Tap-tap-tap.

The sound echoes, every note a gong.

Tap-tap-tap.

The knight cringes slowly.  A heavy grating of metal accompanies the movement, worsening the discordant din.  A thunderous flurry and an awful squawk add to it all.  The knight curls smaller.

"Freedom," whisper the waves.  "Freedom..."

The knight doesn't move until well after the sun has set.  The seabirds have gone to roost, and all that remains is the whispering surf.  With all the speed of a garden snail, the knight sits up, wincing at the noise.  The beach is vacant.  The knight sits on a floe of ice, nearly grounded, still nudged by the sea.

"Freedom."

Carefully, the knight tugs armored legs from the frozen embrace.  There's a flinch at every crack.  Every joint is stiff.  Every step feels heavy.  Slow.  The world is dim, yet far too vibrant.

The knight walks—away from the sea, toward...the knight doesn't know.

The sand catches the rolling whisper of the waves.

Freedom, the knight supposes.

The sun is on the horizon.  The sun, and a forest.  The sun is too bright, but the knight goes all the same.  The forest is the strangest one the knight has ever seen.  The trees stretch toward the skies, but they have stars instead of leaves, and their trunks glint with armor.  There's a river somewhere within the maze of their trunks.  The knight can hear the rushing waters, and continues with a hurried step—and at every step, the knight's awe grows, for the trees are bigger than any the knight has seen, and still, they're distant—and there is no sun on the horizon, but the glow of the forest itself, where the stars have fallen to earth.

The screeching wail of a creature halts the knight's progress.  It careens through the night, wild and anxious, and fades away without warning, and the knight is reminded of caution.

Slowly again, the knight approaches.  The river does not sound like the sea.  It is loud, and angry, or maybe it's frightened.  The trees are larger than the knight imagined, armored trunks bursting from the ground and shearing toward the sky.  The river's voice is many, all overlapping, a whispering dissonance that swells and roars and never quiets, never softens.  The knight's joints ache.

The trees are not trees at all, but palaces (like the one at Eretel, with its wall of stained glass)—but these are not stained anything but dark.  It's the lanterns that are colored, pink and green and blue.

The river rushes on with its hundred voices, though still the knight has not seen it.  A palace door opens—and why was the knight thinking of palaces at all?  The palace at Eretel.  The stained glass.  The Celestial Bloom, rendered in stained glass.  Someone stumbles into the knight, and the knight startles back.  (It's Siv.)  It's a child, in a dress with a skirt like rose petals.

"You—"  She hiccups, swaying forward, then dancing back with a giggle.  "You look funny."

"Look funny," echoes the river.  "Funny, funny..."  The river laughs.  The knight backs away.

"Oh, you're leaving?"  The child pouts.  (Who's Siv?)

She's too loud; the river is too loud—the knight backs away, around a corner (an alley full of noise—an alley, hiding from the noise).  The child begins to sing—too loud; it's grating; the river sings with her (sailors)—the knight cowers.  (Sailors singing—drunken shanties—shadowed alley—Siv.)  The knight looks up abruptly.  It must find Siv.  It?  He.  He?  The knight must find Siv.  Siv...Siv, in the sea.  Which way is the sea?

"The sea?" the river asks.  "The sea," it echoes, "the sea, the sea."

Every step is a creak—salted, rusted.  The sea calls—too faint.  The river is too loud.  The lights are too bright.  Too loud, too bright, and louder and brighter, like the docks but oh so much worse—how the knight longs for the sea!  That silent song, that peaceful calm...

"The sea!" clamors the river.  "The city, the sea, awake and alive, to dance and to play, to sing and to eat, the gardens are blooming, the towers are growing—"

Where is Siv?

"This isn't Siv, this is Rètell."

Eretel?

"Rètell, city of splendor."

Where is Eretel?

"There is no Eretel."

"Some people, leaving their junk everywhere!"

The knight looks up, and the boy jumps back, eyes wide as a deer's, and the knight goes still.

"Fucking 'ell, you're creepy," the boy says, moving closer to peer at the knight.  "You got a name, pal?"

"Good," says the river.  "Strange, unique, fighter?"  Its current is fast.  Its floor, deceptively deep.  The knight slowly leans away.  The boy's ears poke out of a mop of black curls, the tops of them pinched.

"Nothing?  ...honestly adds to the act.  I can work with this."

"Act, work, fight, good show, pretty penny."

The boy smiles, delicate features lending him an elfin look.  "The Lich Queen's Knight," he declares with a grin.  His eyes are too dark.  "I can see it now."  Where is the white?  Where is the brown?  There's a dangerous glint in those pure black eyes.  "So, what do you say, pal?  You want to be famous?"

The knight scrambles back, away from the elf, away from the sinister whisperings of the river—away and away, never escaping, until there are walls all around, and the knight collapses into a trembling ball.

"Run away, never hide, find the sea, you never will, Siv is gone, the sea is gone, the silence, gone—and who is Siv?  Why find the sea?"

"You're not very good at hiding," says the elf.

"Run, hide—stay, fight, play—hide—be found, then find—away—a game!"

"I wish you would join me," the elf says with a pout.  "We could have such fun!"

"Fun!" choruses the river.  "Fun and fun and fun!"

"Don't you want to have fun?  Don't you want to be famous?"

"Fun, fame, glamor, splendor!"

The knight cowers back.

"Friend...friend," the elf coos, stepping in to rest a gentle hand on the knight's rusted shoulder.  "I just want to help you.  I can make you into something great—don't you see it?"  The elf spreads a hand through the air.  "The Lich Queen's Knight.  Don't you want that to be you?  I'm trying to help you—but I can't do that if you're just going to curl up here.  You really need to work on your stage presence.  But I can help you with that, too!  What d'you say?  Will you let me help you?"  He holds out a hand, one side of his mouth curving up in a smile.

"Help you," whispers the river.  "Help you, shape you, make you great, pretty penny, good show, fame and fun, Lich Queen's Knight, famous—Queen's Knight—famous—Queen."

The knight leaps up, grabbing the elf by his green embroidered vest—"Danger, calm, back down!"

"Hey...hey, hey, hey," the elf says, raising his hands, "I'm just trying to help you, pal.  No need to get all grabby on me.  If it's not your jive, it's not your jive, and we'll just go our separate ways—"

Queen.

The knight shakes the elf, as though it would dislodge the information, but the elf only shouts and pleads to be put down, and the river babbles frantically of unhelpful advice, and the knight at last releases the elf, who lands like a cat and brushes his vest smooth with a look of irritation.

"Fucking 'ell, you're a piece of work," the elf mutters, and the river echoes his tone.

"Strength enough, poor temper, scares himself faster than anyone else, worth it?"

"Just don't go making trouble for me, yeah?  I'd hate to introduce you to my friends, seeing as you're not looking for that sort of work."  He gives the knight a strange look, calculating threats and possibilities, and shrugs.  "You change your mind, just ask for Bartleby."  He turns and walks away, but the knight moves after him, and the elf looks back, and the knight halts mid-step.

"You are interested, then?"

A hesitation.  The knight nods.

The elf grins, those black eyes a-glitter, and grabs the knight's hand.  "Oh, you and I are going to have such fun."

Through the streets, the elf leads the knight, betwixt the towering structures of darkened glass, and then slips sideways through a path the knight didn't see and couldn't follow, and they stand in darkness, and the knight relaxes.  But the elf leads on, the darkness lightening, its pattern dappled, and they pass beneath a tunnel of arcing branches into a fair meadow.  Sweet birdsong fills the air, and flowers dot the grass.  Other figures stand about, lounging on stones and fallen logs, a few glancing toward them at their entrance.  The river is quieter here, too, more of a susurrant mumbling than of the endless roar of before.

A woman in a sleeveless shirt with arms the size of small trees looks up from where she's cleaning her nails with the tip of a knife.  "Found some fresh blood, Bartleby?"

"Smith, just who I was looking for!  I need you two ready to go in a week.  Oh-ho, this'll be brilliant!"  The elf claps his hands, nearly bouncing for joy.

The woman pushes herself off the tree she'd been leaning against and wanders over.  She's taller than the elf, and her eyes are human, and her halo of tight, dark curls shades her face as she looks at the knight, distrust and disdain writ in equal measure across her features.  "Bring 'im back when he knows how to treat armor.  Where'd you pull that from," she asks the knight, "a lake?"

The knight falls back a step, uncertain, and can offer little more than a shrug.

The woman scoffs, but the elf waves away her concerns.  "You can fix that up."

"That sort of damage?  You're kidding me, right—"  Her eyes narrow.  Her mouth turns to an irritable frown, a growl sounding in her throat.  "I'm using the last of your pixie dust."  The elf looks suddenly hesitant, opening his mouth to respond.  "And you won't complain."  The elf closes his mouth.

"Fine, fine, use the dust.  Just keep the black and gold look, yeah?  And get him a sword.  I need him ready as the Lich Queen's Knight, you got it?"

Smith waves him off with a deep roll of her eyes.  "Elves," she mutters.  "Now, let's get a look at you...lords above, you're a mess."  She peers into the knight's visor, but is only met with darkness.  "They call me the Lady of the Lake," she says, extending a hand.  "Smith, for short."

The knight looks at her hand, the helmet creaking with the movement, and at her face, and takes her hand gently, bowing over it.

Smith snorts.  "Now you act the part.  You learn any respect for your gear and maybe I'll believe it.  Come on, then—we've only got a week, and the likes of us still need to sleep."

The knight hesitates, and gestures between them, and hesitates again, and waves vaguely in the direction Bartleby went off.

"We're not following the jerk, if that's what you're asking," Smith says, but the knight's already shaking a no.

The knight taps gauntlet to breastplate, then slowly points toward Smith.

"Oh.  Right.  Never seen another human before, have you?  Wait 'til you meet the rest of the crew.  Proper collector."  Her tone is scornful.  "...You coming or not?"

Realizing she's started walking away, the knight hurries to follow, but for all the gestures in the world, she won't speak of anything but chiding lessons on the cleaning and polishing and refinishing of steel.

※

Based on AlternativeStorytelling's prompt:

Awakening in a cryo-pod, your character discovers they've been asleep for a thousand years.  The Earth they knew is gone, replaced by sprawling megacities and towering alien structures.  Your character must navigate this new world and uncover the fate of humanity.