ralsei got down on his paws and knees and started padding along the floor for his glasses. To his relief, he found something glasses-shaped next to a pile of chalky white dust that turned out to be his glasses, though one of the lenses had a spiderweb of cracks running through it that left his left eye blinder than if he didn’t wear glasses at all.
He carefully knocked the shards of glass out of the frame before putting the glasses on. It helped a little, and he could see better if he kept his left eye closed anyway.
The Knight snorted and rose up again, tossing aside a few more thin strips of Ralsei’s scarf before storming toward him. “Boy… no… glasses!”
Ralsei held up his paws. “Wait! I-I mean it. I’d like to go back to Castle Town and get things for you that… smell nice. You can come with me if you’re worried I’ll run off, okay? I have cinnamon and, uh, nutmeg, and… I-I guess if you hate marshmallows, vanilla’s probably too sweet, too?”
The Knight’s eye curved into a smile and it released a heavy, heaving, open-mouthed breath. Something dripped from its mouth, speckling the ground under its knife-sharp feet.
Its hand lashed out, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him off his paws until he and it were at eye-level.
“I go… with you?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Ralsei said. “Just because we’re enemies doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, right?”
It reached out with its other hand and started tickling under his chin. He laughed in spite of himself. He couldn’t breathe. His limbs thrashed on their own, entirely at the Knight’s mercy, as though he were completely under its control.
“Boy… weak… spot…”
It coughed several times in sequence, its chest heaving, and Ralsei realized it was laughing. At him, with him, maybe both, but that was what it was doing. He tried to stop laughing long enough to speak. “Wh-Why d-do you think I—I wear the—the sc-scarf?”
With a satisfied hiss, the Knight tossed him over its shoulder with a hand clamped firmly now on his back. It flexed its shoulderblades and feathery wings sprouted from its back, unfurling to a massive wingspan. Two curls of its new limbs propelled it high into the inky black sky. The pallid cliffs rapidly fell below, shrinking and dwindling away until all of Castle Town filled Ralsei’s line of sight.
The town, its castle, the grand pillar of its fountain, all looked so beautiful from up here that Ralsei forgot how afraid he was.
They didn’t linger, though, and before he could fully take in the sight of his kingdom from a bird’s eye, the Knight touched down on the roof. Its wings curled into its back and vanished. “Spice… rack.”
“It’s downstairs,” Ralsei said.
He immediately regretted it.
The Knight conjured half a dozen blades and cut a perfectly circular hole through the castle from roof to basement and, luckily, no further. A Titan showing up in Castle Town would be worse than apocalyptic.
Laughing to itself, the Knight hovered into the hole. “Cinnamon,” it hissed. “Butterscotch… Pumpkin spice mousse… Fresh from the juice… Fresh from the juice… Don’t get any… on your shuice…”
It set him down on the floor.
“Actually,” he said, “it’s downstairs from here, too.”
The Knight snarled at him, then picked him up and tossed him in the hole.
He fell for a brief moment that lasted too long and too short at the same time and then hit the floor hard enough that his glasses went flying off again.
The Knight let out a screeching laugh and floated down to join him. “Cinnamon,” it hissed.
“It’s right around here,” Ralsei said. “Um, just let me get my glasses again—”
He heard the sound of glass cracking and metal twisting. The Knight lifted one leg and he could just barely make out the blurry sight of what once had been a pair of glasses skewered on their foot.
“Okay,” he said.
He felt his way to the pantry and fumbled around until he found his spice rack and all the little jars tucked away on it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t read any of the labels like this.
“Um, maybe you can pick the cinnamon out of here for me?” he asked the Knight as it drifted into the pantry after him.
The Knight picked up one of the jars and looked at it closely, then popped off the lid and poured at least half the jar into its… mouth? eye? thing.
The Knight couldn’t read, either?
It let out an anguished roar and spiked the jar down on the floor, shattering it and spreading its contents everywhere. “Bad!”
Ralsei crouched down and scooped up a bit of the spice on his fingertip, then licked the white powder off it. His mouth puckered. It tasted sour, but not necessarily in a lemony way, and oddly creamy. “O-Oh, that’s cream of tartar. It’s important for custards and meringues, but I don’t want to smell like it!”
“Why cream… powder?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Bad,” the Knight repreated, scrubbing its orifice with the back of its hand. “Bad cream.”
“Let’s move onto the next one,” he said, picking up another jar. This one had a brownish powder in it, from what he could tell, so it was probably cinnamon.
The Knight picked out a jar of dark dried leaves that was obviously basil or parsley or oregano or cilantro or something like that, and before Ralsei could warn it, it dumped half the jar’s contents into its orifice.
He waited for the predictable results.
Instead, it coughed and started doing a different kind of laugh—hard-edged, but lighter' and bubblier. “Skunky,” it giggled, and it held the jar to its chest and rocked it like a baby. “My… leaves.”
Ralsei reached for the jar. “Um, that’s for savory dishes. I don’t have much experience with them, but you never know when Kris or Susie might want pasta—”
“Mine!” the Knight hissed, then it tossed the rest of the jar into its orifice, glass and all. “My unique… leaves… now…”
“Anyway…” He tried to twist the lid off his jar. It wouldn’t budge. “C-Can you—”
The Knight sliced the jar’s top clean off.
He sighed and dipped his paw inside, then licked it. He was rewarded by the warm, slightly spicy taste of cinnamon, just like he’d hoped. At last, this would appease the Knight! “We did it! We found the cin—”
The Knight snatched the jar out of his paws and sniffed it. Its body quavered like static. “Cinnamon,” it hissed gratefully, and it promptly dug its hand in and pulled out a handful. It trickled through the giant hole in its palm.
“Stupid… hand,” it seethed.
“Um, you can’t just eat cinnamon by the handful,” Ralsei said. “Susie tried the other day and it just soaks up all your saliva so you can’t swallow—”
The Knight upended the jar’s contents over his head and enveloped him in a cloud of cinnamon. Ralsei coughed as the cinnamon coated the inside of his nostrils and his mouth, gagging and hacking. It was even getting in his eyes. It burned everywhere it touched. He tried to no avail to brush the cinnamon out of his fur. All he could do for his eyes was cast a healing spell on himself, and it helped with the burning, at least. But he couldn’t see.
Blinded, he tried to stagger out of the pantry, only for a pair of holey hands to grasp him and pin him against the shelves. He could hear the Knight sniffing him again, could feel puffs of cold and stale air up and down his neck.
“Cinnamon… boy…” the Knight purred in his ear. “My… boy… my… friend…”
It inhaled the scent of his heavily seasoned and spiced fur and pressed him tighter against its hard-edged body. There wasn’t a single part of it that was soft or blunt or warm. It was like being hugged by a gaint black knife, and all the while he was coughing his proverbial lungs out.
But a hug was a hug; the Knight was actually showing him some kind of affection for some reason.
So he returned it and nuzzled what he presumed was the Knight’s cheek. In response, the Knight took another deep whiff of his fur and nuzzled his ear, threading its fingers through his fur. Its hand roved in circles down his chest.
“So… fluffy…” It curled its hard-edged body around him and sank to the floor. He was pinned, but as uncomfortable as the Knight’s body was on top of his, Ralsei somehow couldn’t quite say it was entirely unpleasant, aside from all the sharp edges digging into him and the way his eyes were still burning from the cinnamon.
“Um…” he croaked, slowly regaining his voice, “I… I’m sorry. You miss your cinnamon boy friend a lot, don’t you?”
“Miss him…”
“He must really miss you, too, Knight. If he were here right now, I… I know he’d be really happy to see you. But… don’t dump cinnamon on people just because you miss them, okay—”
The Knight mashed its helmet into Ralsei’s face, forcefully, but not painfully. A weird sucking sound came from its orifice as it lined it up with his mouth, and he realized soon enough that it was trying to kiss him.
“Uh… R-Roaring Knight?” he sputtered, his voice muffled by what was assumedly some sort of attempt at a kiss. His heart pounded in his chest. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. He hadn’t felt this sort of oddly queasy since the night before Kris and Susie came to Castle Town. It wasn’t a bad kind of queasy. It was an exciting kind of queasy, albeit a nauseating kind all the same. “Wh-What are you doing?”
It just clung to him tighter, clumsily nuzzling his face and scraping his cheeks and ears with its antlers.
Somehow, this was the only part of the Knight that was warm.
He didn’t know what to do. Should he kiss it back? How did you kiss an eldritch shadow creature who wasn’t quite a lightner or a darkner? How did you kiss it when all it had was an orifice that was its eye, ear, nose, and mouth all in one that was currently trying to suck your face?
He tried to push it away, blushing so hard his fur had turned pink. “Roaring Knight, I know I smell like your friend now, but—”
The two of them were interrupted by the sound of clanking metal footsteps.
“Oh My Circuits What Is Going On In Here I Was Just Here To Get Some Thermal Paste”
Ralsei looked up at the blurry, tear-stained image of Queen in all her regal translucent blue plastic glory standing over the two of them.
“Is That: The Roaring Knight”
The Knight lifted its head and hissed at her.
“Don’t hurt Queen!” Ralsei blurted out. “She’s… a friend.”
“Ralsei I Had No Idea You Were Such A… Somethings Man,” Queen tittered. “Good For You I Will Now Take: My Leave”
She ran out of the pantry.
The Knight laughed.
Ralsei felt his head clearing and his cheeks stop burning. Had he just… befriended the Knight? What did that mean? How was that even possible?
The Knight let go of Ralsei and sprawled on the floor next to him. “Munchies… Need… munchies…” its rasped, giggling again.
“Um…” Ralsei blinked away the last of his cinnamon-induced tears. “M-Munchies?”
“Good… leaves…”
“Those were… oregano, I think.”
“King… crimson…”
“What?”
“Twenty-first century schizoid man… bwaaaaaah nananaaaa nah naaaaaaah, bwaaaaaah, waaaaaaah, waaaaah….”
The Knight just kept singing to itself, and soon enough, Ralsei found himself humming along even though he didn’t know what it was singing or what it was supposed to sound like. Music came naturally to him, and although the Knight couldn’t seem to stay on pitch very well or enunciate the lyrics, his voice naturally settled into some sort of harmony.
Eventually, the Knight trailed off and started making a different noise.
Ralsei thought it might have been snoring. Had he just… sang it a lullaby? The very thought boggled his mind, but there it was beside him, curled up and sleeping like a cat.
He finally caught his breath for what felt like the first time in forever.
“You know, Roaring Knight,” he said, “I was worried that even if we did manage to change the prophecy, we might just replace it with something worse.”
He laid his paw on the Knight’s head and scratched between its antlers. Its… armor? carapace? had a smooth, hard texture, like matte black laquer. His claws would clack when they drummed on it, but mercifully, the Knight didn’t seem to mind it at all in this state. “But this… doesn’t seem so bad, does it? We don’t have to fight. I can give you your own room here and I can bake all sorts of yummy cakes and pies for you…” He yawned and closed his eyes. “Wouldn’t that sound… nice? To… not start the Roaring?”
He leaned in to kiss the Knight on its forehead.
“Start the Roaring,” the Knight muttered.
Ralsei’s heart sank into his stomach. “N-No, I didn’t mean…”
“Start the Roaring…” Awakened, it lifted itself onto its bladelike feet.
“No,” he said, scurrying after it as it drifted through the castle, “no, no, no one needs to start the Roaring! Things are okay like they are! The world doesn’t need to end!”
“Cinnamon… boy…” The Knight reached down and tousled his fur. “See you… soon.”
“Wait—”
A sweep of the Roaring Knight’s mighty blade, and he was reduced to a pile of fluff.
It was a brand new day, and it was festival time, and there was no better way to start a day like today than a trip to Castle Town. Susie had never been so excited about going to school on a Sunday. The boring lockers and bubblers and posters for the Sadie Hawkmans dance flew past her as she raced for the supply closet, dragging Kris’s half-sleeping body behind her. The yawning black shadow of the dark world within beckoned, and she took a running leap and jumped inside. The darkness clung to her like a second skin, brightening her scales, shaping her boring street clothes into cool spikes and leather.
She hit the ground outside Castle Town with an armored-up Kris at her side. She was so excited. Sure, she couldn’t bring Ralsei to the festival, but the least she could do was have fun with him before it started!
He wasn’t there to greet her and Kris like usual, though.
And on closer inspection, Castle Town’s castle was in kinda rough shape. There was a giant hole in the roof.
Susie and Kris found him looking up at the damage done to the castle from the bottom of the stairs leading to the front gates. “Dude,” she asked, “what happened last night?”
“Oh,” Ralsei said without turning around to face them. “Just some… construction work.” His voice was low and hoarse.
“Are you… alright?”
“I’ll be fine, Susie.” He turned around and offered her a pained smile. “I just… had my heart broken, that’s all.”
Susie tallied up all of the darkners she knew of who would be that cruel to Ralsei. None of them seemed his type, and he didn’t seem any of theirs. “Huh? Who dumped you? I’ll kick their ass!”
A sad little laugh came out of him. If Susie knew the word ‘melancholic,’ that would have been how she would have described it. “Yes, Susie… it seems you will.”