Of The Knight's Love and Lament

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Ela **** herself to take deep, even breaths as she rested at the foot of her driveway. Her stomach tightened slightly, almost making her regret that final doughnut she’d had about half an hour ago. She smiled dryly as she winced - almost. Silently, she admitted that she should have taken her own advice about not doing too much physical activity right after eating.

The blonde focused again on her core, taking another set of measured breaths to regain her composure before walking up to her door.

With a quick tap of her hand, the magic locks disabled themselves for a second, allowing her in. The fresh, cool air of her home was nice and refreshing compared to the outside, now that the sun had truly begun to shine down on Springfield. She shivered ever so slightly - she kept her house a little colder than John did, since she preferred temperatures closer to what she’d known in Europe’s winter time.

She shuddered once more as she shut the door behind her. The sun wasn’t the only warmth that she was missing. For a second, Ela ran her fingers over her palm, remembering the hand that had been there earlier. The Gamer’s palm had been much softer than her own, with none of the rough calluses that she’d picked up from her years with the Order. Even still, it had been comforting to have at her side.

The memory of that brought a softer, happier smile to her face.

It had been… even nicer than she’d expected to finally get to connect with someone again - to allow her guard down for a time. The Bookworm Knight had not quite realized just how much she’d been craving that closeness, nor how much its absence had been affecting her. With a wistful sigh, she paused to take her jacket off, hanging it up and moving into her living room.

As she sat down on her couch to let her feet rest, the knight’s thoughts drifted back to her companion again - her new boyfriend, she remembered with a smile.

The blonde shrugged, allowing the minor focus she’d been paying to pouring mana into her suit to finally dissipate. The mass of woven sinew and cloth slowly wilted around her as the last of her life energy left it, leaving naught but the dead weight upon her. Reaching around behind herself, she placed two fingers on the upper spinal plates, willing the magic that held the seams on her suit apart. She exhaled heavily, rolling her shoulders as she shrugged off the heavy fibers of her armor. Groaning, the blonde shivered slightly as the cool air met her now bare skin.

Running one hand through her hair, she again relaxed back against the couch and closed her eyes.

As her mind drifted off, she found herself again thinking about her morning, or rather, the man she’d spent it with.

To call John Newman a bit of an anomaly in the Abyss was an understatement. If the Order’s sage was to be believed, then he was the first in more than a thousand years that Lady Gaia had chosen to bless. No doubt, in time, there would be a generation of theologians and seers that would spend their lives debating the circumstances of his appearance. None of that really mattered to her though.

The Gamer had made his impression on her long before she’d known he had any connection to the Goddess that ruled over creation.

At first, it had simply been John’s joy and wonder as he discovered spellcraft that had caught her attention. Being a Late Bloomer, he had a unique perspective on magic and the Abyss as a whole. So many things that were commonplace to her had been new and special to him, and she’d enjoyed getting to watch him discover how wide the world really was. It was much more than that now though.

He was earnest and kind, and still filled with joy and optimism. There was a light in his eyes that she saw only rarely these days in the Abyss. She’d known many good men and women during her time in the Order, but time and trauma in the world of magic had a way of blunting that spark within them. She hoped that the same fate would not befall the cute nerd she’d only just gotten to know.

Ela frowned, a cold pit of melancholy carving its way into her stomach as bitter memories surfaced again.

’I have seen that happen up close before,’ she thought, standing and walking over to her television stand. Gently, she picked up the long picture frame resting atop it, her eyes a thousand miles away as she looked at her past self and the woman at her side. ’...I wonder where you are now…’

Halfway Across the World

Thunk.

Thunk.

THUNK.

Heavy metal footfalls echoed off a hardwood floor as a brunette walked outside to watch the sun set. She slid a glass door closed behind her, stepping out onto a wooden deck, twirling a glowing scalpel between her fingers. The woman’s outfit was a mess of woven and nonwoven sinews, tethering together faintly humming metal plates.

The bottom half was more finished than the top, with a ratty pair of jeans covering the completed sections of interconnected muscle and metal. The top was little more than a framework, with a spine of bone running up her back and little more beyond that. Only a faded pink bathrobe overtop protected her modesty.

The clang of her plated boots against the floor was muted by the soft wood as the brown-haired woman walked over to the deck’s railing, leaning forward to gaze at the last gasps of orange and purple against the sky.

Alyxandra Konstantinidis took a second to look out at her yard as the day ended, bouncing one of her armored feet on the planks behind her, a soft rattle of metal resounding as her armor scraped against itself. Sighing, she backed up a step and knelt down, prying the scalpel between the plates of her suit and into the muscle fibers below. With a few quick swipes, she adjusted the tension in the soft parts underneath.

She stood back up and tapped her foot again, nodding appreciatively as the metal stayed in place this time.

Spinning the scalpel back around her fingers again, she slid it into a case on her hip and turned back to the setting sun. The last of the oranges were beginning to bleed out of the sky as the purples and blues of night began to win the war of color. She smiled as she spotted the first stars poking through the veil of clouds on the horizon. This was her favorite time of day.

Alyx pulled out her phone to check her messages one more time as she stepped down from her deck and into the conservation area of her yard below. She tucked the device back into her breast pocket and let the voicemail ring, slowly, as she strode over to a pond in the corner. Ducks and koi fish swam peacefully alongside each other, without a care in the world. She knelt down on the edge of the water, letting her boots sink slightly into the soft soil as she waited to be seen.

“YOU HAVE THREE UNHEARD MESSAGES,” her phone called out, breaking the serenity of the moment. The brunette sighed, rolling her eyes as she let the first recording play - work, no doubt.

“FIRST UNHEARD MESSAGE,” the device blared, before switching to the voice of an asian woman. “Hey Alyx, we’ve got a sale inquiry from the Hunters in Japan. Some kind of flying kaiju, brought down in the islands around Guam. They claim it was ‘eating thunderstorms,’or something along those lines.”

Alyx smiled. The noise from her phone had finally drawn attention to her, and the ducklings were quacking happily as a group of them made their way over to her.

“Assuming that’s true, it sounds like it could fill out the muscle requirements of that new model you’re working on,” the message continued. “Lemme know by morning and I can try to pencil us in to inspect the corpse next week.”

The brunette hummed. Considering the sorry state of the suit she was wearing, it would be nice to finally have it finished. She made a mental note to get back to her team in the morning, then turned her attention to the cute animals that had finally come to greet her. Four fluffy white ducklings had bravely made their way over to her in search of scratches. She ran her hands through their feathers, and was met with contented quacks in kind.

“There you are, Timmy,” she said, finding a little bundle of green sleeping on the back of the frontmost duck. “I thought you must have gotten lost out here.”

Upon the front duckling’s back was a very small animal that the brunette scooped up into her palm. It was, in fact, a tiny dinosaur-like creature, with four stubby legs and a proportionally very long neck, all so remarkably small that it was dwarfed by even her medium-sized hands. Though she knew that it was biologically inaccurate, the tiny-saurus had always reminded her of the brontosauri she’d read about in her youth, if only they’d been shrunk a thousand-fold.

With a single finger, she gently scratched the back of the creature’s head, trying to rouse him from his nap. “Timmyyyy… Come on, it’s time for dinner.”

The dinosaur-monster refused to budge, continuing to snooze in Alyx’s palm as her phone moved on.

“SECOND UNHEARD MESSAGE,” her phone shouted, continuing this time in an older man’s voice. “Alyxandra, your new system has finished crunching the data on the beast’s appearances. It looks like you were right that it’s moved into the Pacific.”

The brunette smiled dryly as she let her duckling friends return to splashing around in the pond. ’Of course I’m right, but that’s only step one.’

“We can start running the predictive model tomorrow. With any luck, we might finally be within reach of finding that monster.”

’Finally…’ she thought, turning to walk back towards her house. A dozen emotions flashed across her face as she thought about that possibility. She’d spent more than a year trying to track down the monster that had torn her life in half. To finally have the end at hand… She swallowed hard, and tried not to allow herself to get too excited. This wasn’t the first time they’d thought they were close.

With a shake of her head, she resolved to sleep on the matter.

Pausing the automated voicemail on her phone, she turned her attention back to the small dinosaur that was still happily asleep in her palm. Alyx chuckled as softly as she could, watching her tiny friend’s chest rise and fall ever-so-slightly as he napped.

As she took the steps back onto her deck, she brought her hand up so that she could whisper at him. “Hey, Timmy, I have pancakes for you.”

That finally got his attention. The tinysaurus’ little eyes excitedly blinked themselves open as he wiggled around until he was standing on her hand. The creature bounced gently up and down, shaking his head happily back and forth. “Mrrawp?”

Alyx smiled, patting the top of his head with a single finger. “Yes, of course, I got your favorite for dinner.”

Timmy stretched up to affectionately wrap his long neck around her finger, cooing gently. Alyx melted a little, and brought him up to her check, cuddling him against her face as she reached to slide open the glass door and head inside. She took a moment to wipe her boots on a mat and clean her tiny companion up with a towel before moving over to a table where she’d set out dinner for the two of them.

As he wiggled with excitement, Alyx plopped Timmy directly on top of a pancake, letting him slide around happily on the butter and syrup for a moment before he leaned down to begin eating. The brunette rested her head on her hand, watching her adorable little companion take the biggest bites he could of pancake (which was not very much).

Eventually, she **** herself to turn to the food she’d gotten for herself, a simple bowl of salad with grilled chicken. As the pair ate, Alyx pulled her phone out to set it next to her, letting the final message play.

“THIRD UNHEARD MESSAGE,” it began, before shifting to a lighter, feminine voice, one that Alyx recognized as an information broker she’d befriended over the last couple months. “Alyx, I don’t know where you’ve been for the last twelve hours, but I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for most of ‘em.”

Immediately, Alyx could tell that something was wrong. The woman on the other end was usually light and bubbly, but her message this time was flat and serious.

“Listen, I don’t have all the details, but something’s happened in Springfield.”

Alyx blinked, mind racing immediately. There was only one reason that she’d be calling her about events in Springfield.

“There was an attack on the Shield Warden. I don’t have all the details, but someone set an ambush for her - almost killed her!” The woman on the other end took a breath, and an eternity passed in the engineer’s mind as she dreaded the rest of the message. “Order’s trying to keep details from getting out, but I know one thing for sure - Ela was caught in the middle.”

Alyx dropped her fork, which clattered loudly against her dish, startling her green friend, who tilted his head with concern. What was going on? As far as she was aware, Ela hadn’t even rejoined the Order, not for any active service at least. How had she gotten caught up in an attack on the Warden herself?

“Call me - this one’s on the house.”

Alyxandra was on her feet before the sentence was over, the message dismissed and her phone ringing as she called the other woman back. Timmy watched in confusion as his guardian stomped from the room in a panic, leaving him alone with his pancakes.

“Mrrawp..?”

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