Queen's Gambit Chapter 36

Draconic Fortune (Noelle)
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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 24

Black Night Town
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When Kris arrived, a large field in front of Carpentown was covered in carriages and wagons with people in and around them. But Noelle wasn't around. Making sure she was all right was the first box for him to check. Maybe she and the others were already in town. But between here and the town gates, there was a large commotion. Probably not the best way inside. He circled around the outside and found another gate.

Outside the walls, at the eastern gates, there was a settlement, or there used to be. The layout made it seem like there used to be a village of farmers, but all the buildings had long turned into charred ruins. There were remains of fences, possible enclosures for farm animals, but they were empty.

The eastern gate was still guarded, but without a large, noisy crowd to deal with. If Noelle was inside, this was the best place to slip in and look for her. Two sword-looking guards stood in front of it. With two of those golden women overlooking them from the town wall above. "Stop! Her eminence has put restrictions on entry to the town."

"I'm just looking for someone. She might be in there. I'll go again when I find her."

They were about to turn him away, when one guard interrupted the other. "It's only one person. I can check on it if he isn't coming back soon."

One of the golden women snapped at the guard from above. "Don't you dare! Her eminence is above letting in such rabble as this - boy!" She overemphasized the 'boy' so much, she practically spat doing so.

The other hid her mouth behind her fan and laughed. "Exactly. We try to maintain a certain level of class in here. Can't have too much dangling about if we want to keep it that way."

One of the guards was annoyed enough to snap back at her. "Give it a rest you two!" He opened the gate for Kris to pass. "Come on, go. Just try not to take too long." Strange, but he welcomed the opportunity to enter. The first thing to do was find Noelle and Ralsei, the others, and then get out of there again so they could figure out their next move.

He recognized almost all the buildings in the city of Carpentown. It was as if someone had taken all of his and Asriel's quirky designs for wooden buildings, even the most impractical ones, and had cramped them all into one big cluster within the stone walls, giving it all a nonsensical layout that just frustrated Kris.

There was a surprisingly low amount of monster-like darkners here. Most of the people walking the streets were Noelle's tarot cards. The closer to the big mansion in the centre of town he got, the more of them were those golden women.

The town was lit with torches on both sides of every street. The doors and windows of most buildings were closed. Once when he came by an open window, he looked inside to see some cat monsters, which cowered behind the window and quickly shut it after noticing that they had his attention. The few times he did encounter a monster from his own drawings, he asked them if they saw a deer or a black goat, but none of them seemed to.

Then he spotted someone whose sight sent a cold shadow crawling on his back. A human, about a foot taller than him, every limb stretched out a little bit in length relative to his own. He had yellow skin, wore a green-and-yellow striped shirt and the bangs of Kris' own hair were simplified into more easy to draw spikes.

When the human-looking darkner noticed he was spotted, he flashed a smile at Kris that pulled the corners of his mouth up to an unnatural height not possible for a real human. He had ridiculously oversized eyes and microscopic irises and pupils. And a generally flattened shading to how light reflected on him.

It was Slasher. The result of Kris trying out an anime art style, drawing himself in it and using that occasion to blow off some steam. By now, Kris was aware that the things he thought and felt when drawing a character, affected what the drawing's respective dark world equivalent was like. Which was why he knew that Slasher was a lot more unhinged and dangerous than Butcher back in Bedrock.

If Noelle and Ralsei were anywhere near here, then Kris had to do something about Slasher before that came back to bite him. He put off his search for his friends and trailed Slasher. Followed him around the many corners caused by the misaligned buildings, all the way to the outskirts of town, where the buildings were still eccentric, but visibly more shabby on average than in the centre.

The killer turned around to glance at Kris several times during his trip through town, which ended in what must have been his house. It was a simple longhouse, but had elements of traditional far-eastern architecture. Including some of its flat, windowed walls being side-ways sliding doors. Slasher entered through a sliding door on one end of the building, while Kris sought out one on the other end.

The house's interior was dark and empty. With occasional lit incense sticks kept in the corners of each room. He heard a noise. It wasn't screaming, but clearly sounds of some woman being in distress, accompanied by a buzzing or fizzing sound. And the closer he got to where Slasher had entered, the louder it got. When there was only one more door separating him from what was going on there, he made sure to slide it open very slowly and carefully.

Behind it, Slasher waited for him, and he wasn't alone. Someone was with him, tied to a wooden table. With various gadgets and cables connecting them to a machine that Slasher held the controlling lever of. It was a rat monster, an exact lookalike of Sarah. His Mom's divorce lawyer. Slasher had all this machinery gifted to him as part of the same drawing he sprung from and was using it to electrocute 'Sarah' while keeping her alive.

"I'm so glad you could join us." Slasher let go of the lever, leaving it half-way pulled so that the rat - while at a lower voltage - remained subjected to continuous electric shocks. He was armed with an oversized kitchen knife and tilted his entire body sideways in a creepy way when he faced Kris.

"You expected me?"

The killer's unnatural smile only grew even wider. He bore his sharp teeth, another artistic deviation from Kris' appearance. "Why of course, you are the talk of town. The lightner those new visitors look to for resolution to their problems. Dubbed 'dragonslayer' in a colossal slew of irony. Oh if only most of them knew what your true involvement with the dragons is. The same involvement you have with me. But now that I see you, I suspect the latter is true to a greater extent than the former."

He stared at Slasher for a while, trying to figure out a course of action. "Oh not so quiet. Please, include us in your thoughts. Have you come here to sate your thirst for adventure. Do you fancy yourself the knight in shining armor..." He turned to 'Sarah' and turned the lever all the way, intensifying the shocks and turning the rat monster's bibbers into screams. "...here to rescue THIS DISGUSTING MAIDEN?"

"No." He replied in a cold and unfazed tone. "No, you can keep doing with her what you like."

"No! HELP!" The rat begged for Kris to do something about her situation. He had little intention to do so.

"Then what exactly do you pay us a visit for?"

Kris remembered that there was an amicable resolution to dealing with Butcher. Maybe that was another pattern with the dark world. Maybe your own lookalikes were more agreeable towards you. Maybe the same was the case here. "I'm here to offer you a deal. Some friends of mine are arriving here. I want you to leave them alone. You don't touch one hair on them. In exchange, I won't tell anyone about you and I won't touch one hair on you."

Slasher jestingly covered his mouth, while swinging his kitchen knife around. "Oh, a request for restraint, is it? I see. Charming, but pointless. Sure, I could agree to your terms, make the conscious effort to stay away from those friends of yours, hope you keep your end of it and we all go on our merry ways. OR - or - I could just kill you and not have to agree to anything."

Well of course things had to go this way. Slasher was pure, unadulterated edge, put to paper by a frustrated artist.

Kris drew his sword and watched Slasher swing his knife. When he did, more knives appeared, floating above through the room, all of which were pointed at him. A few of them drew away from him for a moment, but he immediately knew what that meant. Those were the next knives to shoot for him, and shortly thereafter, they did surge towards him. He could easily dodge the knives by looking which ones drew back first, made his way past the incoming attacks and swung his sword at his anime-lookalike. Slashing open his right forearm with one attack.

He fled to an opposite corner in the room and covered the wound Kris inflicted with his opposite hand. "Curious. You're very adept at reading attack patterns - almost as if you had a lot of experience with that." He began continuously summoning singular knives that shot in Kris' general direction, starting at different points relative to him.

They all moved his way in the same order they appeared in, so again, Kris had little trouble dodging them with little sidesteps even without turning time back. "Or do you just know me so well, because you know yourself just as well?"

"Oh so cold. Don't be like that to me. After all, I am a depiction of what you would do, the moment you could. Those 'friends' of yours only know the masks you wear. I am the face that lurks beneath them." He rushed into another corner and summoned another predictable hail of knives, as easy to dodge as the previous ones. Kris struck for Slasher's right arm again, and cut it open even further. The darkner was no longer able to cover up his gushing wound.

"They only know you for the restraint you show. You shut yourself off from them out of fear what they will discover. I am the nature they run the risk of finding. Your nature." When the hails of knives grew bigger, Kris grabbed a nearby wooden chair to block them off with as he made his way to his target.

By the time the next wave was used up, he was close enough to grab hold of him. As Kris anticipated, the killer next tried to attack with the knife he was holding onto all this time. But that was the same arm Kris had injured so heavily. So all he had to do, was reach for Slasher's knife and wrestle it from his weakened hand.

The gesture Slasher made with his other hand clearly was him summoning more knives to attack Kris from behind. So he grabbed hold of both of Slasher's arms, spun around his body along with his opponent's and watched as all the incoming knives buried themselves in the cartoon human's back. He wanted to be safe about Slasher not recovering from this though, so he pulled his sword back and stabbed him with it on top of that.

Even in his last moments, bleeding out of all his wounds, the killer was still smiling. "I exist for a reason, 'dragonslayer'. The part of you that inspired me, precedes me, and will outlive me. You can kill me, but you will never be rid of me." He only had breath left to whisper the last words, before he gave in to his wounds.

He tipped Slasher's husk over, pulled his sword back out, and let him sag to the ground. He then pulled the lever back to turn off the machine. "Ah, thank goodness, the nightmare is finally over. Quick, untie me, and let's get out of here." With a hopeful look in her eyes, the rat monster stared at Kris.

Waiting for him to remove her from here. He did come closer. "What a lunatic. What nonsense he was talking. Claiming you were anything like him. You came here to rescue me." She stared at him, waiting for him to undo the ties that held her here. "You did come here to rescue me, right? Right?...Right?"

When Kris next left that barren house, it had fallen silent. For good. Making it so felt relieving. Turning this anime into a splatter movie unloaded a lot of lingering anger that had been building up in him in recent time. He couldn't do someone with that face a favour like the one she was asking. The opportunity was too good. With a sense of contentment, he stuffed away the bundle of rat whiskers he collected as a trophy and washed off the blood with water from a nearby hose.

Kris never fully trusted Sarah, but especially not as the reasons not to, began to pile up. Noelle always told him to open up and be nicer to her, but he had a really hard time doing so.

Dad used to be a respected government official. The mayor of Hometown. He only resigned after an embarrassing incident where he threw up in public. He wasn't sick before that, he wasn't under some heavy medication, the only detail that seemed to somewhat relate, was that he had drunken a glass of Sarah's wine, just before.

The mob that picketed their house the next day, declared him a drunkard and demanded that he resign his position, wasn't made up of his constituents. Kris talked to them when it happened. They all came from out of town, and all happened to be personal friends of Sarah. Some specifically mentioned her bringing this up and enlisting them to come to picket the house.

Mom and Dad's love for each other couldn't have been more visible. It was at times unbearable how lovey-dovey they were, except unlike a regular couple, they were like that whenever they were together. That was, until shortly after Dad's resignation, Sarah pulled Mom aside and began talking to her more and more often.

Then things grew more tense at home, the nuzzling and kissing between them stopped and the shouting matches began. A month later, she filed for divorce, Sarah was naturally chosen as the lawyer to handle her case and got to make a lot of money off destroying Kris and Asriel's family.

After that, she started spending more and more time with the Holidays. The Holidays' marriage was as solid as the Dreemurrs', but not long after Sarah befriended Carol, Noelle's mother, Carol became more and more snippish, short-spoken and unfriendly to Kris, to Asriel, to Dad, to Rudy, eventually even to Noelle. To the point where Kris got the impression that with his one visit, he had visited Rudy in the hospital more often than his own wife did.

Noelle kept making excuses for all this, but the coincidences converged way too much for Kris to believe that Sarah was entirely innocent in all of it.

It seemed much more like every time something horrible happened in Hometown, Sarah would happen to be involved in some way. She always just happened to have been there, just before it happened.

Slasher was right about one thing. What happened here today was a perfect reflection of how Kris felt about Sarah, about the things he wished he could do to her. Should he ever have solid reason to believe he could get away with it, he estimated that Sarah had maybe a week to live before suffering a tragic run-in with a knife. Followed up most likely by a few dozen more run-ins until there was only dust.

There was a reason why he always kept a knife on him.

"What do you mean they won't let us?" The emperor, Dasher and Ralsei - after approaching the gates to ask in person what was going on, had gathered in front of all the carriages, and were joined by a now very confused Noelle.

The emperor shrugged. "They simply turned us away. Me included. The moment they caught wind that these folks are on the run from elder dragons, they blocked the way. Now they won't let us in."

"But why?"

"Ask him." The emperor gestured towards an arborfolk, a wooden man dressed in unusually fancy court attire, who held a scroll. "That's the herald she sent, he'll know."

The herald stepped onto a nearby tree stump, cleared his throat and folded open a scroll he had brought with him. "Her eminence the Empress of all four kingdoms, praised to heavens be her name, has decreed that such backwards, lowly rabble as you are to stay out of our fine city of Carpentown. Dragons are nice and friendly, and your backwards ideas about dragons being 'wild animals' and how they - and I quote - 'burned down our homes', have no place in a forward-thinking place such as Carpentown." The herald raised one finger. "BUT! BUT! Her eminence is not only considerate and wise ..."

"I contest those two things!" Shouted one villager from his chariot.

"If you don't help us, we're going to die!" Added another.

The herald just cleared his throat again and continued. "...but also forgiving and merciful. As I speak, her servants are bringing to you an enchanted dragon lure." Indeed there were more arborfolk pulling a cart under heavy physical efforts, which carried a large, glowing crystal ball. "This lure draws elder dragons to it like moths to a flame. You will spend the night gathered around it, and once you have had a friendly interaction with an elder dragon, you will have proven a modicum of open-mindedness."

The human-looking archer stopped him right there. "With all due respect, I have witnessed the elder dragons with my own eyes. The villagers will not survive a longer encounter with them should they reach us without us being armed to take them down."

"TAKE THEM DOWN?" Burst out of the offended herald. "Why would you want to 'take down' such majestic creatures?"

Dasher rolled his eyes. "They're not like the succubi, they're wild animals..."

"ENOUGH! I will not entertain any more of this stupidity. Dragons are perfectly nice and friendly and everyone should invite them into their midst."

"Why are there none in the town then?"

Words that drew an immediate silence from everyone, as well as curious looks to the person ushering them. Hearing who blurted out those words left both Noelle and Ralsei overcome with relief. "Kris!"

"You escaped!"

They both practically jumped to give him a hug, but he was - true to the Kris that Noelle knew - stiff as a lamp post and fully fixated on the herald. Who turned to him with one eyebrow raised. "I beg your pardon?"

Kris explained what he meant. "I was just in Carpentown and there were no dragons there. You just said everyone should invite dragons into their midst, but then where are the dragons in your midst?"

The herald just raised his nose. "Hmph, such entitlement. You should learn to respect your betters."

"You didn't answer the question." But before Kris could press him on that any further, the herald already stormed off.

One of the guards he had come with, stayed with them for a moment and added something of his own. "You know there used to be a dragon in town, an armored succubus. But she marched around Chateau de Chop, the Empress' current seat and caused a huge commotion. Kept blaring out something about 'Beauty' and 'purging the dragons' corruption'."

"Do you know where she went?"

The guard pointed behind him. "Apparently she's terrorizing the vineyards to the west town now. Which also means she's not our problem any more." He then left.

Ralsei still hadn't let Kris go, in fact he hugged him even tighter. He had his face buried into the shoulder that wasn't armored and was practically crying. His shoulders' shaking certainly played the part. "Kris, I'm so glad you're okay. I was so scared! I wouldn't know what to do if anything happened to you!"

"You shouldn't have. The Knight needs me alive for some reason."

"How did you break free from the Susies?"

"I didn't. Axe let me go."

Both Noelle and Ralsei stopped for a moment, and their confusion drew the emotion right back out. "What? Why?"

"It's a long story."

He marched right on towards the city walls to trace the outside walls once there. Naturally, Ralsei and Noelke followed him. "I'm just so glad you're back in one piece."

"Yes, yes." Seeing Noelle and Ralsei be all right and making sure they stayed with him so he could keep it that way was his top priority. But now that he had found them again, he had other things on his mind.

"Wait, what happened after they took you? And where are we going?"

He led them around the city walls, past the acres surrounding them in search for the ones north if town. "The tarot card people are strange they're...they didn't attack me but they talked a lot like we were enemies somehow."

"You're saying they treated you with animosity?"

"Yes, animosity. And the people in town are hiding in their homes. They're scared of something. And then this guy talked so much about how much they like dragons - Something strange is going on here and I hope that dragon knows something about it. If they like dragons so much, you would think they would do everything to keep her there. Why would they throw out the only dragon that actually visits them, unless they were worried about something she said or did?"

"Yes but hold on a second!" They stopped. "Kris, how did you get here?"

"I told you, Axe let me go."

He was about to rush onwards when Noelle grabbed him by the arm and held him in place. "I got that, it's just, you were gone for do long." She exchanged glances with Ralsei. "We were worried about you. I thought we could talk about that for a bit. Aren't you the least bit interested in what happened with us?

"I know most of it. You jumped off the plane then you got to see the elder dragons break out, now you're here and soon so are they. Now let's go!"

Noelle didn't like this. With him being so soft-spoken, physically unresponsive, the way he avoided looking at her again, it was like all that progress she had seen him make opening up to people had just poofed away, just like that. And she had no idea how and when that had happened, or why.

They knew they reached the vineyards when the grain and apple tree fields ceased and acres of grape vine plantations lined their path. "Where are all the people?" They got to a familiar sight. A big, comfortable-looking curved row of buildings that belonged together. Unlike the plantations, this whole place was ripped from Kris' and Asriel's art stash.

Two of them were just storehouses, adjacent and belonging to a wide, three storage house with pine bars lining the outside between the white-painted walls and closed windows. No weird, 'artistic' twists or impractical shapes, just a rectangular, function-over-form house the way Kris preferred it.

The lights were on, so someone was at home. Kris was about to knock on the door, but it burst open before he could. A sweaty bear monster came out and ran, carrying a wooden barrel over his shoulder. "Excuse me?"

"No time!" The winegrower didn't bother to turn to him, he kept on pacing down the path along the buildings, across a wider road, to a smaller storehouse with a smoking chimney further down the path. "Need to keep the dragon appeased."

"Yes - where is the dragon?"

"Right here." He pulled the curtain aside, placed the barrel on the ground, then made a run for it as if something very scary was chasing him.

Inside, they saw the armored dragon they were talking about. Kris remembered last seeing her at the Journeyman's tower, when the Journeyman recounted what happened before they arrived at Bedrock. Veritas, Susie's light world likeness, dressed up as a legionnaire from ancient times, sat in front of an open fire.

The metal plates that were once her clean and flawless armor, hung messily over her torso. Her helmet with its red crest lay in a corner, tossed to the ground going by its trajectory. At least she still had her cape. She spread her arms when she saw them come in. "More wine! And more strangers! Have you too come to mock me? Gather around then!"

Kris took that as his invitation for them to sit down around her, and all three did so roughly facing the fire. "No."

"Wouldn't hold it against you, you wouldn't be the first." She was speaking with a heavy slur. It was hard to discern how much or for how long she must have been drinking. Or how much.

"We saw what you did back in Bedrock. What happened to you?"

"What does it look like?" She got up, grabbed her gladius, chopped open the barrel and filled her cup with wine before sitting back down on her side of the fire. "I've run into a dead end. There's no moving forward. My quarry's escaped and I've got no way to pick up that trail right now."

"What quarry?"

Veritas grabbed Kris by the shoulder and pressed down on him - at first to help keep herself stable, then she began forcefully shaking him. "Same quarry as always, you fool! Beauty of course! My feud with Beauty will never end so long as both of us live!" She struck out to make so wide a gesture, it almost sent her falling over. "I will hunt and kill ALL the dragons and I'll keep killing her until she NEVER comes back."

"Why?"

"Doesn't matter!" She grabbed him again and repeated herself until he looked her straight in the eyes. "Listen, listen, listen, listen...listen, all the dragons are corruption, made manifest! They all have to be destroyed!"

"You're a dragon too, you know."

Veritas put on a wide grin and pointed at herself. "Yeah, but I'm the exception to the rule. I will get Beauty, I will get Temptress, and then I will get all the rest for good. They're all gonna pay! My hunt will never end until they're all gone! I'm just sort of...stuck right now."

"How so?"

"I've got a means of tracking Beauty's movements. But I lost her." Veritas rummaged through a bag next to her and pulled out a strange, small contraption. It was made so that you could attach it to a wrist like a watch, but it wasn't a watch, it was a sundial. A 'sun-watch', perhaps. She held it up into the air for a few seconds.

"See? Nothing. There's supposed to be lights showing me the way. But when I followed her into this this place, it stopped working. She's somewhere in that mansion in the middle of the city, I know it. But the guards didn't let me inside, and then some hoity-toity woman waved her fan and her chain of pearls and had me thrown all the way out here. The winemakers saw me shout at the guards and now think I'm some kind of scary monster out to get them, so they bring me all the wine I could ask for to keep me appeased."

She picked up a few more cups that previously lay on the ground unused. "Speaking of wine, you want some?" He quietly declined. "Suit yourself. What are you even here for?"

"We came here because I thought you might know more about what's going on here. What's scaring the people in town so much? Why is the Empress so - we brought a lot of farmers here who lost everything, and she's keeping them out. Why?"

"I know why the townsfolk are a little skittish. Not long before you, Temptress landed here, riding on the back of an enormous elder dragon. They burned down the farms in the east and scavenged what was left for cattle and other animals to feed the beast to prepare it for an upcoming battle. Her succubi helped occupy the area and drive all the local farmers away."

"When the townsfolk turned to the other force occupying their town, the Empress not only refused to drive the succubi back out, but forbade hurting or harassing the dragons in any way. Even if one of the locals so much as criticized a dragon or dragons in general, they were thrown into one of the new dungeons the Empress had built. The townsfolk are skittish around anyone they don't know, because they can tell that some form of treachery is afoot."

She poured herself another cup as the last one had run out. "As for the Empress' sudden hostility, if it was an Emperor rather than an Empress, I would know exactly what is going on. Since I traced Beauty here, it would follow that HE would be in her thrall. But seeing as this Empress isn't a HE, Beauty's innate magic wouldn't work...I don't know what to tell you. I'm at a loss."

"Even if - just put down the wine and come with us. Maybe we can help you catch Beauty and make sense of all this."

Veritas put her cup down to gesture quotation marks in the air. "Now listen here, 'Dragonslayer', I'm well aware that Axe and her lot got the jump on you. Twice. You've got to know when you're beat."

Ralsei pushed the dragon with an unexpected force. "You can't say that! We've been through worse and Kris always found a way out."

She just shrugged it off though. "If he had anything useful to offer, you wouldn't have come to ask me for help."

Noelle took that as her cue to remind them of that orb. "Even if that was true, we have to try. We don't have a choice. We have to resolve whatever is going on and fast."

"Why?"

"The Empress' guards brought out some kind of bait...ball and said it attracts elder dragons."

This immediately drew Veritas' full attention. "What - what did it look like?"

"It was just a big, glowing orb."

The description appeared to startle Veritas even more. "That can't be. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"That's the dragon lure. That orb belongs to Temptress. I was there when she created it. Why does the Empress have it?" They all shrugged. Not like they had any way of knowing. "Either way if that's the case, you should get to safety and hide away until the storm blows over. Best somewhere underground. Me, I'll rather stay here with my wine."

That was it for Kris. He didn't see much of a way to convince Veritas to join them or believe that she had any more useful information. It was time to get back up and make their way back. And their way back was quiet. No-one had anything to say to their encounter with the legionnaire. The pressing air didn't last forever though. Something caught Kris' attention enough to make him stop and look up at the sky.

Several things struck him. For one, there were clouds. Made visible not through a lack of stars, but through the highlighted silhouettes they had in the dark world. They had a completely clear sky when they were outside just before. And it wasn't that there were just a few clouds like on a summer day. There were lots of them. And they were moving. Fast. Fast enough that you could see them moving even if you didn't stand still. Appearing and converging from all around and soon completely covering the sky.

Something else was happening now. A storm was gathering. At a ridiculous speed. Within a manner of seconds, the sky was covered in clouds, the air around them turned much colder, and they could hear thunder and the distant flashes of light they followed. Something was coming. And when he heard that shrieking roar cast itself across the land, he knew what it was.

"It's Tempest!" Tempest had returned.