The highest tower of the grand castle of Camelot was a truly wonderful place; it stretched up impossibly high, allowing anyone to gaze down upon all of Camelot and even the surrounding area.
From its peak, there never seemed to be any clouds in the sky, and despite there being no walls or windows, there was never much wind, nor was it ever cold.
It was a magical place, one the King of Knights often visited, a place where she just stood and watched her kingdom.
But she wasn't the only person who liked to come up here.
There was another one, another of her knights who enjoyed this place.
Tristan.
Today as well, as everyone was busy preparing for the war, he sat here at the edge, his legs off the platform, dangling over the massive drop, and in his arms was his bow, which also worked as his harp.
Tristan was a rather unconventional knight in that he preferred the bow over the sword or the lance.
It wasn't that he couldn't use other weapons; the bow just suited him best.
He had made a name for himself using it, become a legend, and even his Noble Phantasm involved the bow, which was the biggest possible recognition.
Even the world itself saw his skill with the bow as something truly legendary.
Another legendary skill of his was his music, something he had once used to entertain himself while traveling back in the day.
Many of his traveling companions had enjoyed his music, even if they often told him he should play something more cheerful.
These days, music had become something far greater than back in his time, and there was plenty of room for all kinds of things, even stuff Tristan didn't personally see as music.
Even now, as he sat there, his fingers continued to dance across the strings, filling the air with a melancholic tune.
A sorrowful melody that seemed to weep with the weight of ages, each note a falling tear. The strings of the bow-harp responded to his touch with a resonance that was almost too perfect, a purity of tone that made the sadness even more profound.
He rarely played for others; he wasn't like Sir Dagonet, who liked to put on shows. Tristan preferred more private settings and small groups of friends.
Yet his songs were rarely left unheard, his musical skills were legendary, and he had no shortage of fans.
Standing silently behind him, one of the Veiled Hand stood in the shadow of a marble pillar.
Tristan did not turn.
He had known she was there from the moment her footsteps crossed the threshold. The air shifted when someone entered; even in a place as still as this, the smallest presence left an imprint.
He continued playing.
The melody dipped lower.
The Veiled Hand operative remained still, hands clasped loosely before her. She had been trained to control her breath, to quiet her heartbeat, to reduce herself to absence. Yet here, she did not hide. She simply listened.
When the final note of the phrase faded into the sky, she softly clapped.
"Beautiful, as always." Her voice was quiet. "I never grow tired of hearing you play."
Tristan's fingers rested against the strings, preventing their vibration from fully dying.
"Beautiful?" he said, a dryness to the word. "It's a dirge, Laila. There is nothing beautiful about it."
"Only you could call it a dirge. Others would treat a piece like that as a treasure. A piece that beautiful could make countless people feel touched," Laila said honestly.
She and many others among the former members of the Red Room deeply loved Tristan's music; there was just something so deeply touching about it.
Though privately, she liked to consider herself his biggest admirer.
Tristan shook his head a little. "You are much too kind, my lady. I am merely a lowly knight with lowly skills," he said politely.
There was a slight pause as the wind picked up for a moment, tugging at Laila's maid uniform and causing Tristan's hair to sway slightly.
Even from behind, Tristan was a breathtakingly beautiful man; his long, deeply red hair was enough to make any woman jealous. He was kind, and there was a pitiful feeling around him that made women want to hug him.
It wasn't just his music that people admired about him; Tristan had countless admirers, people who wanted to heal that broken heart of his.
Laila was no different.
"Is that why you are here today, Sir Tristan?" she asked gently. "To write another sorrowful melody for the war?"
He did not answer for a long while.
When he did, his voice was barely audible. "No."
He shifted slightly.
"Songs like that," he said slowly, "should only be written after the war has been fought, not before. That's bad luck, and when we are dealing with a war like this, luck is important."
Laila tilted her head. "Then why are you here? If not for inspiration." Her tone remained gentle, a stark contrast to the sorrowful echo of the harp still hanging in the air. "The sun is high. Soon, the King will call for the final muster."
Tristan turned his head, not fully, just enough for Laila to see the line of his jaw, the elegant curve of his throat. "I was just burning this fight into my eyes," he said. "Reminding myself of why we fight, what we fight for."
He gestured with his chin toward the sprawling kingdom below.
Camelot glittered in the daylight, its white walls and towering spires a beacon of impossible order and beauty. Beyond its walls, the verdant fields of Albion stretched out, dotted with small towns, winding rivers, and the distant, hazy blue of the coast. It was a world crafted from myth and magic, given form by a king's will.
Laila followed his gaze.
"It's beautiful," she murmured.
"Yes," he agreed.
Laila hesitated; she clearly wanted to say something, with a faint blush on her cheeks as her hands gripped her skirt. Yet as she looked at him there, so serene, she couldn't make herself say it out loud, say what they both knew already.
And Tristan… he didn't say anything. He wasn't worthy, didn't deserve love.
-----
The chamber assigned to Sir Palamedes did not resemble a knight's quarters.
It resembled an academic catastrophe.
Scrolls lay unfurled across tables and chairs alike, weighted down by daggers, ink bottles, and half-emptied cups of tea gone cold. There were countless heavy tomes all around, some with sigils faintly glowing on their pages or spines.
Chalkboards covered the walls—some mundane, some clearly enchanted—filled with diagrams of layered circles, branching sigils, annotated translations of infernal dialects.
At the center of it all stood Sir Palamedes.
Since he had heard about this war, about their soon-to-start war with the forces of Hell, he had buried himself in data and preparations.
And right this moment, he was arguing with a book.
"No, no, that makes no structural sense," he muttered, flipping back several pages. "If the Ninth Circle feeds into the Sixth, then the energy inversion would collapse the entire hierarchy.
Unless…"
He paused.
Eyes sharpened.
"…unless the hierarchy isn't vertical."
He stepped back abruptly, scanning the chalkboard wall before him. With a flick of his wrist, a piece of chalk swept across it, and quickly he drew, adjusting circles and lines to fit his newest idea.
"Yes," he murmured. "That's more plausible."
He wasn't a master of the arcane; he was no mage. But this time they were marching not against some cruel king or corrupt noble, but against the forces of the devil himself.
Palamedes wasn't as devoted in his faith as someone like Galahad; he had originally been a Saracen* knight and later converted to Christianity as he joined the Round Table.
He didn't do that out of pure faith, but because he understood that it would be the best course of action, whatever it was; they followed the same God, and the Church was powerful.
It was the best decision, and he made it not out of faith but out of logic.
This was just who he was, the Knight of Inquiry, he who would ride across the land to find answers, to gather information, and use it to guide his king.
Though often he would return from his quests only to learn that Merlin had long since known about whatever information he gathered and had already informed the king.
This time, however, there was no Merlin, no one to tell them anything, and while that witch, the Ancient One, had plenty of information about the enemies they would face, it was not easy to navigate.
Tomes after tomes of it, mountains of scrolls filled with mentions and tales of the demons they would face, countless bits of information, some useful, some less so.
And he was determined to sift through all the information. To learn as much as he could about what they would face, and to help make plans, after all, information was vital for warfare.
He moved to another table and unrolled a parchment marked with annotations in three different inks.
"Nightmare," he muttered. "Entity of dream dominion. Feeds upon psychic vulnerability. Manifestation contingent upon astral permeability."
He underlined the last phrase.
And quickly leafed through magical dictionaries to try to figure out what that meant. It sounded important, but he couldn't be sure.
His fingers traced the page, word after word, until the page ran out of lines, making him look for another work to check.
"If manifestation is contingent," he continued aloud, "then disruption of anchoring vectors becomes possible." He felt like he was going to get a headache from the many new terms he was navigating.
Clearly, these documents weren't meant for a novice, and that was what he was.
Still, he understood that this was important, that information was leverage. And that leverage won wars.
"Demons do not behave randomly," he said to the empty room. "They obey structure. Hierarchy. Contracts." That reminded him of the Fey, but clearly, demons needed someone to willingly sign their pacts; they couldn't use tricks as Fey did.
Still, one thing he grew more certain of as he kept reading was that this was indeed the right path; many demons had specific weaknesses, and if they could learn them, this war would be a whole lot easier.
"Let us see," he murmured quietly, "how well Hell tolerates scrutiny."
(end of chapter)
(Saracen: an Arab or Muslim, especially at the time of the Crusades; a nomad of the Syrian and Arabian desert at the time of the Roman Empire.)