Promise

Lucas opened his eyes to a familiar polished marble ceiling.

The mirror like image of the surface eerily reflected a hazy image of Lucas lying down on a soft bed whilst being encased in the most expensive looking silk fabrics he had seen in his life.

'What the hell is going on...' Lucas thought as he tried to understand where he was.

Lucas got up, the soft caress of the silken blanket gently falling off his chiseled chest.

'Where am I…' Lucas groaned at the brightly lit room.

Golden chandeliers hovered above him while a gentle breeze blew past the thin curtains drooping above the huge doors towards the balcony of his room.

Sweet smelling fragrances wafted from the lit candles on the side of his bed mixed with the warm breeze smelling of grassy meadows and flower fields from outside.

Lucas could not understand all this.

'I must be dreaming...' Lucas laughed. 'It's all a dream...'

Lucas tried to pinch his face just like any other classic.

'Hah, what do you know, I can't feel it!' Lucas laughed in a panic.

He still felt his cheeks burning.

'It's just my imagination...' Lucas breathed deeply.

Lucas got off the bed and realized that he felt the breeze very well. Far too well in fact.

He looked down to see his naked body and sighed.

'To think that I would be naked in a dream...' Lucas wiped his head in disbelief. 'I never thought that such desires were hidden in me...'

Lucas dismissed the issue and continued to look around his room, spotting the verdant grass fields with geometrically arranged flowerbeds outside his room. The furniture was made of Elknwood, a luxury material exclusive to nobility, draped in woven gold and encrusted with crystallized ecchus from the blood of dragons. The act alone of using it in some furniture was an insanely expensive and wasteful move that was an insult to the people who sacrifice hundreds of lives just to get one bit of it. Not to mention that they were using it for some ornamental design.

[This is an insult to dragons…] Lucas wanted to say.

"This here is a symbol of power. Feeble dragons are nothing compared to the Sun God's children." Lucas heard his mouth speak.

[Wut?] Lucas felt his brain hurt. [What the fuck?!]

"Strange…" Lucas ended up saying. "By the Sun God's name, what am I speaking of?!"

[WHY DO I SAY THE WRONG STUFF?!] Lucas wanted to scream. [WHAT SUN GOD?! I'M NOT HIS BELIEVER!]

"My tongue refuses to speak my mind!" Lucas ended up screaming. "My beloved Sun God! Your believer is confused!"

Lucas raised his hand and slapped himself across his face in an attempt to snap out of it and ended up slapping himself too hard that he felt himself getting smacked by a bludgeon. Crimson blood dripped from his nose as he struggled to regain his balance amidst the staggering pain of his now swelling cheek.

Lucas could not believe it.

"By the Sun God's grace, befallen upon me is his miracle in the works…" Lucas spoke with clenched teeth.

Of course, that wasn't what Lucas wanted to say, but it was what Lucas' mouth apparently translated it into.

[Damn what the hell is going on…] Lucas felt his spine shiver. [Why is this not a dream?! Where am I?!]

"By the Sun God's flames… I know not of what has transpired." Lucas mumbled. "For someone such as I to live within a dream?! For I, to be here where I know not this realm?! By the Sun God's will, I am not to wither!"

Lucas just wanted his mouth to shut up at this point. It had a mind of its own, translating his words into that of a fanatic believer of the Church.

'Where the hell am I…' Lucas thought. 'I don't remember such place, yet how come it is so familiar…'

Lucas paced around the room and rummaged through the drawers and cabinets of the place, scanning for something useful in the expensive furniture.

"Perhaps the help I seek shall be found on one of these compartments…" Lucas mumbled. "By the Sun God's providence, I pray my find shall be fruitful."

Lucas felt irritated at his mouth and complained in his head.

'Goddamn whatever witchcraft this is…' Lucas cursed.

Lucas opened a few drawers and found some kind of luxurious looking spyglass gilded with gold and silver with a gem on the sides, a crystal compass, a sun pendant and a few scented candles, a huge pile of papers with endless scribbles of the greatness of the Sun God and whatever.

Lucas thought that the Spyglass could maybe come in handy, but decided not to take it. He instead went and got dressed in the huge wardrobe.

He was greeted by all the finest silk and woven gold tunics and robes. Heck, some suits were made from dragonspider silk and abyssal larvae cocoon thread. A number were made from leather that looked normal, but upon closer inspection turned out to be made from the hide of Gilgamoth, Abyssadrite and Eldruid Behemoth species plus a lot more that Lucas can't even figure out where it came from.

"Legendary beasts are merely clothing for the Children favored by the great Sun God." Lucas mumbled.

'The heck?! This place has stuff this good and not even guard it?!' Lucas felt his head hurt.

The materials on the hundreds of clothes in the wardrobe was enough to make anyone feel worthless.

All the effort they could pile up in a hundred lifetimes could not even amount to this much of treasures. Much less strewn about without any guards.

Lucas just ignored the stabbing feeling in his heart as he walked down the wardrobe and picked a leather tunic made of Golden Balrog hide, pants made of dark, Abyssal Abomination Skin, socks made of Cloudfeather mesh, a overcoat cloak made of bright, reddish-orange, Twilight Mirage Raven feathers.

Before Lucas could put it on however, he encountered a problem.

'Where are the underpants?' Lucas paled at the realization.

'No, no, no, no…' Lucas thought as he rummaged at the drawers and the compartments.

"Such, vile taste…" Lucas slumped down as he found absolutely no underpants in the place.

Lucas considered going commando but quickly shot the idea down.

'No, no, no, no…' Lucas shook his head. 'I am NOT going to run around with jingle bells down my pants!'

Lucas searched around for anything else when he found a bunch of thinly woven scarf made from Frost Elemental strings.

Lucas gulped, already feeling the icy cold bite between his thighs.

'Ah fuck it.' Lucas rolled his eyes.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rowan prowled across the corridors of the inner sanctum like a crazed wolf on a hunt. He now knew where to go and what to do.

But there was still a problem.

Rowan still did not know where he was.

"Goddamn Knight did his best explaining where to go under the motivation of a knife blade." Rowan muttered. "But what the hell does he mean 'take a right and go straight then go up and head south'."

'How do you even tell where is south from here?!' Rowan cursed.

The Knight had fainted before he could get more answers, which left Rowan to figure it out for himself.

There were strangely no spiders in the place and no windows where he could calculate his position through the sunlight.

Rowan was absolutely lost.

'This place is worse than Elknwood Ridge or Darkwood Valley. Heck, even running through the Abyssalite Rifts was easier…' Rowan sighed.

'Wait, where are those places even located at?!' Rowan realized that he may have known the places, but he had no memory of the places itself.

"Goddamnit, my head is going crazy." Rowan mumbled.

Rowan turned a corner and spotted three of the so called 'Repentant Sinners' from the 'Army of Sinners'.

'Tch, trash like this is just part of a front.' Rowan rolled his eyes. 'I bet the real army is far fewer and much, much stronger.'

This was a thought that Rowan soon found out to be annoyingly true. But that is still a long way after he regained his memories.

Back to the story at hand, Rowan dropped from above as he crashed down a soldier with a maul, crushing the soldier's skull and helmet in an instant.

As the other two whipped around to see the remains of their former comrade, Rowan was already in front of one of the soldiers as he struck the mace against the lower plate of his chestpiece, causing it to cave in and knock the air out of the soldier.

The last one called for help as Rowan lunged at him like a pouncing Tiger, completely diving headfirst into the soldier into a tackle.

The soldier reacted by letting go of his spear and drawing a dagger just as Rowan crashed into him. He raised the hand with a dagger to strike Rowan but was too late.

Rowan was way faster with his animalistic instinct.

Rowan did not crash into the soldier as they landed on the ground, instead, after tackling the soldier, he had drawn back his upper body using the recoil and landed crouched on his feet, with the mace still on his hand.

The soldier was down on the ground beneath him, and he was away from the dagger's reach while brandishing the mace on his left hand.

A sudden clash of iron echoed within the halls, silencing a terrified scream of a man that preceded it.

Rowan wiped the blood off his brow as he panted. He was full of wounds and his clothes were nearly dripping wet with blood, yet most of the blood off him was often not his. A solid testament to the amount of battles he's been through.

'Damn, if only my right shoulder didn't have a hole on it.' Rowan grimaced.

His left hand hurt like crazy, so did his legs and feet.

'I need a potion…'

Rowan breathed out violently.

'If only I could blend in… wait.' Rowan eyed the soldier's armor and crushed face.

'Hmmm…' A sinister smile crept it's way on Rowan's cheeks.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Roschek ran through the halls while being followed by four other soldiers with him.

"Hurry!" He beckoned the Repentant Sinners behind him. "There must have been an encounter with that monster again!"

"FOR THE GLORY OF THE SUN GOD~!" The others soldiers chorused.

As Roschek rounded the last corner with a flame bolt ready on his hand, he found three people on the ground. Two were seemingly dead soldiers from the Army of Sinners and one was a dark haired body covered in bloody rags with a bashed in face.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Roschek bellowed.

"SIR!" A soldier crept from behind a pillar he was leaning on and answered. "That one was probably the monster killing our brothers in arms!"

"What?!" Roschek could not believe that a fellow dark haired brother in arms was the murdering monster. "Is he not like us?!"

"No Sir!" The surviving guard spoke without moving. "He came from the south and attacked my two companions!"

Roschek narrowed his eyes in confusion.

South?

Roschek looked to his right. There was no door, hallway, or any passage anywhere right.

"But there's a wall here on south?" Roschek asked in confusion.

"Thanks for telling me which way is south." The survivor's voice suddenly turned sadistic.

"NOT GOOD!" Roscheck cursed as he felt a bloodthirsty aura coming from the survivor and strafed to his side.

Roschek found himself extremely lucky as a flicker of an iron spear flashed on the corner of his eye, narrowly missing his head.

Roschek lunged forth as he drew his sword at the guard and struck with all his might, sending the head flying a few meters from the body.

Roschek did not celebrate and felt it strange that it went far too easy.

'There was no resistance…' Roschek scrunched up his brows.

His suspicions were confirmed as the hollow armor crumbled down into a mess on the floor.

'SHIT!' Roschek cursed as he instinctively stepped back.

"Cover me!" Roschek commanded the soldiers behind him. "I will cast the Sun God's boon! I need your assista…nce…."

Roschek's jaw dropped at the sight of his half dead platoon behind him.

The spear had impaled one in to the wall, the soldier still barely alive and struggling to break the shaft. One of his soldiers was lying on the floor while choking in his own blood with a dagger lodged up the back of his knee. The last soldier was crawling on the ground with half of his body halfway cut up.

Roschek felt fear creep up on him. A sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach threatened to rise up his throat made him retch instinctively.

His hands suddenly felt cold as his body shivered for no reason.

'It had been 6 seconds since the spear was thrown…' Roschek tightened his grip on his sword. 'What kind of monster…'

Roschek quickly turned around in fear and looked around everywhere for a shadow of the monster but found none.

'Sun God, bless my soul…' Roschek closed his eyes to pray.

His faith was absolute, the Sun God always protected his faithful children, Roschek soon found peace in himself and steadied his stance.

He remembered the faces of his comrades, the beautiful nuns, the faithful Templars, the majestic Knights of the Inquisition.

Roschek steeled his resolve and felt a surge of power flow upon him and fill his very being.

'I will not die today.' Roschek swore to himself.

Roschek opened his eyes and turned around.

He found a spear flying at his face faster than he could blink.

"Ah." Roschek gasped in hopelessness.

'I guess I can't keep my promise even for 3 seconds…'