Sacril squinted in annoyance, before standing to his feet supressing the urge to flee with all his might.
'Of course, they just had to call me up.'
now the reason he was suppressing the urge to flee was quite simple: he could not. There were so many people surrounding him that he simply could not even see the door he had come in through.
And conveniently, the people leading up to the stage had parted ways, allowing him to pass through.
He walked up with them to the surrounding crowd. He appeared to stoically make his way up to the stage; in reality, he had simply resigned himself to the absolute disgrace this speech would be.
finally after what felt like an eternity of ignoring the hundreds of stares from those around him, he stepped onto the stage and took a deep bow to the crowned prince.
"Lord Roikos."
The prince nodded, "At ease, Major, the crown is in your debt, and we are calling upon you once again."
A shudder ran through Sacril's body as yet more pressure was dropped on his shoulders.
He wanted to flee, to leave the stage and not say a word, all this expectation on someone who was the opposite of what the people in the building saw him as.
however an incandescent white light woke him from this trance, his eyes focused, and he saw the runes which spelled out a simple sentence in front of his face.
[Explain The Nature Of The Attack.]
a slim string of hope descended to him like a gift from the heavens, perhaps... perhaps he had overlooked something.
He had information that they could not possibly know about, but how to deliver such information without proof or reason for knowing about it?
A smarter person would think about this; however, Sacril was simply ecstatic about this glimmer of hope, and if he had any doubts, he would simply have brushed them off with the premade excuse that the people here obviously trusted him a great deal.
turning to the crowd with a firm and confident expression, he spoke out to the silent and expectant crowd in a loud voice that carried through the hall.
"The Attack on this city will happen tomorrow, it will be enormous, and we will need all the time we have to prepare for it, or this city will be lost."
murmurs ran through the hall, and a moment later, he slowly turned and saw a look of utter outrage on the face of General Gold Strong.
"This Heritic Has gone mad! seize him at once."
.
.
.
Needless to say, he was dumbstruck; he had been stripped of his armor and made to put on rags, and after that, he had been sent to the dungeons to a lonely, although cleaner cell than the others he had seen in the block.
He had no idea why his statement had landed him here, although his leading theory was that you simply couldn't say that the kingdom would fall, and perhaps the king was a god-emperor type figure, and saying anything could kill him or destroy his kingdom would be blasphemy.
However, no one had actually told him this, so he had many more theories. The one thing he was sure of was that he was angered by the damned incandescent runes that hovered in his face almost mockingly.
[12:50]
The sun was setting, and he had burnt through half the time before the siege. What's worse is that he had no way out of the dungeon, and it was almost certain that nobody would heed his warning.
"Well, as impossible as the original trial is, this one is as well. In a more roundabout way, I suppose."
He thought back to when he had first looked out over the vast city, the royal sector separated from the peasants by a large circular wall, even if the royal sector was defended, how many innocents would die?
That being said, he had no idea if these events constituted themselves as real; they felt real, looked real, but he knew that the strange light just conjured up this place as a means to test his abilities. It was unclear if he could even die in here, although he had no intention of testing that out.
He was surprisingly tired; the situations he had been through today had stressed him out, and he actually realized that he would have no problem sleeping, despite the incoming danger.
'Maybe I can make my way out in the chaos? Does that even count as completing this trial?'
He shrugged and fell back onto the thin canvas "bed" below him and sighed.
Being without choices was actually far more calming than having many.
.
.
.
He awoke to the distant smell of burning.
He looked up and was met by the light.
[00:59]
less than an hour.
He imagined the view from the gate, what horrors had appeared to assault this massive fortress.
They were likely just mobilizing in force at a safe distance. This process would take about an hour before they could begin the assault.
He shivered but could do nothing, simply waiting for a very long while in his cell, which had become a whole lot cooler.
[00:15]
He heard a panicked scramble outside his cell.
He then heard a familiar voice curse, before a click was heard outside his door, which proceeded to fly open.
"Well, sir! I have no idea how you knew about this, but by the grace of Leonidas, I never doubted you!"
Outside his door stood Sergeant Tyber, who wore a jovial grin, and was evidently...
missing his left arm.
Sacril stared at it in shock, Tyber followed his gaze and laughed aloud.
"Yes, sir, Im afraid im the only one from our company that made it back, the advance party was torn apart in the ambush. luckily I only lost my weak arm! haha!"
Sacril noted that despite the jokes, he had lost his usual temperament of being carefree, and he seemed to be using the jokes as more of a coping mechanism.
He also appeared to be pale in the face, evidently having lost a lot of blood.
[00:05]
The pair of them had not wasted the last ten minutes, climbing all the way from the deep dungeons, all the way to the top of the walls that encircled that majestic golden castle.
and they were met by a sight that would make nightmares seem light in comparison.
A flaming army was poised outside the castle walls, too many to ever hope to count. Behind them were massive smoking machines, which produced smoke that by now had already covered almost the entire sky.
The creatures were too small to make out from here, their only discernible feature being that they were definitely all aflame.
The sight defied imagination, and Sacril could not hold his words back.
"What in hell..."
Tyber turned.
"so thats it..."
wide-eyed, Sacril met his gaze.
"I see it now, it's strange I couldn't tell."
Sacril already knew the answer, but couldn't help but ask.
"whats that?"
Tyber drew his blade with his singular remaining arm and pointed its length at Sacril, who took a step back.
"You are not Major Stout."