A few weeks later…..
"Sir, I believe this is the town the child was sent to," a young squire no older than eighteen said to his knight. I know this is the town the child was sent to; I read the report. Do you take me for a fool?! " the knight said as he yelled angrily at his squire.
"Forgive me, sir, for my impudence of doubting your abilities," his squire apologized, lowering his head to his knight. "At ease, Biron. Forgive me for lashing out at you. This assignment has me at my wit's end," the knight said to Biron, the squire apologizing for his behavior. "No need to apologize, sir Myron. I understand."
Myron was a knight of the Ambrosios empire, with Biron as his squire. The third prince, Pyros Ambrosios, had ordered him in secret to track down and kill the holder of the Boof of Travelers. The holder of that book was a young boy who worked in the imperial library. By all means, he shouldn't have been able to acquire the book, but the Librarian had taken a liking to him and had given him access to a forbidden area in the library.
He worked there for years studying underneath the librarian in the forbidden area, learning things he was not meant to know, knowledge that could make or destroy a kingdom.
He was a relatively unremarkable commoner lucky to be granted the honor of working in the imperial library. He worked there for years while studying under the Librarian until an incident occurred one day; a significant portion of the library was lost in a great fire. No one knew who or what had started the fire, but they needed someone to blame to avoid being made to look like useless, incompetent fools, so they picked the Librarian's assistant. He was of minor importance, with no family name or connections to back him up, so it was easy to blame him.
As soon as he heard the plan to pin all the blame on his assistant, the Librarian couldn't allow it. His assistant, his student, was like the son he never had. He knew the boy was meant for more extraordinary things when he first met him. He didn't even know how to read, and in just a week, he learned. The boy had an incredible talent for absorbing whatever he taught and even improving his teachings. He only lacked the practical skills to execute what he knew.
The thought of such a genius being executed for something he didn't even do, he wouldn't allow it, so he sent him to a village where he thought they would never think to look for him.
The village of rejects and half-men was where the empire sent its less-than-desirable citizens. The empire only had room for those it deemed valuable, so it sent anyone it considered defective to Village Z, the village of rejects and half-men.
For regular citizens of the empire to have a family member be sent there was a great shame to them, so to avoid being shamed, they often killed them at birth if they were born with any noticeable physical abnormalities.
Some weren't born with physical abnormalities but mental ones, and their families tried to keep them hidden, not to protect them but to protect their reputation. It was believed that if someone's brother, sister, uncle, etc., had such abnormalities, they could pass them on to their children, so they avoided marrying people who had family members sent to the village.
So they either hid such family members or killed them, as that was the norm. Then, one day, a new empress rose to power and passed a law making it illegal to kill their children during childbirth; the law, of course, nearly ruined the empire with people rioting in the street and lynching anyone they suspected to be 'defective.' To stop the bloodshed, the empress built a village to send all the people deemed 'defective' to protect them from the mobs.
The boy was now supposed to be hiding in the village. They learned this when they surveyed the town and saw someone new living there. Upon learning this news, the third prince sent his knight, Myron Despoina, to retrieve the book and kill the boy.
Without question, Myron, a dutiful knight of the empire, set out to carry his orders and was now at the village where the boy was supposed to be. That village was now little more than a pile of rubble and ruins.
"What could've happened here?" Myron questioned out loud. This village was under the empire's protection, and no citizens or soldiers would dare to come here and burn it. It was all the way out in the farthest backwater of the empire to keep the villagers safe from the more destructive citizens, and the closest village was over a week's journey from here, leaving it isolated.
"Sir, over here, I believe I found something," Biron said, calling Myron to show him his findings. Myron walked over to Bion and saw that he was pointing at a large dirt mound with a cross atop it. " I think this is where all the villagers are, sir," Biron said.
"That means there were survivors; someone had to have buried them," Myron said, deducting that someone had to have survived; otherwise, who would have buried all the dead?
"By the Gods! what is that?" Biron screamed as he pointed at the remains of a wraith; they were pitch black and shriveled up after being burned.
"A wraith, eh?" Myron muttered; he had seen them before in the early days when he was first annoyed by a knight. He was a part of one of the expeditions to conquer the Asar Forest.
Looking at the forest brought back memories of trekking across the empire with over a hundred other knights, eager to prove themselves and earn glory by conquering new territories for the empire.
They had camped at the forest's edge the first night to rest and prepare before venturing deeper. That was when the wraiths came, they blinded and slit the throats of the sentries and spread themselves throughout their camp before beginning their slaughter.
Myron remembered waking up in the night to the screams of his fellow brothers in arms. The moment he had left his tent, one of the wraiths jumped on him, biting him on the shoulder and about to tear his arm off before a passing squire saved him.
The night was long, and the few survivors worked together to bring the wraiths down individually, but their swords failed to pierce and cut the wraiths' skin, leaving them with only their hands and shields to fight them.
With their shields and hands, they fell one after another to the wraiths before someone began using torches to burn them. When the night was done, and the wraiths were driven back, they counted their dead: sixty dead and twenty missing, leaving only twenty members of the expedition force. At first, they believed the ones who were missing were deserters, but they later found their bodies half-eaten a mile away from their camp. They were the ones who had been on guard duty that night.
Myron had tried his best to forget about that night and the rest of that horrible expedition, but being back here at the Asar Forest dug those memories up, reminding him of what he had done.
He forced those memories out of his mind to focus on the mission so he could leave this cursed forest. "He must have gone into the forest; there's no other place he could've gone," Myron said. "Sir, are you sure? We can still head to the nearest village and see if he passed through there," Biron questioned.
"No, he's already too far ahead of us. This happened a while ago. We would've heard about it if he had returned to the empire with all the posters and his face spread everywhere. He went into the forest, the crazy bastard," Myron said.
"Then surely we can return and report that he and the book are destroyed. There's no way he could've survived in that forest with the wraiths," Biron said, not wanting to venture into the forest. He had heard about the expedition and thought that they made the wraiths up to protect the honor of the dead because they died from disease or hunger.
Now that he could see the wraith's body, he was afraid of how many more of them could be in the forest. "Biron, I'll pretend I didn't hear that for both our sakes; we have a mission to complete: to retrieve the book and eliminate the boy carrying it along with anyone in our way. That includes you if you compromise or threaten the mission. Is that understood?"
Myron said, lowering his gaze on Biron, daring him to say anything but 'Yes, Sir.' "Y-yes, s-sir," Biron stuttered, fearing being punished or killed for disobeying orders.
"Good, now let's move on. He's already gained too much ground on us," Myron said, dismounting his horse and walking into the forest. "Wait! we're leaving the horses?" Biron questioned.
"Yes, they'll be no good in there. The wraiths will smell them from a mile away. They also seem to like horse meat better than human meat, for whatever reason. I don't particularly feel like having my horse die ripped apart by those things, especially when he's already done his job," Myron said, expressing deep care for his horse.
After all, he's never been lied to by a horse. Having to leave the horses behind, Biron had to carry all the supplies.
They continued to venture deep into the forest before encountering another dead wraith. "Look, sir, another dead wraith. You were right; he must've escaped into the forest," Bion said.
This wraith wasn't burnt, leaving Myron confused about how it had died. The only way to kill a wraith he knew of was to burn it. Bladed weapons and blunt attacks were ineffective against them.
He flipped the wraith over and saw that its eyes were destroyed. The arms and legs were facing the wrong way, and bones were pressed against the points, where they were broken and trying to poke out of the skin.
"Hmm, someone broke its neck; they immobilized it by breaking its legs and arms, then they snapped its neck, killing it," Myron deduced while admiring the work.
He was perplexed by how and who could kill such a monster in such a bizarre way, but he knew this made his job much harder. "We'll have to be even more careful from now on," Myron stated.
"What do you mean, sir?" Biron asked, "The boy isn't alone. He has someone protecting him; only a skilled warrior could've managed to kill a wraith this way; that or he managed to hire a full party to protect him," Myron said, explaining to Biron that the mission would be even more dangerous from now on since the boy had someone skilled protecting him.
He didn't know how many guards the boy could've hired but felt it was only one or two. The way the wraith was killed didn't look like the work of a group but a skilled individual. He knew this made matters much more complicated than he had led Biron to believe; killing a wraith was no small feat, let alone two.
They continued venturing into the forest and only made it about twenty feet when Biron said, "Look, sir! There's another body," pointing at the next dead wraith. Myron looked at it and saw it had the same wounds as the second one he found.
After looking at the dead wraith, Myron thought, 'Whoever this guard is, I might not be able to handle him.'