??? A.S.
Britannia — Golden Age of Seekers
A woman screamed, and it was the kind of scream that made men move before they had time to think.
The knights stationed in the town of Shèvadun turned as one, hands already finding reins and steel. Sir Edward broke into a run first, shoving past townsfolk and carts toward the woman collapsed near the well. He dropped to a knee in front of her.
"What happened?"
She tried to answer. Nothing came out but sobbing, her whole body shaking so badly she could barely lift her arm — but she managed it, pointing toward the dark line of trees outside town.
Then they heard it. A child, screaming, farther off now.
Edward was moving before the sound finished echoing.
"Mount up!"
His knights were already swinging into their saddles. Edward kicked forward and tore down the road toward the woods with the others close behind, the child's scream still ringing in his ears.
"I'm coming for you!" he shouted into the trees. "Hold on!"
They crashed into the forest at a dead run. Branches slapped armor, roots rose crooked out of the dark earth, and the horses fought the rough ground as the knights pushed them hard between the trunks. The screaming came in bursts now — closer, then farther, somewhere between the trees — tangled with the sound of something else moving fast through the brush. Edward caught it in pieces: twigs snapping, brush shifting, something big weaving through the dark ahead of them.
Then, all at once, nothing. Silence dropped over the woods like a blanket, and the horses slowed hard against it.
"Shit," Gawain spat. "We lost them."
Edward was already off his horse before it had fully settled, scanning the trees, the ground, every broken twig and disturbed patch of earth. Then he crouched.
Tracks. Not human — the shape of them alone was wrong enough to send a cold line down the spine of every man behind him. One knight muttered a prayer under his breath. Another swallowed too loudly.
Edward stood and looked at them, one by one. "Calm yourselves." Nobody answered. "Imagine if this was one of our own kids."
That landed. The fear didn't leave their faces, but it changed shape — got harder, sharper, something they could use instead of something that used them. Gawain nodded once, and the others straightened with him.
"We follow," Edward said, and pointed ahead.
The prints led them deeper into the woods before vanishing at the mouth of a small cave, half-swallowed by rock and bramble. The smell reached them before the dark did — rot, old blood, wet stone, and something fouler underneath, sweet and dead at once. Two men gagged on the spot. A third turned away and was sick into the brush.
Gawain covered his mouth with the back of his hand. "It smells of death and the unliving."
Edward stared into the black mouth of the cave and drew a breath through his nose anyway. "Well. Death it is."
He turned sharply. "Six of you stay out here — watch the horses, watch the tree line, no one drifts off alone." He pointed at Gawain and the rest. "You, him, and six more. With me."
No one argued. Edward raised a hand, gathered fire in his palm, and let it snap into the head of a torch he'd pulled from the wall by the entrance. The light came alive in a quick orange flare.
"Move."
The deeper they went, the worse the smell got — thick enough to sit on the tongue, thick enough that breathing through the mouth only made it worse. Water dripped from the ceiling in slow, fat taps. Boots scraped over stone and over softer things nobody wanted to think too hard about.
Then one knight stepped wrong and plunged knee-deep into what looked, at a glance, like a shallow pool. He cursed and lurched sideways; two men grabbed him and hauled him out. When he lowered his torch to see what he'd stepped in, he went completely still.
Edward looked, and the cave changed around him.
Bodies. Children's bodies — mostly bone now, some in pieces, some with meat still clinging where the flesh hadn't finished its work. Some small enough that no man in that cave could hold his gaze on them for long without something inside him breaking loose. The pool wasn't water. It was blood — old, thick, gone dark and half-clotted where rainwater from the ceiling had thinned it over time into a foul, sticky swamp of human death.
Gawain staggered back and was sick against the wall. Two more followed him. When he finally wiped his mouth, his voice came out cracked with rage.
"Who does this to children? We must be hunting a demon itself — no mortal could do this."
Edward didn't look away from the bones. "Steel your souls." The men forced themselves quiet around him. "If it's a demon, it can smell fear. I only brought fearless knights with me." He turned, eyes hard in the torchlight. "I didn't bring cowards. And I'm not backing down — nor will I let some Seeker make Britannia's knights look bad in the doing of it."
That did it. Gawain straightened, shame and fury burning together across his face. "Sorry. I got shook for a second." He wiped his mouth again and reached for his weapon. "Now I want vengeance."
Edward smirked. "That sounds more like you."
They pushed on, deeper, through tunnels that twisted in ugly, natural turns, opening and narrowing without any logic to follow. Torchlight threw long shadows that made every bend in the rock look occupied.
Then the light caught movement — a silhouette, big and wrong, at the edge of the glow, gone again before anyone could be sure they'd seen it.
Edward caught it first. "There!"
They broke into a run, boots scraping stone, shoulders clipping the narrow walls, torchlight lurching wildly as whatever moved ahead of them tore through the tunnels like it had memorized every turn. Then the passage opened into a larger chamber — a lair. Bones everywhere, in piles big and small, some gnawed clean, some cracked open for whatever had been inside.
Edward lifted his torch higher. "This must be the creature's lair."
Then he saw them. Children. Alive. Huddled together in one corner. He was already moving toward them when one of the girls screamed.
"Look out — behind you!"
He turned. Too late.
A massive black shape burst from the dark and closed on two knights before the chamber had even registered what was happening. One man's face went slack in its grip; the other's neck snapped with a sound like a branch giving way in wet weather. The thing fled again into another tunnel mouth before anyone could answer it.
"Defensive formation!" Edward's voice cracked through the panic, and the remaining knights snapped into it without hesitation — steel up, torches higher, the children pushed behind the line.
Edward dropped into a crouch near them, trying to keep his voice steady without ever taking his eyes off the tunnel mouths.
"Who was taken from town?"
The same girl, still shaking, pointed at herself. "Me. I was doing washing with my grandma and mom, and then — then a black beast came out of nowhere and grabbed me."
While she spoke, Edward looked over the rest of them. Too thin. Too weak. Sunken eyes, dry lips — they'd been down here for days, some longer, long enough to watch others taken and never come back. That changed the math of everything. He couldn't move them all quickly. He couldn't afford to stay, either.
A low snarl rolled out of one of the tunnels, and every knight turned toward it.
It stepped out slowly, and at first all they could make out was the shape — fifteen feet of it, black fur matted with blood, a knight hanging limp from its jaws by the neck, yellow eyes burning somewhere above all of it. Then the torchlight found it properly, and the whole chamber seemed to drop ten degrees.
It was a wolf built into the rough shape of a man. Fifteen feet of black fur and roped muscle, fangs like drawn knives, shoulders too broad and arms too long, and yet it stood upright with a balance that made it worse than any natural beast could have been. Its eyes held something too much like intelligence for comfort.
Gawain's face twisted. "Unhand my friend."
The knight in its jaws twitched, weakly, once.
Edward stepped in front of his men. "Gawain. Get the kids out."
Gawain rounded on him. "I'm not leaving you with—"
"You are." Edward didn't blink. "Take the children, take as many men as you need. I'll hold it here and kill it, if the gods still like me."
Gawain wanted to argue — Edward could see the shape of it forming behind his eyes — but he looked back at the children instead and swallowed it whole. He nodded. "Good luck."
Edward grinned and pulled his arming sword free, the aura-refined steel catching torchlight along its fuller.
Lionheart.
"We Lancasters don't need luck," he said. "Just our hearts and our good looks."
A few of the men almost laughed, despite everything.
He fed aura into the blade, then fire behind it. "Fire Muti: Fire Iron." Flame ran the length of the metal, bright and hot enough that even the beast gave a short step back. Edward took the opening.
"Go!" He pointed with the burning sword. "Take as many as you can carry, keep close whoever can still walk or run — I'll bring out the rest when I'm done in here."
The knights moved fast. The beast launched after them with terrible speed, and Edward met it head-on.
"Martial Muti: Knight's Step."
He closed the distance in a burst of aura and steel, and the clash shook the chamber — fire and steel against fangs and claws, all of it crashing together in one violent knot while Gawain and the others dragged children back through the tunnels. As they fled the maze, all they could hear behind them were Edward's war cries and the beast's answering roar, something out of the old stories of Ragnar, King of Wolves.
Gawain kept moving, but in his head he said it anyway: *Be careful, Ed. You've got this.*
Back in the lair, Edward's sword and the beast's claws locked hard against each other — for one second, they held. Then the beast overpowered him and flung him bodily across the chamber. He hit the wall hard enough to blow stone dust into the air.
The beast turned toward the tunnels. Toward the children. Toward the escape.
Edward coughed through the dust, forced air back into his chest, and slashed blind through the smoke. "Fire Muti: X Burner!" Two arcs of fire cut the chamber. The beast's senses caught the first and it dodged clean — but the second grazed it, and it jumped back snarling, smoke rising off singed fur.
Edward came out of the dust with Lionheart still burning, planting himself between the beast and the tunnel mouths. It lunged again.
"Martial Muti: Knight's Step."
He dashed clear at the last possible moment, and the beast crashed into a pile of bones instead, sending skulls and ribs scattering across the stone. Edward conjured fire into his palm and tightened it down until it sharpened into a point.
"Fire Muti: Fire Spear."
He hurled it. The spear struck the bone pile and detonated in a burst of flame, throwing debris and broken remains in every direction. Edward grinned through blood and smoke.
"That's a Britannia special for you, demon."
He ran back to the surviving children and checked them fast. Still breathing. Still terrified. Still here — that would have to be enough for now. He pulled a summoning scroll from his coat, cut his palm across it, and signed his name into the seal.
"Contract Summon: The White Pack."
Five white war dogs burst into the chamber in flashes of summoned aura — veterans, each near six feet at the shoulder, armored and scarred from old campaigns, some carrying wounds that had never quite healed right. Their leader, Golidog, wore a patch over one eye and scars across half his body like a map of every fight he'd survived.
Edward pointed at the children. "Get them out. Carry the weakest. Move!"
The pack obeyed instantly, lowering themselves so the children could be lifted and dragged onto their backs. Behind Edward, the rubble he'd buried the beast under shifted — a hand burst free of it, and the beast's roar tore through the tunnels and out into the woods above, loud enough that Gawain and the waiting knights outside felt their blood go cold just hearing it.
Inside, Edward shouted the pack toward the exit. They turned to go.
Golidog didn't.
He stood beside Edward instead, fur already flecked with blood, lips peeled back in a growl. The beast lunged — and Golidog met it head-on, claws and bites and torn fur and flying blood, a brutal, animal collision. The beast tore chunks from Golidog's white coat and stained it red, but the old war dog had known pain longer than most men knew discipline, and he stayed locked in the thing's face, jaws set, body driving forward.
Edward moved in behind it. "Martial Muti: A Knight's Dance." He flashed around the beast with footwork too fast to track cleanly, slicing every exposed line he could find, his swordplay staying noble and compact even as every hit landed like dropped stone.
Then the beast caught him — mid-air, by the leg — and slammed him into the ground, then into the wall. The impact very nearly took his consciousness with it. As the beast raised him again, ready to finish the job, the world began narrowing at the edges.
*I'm about to die. Shit. If I die here, all of this means nothing.*
*No.*
*Soul — sharpen and rush me through this. I'll show you the secret technique Master Elric taught me.*
Half-conscious, half-broken, he forced his fingers into a sign and snapped his hand toward the beast's face.
"Fire Art: C4!"
He snapped his fingers, and the explosion came immediately. Golidog caught him out of the air and ran, flame filling the chamber behind them in one brutal detonation, a roaring wall of heat chasing them through every turn of the maze. Edward rode half-conscious over the dog's back as a small light appeared ahead — the exit. Golidog pushed harder, then harder still, and threw himself out of the cave mouth just as the explosion tore free behind them in a column of fire.
Edward looked back at the smoking entrance and laughed, weak and disbelieving. "By the gods... I did it. Hah... I did it."
Then his smile faded.
Something was wrong. The children were there. The Pack was there. But no knights.
He staggered toward the girl from town. "What happened? Where are my men?"
She was shaking too hard to stand straight. "There was another one."
"Another what?"
Her answer came out like she hated the shape of it in her mouth. "Vargrolf."
Edward's blood went cold. "Another?"
He hauled himself onto his horse, hurt and bleeding but not empty enough yet to stop, left Golidog and the Pack to guard the children, and kicked off in the direction she'd pointed. He hadn't gone far before he found blood smeared down the side of a tree. He dismounted, followed the trail, and found one of his knights dying in the brush.
He rushed to him and tried to bind the wound, but the man was already leaving. All he could manage was one shaking hand, lifted, pointing.
"Thank you... Sir Lancaster..."
Then he was gone. Edward closed the man's eyes and moved on.
Farther ahead he found the battle — Gawain at the front, two more knights already dead, the rest fighting under him, battered and running on nothing but will. In front of them stood the second Vargrolf, more wolf than man this time, lower and broader through the body, maybe ten feet at full height but built heavier, faster-looking, black murder given muscle and fur.
It launched at Gawain and the others, and Edward came in on horseback at full speed, drawing Lionheart and igniting it with whatever Fire Muti he had left, pouring the last of his aura into the horse beneath him, forcing the animal past its own limits. All the fire in him condensed into the blade.
"Fire Muti: Sun Bane."
The steel burned red. As he closed the distance, one thought hammered through everything else: *I have one shot. I can't miss.*
Right before the beast reached Gawain, Edward leapt from the saddle.
"Ed — Edward!" Gawain shouted, stunned.
Edward came down like a falling execution. "Martial Muti: Head Cleaver!" He put everything he had left into the strike, aiming for the skull. At the last instant the beast shifted — not enough. The blade tore deep through the side of its head and neck, spraying blood across the clearing, but it still got a swipe in on the way down. Edward went flying.
Gawain caught him with Knight's Step, and the impact still threw them both sideways into a tree. Edward was barely breathing when he managed, "Nice catch, G."
Gawain smirked, just once. Then a knight shouted, "It's getting back up, Sir!"
Gawain hauled Edward to his feet. "What's the plan? You're out of aura — I can see it — and me and the lads can't hold like you can. We need something now if we're living through this."
Edward let out a tired breath that might have been a laugh. "I've got nothing, honestly. I'm exhausted." He looked at the beast dragging itself upright through blood and dirt. "But we can't let it leave here."
He called the men into formation and walked to the front of it, sword still in hand, thinking: *By the gods — who'd have thought I'd die in the forest of Shèvadun? I'd have liked one more of Lady Anne's dinners. Told her this story myself. But not now. Not while I've still got men and kids to protect. Soul — sharpen and rush me through this.*
His aura barely flared. Behind him, Gawain and the others released theirs too, and the clearing shuddered under the weight of it, wind kicking up around them all.
The beast roared, and charged.
Edward raised his sword. "Here it comes. Steel yourselves for the storm."
The creature became a black blur — too fast, too close — and right before it reached the formation, a cloaked figure stepped between them and stopped its claw with a single finger.
Aura ran through that finger, steady, effortless. The Vargrolf pushed against it and couldn't move him an inch.
The figure turned, smirking over one shoulder.
"Did anyone order a Seeker?"
Edward's eyes filled before he could stop them. A Seeker. By the gods, an actual Seeker. He very nearly laughed from the relief of it.
"Thank you," he said. "I did. Thank you, sir Seeker."