There came across the ruined wall a knight of endless watch, who by enchantment had stood as still as stone for numberless days and nights, as rock warmed, cooled and cracked and crumbled around him as he waited for one to step across his runic boundary, at which he would draw his black blade hissing from its sheath, and advance upon the intruder with oaths spoken through his visor blacker than all his nights alone.
Decided to write something around this:
Gawain stood.
Something was
drip.
Drip.
Dripping behind him. For how long? Fifty years, a hundred? He couldn't be sure. Indeed, years were obsolete. The drip had become his way of telling time. One thousand eight hundred and ninety nine drips. One thousand nine hundred drips. On until the sun set in front of him, burning his lidless eyes, blinding him daily. Then he would start again.
He hated that sun. Vaguely, so vaguely that it seemed like a memory made of mist, he remembered a past when that had not been so. Stretching his memory - his imagination? - he saw a pair of brown eyes, felt a pair of spectral hands on his head. He wondered at that, at who she was. Now, when the pregnant clouds rolled down from the Rim Mountains and blocked the light, he blessed them. Though the sound of the rain did interrupt his careful tabulation of time.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Gawain stood.
In the distance, his eyes saw a speck. People coming. If he could have frowned, he would; the ruins of Tol Daren had not seen visitors in.... so long that his mind rebounded at the thought. It grew larger, and larger. Three hundred thousand drips later, they were close enough for him to see the lumbering beasts, the grey-beard at the front with his walking staff. It was a caravan, tired-looking women and children strung out in a line with hard-faced men to the sides. The old man weaved erratically in front of them all. The cut of their clothes was alien to him, but fashion, as he well knew, changed. His own set of obsidian armour likely belonged in one of their museums.
The old man stopped a few paces from Gawain, and drew a long draught from the flask at his side. His eyes ranged over the ruined buildings, the symbols etched clearly into the ground despite the grinding of the years. Gawain knew what they said. Warning, they cried. Danger. Do not cross. The old man's face lit up. The caravan caught up to him, and one of the women stepped forward with a babe-in-arms.
Grey beard gestured expansively in front of him. "Behold, Veronica! I have delivered our people from the scourge of the Daidier... Dayder..."
"Derdimon," the woman said.
"Yes! The Derdimune. This is the capital of Visothie. We'll not be followed." He spat to the side. "Superstitious fools."
The others were gathering now, and one of the men pointed to the symbols cut into the ground.
"Maybe there's something to the rumours... look at those. They don't look like nothing but superstition, Prophet."
"Nonsense! Listen, when I was your age, I explored ruins for a living. They all have curses! And I'm perfectly alright."
The others shuffled their feet, and the 'Prophet' rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion. Gawain could smell him, now. Sour berries and travel sweat. One of the children ran forward, thin beneath his simple clothes but with a light of curiosity in his eyes.
"P...prophet? Is that a real Knight?" A shaking finger was pointed at Gawain, and the Prophet's eyes became briefly grim. He took another long pull from his flask, and when it lowered his eyes were full of optimism once more.
"No, Little One. It's a statue of the Mad Prince. It's said he slaughtered the entire city single-handedly, slaying innocents in their beds. It's said his ghost walks the haunted streets with flames in its eyes and murder in its incorporeal heart." He hiccuped, and trailed to a stop. The women in the crowd were glaring at him. It took three drips for him to realise, and when he did he scowled.
"Superstition," he said.
He stepped across the boundary.
Gawain's muscles moved, not stiff as he would have expected. Freely. Limber. Powered by ancient magic. His sword cleared its sheath with a sibilant whisper, soft as a breeze in grass. It was black obsidian. When the Prophet's head tumbled from his shoulders, it was red.
When Gawain spoke, though, his voice creaked like an old man's. They were not even his words, though they would not know that. A sorcerer, long dead, speaking in a forbidden language. Speaking again the spell which would bind Gawain, root him to the earth like a common statue. He would not have long. If any got past to the City Centre, the sorcerer would become.... less dead. He remembered long-gone spoken oaths and recited them where the sorcerer's incantation lulled.
I will defend the city.
I will seal the tomb.
My sentinel will be eternal,
The Mage will know his doom.
Sword will not break
Nor armour rust
Head will not bow
Nor turn to dust
'Til it is done
And Mage is dead.
It no longer bothered him that the words had long since lost their meaning to him. He knew what they meant in spirit. Stand and kill whoever tried to get into the city. The sorcerer could not be allowed to wake. He strained against the spell that poured from his own lips.
It was over before he realised it was, and they all lay before him dead. Two hundred people, maybe more. A village seeking refuge in all the wrong places. He barely had time to return to his place before the sorcerer's curse caught him fully in its snare once more. In front of him, the woman named Veronica stared sightlessly at the damned sun. Her eyes, he noticed, were brown.
Behind him, the drips continued. But slightly different, now.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
His sword, clenched in his hand and freed of its sheath, dripped red onto the thirsty runes at his feet.