Sorry for the delay, folks. I lost all my notes in the fire laptop reformatting. Back to work now though.
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The darkness of the wood filled the messenger with uncertainty. Three days and nights, he had waited for some sign of the woman he was told to retrieve. Suddenly, the forest fell silent. Not the usual sort of silence, but rather the otherworldly, unnatural silence. He could hear neither the crackling of his camp fire nor the sound of his own breath. The darkness around him seemed to encroach and swallow the fire, leaving him in complete darkness. Panicking, he stumbled over the undergrowth, as the shadows grew together into a ball, retreating from the fire, and returning sound to the wood, as a young woman appeared in the distance. She approached, wearing nothing but the light of the fire, until she walked through the ball of shadows she had made from the night itself, pulling through it, forming a gown. She giggled a bit at his panicked face. It had been a game to her, as so much of life was.
"I-I have a m-messa--"
"Yes, yes, a message for me, from king Claudas, I'm well aware. So? What is it?"
"A chance to bring ruin...to the knights of the round table..." A grin creeped across her face as she took his hand.
"Well, we mustn't keep your master waiting." The light vanished again, but when it returned this time, they were in the king's study, where he had been attempting to decipher the notes, the scrolls, the incantations, and the diagrams that the thief had brought to him. The messenger fainted from the shock of suddenly appearing somewhere he had never even been permitted, as the fae witch placed a hand on the king's shoulder.
"Tell me, your highness...what game might we play with this new king?" Claudas drew a long, wicked, frightening smile.
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Miles away, a chill ran down Sonic's spine, startling enough to throw his balance, knocking him from his seat at the banquet table. Luckily, he managed to right himself with such characteristic speed that no one seemed to notice.
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"The sigils are in place, the gate is opened... the armor you've picked is marked to bind...now we simply need someone to inhabit it..." said Morgan, a bit of exhaustion in her voice, a swirling vortex to hell opened before her and the king.
"And how do we do that?" asked Claudas, inspecting the control seals on the armor for the experiment.
"Oh, just shove it in the portal, see what picks it up." She replied, sounding a bit bored. Claudas merely stared at her for a moment, not sure if she was joking. Eventually he merely shrugged, with nothing to lose besides some cheap armor, and pushed the assembled, yet empty suit into the gaping maw of the inferno.
Rather than falling in, invisible forces held it aloft over the portal, shadows flooding out, filling the armor. The completed knight of the underworld leapt from his position over the portal, to kneel before its king.
"Oh dear. Looks like the binding marks worked. How boring..." Indeed, the seals had faded, and instead of the armor, they were on the flesh of the hell knight within. Claudas thought for a moment before ordering the knight back into the gate, where it once again floated in the air, gathering more damned souls. It seemed no different visibly, but the sheer terror he felt at its presence was proof enough of its strength. This time, instead of bowing, it charged the king, the newly added souls not bound to his word. His guards rushed in to attack it as Morgan floated through the air, laughing heavily, gasping for breath. The knight was dispatched, and more experiments were performed. Finally, the king was ready to reveal his plan. A suit of golden armor was brought in, bindings painted, and into the pit it went. It was sent on its mission, one that Claudas hoped would turn Camelot on its king.
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END CHAPTER. Got new divider things picked out. :P FINALLY finished this chapter. Next is the second part of the green knight, and then we'll start picking up some more of the details in the main story.