The tale of the brave knight (I)

"So, what do you usually do when you're bored?" I then asked while getting up on the bed to 

"I study; there's not much to do here. I also like to play volleyball, but lately everyone's so obsessed with video games, it's rotting their brains! They're all zombies!"

"You can't be serious, right?"

Oops, I shouldn't have let that escape.

"Yeah! They're glued to those tiny screens that they can fit into their pockets and play make-believe with some monsters; they're so annoying! Can you believe they mocked me for not having one of those things?"

She seemed to have misunderstood what I just said.

"Anyway, is there anything we can play with here?"

I immediately tried to change the topic to not start talking badly about people I didn't even know, desperately looking for something stored in the room, but there was nothing that caught my eye.

The room was mostly white; the furniture placed on the corners of the room was made out of wood, and it was pretty scarce in such a spacious room.

"Can you at least put something else on the screen? I'm getting tired of the life of a pack of lions." After some more time spent in silence, I grew too bored to stand that situation.

"Oh, sure, just pass me the remote."

What? You're the one holding… That's what that was—the fidgeting from earlier. She was hiding it!

My immediate instinct was to check her hands, and they were empty, then the nightstand behind her. I checked underneath the bed, in between the mattress and the bed frame, and lastly, I checked in the space behind us, in between the bed and the wall.

Nothing.

As I was looking around, I saw the edges of her mouth slightly rising as I kept researching and failing to find the remote.

She must still have it. There's no way she doesn't.

When I got closer to her, the small smirk vanished and was replaced by a blank expression as she was trying to hide her emotion from me. I once again took her hands and checked them one more time, then I began to pat her arms in search of the remote.

That's when I saw her finally cracking. As I began inspecting her body, I noticed her slowly leaning away from me, then when I began inspecting the loose sleeves of her shirt, she rapidly got away from me, making the remote fall out of her left shirt sleeve.

Caught you! I win, you lose. I'm the best, as usual.

I quickly rushed to get the remote, and the girl kicked it away before I could pick it up with enough force to make it fly towards the other end of the room, breaking it against the wall of the room.

Really? Did you really have to break it? Just so I couldn't change channels? I mean, you could have simply refused if you didn't want to change channels; it's not like I could've done much else in this situation.

"What was that for?" I shouted at her.

"Ah, no!"

The girl rushed over the fragmented remote, hoping, but it was already too late. The remote had shattered; the plastic buttons were scattered across the floor. Her father was quick to notice the commotion.

He seemed worried about his daughter, and when he saw her standing on the other side of the room picking up the pieces of the broken remote, he let out a sigh of relief.

"Ah, ehm… Sorry!"

She was on the verge of tears as she turned around and handed her father the broken remote. He simply took the broken pieces and hugged her.

"Just be careful now; we can always buy a new one. This stuff is pretty cheap; there's no need to cry, okay?" He reassured her while patting the top of her head and giving her small kisses on her forehead.

"B-b-but!"

Is she doing it on purpose? There's no way you would cry over a broken remote. Ugh, this feels odd; just be normal, please; just apologize, bow your head, and say I'm sorry; no need for the tears.

"Don't worry, everything's under control."

Since we couldn't switch channels anymore and I was starting to get bored, the disfigured man brought in a deck of strange cards.

The deck was incredibly large. It must've surely contained over ninety cards, all with a strange ring on their back made out of two snakes biting each other's tail.

"Since we can't watch the TV, how about we play a card game?"

He had already started shuffling the deck, so it was too late to refuse. We set up the nightstand that was right beside my bed as our table and brought in some chairs for the father and the girl and began playing a strange game.

The girl was sitting right in front of me while the man was sitting on my left side.

Each card had a different theme: some had depictions of wars, and some had simply some infrastructure, like giant towers, amphitheaters, and more.

In total, there were five kinds of cards: character cards, peaceful cards, violent cards, cards that show depictions of buildings, and lastly, mirror cards.

Once we all sat down, the doctor distributed the cards until we all had five cards each. I had the luck of drawing a mirror card immediately, as it is the most beautiful and mesmerizing among all others.

It was seemingly see-through, but it also functioned as a mirror; it seemed to have large shards of a mirror floating in the cards that reflect whatever is on the other side.

How does this even work? There can't be something inside the card; it's basically paper-thin.

"The game is really simple. It's a storytelling game. The cards are used to tell a story. I'll be the narrator narrating the events, and you'll be the ones deciding the story, while I'll try my best to interpret your choices."

What a lame game… It sounds boring. Why do I have to play this? The cards are beautiful, but this sounds boring as hell!

Then the man tapped twice on the deck of cards, and suddenly the entire room around us disappeared and turned completely dark.

An illusion? Why would there… Wait, don't tell me these are…

"I'll start." He said while placing down a character card representing a knight.

"There once was, a long time ago, a valiant knight. He was the strongest and purest soul there could ever be. Hailing from an unknown village, he set off on his adventure at a young age to make a name for himself, dreaming of becoming the strongest knight."

As the man was narrating the story, the illusion started to become clearer and clearer; a knight riding a majestic horse appeared, both armored to the teeth. The knight's armor seemed extremely large and heavy, with spikes on the shoulders, knees, and elbows.

Suddenly, the game didn't look so boring after all.

Then Helena placed down the princess card. Her eyes were ecstatic the moment she had drawn her cards, and that must've surely been one of the reasons why.

"As soon as he arrived in the city, he fell in love with one of the kingdom's princesses; her name is Aisha, the Flower of the East." 

And now it was my turn. In my hand, all I had was a tower, a duel, a greedy king, a prince, and a mirror card.

A tower would be too cliché here. I should probably put down either the duel or the greedy king… But I really want to see what the mirror card does.

I placed down the prince card because he had an unsettling smile, and I wanted to rid myself of him and not look at him any further.

"Unfortunately for the knight, a prince in a faraway country had already betrothed her. Knowing this, the knight set off on an adventure to prove himself worthy of becoming the princess consort."

When the princess appeared, she was stunning and was wearing an elegant, flowery dress that reached her ankles. She was currently standing in front of some sort of balcony, waving at a group of knights as they were preparing themselves to duel with one another.

The knight protagonist of the tale was looking at her and glaring at her companion, who stood beside her, clenching his fist whenever he saw her trying to refuse the advances of her prince.

I then drew the rebellion card.

This seems a little more violent than I thought, but who am I to judge? This is the game the people of the Fracture play; I should just enjoy it for now.

"In his quest for greatness, our hero encountered a village currently being raided by bandits."

The other knights and the princess disappeared. We didn't even see the hero leaving the city.

We suddenly found ourselves sitting near a river staring at a village in flames, civilians fleeing, and savage barbarians chasing them.

"The knight couldn't possibly ignore a group of people in need, so he set out to slay the bandits and free the village."

The knight was merciless. He was far more skilled in swordsmanship and spearmanship than all the barbarians combined.

They had surrounded him, yet their combined efforts weren't enough to even leave a scratch on his armor. The knight spun around their attacks, constantly changing weapons, disarming them, or stealing their weapons and throwing them back, leaving no blind spot.

He charged forward, running headfirst against the line of spears, and moved to the side at the last minute to avoid getting impaled by their spears, grabbed the spear by the shaft, and killed its owner by stabbing him in the neck with his sword.

The sound of the barbarians dying remained imprinted in my head. I looked around to see the reaction of the others, and they seemed perfectly used to this.

The knight moved forward, pulling away the spear from the corpse's hand to stab the soldier standing on his opposite side, pushed him out of the way, and then threw his sword, piercing the head of the barbarian standing right behind the one he had just killed.

Another warrior tried to attack the knight from behind using a large hammer. The knight spun around his weapon and unsheathed a dagger hidden within his armor, stabbed the barbarian in the neck, pushed away, stole the hammer, and used it to crush his head.

In the end, he stood over a mountain of corpses, covered in blood and shouting a war cry so powerful it made my whole body shiver.

One thing that I didn't like about that game was how real it seemed, with the pungent smell of fresh blood, the terrifying sound of blades clashing, the sound of the fire burning down the buildings around us, and the smell of the smoke.