Nahte: Sorry for the long no-updatedness....T.T Me has encountered a writer's block!! (dun dun dunnnnn...)
Mel (check my profile if you want to know who she is): You humans are SO weird.
Cricket: I told you so! But you didn't listen! Geez, Greek gods....
Mel: (rolls her eyes and flicks him out of the fic)
Cricket: O.O What did I do?!?!
Nahte: Now for the disclaimers:
Disclaimers: Does the word FAN-fiction ring a bell?
p.s. TT They took out the star symbols and stuff so I have to use the ugly brackets instead of the cute little things....TT The number thing looks hairy....
p.p.s. By the way, I'm planning to change my name to Nahte...what do you guys think?
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A Knight's Duty
Ch 3—The Battle With the Tamer—part 1
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There it was again.
The eerie sound....echoing through the battlefield. I looked over at Shadii, and to my great surprise, he looked frightened. He was the kind of guy who never lost his cool, even if his eyebrow was being burnt off.
But this time, however, the sound was rather....musical.
"Brace yourself, Seto Kaiba!" Shadii said suddenly as the Tamer began to draw a glowing magic circle in front of him. "That is the mark of the summoning magic!!"
"Summoning magic—for what?!" I demanded, but before Shadii could answer, I had received it instead from the Tamer himself. My eyes widened to their full extent as wolfish looking creatures sprang out from the magic circle, racing toward our side. The creatures had the body of a wolf with red eyes and a third eye planted in the middle of their forehead. Their fangs were unusually long and were white, showing clearly against their dark gray coats. Their claws were made of iron, and the hair that covered their three tails were made of some kind of metal as well. They weren't as large as normal wolves, but there were tens of them, possibly hundreds.
"They're demons!" I cried, noticing their demonic signs on their backs.
"Yes," Shadii whispered, his eyes looking sad. "Heartless demons. Our warriors will suffer." And just as he predicted, they did. The wolf demons, with their red tongues hanging out of their mouth, attacked the archers mercilessly, their lips set into cruel smiles. They tore at my warriors—broke their bones—ate at their flesh and gnawed at their body—murdered them, slaughtered them!! As I looked down at the wall in helplessness, that was when I spotted Ignatio down there, trying to encourage the warriors to fight off the demons. At first, I was too surprised to speak, but as I found my voice, I yelled at him to get the hell out of there.
"No, Sir Kaiba!" came the reply through the roaring of the monsters and the remaining warriors who were taking down at least some of the cruel monstrosities. "I have served the royal family of Egyptus since my birth, and I will go down serving them!"
"Ignatio, get back here!" Hell, he may be annoying—but—I had rather admired him, admired him for his strengths—not physical, but mental. "King...the King's going to kill me!!" The tiny figure of the servant-boy merely waved his hand at me as he charged at the pack of the demonic wolves upon a beautiful white horse, standing out against the redness of the environment.
"Ignatio....foolish boy," Shadii said in a sad tone, his eyes hidden under the hood of his cloak now.
"He can't win the fight—stop him!" I said frantically, glaring at him.
"I cannot," he said simply. "It is his decision. It is not up to me to stop him." I turned away, frustrated and angry at both Shadii and myself.
"Ignatio—" I gasped as one of the demon wolves headed for him. He—he was going to get killed! "Move out of the way! Forget about the war, forget about this stupid battle, just move!!" Either he had not heard me, or he had heard me but chose to go on, as he rode on toward the Tamer while wolves from every possible direction attacked him. He was an excellent horse rider, I'll give him that much...but this was still too dangerous for him. A blitzkrieg such as this, he could not, and will not survive!
"IGNATIO!!!" I yelled as one of the minions of the Tamer finally got to Ignatio and attacked both the horse and its rider. The horse's pure, white coat was immediately stained with his crimson blood as one of the larger demon wolves literally tore his arm out. He fell from the horse, clutching at his injured stump of an arm, and the horse fell beside its owner, bathed in red liquid as well. I would have jumped down from the fortress wall and ran to his side if it weren't for Shadii's firm grip on my arm, preventing me from doing anything stupid.
"Let me go, dammit! I have to help him!" I cried in a fit of hysteria. "I can still save him—get the hell away from me!!" A single drop of hot tear ran down my cheek, but I did not know whether it was a tear of grief or of frustration and anger.
"I have to save him! I won't let them violate him like this!!" I screamed, blinded by fury and rage as I watched helplessly as the wolves tore at Ignatio, the brave, valiant servant's carcass, savoring the taste of the victim that they had just fell, Shadii's grip on my arm as firm as ever.
"It is over, Seto Kaiba," he said, his voice strangely strained. "You cannot help him, all you can do is revenge his bravery—look, the Tamer's retreating—we must've done enough damage—look—oh, will you stop struggling?!" he finally said with a steely edge to his voice.
"It is over, alright?! You cannot bring him back, you'll only get yourself killed! The Tamer's retreating, and I have figured out a strategy that might be able to defeat them! Dear Ra, snap out of it!" he said heatedly, giving a small shake to my arms. I was barely listening to him as felt suddenly weak, tired, and scared for the first time, the death of a brave servant finally registering into my brain. "I understand why you are like this, but stop this! Grieving will get you nowhere—"
"You don't understand anything!" I suddenly yelled, tearing my arm out of his grip. My eyes were narrowed angrily as I glared at the fellow general. He didn't understand—he didn't! I have known Ignatio for a while—Shadii didn't know him like I did—what a smug little fucker he was, pretending as if he understood my pain! "You know nothing about him, or me, or how it feels when someone close to you dies, you have no friends! You don't—"
"Yes, I do," Shadii whispered suddenly, cutting me off in mid-sentence. "I have....lost my wife and my children to them." My body suddenly went cold and numb as he began to tell his tragic tale.
"I was away in another kingdom," he said, not paying attention to the retreating figures of Man Slayer warriors or the demonic wolves. "I was on a spy mission, and I gone back to Egyptus to report to the king—that's when the Man Slayers attacked the kingdom, and destroyed everything in it.....my wife, and my two little children—they died, painfully, as I heard from one of the survivors of the massacre—they didn't know the Man Slayers' strategies, they kill everyone who does—my wife was raped, and my children, slaughtered before her very eyes—" he choked suddenly and turned his face away from him, leaving me to look at his back.
"—and I didn't even get to say goodbye to her properly, we were engaged in a small fight because she was mad at me for accepting the king's crazy missions...but I loved her dearly, and it broke my heart....and I vowed from that time, never to love again...never to feel human emotions again.... he finished, his voice barely heard over the rustles of the wind carrying the bloody scent of the battlefield, and I realized that I was crying. Before he could turn around and see me, I quickly wiped away my tears and cleared my throat.
"I'm....so sorry.....I didn't know...." I said, my voice crackling nonetheless.
"It does not matter. They have died proudly as the family of a Knight in service of the King. Let's go back into the headquarters and discuss our battle plan." His usually broad-and-proud figure looked small and sad as he floated toward our tents, with me trotting dejectedly behind him, shocked with my new knowledge about him.
---
"So...what do you have in mind?" I asked Shadii cautiously, the loss I had suffered mere hours before still weighing down on me, drinking out of the wine glass one of my other servants had brought.
"It is simple," Shadii replied quietly, accepting the other glass that my servant had offered him. "We match their brute animal force with our own." I raised an eyebrow, motioning for him to go on.
"The prized hunting dogs of Egyptus....do you remember them, Sir Kaiba? The Ji'ns?" I nodded curtly.
"They are not demons, but they are larger than the beasts. If we can acquire them, we can use them against them."
"But we'll still need hundreds of them, no matter how big they are," I protested, putting my glass gently down onto the table. "We cannot gather them all in a few days!"
"Ah," Shadii said softly, sipping at his wine. "But you are forgetting something—Lord Wheeler. He breeds the Ji'ns personally, and he has several large packs. We will have to ask him to bring his dogs over—"
"Hell no!" I cried suddenly, bringing my fist down onto the table, my temper flaring in the midst of my sadness. "Anyone but him! I am not about to fight alongside him!" I yelled, remembering his smug expression back at the palace and how I was dangerously close to murdering him on the spot, if it weren't for the fact that the King had assigned me, instead of him, to the Southern Border.
"Sir Kaiba," Shadii said, the steely edge to his voice returning. "Do you wish to avenge Ignatio or not??" I was about to break my glass out of my anger, but froze suddenly at my former servant's name. I let my hands fall to my side and slumped back onto the chair, the feeling of loss returning to me.
"Yes," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, my face in my hands. "Send him a messenger. Bring him over."
---
But, however, things have not gone as we planned to. Several days later, we had received a message that said the Wheeler will be arriving at the fortress soon, so would you please greet our party a few miles out from the fortress? Shadii stayed at the Fort Suter, the fortress we were defending, while I decided that I would greet Wheeler. The morning of the promised arrival of Wheeler arrived, and I put my saddle on my favorite black stallion, and rode toward the designated spot along with a small army, just in case the Man Slayers tried a sneak attack. I wasn't too worried, however; the Man Slayers regarded sneak attacks below their style and had never done it before.
---
"Whoa, whoa," I said, patting my stallion, Ka, gently. "Calm down, boy." Ka snorted impatiently and threw his head around several times, clearly uneasy about the cloud of dust forming upon the road not too far away.
"Get your weapons ready," I informed my men, "incase the Man Slayers are trying a sneak attack." But it was unnecessary as a set of distinct barking could be heard to the tiny hill where my army and myself were waiting. The first of the dogs came at our way and stopped just a few feet in front of me, sniffing cautiously. A brown carriage was spotted but a few yards away, and I tensed, preparing myself for the idiotic face of Wheeler. The door swung open slowly, and the driver steadied the horses as the rider stepped outside of the tasteless carriage. How typical of Wheeler to pick out a stagecoach that looked more like a dog pen. I could not have been more surprised as foot rested upon the ground gently while the rest of the body slowly followed the foot.
Hmm.
A pure-white high-heel with a pearl studded upon it. Not Joey Wheeler's foot, I'm sure.
I gave a barely-audible gasp as a girl stepped out, her brunette hair waving gently to the wind.
It was—her!
The girl from the palace!
"You!" I said suddenly as her own guards stepped around her like a beefy wall. "But I asked for the owner of the Ji'ns—"
"I am the owner," she said softly, her angelic voice soothing. "I train the dogs, not my brother. Joey is too busy for that."
"Wheeler is your brother?!" I said, my eyes nearly popping out of my socket.
"Yes, I'm Serenity Wheeler, Sir Seto Kaiba," she said and her amber eyes glared at me briefly, a classic Wheeler style, as if to say, You got a problem with that?! Then her eyes relaxed and she curtseyed at me as I bowed at her as well.
"Would you be kind enough to escort us to Fort Suter?"
---
"Lady Wheeler," Shadii said gracefully, giving her a formal bow once we were in the headquarters. "You honor us with your presence. But what about your brother...?"
"I am the trainer and the owner of the dogs," Serenity said softly, smiling at him. "I may not look it, but I assure you, I am quite tough."
"Excellent," Shadii muttered under his breath as Serenity was escorted toward the place she will be staying for the next couple of weeks, possibly even months. The dogs outside of the headquarters started howling, and he smiled in a satisfied way.
"The Ji'ns will surely lose against the wolves," I said dejectedly, shaking my head. "Demons versus ordinary dogs? Not a chance."
"Whoever said that I was going to use them against the wolves?"
#######
Nahte: How did you like the third chapter? Pretty sad history behind Shadii, huh?
Mel: (sniff) I never realized just how sad that boy is!! (cries and hugs Shadii)
Shadii: O.O Get offa me!!
Mel (check my profile if you want to know who she is): You humans are SO weird.
Cricket: I told you so! But you didn't listen! Geez, Greek gods....
Mel: (rolls her eyes and flicks him out of the fic)
Cricket: O.O What did I do?!?!
Nahte: Now for the disclaimers:
Disclaimers: Does the word FAN-fiction ring a bell?
p.s. TT They took out the star symbols and stuff so I have to use the ugly brackets instead of the cute little things....TT The number thing looks hairy....
p.p.s. By the way, I'm planning to change my name to Nahte...what do you guys think?
#######
A Knight's Duty
Ch 3—The Battle With the Tamer—part 1
#######
There it was again.
The eerie sound....echoing through the battlefield. I looked over at Shadii, and to my great surprise, he looked frightened. He was the kind of guy who never lost his cool, even if his eyebrow was being burnt off.
But this time, however, the sound was rather....musical.
"Brace yourself, Seto Kaiba!" Shadii said suddenly as the Tamer began to draw a glowing magic circle in front of him. "That is the mark of the summoning magic!!"
"Summoning magic—for what?!" I demanded, but before Shadii could answer, I had received it instead from the Tamer himself. My eyes widened to their full extent as wolfish looking creatures sprang out from the magic circle, racing toward our side. The creatures had the body of a wolf with red eyes and a third eye planted in the middle of their forehead. Their fangs were unusually long and were white, showing clearly against their dark gray coats. Their claws were made of iron, and the hair that covered their three tails were made of some kind of metal as well. They weren't as large as normal wolves, but there were tens of them, possibly hundreds.
"They're demons!" I cried, noticing their demonic signs on their backs.
"Yes," Shadii whispered, his eyes looking sad. "Heartless demons. Our warriors will suffer." And just as he predicted, they did. The wolf demons, with their red tongues hanging out of their mouth, attacked the archers mercilessly, their lips set into cruel smiles. They tore at my warriors—broke their bones—ate at their flesh and gnawed at their body—murdered them, slaughtered them!! As I looked down at the wall in helplessness, that was when I spotted Ignatio down there, trying to encourage the warriors to fight off the demons. At first, I was too surprised to speak, but as I found my voice, I yelled at him to get the hell out of there.
"No, Sir Kaiba!" came the reply through the roaring of the monsters and the remaining warriors who were taking down at least some of the cruel monstrosities. "I have served the royal family of Egyptus since my birth, and I will go down serving them!"
"Ignatio, get back here!" Hell, he may be annoying—but—I had rather admired him, admired him for his strengths—not physical, but mental. "King...the King's going to kill me!!" The tiny figure of the servant-boy merely waved his hand at me as he charged at the pack of the demonic wolves upon a beautiful white horse, standing out against the redness of the environment.
"Ignatio....foolish boy," Shadii said in a sad tone, his eyes hidden under the hood of his cloak now.
"He can't win the fight—stop him!" I said frantically, glaring at him.
"I cannot," he said simply. "It is his decision. It is not up to me to stop him." I turned away, frustrated and angry at both Shadii and myself.
"Ignatio—" I gasped as one of the demon wolves headed for him. He—he was going to get killed! "Move out of the way! Forget about the war, forget about this stupid battle, just move!!" Either he had not heard me, or he had heard me but chose to go on, as he rode on toward the Tamer while wolves from every possible direction attacked him. He was an excellent horse rider, I'll give him that much...but this was still too dangerous for him. A blitzkrieg such as this, he could not, and will not survive!
"IGNATIO!!!" I yelled as one of the minions of the Tamer finally got to Ignatio and attacked both the horse and its rider. The horse's pure, white coat was immediately stained with his crimson blood as one of the larger demon wolves literally tore his arm out. He fell from the horse, clutching at his injured stump of an arm, and the horse fell beside its owner, bathed in red liquid as well. I would have jumped down from the fortress wall and ran to his side if it weren't for Shadii's firm grip on my arm, preventing me from doing anything stupid.
"Let me go, dammit! I have to help him!" I cried in a fit of hysteria. "I can still save him—get the hell away from me!!" A single drop of hot tear ran down my cheek, but I did not know whether it was a tear of grief or of frustration and anger.
"I have to save him! I won't let them violate him like this!!" I screamed, blinded by fury and rage as I watched helplessly as the wolves tore at Ignatio, the brave, valiant servant's carcass, savoring the taste of the victim that they had just fell, Shadii's grip on my arm as firm as ever.
"It is over, Seto Kaiba," he said, his voice strangely strained. "You cannot help him, all you can do is revenge his bravery—look, the Tamer's retreating—we must've done enough damage—look—oh, will you stop struggling?!" he finally said with a steely edge to his voice.
"It is over, alright?! You cannot bring him back, you'll only get yourself killed! The Tamer's retreating, and I have figured out a strategy that might be able to defeat them! Dear Ra, snap out of it!" he said heatedly, giving a small shake to my arms. I was barely listening to him as felt suddenly weak, tired, and scared for the first time, the death of a brave servant finally registering into my brain. "I understand why you are like this, but stop this! Grieving will get you nowhere—"
"You don't understand anything!" I suddenly yelled, tearing my arm out of his grip. My eyes were narrowed angrily as I glared at the fellow general. He didn't understand—he didn't! I have known Ignatio for a while—Shadii didn't know him like I did—what a smug little fucker he was, pretending as if he understood my pain! "You know nothing about him, or me, or how it feels when someone close to you dies, you have no friends! You don't—"
"Yes, I do," Shadii whispered suddenly, cutting me off in mid-sentence. "I have....lost my wife and my children to them." My body suddenly went cold and numb as he began to tell his tragic tale.
"I was away in another kingdom," he said, not paying attention to the retreating figures of Man Slayer warriors or the demonic wolves. "I was on a spy mission, and I gone back to Egyptus to report to the king—that's when the Man Slayers attacked the kingdom, and destroyed everything in it.....my wife, and my two little children—they died, painfully, as I heard from one of the survivors of the massacre—they didn't know the Man Slayers' strategies, they kill everyone who does—my wife was raped, and my children, slaughtered before her very eyes—" he choked suddenly and turned his face away from him, leaving me to look at his back.
"—and I didn't even get to say goodbye to her properly, we were engaged in a small fight because she was mad at me for accepting the king's crazy missions...but I loved her dearly, and it broke my heart....and I vowed from that time, never to love again...never to feel human emotions again.... he finished, his voice barely heard over the rustles of the wind carrying the bloody scent of the battlefield, and I realized that I was crying. Before he could turn around and see me, I quickly wiped away my tears and cleared my throat.
"I'm....so sorry.....I didn't know...." I said, my voice crackling nonetheless.
"It does not matter. They have died proudly as the family of a Knight in service of the King. Let's go back into the headquarters and discuss our battle plan." His usually broad-and-proud figure looked small and sad as he floated toward our tents, with me trotting dejectedly behind him, shocked with my new knowledge about him.
---
"So...what do you have in mind?" I asked Shadii cautiously, the loss I had suffered mere hours before still weighing down on me, drinking out of the wine glass one of my other servants had brought.
"It is simple," Shadii replied quietly, accepting the other glass that my servant had offered him. "We match their brute animal force with our own." I raised an eyebrow, motioning for him to go on.
"The prized hunting dogs of Egyptus....do you remember them, Sir Kaiba? The Ji'ns?" I nodded curtly.
"They are not demons, but they are larger than the beasts. If we can acquire them, we can use them against them."
"But we'll still need hundreds of them, no matter how big they are," I protested, putting my glass gently down onto the table. "We cannot gather them all in a few days!"
"Ah," Shadii said softly, sipping at his wine. "But you are forgetting something—Lord Wheeler. He breeds the Ji'ns personally, and he has several large packs. We will have to ask him to bring his dogs over—"
"Hell no!" I cried suddenly, bringing my fist down onto the table, my temper flaring in the midst of my sadness. "Anyone but him! I am not about to fight alongside him!" I yelled, remembering his smug expression back at the palace and how I was dangerously close to murdering him on the spot, if it weren't for the fact that the King had assigned me, instead of him, to the Southern Border.
"Sir Kaiba," Shadii said, the steely edge to his voice returning. "Do you wish to avenge Ignatio or not??" I was about to break my glass out of my anger, but froze suddenly at my former servant's name. I let my hands fall to my side and slumped back onto the chair, the feeling of loss returning to me.
"Yes," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, my face in my hands. "Send him a messenger. Bring him over."
---
But, however, things have not gone as we planned to. Several days later, we had received a message that said the Wheeler will be arriving at the fortress soon, so would you please greet our party a few miles out from the fortress? Shadii stayed at the Fort Suter, the fortress we were defending, while I decided that I would greet Wheeler. The morning of the promised arrival of Wheeler arrived, and I put my saddle on my favorite black stallion, and rode toward the designated spot along with a small army, just in case the Man Slayers tried a sneak attack. I wasn't too worried, however; the Man Slayers regarded sneak attacks below their style and had never done it before.
---
"Whoa, whoa," I said, patting my stallion, Ka, gently. "Calm down, boy." Ka snorted impatiently and threw his head around several times, clearly uneasy about the cloud of dust forming upon the road not too far away.
"Get your weapons ready," I informed my men, "incase the Man Slayers are trying a sneak attack." But it was unnecessary as a set of distinct barking could be heard to the tiny hill where my army and myself were waiting. The first of the dogs came at our way and stopped just a few feet in front of me, sniffing cautiously. A brown carriage was spotted but a few yards away, and I tensed, preparing myself for the idiotic face of Wheeler. The door swung open slowly, and the driver steadied the horses as the rider stepped outside of the tasteless carriage. How typical of Wheeler to pick out a stagecoach that looked more like a dog pen. I could not have been more surprised as foot rested upon the ground gently while the rest of the body slowly followed the foot.
Hmm.
A pure-white high-heel with a pearl studded upon it. Not Joey Wheeler's foot, I'm sure.
I gave a barely-audible gasp as a girl stepped out, her brunette hair waving gently to the wind.
It was—her!
The girl from the palace!
"You!" I said suddenly as her own guards stepped around her like a beefy wall. "But I asked for the owner of the Ji'ns—"
"I am the owner," she said softly, her angelic voice soothing. "I train the dogs, not my brother. Joey is too busy for that."
"Wheeler is your brother?!" I said, my eyes nearly popping out of my socket.
"Yes, I'm Serenity Wheeler, Sir Seto Kaiba," she said and her amber eyes glared at me briefly, a classic Wheeler style, as if to say, You got a problem with that?! Then her eyes relaxed and she curtseyed at me as I bowed at her as well.
"Would you be kind enough to escort us to Fort Suter?"
---
"Lady Wheeler," Shadii said gracefully, giving her a formal bow once we were in the headquarters. "You honor us with your presence. But what about your brother...?"
"I am the trainer and the owner of the dogs," Serenity said softly, smiling at him. "I may not look it, but I assure you, I am quite tough."
"Excellent," Shadii muttered under his breath as Serenity was escorted toward the place she will be staying for the next couple of weeks, possibly even months. The dogs outside of the headquarters started howling, and he smiled in a satisfied way.
"The Ji'ns will surely lose against the wolves," I said dejectedly, shaking my head. "Demons versus ordinary dogs? Not a chance."
"Whoever said that I was going to use them against the wolves?"
#######
Nahte: How did you like the third chapter? Pretty sad history behind Shadii, huh?
Mel: (sniff) I never realized just how sad that boy is!! (cries and hugs Shadii)
Shadii: O.O Get offa me!!