A knight sang low under his breath as they walked, the sound carrying strange and clear through the evening air, a voice that belonged to a much older world than the one currently rusting away in overcoat pockets and coal smoke around them.
“Roland sætte luren på blodiga mundi, blæs han i med vreide; da rivna jord og jardir og ljod iver hav iver heier.”
Cormac did not miss a step.
“Ria dei ut or Franklandet med dyre dros i sadel.
Blæs i luren Olivant på Rusarvollen.”
A knight stopped walking entirely.
“…Thou knowest the Song of Roland?”
There was something almost wounded in his surprise, the way a man sounds when he finds a coin from his own homeland in a stranger’s pocket a thousand miles from anywhere he’s ever been.
“Thou singest it well.
Better than most men Someone has heard attempt it, living or otherwise.”
“My grandmother used to sing it to me.”
Cormac found, a little to his own surprise, that the memory came easily, warm and unforced in a way most of his borrowed London life didn’t.
“My father’s mother.
She had dozens of old songs, as far as I could tell.
My mother’s side told stories instead, mostly about the dead and death in general, they sung songs too but they weren’t really stories.
I liked the sound of both though.”
“A blessing.” a knight said, almost reverent.
“To carry a homeland in a voice, long after the ground itself hath forgotten thee.”
‘I should be careful,’ Cormac thought.
‘Get too sentimental and I’ll have a knight weeping on his own sword by sundown.’
They had been walking for three days now, with rest here and there of course.
Not with any particular destination in mind, not one Cormac could have named aloud without sounding unhinged, only the same patient, wordless pull behind his sternum, content to lead him roughly forward and trust that he’d follow.
He mostly did.
He didn’t have anything better to do with the time, and a man recently promoted to eldritch horror could, he’d decided, afford to take the scenic route.
The first day had been the strangest, if he was honest with himself, stranger even than the forest full of things with too many joints.
They’d come out of the trees into the outskirts of London proper, and London had simply been wrong in every direction he looked, wrong the way a familiar face is wrong when you meet it forty years too early.
The streets were narrower than he remembered them.
Motorcars sat low and boxy and rare enough that people still turned to watch them pass.
The air tasted of coal in a way his 1966 London hadn’t, rather unfortunate for his still functional lungs.
It took him the better part of an afternoon to understand why the whole city felt so oddly, achingly whole.
It hadn’t been bombed yet.
He’d stood on a corner for a long moment, looking at a row of buildings that would, in another decade, be craters and then rebuilt into something blander, and felt an uncomfortable little twist in his stomach at the thought of it, whole streets full of people going about their days and evenings with absolutely no idea what their children would live through, what they would live through.
Or at least, would have.
Cormac wasn’t sure about the exact dates but he knew that the storms were not far apart.
As horrifying as the Storm is, there is a silver lining.
If it weren’t for the horrors of the Storm, the horrors of humanity would befall these people, and he genuinely could not tell which is worse.
‘Funny thing, humanity,’ he’d thought, watching a man cheerfully argue with a fishmonger over the price of eel.
‘Give it one apocalypse and it rebuilds a nicer high street on top.
Give it two and it’s already planning the third.’
He thought of the war to come, World War 2, the sequel that completely shattered the meaning of “The war to end all wars” that people gave to the First World War, called the Great War for now.
‘Becoming the Red Priest would’ve been so easy, you don’t really have to do much.
The symbol of the Red Priest would probably change though, from fire to mud, from armors of cold steel to shells of artillery, he’ll probably gain my horror aspect’
He’d caught himself following that thought further than he liked and hauled it back by the collar before it could go anywhere useful.
‘No.
Not today.
I have more things to worry about, let’s not add to it.’
At least, he’d reflected, that was enough.
On a positive note, things were cheap here.
Absurdly cheap, if you’d spent your whole life pricing things against 1966.
Of the seventeen pounds he’d had in his pocket when the Storm had come calling, less than six had been enough to see him properly outfitted, when the same wardrobe would have cost him at least double that, or more trying, to find something period-accurate back home, assuming such a thing was even possible to buy off a rack.
He walked out of that tailor shop as a new man, in every sense that currently mattered for his disguise.
A three-piece suit made of soft dark wool, waistcoat buttoned snug beneath the jacket, trousers held with a smart pair of suspenders rather than the belt he’d been used to, although it was mostly hidden under the waistcoat.
A silk necktie in deep burgundy, knotted properly for the first time in either of his lives.
A simple fedora that he rarely used.
Leather oxford shoes, polished to a shine that made him faintly uncomfortable every time he looked down at them.
A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, purely decorative, since his eyesight had apparently improved along with everything else about him, but he’d decided they suited the look too much to leave behind.
He also procured a pair of short black glossy patent leather gloves and a long winter overcoat which actually cost him another three pounds, he’d rather not talk about the necessity of those.
He even got a new hairstyle in a barbershop, and to his surprise they already had something like a hair gel, it was called Brylcreem so he got his hair slicked-back and neat.
The obvious inspiration was Gehrman Sparrow, he would never deny that the man knew what to wear but still adhering to his preferences.
And, after no small amount of searching, a slim wooden cane with a silver head, which he did not remotely need yet carried it anyway, because a man dressed like this without a cane, he’d decided, was simply a man who hadn’t finished getting dressed.
His old clothes he’d folded away rather than sold, telling himself vaguely that he might get around to selling them later, then privately admitting he almost certainly wouldn’t, because the idea of haggling over a bottle-green herringbone jacket with some bewildered secondhand dealer in 1929 sounded like exactly the sort of hassle he had no interest in.
He bought a plain leather suitcase instead and packed the whole ensemble away inside it, sunglasses and all.
He put some bread, cheese, and tins of sardines in there as well.
Of course he never forgot about tea and a billy can to boil it in.
However, dressing the knight had proven considerably harder.
There was simply no type of clothing except for the ones he already had that would stick.
After the fourth attempt, Cormac had given up on the project entirely and gone back to the bedsheet solution, which at least had the advantage of being cheap and replaceable.
‘Four more Sequences to go before I can just tuck him away in my inner underworld,’
He thought, watching the sheet flutter faintly as they walked, giving the distinct impression of a friendly, wandering ghost.
‘Or my teeth.
I genuinely can’t wait for that particular upgrade.’
The sun was low now, sliding down towards a horizon with the color of a dying ember, the fields and hedgerows around them soaked gold and long-shadowed in the last hour of the light.
Cormac felt it settle over him the way it always did lately, that particular hush of twilight, and something under his skin stirred to meet it, quiet and pleased, the way a cat stretches toward a patch of warm sun, but he could also feel his body eagerly waiting for the dark night.
He and the knight had fallen into the habit of walking through the nights, easier to not get spotted by anyone.
It even helps him in digesting his Sleepless beyonder characteristic, stopping only when he needs the occasional rest, which should still take around three to four hours a day, but perhaps due to his physique, he only needs around two hours.
There was something almost peaceful in it now, three days in, the rhythm of it settling into his bones alongside everything else that had settled there recently.
He closed his eyes for a few steps, just to feel it properly, the gold fading to violet fading to the first true dark, savoring it the unhurried way a man savors the first sip of something he’s waited all day for.
He opened them again at the sound of footsteps that did not belong to the road, nor the century, nor anything good for him.
A small cluster of figures stood ahead of them at the edge of the lane, half-shadowed in the fading light, and every single one of them was dressed in spotless, gleaming white.
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My upload schedule might slow down next week because of upcoming tests.
Also, I’m still not sure about the romance, i wanna add it but I’m not sure with who, I’m thinking either Nautika or Anjo Nala but feel free to suggest.
No harem though, I actually want to focus on the story’s romance a bit and not just turn it to a waifu collection.