Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“My thanks, dearest cousin. She is beautiful.”

“She is modeled after a tutor of mine, little cousin. She ought to be beautiful indeed.”

“What is her name?”

“The witch, or the doll?”

“Both?”

“The witch never revealed to me her name. ‘Twas a tradition of her people, or some such. But the doll? The doll is thine, and so it is thine to name as thou wilt.”

“Then I shall call her Renna. In thy honor, Cousin Ranni.”

My eyes snap open. My gel-tissue lungs expand with a sudden gasp of breath. Spluttering and coughing, I force myself upright—can’t immediately remember what killed me, this time, so for all I know this is a mid-combat rez.

“Easy there, Barrett,” says Winchester, hovering in front of me. The ghost’s shell of burnished wood and polished gold whirs around his core. “We’re safe for now. No need to rush.”

I nod, still coughing, and lean back against the wreckage of my ship, clutching at my chest as I try to get my breath back.

…Wait.

I stand up and turn around. Yep, that’s the Lonestar, all right—absolutely smashed to bits.

“What the hell happened?” I ask hoarsely.

“How much do you remember?” Winchester answers my question with a question, which is both rude and just like him.

I force my mind back. I always have a little trouble remembering the immediate details before a death, and the problem tends to be worse outside of combat. Privately, I blame Clovis Bray. Not for any particular reason, it just seems like a safe bet.

“We were… investigating a goldilocks world, right?” I ask slowly. “Had that big megaflora anomaly, visible from space.” It looked like a massive tree, with boughs stretching over an entire continent, all glowing gold. “Then we… hit an asteroid, or something? Kind of lose it after that.”

“That’s most of it,” says Winchester. “The moment we enter the planet’s gravity well, suddenly there’s a whole-ass debris field hanging in geosync orbit, like every meteorite to approach the planet in decades just froze in place and was somehow cloaked until we got too close to avoid ‘em. Ship smacks one, goes into a tailspin, and hits at least half a dozen more on the way to the ground. Think you died around the third impact when it buckled the cockpit.”

“Shit.” I look over the ruins of the Lonestar. “Tell me the radio unit’s still salvageable, at least?”

“Sure, I can tell you that,” says Winchester. “Be lying, though. Well,” he adds, “it might be salvageable, if we had either the raw materials I need or an engram decoder so I could program our glimmer. Unfortunately, our decoder is definitely not salvageable, so unless you know where I can find a whole lot of gold, iridium, and carbon insulation…”

“Iridium and gold we can probably find in the asteroid field,” I say.

“Yeah. The debris field that is, and I cannot stress this enough, not accessible from planetside.” Winchester always gets colorful like this when he’s frustrated. “ And even if we could get there, we still couldn’t get through without getting torn up by the meteors again. We need the debris to get the ship working, we need the ship to get the debris, and we need the debris out of the way to—wait. Hang on.”

“What?” I ask, turning back to face him.

“Thinking,” snaps Winchester. “Going through the telemetry logs.” A pause. I wait patiently. Or, well, sort of patiently. So maybe my foot’s tapping, can you blame me? “Okay, so I have good news.”

“Lay it on me, bud.”

“The debris field is being suspended off-planet.”

I frown. “…Suspended?”

“The Lonestar should have at least knocked some of that debris out of geosync,” says Winchester. “It didn’t. Somehow, none of the debris started drifting towards the planet—all of it either maintained constant altitude, or drifted away.”

“Some kind of barrier? Force field? A barricade left by a really big Titan?”

“Ha, ha.” Winchester grumbles. “No—things didn’t bounce off of anything. If I’m reading the data right… the impacts that should have sent the debris into a downward spiral instead sent it parallel to the ground, maintaining constant elevation. It’s not a force field, at least not as we think of it—it’s a… a weaponized gravitational anomaly. Or something.”

“Winchester, that don’t make any goddamn sense.”

“Barrett, if it made any goddamn sense, I wouldn’t be talking about it!” Winchester lets out a grumpy sound, halfway between a grunt and a chirp. It’s cute. As much as my ghost can be an ornery bastard, I gotta admit he can be damn adorable. Privately, of course. I don’t need him refusing to rez me.

“Okay.” I sigh. “Have we got hammerspace capacity to drag the wreck with us, or do we need to leave the ship here?”

“We don’t even have the space for all the stuff we already had in hammerspace,” Winchester groans. “Dammit, half the arsenal was uploaded to the ship’s computers!”

“Is it recoverable?”

“Let me check.” Winchester darts past me and slips inside a smashed hole in the Lonestar’s hull. I take advantage of the momentary silence to look around.

It looks like we smashed through the rock ceiling of a cave, but that isn’t what gets my attention. “Holy hell,” I mumble, staring at the emaciated corpses practically covering the floor. “Holy hell.”

“You say something?” Winchester says, emerging from the ship.

“That’s a lot of bodies.”

“You’re not paying attention,” Winchester says grimly. “It’s a lot of bodies, but it’s really a lot of human bodies to be on a planet that wasn’t on any of the Coalition’s starcharts.”

I feel my brow plates shift as my eyes widen. “Oh, shit, you’re right. How is—”

I’m spinning on my heel before I’ve even completely registered the sound I’m hearing, and Winchester’s already transmatting my gun onto my back when I reach for the stock. I tug it off its magnetic holster and bring it to bear, snapping its lever into place.

There’s a woman there, sitting astride a horse. No, wait, it’s got horns; I have no idea what the hell it is. She’s wearing a hooded cloak that hides everything from her ankles to her throat, and even her face is in shadow. All I can see is a hint of strawberry blonde hair and a single eye, gold and wary.

I keep the Dead Man’s Tale loosely at my hip, partly to keep from seeming too threatening, but mostly because the DMT works better when I’m pumping the lever from the hip anyway. “Hey there,” I say, jerking my chin upward in greeting. “You startled me.”

“So I can see,” says the woman. Her voice is soft and a little raspy. It reminds me a little bit of Silver when she’s flirting. I’m immune to it from her—partly because Silver’s one of my oldest friends, and partly because I avoid sleeping with actual dragons—but turns out I’m not immune to it from this stranger. Not that a pretty voice and a pretty eye is enough to get me to put down my gun.

The lady’s also speaking English. Which is deeply weird. It’s not even the nu-English of the City, and Winchester’s translation suite isn’t kicking in to feed me the details of what she’s saying. She’s speaking straight-up English.

“I came to investigate what appeared to be a star, falling from the heavens,” says the woman. She looks past me at the wreck of the Lonestar. “I gather you are the source of the disturbance?”

“That’s me,” I say. “Sorry about that. Wasn’t exactly planned.”

She nods slowly. Her one eye looks me up and down, appraising. “You… are unlike any denizen of the Lands Between I have ever beheld,” she says. “Nor, I think, are you like any inhabitant of those remote places beyond the Fog, far from the Erdtree’s light. What manner of being are you?”

I realize two things at once.

The first is, not only is this lady talking straight-up English, she’s talking old straight-up English. It’s like a character walked out of one of those plays Shaxx collects. He hides the books, but we all know about them.

The second is, uh, shit. Not only is there apparently human life on this world several dozen light-years from Earth, and not only does that life somehow speak pre-Golden Age English, but apparently the local civilization is pre-warp. At least, that’s the implication. That don’t make any sense at all, but things stopped making sense about half an hour ago and they ain’t started up again yet. “Uh,” I say eloquently. “I… think you either wouldn’t understand my answer or wouldn’t believe it.”

The woman’s eye narrowed slightly under her hood. The gold was ever so slightly luminous, visible beneath the hood even as the rest of her face was hidden in shadow. “Are you some form of animate doll?” she asks. “A puppet, or marionette, perhaps, like those wielded by the sorcerers of Raya Lucaria?”

Okay, she probably doesn’t have any way of knowing that calling an Exo a doll or puppet is a great way to get a solid metal fist to the teeth, but that doesn’t mean it’s nice to hear. We got enough of that shit from old grandaddy Clovis, even if none of us really remember that anymore. “Excuse you,” I manage to grind out. “I’m an Exomind, thanks very much, not anyone’s doll.”

She blinks. “I have offended you. I apologize. As I said, you are unlike anything I have seen before.”

Aaaand now I feel bad. A little bad, at least. “No harm done. That’s my ship,” I say, taking my left hand off the foregrip of the DMT to jerk my thumb back at the Lonestar. I’m watching her as I do, waiting for any sign that she’ll try to take advantage of the opening. Doesn’t look like it, so I relax a bit. “We were dropping into your planet’s gravity well to investigate the big-ass tree you’ve got out front when a meteor sucker-punched us. Ship goes down, now we’re here.”

Her eye narrows in thought. “Am I to understand, then,” she says slowly, “that you have descended from beyond the very stars?”

“Well, that’s a melodramatic way of putting it, but, uh, yeah. Sure.”

She considers me for a moment. “In the days before the Shattering,” she says, “General Radahn, whom some called mightiest of the demigods, made war on the stars, and halted their movements in the heavens. Since that day, they have hung cold and still in the night sky. Yet you have somehow circumvented his forbiddance.”

“Wait, that must be what we ran into!” Winchester says suddenly. The woman visibly starts when he rises from behind my shoulder to speak. “Whatever this Radahn guy did must be what’s causing the weird gravity field and the debris suspension.”

I frown. “Is there a way we can convince General Radahn to let the stars, uh, move again?” I ask the woman. “Only I’m kind of stuck if that meteor field stays hanging up there like that.”

“It is possible,” she says. “But I am no great scholar of sorcery.” She watches me for a moment, looking as if she’s considering something. Then she shrugs and dismounts from her horse-thing. She reaches up and lowers her hood—

Oh, shit, she’s pretty. This is gonna be a thing, ain’t it? Damn. That smoky voice is matched with smooth, elegant features and soft, flawless skin.

...Mostly flawless skin. As her hands lower again, I see that they’re slightly mottled, as if they got burned real bad a long time ago.

“My name is Melina,” she says. “And I would offer you an accord.”

“Pleasure, Melina. I’m Barrett-12.” I raise a metal eyebrow. “And I’m listening. Go on.”

“I will aid you however I can in undoing the stasis General Radahn has placed upon the heavens,” says Melina. “In return, I ask that you bring me to the base of the Erdtree. I had intended to come here in search of a Tarnished to aid in this. You are no Tarnished… but like those banished warriors, you come from beyond the Lands Between. Like them, you are bereft of Grace, though theirs has been restored of late. I may not know what fate lies in store for you… but I have no doubt that it will lead you to the Erdtree, by one road or another. All paths eventually do. I ask only that you bring me with you, and that you survive the course.”

“I make a habit of surviving,” I say before I can stop myself.

All the principles in the world won’t save you from a knife in your throat. There is only one law that matters, Dredgen Scythe, and you must learn to embody it.

I force myself out of the memory. “Or at least, I make a habit of coming back when I don’t.”

“Then you stand outside the ravages of Destined Death?” Melina asks, sounding surprised. Her one golden eye widens a little, and I notice that her missing eye isn’t missing at all. It’s closed, as if it’s scarred shut by a strange tattoo over the eyelid. “This is a trait normally afforded those possessed of Grace. You are Graceless, yet Destined Death has no hold on you?”

“I’m a Guardian, sweetheart,” I say. The affectionate nickname slips out before I can bite it back. Damn it all. “Coming back from death is, like, half the job description.”

“This is good,” says Melina. I’m mostly relieved that she doesn’t seem to have noticed what I called her. Mostly relieved, and just a tiny bit disappointed, because I’m an idiot like that. “The Lands Between have become extremely dangerous in these latter days since the Shattering. To escape Destined Death may prove necessary, if you seek to reach the foot of the Erdtree or to challenge General Radahn.” She nods to herself. “Then, Sir Barrett, if you will have me, I offer you my services. I am no Finger Maiden, but even if I cannot offer the guidance of their faith, I can offer the power of their abilities—the power to turn Runes to strength. I can offer whatever knowledge I can of the Lands Between and their state as things now stand. In exchange, I ask only that you bring me to the base of the Erdtree. Have we an agreement?”

I look at Winchester. Winchester looks back at him and rotates his petals in an approximation of a shrug. “Don’t look at me,” he says. “I don’t know half of the proper nouns she just used, but I’m also not sure it matters. Your call, bud.”

I turn back to Melina. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll take you to the foot of the Erdtree, whatever that means, and you can help me undo whatever this Radahn guy did.”

Melina gives me a small, soft smile. Somehow, that feels like the most important thing to happen this morning, and I just crash-landed on one of the weirdest worlds I’ve ever seen with no way to phone home. Damn it all. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time in a while. I thought I’d outgrown this!

“Then,” she says, reaching into a pouch under her cloak, “I offer you this ring.” She holds out a small band of twined gold. “It represents a contract with Torrent, the spectral steed.” She pats her horse-thing on the snout, turning her gentle smile on it. “He will gladly bear you wherever you must go.”

“No need, you can keep him,” I say. “Winchester, tell me we have at least one functioning Sparrow?”

“You really think I’d risk losing Always On Time to data corruption?” asks Winchester dryly. “Of course we do.”

“Nice. Let’s get outside, then you can decrypt it. We’ll leave the ship here for now.” I grimace at what’s left of the Lonestar. Poor old girl. “Hopefully nobody comes by to scavenge her.”

“The experimental cloak is still in working order,” says Winchester. “I could try and hide it? The Arc battery will probably hold for at least a few weeks.”

“Anyone watching will have noticed how we literally dropped out of the sky,”I say. But then again… “Ah, damn it all. Sure. Can’t hurt. I can always shove my Arcstaff into it if it needs a jumpstart once we get the parts we need.”

Winchester bobs up and down in an approximate nod, then turns and dives back into the ship. After a moment, a flicker of Arc energy flares around the ship and the prototype Eliksni cloak snaps into place around it, hiding it from view.

“Here’s hoping that holds,” I say as Winchester floats out again. I turn to Melina, who’s still standing beside Torrent.

“I do not need Torrent to accompany you,” She says quietly. Her smile’s gone. She looks almost mournful, and I can’t help but wonder why.

“I don’t need a horse to keep up with you,” I counter. “Keep him, seriously. Let’s get outside, and I’ll show you—I’ve already got a ride.”

She frowns at me, but nods after a moment. She mounts Torrent again, and the horse thing (spectral steed? Is that, like, its species?) follows me and Winchester out through the crater the Lonestar tore through the roof of the cave. We emerge onto a sandy shoreline overlooking a wide, blue ocean.

“Winchester?” I prompt, but he’s already on it before I can ask. The Always On Time appears in a flare of blue transmat. I swing my leg over it and look up at Melina, seated in Torrent’s saddle. “Well?” I ask. “Where to first?”

She stares at me for a moment, expression unreadable. “That is your decision,” she says. “Northward lies Stormveil Castle, and beyond it the lake-bound realm of Liurnia. That road leads us to the Altus Plateau and the base of the Erdtree. To the east is rotting Caelid, where the greatest battle of the Shattering was fought between General Radahn and his cousin Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. If we wish to follow Radahn’s trail, that is where we should begin.”

I frown. “Wait. So your goal and mine are in completely different directions?”

“Not entirely,” Melina says. “The Royal Capital of Leyndell is barred to any who do not already possess enough Great Runes to overcome the wards its new king placed upon it. Two should be sufficient, and General Radahn holds one such.”

“Great. Where can I find another?”

“Two others are within your reach, that I know of. The first is the rune taken by Godrick the Grafted, lord of this land, Limgrave. The second is that given to Queen Rennala of Caria in Liurnia to the north.”

“Great.” Only it’s not. I stop my sparrow at the base of a bluff with what looks like a stone mausoleum on top of it, and turn to face her. “Okay, Melina,” I say. “I need you to understand that I don’t even recognize half of the words you’re saying.”

She flushes. Shit, it’s cute. “I apologize, Sir Barrett. If you have any questions, please, ask. I shall answer all I can.”

“I think I just need a general primer,” I say. “Is there a good place to make camp? There’s a lot to talk about.”

“I might suggest up here,” calls a voice from above. For the second time in an hour I grab the DMT off my shoulder and spin to face someone new. A face is looking down at us from up the steep hill. The man’s wearing tattered clothes in white and grey, and a bone-white mask is affixed on his face. “Only,” he adds, “you are directly within sight of the patrol route of an Erdtree Sentinel, and there is a Site of Grace here.”

“An Erdtree Sentinel?” Melina asks sharply. “What is one of Leyndell’s most deadly defenders doing so far south?”

“I had not thought to ask him,” says the man in the mask. Now, I’ve got absolutely zero context, as I just made clear to Melina. But even without context, his sarcasm sticks out enough to trip over. “You are welcome to do so. Particularly if you are not especially attached to your entrails.”

“I like my entrails right where they are, thanks,” I say. “We’ll come up.”

“Ah, the strange creature does speak!” says the man. “A pleasant surprise indeed. Come, join me here. There is no sense in shouting halfway from here to the Church of Elleh.”

The man turns and vanishes behind the crest of the hill. I glance at Melina. “You know that guy?”

“I do not,” she says. “But I can tell you that he is Tarnished. That does not necessarily make him either ally or enemy to you. Most whom you encounter, here in the Lands Between, will be dedicated to one or another demigod, lord, or cause. Most will, if they do not immediately recognize you as sharing their loyalty, attack at once. Tarnished alone are unbound from such fealty, though some take it up of their own volition. You are more likely to find Tarnished willing to speak with you than you are to find others willing to do the same.”

That’s… actually helpful. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I have a whole world to catch up on, gotta start somewhere. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s have a word with him, then.”

Chapter Text

“What the hell is that?”

“Don’t you recognize it, big guy?”

“Oh, you bet I recognize it—where the fuck did you get it?”

“Wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Wanna go give it a spin?”

“Give it a—sweetheart, are you out of your mind?”

“Not in the Crucible! I just mean, like, out in the Cosmodrome patrol zones. I’ve always wondered what the real thing would do to some Fallen scavs. Turn it on the enemy, you know?”

“This is a bad idea.”

“Scared, Barrett?”

“…Damn it all. Fine. Let’s go.”

It doesn’t take us long to scramble up to the little mausoleum. Always On Time is obviously up to a little hill, and even though the ascent looks too steep for Torrent, the creature takes me by surprise when it leaps nearly its own height into the air…

…And then jumps again.

That was a double jump, Winchester observes over our private channel. Paracausal, you think?

I’d assume so, I subvocalize. But, well, the gravitational anomaly and the giant glowing tree already told us this world had paracausality to go around. And all the shit Melina was saying about people ‘escaping’ death, or whatever.

Winchester snorts. Right, like you followed a damn thing she said.

I followed bits, I protest.

I guess it’s good for a Guardian to be generous. Even to themselves.

I don’t bother to answer that one.

The man in the white mask is seated cross-legged when we reach him, his back to a bush bearing small red fruit. Just a couple feet from him is a glowing mote of golden light. It hovers a foot or so above the grass, washing out the green blades in pale gold. It flickers like firelight, drifting in and out of an indistinct shape that might be a crude effigy of a person. Faint ribbons of sparkling gold orbit it in the air around us, dancing on a breeze that doesn’t so much as ruffle my cloak.

“I see that the Grace of gold is visible to you, then,” says the man in the mask. He sounds satisfied—and intrigued. “How unexpected. What manner of creature are you? And how did you come to be touched by Grace?”

I shoot him a look with a raised eyebrow. “You greet every stranger like that?”

“Only the interesting ones,” says the man. Huh, a sense of humor. Nice. “Come, sit. I am Varré.”

“Barrett-12,” I say, swinging my leg over the side of Always On Time and striding towards the golden light. Beside me, Melina dismounts from Torrent. The creature vanishes into pale blue mist.

“And I am Morna,” said Melina.

I don’t react. She’s entitled to give me and Varré different names, though I’d be lying if I say I’m not curious why. I also don’t even know for sure which name, if either, is really hers now. But that’s fine. I’m a Guardian, names don’t mean as much to us as to people who were born to them. Or, well, they don’t have to mean much. Sometimes they do anyway, when we choose to make them.

“To answer your question,” I say as I sit down across from Varré, “I’m an Exomind. That means a human named Barrett once had his mind transferred to a metal shell, centuries ago. I’m what came out the other end of that.”

“Then you were once a man?” Varré asked.

“No,” I say firmly. “I’m the pieces of a human put together in a new configuration. That doesn’t make me the same person as that human.”

“Ah. A rebirth, then, of a sort. Reborn in steel.” Varré sounds… almost reverent. Weird.

“You could put it that way.”

“And how did you come upon this rebirth?” asks Varré. “Did you, perhaps, undertake pilgrimage to Queen Rennala of the Full Moon, who possesses, it is said, a Great Rune capable of bestowing transformation? Or do you seek out Lord Miquella’s Haligtree, where all transformed and misbegotten wretches may find a haven?”

“Misbegotten wretches?” I ask, more amused than insulted. “Really, friend, I’ve never been so flattered.”

Varré draws back slightly. “My apologies. I meant no offense, of course. I have nothing but admiration for Prince Miquella and those who eagerly await his return.”

“None taken. But no, I’m not from around here. I only just arrived in… what did you call this area, Morna?”

“The Lands Between,” says Melina.

“Oh, indeed?” Varré leans forward slightly, the golden light casting strange shadows across his mask. “From beyond the Fog you come, then? And yet you are no Tarnished, clearly. A true unknown. How… fascinating. And yet, already you have found yourself in the company of a Finger Maiden.”

“I am no Finger Maiden, Sir Varré,” says Melina quietly. “Merely a traveler seeking to return to her roots, like so many others.”

“Truly?” Varré shoots her a look, eyes glittering behind the holes in his mask. Whatever he sees there satisfies him, and he nods. “No Maiden, then, for the strange Master Barrett Twelve.” He sounds amused, and pleased, by that. “And yet—Tarnished or no, you can see this Site of Grace before us. Come, touch it. Let us see how it reacts to you.”

I glance at Melina. She nods. “I confess myself curious as well,” she says. “For a Tarnished, or any other bestowed with Grace and purpose, a Site of Grace is a place of rest and guidance. It may also be so for you.”

I look down at the flickering gold. Think it’s safe, Winchester?

Dunno. Not without scanning. You want me to come out and give it a look?

Sure, why not. We’ve already trusted Melina without much good reason, what’s one more?

Two’s company, Winchester points out.

And three’s a fireteam. Get out here, buddy.

With a sigh, Winchester pops into being over my shoulder and drifts towards the glowing Grace. Varré starts. “What is that creature? A weapon or spell of some sort?”

“Winchester’s my Ghost,” I explain. “He’s just gonna give this thing a look before I start fondling it.”

“Guess you can teach an old Hunter new tricks,” mutters Winchester, eye flashing as he scanned. “Not putting any old thing in your mouth like a toddler anymore?”

“You shut up.”

“No.” Winchester turns back to me. “Definitely paracausal,” he confirms. “Neither Light nor Dark, and it doesn’t look like it’s meant to cause harm directly. It might be usable as a power source for some kind of weapon or trap, but I don’t see any sign of that here.”

“Neither Light nor Dark?” I ask.

“What’s so surprising about that?” Winchester grunts. “Anthem Anatheme’s non-polar. So are the Awoken Techeuns. And the Nine.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Which is why it makes me nervous when we run into shit like this. None of those are what I’d call family-friendly or safe.”

“Quit your bitching,” my Ghost says, vanishing back into hammerspace like the ornery bastard he is.

I sigh and reach out. I won’t lie, I’m a little nervous when my fingers brush the edge of the flickering Grace.

The world goes gold.

The sun is setting behind the mountain. Its jagged, rocky teeth cut the light into fractal shapes, dappling the plain in patterns like firing synapses.

Before the notched mountain is a tower. All around the tower is a plain. Once, this was a fertile field of golden wheat, gently whispering in a soft breeze. Maybe it will be again. Today, it is blackened. Burned.

I reach out and take Lex’s head between my hands, my metal palms on their temples. I squeeze until my best friend’s skull cracks like a watermelon.

Then Blackwall charges me. I dodge to the side, avoiding him, and grab him by the arm as he passes. I plant my feet, roll my hips, and throw him. He tumbles, and I follow, sprinting, raising one foot and stomping down as hard as I can until his ribs cave in.

Next is Grant. Poor, young Grant, all curiosity and optimism. I catch his punch in one hand and snap his neck with the other.

Then Parvati. My fellow Exo’s eyes are wrong, glowing gold instead of red, sparking like the circuits in her head are frying. She leaps for me. I roll under it, spin, and kick her into the air. By the time she comes back down, I’m ready to catch her and pummel her directly into the ground.

I’ve only just finished the job when Thermidor grabs me from behind. He throws me off her, then throws his full weight onto me, trying to pin my arm. But I slip out of his grip and bury my fist in his eye, pushing deep enough to break the skull.

Then there’s silence. All around me are the corpses of my friends. My family. My fireteam.

I turn to the tower. Only it isn’t a tower anymore. And that’s not the sun setting behind it.

The Erdtree rises over the plain of ash and death, and its falling leaves trace my sins in the dust. I feel my blood—the Clarified radiolarian fluid flowing through my frame, carrying the fractal image of my imitation consciousness with it—ignite.

I scream.

I actually do scream. Like, in real life. Not sure what I say, but it’s enough that both Melina and Varré are scrambling back by the time I come to.  Winchester dives for me, pushing his shell into my cheek in that way he knows I find grounding. “Hey,” he says. “Shit, bud, what happened? You see something?”

“Crypt vision,” I manage to gasp out. Then, after a couple of deep breaths, I manage a vehement “Motherfucker.”

“Shit,” says Winchester. “It’s all right. Wasn’t real. You know that. Take your time. Just breathe.”

I do. And while I’m in the middle of just breathing, I hear hoofbeats coming up the hill.

So does Varré. He glances back, over the bush, and then leaps to his feet. “The Sentinel is coming,” he says sharply.

I force myself up. I can see it now, galloping up the hill. It looks like a giant of a man, bigger than most Titans I’ve known, in ornate golden armor astride a horse with matching barding. There’s a massive halberd in one of his hands, and in the other is an enormous round shield.

Now, I love the Dead Man’s Tale. Katabasis, that poor bastard, left me one hell of a gun. But I know what she’s good for, and this ain’t it. If I were up to a protracted fight, maybe, but as it is I still feel like my insides are on fire. “Winchester,” I gasp out, still half winded. “FILO!”

The shotgun, First In, Last Out, drops into my hands. I raise it, left palm on the stabilizer on the gun’s underside, right finger on the trigger, and aim.

The Erdtree Sentinel lunges at me, its horse leaping high into the air.

I fire.

The Arc slug drills a hole directly through the warrior’s visor. He recoils as his horse bears him past me and Varré. Melina, I notice, has vanished. Varré, on the other hand, is drawing a mace that looks a bit like a bouquet of roses. Something’s glowing gold in his left hand.

But there’s no time to focus on that. The Sentinel is coming back around, despite the hole in its face, halberd whirling through the air like the blade of a fan.

My Super isn’t up. I haven’t been in a fight, I wasn’t braced for a fight, and even if I had been before the Crypt dream would have driven my focus away. But I have my other abilities.

I channel the Light into a weighted knife, flip it between my fingers, and throw it at the new hole in the Sentinel’s helmet. It hits. He bellows in pain, but somehow he’s still coming. I have to roll out of the way of his halberd, and it clips me in the leg on the way past. Lotta weight behind that swing, and I definitely feel it.

“Go for the horse!” Winchester shouts in my ear. Which, you know, fair. It’s a good idea.

I fire a FILO slug into the animal’s head. Apparently it’s less durable than its rider, because it goes down, vanishing into pale dust and sending the Sentinel tumbling. I holster my shotgun as I run towards the fallen man, calling out to my little transmatting robot buddy. “Sword!”

The familiar weight of Quickfang falls into my hand as I thrust it out to the side. I lunge as the Erdtree Sentinel tries to stand.

Turns out, no matter how durable a son of a bitch is, he don’t survive having his head liberated from his shoulders.

The man’s body dissipates into dust and I breathe heavily, standing over where he was, favoring my injured leg until the Light can finish knitting me back together. Then I turn back.

Varré is studying me. The head of his mace is surrounded by blood-red fire, now, but he doesn’t seem concerned about it. “Most impressive,” he says. “Your weapons are passing strange, and surpassingly powerful.”

I sheathe Quickfang. “Sorry if you were hoping for a piece of him,” I say.

“No, no,” says Varré. “I am pleased.” Then he cocks his head. “As should you be, with the number of Runes you have harvested.”

I blink. “Runes?”

Varré chuckles. “My, my, but you truly are a lost lambkin, aren’t you? Well, Runes are a source of power for those who have a Finger Maiden to make them so. But, since you are Maidenless, they are unlikely to serve you so. Still, they may serve as coinage with which to trade.”

“But what are they?” I ask impatiently, gesturing at the—conspicuously empty—ground where the Erdtree Sentinel had fallen. “What do you mean I harvested them?”

“Paracausal trace, looks like,” says Winchester, flickering into solidity beside me. “Moment the big guy died, something that was following him attached itself to you.”

“Alive?”

“No. Or, at least, not completely.” He hesitates. “If anything, it reminds me of Soulfire.”

I shoot him a look. “I do not like that comparison, Chester.”

“Nor do I, bud. I’ll look into it, take some scans.”

At that moment, Melina fades back into being beside the grace. Her expression is tight. Ashamed. “Forgive my disappearance,” she says.

I walk over. “Nothing to forgive,” I say. “I’m a Guardian, I’m used to being the guy who fights. Would have appreciated a warning, though.”

She nods wordlessly.

“Well,” says Varré clipping his mace back to his belt and clasping his hands together. “Clearly you can handle yourself, Master Barrett Twelve, and with that Sentinel gone my path forward has cleared. If you have need of me again, seek me at the Rose Church in Liurnia, to the north.”

“You heading out?”

“I am,” he confirms. “I was stymied for a time by the Sentinel, but my purpose can wait no longer. Farewell, Master Barrett Twelve.”

“Just Barrett, please.” If I hear him call me ‘Master Barrett Twelve’ one more time I’m gonna lose it.

“Barrett, then. I do hope we will meet again.” And with that, the odd man turns and starts down the hill and a gentle jog.

I sit back down at the Site of Grace, letting out a heavy breath. Melina settles beside me. “I am sorry,” she says again.

“Like I said, nothing to forgive, sweetheart.”

She shakes her head. “Not for failing to fight,” she said. “For failing to warn you. There are things you should know, if we are to travel together. Things I should have informed you, which did not occur to me. It is as you say—you lack context. It falls to me to provide it.”

I gesture at the Site of Grace. “Seems like we’ve made camp,” I say. “Now’s as good a time as any, wouldn’t you say?”

“Indeed.” She turns her gaze skyward, the boughs of the golden Erdtree reflected in her golden eye, and begins to speak.

Chapter Text

“It shan’t be long ere you grow larger than me, little sister.”

“But why should I grow larger than you, brother? Thou’rt my senior by some centuries.”

“True. But it is my curse to remain ever a child, weak and sickly. Never shall I wield great weapons in battle as our brother does, nor shall I be possessed of the elegance and grace of our sister, on her healthier days. I must learn other ways to claim control over my own fate.”

“Brother Miquella?”

“Yes, little sister?”

“You say you are afflicted, and that Sister Malenia is also afflicted.”

“We are.”

“Am I afflicted, too?”

“The Golden Order,” Melina begins, “which governs all things in this world, is represented in physical form by the Elden Ring. Our present struggles begin centuries ago, now, when the Elden Ring was shattered into myriad Great Runes. These Great Runes were seized by the demigod children of Queen Marika the Eternal, who was god and bearer of the Elden Ring before the Shattering. The demigods each took a Great Rune from the shattered Ring, each Rune representing one piece of the Golden Order, one underlying principle of the world. Then they went to war, each seeking to claim the other fragments, that they might reassemble the shattered Elden Ring and become gods themselves.”

I sit back, leaning against a rock, listening to her soft, smoky voice weave the story in the air. It’s putting me on edge already. Hearing about gods and demigods going to war over artifacts giving access to the underlying principles of the universe? Well, last I heard, Thermidor still has that Tablet of Ruin we nabbed from the High Coven, but there should still be more of the damn things out there somewhere. The Books of Sorrow didn’t say how many Tablets old Oryx made, but it was clear that the number was more than one.

Hopefully this Elden Ring isn’t quite as dangerous as the ability to Take. But I ain’t holding my breath.

“Hm.” Melina shifts, bringing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them, one eye gazing out at the twilight. It’s night—the sun set a bit before I fought the Erdtree Sentinel—but the damn tree keeps it as bright as early dusk on this world. “It is difficult to know how to begin,” she says.

“The beginning would be nice,” I tell her.

“I agree,” she says. “But so little of the beginning is now remembered, and even less is agreed upon.” She shakes her head, strawberry blond hair reflecting the golden light. “I must begin with the very basics. There is a being which, since time immemorial, has watched over the world. It is an Outer God known as the Greater Will. Long ago, it sent its emissaries to guide us, creatures known as the Two Fingers. The Two Fingers selected Queen Marika as an Empyrean, and tasked her to seize the power of the Elden Ring, to become a god. She did so, with the aid of her husband Godfrey, who became the First Elden Lord as her consort.” She shoots me a look. “Do you follow so far?”

“I follow,” I say. “Mostly, anyway. What’s an Outer God?”

“Outer Gods are beings of terrible power who exist outside of the world,” says Melina. “The Greater Will is one. There are others. None know how many. I have heard names for only a few. The Formless Mother, the Blood Star.”

“Okay.” I gesture for her to continue, biting my silicone tongue. I don’t like this, I tell Winchester silently.

Nor do I, bud, he says. Too damn Hive for my tastes.

We’re allied with Savathûn now, in theory, but that alliance is mostly “you go to the opposite end of the universe and we won’t bother each other too much.” None of us is exactly comfortable with her, except maybe Silver, so we’re okay with that. Hopefully it won’t turn out she’s involved in all this.

“Some time after Queen Marika and Lord Godfrey began their conquest of the Lands Between, bringing all of its peoples beneath the banner of the Golden Order, Queen Marika cast her husband aside,” says Melina. “She divested Lord Godfrey, and his most loyal soldiers, of their Grace. Then she sent them away, across the seas and beyond the Fog, to fight and die in distant wars. These were the first Tarnished, and it was prophesied that after their death their Grace would be returned, and they would be called back to the Lands Between. Just so has it come to pass. The Tarnished have been slowly returning as the Shattering sets the world crumbling.”

“So Varré works for this Lord Godfrey?” I ask.

“He once did, perhaps” says Melina. “Or he may have lost the guidance of Grace in a later age, and been banished separately. But returning from across the Fog and beyond Death has taken the memories of most of the Tarnished. They return as newborn babes, with only fragments of memory and insight, and the restored guidance of Grace, to lead them to their destiny.”

Well that’s fuckin’ familiar, mutters Winchester. Which, no kidding.

“By the time Lord Godfrey was banished, the Golden Order had grown to include much of the Lands Between,” Melina continues. “But one place that had not yet been absorbed was Liurnia, realm of the Rennala of Caria, Queen of the Full Moon. A champion of the Golden Order, Radagon, made war against Caria in the name of Queen Marika. But before the decisive battle, he turned aside—he abandoned conquest, and an alliance was made between the Golden Order and the realm of Caria by a marriage between Radagon and Queen Rennala. She bore for him three children: Rykard, Radahn, and Ranni.”

“Radahn’s the guy who set up the gravitational anomaly around this world?” I ask. “You said he ‘held back the stars’?”

“Indeed,” says Melina. “Radagon set Queen Rennala aside after she bore him those three children, and instead returned to the Golden Order to become Queen Marika’s second husband and the Second Elden Lord. Marika adopted Radagon’s children by Queen Rennala into her Golden Lineage, making the three of them demigods.”

“Wait,” I say. “You can be a demigod by adoption?”

She smiles suddenly, amused. “It would seem so,” she says. “Indeed, Princess Ranni was not only a demigod—she was chosen, like Marika herself, as an Empyrean.”

“What does that mean?”

She pauses. “I must begin by explaining the Two Fingers,” she says. “They are strange creatures. One set once resided upon each of the divine towers spread across the Lands Between. Several more were scattered across the realm; I do not know how many. It was the purview of the Two Fingers to choose Empyreans in the name of the Greater Will. An Empyrean is a candidate for divinity—one who might take up the Elden Ring and become the vessel for the Greater Will in this world. Princess Ranni was selected as an Empyrean and a potential successor to her adoptive mother.”

“A potential successor?” I ask. “You make it sound like there’s multiple Empyreans.”

“There are,” says Melina. “A different set of Two Fingers chose each of the twins born to the union of Lord Radagon and Queen Marika—Malenia and Miquella. Each of these were also Empyreans, potential rivals to Princess Ranni and successors to their mother.”

Something about this all bothers me. Why are there multiple ‘sets’ of Two Fingers? Why are those different sets choosing different Empyreans? Why are they choosing successors to the god they originally chose? I doubt Melina has answers to most of those questions, but it’s worth a shot. “Did Marika do something to lose the Greater Will’s favor?” I ask. “It sounds like it was trying to replace her.”

“I do not know,” she says, shaking her head. “Queen Marika has now lost the favor of the Two Fingers—they blame her for the Shattering, and have imprisoned her and her husband within the Erdtree as punishment. But whether they were already starting to lose faith in her before the Shattering, or whether they had some other reason for selecting potential successors, I do not know.”

Yep, kinda expected that. Melina knows a lot, at least compared to me, but it seems like she’s too young to actually remember most of this. “Okay,” I say. “So these five demigods have the fragments of the Elden Ring, and we need two of them to get you to the base of the Erdtree?”

“These five are not the only demigods,” says Melina. “There are also the three children Queen Marika bore to Lord Godfrey before she set him aside. The first of these was Godwyn the Golden, who was the first of the demigods in history to die—slain by assassins bearing fragments of the stolen Rune of Death.”

“Okay, back up,” I say, holding up my hands. “The Rune of Death?”

Melina pauses for a long moment. “There are, to my knowledge, ten Great Runes scattered across the Lands Between,” she says. “It is possible that there are more, hidden in forgotten corners of the world. But of these ten, the first to be removed from the Elden Ring was the Rune of Death. Queen Marika plucked it from the Elden Ring long ago, thus removing death itself from the fabric of the world.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It is difficult to explain,” she says. “To my understanding, before the removal and imprisonment of Destined Death, a person’s death was a total cessation. Their body became mere inert matter; their spirit vanished entirely. After the Rune of Death was removed, death came to mean something different. It is what comes when the body can no longer support life. But the spirit remains, longing for release. It finds that release, eventually, when it is returned to the roots of the Erdtree, where it can fuel new growth and find rebirth.”

Okay. That means one of two things. Either Marika completely recontextualized how people on this world think of death, or she somehow… transformed death itself. If I take Melina literally, then this world just got a lot weirder—and a lot more important.

There aren’t many paracausal forces in the universe that can fuck around with death. It’s usually pretty damn constant. I have one of them, in the form of Winchester—the Light gives us a way to dodge around death, dance the limbo under its scythe. The Hive mastered another, in their Throne Worlds. But that’s almost it. Even the Anthem Anatheme can’t no-sell death like that. It can create a semblance of a dead person, but it can’t bring them back. Silver was real clear on that, when Lex asked her to bring Cayde back. She can’t do it, and trying would probably twist her into a monster.

We dealt with the Witness, but some of its Disciples are still hanging around, skulking on the edges of the universe. What would they do with the ability to completely change the nature of death itself? I can’t even imagine it, but I know it wouldn’t be pretty.

“What are the other Great Runes?” I ask, instead of getting into all that right now.

“I do not know the names of all of them,” Melina warns. “But I know that the one which should have been held by Godwyn the Golden is kept instead by his descendant, Godrick, who rules from Stormveil Castle. One is held each by Morgott and Mohg, Godwyn’s mysterious brothers. One each is held by Rykard, Radahn, and Ranni. Two more are held by Malenia and Miquella. The final Great Rune is the Rune of the Unborn, which was gifted to Queen Rennala before Radagon abandoned her.”

I nod slowly. “Okay. And we need two of those to get you to the Erdtree?”

“Indeed,” she says.

“Great,” I say, stretching. “And how do you come into all this?”

She’s silent for several seconds before answering carefully. “My involvement is negligible at best,” she says. “I am older than I may appear, but compared to these figures of myth I am young indeed. I was born only briefly before the Shattering. Now, as all things do, I desire to return to the place of my birth—at the foot of the Erdtree. I have questions which can only be answered there.”

That’s an evasive answer if I’ve ever heard one. But she has the right to her privacy. “Sure. Anything else I need to know to be getting on with?”

She shakes her head. “This shall serve as a beginning.”

““Then I’ve got only one question before we turn in for the night,” I say, shooting a look up at the golden boughs over our head, and the leaves falling from them like glowing cinders. “Which demigod do you think we should go for first? We have to hit Radahn, obviously, but he doesn’t have to be the first one we go for.”

“I recommend you begin with Godrick,” she says after some consideration. “Castle Stormveil is not far from here, compared to the distance to either Raya Lucaria or Castle Redmane. It will be an easier place to begin.”

“Godrick it is,” I say. “Any chance he’ll let us just take his Great Rune without having to kill him?”

“None at all,” says Melina, shaking her head.

“I don’t kill people who don’t deserve it,” I warn her.

She gives me a grim look. “I do not think that will be a problem,” she says. “But I have no desire to explain the depravities of Godrick the Grafted—not when you shall see them for yourself on the morrow. Rest, Barrett. And thank you for your aid.”

“Thank you for the crash course,” I counter. “Chester, we don’t happen to have a sleeping bag, do we?”

“Didn’t expect to need one,” he admits. “Sorry.”

“No worries, we’ll find something before too long,” I say. I’m an Exo, it’s not like I really need a sleeping bag anyway. I just fling myself onto the springy turf, face turned towards the gold-lines sky. I hear the grass rustle as Melina lays down not far from me, and shoot her a glance. She’s curling up, balling up the hood of her cloak to serve as a pillow, her strawberry blond hair a loose curtain around her soft features.

Damn it, she’s gorgeous.

I tear my eyes away and force them shut. I let out a long breath and try to drift. Sure hope I don’t dream of the Crypt again, I think.

Chapter Text

“Damn, this thing packs a hell of a punch!”

“Of course it does, Sara. But we’ve got dozens of guns that pack a punch.”

“Not like this, Barrett. Hot damn, not like this.”

I don’t dream of the Crypt again. I don’t dream at all. But I also don’t get much sleep.

I’m woken only a couple hours after sunset by a sudden jolt of Arc energy. I think shouting “Dammit!” and trying to slap Winchester out of the air is a completely appropriate response.

He disagrees. “Cut that out,” he snaps, voice low as he darts away from my flailing hand. “Get up and come with me.”

I shake the last of the sleep from my head and glance to the side. Melina is still lying on the grass, hair still spread over the rolled-up hood of her cloak, almost luminous in the light of the Grace beside her and the Erdtree above. I stand quietly. “What is it, Chester?”

He doesn’t answer, just starts floating away. I follow. We walk down the hill, away from the mausoleum, heading away from the Erdtree in the distance, back in the direction of the Lonestar. We don’t get nearly that far before I hear something that has me freezing in place.

“Was that—”

“Yes,” Winchester says darkly. “Come on.”

I’m tenser as I follow him now. The sound continues, one voice joining with others. A dozen of them, maybe more.

We crest the hill and it takes me a second to understand what I’m seeing. There’s burned corpses, crucified on wooden stakes, lining a vague trail down by the shore of a lake to my left. Some of them are even glowing slightly, like coals in the night, as if the fire had never gone out after they were burned alive.

Then I realize that the sound I’ve been hearing is coming from the corpses. The burned and crucified corpses are screaming in agony.

“What the fuck,” I whisper.

Winchester doesn’t answer. He just settles over my shoulder, flaps rotating slightly.

What the hell had Melina said? The spirit remains, longing for release. It finds that release, eventually, when it is returned to the roots of the Erdtree.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “They’re being suspended off the ground. They’re being kept away from the roots.”

“Looks that way,” says Winchester.

It’s only when I almost slip on a patch of loose gravel that I realize I’ve started to walk down the hill to the nearest crucifix. I come to a stop just in front of it, staring up at the remains of a body which, somehow, still screams despite being little more than charcoal.

Quiet hoofbeats approach me, and I hear Melina dismount from Torrent. “The traditional punishment for those who committed the most heinous of crimes,” she says softly, “was to be wrapped in a crown of briars and banished from the southern heartlands into the forbidden north, or to be cast away entirely beyond the Fog as a Tarnished. But ever since the discovery of the Blood Star and the development of thorn sorceries, this practice has begun to replace the old briar crowns.”

“I’m gonna need an explanation of those things,” I say, not looking at her, “but not now.” I draw Quickfang and strike at the heavy wooden stake. It takes a couple blows to carve through the stake—Quickfang is light, meant to slip through armor and tear through flesh, not do the work of a saw—but before too long, I bring the crucifix down. It falls, but when the corpse hits the ground it keeps screaming. “You said that the spirit will be set free if we return it to the roots of the Erdtree?”

“Yes,” says Melina. “There may be a place to perform Erdtree burial somewhere within the catacombs beneath the Hero’s Grave here—“ she gestures up at the mausoleum on the hill “—but I know not what manner of defenders might be within.”

“Defenders?”

“Erdtree burial sites are carefully controlled,” says Melina. “Especially now. Those which are not defended by stone watchdogs and other constructed defenders have often been taken up as residences by Those Who Live in Death, who spread their corruption through the roots.”

More goddamn proper nouns I’ve got no idea about. “And what happens,” I ask, “if ‘Those Who Live in Death’ have corrupted the roots here? Or what happens if they do later?”

She looks… really, really sad. Not the abstract sorrow of knowing something horrible is happening to people you don’t know, but the real, present grief of having a personal connection to someone involved. “Then they will take any who have not been fully reclaimed by the Erdtree,” she says. “And they will transform them into more of their kind.”

“What are Those Who Live in Death?”

“It is not entirely known,” says Melina softly. “Whatever they are, they only appeared after the Night of the Black Knives, when Godwyn the Golden was assassinated. They are soulless creatures to whom death is empowering. A living thing which dies ceases to move, until it is either restored by Grace or returned to the Erdtree. But for Those Who Live in Death, one may scatter their bones and they will simply reform them in seconds. To destroy them, the entire skeleton must be crushed—and even then, the dust carries the spreading rot of their Deathroot.”

I stare at her for a minute. Then I look at Winchester. “Vex Risen,” I say.

“You shut up,” he grunts. “I can’t even sleep and that’s gonna give me nightmares.”

I shake my head, turning back to the poor burned carcass on the ground. “Well, we can’t leave them like this,” I say. “And I don’t want to risk them getting turned into a contagious zombie monster.”

“There’s another option,” says Winchester quietly.

Something in his tone makes me pause, and that pause is all it takes for me to follow his logic. “Tell me you didn’t keep it.”

“Of course I kept it. You think a Weapon of Sorrow is gonna let itself get lost in data corruption? If I’d left it in the vault to decay it’d just find some way to turn up outside of our control.”

I hate it, but he’s right. I grit my nickel-alloy teeth. “I thought Ghosts were supposed to stop their Guardians from playing with shit like that.”

“When the hell did I give you the impression I was a good Ghost?” Winchester asks, and boy oh boy is there a lot going unsaid in the spaces between those words.

“This time, it is I who is lost in this conversation,” Melina says softly. “What are you discussing?”

I look down at the screaming corpse at my feet. Exomind bodies are damn good at simulating humanity—they have to be, or we’d be getting weekly resets—but they’re not perfect. If they were, I’m pretty sure I’d be swallowing back bile. “Give me the damn gun.”

The Dead Man’s Tale disappears from my back. In its place is a more smaller, more compact gun. It’s made of lighter materials, but somehow it’s almost heavy enough to make me stagger. I reach over my shoulder and pull out the Osteo Striga.

“We should’ve purified this months ago,” I say.

“Dunno if that poor bastard would agree,” says Winchester softly. “Don’t think Lumina could do what needs to be done today.”

I grimace and bring my eye to the gun’s sights. I rest my shaking finger on the trigger. It’s warm to the touch. I can feel its eagerness, its hunger. I take aim at the corpse’s emaciated head, then close my eyes.

I pull the trigger.

The corpse lets out one final, agonized scream, then falls mercifully silent. When I open my eyes, it’s already decayed into Hive miasma and soulfire.

There’s a sharp intake of breath beside me. “What… is that?” Melina asks.

Fuck. Almost involuntarily, my hands tighten around the gun between them. Don’t you dare try and corrupt her, I think at it, willing it to understand me. She wouldn’t even know how to use you. You may only be a small part of my arsenal, one I’m reluctant to use, but you’re better off there than stuck with her.

I’m never sure whether I’m imagining it when some of the almost- sentient weapons in my arsenal respond to me. If D.A.R.C.I. says something to Lex, they know she’s really talking. Back before she passed it to Grant, the Whisper was always quick to let Silver know when it wanted something. But the Osteo Striga isn’t sentient. Not really. It’s a Weapon of Sorrow—the Sword-Logic manifested in the form of a weapon. It’s no more sentient than the law of gravity.

But even gravity can be said to have a singular desire. It wants to bring things together. And Osteo Striga wants to feed.

So I don’t know if I’m imagining it when I feel Osteo Striga shiver under my hands. I don’t know whether I’m imagining the psychic pulse of satisfaction that runs through me. But for once I hope I’m not.

I turn to Melina. “This is a Weapon of Sorrow,” I say. “It can set these people free.”

“How?” she asks.

I grimace. “By consuming their souls,” I say. “The Weapons of Sorrow are some of the only things in the universe that can permanently kill a Guardian like me. If we don’t know whether the Erdtree roots are safe for these people… then this is our best option.”

Melina nods slowly, looking at the gun in my hands with dread and awe. “I agree,” she says. Then she looks back up at me. “You are kinder than I expected,” she says softly. “Kinder than most in these lands. Kinder than I, certainly.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, sweetheart.”

“I did not for a moment consider cutting these wretches down and offering them Erdtree burial. It did not so much as occur to me. Their plight did not even enter my mind.” She turns and looks out over the long line of crucified bodies. “Will you do this to every crucifix in Limgrave?” she asks.

“I…” Part of me wants to say yes. No one deserves this. I remember Crow’s disgust over the treatment of the Hive prisoners we took back in Operation Elbrus, all those years ago. Of course, those bastards hadn’t actually been in constant tortuous agony, but Crow had believed they were. It’s taken me a while to forgive him for almost bringing down our hard-won alliance with Caiatl in a single reckless move, but I get it.

I’ve put a few demons of my own out of their misery.

But… I turn and look up at the Erdtree. I think about that gravitational anomaly, sealing this world off from my friends and allies. I think about the tiny slice of the Lands Between I’ve already seen.

There have never been enough Guardians to protect everyone. We can’t afford to let ourselves get tunnel vision. We can’t focus on the problem in front of us—even if it is a really big problem—to the point that we lose sight of the wider context.

That way lies obsession. It’s happened to hundreds of us, many of whom I knew personally. It happened to Rezyl Azzir. It happened to Toland. It happened to Jana-14.

It happened to Sara.

“No,” I say heavily, holstering the Striga. “I’ll free those we pass on our route. But there’s too much to do for me to spend weeks going all over Limgrave looking for crucifixes. I need to get my radio repaired and signal my fireteam. And I promised to take you to the Erdtree, didn’t I?”

She looks at me for a long moment, then nods. “One day,” she says softly, “These poor creatures will all be laid to rest. By one course or by another.”

“One day,” I agree hollowly. “I don’t think I’m gonna be getting any more sleep tonight. You good to go?”

“I am well enough to travel, yes.”

“Then I’m gonna need Always On Time, Chester.”

We head north. The Erdtree Sentinel I killed yesterday was patrolling a stretch of road between the mausoleum and what looks like the remains of a chapel. There’s several more crucified bodies hanging up along the path, and I give each one a double-tap to the head as we pass. Striga is joyful in my hands. I just feel sick.

By the time we reach the crumbling church, the sun has started to rise. I glance inside the stone archway—if there was ever a door there, it’s rotted away by now—and see what looks like firelight on the inside. I brake, and Torrent slows to a halt beside me.

“What is it?” Melina asks me.

“Someone’s in there,” I say.”

She follows my gaze. “Ah, a wandering merchant,” she says. “In the days before the Shattering, theirs was an oft-reviled people. As a result, their lives have changed perhaps less than nearly any others’, though I imagine they often have fewer clients than they once did.”

“Chester, you ever figure out what to do with those ‘runes’ we supposedly got from that big gold guy?”

“I mean, I scanned while you were sleeping, and they should be harmless,” says Winchester. “But what to do with them? No idea.”

“Maybe he can explain it to us,” I say. “After all, probably in his interests to make sure we know how to give him money.” I dismount from Always On Time and step through the high arch into the ruined church. Melina follows, but doesn’t dismount from Torrent until she’s close to the Site of Grace in the center of the room. I give that thing a wide berth. No Crypt visions today, thanks.”

“Hm,” says the merchant as I draw near. His voice is raspy, like he hasn’t had a drop of water in it in days. “Well, you are an unfamiliar face, and no mistake.”

“Getting that a lot,” I say, sitting down at his campfire across from him.

The man has some kind of musical instrument in his lap. It has a bow like a violin, but its hairs are woven between the two threads strung across the rest of the instrument’s wooden body. The bow is tipped with that looks like an open hand, cast in silver. The guy’s wearing the brightest clothes I’ve seen so far—a warm-looking, bright red coat and cap, and a matching fur cloak with a thick white collar. There’s also a red scarf wrapped around his mouth.

“I can only imagine,” says the merchant, with what sounds like a sincere chuckle. “Well, steel-faced stranger, I am Kalé, purveyor of fine goods.”

“Barrett-12, Guardian. Just call me Barrett.”

“A pleasure, Barrett,” says Kalé. “It’s always a joy to meet people who would rather talk than try to separate my head from my shoulders. All too uncommon, these days.”

“I’m gathering that,” I say. “Sounds like things aren’t going so well in the Lands Between lately.”

“You could say that.” Kalé’s eyes, I notice, aren’t any normal color. Nor are they gold like Melina’s, which is what I’d thought at first. Instead, they’re a sickly yellow. “But despite everything, there are still occasionally travelers in need of supplies. Perhaps I can furnish you?”

“Well, I was hoping you could help me with that, actually,” I say. “I’ve gotten myself a fair number of Runes—killed the Erdtree Sentinel who was patrolling outside, if you saw him.”

“Ah, I noticed that he had vanished,” says Kalé. “You have my gratitude. I was worried he would notice me here and decide to rid the world of one more wretched merchant.”

“Glad he didn’t,” I say, though I have to wonder what the hell kind of history is there for a people identified only as merchants to be hunted down like that. Is it an ethnic thing, or something else? “But unfortunately, I’ve got no idea how to use those Runes. So how about you explain to me how I can use them to buy something, and I’ll repay you by making sure I do?”

“A generous exchange,” says Kalé, sounding amused, “as I suspect you’ll discover in a mere moment. How many Runes do you have?”

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

I blink, and suddenly realize that whatever those paracausal specks that passed to me from the Erdtree Sentinel were, I’m aware of them. Only vaguely, and only when I look, but I know they’re there. And I know how many there are without even having to count. “Three thousand, two hundred,” I say. “What the hell?”

He smiles slightly under his scarf, visible in the wrinkling around his eyes. “Well, I’d recommend you pick up my crafting kit. It’ll help you put together whatever you might need from supplies you can scavenge all over the Lands Between. I have some manuscripts detailing recipes, as well.”

“Sure. How much for the kit?”

“Three hundred Runes. Then five hundred for two manuscripts I received from a nomadic warrior several years ago, and a thousand for a cookbook compiled by a missionary of the Golden Order in the years before the Shattering.”

“Just the kit, for now,” I say. “Let me guess, I just…”

I will three hundred of my motes of paracausal energy to pass into Kalé’s possession. They oblige, and he reaches into a sack beside him and pulls out a small purse, full of needles, spools of thread, chisels, scalpels, and various other tools. “There you are, then,” he says. “I have other wares, if you would like them. Some information and advice, as well.”

“What sort of advice?”

“Two pieces of useful information have passed into my hands recently,” says Kalé. “Two hundred runes apiece. The first concerns an object you may find useful—a Flask of Wonderous Physick. The second concerns a set of ruins nearby, and what is contained within.”

“Where are those ruins?”

“To the east, just across the river.”

I consider. “I’m not headed in that direction right now,” I say. “And if this Flask involves drinking some kind of potion, well, I’m not sure it’d do much for me.”

“I suppose that’s sensible.” Kalé doesn’t seem too disappointed by my refusal. “I have armor, ammunition, and a few various other oddments. But I’ll be here if you decide to return at a later date, as well.”

“Fair enough.” I stand up. “Thank you, Kalé. I appreciate it. It’s nice to meet a friendly face.”

“I could say the same thing, Barrett.”

I turn to Melina, then blink. “Where’s Torrent?”

She glances behind her, seeming surprised at the absence of her Spectral Steed. She looks around, and then smiles. I follow her gaze. Torrent is nuzzling at a crumbling wall, about chest-high, to my right. He almost seems like he’s looking for something.

“Is he hungry?” I ask Melina.

“Unlikely,” she says. “Given that there are rowa bushes aplenty all over Limgrave. No, more likely he has noticed some unusual scent.” She walks over and mounts the creature gracefully. “Now then,” she says. “Do we make for Castle Stormveil?”

“Lead the way.”

Chapter Text

“Ah. Sister.”

“Hello, Brother. Might I ask you a question?”

“If you must.”

“There’s no need to be unkind, Godwyn. Greetings, Lady Melina.”

“Greetings, Lord Fortissax. Brother, I asked my tutors when the lands north of the city were barred, and why. He bade me ask you.”

“Ah. I had them barred.”

“Why?”

“That overly curious young demigods would not uncover secrets that better remain buried.”

We slow to a halt as we clear the treeline at the crest of a small hill. The woods behind us were patrolled by soldiers wearing padded armor emblazoned with red and green heraldry. Soldiers in the employ of Godrick the Grafted, apparently.

There’s a small complex of ruins ahead of us that might once have been a hamlet, though only stone foundations remain. But to the left is a massive stone gate that looks more well-maintained. The portcullis is raised, though, and part of me suspects it’s stuck that way. The patrols I see marching back and forth in the ruins out front certainly don’t seem like they want to let just anyone traipse on by.

“What am I looking at?” I ask Melina.

She shakes her head. “If this village had a name before the Shattering, I do not know it,” she says. “The Gate of Storms is one of the few ways up the cliffs from lower Limgrave onto the Stormhill. Castle Stormveil is built at the summit of the Stormhill.”

I look past the sheer stone cliffs and point. “Is that part of the castle?”

Melina follows my finger. “No,” she says. “That is the Divine Tower of Limgrave. In the days before the Shattering, a bridge connected the tower to the castle so that its ruler might go to consult with the Two Fingers at its summit. But that bridge has been broken, and I rather doubt the Fingers survived. Many sets of Fingers were killed when the demigods went to war.”

“Why?”

“I know not. I was not free to investigate at the time. Some say that the demigods themselves slew the Fingers to prevent them selecting any upstart as an Empyrean rival. Others claim that the Shattering itself killed the Fingers, for their connection to the Elden Ring is what sustained them. I cannot say whether either story is truth.”

“Huh.” I shrug. I have bigger fish to fry than questioning the details of how a group of paracausal grippers died centuries ago. “Gate looks heavily defended,” I observe.

“Yes,” Melina agreed. She leans forward on Torrent’s back, frowning at the gate with narrowed eyes. “It is likely that there are more defenders in the canyon behind the gate, as well.” She looks over at me. “There are other ways onto the Stormhill, if you would prefer.

“How far out of the way?” I ask. Daylight is weird here—the Erdtree fucks with the lighting in ways I don’t expect, making morning and evening less dark than I feel like they should be—but the sun’s a bit past noon already. This planet’s day-night cycle is a little shorter than Earth standard, but not by enough that I’m tempted to force Melina and Torrent out of their circadian rhythm. I can work with shorter days and nights, I’ve done it before.

“We would have to cross the Murkwater,” Melina says. “There are spiritsprings on the eastern side that Torrent can use to ascend the hill.”

I frown. “Will those work with my sparrow?”

Melina’s face falls slightly. “I do not know,” she says, “but it will not matter. You can ride Torrent, and I will follow.”

“How?”

Her lips thin. She visibly debates with herself about how to answer. So, I raise a hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. I remember now—she offered me Torrent at the beginning, told me she had her own way to keep up. But she clearly doesn’t actually like taking that option, whatever it is. “There’s no need to go that far out of the way, anyway. We can just take the gate.”

“Are you certain?” she asks.

“I want to try talking to the soldiers anyway,” I say. “I know you said they probably wouldn’t listen to a word I said before trying to gut me, but I wouldn’t feel right going after Godrick if I hadn’t at least tried, you know?”

She considers me with an unreadable look in her golden eye. “I suppose I understand,” she says. “It has been a terribly long time since any in the Lands Between had the luxury of such principles, Barrett.”

“I’m a Guardian of the Last City,” I say, swing my leg over the Always On Time and standing up. “Principles ain’t a luxury for me. They’re the wall and the people behind it. Stay back here, I’ll come get you when it’s safe.”

“…Thank you,” she says, with visible reluctance. It’s odd—she vanished the moment the fight against the Sentinel started yesterday, but she doesn’t seem to like staying out of fights.

“Do you want to come with?” I ask.

“I fear I would not be able to offer any assistance,” she says. “No, it is best you face them alone. As frustrating as my current state is, it is one I must come to terms with.”

“Your current state?”

“Go, Barrett,” she says. “We can speak more later.”

I shrug and start on down the hill.

She’s keeping secrets from you, Winchester says from the safety of my localized hammerspace.

No shit, I answer.

That don’t bother you?

Some, I admit. But not enough to want to burn the only damn bridge I’ve built on this planet. We’ll keep our eyes open. It’ll be fine.

Winchester doesn’t give any more answer than a grunt.

Once I’ve crossed about half the distance to the ruins, one of the soldiers finally spots me. I raise a hand when I see the man start, looking in my directions. “Hey there!” I call. “I’m—”

The man raises a trumpet to his lips and blows, cutting me off. Every other soldier in the ruins, whether they’re hanging out around a campfire or patrolling around one of the massive carriages, jumps to attention. It takes some of them a minute to figure out where the trumpeter was looking, but eventually they all spot me. And once they do, every damn one of them draws their weapon and charges.

I sigh. This ain’t looking good.

No shit, Winchester says dryly.

I don’t draw my weapon until the first guy reaches me. “I’m not—” I try to say, but he doesn’t even slow before swinging his sword at my head. I channel the light around me, thinning the air the way Aparajita-4 taught me all those years ago, throwing myself backwards and rolling, the air offering as little resistance as vacuum. I roll back to my feet. “I just want—”

He swings again, and, well… I’m a Guardian, not a pacifist.

I channel Solar Light into a weighted knife. It coalesces in my right hand, warm as a hearth and hot as napalm. I parry the blade, then swing mine into the soldier’s chest. He lets out a choked, guttural scream, then falls. But as he does, I notice something.

That wasn’t a totally human sound. The guy’s skin is grey. And, mostly hidden by his helm, his eyes are bloodshot, with irises that are unnaturally black. I… don’t think these people are completely human anymore. And I say anymore deliberately.

There’s nothing that can be as inhumane as something that was once human.

A couple of wolves are charging me now. Guess these soldiers must have domesticated them. But they’ve got nothing on war beasts.

I throw the knife at the first. It buries it in the beast’s skull. By the time the other reaches me, I’ve pulled out the Dead Man’s Tale. Two shots to the head are plenty to put the wolf down.

Then I turn the gun on the people behind them. The half-dozen or so soldiers go down in three headshots apiece. The last one gets wise enough to start zig-zagging, but I’ve been training in the Crucible for centuries. It doesn’t help him.

There’s a guy in heavier armor behind them. He starts hiding behind his big shield when he sees what my gun is doing to his men, advancing at me slowly with his spear extended towards me. I fire a couple experimental shots at the shield, but the bullets ping off it with hardly any impact. If they even dent it, I can’t see it from this distance.

It’s a damn heavy piece of work, wider and thicker than the shields Hive Knights sometimes carry. And I’m talking objectively wider and thicker—relative to the guy holding it, who’s a good three feet shorter than a Knight morph, it’s comically oversized. But the guy doesn’t seem to be struggling with it hardly at all. I mean, obviously he’s moving a little slowly, but that’s mostly because he’s half-crouched behind the shield, not because the shield itself is so heavy.

I put away the Dead Man’s Tale. I briefly consider asking Winchester for a fusion rifle or grenade launcher, or something else that might get through the shield or disintegrate the guy behind it. But the thing is, without our ship’s engram decoder, my ammo is limited to what Winchester can fabricate from the materials we can salvage.

Kinetic ammo—or even the liquid ammo of my simpler Omolon weapons—is easy. Winchester could probably fab a full mag of bullets for the Striga from a handful of dirt. But for more advanced stuff? Grenades, charged ammo for my directed energy weapons, or RPGs for my rocket launchers? Those will take resources I’m not even sure we can find planetside. Once we get that debris field down here it’ll be possible, but once we get that debris field down here I’ll have a distress call out anyway.

So instead of burning limited resources on one guy with a metal barn door strapped to his arm, I call on the Light. Flames lick up my arm as a grenade coalesces in my hand. I throw it. The Solar Grenade blossoms into life around the man and his shield. He screams, stumbling, then falls. A moment later, he falls silent as he cooks in his armor.

I grimace as the scent of burning human flesh reaches my synthetic olfactory receptors. Most of the time, I’m glad that DER forced Clovis Bray to make us Exos simulate most human functionality. But it’s times like this that I wish we could have some kind of toggle for some of our senses.

I turn around and fall back to where Melina is watching me astride Torrent. “Most impressive,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “Guess you were right. Will they just… linger? Like the poor bastards on the crosses?”

“Only very briefly,” Melina says. “They are not being kept from the earth, and so the earth can reclaim them. Their road back to the roots of the Erdtree will be longer than some, but they will find their way back, just the same.”

“That’s good.” I hadn’t been looking forward to pulling out the Striga again. “What’s up with their skin?”

“Their skin?” Melina asks. “Ah—were they grey of flesh?”

“With black eyes, yeah.”

“It something I have only seen a few times before,” she says. “I suspect it is more common now. The dark eyes are a marker of those who have lost the Grace of Gold. The graying skin occurs after someone remains so afflicted for long enough. It usually takes years.” She grimaces. “I imagine, after all these years of constant warfare, most of the armies of all the demigods must have greyed, decaying flesh by now.”

“Is that how that works?” I ask. “Does trauma lead to the loss of Grace?”

“The process is poorly-understood,” Melina says. “But it is most common in those who lose a sense of purpose and hope. The First Elden Lord, Godfrey, lost his Grace after he ran short of lands to conquer. In the days before the Shattering, it was more common in soldiers than in other professions.”

“Damn,” Winchester grunts, popping out of my hammerspace. “A paracausal punishment for depression. That’s fucked.”

“Agreed,” I say. Then I shrug. “Once we get the fireteam back together, we can start looking into fixing things.”

“You have said such things a few times now,” Melina says. “There are more warriors like you, then? Once you have escaped the barrier Radahn has placed upon the stars, will they wish to involve themselves in the wars ravaging these lands?”

“Can’t promise anything for everyone else,” I say, “but I became a Guardian because I wanted to give people a safe place to live. There’s people here, and it doesn’t sound like they’ve got one. So even if I leave, I think I’ll probably come back before too long.”

She smiles. It sends something swooping in my stomach. “I am pleased to hear that,” she says. “If you would not object, I would hear something of your homeland, Barrett. A place defended by men like you must be a goodly place.”

“It’s getting there,” I say. I point at the gate. “Let’s get through there and up onto the Stormhill. You told me about the Lands Between when we made camp last night. I’ll return the favor when we make camp tonight.”

Unfortunately, getting through the Gate of Storms ain’t that easy.

With the ruins’ garrison dealt with, Melina and I ride down to a Site of Grace just outside the gate. Then we take cover behind the gate and poke our heads around the corner to get a look at what’s on the other side. It doesn’t look good.

There’s multiple layers of barricades blocking the narrow path up the canyon. I can only see a couple of soldiers, mostly armed with crossbows, but I’m willing to bet there’s more, taking advantage of the dim lighting and abundant cover to keep hidden.

Speaking of the dim lighting, there’s what looks like a massive, crumbling chunk of ancient masonry wedged across the walls of the canyon, forming a bridge across the gap above us and throwing the whole path in shadow. And there's something up on top of that bridge. I duck back behind cover and look at Melina. “Above the path. Tell me that’s a statue.”

She looks again, and when she looks back at me, her expression is grim. “I’m afraid not,” she says. “That looks to be a troll.”

“Great,” I say. “Big fella.”

“Yes. He is not likely to be as much a threat as the Erdtree Sentinel you fought yesterday, however.”

“Really?” I ask. “He looks bigger than that guy was. Maybe not if you include the horse.”

“Trolls are large, but they are also slow,” Melina says. “And those in this part of the world largely lack advanced training in warfare or magic. Before the Shattering, many trolls were used as little more than beasts of burden. I would guess that the one here was freed by Godrick in exchange for his service.”

“Beasts of burden? These trolls are intelligent, right?”

“Enough to speak. I was once told that they were markedly less intelligent than men, but I could not say whether this is so.”

Intelligent beasts of burden. Don’t like that. I’m starting to get the feeling that this world wasn’t exactly sunshine and roses even before the Shattering.

“Those barricades didn’t look all that sturdy,” Winchester says. “We might be able to bust right through them if we hit ‘em with Always On Time.”

I look at him. “We sure there’s a clear path? I don’t want to get pinned against a locked gate with that whole garrison behind us.”

“I could check,” he offers.

“Absolutely fuckin’ not. We have no idea what kind of paracausal shit they have in play. I’m not risking you going like Sundance did.”

He grunts, and I get the feeling that if he had a face, it’d be grimacing. “Fair enough. So what—you wanna kill everything in the path?”

“Not really,” I admit. It’s not like I enjoy killing people, even if they seem to have lost some of what makes them people. It was easier, once, and I don’t want to go back to that.

“Could try invisibility,” my Ghost suggests.

“I’m not Lex. Can’t chain smoke bombs long enough to keep both me and Melina invisible the whole way through that.” I consider. “Maybe combine strategies, though. Try and dash through, then use a smoke bomb to get us out if things get hairy?”

“I have my own way of escape if things grow violent,” Melina says. “You need not concern yourself with my safety, Barrett.”

“You don’t seem to like that way of escape, though, sweetheart,” I tell her.

She flushes slightly, as if she didn’t expect me to notice. “Nonetheless. If it is a choice between my comfort and your life, the choice should be obvious.”

Which is fair. “Fine, sounds good.” I mount back up on Always On Time, and Melina pulls herself up onto Torrent’s back. “Follow me,” I tell her, “and holler if something goes wrong.”

“I will,” she promises.

That said, I turn the sparrow towards the gate and gun it.

Fortunately, there is a clear path. Mostly clear, anyway. Unfortunately, the last barricade is reinforced. After busting through half a dozen of the things already, I don’t notice how much sturdier it is until my sparrow hits it dead-on. The barricade comes apart—but a bit of wood reinforced with iron flies into my engine, and my ride comes apart too. Always On Time explodes under me, tearing through my shields and ripping gashes through the plating of my legs. I go flying and hit the ground hard.

“Barrett!” Melina screams, slowing Torrent.

I wave her on. “Go! I’ll catch up.”

She hesitates, so I palm a smoke bomb and toss it on the ground beside where I’ve fallen. The vaporized Void Light hisses as it forms a haze around me, I see my own hands fade from view.

She blinks at where I’ve disappeared, then sets her face and leans into Torrent. The spectral steed gallops onward, leaving me, the wreck of my sparrow, at least a dozen soldiers, and a troll, which has jumped down onto the path and is jogging up the hill after us.

Nice driving, Winchester says caustically.

Shut your flaps, I tell him. The Light’s already knitted my legs back together, enough to stand up at least, so I pull myself to my feet. A couple of soldiers—the ones who had been behind that reinforced barricade—are trying to figure out where I went, but the rest of the force seems to be headed up the hill after Melina.

Hate to break it to you, bud, says Winchester, but I don’t have the resources to re-fab that sparrow from scratch. We need to salvage the wreck.

I sigh and draw Quickfang. Figures.

The soldiers go down fast. A hit from the Void-charged sword is enough break their shields if they have them, and another cuts them down. I take a few hits from their crossbows, but I pull the bolts out and heal up by the time the troll reaches me. I get my first good look at him and…

…I don’t actually know what I’m looking at. The big guy looks like a giant scoop got ripped out of his torso. It almost looks like something’s embedded in his exposed guts, like a slab of stone, held inside by his entrails. Sounds fucked, but in this lighting that’s what it looks like. He tries to slam his fist down into the ground on me, but I roll to the side.

I take stock once I’m back on my feet. Most of the soldiers are dead now, and the four that aren’t are still halfway down the hill aiming at me with crossbows. The troll’s the only thing still trying to engage me in CQC, so I roll between his legs, sheathing Quickfang and pulling out the Dead Man’s Tale. I aim from the hip and fire off four shots. The surviving crossbowmen go down.

I roll out of the way of the troll’s foot as he tries to step on me, then hit him a couple times in the dome with DMT. He flinches, but takes the shots like a champ, trying to backhand me away. I jump over his hand, switching weapons in midair to my First In, Last Out, and hit him with that.

My FILO was designed to take out a Titan in the Crucible in the middle of his Super. If it hits the radiolarian core, it can take out a Vex Hydra with one slug. The troll, poor bastard, doesn’t stand a chance.

By the time he’s finished falling to the ground—it takes a while, with how big he is—Winchester is already halfway back to the wreck of Always On Time. “I’m not gonna be able to rebuild this thing that many times,” he warns me. “Not without our decoder.”

“I know,” I say.

“So be fuckin’ careful with it, then,” he snaps.

“I will. No more crazy charges without seeing the course in advance. Promise.”

Winchester just grunts as he finishes decompiling the wreck. “It’ll take me a few hours to reconstruct it,” he says. “You’re gonna have to run to catch up with the girl.”

“Fine,” I say as he disappears into my hammerspace.

There’s a pack of wolves on the road just as I come out of the canyon, but I go invisible and slip by them without much trouble. Nice thing about paracausal invisibility like we Lightbearers use is that it muffles all of the senses, not just sight. If I’d been using an Eliksni cloak, like the one we used to hide the Lonestar, they’d have been able to smell me just fine. Even so, I see one of the wolves sniff the air as I pass it. Invisibility is never completely perfect.

I pass them by, and then pass a tiny glowing sapling on the side of the road. Looks like a miniature Erdtree. Gotta ask Melina about it when I catch up. It takes a few minutes before I see what looks like a small, dilapidated cottage up ahead. As I get closer, I see that Torrent is out front, munching on a berry bush. The spectral steed looks up as I get close. His eyes have rectangular pupils, like a goat’s. Probably some evolutionary significance to that, but I ain’t a Warlock. I give the animal a nod, and I swear he nods back as I duck into the shack.

The walls have mostly rotted away, but the roof is still mostly held up by four supports at the corners. Melina is there, her hood up as she sits beside another Site of Grace. There’s another girl, wearing a hooded cloak that looks like it’s made of red velvet. They both look up as I come in, but the new face looks back down again a moment later.

“You made it,” Melina says. “I was somewhat worried. There were far more soldiers there than at the ruins.”

“Nothin’ I can’t handle.” I nod at the girl in red. “Who’s this?”

Melina glances over. “We have not spoken much. She says her name is Roderika.”

“Hm.” Did she really come in here, get the girl’s name, and then just sit down in silence? Huh. First giving Varré a fake name, then barely talking with Kalé, and now this. I’m starting to think Melina has hangups about talking to people. I approach Roderika. “Hey. I’m Barrett.”

She looks up at me. “Are you a man?” she asks. Her hair’s blond, and her eyes are blue. Her skin is very pale, to the point that a faint redness in her cheeks, probably from the cold wind, stands out sharply against the rest of her face.

“Yeah, last I checked. An Exo, which is why I look,” I rap my knuckles against the metal of my cheek, “like this.”

She nods slowly. “I suppose you’ve nothing to fear from grafting, then,” she says, looking away.

I sit down across from her. “People have mentioned that a fellow named Godrick the Grafted rules this territory,” I say. “But nobody’s actually explained what that means.”

“It happened to my companions,” Roderika says softly. “Everyone who crossed the sea with me. Their arms, their legs, even their heads. Taken, and grafted to the spider.”

It takes me a second to even guess at what she means, and once I do the image in my head is almost too grotesque to imagine. “You mean… their body parts were attached to this ‘spider’?”

“Aye. They say if you’re grafted by the spider, you become a chrysalid. I’m sure it’ll happen to me before long.” She hugs herself with shaking arms. “I should’ve just gotten it over with then, with my men. But I—I was too much of a craven to do it. I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready.”

“Hey. There’s no shame in wanting to live.”

“But this way, I’m all alone,” she says. “I want to be like everyone else. To become a chrysalid. But it’s scary.”

“Fear is the mind’s way of warning us. Telling us that we need to be careful. That we might be making a mistake. Sometimes we need to push through it, but sometimes…” I shake my head. “I don’t think your men would want you to suffer their fate. I think they’d want you to survive.”

She sighs. “I don’t know what to do, if not to become a chrysalid. I’m alone now. What can I do alone?”

“Everyone’s alone. Find someone to be alone together with.”

She frowns. Meets my eyes. “How?”

I shrug. “Where were you headed before? Why’d you come to the Lands Between in the first place?”

“Same reason as any other Tarnished, I suppose. My men hoped I’d become Elden Lord. Much good that did them.”

“Well, I promised her—” I jerk my thumb back at Melina, who’s sitting silent and watching us “—that I’d get her to the base of the Erdtree. You’re welcome to tag along.” I glance back at Melina. “She is welcome, right?"

Melina considers me in silence for a long moment before she nods. The hesitation is long enough for me to regret not at least consulting her before offering a space in my little fireteam.

But it doesn’t matter. Roderika shakes her head. “I’m too scared even to leave my ward,” she whispers. “No, I can’t climb to the Erdtree. Not like this.”

“All right,” I say, standing. I offer her my hand. “I’m Barrett, anyway. Let me know if I can help you.”

Hesitantly, she takes my hand. “Thank you for your kind words, Barrett,” she says.

I return to the Site of Grace and Melina. “You all right?” I ask her softly.

“Well enough,” she answers.

“Sorry I didn’t talk to you before—”

“There is no need to apologize.” Melina cuts me off. “I cannot fight with you. It is only fit that you should have the right to seek out companions who can.”

“That wasn’t why I offered to travel with her. Or with you, for that matter. I’m a Hunter, I’m used to ranging out on my own. But it’s better with friends, even if I’m fighting alone.”

She considers that for a moment. Under her hood, I see her one eye reflecting the irregular light of the Site of Grace. Then she looks at me. “You said you would tell me something of your homeland,” she says. “Are you still willing?”

“Of course, sweetheart. What do you want to know?”

“What does it mean to be a Guardian?”

I let out a breath. “Well now, starting with the big questions.”

“Can you not tell me?”

“It’ll take a bit to explain.”

Melina gestures at the sun, sinking low in the sky. “I believe we have time.”

“Guess we do.”

Chapter Text

“Where were you?”

“Whoa! You startled me, Barrett.”

“Sorry. But I expected you back hours ago. Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine! You worry too much.”

“I guess this must be how you felt,” I say, my eyes going to the glowing Erdtree in the distance. “It’s hard to know where to start. Especially since I have nothing to point to and say ‘that’s what I’m talking about.’ You could at least just gesture vaguely at the Erdtree.”

“Before you continue,” Melina shoots a glance at Roderika. The girl doesn’t seem to be paying attention to us, but I know how hard it is not to hear a conversation happening just a few meters away when there’s nothing else to take your attention. “Are you sure you do not wish to have this conversation elsewhere?”

I shrug. “I’m not gonna tell you anything that’s all that secret. If you think there’s a danger to people spreading rumors about me, I guess I don’t mind having this conversation on the other side of the road or something.”

She considers me, then Roderika. “No,” she says slowly. “I suspect rumor of you will already be spreading with Varré and Kalé. If you do not fear spreading what you share, I see no reason to be concerned.”

“All right.” I pause for a minute, gather my thoughts. “I guess I need to start by defining a term. You’ve probably heard me and Chester talking about paracausality.”

“Yes. I gather it is a word for magic?”

“Not wrong, but it’s more complicated than that. I don’t rightly know how you define magic—what makes a phenomenon magical, as opposed to just unexplained. Paracausality, there’s a pretty clear definition. Something that’s paracausal is anything that can violate the principle of cause and effect.”

Melina breathes in sharply. “You reject the Law of Causality.”

I look at her. “Don’t think I didn’t hear them capital letters. Causality is a thing here? More than just the way things work?”

“It is one of the two principles of the Golden Order that defined Queen Marika’s world.” Melina’s voice is soft, and she’s staring at me with something… hard to define in her eye. She doesn’t look afraid or even displeased. If anything, she looks warily intrigued. “The Fundamentalists defined the Golden Order as being comprised of the Laws of Causality—that cause should follow effect, and that effects should branch forth from causes like the limbs of the Erdtree—and of Regression—that all things, from men to beasts to inert stone, seek to return to their roots, to the places and things from which they came.”

“For you were made from dust, and to dust you shall return.” Winchester’s voice is considering. “That’s from a pre-Golden Age religious text Arch lent me a few years ago. Interesting.”

It is interesting. It might be nothing, but I haven’t forgotten that we still don’t know how humans got onto this world in the first place. If some paracausal being—a Disciple, or a god, or even something neutral like an Ahamkara—scooped a bunch of humans off Earth and dropped them here a thousand years or more ago, it would make sense that maybe some fragments of Earth’s religions survived. Especially given their language seems to have hardly drifted.

“Well, cause and effect still matter,” I allow. “I mean, if I punch someone in the face, they’re still gonna want to punch me back. Me being paracausal doesn’t change that. But it does allow me to do things like—like create fire without fuel, or jump without my feet touching the ground, or harness the potential energy of a black hole without swallowing half the planet. And from what little I’ve seen, all of your magic is also paracausal.”

“Those Runes you’ve been picking up every time you kill something,” Winchester says. “They’re lossless encoded information without any receptacle for that information to be encoded into. Like engrams without glimmer.”

“There you go,” I say, nodding at him. “And the debris field Radahn suspended above the planet—first of all, it’s invisible until you get into the planet’s gravity well, and second of all, they don’t obey the causal laws of gravity and momentum at all. So whatever magic he used to hang them there is also paracausal.”

“Yet the stars hang in their place because of his magic,” Melina says. “Is that not causation?”

“Sure. But it doesn’t obey the underlying physical principles of how causation is supposed to work. Without paracausality, effects have predictable causes. If a stone monolith crumbles, it’s because some force broke it. If you know enough about the world, you can figure out what that force was—gravity, tension, whatever. Paracausality breaks that. If I snap my fingers, the only physical forces that should causally have been created are the pressure between my thumb and finger, and then the impact of my finger against my palm. But I can snap my fingers and make the stone monolith crumble. Cause and effect, yes, but breaking the underlying principles of why the cause creates the effect. Make sense?”

“I suppose so,” Melina says. “But how do you know that you are violating the underlying principles of the world, rather than merely harnessing those you do not yet understand?”

I grin at her. “I have got to introduce you to Parvati once I get in touch with her. There are two reasons why I know paracausality is real. First, Warlocks have done experiments—I don’t understand most of them, but they managed to use the Light to get particles to disobey the underlying principles of quantum mechanics, the most foundational facts of the causal universe. Second, there’s paracausal effects that are a hell of a lot more impressive than just breaking a hunk of rock.”

“What sort of effects?”

“Well, that’s where the story starts. I won’t bore you with the billions of years of subjective history before humans and Guardians ever came along. For us, the story starts a little less than two thousand years ago, when a shape appeared in our solar system. At first, human astronomers thought it was a comet or asteroid, but it didn’t obey the laws of gravity. The first time humans stepped foot on a world other than Earth, it was to catch up with it when it reached Mars. It turned out to be a machine—a white sphere probably about as big across as the Erdtree is tall. We called it the Traveler, and it had come to change our world.

“That was our first exposure to paracausality, and it was the start of our Golden Age. Human lifespan tripled. We started to gain access to paracausal principles—basic and predictable ones, sure, but still paracausal. We learned to refine electrical currents into stable Arc energy, to clarify heat into Solar energy, to harness the nuclear forces into Void energy. We started colonizing the other worlds in the Sol system almost as fast as the Traveler terraformed them. The Golden Age lasted almost seven hundred years.” My smile, almost nostalgic for a time my eyes had seen that I’d never remember, twists. “It ended in a matter of days.”

“You were attacked,” Melina says softly.

“We call it the Collapse,” I say. “The Traveler was being chased. Some people had dreams about it, apparently, but no one really knew. Not until it was too late. It had enemies—well, one enemy, though we didn’t know that until much, much later. It called itself the Witness, and its Disciples came to try and destroy the Traveler, and our whole civilization with it. Turns out, the Traveler had gone to thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of systems before us and been chased away by the Witness and its Black Fleet every time. The civilizations it left behind were laid to waste. Every time before Sol, it left when the Black Fleet caught up with it. But at Sol, something changed.

“I still don’t fully know what happened. Only two or three people are still alive who do, and none of them are telling. But for whatever reason, the Traveler stood its ground and fought off the Black Fleet. It went dormant after that, but not before giving humanity one last gift.” I nod to Winchester, hovering near the Site of Grace. “The Ghosts.”

“We were created knowing what we were for,” Winchester says. “We’d been sent out to find the dead, and resurrect them. When we scan a body—or even just a grave, if it’s been long enough—we get a… feeling for the person they were before they died. Nothing about their history, just a sense for who they were. When we find someone who feels compatible with us, we funnel our Light into them. It reconstructs the body and breathes life into it, but wipes away any memories of the life before they died.”

“And Chester found me,” I continue. “That was centuries ago—just a few decades into what we call the City Age, after the Last City had been built under where the Traveler came to rest. Lot’s changed since then, especially recently.” I summon a Solar knife and idly flip it between my fingers, trying to figure out how to continue the story from there. “We Guardians see it as our duty to defend the City from its enemies. That includes gods like the Witness, and more mundane—causal—enemies like the Cabal and Vex.”

“And what are those?” Melina asks.

“There were four general groups of aliens that started harassing the survivors after the Collapse. There were the Cabal, an interstellar empire trying to expand into the system. The Vex, an ancient network of machines that can sort of travel through time by simulating the past and future with near-perfect accuracy. The Eliksni, a race chosen by the Traveler before humanity that was chasing after it after their own Collapse—they called it the Whirlwind. And the Hive. They were probably the most dangerous, because unlike the others, they were paracausal, just like Guardians. They worshipped the Witness, followed it to Sol and wanted to drive us to extinction because, to them, that was the moral thing to do.”

“And you prosecuted this war on four fronts?” Melina asks. “With only a single city remaining to your people, you held against these ancient empires and horrors?”

I grin. “A single Guardian is more dangerous than damn near anything any of those groups can put on the field. A few things could compete. Some of the oldest Cabal commanders and Eliksni Kells. Vex Axis Minds. The Hive gods. But yeah, against their armies? We held.”

“Then this ‘Light’ you wield must be powerful indeed,” Melina says. “Precisely what is it?”

“Complicated answer,” I say. “Short and simple version is that the Light is a paracausal force that underlies the universe. Guardians can wield it to fuel our abilities. Typically, we filter it down to one of three aspects that are easier to work with than raw Light: Solar, Arc, and Void. Each of those is complicated, too, but again, basics.

“The simplest version of the elements that every Kinderguardian learns is that Solar is fire, Arc is electricity or lightning, and Void is gravity and fields. It’s more complicated than that, especially in the case of Void, but them’s the basics. Myself, I’m a Gunslinger by training, which is a way of using Solar Light mostly. I’ve trained as an Arc-specialized Bladedancer in the past, too, but that was a long time ago. I can use all of the elements, but I’m most comfortable with Solar. In the past few years, Guardians have started using the Darkness, too, but I’ve never had the knack for it.”

“Darkness?” Melina sounds startled more than curious. “You wield the magic of your enemies, then?”

“When we need to.” I force myself to call on the cold depths buried inside me. Crystal creeps up my hand, freezing my burning knife solid. “We learned to use the Darkness alongside the Light a few years back. I’ve never used it as much. There’re two aspects of the Dark that I know how to use, like the three aspects of Light. This one’s Stasis—ice, basically, if you don’t care about the philosophy. The other one’s Strand, and it’s… harder to explain. Threads and connection.” I flex my fingers, shattering the crystal, then spread them to reveal a cat’s cradle of green threads between them.

“I see,” Melina says, her eye on the green lattice. Then her gaze turns to my face. “Each of these, then, is akin to a different school of magic? To my mind, it seems to resemble the distinction between the draconic incantations and those of the Erdtree, or the crystal and night sorceries.”

“Dunno if I can speak to that,” I say. “Are those different schools philosophically different, or just separate collections of spells?”

“Both, as a rule,” Melina says. “Though not always. The incantations of most Erdtree scholars share their root philosophy with those of the Fundamentalists, but the understanding of the Fundamentalists is deeper and their incantations are therefore different.”

“Sounds similar, then.”

She considers me. I meet her eyes, flickering in the irregular light of the Site of Grace. Outside the little shack, rain has started to fall, pattering on the grassy turf like a billion tiny footfalls.

“I confess, Barrett,” Melina says, “I did not take you for a philosopher.”

“Sometimes philosophy is a matter of life and death for a Guardian,” I tell her, thinking of Ahamkara, Weapons of Sorrow, and the Osmium Gods.

“Indeed.” Melina turns her gaze back on the Site of Grace. She’s silent for a long moment before speaking again. “I am sorry that you have been sundered from your people,” she says. “From the city you defend. But I confess, I am glad that you have arrived here.”

“I’ve hardly done anything yet,” I point out.

“But you have shown yourself capable,” she says. “And, more importantly, sincere. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of Tarnished scattered throughout the Lands Between. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of humans, demi-humans, and other thinking beings living in these lands. And yet none of them attempted to fell those crucifixes. Not one sought to show mercy to those condemned to linger, denied the peace of Erdtree burial. Not even me.”

“In fairness, no one else has a Weapon of Sorrow on this planet,” I point out. “At least, I sure hope they don’t.”

“They could still have cut the wretches down,” Melina said. “Even merely allowing them to touch the ground would eventually set them free. Burying them would have been faster still. But none did so.”

“You can’t know that no one is doing that,” I say. “It’s a big continent.”

“And yet I never saw any try to relieve that pain while I wandered with Torrent, seeking one who might help to relieve my own burdens.” She meets my gaze. “I may not understand every aspect of your tale, but I suspect this is the heart of your creed. That you do not turn away, you do not allow yourself to be distracted from the pain of those who have no recourse or relief. Not even by your own pain.”

If I had blood and skin instead of Clarified radiolaria and plating, I’d be flushing by now. “We do our best,” I say. “A Guardian who doesn’t try to protect people isn’t a Guardian at all, just another Risen.”

“I only hope that your determination will hold,” she says. “At least until our pact is concluded and you leave this world. And that, when you do, you do not forget the plight of the innocent here entirely.”

“Never.” I sit back. “You got any other questions?”

“Not for now,” she says. “Though I am sure we both have much to learn of one another.  But for now, we should rest—assuming you yet intend to assault Castle Stormveil on the morrow?”

“There’s no way we’re getting Godrick to give up his Great Rune without a fight, right?”

“Not only will he never willingly surrender his Great Rune,” Melina says softly, “I suspect that, once you have seen the inside of his castle, you will not wish him to. You were affronted by the site of crucified criminals. But their fate is far kinder than that which Godrick inflicts upon many within his domain.”

I grimace. “Like Roderika’s companions?”

“Indeed,” Melina says. “Rest, Barrett, and brace yourself. Tomorrow, you will face the Grafted.”

I frown. “You won’t be joining me?”

She grimaces. “Torrent will not fit in most of Stormveil,” she says. “The corridors are too narrow, the ceilings too low, the floors too weak. And I… cannot move about on my own, without Torrent to anchor me.”

“Okay,” I say. “Don’t worry about it. Are there Sites of Grace inside the castle?”

“I suspect so, though I have never entered Stormveil myself.”

“Then I’ll stop by those whenever I can, and we’ll make sure we stay on the same page.” I grin at her. “It’ll be all right, Melina.”

She lets out a breath. “I pray you are correct,” she says.

We don’t talk much after that before turning in for the night. It’s easy to let the drizzle outside lull me to sleep.

Chapter Text

“Oh, Cousin Rykard! Welcome home!”

“Hello, little one. How has my favorite half-sister fared in this golden city these past years?”

“Well enough. Is all well in your realm at the Mountain?”

“Mm. Let us say that whatever is wrong is not something a precocious young demigod need concern herself with. All will be well, in time.”

The road up to Stormveil from the shack is about as heavily guarded as the Gate of Storms was. And, unfortunately, there’s no cover that can hide Melina while she’s riding on Torrent. So we barely make it a hundred yards from the Site of Grace before we have to stop, looking over the patrolling guards.

“This is where I must part from you for a time,” Melina says quietly. “I will remain beside you, only incorporeal. Unable to assist or speak.” I can hear the bitterness in her voice. Whatever happened to leave her like this, she hates it.

“No worries,” I say. “We’ll check in again once I find a Site of Grace. Won’t be long.”

“I pray you are right,” Melina says with a stiff nod. “Good luck, Barrett. Be wary. Within Castle Stormveil are creatures far more terrible than those you have encountered thus far. The Grafted are not to be trifled with.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She lets out a breath, and then she and Torrent fade away into glittering blue smoke, which dissipates in the breeze after barely a second.

“They’re a lot like those Runes,” Winchester says, scanning me. “When they’re incorporeal like that, I mean. Paracausal trace tied to you.”

“They aware of what’s going on?”

“Yeah. Might not catch every detail, but they’re still conscious. In fact, I might be able to jury-rig a comms protocol if I had Glimmer. “

I shoot him a look. “Wait, really?”

“Sure. It’s paracausal tech, but I’m good with paracausal tech.” He rotates his flaps and shoots me a look. “Remember, bud, I was part of the team that designed the H.E.L.M.’s ansible. Paracausal comms ain’t new to me.”

I had forgotten. Chester likes to keep himself a little low-key. He prefers that people know about me, rather than him. Partly it’s humility, but partly it’s… well, Sundance was only the last of way, way too many friends who got shot out of the sky because they drew the attention of their Risen’s enemies. So Winchester doesn’t like drawing attention to the fact that he’s a damn good paracausal technician—one of the best. But it’s been damn helpful a few times in the past.

Unfortunately, “Well, it’s a shame we don’t have an engram decoder.”

“Yep,” Winchester says grumpily. “Not exactly the kind of vacation I was hoping for when we left Sol, bud. I feel like we went camping without a tent.”

“We’ve been camping without a tent. Remember the Red War? We didn’t even have the Light.”

“But you know what we did have? A damn Cryptarch with a damn engram decoder.”

I snort. “You’d rather have a decoder than the Light?”

“You bet your ass. Now quit stalling.”

I sigh, pop a smoke bomb, and start jogging. A couple dozen soldiers completely miss me running past them. One of them’s stationed just outside the entrance on a ballista. I ignore him as I step inside. But I’ve only taken a few steps past the doorway when I hear a commotion outside. One of the soldiers blows a trumpet. The ballista fires.

My invisibility isn’t gonna last much longer, but I turn around and go back, looking past the ballista. I see where the previous bolt is embedded in the ground, and there’s a guy standing up beside it. Looks like he just rolled out of the way. The man’s dressed like a stereotypical wizard, complete with a big, pointy hat. His clothes are green and yellow, and look quite a bit nicer than most I’ve seen—excluding that red velvet cloak Roderika was wearing, obviously. In his right hand is a thin sword, and in his left is a straight-up wizard’s staff. I’m not even surprised when he waves it and sends a blast of blue energy at one of the soldiers near him. The guy staggers back, then crumples when the wizard follows up with a thrust of his rapier.

But the rest of the soldiers are converging on him now. One guy against about a dozen. I don’t like those odds, even if the guy has paracausal abilities. He might be fine. I’d be fine. But I’m not gonna sit on my thumb and wait to find out. My invisibility breaks as I pull a weighted Solar knife out of the air. I throw it, and it thuds into the back of the ballista operator’s head. The man slumps forward onto the weapon. Before any of the soldiers can even notice that they’ve lost their metaphorical big gun, I pull out DMT and start firing.

It's all over in less than three minutes. Once the last soldier is dead, the wizard sheathes his sword and starts walking towards me, using his staff like a short walkingstick. “Hello, sir!” he calls.

I give him a wave. “Hey. You all right?”

“Well enough, all told.” The man stops several paces away, both hands on the crystal at the head of his staff. “I must say, I’ve never seen a creature such as you.”

“I’m an Exo. A person in an artificial body. Here to try and get the Great Rune off of Godrick.”

“Oh?” The wizard looks intrigued. “Tarnished, then, are you?”

“No.” Why would that be the assumption? “Just made a promise, and I need to get to the foot of the Erdtree to fulfill it.”

“Hm. Then you are not seeking the throne of Elden Lord?”

“Don’t think I’d make a very good lord.”

“I see.” He considers me for a moment. “Well, I am Tarnished, but I have not pursued the Elden Ring for some time. I am seeking something else. Perhaps we can help each other?”

“Don’t see why not.” I hold out a hand. “I’m Barrett-12. Call me Barrett.”

“Rogier. Sorcerer.” He shakes. His grip is firmer than I expect from a guy using a delicate rapier and wearing relatively fine clothes.

“If you’re not here for the Great Rune, what are you here for?” I ask him.

“I’ve heard tell of something beneath Stormveil. Some relic of the Shattering.” He considers me, visibly debating with himself. “I would rather not say more until I have at least some confirmation.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “I’ll help you search.”

“Any assistance would be appreciated,” says Rogier. “But we will need to get into the castle first.”

The doorway opens into a long corridor, curving to the right as it ascends the hill. We pass a Site of Grace in an alcove on our left, and pause for a moment so Rogier can touch it. It flashes under his fingers, sparkling gold. Gotta admit, I’m a little jealous that he doesn’t have to deal with a Crypt vision.

Only a few paces later, the tunnel opens out onto a windswept spit of land. It was probably once ornately decorated, if the crumbling remains of tiles and statues are any indication. A lot of those statues seemingly got replaced by gravestones more recently, but in the wind and rain that seems pretty constant up here even those gravestones are hardly legible anymore. Up ahead is an arched gate between two tall towers, and past that looms Castle Stormveil. The mountains and trees have obscured my view until now, so this is the first clear view I’ve gotten of it. Gotta say, it’s impressive. Reminds me a little of Felwinter Peak, though with extra gold trim and masonry instead of concrete fortifications.

There’s a Site of Grace right in the middle of the land bridge, between us and the archway. Something about seeing that, barely a hundred yards from the last Site we passed, makes me nervous.

I’m right.

We’ve barely taken two steps out into the wind when a voice booms from above us, somehow echoing around us, even though it should be getting stripped away by the gale. “Foul Tarnished!”

Beside me, Rogier mutters what sounds like a particularly blasphemous curse.

We both look up at one of the towers overlooking the narrow plateau. There’s a figure there. Some kind of neohuman, at first glance. He looks mostly like an old man with greying hair, wearing a shapeless brown robe and carrying a heavy walkingstick. But he’s got a tangled mess of horns growing out of his head, mostly out of the right side. It looks like he had some on the left, too, growing out from above his eye, but they were cut only an inch or so from the skin, leaving bone-white patches behind.

Oh, he’s also almost twenty feet tall. That’s also worth noting.

“Another of thine accursed kind comes to Castle Stormveil,” says the massive figure in a deep, resonant voice. Despite the ragged robe, unkempt hair, and half-trimmed horns, something about his voice and bearing screams nobility. Reminds me a little of Mara Sov, actually. Just a little. “Emboldened by the flame of ambition.”

He jumps, and in a single motion sails damn near a hundred feet in the air. A tail, tipped with a stinger like a scorpion, whips behind him like the trail of a comet. He lands on the plateau in front of us, sending dust and cracked masonry scattering. His amber eyes are fixed on Rogier. Doesn’t even seem to notice me.

“Someone,” he says grimly, “must extinguish thy flame. Let it be Margit the Fell.”

I clear my throat. “Can we…” But before I can finish saying talk about this, both Margit and Rogier have leapt into action. Margit opens by summoning a golden dagger—dagger for him, which means it’s about the size of Crown-Splitter—and throwing it towards Rogier. The sorcerer rolls out of the way, then waves his staff, creating three similar blades of blue light hovering around his head.

“Damn it,” I say, pulling out First In, Last Out. “Here we go, then.”

I charge in, fingers tight around the shotgun. Unfortunately, for such a big guy, Margit is deceptively fast. And deceptively is the important part of that sentence. His style is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. He jumps around the arena like a Threadrunner in the Crucible, but when he attacks, he plants himself down to make incredibly heavy blows with his massive staff. The first time he does one, I try to dodge out of the way, only to misjudge the timing and get smashed into the ground while I’m trying to get back to my feet. And, uh, damn the guy has a mean swing. I’ve taken explosives to the face that didn’t have as much stopping power.

But I’ve got some stopping power too. Once I pick myself up, I dump a FILO slug into his chest, not totally confident I can hit his head while he’s moving so erratically. The blow definitely lands—I see the Arc-charged slug tear a hole in his robe and thud into his body. He flinches, but turns right back around and swings that stick again. This time he moves it a little faster, albeit with less raw force behind it, but I manage to duck under the attack. While he’s focused on me, I see Rogier fling a bolt of blue light at him from the side.

We fall into a rhythm. I stay in close, doing my best to dodge Margit’s swings and tanking those I can’t, dumping slugs into him whenever I get the chance. Rogier hangs back, slinging spells at him whenever I give him an opening. It’s working, although it’s doing a number on me. I can see Margit flagging. After I hit him with a slug to the knee, he leaps back, staggering slightly. “Well,” he growls, still looking at Rogier. “Thou art of passing skill, I see. It shall avail thee nought, Tarnished.”

“Think I’m the one who hit you there, actually,” I say.

Margit rolls his eyes at Rogier. “Speak not through this Carian puppetry,” he says. “I am not so easily distracted.”

“Oh, fuck off,” I growl. This asshole is attacking me, not because he thinks I’m Tarnished, but because he assumes I’m a Tarnished’s puppet? A toy soldier? A damn—

For a second, I’m back in the blizzards outside Eventide, listening to Clovis Bray’s inflated head say something as inane as it is pompous. When I return to myself, there are two crystalline shurikens between my fingers.

That’s how Stasis has always been, for me. I never want to use it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fanatic like Shayura used to be. I’ve got nothing but respect for Eris Morn and Elsie Bray, two of the three pioneers when it comes to using Stasis without joining the Witness’ side. Blackwall’s one of my best friends, and he’s probably the most accomplished Behemoth in the universe.

But Blackwall’s… he’s done things he’s not proud of, sure. Everyone has. But he’s never been someone he’s not proud of. He’s always known who he is. From the moment he was first resurrected to now, he’s been who he is. All the changes of the past decade—House Light, the Coalition, Savathûn—haven’t shaken his confidence, even though he used to kill Eliksni, Cabal, and Hive just as much as the rest of us. So Stasis has no fear for him.

See, Stasis is about… stillness. Stagnation. Rigidity. That’s why it was so terrible for Eramis, why the Europan pyramid was able to twist her bitterness about the Whirlwind into a murderous hatred of the Traveler, a hatred so strong that she was willing to enter into the service of the incarnation of the apocalypse. That’s why she was willing to join such illustrious company as Xivu Arath—who, lest we forget, was Oryx’s second in command when the Taken King led the armies that actually carried out the attack on Riis. It’s why the Witness’ whispers through Clarity were so effective in preying on Clovis Bray’s god complex. Eris Morn once suspected that Stasis was based on obsession, but that’s not it, not exactly. Stasis is about stasis. Being unchanging. And if your unchanging state has a singular motivation, it’s almost inevitable that it’ll become an obsession. An all-consuming one, given time.

That’s why I don’t like using Stasis. Because once I was everything the Witness tried to use it to turn people into. And Stasis likes to pop into my hands whenever I’m angry, or hurt, or afraid—as if to remind me that I could always go back to that.

But just using Stasis doesn’t actually promote that. It’s drawing on it, delving deep inside yourself to try and pull more power out of that well of Darkness deep inside, that twists a person up. So I don’t throw away those Withering Blades. Instead, I fling them both at Margit, holster FILO, and close my fists. Two crystalline kamas form between my fingers. Because as much as I don’t like Stasis, I was the one who first figured out Silence and Squall, the two kamas that have become a standard part of the Revenant toolkit in the Crucible.

But while I’m drawing on the Super, Margit has charged Rogier. He summons a massive hammer of solid, golden light over his head. Rogier tries to dodge, but he mistimes it just like I did.

Silence strikes Margit in the back, but not before Margit’s hammer rushes Rogier into the rock. Margit freezes, encased in pale blue crystal. He looks like an ice sculpture, only I know from experience that he’s not cold to the touch, and it’d take more heat than any Sun in the galaxy can generate to melt Stasis crystals. They break because Guardians don’t focus on maintaining them, not because the physical crystal itself is weak. It’s one of the strongest substances in the universe.

Squall hits the crystal. It shatters, and so does the crystal, surrounding the stumbling and bleeding Margit in a storm of razor-sharp shards, whipping around him like a localized hurricane. I approach, pumping the action on FILO.

“Ah!” he cries out, shielding his face from the shards, glaring at me in shock and anger between his fingers. “What? Still thou takest arms against me, though thy puppeteer is fallen?”

“I am not a fucking puppet,” I snap, raising FILO. The slug hits him in the palm where his hand is raised to protect his face. He flails that hand, taking a step away from me.

“What… are you?” he demands.

There are dozens of pithy one-liners I could give to that one. I’d love to say that the reason I don’t is because I’m better than that, but really I just can’t pick. The next slug buries itself in his eye. He staggers, and then his body starts to come apart into sparkling golden smoke. It’s… almost exactly like what happens when Torrent and Melina vanish, actually, only gold instead of blue.

He falls to his hands and knees, body dissipating, and then vanishes entirely, leaving neither his walkingstick nor his cloak behind. Now that I know what to look for, I feel the Runes attach themselves to me, twelve thousand tiny paracausal reminders of this fight.

But I know what I saw. I narrow my eyes. “You’re still here,” I growl, pumping my shotgun. “I know what it looks like when someone discorporeates. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re not dead.”

There’s silence for a long moment. I notice that Rogier’s corpse has dissolved too, into inert gray dust. Then Margit’s voice echoes around me again.

“Thou art no puppet,” he says quietly. “I see this now. Why dost thou travel with the accursed Tarnished?”

“I met the guy literally right on the other side of the tunnel,” I snap. “But he sure seemed more decent than you.”

“Seekest thou the Great Rune carried by the traitor Godrick, then?” asks Margit.

“Yes,” I say. “That a problem?”

There’s a very, very long pause. More than a minute. Then… “Perhaps not,” says Margit slowly. “Perhaps we have no quarrel after all. So long as thou dost not intend to give the Great Rune up to any of the Graceless Tarnished.”

“I made a promise to get someone to the base of the Erdtree,” I say. “Can’t do that without Great Runes, or so I’ve been told. So, no, I’m not planning on giving them to someone else. Not until I’ve done that, at least.”

There’s what sounds like a sigh. “And this Tarnished that fought with thee. He does not seek the Great Rune?”

“He said he didn’t. Not that I had the chance to know him for more than five minutes.”

“Then perhaps I have acted in haste,” says Margit. “The hands of the Fell Omen will be watching thee, Unstrung One. If thou hast spoken true, then perhaps we shall have no quarrel when next we meet.”

Unstrung One? “My name’s Barrett,” I say.

There’s no response.

I sigh and sit down beside the Site of Grace, turning my back on the scattering dust that’s all that’s left of poor Rogier. It’s not the first time someone’s died on my watch, not even close. But it always hurts, and I welcome that pain. It’s better than what rushes in to fill the void without it. Joy and sorrow, to the adherent of the sword-logic, are the same thing.

After a moment, Melina appears beside me in a puff of sparkling blue. “Impressively fought,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say, definitely not sounding even a little sincere. “You have any idea who that was?”

She studies me for a long moment. “An idea, yes. But no certainty. And if I am right, it is not my secret to reveal.”

“Damn it. Fine.” I rub my face. “What was he?”

“An Omen,” she says. “An old and powerful one.”

“What’s an Omen?”

“In the days of Queen Marika’s reign, occasionally a child would be born malformed, with horns or bestial traits. These were Omens, and they were deemed accursed by the adherents of the Golden Order.” Melina’s voice is softly unhappy. “It was traditional to have their horns and bestial parts severed as infants. Many did not survive the procedure. Those which did were shunned all their lives.”

“That’s horrible.” Margit might’ve killed Rogier, but… well, I pitied Eramis, too, before the end. The worst enemies are always the ones that might have been friends, if things were different.

“It is,” she agrees simply. “Far too many such atrocities were allowed, and even encouraged, under the Golden Order. The brutality of the crucifixions you saw on the roads of Limgrave did not begin with the Shattering. They only grew more common.”

“I don’t think I like your Golden Order very much,” I tell her.

She’s silent for a long time. “Someone I loved dearly,” she whispers finally, “told me that it was not my Order. That there was no place for me within it. And then he did his best to remove me from it.”

I stare at her. She’s looking down at her burned hands, clutching one another in her lap. But before I can ask, I hear footsteps on stone behind us. I look up.

Rogier steps out of the tunnel onto the plateau. His clothes are as immaculate as they were before he got crushed like a grape. “You finished the Omen off, then?” he asks.

Chapter Text

“Startin’ to worry about you, Sara.”

“Worry? What’s to worry about?”

“You want an itemized list? That gun’s got history, sweetheart. Dark history.”

“It’s just a gun. A damn good one. Come on, come out to the Ravine with me tomorrow. You can give it a spin.”

I can’t help but blink a couple times while Rogier approaches and sits at the Site of Grace beside us. Sure, Melina told me that death wasn’t as permanent here as it is elsewhere in the universe, and I’ve seen evidence of that in the crucified corpses on the roads. But this is… something else.

“You recover quickly, Sorcerer,” says Melina softly.

“You must have noticed the Site of Grace only a few paces from us,” says Rogier. “Kind of the Omen to prepare his ambush so close to one, I must say. Though perhaps he did not know. I’ve not had the opportunity to ask an Omen whether they can see the guidance of Grace.”

“Is this a thing all Tarnished can do, then?” I ask, looking between Rogier and Melina. “Come back from death?”

“Indeed,” Rogier says. “I have long since lost sight of the guiding arcs of Grace that emerge from the Sites, but the Sites themselves remain visible.”

“But ordinary people can’t do that.”

“Not as a rule,” Melina says. “There were rumors, during the reign of Queen Marika, of miraculous resurrections at places where the Grace of Gold pooled, but they were just that—rumors and miracles. It is only the Tarnished, since their return from beyond the Fog, who can reliably be so reborn.”

“A gift to our kind, perhaps, after our long exile. I cannot say,” Rogier says with a rueful grin. His wide-brimmed hat throws his face in shadow, hiding his pointed chin and wide mouth from the Erdtree’s light. “And we cannot always return so. From rumors and speculation I gather that a Tarnished killed by another Tarnished remains dead forever. But it is difficult to be certain of such a thing, as it is impossible to test safely. It’s frustrating, at times, to walk in the wreckage of a golden age I cannot remember, where every sight begs a dozen questions and every answer begs a dozen more.”

I’m reminded of how I felt, more than four centuries ago, waking up coughing and spluttering on the shores of the New Orleans Basin. No memories, but knowing that my metal skin wasn’t natural, that the rusting husks of cars all around me should be carrying people down much less dilapidated roads, but never quite knowing why I was so sure. “Is that what you’re looking for, under the castle?” I ask him. “Answers?”

“Always, my friend,” says Rogier. “But specifically, I have been tracking Deathroot outbreaks in Limgrave and Liurnia. I have a suspicion about how the root splits and spreads beneath the ground, and if I am correct, there will be a large growth beneath the castle. If it is so, I may be able to trace the growth all across the Lands Between to find where the network as a whole is rooted. Where the original Deathroot grows still, spreading through the earth like the branches of a subterranean Erdtree.”

“Have a care,” says Melina softly. “In seeking answers about Those Who Live In Death, you may find yourself opening graves best left buried.”

“A friend of mine told me much the same thing,” says Rogier. “And he may be right. He yet sees the Guidance of Grace, while I do not. Perhaps that is because his faith holds firm, and mine does not. But…” He sighs. “Is it any wonder my faith has faltered? Godrick is a direct descendant of the Golden Lineage, descended from Godwyn the Golden himself, and yet look at the depravity he has wrought here in Limgrave. Caelid was once said to be a beauteous place, but is now a rotting, pestilent waste—all due to the actions of the Empyrean Malenia. Pastor Miriel teaches of the love that tied the Golden Order to the lineage of the Full Moon, but that love ended in betrayal, and was followed by yet more betrayal as the Knights of the Cuckoo turned upon House Caria and imprisoned Queen Rennala in her own academy. With every secret I uncover, I find more reasons to question the justice of the Golden Order.”

“I cannot fault you this,” Melina says.

Rogier looks surprised. “Can you not?” he asks. “I would have thought a Finger Maiden would find such speech blasphemous.”

“I am no Finger Maiden,” says Melina. “Merely a lonely traveler, seeking to return to her roots. A difficult task, as I have no legs of my own to carry me back.”

“Ah. Then you are the one to whom Barrett made his promise?” He looks at me. “To return the lady to Leyndell?”

“That’s right,” I say.

“I am Morna,” says Melina. “And though you did not see me, I was present for your introduction to Barrett, Sorcerer Rogier.”

That’s the second time she’s introduced herself by that name to a Tarnished. I don’t think I’m the one she’s lying to. But why would her name matter to them?

“A pleasure, Morna,” says Rogier, though there’s a curious look in his eye. “Morna. Hm. A name with much history.”

“Is it?” I ask.

“It is, I assume, derived from Castle Morne, at the southernmost point in the Lands Between,” says Rogier. “A grim place, with a sad history.”

“A history tormented,” whispers Melina, “by vengeance, betrayal, and violence.”

“Just so,” says Rogier.

I stare at Melina for a long moment. She avoids my gaze.

“In any case,” Rogier says, pulling my attention. “I find myself curious about you, Barrett. That is twice that you have shown yourself a more than capable warrior. You did far more than your share of the work in battle against the Omen. And I’ve not seen weapons like yours before.”

“You wouldn’t have,” I say. “I’m from… well, I guess I’m from the stars.”

Rogier leans back, like he’s staggering while sitting down. “Truly?” he asks. “Like the Fallingstar Beasts?”

“The what?”

“Denizens of the Stars who fell to the Lands Between in great numbers many years before the Shattering,” Melina says. “It was this invasion that motivated General Radahn to halt the stars in their motion in the first place.”

“Huh.” I consider that. “Chester, you didn’t see anything alive in that debris field, did you?”

Winchester pops out of my hammerspace. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to do sightseeing, bud,” he grunts. “What with hitting an asteroid, you dying, and dropping faster than a civilian in surgery.”

“Fair enough.”

“And what sort of creature are you?” Rogier asks, looking fascinated at Winchester.

“I’m a Ghost,” Winchester says. “My job is to keep this idiot alive.”

“I resemble that remark,” I quip. “Anyway, I ain’t seen one of these Fallingstar Beasts since we got here. What do they look like?”

“A bit like bulls,” Rogier says. “Only rather than horns, they have pincers like those of an insect, their long tails are barbed with metal spikes, and their hides are plated with black stone.”

“Never heard of anything like that,” I say. “Universe is a big place. They must have come from somewhere I haven’t come across yet.”

“Are you an explorer then?” Rogier asks.

“Yep. Founding member of the Foreguard, the Last City’s extrasolar exploration force. Our job is to make sure that the next time someone comes around to threaten the people of Sol, we know they’re coming before they get close enough to throw rocks.”

“Fascinating,” says Rogier. “And, once again, I am forced to question. All of the Golden Order’s records indicate that the war on the stars was a just one, that the Fallingstar Beasts were ravenous monsters who sought the destruction of all the world. Yet here you are, an entirely different creature from the stars who seems entirely reasonable.”

“Don’t think the Golden Order encountered anyone like me before the Shattering,” I say. “Take it from me, Rogier, space is a really dangerous place. Most of the things out there probably would try to kill us. It's gotten safer lately, but it’s still a mess up there. Just be glad you got those Fallingstar Beasts rather than the Hive or the Taken.”

“From the story you told me, I suspect we are lucky,” Melina says.

“Ah!” Rogier exclaims, standing up and dusting himself off. “I beg of you, enough! If you continue tempting me with the promise of stories and secrets I could never have encountered before, I will never stand up again. But, alas, I still do have an investigation to complete.”

I grin, following him to my feet. “And I have a Great Rune to find,” I say. “You wanna split up, or should we do this as a team?”

“Two heads are better than one, as they say.” He shrugs. “We should at least approach a fork in the path before we discuss parting ways.”

“Fair enough,” I say, as Melina stands and fades away into glittering blue smoke.

We hit that first fork in the road sooner than I expect.

“O-oh, Tarnished, aren’t you?” A man who looks half-rotted away is standing in the dilapidated gatehouse just beside the heavy portcullis blocking our way into the castle proper. He’s looking at Rogier, which I’m starting to get the feeling is something I’m just gonna have to get used to.

“Yes,” says Rogier. “Will that be an issue?”

“Oh, n-no, not at all, sir,” says the man, with an ingratiating insincerity that puts my nickel-alloy teeth on edge. “Only, if you don’t mind s-some advice, I’d advise against taking the main gate into the castle. It’s under heavy guard.” He gestures at a giant hole in the wall of the building. At first glance it looks like it just opens onto a sheer drop down the mountainside, but when I look again I see that there’s a narrow ledge along the castle wall that we can walk across. “Try the opening here. The guards don’t know about it.”

I frown at him. The man’s flesh is graying, the same as the other soldiers I’ve been encountering. His hair has almost all fallen out, and what’s left dangles greasily from his scalp in tattered curtains around his sunken face. Around his neck is what looks like a pretty heavy metal collar, and hanging from that is some kind of wooden stockade, with two holes for his wrists. His left hand is missing from the wrist down, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it was in that stockade when it was removed.

But despite all of that, his eyes are still… well, not gold, not like the liquid sunlight in Melina’s face, but at least yellow. It’s closer to gold than the coal-black eyes of those groaning soldiers I fought at the Gate of Storms. I’m starting to gather that eye color is a hint as to how much of a person is left in their skull, in these parts.

I don’t trust him. Not by a long shot. But I can believe that he doesn’t like Godrick or his soldiers any more than I do.

“I must say, it is tempting,” Rogier says, looking speculatively out at the ledge before turning to me. “What do you think, Barrett?”

“I can make it through the main gate,” I say. I can always go invisible if I need to, after all. “But you’re the one who needs to search the castle for a way underground. Seems to me like the main gate is going to lead straight to the throne room once we get past the guards, so maybe it makes more sense to try a side path first.”

“Only if you’re willing to accept the delay,” Rogier says.”

“Sure. I have time.”

Rogier nods at me, then turns to the man. Now that he’s heard me talk, the man’s eyes are fixed on me, uncertainty and dread written in the heavy lines of his face. “We’ll try the side path then, Sir…” Rogier says, trailing off.

“Oh, I’m Gostoc,” says the man, still looking at me. “But don’t mind me. I just want to keep my head down. Coming between the Tarnished and Lord Godrick doesn’t seem like a good way to survive long.”

“Wise, I suppose,” says Rogier. “Well, I’m Rogier, and this is Barrett. Thank you for your assistance, Gostoc.”

Rogier takes the lead as we start down the narrow path. We cross the ledge, then drop into a small valley. There’s a path leading up along the wall, going around the base of a tower. We get ambushed on the way up—by giant hawks with swords in place of feet, because that’s just the kind of day we’re having. Two of them come at us, but I throw my knife at one while Rogier blasts the other with his magic, and that’s that.

“These are new,” I say, nudging one of the feathery corpses with my foot.

“Indeed,” says Rogier. “I’d heard tell of the stormhawks that were said to roost on the mountain, but this…” He leans down and examines the point where the sword has been bolted into a hawk’s leg. “The foot was removed, and the sword affixed in its place. Has Godrick run so low on human flesh for his grafting that he has lowered himself to the limbs of beasts?”

“Couldn’t say. So, this grafting. Any idea how it works?”

Rogier shoots me a look. “Not in any detail. I’ve not had any desire to become one of Godrick’s heretical surgeons. My understanding is that incantation is involved, and as a sorcerer that is far outside my expertise.”

“Is it? Me—Morna mentioned incantations and sorceries, but I wasn’t aware that they were so different.”

“They are entirely different skillsets,” Rogier says as we ascend the hill, passing a Site of Grace in a small hollow. “Sorceries are technical, formal things, generally requiring that the sorcerer retain the spell’s formulation entirely within their mind while casting. A well-trained intellect is imperative. Incantations, conversely, draw upon powers other than those of the spellcaster. The incantations of the Erdtree draw on the Golden Order itself, for instance. There are some exceptions to this sharp delineation, of course. The incantations of draconic communion blur the line. They require an openness to connection like other incantations, but the connection is to the flesh of dragons that the cantor has consumed.”

“Consumed?”

“The greatest cantors of dragon communion would hunt great drakes in the wild places of the world,” says Rogier. “Or so it is said—I have never known an accomplished draconic cantor myself. Supposedly they would harvest and eat the hearts of dragons to strengthen their communion.”

I hesitate for a second as we start onto a narrow wooden ramp, leading up to an opening in one of the castle’s towers. “…Are dragons intelligent?”

“The ancient dragons certainly were. It is said that the dragonlord Fortissax was a dear friend of Godwyn the Golden. Their lesser descendents are likely still somewhat intelligent, but I suspect they are far nearer to beasts than the dragonlords of the days before the Golden Order.”

Nearer to beasts does not mean non-sapient animals, though. So, great, there’s a whole school of magic based on slaughtering and eating the hearts of intelligent beings. Fun, fun. I think I hate this place. Before I can say anything, though, I see a figure step outside of the tower. He starts as he sees us, and I see him reach for his belt—and the trumpet there. Before he can blow it, I whip out the Dead Man’s Tale and fire a shot straight into his skull. The first pings off his helmet, the second sends him staggering, and the third drops him, sending his body tumbling off the cliff into the mist below.

…Unfortunately, the gunfire was almost as loud as the trumpet would have been.

“Not the must subtle of weapons, is it?” Rogier asks as several other soldiers rush out of the tower and start sprinting down towards us, drawing swords and spears as they go.

“…I’ll see if I’ve got something with a suppressor,” I say, taking aim at the next man.

There are enough of them that they get to us before we kill them all, but there aren’t enough to survive much past that. After they’re dead, we ascend into the tower. There’s an opening from there into a larger building. A wooden staircase leads up to a second floor, and I can see at least one more floor above that through the rotting holes in the boards.

“Hope I don’t fall through the floors,” I say. That’s happened a couple times while I was out ranging. Most recently I fell through a half-rotted floor in Trostland during the Red War. Thermidor damn near died laughing.

“I advise you to tread carefully,” Rogier says, grinning.

I do. It’s slow going, getting up the building, not just because I have to avoid falling through the floorboards. There’s a locked door between us and the ladder up to the next level with a floor made of actual rock that I won’t fall through, and we have to brave the wooden deathtrap of a landing to find the key, which turns out to be in a side room. There’s a few… servants, probably? Scattered around the mouldering floors, but all of them have clearly lost their minds as bad as any of the soldiers, charging us with dull knives and limbs like twigs. They go down easily—I’ve pulled out the Edge of Concurrence for now while Winchester tries to rig a suppressor to one of my more conventional weapons, but these guys don’t even need ammo. I just let ‘em get close, then stab them with the glaive.

We do eventually get the door open, make it up the ladder, then follow the path out to another narrow ledge outside the castle. That leads us to a staircase—and seriously, whoever designed this castle with so much exterior scaffolding, with these winds? I want a word with them. It’s nothing I can’t deal with, after scaling the interior walls of the sunken pyramid, but still, it’s bad architecture.

Once we get back inside we’re met with a big guy in armor. I hit him with the Edge and he falls backwards into… is that an elevator shaft?

“Oh,” Rogier says, looking down. “That’s promising.”

“If we’re trying to get under the castle, yeah,” I agree. “I can get down there, take a look?”

He blinks at me. “You… how? Do you have a way to call the elevator?”

“Nah, I’ll just jump. Let you know if I see anything.” Before he can react, I jump down. I catch myself at the bottom with a double jump and hit the elevator lightly.

There’s a button in the middle of the platform, I notice. Which just begs the question. I mean, the button implies an automated trigger, and for an automated trigger to run an elevator safely between two levels… doesn’t that imply an electrical motor? I dunno, I’m not a mechanical engineer. It’s probably magic. The room has only one exit besides the elevator. I step outside…

…And come face to face with an eight-foot-tall fuck in heavy red plate.

We look at each other for a long moment.

“Well,” he says. “What manner of creature art thou?”

Chapter Text

“Well, now, I see thou hast kept my gift.”

“Oh, Cousin Ranni! Of course I have kept her. Little Renna is a great comfort, on days when duty taketh Miquella away from the citadel.”

“Only Miquella? Hast thou not two other siblings here in Leyndell?”

“Malenia remaineth cloistered while she is within the city, meditating to control her curse. And Godwyn…”

“What of Godwyn?”

“…Methinks he careth not for me.”

“Uh, hi,” I say, my eyes darting from the guy’s heavy longsword, to the wickedly curved spike on his shield, to the flanges, like the blades of an axe, adorning the sides of his helmet. “I’m Barrett-12. Exomind. Call me Barrett.”

“Barrett.” The man sounds amicable, even though his voice echoes ominously in his helm. “I am Trinovar, Knight of the Crucible.”

Knight of the Crucible? I don’t remember anyone mentioning that organization. An oversight, or are there just not enough of these guys for it to be relevant? “Pleasure,” I say. “Nice not to be attacked on sight, gotta say.”

Trinovar hums. “I fear that the soldiers sworn to Lord Godrick, as well as the former Mistwood Knights, have not adapted well to the strife of these latter days. Their minds fracture beneath the strain. There is shame in that, ‘tis true, but it is a shame borne even by the most noble.” He sounds sad, as if remembering someone specific.

“Are you not sworn to Godrick, then?” I ask.

“Lord Godrick,” he corrects me, though his tone is more a gentle reminder than a sharp rebuke. Then he shrugs, his heavy pauldrons clinking. “Nay, I am. In name, at least. We swore ourselves to uphold and defend the honor of the Golden Lineage after Lord Godfrey was banished.”

“And yet you’re down here,” I point out. “Not even really in the castle.”

“Alas, the trust the Golden Lineage once held in we of the Crucible hath been eroding for millennia.” Trinovar sounds wry, as if he sees a joke and knows he’s the punchline. “By now, it is so thin that methinks Lord Godrick suffereth my presence only for fear that I would resist were he to order mine eviction. He is mistaken, of course, but no oath compelleth me to enlighten him.”

“But you serve him anyway? Even though he doesn’t want you here?” That’s confusing, briefly, but after a minute I get it. I remember the early days of the Coalition, back before Misraaks and House Light won the City’s hearts and minds. At the beginning, I’d had some reservations. Me, Parvati, and Lex had all had a little trouble getting used to having Eliksni in the walls. Or, well, Fallen, as we’d still called them at the time. But with Thermidor and Blackwall pushing us, inspiring us to be our best selves, we’d manned the walls around the Botza district anyway.

I still remember the looks we got from the refugees, cowering in the shade of the half-destroyed buildings. They hadn’t wanted us there. They’d thought we were looking for an excuse to turn our guns and our Light in at them. Deep down, in my case, they might even have been right.

But in the end, it wasn’t House Light that brought the Vex into the Last City for the first time ever. And something about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the few real warriors of House Light, while their civilians and hatchlings evacuated, made it hard not to accept them afterward. Knowing that the Eliksni beside me wouldn’t get back up from a torch hammer blast, and that they were standing there anyway? It was humbling.

I try not to tell him too often, but Thermidor is right most of the time, and he definitely was that day.

“I am sworn to the Golden Lineage,” says Trinovar. “That they do not trust me changeth this not. I am sworn to those descendants of Lord Godfrey who remain blessed by Grace, and specifically to Lord Godrick, unless he chooseth to release me from service.”

Lord Godfrey. Wasn’t that the First Elden Lord? The first Tarnished? “Remain blessed by Grace?” I ask. “I’m guessing those who got it back more recently don’t count.”

“Thou speakest of the Tarnished,” says Trinovar. “Were it my choice, I would sit with the Tarnished and discuss their journeys back from beyond the Fog. I would ask if they brought word of Lord Godfrey, who led us into battle all those centuries ago. But, alas, it is not. Lord Godrick hath decreed that all Tarnished are to be destroyed on sight.”

“Even if a Tarnished wasn’t looking to fight him?”

“Lord Godrick’s orders were not discerning.”

Hm. Well, I can’t bring Rogier down here, then. Not unless I want him and Trinovar to duke it out, and I don’t. Trinovar seems decent, even if he does work for an asshole.

But then again… No oath compelleth me to enlighten him, he said. And ain’t that interesting? Sounds like the big guy’s at the end of his rope when it comes to tolerating his boss. Somehow I doubt he’s all that happy about the grafting and the crucifixions and whatever the hell else Godrick’s been getting up to, even if he feels like he can’t turn on his liege.

Maybe he doesn’t have to.

“I’ve only been in Limgrave a few days,” I say. “But I’ve already seen some of the stuff Godrick’s been getting up to.”

“Lord Godrick.” Trinovar’s tone is wooden, now. Which might be a bad sign… but it also might not.

In for a bullet… “Lord Godrick, then,” I say. “You seem like an honorable fella, Sir Trinovar. You want to uphold your oaths. But it doesn’t seem like Lord Godrick really reflects those ideals all that well.”

“It is not for me to question my Lord,” says Trinovar in a monotone that would make even a combat frame jealous.

“Well, you said that you were sworn to uphold the honor of the Golden Lineage,” I say. “What if a particular member of it is a stain on that honor?”

“It is not for me to question my Lord,” says Trinovar again.

…In for a mag. “What would happen,” I begin slowly, hoping I’m not making a mistake, “if, hypothetically, Godrick were to die while you were down here?” Be a shame to have to fight the guy just when I’m starting to like him.

“I am sworn to obey the commands of my Lord Godrick,” says Trinovar. I can’t see his face under his helmet, but I can tell he’s watching me closely. “He hath commanded that I am to be stationed here, upon this ledge, out of sight and out of mind. But while I remain here, I cannot defend His Lordship from any who may attempt to approach him from the main gate. Should he die, the Golden Lineage would be ended, and I would be without a liegelord—though I might seek to serve other descendants of Queen Marika.”

“And his order to kill Tarnished on sight?”

“Would bear no further weight. Such is not the doctrine of the Golden Order, but a tactical decision made by Lord Godrick himself. If he were to die, his war would be lost and his tactics would be ended.”

…I’m starting to get the feeling that Trinovar is smarter than I assumed. “Gotcha,” I say. “Crystal clear. But how would you even know Godrick was dead?”

“I likely would not, at least immediately,” he says. “I would need to be told, or to see some sign.”

“All right,” I say. “Good to know. Trying to understand the people of the Lands Between, you know? Your perspective is enlightening. But for now, I should get back up the elevator.”

“Indeed,” says Trinovar. “I suspect that I shall see thee again ere long, Sir Barrett.”

“Can’t imagine where you might get that impression,” I say mildly. “I’ll send the elevator back down, in case you need it.”

“Thou hast mine appreciation. There is a mechanism to summon it, but it hath been known to fail.”

“Last question,” I say. “Is there any way to get under the castle from here?”

“None that I have found,” says Trinovar. “I have been stationed here for several months now. There are no caves, wells, or drainages that might allow such passage. One seeking it would be forced to dig.”

“Good to know. Thanks.” I turn around and hop onto the pressure plate in the center of the elevator. It starts moving. It’s a long chute, but for a rickety construction of wood and chain the elevator moves fast. I’m back to Rogier in well under a minute.

“Well?” Rogier asks. “Is there a way into the mountain?”

“Not down there,” I say. “But I did run into someone you’ll want to talk to. He certainly seemed to want to chat with a Tarnished. Unfortunately, that’ll have to wait.”

“Someone wishes to speak with a Tarnished? Here?” Rogier watches me step back onto the pressure plate, then jump off the elevator as it starts to descend.

“Yep,” I tell him. “Name of Trinovar, says he’s a Knight of the Crucible.”

Rogier sucks in a sharp breath. “A Crucible Knight…? Incredible. Even at the height of their order’s power and prestige, there were said to be only a small number of them. Fewer than two dozen; the precise count varies. And there is one here? In Castle Stormveil?”

“Sworn to Godrick,” I say. “But he doesn’t seem to like the guy. He’s also been ordered to stay down there. So if I take out Godrick, we can go back down there with proof of the kill and Trinovar won’t attack us.”

“You are certain of this?”

“Just about. He couldn’t straight-up tell me he wanted me to kill his boss, but the message got across.”

“Incredible,” Rogier says again. “A Crucible Knight in the flesh. I’ve not even seen one before. Well, we shall have to return after Godrick is defeated.”

“Agreed,” I say. “But for now, let’s keep moving.”

We climb the tower. There’s a few more soldiers, and one more guy in heavy armor, a tattered cape streaming behind him. I don’t kill him as quick as I did the last one we fought like him, and he starts throwing some kind of wind magic around. It’s got enough force to knock me back, but he only tosses it out once.

We pass a Site of Grace in a side room overlooking the battlements, pausing for Rogier to touch the flickering gold and rest up a bit. I can see him healing in the golden light, bruises from getting thrown into the wall by that wind magic fading away before my eyes. That also gives Melina enough time to appear in a mist of sparkling blue.

“Hey.” I give her a wave.

She waves back, a little hesitant, as if the gesture isn’t one she’s familiar with. To be fair, might not be. “You handled yourself well with the Crucible Knight.”

“You were watching that?”

Her lips twitch. “You are my legs where Torrent cannot be, Barrett. I am afraid you will have little privacy until we are finished in the castle. My apologies.”

“No harm done.”

“What did you think of the Knight, Lady Morna?” Rogier asks. “Will he truly speak with me after Godrick is defeated?”

“I believe so,” Melina says. “His order’s story is a sad one, Sorcerer. I doubt it pleases him to meekly accept the scorn the Golden Order’s most ardent adherents have flung upon them for tens of centuries. But he is a knight, and so feels he must keep at least to the letter of his oaths.”

“So was the Order of the Cuckoo,” Rogier points out. “And their oaths did little to protect House Caria.”

Melina says nothing for a long moment, eye fixed on the flickering Grace between us. “Have you ever encountered a cuckoo, Sorcerer Rogier?” she asks finally.

“The bird itself? If I have, I did not recognize it as such.”

Melina nods slowly. “The cuckoo plants its eggs in the nests of other birds,” she says. “So that the nest’s maker will be fooled into caring for the cuckoo’s chicks as its own. Sometimes it goes so far as to discard the eggs already present to ensure that its children will control the affections of the surrogate parent.” She turns her gaze up and fixes her golden eye on Rogier’s face. “It makes one wonder why an order of knights would choose such a duplicitous creature for their heraldry, does it not?”

“So it does,” says Rogier slowly, holding Melina’s gaze. “Indeed, so it does.”

Melina stands and brushes off the knees of her leather leggings. (Leggings which are usually pretty well hidden under her cloak, and which hug her thighs in a way I can’t quite not notice.) “We should continue when you are prepared, Rogier,” she says.

Rogier stands too. “Then let us do so now.”

We do, stepping out onto the battlements. A stormhawk immediately shrieks and comes flying towards us, a massive barrel speared on the swords attached to its legs. It undulates in midair a few paces from us before I can get my gun up, flinging the barrel our way. Rogier rolls out of the way. I make the mistake of assuming that because the barrel isn’t actually going to hit me, that I’m safe. When it explodes, I’m just inches away from ground zero. The blast sends me flying, breaking straight through my shields. My back impacts the low wall on the inner side of the battlements, and I almost get knocked straight over it and down onto the castle grounds way below. But I catch myself, and look up just in time to see the stormhawk coming for me, sword-feet outstretched.

I don’t have time to think about whether it’s even worth trying so hard to survive if I’m going to draw attention. I just react on instinct, reaching for the first thing that comes to me. Usually that’s either the gun at my hip or my Solar Light. But for whatever reason, maybe because I’ve got cuckoos and Crucible Knights and loyalty on my mind, it’s Strand that comes to me first.

Strand is Darkness, like Stasis. That’s about where the similarities end.

Ikora once described the Darkness and the Light to me in terms of an old logic puzzle, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The idea is that you’ve got two convicts, each of which has the choice of whether to sell the other guy out, or cooperate. If they both cooperate, they both get a light sentence. If they both choose to betray each other, they both get a longer sentence. But if only one of them chooses to betray the other, and the other guy tries to cooperate, then the guy who betrays gets to go home free while the guy who tries to cooperate gets the longest sentence possible. In a more advanced version of the puzzle, this process iterates, where the same two prisoners are presented with the same choice, over and over again.

The Light, Ikora claims, is the ability to forgive and forget. It’s the strength that lets us go back and choose to cooperate with someone who’s betrayed us in the past, if we have reason to, if we think it’s the right thing to do. The Darkness, on the other hand, is memory. When she originally talked about this it was before we had Strand, and she thought of Darkness—of Stasis—as the ability to remember that we were betrayed, and to refuse to expose ourselves to that pain again.

But Strand is the flip side, the mirror image. Strand is the memory that we weren’t betrayed. It’s the force that connects me to the other guy in my cell, both of us knowing that we chose to trust each other, and that because we chose to trust, even though we’re in here now, we’ll be out together soon.

Grant’s always been the best of us with Strand. Privately, I think it’s partly because he’s so young. He doesn’t have the caked-on calluses the rest of us have built up over the decades, years of pain compounding until it’s hard to imagine opening ourselves up to it again. He wasn’t even around to see Cayde die. Even Thermidor was here for that, and he’s barely a decade old.

But me and Lex, the team’s Hunters? Neither of us is really good with Strand. But we’re bad at different things. Lex can’t seem to get their threads to go where they want them to. They miss their grapples, their rope dart hits the wrong things, the wrong enemy ends up suspended. But me? My problem is that I have so much trouble calling on Strand in the first place. I’ve never been good at the whole let it flow thing Osiris worked out during the initial skirmishes on Neptune.

But once I get it? Once Strand comes to me? Once I manage to call it, I become one hell of a Threadrunner.

My fingers close. In my left hand is the weighted end of a luminous green rope. Dangling from my right is the dart connected to the other end. The stormhawk barely has time to squawk before the dart hits it in the throat. Its body unravels into green threads, and in less than a second it’s vanished entirely.

I’m a little reluctant to dismiss the rope dart as I stand. But I do, because I know if I don’t the power will pull away from me harder, leaving me drained and weak for a while. As I release it, I feel the well of Strand deep inside me slip back out of my reach.

“Strange magic,” Rogier comments. “Is that how you defeated the Omen?”

“Related power,” I say, watching the shield indicator on my HUD fill back up.

“Is it sorcery or incantation? Or something entirely different?”

I’m about to tell him that it’s totally different before I stop and think about it. From what I gathered of his explanation, there actually is at least some conceptual similarity between the sorcery/incantation duality and that of Light and Darkness.

“I… don’t think it’s exactly either,” I say finally. Because the thing is… I’m not sure which is which.

Sorcery draws on physical powers, supposedly, like glintstone. That’s like the Light abilities—Arc, Solar, and Void—which all represent some general grouping of forces and energies in the physical world. But the ability to use sorcery is something drawn from within. That’s like the Darkness, pulling on powers inside myself.

Incantations draw on more metaphysical powers, like the connection to the Golden Order or the dragons. That’s like Darkness, which tends to be esoteric. But it’s used with faith and power drawn in from an outside source. That’s like the Light, which I get from my connection to Winchester and the Traveler.

And that mixing of ideas, that dark mirror of the duality I’m used to? That unsettles me. That unsettles me a lot.

We climb down from the battlements and cross a narrow ‘bridge’—really, it’s the upper awning of an archway that passes over a walkway below us—to reach what looks like a small chapel. We duck inside an open archway that might once have held a stained-glass window, then carefully jump down to the ground floor of the building. From there we take that walkway, fighting another of those wind-magic knights, and enter a much larger building than any of the others around. It seems to be one of two proper keeps—the other is at the top of the mountain, though it looks like it’s mostly built down into the hillside.

We come in at an upper floor, and it takes us a while to climb down all the way. As we descend, the stench gets gradually worse. It reminds me a little of the smell inside a Hive spawning nest, but the Hive don’t usually let meat rot like this inside their broodholds. Hive nests smell like meat, mold, and ozone. This place smells like a Hive nest that’s been abandoned for a few years, where the last clutch in the spawning pools was allowed to die and decay.

Near the bottom floor, we cross a landing overlooking—oh, yuck. I grimace as I lean over the railing. The stench is horrific. There’s a heaping pile of body parts below us, with the strung-up corpse of a troll dangling over it. There’s a couple of mangy-looking dogs rooting around among the bodies—mean-looking, terribly thin things. They look half-dead themselves, actually, almost blending in with the butchery around them. I wonder if they are half-dead, if they’ve been kept alive by the same weirdness that keeps corpses screaming in Limgrave.

Somethin’ down there, says Winchester suddenly over our private channel.

I startle. You mean, besides the cannibal’s charcuterie?

Yes. Something paracausal. Look, you can see it, right at the top of the pile.

I look. Sure enough, there’s something there. It’s not hard to see—it looks like a small bundle wrapped in bright red velvet. It stands out against the dark, clotting blood, the greying skin, the stained brown clothing.

“Is something wrong?” Rogier asks beside me, his voice a low whisper. I’ve been standing still for a while, and he can’t hear me and Winchester subvocalizing.

“Yeah, talking to Chester,” I reply. “One sec.” You want me to grab it? I ask my Ghost.

It’s a shiny new paracausal thing. Winchester sounds impatient. Why do I even have to ask you?

I grin. Fair enough. I turn to Rogier, who’s watching me curiously. “Be back in a bit,” I say, then leap over the railing. I land feet-first on the skull of the first, cracking it open. Then I throw a weighted knife at the second before it can so much as bark. Having avoided raising the alarm, I clamber up to the top of the pile and pick up the thing.

I unwrap it, and in the middle of the folded velvet there’s a small broach. As it emerges, a thin mist puffs out, as though the velvet were refrigerating it. Wondering if it’s cold to the touch, I reach out.

It isn’t, and that mist isn’t water vapor. As my fingers close on the broach, there’s a flash of gold in my vision, and for an instant I see Roderika, the girl cowering in the shack on the slopes of the Stormhill, before blinking to see the world come back into focus.

You all right? Winchester asks sharply. Thing made some kind of momentary connection to you.

I’m fine, I say softly, wrapping the broach back up as I stare down at the pile of…

…Of chrysalids.

Some kind of paracausal trace lingering around this thing, Winchester says, popping out of hammerspace to start scanning the broach. Let me—

“It’s people,” I say. Aloud.

Winchester looks at me. “What?”

I hear movement inside the building beside me. I find I don’t care. “The trace. It’s people. They’re not dead. They’ve been grafted. These are the dregs, but enough of them has been grafted that they’re trapped like this. Trapped here. That’s what this thing is. It’s a way out for some of them. Something to inhabit besides their mutilated bodies.”

“…Holy shit,” murmurs Winchester, looking down at the chrysalids. “This is what the chick in the shack was talking about.”

“Exactly,” I say.

With a shriek, something bursts out of the building and into the dumping ground. It looks like a spider, if spiders were made of the ruined parts of a hundred corpses. It walks on a dozen arms and legs. It stares at me with a dozen hollow eyes. It charges at me with a pair of golden swords and a large shield, proudly emblazoned with the golden roots and branches of the Erdtree.

And, all of a sudden, the dislike, disgust, and general dissatisfaction I’ve been feeling for everything I’ve seen so far in Limgrave

sharpens

into

hate.

I leap skyward, Solar light superheating the air around me, cloaking me in flames that burn without fuel and consume no oxygen. I spin, and a flood of tiny blades of pure Solar Light surges out of me in a wave of heat and fury. They bury themselves in the pile of ruined chrysalids and in the spider.

Then they detonate.

I land in a field of flame, surrounded by smoke that stinks of burning flesh. The fire is up to my knees, but doesn’t burn me. How could it?

Right now, I am incandescent.

I manage to hold onto my emotions for just long enough to look up at Rogier’s wide, dark-green eyes, staring down from the landing. “Meet you inside,” I say, my synthetic voice riddled with static, as though I were speaking into a radio while a wildfire raged around me. Then, cloaked in Light and death, I storm into the keep.

The flame follows me.

Chapter Text

“…Ha. You’re right. It does feel good.”

The fire roared in my ears, ravenous. The wooden furniture lining what must once have been an opulent and beautiful dining hall blackened as I passed. Over my head, desiccating chrysalids—severed arms and legs, some from animals, most from humans—dangled from the ceiling like macabre chandeliers. Those which hung lowest caught fire as I passed beneath them.

A soldier rushed out of a side door. I waved an arm, and three slivers of Solar Light buried themselves in his chest. He ignited, screaming, and exploded into cinders and smoke.

There was no viscera, because I wasn’t lighting him on fire. That’s not how Solar Light works, at its apex. Sure, when I just lightly scorch a guy, he burns pretty much as if he was being lit up by causal fire. But when I’m like this? Luminous with fury, and letting my rage pour power into every blow?

Solar Light isn’t fire. Nor is it sunlight, heat, plasma, or any of the other analogies we use to teach kinderguardians the ropes. Solar Light, at its core, is infusion. It’s raw energy being pressed into matter like gas into soda. Do it a little, you get a hot knife. Do it some more, things catch fire. Do it carefully, and you can give living things the energy to heal. Throw restraint to the winds, and you can tear matter apart.

I’m not causing nuclear fission, not tearing apart atoms. But I probably could, if I pushed hard enough.

I hear a trumpet sound outside. As I storm out the open doorway, three streams of fire blast in my direction, pouring from little flamethrower installations manned by more of the soldiers wrapped in red. Adorable. The flame flows into the Solar corona around me, achieving nothing. I thrust my right hand out to the side, and my fingers close around the warm grip of my Golden Gun. I bring my hands together to fan the hammer, and blast them, one after the other, scattering them into ash and dust.

There’s a huge guy near the back of the courtyard, almost as big around as he is tall and covered in horrible-looking welts and scabs. He draws a massive curved sword, like a cross between a scimitar and a cleaver, and charges me. My next shot catches him between the eyes, and he disintegrates into the same cinder as the rest of them.

There are trumpets going up all over the place now. I hear a bell ringing in a tower. A troll rounds the corner of the path ahead of me, bellowing. He survives two whole shot before the third scatters him. Doors are bursting open all around me, soldiers and knights charging me. I blast all comers, but they’re closing. In the end, even with Golden Gun, I’m just one guy.

The moment I realize that I’m gonna get overrun, that realization tempers my hate. That tempering leaches away at the power. I’ve got a few seconds left of this surge of power before it drains away. Gotta use it well.

So I turn my Golden Gun, not on any of the soldiers, but on the ground at my feet. I fire. It’s a trick I learned from Shaw Han, of all people, something he pieced together after working with Warlocks for years. The Guardian Orders, the classes, they’re social constructs. They’re easy, digestible ways of learning and using our abilities. What they aren’t is hard lines on what’s possible.

We’re paracausal. There are no hard lines.

The Well of Radiance blooms around me, golden mist wafting up from a ring around my feet. The Golden Gun fades, but I don’t need it anymore. “Winchester?” I say, reaching up to my shoulder. “Death Adder.”

The Veist-built submachine gun appears under my hand. I pull it out and turn it on the closest soldier. The grips of the gun are warm under my fingers, a telltale sign that it’s being infused with the Well of Radiance. I pull the trigger, and hold it down. All around me, soldiers die. It’s not enough. They swarm me, hacking away at me with swords, axes, spears, and crossbows.

Eventually, one gets lucky. A speartip buries itself in my eye, and the world goes dark.

—The great tree stretches to the sky, its deep brown bark gnarled and thick, its leaves a blanket of green over the land. The sun shines behind them, rendering the whole land verdant.

Another light eclipses it. A golden star, bright enough to be visible in the daylight, and growing brighter by the moment. It descends upon the world, terrifyingly fast, falling towards the tree. It strikes directly where the trunk meets the earth—

I gasp for breath, my eyes opening just in time to see Winchester vanish back into hammerspace. The soldiers who were in the process of picking my carcass up drop me in shock and horror. It’s the last thing they manage to do.

The fight begins again. There’s still a lot of them, and it seems like they’re assuming my resurrection trick was a one-time show. They’re still swarming me, and another one gets a good hit—

—Where the star falls, it stains the bark of the great tree in luminous gold. The gold begins to spread, sweeping across the wood like a creeping infection.

It ascends the trunk, following the branches as they split, rushing up the branches and changing the color of the leaves like the coming of autumn—

My eyes snap open, and I jump back to my feet. The soldiers snap back into action again but seeing me resurrect a second time has broken their spirit. Most of those who can’t get me in immediate range of their weapons give it up and start running the other way. There’s only about a dozen who remain, and they go down easy. I’ve taken a few good hits by the time it’s done, but I’m still alive.

I’m left standing in the middle of a field of carnage. Once I took to Death Adder, the energy in the Veist stinger rounds wasn’t enough to disintegrate the bodies as I killed them. So I’m surrounded by scorched corpses, weapons still clutched in their cooling hands. Some of the wooden handles are burning, some of the metal half-melted.

As I look over the bodies, my mind drifts to the visions I just had. I’m not a trained thanatonaut. Never even tried. Every Guardian has a vision once in a while, if they live long enough and die often enough. But two death-visions in a row? Visions that are clearly two parts of the same longer story?

Something’s trying to communicate with me. I’m not sure how I feel about that. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.

I holster Death Adder, breathing heavily. Footsteps come up from behind me, and a moment later Rogier is abreast of me, staring at the field of death.

“Gods in gold,” he whispers.

“Sorry about that,” I pant. “Lost my temper, I guess.”

Rogier doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I begin to suspect that you have no need of my assistance,” he says finally.

“Need? Probably not. But it’s always better with friends.”

Something about that seems like it draws the sorcerer up short. He looks hard at me. “You would offer to help me investigate the tunnels beneath Stormveil simply for company?”

“I mean, I want answers too. A lot of ‘em. And—”

A sound from the other side of the courtyard draws my attention. On instinct, I reach for my gun.

“Peace!” calls a woman’s voice. She’s just rounded the same corner that troll did at the beginning of the fight, and she holds up her left hand in a universal sign of ‘don’t shoot!’ In her right is a battleaxe, but she doesn’t raise it. She’s wearing fur and rags, with a black cowl over her head and a red sash tied around her belt. “I am no friend of Godrick!”

I holster Death Adder again. “Hey!” I call. “As you can probably tell, neither are we!”

“Clearly,” she says, dry as a Mercury summer. She starts walking towards us, hanging her axe from a hook at her waist. “Are you here seeking his death?” she asks. “Or is all this merely incidental?”

“What d’you think?” I ask. “I was originally planning on asking if he’d give up his Great Rune willingly.”

“He’d not agree,” says Rogier.

“I knew that, but it’s nice to offer when I can.” I bare my teeth. “Then I came across his dumping grounds and his spider. Now, whaddaya know, I’m fresh outta mercy.”

“Entirely understandable,” says the woman. “I have come for much the same purpose. Originally, I had intended to seek out the Great Rune myself. Somehow, I doubt I’d find much success in competition with you.”

I shrug. “I’m not trying to become Elden Lord,” I say. “I just promised someone I’d get them to the foot of the Erdtree. Don’t see why we can’t work together.”

She frowns. “You would give up the Great Runes once you claimed them?”

“Not looking for divinity.” I remember Savathûn and her siblings, Calus losing sight of everything he once claimed to care for, Ghaul losing his mind in his pursuit of the Light. “Tends to have a kind of cost I’m not willing to pay.”

She considers me. “Taking up the Elden Ring given freely seems improper, somehow,” she says. “But this can be discussed when the Runes are in our—your—hands. For now, I would be honored to assist in bringing some justice to the false lord.” She holds out a hand. It’s callused and scarred, with a couple of nails chipped and broken. “Nepheli Loux. Warrior.”

Handshakes are still a thing here, I observe to Winchester as I give one to Nepheli. That tell us anything?

Do I look like a Cryptarch’s Ghost? he grouses. Probably tell us something if I knew when handshakes showed up in human societies, but why the hell would I know that? Doubt anyone does. Lotta history was lost in the Collapse.

Fair enough. “Barrett-12,” I say aloud, gripping Nepheli’s hand. “Call me Barrett. Guardian of the Last City.”

“A title I’ve not heard for a man the like of which I’ve not seen,” she says, considering me. “Fitting, I suppose.” She casts her eyes around the killing field. “Well. If we are seeking Godrick’s death, I think you’ve destroyed most of his defenders now.”

“Guess so.” I roll my shoulders, metal and gels creaking slightly. I need some oil before too long. “You know where he is?”

“Not far.” Nepheli gestures back the way she came. “I caught a glimpse of him before all the commotion. He was in a courtyard just outside his throne room then. He may have moved now. You created rather a spectacle.”

“I do that. Lead the way.”

Rogier and I follow her up the stairs and past a series of barricades. They’re deserted now. Apparently the garrison joined the party earlier. We make a turn and head up a small flight of stairs and… there he is.

I can see him through an archway flanked by a small gatehouse. There’s a door hanging open, and past it is exactly what Nepheli described—a wide courtyard in front of a keep. It looks like that courtyard’s been converted into a graveyard. The centerpiece of that graveyard is a stone mausoleam, on top of which is unmistakably a dragon’s corpse. Not an Ahamkara, thank the Traveler. It’s grey and dull, as if its scales are made of stone. Are they always that color, or is that something that happens when they die?

No time to think about that right now. A figure is standing in front of the corpse. There’s a crown on his head, which is the mostly lordly-looking thing about him. He’s wearing what looks like it might have been a fancy tapestry, draped loosely over a pair of way-too-wide shoulders. He’s reaching up to the dragon’s slumped head, apparently caressing its cheek where I can’t see. His proportions are all wrong, though I can’t make out much detail under that makeshift robe. I’m morbidly curious what’s under it… and at the same time, I’m absolutely sure I don’t want to know.

He turns to face us. His eyes are sunken, his lips chapped and cracked badly enough that I can see it even at this distance. I start forward, flanked by the two Tarnished.

“Lowly wretches,” growls Godrick. “Thou wouldst assault me in my home? Bring war into my house? I am the lord of all that is golden!”

I glance over at the Erdtree dominating the skyline. “Really? Didn’t realize we were in Leyndell.”

“Hrah!” Godrick lets out a sound somewhere between a growl and a shout. The tapestry on his back twitches, then starts to move, thrown aside by more than a half dozen arms grafted together, protruding out of his own unnaturally long ones. I realize with a sick twist of horror that his arms are made of the torsos those arms are attached to, grafted sternum to hip in a chain. “Mighty dragon!” he bellows, turning his gaze on the slumped beast beside him. “Lend me thy strength!”

With a wet tearing sound, he pulls the dragon’s head off its neck. It falls to the ground at his feet—grafted at the neck onto the end of his arm.

“Damn,” I say.

A small gout of fire belches forth from the dragon’s lips. The head rises as he raises his arm. I’d been imagining some kind of, I don’t know, surgery involved in the grafting process. Not just ripping body parts off and slapping them on like standard-issue Cabal armor.

The disgust rises in me again. I keep it in check. I’m a Guardian. That means I have principles, and I stick to them. There was a time when we shot first and asked questions later. That’s how the Eliksni inherited legends of the Saint. It’s why Savathûn assumed we couldn’t be reasoned with, why so many Cabal thought working for the Witness would give them a better odds than joining up with us. We’re better now. Wiser. We have lives to spare, and that means we have to be responsible with those that don’t.

“I need your Great Rune,” I say. “I don’t need you dead. Surrender.”

He cackles madly. “A crown is warranted with strength!” he screams. “Thou shalt never have mine! Not with the strength of a thousand men couldst thou claim it from me!”

“I was hoping you’d say something like that,” I tell him, even as the Golden Gun falls into my hands.

The dragon’s head belches flame over me. Rogier and Nepheli leap out of the way. I don’t bother. The heat is intense—the fire is paracausal, clearly, given the absence of any obvious fuel—but I’m in the middle of a Solar Super. Good luck getting me to burn. I take aim and fire directly into the grafted gullet.

Godrick screams, staggering back, the jet of flame stopping suddenly as his other hand—six-fingered, I notice idly—clutches at the point where the dragon’s neck meets the end of the array of bodies that he calls an arm. I take aim again, sighting directly at the center of his stupid little crown. It’s not even properly gold, I notice. It’s dull and tarnished, clearly an alloy that hasn’t been properly maintained.

I fire, but he moves faster than I thought he had in him. One of his several extra hands snaps into position with a heavy axe, catching the Solar blast on the head. The metal explodes into molten liquid, and he screams again as a lot of it splatters onto him. But then he charges me, grabbing another, much heavier axe in his six-fingered main hand as he goes.

I snap off a last shot with Goldie, but it goes wide. Still hits him, but in the side—somewhere nonvital. Then I have to roll out of the way as he swings down with his axe.

Come on, I tell myself as I come back to my feet. Where’s all that raw power from earlier? This is the guy you were angry at! Show him what he pissed off!

But the Light’s fickle like that, sometimes. It can be fueled by anger and other emotions, but my connection to it is limited. It gets harder to call on it the more I draw out in a short amount of time. And for the moment, I’ve run dry.

I sprint away from Godrick, hearing that axe strike the ground behind me as I go. “Rogier, Nepheli, stand back!” I shout. “Winchester—Ascendancy!”

I feel the heavy rocket launcher drop into place on my back between one step and the next. I jump, pulling out the weapon and spinning in midair with it on my shoulder. I fire.

The rocket sails through the air, hits Godrick in the chest, and detonates. He’s thrown back into the wall beside the archway we came in through, several bones in his grafted limbs audibly snapping with the impact. He screeches, baring his teeth, but he points that dragon’s head at me again, shooting a jet of fire my way.

Man just survived a rocket to the chest, what the hell? I’ve seen things survive hits like that before, sure. Plenty of times. Cabal in heavy armor can sometimes do it, so can Eliksni with high-end shields or Hive bolstered by defensive rituals. A Gate Lord can sometimes do some probabilistic trickery to get through an impact like that if the weapon’s causal, even if the hand wielding it isn’t. But somehow I was expecting Godrick to be a bit more like a human in terms of durability, especially since I can’t see any of the obvious defenses I’ve learned to look for. But I guess the Runes, the Grace, and all the other paracausal markers I’ve been seeing around the Lands Between so far let a person build up paracausal shielding a bit like mine.

…Damn. I like the Crucible and Gambit plenty, but I don’t like fighting other Guardians out in the field. Not when it matters. Not anymore.

I’m far enough away that the flame barely warms me—apparently Godrick still hasn’t figured out his range with that thing, which makes sense given that he literally grafted it on a couple minutes ago. I land and holster Ascendancy. No sense wasting ammo, not while Winchester can’t easily generate more. No, I’m gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way. Solar’s great for taking out loads of targets at once and at drilling a hole through someone at three hundred yards with Golden Gun, but for a real slugfest?

You can’t beat the classics.

With a thought, I change the polarity of my Light. I clench my fists, and electricity arcs between my knuckles.

When I first started out, all those centuries ago, I had a knack for Arc Light. When I made it to the City, still in its early days, I threw myself into learning the techniques of the Bladedancers, the premier Hunters at the time when it came to Arc Light. They’ve fallen out of favor more recently in favor of the Arcstrider tradition that Efrideet brought back to Earth in the few months she was around before the Red War. Part of me wonders if that would’ve happened if I’d still been Bladedancing the way I used to, but ever since…

…Well, I’m a Gunslinger now. Deputized into it, you might say. But sometimes this old dog has to put away his new tricks. I reach for Arc Light and it falls into my hand in the shape of a shortsword as easily as ever.

At first glance, Bladedancers look a bit like Gunslingers. Sure, they don’t have Golden Gun, but a lot of a Gunslinger’s abilities use knives of coalesced Solar Light. To the untrained eye, a Bladedancer’s shortsword seems similar. But the Arc blade can’t be thrown, not without a whole lot of effort and training, whereas the Solar knives are meant for throwing. That comes down to the differences between Arc and Solar.

Solar’s about infusion. About pouring raw Light into something and letting it do whatever you want it to once it’s there, whether that’s healing, exploding, burning, whatever. Arc Light is different in a subtle, but important, way. Arc Light is about flow. It’s about transferring energy from the channeler into the target, rather than about dropping that energy as fast and as hard as you can. Think of it as the difference between tossing a bucket of water into a lake in a spray and pouring it in carefully. Solar is one-and-done. You create the knife, you throw the knife, and that’s the end of your involvement. Arc is more… personal. I can’t toss my sword and expect it to do much. The sword is just a conduit. It connects me to the target. The connection is the important part.

I sprint forward, Arc blade in my hand. I duck under Godrick’s axe and slash at his side as I pass. The moment the blade hits him, I feel the circuit form, and the Light surges through. He yelps, and I smell ozone. He turns towards me, but gets distracted by five glowing blades thudding into his back, courtesy of Rogier. A moment later, before he can do more than turn, Nepheli is swinging wildly at his leg with her axe.

I’d forgotten that I have friends with me. Nice.

The thing about fighting multiple enemies at once is that it’s a skill you have to learn. Godrick hasn’t. It’s obvious in the way he keeps turning his focus on whoever’s attacked him last. Rogier, Nepheli and I don’t even have to communicate—we instinctively fall into a rhythm. Nepheli charges, hits him a couple times with her axe, then falls back just in time for Rogier to throw a couple glowing missiles at Godrick before he can do more than swing at her once. Then, by the time he’s reached Rogier, I’m ducking into his guard and striking him with my Arc sword. I get a couple hits in, then jump out of the way of his swing while Nepheli jumps in to pull his focus.

Before too long, he’s flagging. He’s an absolute beast, more durable than anyone I’ve fought in the Lands Between so far, but a thousand cuts will get to anyone eventually. Finally, he staggers after one of Nepheli’s hits. I jump on the opening, hopping onto his back. He thrashes, trying to shake me off, bellowing. “I am the lord of all that is golden! I cannot—”

I get my blade into position and slice. It passes through his throat. Blood sprays out. His voice chokes off. His massive hand bats uselessly at his neck for a moment before, at last, he tumbles forward. His body comes apart as he falls, the grafted pieces separating from one another until what eventually hits the ground is the parts of about a dozen different bodies rather than just one. All that’s left of Godrick’s original body, in the end, is his torso and head, strangely small after fighting the massive, grafted juggernaut for the past several minutes. That tarnished crown is still on his brow. It doesn’t even jostle as he falls, and I realize that it’s been somehow attached to his head.

Just one last little show of the asshole’s narcissism.

As he falls, I feel the paracausal traces I’ve started to get familiar with attaching themselves to me. His Runes flow out, into me and into Rogier and Nepheli. But something else—some other paracausal trace, a different store of power released by Godrick’s death—does something else.

It starts as a trail of golden light rising from the body. Then another, followed by more. They twist around each other, spinning and twining in a strange pattern. They coalesce after a minute into a singular shape. It looks a bit like one of those knotlike carvings that show up in some old ruins north of the EDZ.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I ask, stepping forward.

“Indeed,” says Nepheli. She sounds reverent. “A Great Rune. I’ve not seen one before.”

I can feel the power radiating off the thing. After another moment of hesitation, I reach out. My fingers brush against the Great Rune. It dissolves into golden dust, which passes into me. I feel it connect to me. I know what it feels like to draw power from death. I’ve used the Sword-logic before. It felt like this.

I shiver, then turn away, looking over at Rogier. “Well,” I say. “That’s that. I think I owe you a search for a way down into the mountain?”

Chapter Text

“Thou understandest not, little brother.”

“Then explain to me, Godwyn. Melina is a sweet child, far too young to have caused offense. Whence cometh thy scorn?”

“I have no scorn for Melina. Nor for anything she hath done.”

“Thou hast a poor way of showing thy brotherly affection, then.”

“It is not what she hath done that concerneth me. It—someone listens.”

The three of us sit down around a Site of Grace Rogier spots not far from where Godrick went down. A moment later, Melina appears beside us in a puff of sparkling blue. “Well fought,” she comments.

“Thanks,” I say. I’m still panting some, and so is Nepheli, but Rogier’s worse off than either of us. Sweat literally drips off the end of his pointed chin.

“A finger maiden?” Nepheli asks, shooting Melina a look that’s somewhere between reverence and suspicion. It’s a weird combination.

“Nay,” says Melina. “Merely a traveler, seeking a path north. Barrett has agreed to help me, in exchange for what little aid I can provide him.”

“Guidance, mostly,” I tell Nepheli. “When I first got here, I had no idea where I was or what to do. Me—Morna’s helped a ton, even if she can’t pick up a gun and join in every scrap.”

“I see,” says Nepheli, in a tone that suggests she doesn’t completely. But when she adds, “Well met, then, Morna,” it sounds sincere. Then she turns back to me and Rogier. “You say that you are looking for a way into the mountain?”

“Just so,” says Rogier. “I have been investigating the Deathroot infestation that has overtaken the Lands Between. Many of the roots seem to converge here. I suspect that some central growth, a local heart of the lattice, is somewhere within the mountain.”

“Is it not possible that this central growth is buried too deep for you to find?” Nepheli asks. “You do not carry pickaxes and shovels. Do you intend to use gravitational sorceries to tear away the rock?”

“No, I have only a little skill in such magic,” says Rogier, and I grin at the boyish excitement in his tone and posture. I get the feeling he’s surprised at the apparent depth of Nepheli’s education, and he must be excited to talk to someone who knows more than I do. “But the Deathroot, so far as I can tell, craves the open air. It does not like to be entirely buried, but prefers to protrude from the ground. It is possible that this local mother-root behaves differently, but I suspect otherwise.”

“Well,” says Nepheli. “I did not follow it any great distance, but I did find a path that may lead where you seek while I was exploring the castle. I can lead you to it, if you wish.”

“Is it the elevator in the tower on the wall?” I ask. “On the south side of the castle? ‘Cause I checked there. No path into the mountain.”

“No, the mechanism to call it did not respond to me and I found no other way down,” says Nepheli. “What was down there?”

“A Crucible Knight named Trinovar,” I say. “He’s a decent sort. Now that Godrick’s dead, I think he’ll want to talk to any Tarnished who’s willing to chat.”

“Talk?” Nepheli asks incredulously. “A Crucible Knight? Are they not all sworn enemies to the Tarnished? All those I’ve encountered attacked me on sight. I was under the impression that they hated our kind due to our connection to the Lord who brought shame to their order.”

“Trinovar didn’t seem ashamed of Godfrey,” I say. “That’s actually what he wanted to talk to you about, I think. I got the impression he was hoping that y’all being back here meant there was a chance Godfrey would return too.”

“Truly?” Nepheli looks… pensive. As if she’s not sure how she feels about that—or, really, as if how she feels and how she thinks she should feel are very, very different things.

“Yeah. You want to come with me and Rogier when we talk to him?”

“No, no,” she says hurriedly. “I will guide you to the passage, but then I must return to my father.” She hesitates for a fraction of a second on that final word. I have a few guesses why. “He will await my report at the Roundtable Hold. He will wish to know of Godrick’s defeat.”

“Roundtable Hold?” I ask.

“A safe place for the Tarnished to gather,” Rogier says. “I’ve been there a few times. It is a place… between.”

“A place between?” I ask, looking at Melina. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It does not exist within the normal flow of space and time,” Melina says. “It exists apart, accessible only to those able to reach it by other means.”

We Tarnished can use any Site of Grace to travel there,” Rogier says. “Rumor has it that it was once a manor in Leyndell, but the Two Fingers removed it from the city after the Night of the Black Knives. They say a set of Fingers resides within the Hold, though I have never seen them myself.”

“I have,” Nepheli says. “They take audience with my father, on occasion.”

“Your father?” Rogier asks, looking at her sharply. Then his eyes widen. “You are Sir Gideon’s daughter.”

“I am,” says Nepheli. “He took me in upon my return from beyond the Fog. He has guided me well.”

“I am sure he has,” says Rogier. “Not for nothing is he called ‘the All-Knowing’.”

“Who is this Sir Gideon?” I ask.

“Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing,” Rogier says. “A particularly old and well-studied Tarnished. He is based within the Roundtable Hold, and though he himself seldom leaves he is said to have agents all over the Lands Between.”

“Of which I am one,” says Nepheli, “and proud to be so. My father is a great man. Wise and noble.”

I know what hero worship looks like when I see it. I also know that it’s never a good sign when a kid worships their parent that way. Sometimes it’s because the parent really is a hero. More often it’s because the parent wants to be seen that way. “I’m sure he is,” I say neutrally. “Well, we’d appreciate a tip about that path down before you leave.”

“Of course,” Nepheli says, standing up and dusting off her fur skirts. “Come. It’s not far.”

We stand, Melina vanishing into sparkling mist. She leads us back towards the courtyard where I fought the guards, but instead of crossing it we skirt the edge, entering a side chamber. It looks like some kind of arsenal for the castle’s quartermaster, full of racks upon racks of weapons and armor lining the walls. In the center of the room is a Site of Grace, to our right is another elevator shaft, and across the room is another door, leading outside.

“There,” she says, pointing at the door. “It was barred from the other side, but I came upon it from the other direction while trying to avoid the soldiers in the courtyard.”

The three of us approach the door. Through it, I can see what she means about a path. It’s not really a path, not an intentional one, at least. But there’s a crumbling ledge that leads over to some support arches, which we could probably climb down towards the ground below.

“Excellent,” says Rogier. “Many thanks, Nepheli.”

“No thanks are needed,” says Nepheli. “I ask only that you share any information about the origins of deathroot should you find it. We must work together to contain Those Who Live In Death, or they will spread unchecked through all the Lands Between.”

“Just so,” says Rogier. “Are you parting from us now, then?”

“I am,” says Nepheli. “I have fulfilled my task here, and I must return to my father. Farewell, Rogier, Barrett.”

“Farewell, Nepheli.”

“See you around,” I say. “If we run into each other again, let me know if I can help you out.”

“I shall remember your offer, Barrett,” says Nepheli. “Thank you.” She turns and squats beside the Site of Grace. I watch, interested, as she reaches out and touches the flickering gold. Her body slowly fades away, dissipating into a sparkling golden mist, not unlike the one that Margit turned into after our fight.

“Barrett?” Rogier calls. I turn to see that he’s already halfway across the ledge. “Are you coming?”

“Sorry, on my way,” I say, starting down the steps after him.

The path is unsteady, but we eventually make it down to a small wooden platform just a few feet over the ground. And the ground is… well, no bones about it, it’s disgusting. Flies are buzzing all around, feasting on the old, rotting corpses that have been piling up here for what’s got to be a long time. There’s no sign of Godrick’s chrysalids, which makes sense. I don’t think people come down here often—that path didn’t look intentional. I’d say this is where they dumped bodies Godrick didn’t want.

There’s a couple of really big rats—the biggest one, I’m talking the size of a Cabal Interceptor—feasting on the bodies in a corner. They start towards us, hunger in their eyes, but a couple shots from DMT take out the big one, and the smaller ones—still as big as War Beasts—scatter after that.

Past them is a yawning opening. It’s not exactly a cavern. It’s too constructed for that. It looks…

Some of Earth’s oldest Golden Age cities are thousands of years old. In a lot of those cities, fires, earthquakes, and other disasters brought down the cities over generations. New buildings got built over the rubble of the old ones. But sometimes, parts of those cities survived, buried beneath the weight of the later generations.

This looks like that. It looks as though Castle Stormveil—the castle we just fought our way through—was built over the ruins of an older castle, and we’re about to enter those ruins.

“This is it,” says Rogier softly. “I can feel it. I haven’t felt the guidance of Grace in a long time, but it felt like this. This is where I am meant to be. My fate.”

I grimace. “Not a fan of fate,” I say.

Rogier chuckles grimly. “Nor is anyone whose fate is cruel,” he says. “It comes for them nonetheless.”

I consider explaining paracausality to him, but now’s not the time. It doesn’t really matter what he thinks at the moment. I know the truth.

Guardians make their own fate.

Together, we descend into the dark. A small bug scuttles out of our way—looks like a dung beetle, the way it’s pushing a bundle ahead of it—but it doesn’t seem aggressive, so we ignore it. We come to a small ledge overlooking what must once have been a large atrium. Maybe a church? Hard to tell, with the mud and sludge coating the floor and the dirt and roots poking through the walls.

Across the room, I can barely make out something in the gloom. It looks pretty shapeless to me, pale and squat, but something about it draws my eye. Sends a shiver down my spine. “What is that?” I ask quietly.

“I think that is what I am here for,” says Rogier softly. Slowly, he crouches, then drops down to the floor of the room. I follow him down as he starts forward.

He’s barely taken two steps into the room before it starts to rumble. For a moment, I’m worried about a cave-in. But I needn’t have. What happens instead is almost as bad.

From the center of the room erupts a giant serpent. Its flesh is made of rotting bark and tangled roots. Two twisted arms emerge from about a quarter of the way down its length. Its head has no eyes, no features at all, other than the gnarled, infected texture of its flesh and a massive, gaping mouth. It rises from the muck like a whale cresting over the sea. As it does, it fills the air with a horrible, ear-splitting scream that rattles my alloy bones and practically knocks the air out of my gel lungs. Then it descends, right onto me and Rogier.

We scatter. I roll right, he runs left.

“The hell is this thing!?” I scream.

“A corrupted spirit of a minor Erdtree!” Rogier calls from the other side of the room between grunts as he dodges the thing. “But why is it here!?”

I don’t know the answer, and there’s no time to think about it now. The serpent turns on a dime, swinging its head like a giant flail towards me. I roll out of the way, reaching for the Light. It coalesces in my hand as a Fusion Grenade. I toss it into the thing’s mouth, then sprint out of the way as it swipes at me with its spindly claws. The grenade detonates, and the spirit lets out an otherworldly shriek of pain and fury. The ground rumbles under me as it gives chase, but then I hear the crystalline impact of one of Rogier’s spells as he draws its attention.

Unfortunately, the strategy that worked on Godrick doesn’t work as well here. Sure, Rogier pulls the monster’s focus. But as its head turns towards him, golden fire filling its jaws, its tail whips around, catching me on the backswing as I turn to face it. The impact knocks me sprawling. I pull myself to my feet just in time to see it just barely miss catching Rogier in its jaws.

I reach for the Light again. But it hasn’t been that long since I tossed out a Blade Barrage, a Golden Gun, and an Arc Blade all within half an hour of each other. The Light is there, it comes to me, but it’s tired and sluggish. I don’t think I have a Super in me.

Damn. I need to be more conservative with my abilities. I don’t have a fireteam of other Guardians to watch my back out here. It’s just me and, occasionally, whatever Tarnished feel like hanging around, so far.

But I have a hunch. The thing’s whole body is flickering with golden flame, now, and Rogier said it’s an Erdtree spirit. The color gold is connecting, in my mind, to the Golden Order, to which death is anathema.

“Winchester?” I say. “Deathbringer.”

Got it, he says in my mind.

I feel the heavy rocket launcher drop onto my back. I pull it out, the black stone and charred bone icy under my fingers. As my finger lands on the trigger, I can hear the Deathsingers’ hymn on the knife-edge where hearing passes into imagination, where reality becomes nightmare. I take a deep breath, raising the launcher, aiming it at the air above the spirit’s head.

I pull the trigger, hold it down as the Void-charged projectile surges forward, then release it just as it passes over the serpent. The secondary activation breaks the Void orb apart, sending a cascade of shrieking nothingness down onto the spirit. As the spheres impact its twisted flesh, it screams. Where they touch, bark vanishes, leaving clean scoops of negative space where the serpent’s body has been wiped away. It crumples beneath the onslaught, writhing, until one of the final orbs strikes it in the center of its brow. Then it stops moving.

I sling Deathbringer back over my shoulder, and it vanishes back into hammerspace. Winchester replaces it, hovering over my shoulder. “You can’t keep bringing out Power weapons to every damn fight,” he says. “At this rate I’ll be out of ammo for you in just two or three more.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I say, crossing the room. It takes me a minute to find Rogier. The thing fell on him as it died, and he’s having trouble pulling himself out from under it. I give him a hand, bracing myself against the much and lifting the serpentine body just enough that he can crawl out.

“Thank you,” he says, standing. “That was… unexpected.”

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to think about the fact that I’m still not completely certain I’m imagining the hymn still ringing in my ears.

Rogier turns towards the back of the chamber. I follow his gaze, then follow him as he starts walking. The indistinct, pale shape in the back of the room starts to come into terrible focus.

“What the hell is that?” I whisper.

It looks like a face. An indistinct, half-melted face. Its eyes, which are its most well-defined features, are hollow openings. They don’t move in any way, but I can’t shake the feeling they’re following me.

“So it is true,” whispers Rogier. “There is a Prince of Death.”

“A what?”

“I did not want to believe it…” Rogier takes a couple more hesitant steps towards the thing. “Common wisdom would have you believe that the deathroot first began appearing after the Elden Ring was shattered, but my research indicates that it is not so. There are records of it dating back to shortly before the Shattering. There are indications, also, of a guiding intellect behind Those Who Live in Death. A nascent god, perhaps even an Empyrean, whose purview is over Destined Death itself, or perhaps whose very existence is in defiance of Destined Death. The Prince of Death, it is called. These two facts put together… and now, in the face of this… The deathroot is no inert contagion. It is the flesh of the Prince of Death himself, imposing his own Order upon a world bereft of Gold. And I fear I may suspect his identity.”

I stare at the horrible face. “You think this is the Prince of Death, then?”

“No,” Rogier says. “But deathroot—its bulbs often take on features resembling eyes. I had speculated that if a single root grew to sufficient size, it might begin to take a more defined shape. And it seems to be so.” He gestures with a shaking hand. “This is simply a very large deathroot growth. But it has begun to take a shape reminiscent of the original deathroot. To resemble its progenitor. That is the Prince of Death, of which this is merely an imitation.”

“And you think you know the Prince of Death’s identity?” I ask. “Implying that he was someone else, before the Shattering?”

He grimaces. “I do not know. And I dare not speak of it. Not yet. But I must take a sample, at least. Perhaps, if I bring back proof, D will—”

I don’t have time to react. Rogier kneels, pulling a knife out of his belt with one hand while reaching out with the other. The moment his fingers touch the root, I feel a mind turn its attention on us. It’s the same sensation of being watched I had when Thermidor, Parvati and I were exploring High Coven, in the days after Savathûn first became a Lightbearer.

Thorny black brambles shoot out from the root. They wrap around Rogier, tearing into his flesh. He screams, but only for a fraction of a second. Then he falls silent, his skin going grey as another vine shoots from the ground at his feet, stabbing upward through the small of his back with enough force to raise him into the air like a macabre banner.

“Rogier!” I shout, but his body is already dissipating into dust.

Chapter Text

“Ran into a guy with a replica out in the field today.”

“A replica of what?”

“Of the gun, dummy. I think he assumed mine was one too. Didn’t correct him.”

“Why would he…?”

“I think there’s a group of these guys. You’ve heard the rumors, right? These ‘Dredgens.’”

“Sure. What you wanna do about it?”

“Well, I mean… if they wanna follow the example of the guy who used Thorn first, why don’t we give them someone to follow now?”

I stare at the spike of thorny bramble for a long moment as the dust of Rogier’s body blows away. It’s fine, I tell myself. He’ll be fine. He’ll be back at the Site of Grace Nepheli led us to any second now.

I swallow, then turn away. There’s a ladder along one wall, leading up, but I ignore it. I’m not in the mood to explore at the moment. Instead I go back the way Rogier and I came. Some of the gaps are too far for an ordinary human or neohuman to cross, but a few double- and triple-jumps get me over them.

Soon, I’m stumbling back through the door into the arsenal room. Rogier is there, sure enough, sitting slumped beside the Site of Grace. “Rogier,” I say, and then stop, taking in what’s happened with widening eyes.

“Hello, Barrett,” says Rogier, looking up at me in exhaustion and despair. I can’t blame him.

His legs… well, they barely look like legs anymore. They’ve swollen up into grotesque tubes of necrotized flesh, tendrils of that same thorny bramble poking out from under the rotting skin. His pants have torn away, leaving him in little more than a tattered loincloth.

“Traveler,” I murmur, even as Winchester pops out from hammerspace beside me. I don’t even have to ask—he’s already going over to scan the damage.

“I do not think I will be able to join you in speaking to the Crucible Knight,” says Rogier. “I do not think I can walk at all, any longer.”

“Don’t give up just yet,” says Winchester sternly, even as Melina appears beside the Site of Grace in a flicker of mist.

“How is this possible?” she asks, staring at the damage. “How can such an injury linger even after you have been restored by Grace?”

“I suspect only a wound or curse dealt by something which rivals Grace in power could have such an effect,” says Rogier grimly. “It is as I suspected—the Prince of Death is spreading his own Order through the world. And I, doubtful as I have been in the guidance of Grace and the Golden Order of late… well, the Erdtree’s hold on me is likely far weaker than it would be on a more loyal Tarnished. As such, I am more easily marked by other powers.”

“Marked is right,” says Winchester, backing away and turning his eye on me. His spines are rotating agitatedly. “It’s a… parasite? Something like. Ain’t seen anything quite like it before. It’s not an entity in its own right, not like the Hive worms. If anything it resembles radiolarian contamination.”

“Like Asher’s arm.”

“A bit, yeah. Dunno for sure if it’ll spread, or how fast. But it doesn’t seem like it’s as deep in as Asher’s problem yet. We might be able to… burn it away.”

“Solar Light?” I ask, already mentally reaching for it.

“Might work. Not sure. Might also heal the infection if it doesn’t recognize the contaminant as separate from Rogier. That’s what happened with Asher—the Vex conversion registered as the same being as the rest of Asher, so it wasn’t possible to use Solar healing to expunge it.”

I’d forgotten that. Parvati, one of the better Sunsingers I’ve known, tried to heal Asher not long after he got infected. Didn’t work. If this really is similar to the Radiolarian infestation… I don’t think my Gunslinger’s imitation of Dawnblade abilities is going to be able to succeed where Parvati-9 couldn’t.

…But there is at least one difference between this affliction and Asher’s. “It’s paracausal, right?” I ask Winchester.

“Sure.” Then my Ghost stops in place, hovering perfectly still, as he realizes the implication. “Lumina.”

I nod, already reaching for the gun as Winchester transmats her onto my hip. I don’t know how Lumina works. No one does. All I meant to do, when I took the old Thorn out of its sealed vault to try and find some meaning in everything that had happened, was to purge the old corruption. I’d hoped it’d give me some kind of peace. Closure.

Instead, the gun that Thorn became took on purification as her own identity. She was more than just a purified Weapon of Sorrow. She was something entirely new. A Weapon of Hope.

“I need something to load a Noble Round,” I say. I look at Rogier and Melina. “You two stay here. I’ll be back.”

Melina makes to stand, but seems to think better of it. “Very well,” she says. “Return soon, whatever you are attempting.”

I head out of the room. The courtyard is still silent after the carnage I put it through. But there are places in this damn castle that I haven’t been. Places far enough away that whoever’s there wouldn’t have heard the fighting here. I look around, and see a stairway leading down into some kind of cellar. That’s promising. I jog across the courtyard and head down into it.

Jackpot. Another war beast-sized rat jumps at me just a few paces into the gloomy, damp corridor. I shoot it in the dome and reach for the glowing Remnant it leaves behind. Its death flows into the gun.

Here’s the thing. I love Lumina. And I don’t mean in the way that I love the DMT or Quickfang. Those weapons, and several of the others in my arsenal, are just a blast to use. They feel good in my hands, they’re rhythmic and satisfying in action. It’s almost meditative to rapid-fire the Dead Man’s Tale, tugging the lever back between each pull of the trigger.

Lumina isn’t like that. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still a well-made gun. Clean, smooth to fire, decent recoil compensation. But she’s no Dire Promise, no Bottom Dollar. She’s not one of my go-to weapons for duels in the Crucible, and that’s okay. That’s not what she’s for.

There must be meaning in my roar. Those were the words I’d inscribed on the barrel of the gun, the final touch to transform the weapon that had taken Sara from me into the weapon that would bring the closure, the absolution, that I’d wanted for so long. I don’t even remember deciding on them. I just remember my eyes blurring with simulated tears as the plasma chisel moved in my hands.

And the thing is, she still roars. She still fires the same ammunition that Thorn once did. It comes out of the same barrel. She still kills. Purifying her didn’t make her into something other than a gun, a weapon designed to deal death with terrible efficiency. But, then, so am I. I’m the same sort of being as the Warlords who turned Earth into their own feudal playground. My fundamental nature is the same as Dredgen Yor’s, the man who first turned Rose into Thorn. And it’s not like those of us who align with the City have cleaner hands. Saint-14 may have been forgiven by Misraaks, but I’ll never forget the first time I heard the Eliksni whisper about their boogeyman, who carved a path of slaughter through thousands of their fellows. Guardians, like any other soldiers, are weapons designed to kill.

What sets us apart—what sets Lumina and I apart—is that we’re more than that. When I first finished Lumina, it worried me that she still needed death to fuel her, just like Thorn had, like any Weapon of Sorrow did. But talking to Ikora about it put my worries to bed.

The thing is, the Light isn’t peaceful. Not the way we use it. We’re not pacifists. There are pacifist Lightbearers, Efrideet at the top of the list, but they’re not Guardians. The thing about building a gentle place for the meek and the small is that you need to ring it in spears, and you have to be ready to use them.

So, yeah, Lumina still requires death to fuel her. It’s what she does with that death that sets her apart. A Weapon of Sorrow takes in the power released by death and swallows it, drinking up the violence like a gluttonous alcoholic, always craving more, more, more.

A Weapon of Hope takes in the power of death… and then gives it away.

Lumina is proof that there can be meaning in the killing, that there can be a reason we’re all doing this, that there is a cause worth fighting for. And I love her for it.

I return to the Site of Grace, Lumina flaring with white fire. I take aim at Rogier, and let loose the Noble Round. He flinches, but the orb of Light emerges almost slowly, sailing across the room and sinking easily into him. The white flame spreads across his body.

And the brambles in his legs burn away. The necrotized flesh sloughs off like a layer of tarnish, leaving his own legs, healthy and functional, behind. He stares at them for a long moment as the pale fire dissipates. Then, hesitantly, he stands up.

“How is this possible?” he whispers.

“This is Lumina,” I say, gesturing with the gun before holstering her. “It purifies the influence of paracausal contagions and poisons. Guess it works on the influence of the Prince of Death, too.”

“Incredible.” He takes a long, slow breath, then looks at me. “Thank you, Barrett,” he says. “I had feared that all of my hopes, all the questions I still had to answer and the research I still wished to do, had slipped from my fingers. I thought I would have to hide away in the Roundtable Hold, waiting for the end of the age to come and find me. You have given me back my life.”

“No need to be dramatic,” I protest.

“I am not.” He chuckles. “And besides, you have given me a whole litany of new questions to ask, new answers to seek. Come, let us meet this Crucible Knight. And after that, wherever you next travel… if you will have me, I will follow you.”

“You sure?” I ask.

“Quite sure,” he says. “You have given me more answers and questions both in the past day than I have managed to find alone in years. I would be a fool to part from you if I can avoid it.”

“We’re going to Caelid next,” I say. “From what I hear, it’s not a nice place.”

“All the better,” he says. “I have never dared investigate Caelid alone in any depth. But at your side, I think there is a great deal I might learn.”

Melina stands. “We should be off soon,” she says. “Godrick is defeated, and Barrett is in possession of a Great Rune. That should be proof enough for Sir Trinovar of his master’s death.”

“Indeed,” says Rogier, rising as well. “I look forward to meeting this knight.”

It doesn’t take us long to get back to the old elevator shaft. Rather than just jump down, this time I use the lever beside the pit to call it up. Rogier and I step on it, and I hit the pressure plate to lower it.

Trinovar is seated by one of the walls of the tower when we descend. He stands to greet us. “Ah,” he says, looking me up and down. “I acknowledge thee, Shardbearer. Then Lord Godrick is slain?”

“Yup,” I say. “Sorry about that.”

“A cruel fate, that should bring so deserving a lord to so untimely an end,” Trinovar says, bland as shaved ice without syrup. “But, alas, there is nought I can do to restore him. Vengeance shall not resurrect the dead, and so I feel no pressing need to seek it.”

“Glad to hear that,” I say. “With him gone, I assume your standing order to attack Tarnished is obsolete?”

“Just so,” says Trinovar, nodding his helmeted head at Rogier. “Greetings, Tarnished sorcerer. I am Sir Trinovar of the Order of the Crucible.”

“Rogier,” says Rogier. “Formerly, I suspect, of the Academy of Raya Lucaria.”

“You suspect?”

Rogier shrugs. “Some Tarnished lose much or all of their memories upon their return from beyond the Fog,” he says. “I am such a one. It concerns me little, I confess. If I had friends or family before I was forsaken by Grace the first time, they are almost certainly both long dead and lost to me by the dogmatic rejection of those without Grace in any case. I cannot miss that which I cannot recall.”

That rings a little hollow to me, but to be fair, I’m an Exo. The whole ‘Guardians lose their memories’ thing works a little different when you’ve got a name and a number inscribed in your metal skull, and you keep having dreams of people your past selves maybe knew once.

“The Golden Order did grow dogmatic, in the years following the Eternal Queen’s apotheosis,” says Trinovar. “It was a terrible shame at the time, and so it remains now. Such rigidity was once anathema.”

“I agree!” Rogier sounds almost excited. “The Golden Order, at one time, was able to take in the strengths and the peoples who were once its rivals into itself. It assimilated the Academy of Raya Lucaria, the trolls of the far north, even the demi-humans of southern Limgrave and the Misbegotten of the Weeping Peninsula, originally.”

“And the Order of the Crucible,” says Trinovar. “We predate the Golden Order, you know. Ours was an early alliance of Queen Marika. It was in part to gain our service that she first approached Lord Godfrey for an alliance.”

“Indeed?” asks Rogier, stepping past me to approach the knight. “Then what did you and your fellows serve before the Golden Order?”

“Originally, we served Lord Placidusax.”

“The Dragonlord?” Rogier’s voice is slow and full of wonder. “Then he did exist? The records are so dim of that time, now.”

“He did,” says Trinovar. “But after the coming of Gold, the great temple of Farum Azula vanished from the skies, and he vanished with it. The ancient dragons who survived rallied around Gransax, who traced his lineage back to the Dragonlord. But he was not Empyrean, and was deemed unfit to take up the newly gilded mantle of the Erdtree and the Elden Ring. So we waited for new Empyreans to rise, and Lord Godfrey chose to cast our lot with Queen Marika when they did.”

“Fascinating,” Rogier murmurs.

“I am afraid that, while I yet recall these broad strokes, many of the details are lost even to me,” says Trinovar. “Alas, the memory of a man doth decay, after so long a count of years.”

“Of course,” Rogier says.

“Question,” I say, thinking of my death-visions. “What’s this about the newly-gilded mantle of the Erdtree? You make it sound like it wasn’t always gold.”

“It was not,” says Trinovar. “In the beginning of time, the Great Tree grew from these lands to hold up the very sky. At the time, its bark was brown, and its leaves green, like any other tree in the Lands Between. But then, some centuries after the coming of Mankind to these lands, a star of Gold fell to earth. It struck the base of the Great Tree, and from that impact…”

“…The Gold spread up the bark,” I whisper. “Until it reached the branches and the leaves, and the Great Tree became the Erdtree.”

“Just so.” Trinovar looks at me oddly. “If thou knowest this tale, then why dost thou ask?”

“I didn’t know it. I saw it. In a vision. I thought—you can never trust death-visions to be that literal.”

“Death-visions?” Rogier asks.

“When a Lightbearer dies, sometimes we can see things,” I say. “There are people—Warlocks, mostly—who train to try and collect as much information as they can from visions like that. Thanatonauts, they’re called. But I never trained as one. I get a death-vision maybe one death in a hundred, at most. But I died twice in that fight in the courtyard, and I saw two parts of the same vision. That never happens.”

“And you saw the Elden Star fall upon the Lands Between?” asks Trinovar.

“Yeah. I saw the tree turning gold. I think something wanted me to see that.”

“An Outer God?” Trinovar doesn’t seem to be asking me, exactly, though he’s looking right at me as he says it. He sounds… excited. “Could it be…?”

“Could what be?”

“If you have been singled out by an Outer God, perhaps even the Greater Will itself,” says Rogier slowly, “that might make you…”

“…An Empyrean,” Trinovar murmurs.

I take a step back. “Uh, no. No, we’re not doing that. Nope.”

“Thou wouldst reject such a glorious destiny?”

“I make my own destiny.” My voice snaps out before I’ve even had time to think of a response. “I’m a Lightbearer. I’m paracausal. I’ve had gods and monsters and embodied Logics all try to make me be something they want, and it’s never gone well for them. Guardians make their own fate.”

“It is never wise to struggle against the currents of fate,” says Trinovar. “They will only drag you below with greater force.”

“You don’t—” I pause, taking a couple deep breaths to calm down. “The greatest enemy I’ve ever fought was the first one who told me, in exactly so many words, that there is no destiny. It was right. There are forces in the universe trying to create destiny, placing obstacles and pressures into the world to try to push people one way or another. It was one of those forces. But they’re never insurmountable. Not for me. I’m paracausal, that’s what that means.”

“Either way,” says Rogier. “Whether or not destiny has any hold on you, Barrett, you must be curious what entity gave you these visions, and for what purpose.”

“As am I,” says Trinovar. “If thou art Empyrean, Barrett, then whatever thy feelings on the matter, it is one great import.”

“On that, we agree,” I admit.

“Then we should try and find answers to these questions,” says Rogier. “I suggest the Academy of Raya Lucaria, as a place to begin. For all their faults—and there are many—there is no finer repository of knowledge on the movements of the stars, which are said to govern the destinies of mortals. You are not mortal, precisely, Barrett, but it is a place to begin.”

“That’s in the opposite direction of Caelid, though,” I say.

“Thou makest for Caelid?” asks Trinovar. “I have heard only ill tidings from that land, ever since the Empyrean Malenia unleashed the power of her fetid god.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve heard a lot of the same. But supposedly, Radahn is holding back the asteroid field just outside this world’s atmosphere, and I need the resources in those rocks. It’s the only way for me to repair my ansible and call my fireteam.”

“I know not just what these words mean,” admits Trinovar. “But if thou makest for Caelid, we could begin our investigation in Sellia. The town of sorcery is near as old as the Academy itself, and while it hath other specialties, many of the greatest scholars of Raya Lucaria came originally from that place.”

“Wait,” I say. “Our investigation?”

Trinovar draws back. “Ah—forgive me. My tongue outstrippeth my wisdom. If thou wouldst have me, I would join thee in thy journeys. I have little to hold me, either here in Stormveil or in Limgrave at all. There is little in my life more pressing than the prospect of an Empyrean untainted by either the rot-god which hath claimed Malenia or the strange affliction that burdeneth Miquella.”

I grimace. “I don’t like the idea that you’re following me because you think I might be your next Elden Lord,” I say.

“Besides which,” adds Rogier, “there is at least one other Empyrean. Lunar Princess Ranni was said to be such a one.”

“Aye,” says Trinovar. “But she hath not been seen since before the Shattering. If she yet lives, I have yet to see evidence of it. Nor, for that matter, hath the one demigod whose Empyrean status was never confirmed.”

Rogier blinks at the Crucible Knight. “What demigod is this?”

“Why, the Princess Melina, of course,” says Trinovar, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.

“Ah,” says Rogier. “Few records even exist of her. She was born scarcely a decade before the Shattering, was she not?”

“Just so,” says Trinovar. “And she vanished on the eve of her audience with the Two Fingers, when it would be determined whether she, like her siblings, had the potential to succeed her mother. None know where she went, or what the judgement of the Fingers would have been.”

I have to force myself back into the present. There’ll be time to interrogate Melina—the demigod I’ve been traveling with, whose thighs I fantasized about a couple hours ago—later. To be fair, I’m not actually sure it matters? It’s not like Marika is my god. If I can kick the whole Hive pantheon’s collective asses with my fireteam, I can crush on a local demigod. It’s probably fine. Maybe. It just feels like something I’d have liked to know a bit sooner, you know?

For now… “Fine,” I say. “It is worth investigating, if nothing else. I don’t know exactly where Sellia is, but we can stop there either on the way to Radahn, or after we’ve gotten his Great Rune, before we leave Caelid.”

“Then I have thy leave to join thee?” asks Trinovar.

“Sure. Just… no worshipping me.”

The Crucible Knight laughs. “No fear of that,” he says. “Whether thou art Empyrean or no, thou’rt no god yet.”

Chapter Text

“I understand it not, little Renna. If it is not something I have done that Godwyn misliketh, then what cause hath he? If only he had not heard me! I might have had mine answer!”

It takes us only a few minutes to get out of the castle after that. The few guards still at their posts scatter when they see us coming. I’m not sure whether they’re more scared of me, the guy carrying Godrick’s Great Rune, or Trinovar, the boogeyman-Knight who’s been living just outside their windowsills for who knows how long. Either way, they don’t give us any trouble.

Once we’re outside, past the plateau where Rogier and I fought Margit and through the tunnel under the wall, Melina appears beside us in a flare of sparkling blue mist.

“Ah!” Trinovar starts, reaching for his sword, but doesn’t draw it.

“Peace, noble knight,” Melina says as Torrent steps onto the turf beside her. “I am merely another of Barrett’s traveling companions—one who, lacking a body of her own, cannot join him in battle. I can only appear at all when I can be grounded by my spectral steed.”

I don’t think you’re merely anything, Princess, I think, but don’t say. Still, I’m relieved that she’s back. I worried that having Trinovar and Rogier drop that little bombshell might have convinced her to run. She clearly wanted that secret kept. But I guess she trusts me enough to hope I’ll still keep my word to her. I try not to get too warm and fuzzy over that. Fact is, she was still hiding her identity, and I still don’t know why.

“Ah, I had wondered how you and Barrett had become acquainted, Lady Morna,” says Rogier. “I assume he encountered you somewhere in Limgrave?”

“I had the good fortune to see his vessel fall from the sky,” says Melina. “It was small and, perhaps, difficult to notice from a distance and in the daylight. But I went to investigate where the apparent star had fallen and found Barrett in a hollow that had been broken open by the impact.”

“You did say you came from beyond the stars,” says Trinovar. He sounds interested, but I can’t see his expression under his helmet. “But what vessel could sail such a sea?”

“Her name’s Lonestar,” I say. “She’s a City-made jumpship, fast as I could make her. Unfortunately, she’s also currently a wreck. That’s why I need to get at the asteroid field Radahn suspended over this planet—there’s resources in those rocks that Winchester and I need to repair the ship.”

“Winchester?” Trinovar asks. “Is this another companion I have not met?”

“Oh, sorry.” I hold out my hand, and Winchester pops into being above my palm in a flicker of blue light. “This is Winchester, my Ghost. He resurrects me when I die and gives me access to the Light.”

“Resurrects you?”

It takes just a minute to catch him up to speed. Then I turn to Winchester. “We don’t happen to have two more sparrows, do we?”

“No dice,” says Winchester. “Guess we’re walking unless someone’s got horses in their back pocket.

“Not yet,” says Rogier. “But I believe some of Godrick’s officers were originally cavalry. We may be able to find and acquire horses for Trinovar and myself.”

“I do not think any ordinary horse will be able to bear the weight of mine armor,” Trinovar says. “And, alas, I have none of General Radahn’s skill with gravitational sorceries to allow a smaller beast to carry me.”

“You could use the sparrow,” I say before I can fully think through the words. “I can take a horse.”

To be fair, I do know how to ride. Before Winchester and I made it to the City all those years ago, we found a wild mustang on the way through Old Texas. We called him Bugle. He got us all the way to the City, and I kept him stabled there for a few years, taking him out on rides every couple days until he passed away. Some of his descendants are still around. A few of them even carried civilians to safety during the Red War.

“What exactly is a ‘sparrow’?” Trinovar asks. “Methinks thou meanest not a small bird.”

“Nah,” I say. “A sparrow’s a City-built hovercraft. Faster than any horse, but I’ve only got the one.”

“And thou thinkest it shall bear my weight?”

“Oh, definitely. It can carry Blackwall in his full armor, it can carry you easy.”

“Then I would appreciate the loan,” says Trinovar. “If only we may find two horses for yourself and Rogier.”

“If we find only one,” Melina says, “Barrett may use Torrent. I can always follow along incorporeally.”

“Hopefully, that won’t come up,” I say. “But before we go looking for horses…” I pull the cloth-wrapped brooch I picked up from the pile of chrysalids out from my vest pocket. “I gotta give this to Roderika.”

“To whom?” Trinovar asks.

“Roderika. She’s another Tarnished. Ran into her in a shack just down the hill.”

“We’re in luck,” says Rogier. “Roderika and her shack are on the path we must follow to reach Caelid in any case.”

As we start down the road, Trinovar and Rogier start up a conversation. Trinovar’s trying to get a feel for what exactly Rogier remembers of his life before returning to the Lands Between. I think he’s trying to figure out if there’s any pattern to what Rogier forgot. It’s an interesting question, especially since I got the feeling both Nepheli and Roderika had much more intact memories than Rogier seems to.

While they talk, I speed up just a bit so that Melina, trotting beside me on Torrent, and I can chat a bit without being overheard. “So,” I say quietly. “Were you planning on telling me?”

“No,” she says. Points for honesty, I guess. “It does not matter.”

“The fact that you’re a demigod, that Radahn’s your brother, doesn’t matter?”

“Radahn was my half-brother,” says Melina. “But if any part of what I have heard out of Caelid is truth, there is not much left of him. And there is not much left of me, either. I have no desire to be like my siblings and half-siblings, Barrett. Wandering the Lands Between in my current, bodiless state, has taught me well the folly of pursuing godhead.”

“I still would’ve liked to know,” I say. “What are you hoping to find at the foot of the Erdtree, anyway? What does Princess Melina, daughter of—”

“Enough, Barrett,” she snaps. “I am grateful for thy assistance, but thou—” She cuts herself off and takes a deep breath. “I have not expected you to tell me every detail of your story. I have tried to share all information that will be pertinent to your goals, and to your assistance achieving mine. I do not think you are entitled to know more.”

I feel like a heel. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

“Did not mean what, Barrett?” she asks. She sounds exhausted. “Did you not think there might be a reason I have kept this from you? A reason I do not wish to discuss it? A reason I, once the daughter of a god, am wandering these lands without even a body to my name and with only a fellow specter for company? Did you not think these reasons might be unpleasant?”

I’m silent for a while, walking alongside Torrent. “There was a girl I loved once,” I say finally, barely above a whisper. “Her name was Sara. By the end, when she died, I thanked the man who put a Solar bullet in her head.” I glance up at Melina. “I know what it’s like to have a sad story,” I say. “I know what it’s like not to want to think about it. I’m sorry I pushed you. You’re right. You’re entitled to keep that story to yourself. I was surprised, but that’s no excuse.”

She’s silent for a long moment. “Do you mind if I ask?” she says. “About your own story.”

“Not at all,” I say. “I’ve made my peace with it all. Lumina is my peace with it.”

“Lumina? The weapon you used to purify Rogier?”

“Yup. She was once called Thorn—a Weapon of Sorrow, like Osteo Striga. Those things… they can be corruptive. They want to be used, and they can twist whoever carries them into wanting to use them unless they know what they’re doing. Sara and I… didn’t, back in the day.”

She lets out a breath. “I had wondered why you seemed so reluctant to use that weapon—Osteo Striga, you called it? If its sister corrupted your lover…”

“It corrupted me, too,” I say. “I got better. I snapped out of it in time, and when the Man with the Golden Gun came calling, I welcomed him. Sara… didn’t. And she died for it. He took Thorn, and only gave it back to me years later, so that I could purify it. When I was done, Lumina was in my hands, and I felt better than I had in decades.”

“I am glad you had the opportunity for absolution,” Melina murmurs. “That you had the chance to take the tragedy and horror of your past and turn it into something beautiful.”

“There must be meaning in my roar,” I whisper. “Is that what you’re looking for? Absolution?”

“I have lost hope of achieving that,” she says. “No, I know the meaning behind what happened to me. The man who—” She stops. “Forgive me, Barrett. I do not think I am ready to tell this story. Not yet.”

“Don’t be,” I say, reaching up on an instinct to pat her knee. The flesh flickers into blue mist when my hand contacts it. I breathe in sharply and pull my hand away. “Oh, shit, sorry.”

“I am unhurt,” she says, smiling sadly down at me, her one visible eye practically glowing like liquid gold. “It is merely a reminder. I appreciate the thought, all the same.”

I swallow. “I wish I knew of a way to help you,” I say. “Even Exominds—we need the organic brain to imprint onto the Exo body, even if we could fix up all the equipment in the Deep Stone Crypt. I can’t offer you a body like mine.”

“It means a great deal that you have even considered it. But I have…” she hesitates, and Traveler, I know that hesitation. “I am learning to come to terms with what has happened to me,” she says finally. “Learning not to dwell upon it.”

I nod silently. There’s a chance that nothing can be done about it. That Melina will never have a body, or anything that can approximate one, again. If that’s the case, it’s better for her not to have hope. ‘The strength to know what you can change, the wisdom to accept what you can’t,’ or whatever that Golden Age saying is.

But I’ve never been wise. So I promise myself that, even if I don’t talk to Melina about it, don’t get her hopes up, I’ve got one more goal on this world. I’m going to get Melina a body.

I’m a Guardian, and we’ve never been good at accepting that things can’t be changed. Just ask the Witness.

Roderika’s still sitting slumped in the corner of her little shack. She looks up at the approaching sound of Trinovar and Rogier’s ongoing conversation. Her face is still pale and drawn, as if she can’t decide whether to cry, laugh, or lie down and die.

Melina and the others stay outside as I approach her. “Hey,” I say, pulling out the bundle wrapped in red cloth. “I found something of yours.”

“Of… mine?” she asks, reaching slowly to take it from me. The cloth falls open, leaving the brooch in that faint wreath of mist, almost invisible out here in the constant, soft drizzle. Roderika gasps. “A… a keepsake? From my men?”

“I found the chrysalids,” I say softly. “That was sitting on top of the pile. They wanted you to have it.”

She takes in a shuddering breath, and I see her breathe in some of that mist—which, I suspect, is what’s left of her people’s spirits, or souls, or whatever wasn’t claimed by either the Erdtree or Godrick. “They all… believed in me. In me! A helpless craven who can’t do anything!”

“Hey, hey,” I murmur, kneeling down beside her. “I don’t think they’d want you to say that about yourself. Do you?”

“No…” she whispers. “No, I suppose not.” She bows her head over the brooch in her hands. I see tears fall onto the cloth. “You killed him, didn’t you?” she asks without looking up, her voice barely holding steady against the urge to sob. “I’ve never seen a Great Rune, you know, but something about you has changed.”

“I did,” I say. “Me, Rogier over there, and another Tarnished named Nepheli Loux. She’s gone back to the Roundtable Hold. Rogier and I are headed to Caelid.”

“If all this has taught me anything, it’s that there is nothing for me in Caelid,” she mumbles. “I’ll not be Elden Lord. A whole team of warriors couldn’t get me more than a short distance into Godrick’s lands. I can’t possibly challenge Shardbearers even greater than him.”

“No shame in that,” I say. “The whole reason Guardians like me exist is so that not everyone has to be a warrior.”

She looks up at me, tear tracks staining her cheeks. “I think I’ll go to the Roundtable Hold as well, then,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll find my purpose there.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But if you want my advice… well, maybe you don’t.”

“I would hear it.” She closes her hands around the brooch. “You brought me the last thoughts of my men. It’s the least I can do to listen to yours.”

“Then I’d tell you not to wait for your purpose to come find you. If you do, it'll be someone else’s purpose that comes your way.” I reach out and put a hand against the faintly shimmering paracausal barrier around her. “Your purpose is something you make. The universe is too big and too complicated to have a prescribed destiny for everyone. Anyone who tells you otherwise just wants you to be predictable, so that they can take advantage of you—or they’ve been lied to themselves, by someone who is. It’s a big world, Roderika. Bigger than you can imagine. There’s a whole universe of things you could do with your life in it. Don’t let someone else decide which.”

She stares at me for a long moment. Then, moving quickly and impulsively, she reaches for me. The barrier collapses around her like shattering glass as she throws her arms around me. I hold her as she shudders, feeling her tears run down the leather of my vest. “We all thought,” she sobs, “that I was destined for this. That if we just held to our faith, we would reach the Erdtree. But we were doomed from the beginning, and now I’m all that’s left.”

I rub small circles into the small of her back until she subsides, breathing slow and deep the way a person who hasn’t quite cried themselves out does when they’re trying to save some tears for later. “We can’t bring them back,” I say quietly. “All we can do is give their deaths meaning. Everyone who died so that both of us could be here. You and me. Your men trusted you to do that. And so do I.”

She lets out one last strangled sob, then pulls away. On shaking legs, she stands up. “Thank you, Barrett,” she says. “Will I ever see you at Roundtable Hold?”

“Dunno,” I say. “I hear you Tarnished use Sites of Grace to get there, and the one time I tried touching one of those things it, uh, didn’t like me much. So unless I find another way there, probably not.”

“Then, if I never see you again, know that I’ll remember this always. I’ll remember what you did for me, what you told me, and that you held me as I cried.” She tries to give me a smile. It’s an honest expression the way only a totally failed façade can be. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Roderika,” I say.

She walks past me, kneels beside the Site of Grace in the center of the shack, and reaches her hands out to it. I watch her body fade away into golden mist and flow into the Grace. Then she’s gone.

Winchester appears over my shoulder. “That was kind of you,” he says quietly.

“Softy,” I say.

It’s an old, old exchange. When I was first raised, Winchester would call me a softy whenever I got ‘too emotional’ for the taste of an ornery ghost with a chip on his shell. He taught me to keep my chin up and a grin on my face, like all the best Hunters—Cayde-6, Andal Brask, Tallulah Fairwind.

All three of them died. And after Sara, Chester stopped teasing me for having feelings. I still don’t think he’s forgiven himself that he ever did.

Chapter Text

“So it’s true. Thorn—the original Thorn—has been found.”

“Yep. And it’s mine.”

“Well. If any one of us is worthy of the title of Dredgen, then you are. Your companion, as well, if he comes with your recommendation.”

“He does.”

“Very good. Then what will you call yourselves?”

“…Dredgen Vile. What about you, Barrett?”

“How about… Dredgen Scythe.”

After stopping at the shack, we turn east. There’s a path leading past a block of ruined, half-buried masonry towards a forest. The trees have leaves slightly yellow in color, as if whatever stained the Erdtree in gold washed dimly onto these lesser saplings too.

There’s a wrecked, horse-drawn cart just outside the treeline. Unfortunately, whatever horse was pulling it must have skedaddled after whatever tore the cart apart. Two men in rugged armor made of fur and steel scales are patrolling around. I can’t tell whether they’re trying to find whoever owned the cart, or whoever ambushed it. Either way, when they see the four of us coming their way, both of them freeze like deer in a sparrow’s headlights.

“Hey there,” I call, holding up a hand in greeting. “We don’t gotta fight.”

They look at each other. Then back at us. “We are under orders of Lord Godrick,” says one slowly.

“Godrick’s dead,” I say. “I’ve got his Great Rune, if you can’t tell.”

“You killed him, then?” asks the other soldier. Only… I don’t think these are soldiers. Not in the classical sense. I think Godrick hired a mercenary army to supplement his own forces once they started dying out.

And the thing about mercenaries is that once the money dries up, so do they.

“Yep,” I say. “Y’all have a severance clause somewhere in your contract?”

They look at each other again. “We are sworn to serve the Lord,” says the first one.

“Aye, while he pays,” says the second. “Dead men carry no Runes.”

“It’d be dishonorable,” argues the first.

“You see that Queen-damned Crucible Knight?” demands the second, pointing at Trinovar. “You wanna argue the point with his sword?”

The first merc glanced over, grimaces, and seems to decide that today wisdom is the better part of valor. “Fair point,” he says. “Ah, we’ll not contest your passage, Shardbearer.”

“Glad to hear it,” I say. “Quick question, any idea where we can get a couple horses? We’re two short.”

“Only two?” one asks. “I count four travelers and one steed.”

“Shows what you know,” I say without explaining. “Seriously, where can we find two horses?”

“Stormveil’s stables have been empty for years now, save when couriers and soldiers return briefly from the frontiers,” says the other. “You’ll not find any down this road, either. There are no soldiers patrolling east of the woods—not since the Mariner took up residence in the ruins Summonwater.”

“Sorry,” I say. “The Mariner?”

“Aye.” The merc sounds grim. “A Mariner has set his boat in what remains of Summonwater. Those Who Live in Death now infest the ruins.”

“A Tibia Mariner is a local commander of Those Who Live in Death,” Rogier says to me. “They are capable of calling up more of their fellows, upturning the inhabitants of nearby graves that have not yet been returned to the Erdtree. If one truly has taken up residence in the ruins across the river, we must be cautious. It might be wise to go around entirely.”

I shake my head. “I still ain’t even fought Those Who Live in Death,” I say. “I’ve heard plenty bad—and I saw what happened to you under Stormveil—but I feel like I need to get an idea of just how bad the damn things are. Besides, if this Mariner is so dangerous, I feel like I should try and clear him out. What kind of Hunter leaves the monsters out on the frontiers for anyone to stumble over?”

“Noble of thee,” says Trinovar. “But take care that thou dost not commit to more than thou canst deliver. These are dangerous lands, Master Barrett, even for one of thy skills.”

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “We run into something too big, I can put a pin into it until I can call down my fireteam. Ain’t nothing in the universe that can stand against all six of us, as far as I can tell.” And definitely not if Silver comes too, I add in the privacy of my head. But I really don’t wanna have to explain why one of my best friends is a predatory, wish-granting, shapeshifting, eldritch dragon, so I keep it to myself.

“I can believe it, if all five of your companions are equal to you,” Rogier says.

“Oh, they’re not,” I say. “Most of them are better.” The only member of the team I can confidently say I could take in a fight nine times out of ten is Grant. Lex and Thermidor, I’d have decent odds. Maybe six times in ten? Seven, if I’m generous? I train in the Crucible a lot more than either of them, but Lex is older’n me by a couple centuries and is a better Nightstalker than I’ll ever be, and Thermidor is Thermidor. Only reason the man doesn’t have Zavala’s job is because he makes like a Hunter and hides whenever the topic comes up.

But Parvati and Blackwall? Absolutely not. Blackwall was brought up in the Dark Age and made a name for himself defending civilians in the Pilgrim Guard against Warlords. People talk about him in the same breath they talk about Saint-14, Osiris, and the Iron Lords. And Parvati? Or, as some people still call her, Lady Parvati-9?

Yeah. I don’t fancy my chances against one of only two people in the universe who still keeps the Warlord title.

“Either way,” I say, shaking my thoughts free of my friends. I’ll see them again. Soon. “Whether or not we fight this Mariner, we still need to find horses unless we want to walk all the way across Caelid.”

“You could try the southern road,” says one of the mercs doubtfully. “There will likely be a few horsemen yet patrolling north of Lake Agheel, and there was supposed to be an aristocrat’s carriage traveling toward the Weeping Peninsula in the next few days. They… might yet be somewhere near the Waypoint? The escort for the carriage would certainly have some horseflesh among it.”

“Oh!” says the other. “There’s the encampment east of the Gate of—”

The other one lunges for him, cuffing him upside the head. “Yes,” he hisses. “The encampment of our fellows. Of fellow Kaidens!”

“Hey,” I say. “We don’t wanna fight anyone. And you’ve been helpful. Any chance we could buy the horses off your friends?”

They both turn to look at me, frozen halfway through a scuffle. “Perhaps,” says the guy who just got punched.

“Not if Captain Ivar yet leads the company,” says the puncher.

“Why?” I ask. “Is one of the horses his? We can—”

“Nay,” says the merc. “He merely will not trade with an unproven warrior.”

“Uh, we killed Godrick,” I say. “That don’t count?”

“Not without proof.”

“I have his Great Rune,” I say. “Not sure how to make that more obvious. Some people seem to know how to tell, but not everyone does.”

“It would be more obvious if the Rune were reinfused with Grace,” says Melina. “But that would require backtracking to the Divine Tower, accessible only through Stormveil—and there is no guarantee that the Two Fingers would recognize your claim to the Rune, if they even yet live.”

“The Two Fingers atop the Divine Tower of Limgrave are long dead,” says Trinovar. “Their Grace is free for the taking.”

She looks at him. “Is it? Do you think that even their corpse can empower the Rune?”

“I would suspect so,” he says. “They are suspended high above the Erdtree’s roots in their tower. Their Grace hath no way to leach back into its source. It will joyfully accept the embrace of even a shattered fragment of the Elden Ring.”

“All it’ll require is us turning right around and going back the way we came,” I grumble.

“There are further benefits beyond the chance to acquire horses,” says Rogier. “The Great Runes have considerable power, Barrett, but that power will remain out of your reach until it is infused with Grace.”

“I’m too old to be chasing every scrap of power I can get my hands on.” But I sigh and turn back to the mercs. “What’ll you do if we head back to get the Great Rune infused?”

“We shall follow you until the road forks at the old shack, then turn south through the Gate of Storms,” says one. “It is the shortest safe route to the encampment.”

“Great,” I say, shrugging. “Then I guess we’ll see you there.”

I’ve always hated backtracking. It’s not something I have to do, most of the time. Usually, if I have to get from point A to point B on foot, by the time I reach point B it’s safe to either call in the Lonestar or set up a transmat beacon. Unfortunately, I’m out of range of any functioning transmat grid and the Lonestar is a wreck hidden in a cave now. So, backtracking it is.

It doesn’t take us long to hike back up to Stormveil. The whole way, I’m committing to memory the idea that I need to do this first after I get Radahn’s rune. I ain’t doing another out-and-back trek like this if I can avoid it.

This time, we go in through the main gate. The castle’s not totally deserted, but the few soldiers and servants we see scuttle out of our way and into hiding as soon as they spot us, and the ballistae watching the gate aren’t manned anymore. We climb the stairs and reach a broad flagstone concourse, with the castle on our left and a courtyard on our left. On the other side of the courtyard is some kind of gatehouse. Trinovar points it out to me.

“Beyond that lieth the bridge to the Divine Tower,” he says. “The bridge itself broke years ago, but a teleporter gate hath been established to cross the damaged stretch.”

“Great,” I say. “Then let’s—”

I freeze. In the corner of the courtyard is a lump of white fur. It’s rising and falling slowly.

Trinovar follows my gaze. “Ah,” he says slowly. “It survived, then. All these years.”

“What survived?” I ask.

“In the years since the Shattering, beasts bearing budding horns similar to those of Omens have appeared,” he says. “In lions, such omen-beasts are ferocious combatants. But Shardbearers, it was found, could bind them to their will. It became practice for many of the demigods to employ them as guardians of their holds.”

My eyes narrow. “But I’m the Shardbearer now.”

“Aye. So you are.”

“…Let’s get this Rune charged.” I palm a smoke grenade. “Stay close to me and keep quiet. We’ll sneak past.”

We go invisible and creep across the courtyard. The lion is hanging near the door—I hear its slow, measured breathing as we pass. We get close enough that I can see its head and matted mane folded over its paws, the horns budding out of the sides of its head.

The curved blade nailed to its wrist.

I hate this place.

We’re well in the gatehouse by the time the invisibility breaks. There’s another door on the other side, and we step out onto a long stone bridge. In the distance the Divine Tower rises into the sky. We haven’t taken more than a few steps onto the bridge, though, when what I’d assumed were ruined, fallen statues start standing up.

“Ah!” Trinovar exclaims. “The old guardian golems yet function! This, I did not expect.”

“How dangerous are they?” I ask, watching them stand up. The one nearest us is carrying a massive, stone halberd, while the other two are apparently archers based on the massive longbows and quivers of black arrows on their backs.

“Dangerous enough to threaten ordinary soldiers,” Trinovar says. “But methinks we are not ordinary.”

“True enough.” But I don’t have the power ammo to spare on rockets for these, and I’m still drained after all the supers I tossed around today. “Winchester,” I say. “Give me… I dunno. Death Adder, maybe? Wait, no.” The golem seems like it has some kind of combustion-based power source, if the flame flickering out of vents in its torso is any indication. “Dammit all. Just give me Osteo.”

“Sure,” he says, transmatting the gun onto my back. I whip it out and charge towards the halberdier golem. Hopefully the gun won’t mind being used against artificial creatures so long as they are made for combat. It doesn’t complain about Vex, but Vex are different.

Still, when I slide under the thing’s swipe and start firing upward into it, Osteo Striga shudders under my hands in satisfaction. The miasma of its toxic hunger blooms around the golem, and despite its size it goes down without too much trouble. It tumbles to the ground, and I slide out of the way—just in time to take a massive arrow to the chest from one of the others. There’s an instant of brutal pain as the bolt punches a hole in my frame, and then—

—The golden star sails down towards the Erdtree. It passes from the outer system, past the two moons—one luminous, the other dim and barely there.

It tears through a structure floating above the Lands Between. A flying city shatters, crumbling slowly in an inexorable, inescapable apocalypse—

—“There you go, up you get.” Winchester’s voice breaks into my consciousness as my gel-tissue lungs expand suddenly. I sit up, coughing.

Three ruined golems are strent around. Trinovar and Rogier are looking curiously down at me. “Fascinating,” says Trinovar. “And thou canst do this anywhere? Thou needest no proximity to Grace?”

“Yeah,” I say, still coughing. Once I get my breathing under control, I glance at Winchester. “Another vision. Related to the ones from earlier.”

“Damn, really?” His flaps rotate in concern. “Something really wants to get your attention, bud.”

“What didst thou see this time?” Trinovar asks.

“The star hit something on its way down to the Erdtree,” I say. “A… flying city, it looked like. Made of stone. Dunno how it stayed afloat.”

Trinovar draws back. “Thou’rt certain of this?”

“Hard to read it any other way. It looked pretty clear. Why?”

“That must have been Farum Azula,” says Rogier. “The great sky-city of the Ancient Dragons, from which Elden Lord Placidusax once ruled.” He turns to Trinovar. “But this implies that Farum Azula was destroyed—”

“—By the coming of the Elden Star,” agrees Trinovar grimly. “Which, needless to say, is not in keeping with the traditions of the Golden Order.”

“What’s the contradiction?” I ask.

“Our histories recount that Lord Placidusax was Elden Lord, chosen by the Elden Ring with the approval of the Greater Will,” says Trinovar. “I was not present for the transition, but I was taught that the Elden Star was only sent to earth after Lord Placidusax and Farum Azula vanished. Surely someone would have seen the star destroy the great city?”

“The records I have found implied that Placidusax was Elden Lord after the Erdtree bloomed golden,” says Rogier. “But you seem to confirm Barrett’s vision that this is not so.”

Trinovar blinks at him. “It is not. How could the histories have grown so muddled? Any who fought alongside Lord Godfrey would remember the truth.”

“All it takes to change history is convincing all the witnesses of the new narrative,” I say, thinking of worms and sisters and god-waves.

“But none attempted to convince me of any such lie,” protests Trinovar.

“Then they needed you not to contradict it,” I say. “Tell me—did the Crucible Knights have a habit of talking to people much before the Shattering?”

“We did, once. We were welcomed in any community, until…” Trinovar pauses. “…Until the adherents of the Golden Order began to turn against us.”

“And the same survivors would have remembered that you fought beside them,” I say.

“Suggestest thou that Queen Marika deliberately saw to it that mine order was cast out from society, all so that she could control the records of history with none to gainsay her?” Trinovar sounds floored at the very idea—or maybe at my audacity to suggest it.

“I have no idea,” I admit. “It’s also possible that my vision is flat-out wrong. Whatever’s giving them to me probably has its own agenda. That agenda might not involve giving me the truth.”

“Even if so, it does little to explain the contradiction between the histories I learned and those Sir Trinovar recalls,” Rogier says.

“Well, we’re not gonna get an explanation standing here,” I say. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to let them stew on this for too long right now. Rogier’s a skeptic, but Trinovar’s been dedicated to the Golden Order for thousands of years. I don’t want him getting too deep in his own head over the idea that it might be flawed. That it might be headed by liars. “Let’s get to that tower.”

I turn and find that the bridge ends abruptly just a few dozen paces from me. But right near the end, there’s a small stone tablet, a bit like a gravestone with a hole in it. And there’s some sort of swirling light inside that hole.

It ain’t a Vex Gate, but if that’s not a portal I’ll eat my hat.

“I… suppose this is true,” says Trinovar hesitantly. “Very well.”

“Great,” I say, and jog over to the portal. The hole in it is a little small for me to jump into comfortably, so I start by Bending down and just reaching my hand into the swirling light.

That seems to work. Twining threads of energy reach out, surrounding me, and the world fades into color and light. When it comes back into focus, I’m on the other side of the gap. Trinovar and Rogier follow a moment later, and I start towards the looming tower up ahead.

There’s a couple of stormhawks which attack us when we get close. These ones don’t have swords nailed to their feet, but it seems like they’re just as territorial as the mutilated ones in the castle. They go down to one DMT round to the head apiece.

Before long, we’re standing at the base of the tower’s absolutely massive doors. The double doors themselves has to be at least twenty, maybe thirty feet tall, made of intricately engraved stone. “All right,” I say, reaching to brace myself against the left panel. “Trinovar, can you help me get this?”

“I am afraid not,” he says. “The Divine Towers are sealed to all but Shardbearers. Thou must enter alone.”

“I don’t think I can get these doors on my own,” I say.

“Try,” he says simply.

So I do, bracing one hand against each door and pushing with all my strength. And, somehow, it works. The doors are still impossibly heavy, but somehow they slowly grind open. It’s not that they’re lighter than they look—it’s more like something inside me is adding strength to my arms and legs. The Great Rune, if I had to guess.

Inside, there’s a stone platform suspended over all the tower’s height below us. It looks like a bottomless abyss from here—the light from the windows lining the walls above us don’t reach much below this level. In the center of the platform is a raised plate, exactly like the wooden one on the elevators in Stormveil.

“Huh,” I say. “All right then. Y’all can’t join me in there?”

“No,” says Rogier. “But there should be no danger.”

“Don’t say things like that,” I say. “It practically guarantees that something’s gonna go wrong.”

He chuckles. “Apologies. I’ll refrain in future.”

“Great.” I take a deep breath and step inside. My footsteps echo around the massive spire. There are no floors, no landings. Just a single massive shaft, traversable by the elevator, leading up for hundreds of feet. I step onto the pressure plate, and with a grinding sound, the elevator starts to rise.

It ascends for what has to be almost a minute. If I had organic ears, I’m certain they’d have popped from the pressure differential. But eventually, it comes to a stop. There’s only one door here, leading out onto a landing outside. I step out into the mist.

I don’t notice the Site of Grace until Melina appears in a bloom of sparkling mist. She steps right up to the edge of the platform. I follow her, standing next to her as we look out at the world below us.

Visibility’s weirdly bad. I don’t remember seeing clouds up here in the evening sky when we were down below, but somehow the air is thick with mist. Given that mist is the color of spun gold, I’m not sure I should be surprised it wasn’t visible from below. I’m not completely certain that I’m standing quite in reality anymore. There’s a sort of fuzzy quality to the world, even to the stone I’m standing on, that makes me think…

“Ascendant Plane?” I ask.

Melina glances at me, but Winchester answers from my other shoulder. “Not all the way,” he says. “We’re definitely still at least partly anchored in reality. But—yeah, I’m picking up the same kind of psionic traces I’d expect to see in the Ascendant Plane. We’re sort of half-phased into it, if I had to guess.”

“Huh.” It’s definitely prettier than most of the Ascendant Plane, that’s for sure. High Coven, parts of it, were nicer, even if the beauty was all the fantasy of a woman who had spent so long coveting and idealizing the Light that she’d completely lost touch with the reality of it.

“What is the Ascendant Plane?” Melina asks.

“The backstage of the universe,” I say, echoing something Petra Venj once said. “It’s… it’s hard to explain. It’s the space that spaces exist within. Anywhere that isn’t quite reality, doesn’t exist in the usual sense, is probably a cut-off section of the Ascendant Plane.”

“Like the Roundtable Hold,” she says thoughtfully. “It always fascinates me how you have such different terms and experiences with concepts that have grown familiar to me. It is like seeing the world with my other eye.”

I look at her. “What happened to your eye, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She smiles slightly. Most of the smiles I’ve seen on her face have been sad, half-hearted things, like she’s trying to squeeze joy out of a world of stone. In the golden half-light, the curve of her lips looks lighter than any of her past expressions. She seems genuinely happy to be here. “I have no idea,” she says. “I was told that I was born blind in that eye. But I have reason to suspect that there is more to the story.”

“What reason?”

She shakes her head. “Suspicions, nothing more. I know that I was burned for something that was endemic to my nature—something I was born with. I have suspected ever since that whatever is sealed in my eye, whatever odd asymmetry I bear, has something to do with it.”

“Sealed?” I ask, leaning slightly forward to examine her tattoo. “Can you not open it?”

“No. I have never been able to. The marking holds it shut.”

“Hm.” Just one more question, I guess. “What did you think of the conversation down below? About the different histories Rogier and Trinovar learned?”

“I think that you have come upon a truth I have long known,” says Melina, with dark humor in the quirk of her lips and the twist of her voice. “Queen Marika—my mother—craved control. And she was not above deceit to get it.”

“So you think she did manipulate the historical record.”

“She certainly did. I need do no more than examine what records of me survive to see that. Whether she manipulated the records regarding Farum Azula is less certain, but I have no difficulty believing it.”

“What did she change about your history?”

Melina turns away from me, looking out at the world. “Trinovar named me as a demigod whose Empyrean status was uncertain,” she says. “He is mistaken. My status was known at the time that I was burned. Known only to a few, my mother among them.”

“And?”

“I am Empyrean.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. “Like my true-blooded siblings, Malenia and Miquella. Like my dearest cousin Ranni. Like my mother before me.”

“I’m guessing you don’t want to be a god any more than I do,” I say. It’s written in every line of her face and body.

But she’s hesitant when she shakes her head. “It is not so simple,” she says. “I am likely out of the reckoning. I have no Shards and no way to claim them, without a body. And I do not wish the throne, nor do I covet the Elden Ring. But…” she gestures out at the world, pointing slightly to our right.

“That is Caelid,” she says. “See how the world itself has been painted crimson? It was not so until my sister Malenia met our cousin—our half-brother—Radahn in battle during the Shattering. He was the better swordsman. He pressed her, wounded her. And so she abandoned all the honor and courage she had shown for centuries. For her whole life she had held back a Outer God whose essence had tainted her in the womb—the God of Rot, as it is known. On that day, she set it loose. And all of Caelid was corrupted by it. By her pride. Her unwillingness to be defeated. You will see, when we travel there, Barrett—Caelid is a terrible place, filled with twisted, wile things that crave nothing more than decay, for themselves and all they can touch. My own sister did that. And she is Empyrean.

“My brother, Miquella—he was able to bewitch any whom he so wished. He could be kind—he tried to be kind, always. But sometimes, he failed. Sometimes, he would twist a person’s mind so thoroughly that they were unrecognizable. He drew whole populations to his Haligtree out of a desire to prove that his experiment in a second Erdtree had merit. And for what? Only one Erdtree now grows on this horizon. And he is Empyrean.

“My half-sister, Cousin Ranni—she was prideful, too. She was kind to me, but she could lash out when angered. Lash out with terrible power. She never forgave our father for abandoning her mother, never forgave my mother for stealing him away. She never forgave at all. And if she even yet lives, she would hate the notion of serving the Greater Will as its vassal-god on earth. Servitude in any form always pricked her pride. And she, too, is Empyrean.”

Melina turns back to me. “Do you understand, Barrett?” she asks. “I have no desire for godhead. And it is likely beyond my reach in any case. But if it were open to me, and if the only alternatives were my siblings? I think I would take it—if only to protect this world from gods far worse than I would be.”

“I understand, sweetheart,” I murmur. It’s been a real long time since I wanted to kiss someone as much as I want to kiss her, there in the golden half-light. But even if I tried—and I wouldn’t, not without a little longer to get to know her, and not without at least asking—my lips would just go right through hers. Whoever burned her has a lot to answer for. Not because I can’t touch her, that doesn’t matter—because she can’t touch anyone. And even without asking, I know how much she hates it. I would too. Barrett-1 probably did hate it, before the Exomind frames got the kinks worked out to fight off DER.

She turns away again, staring out at the Erdtree on our left. “Thank you, Barrett,” she says.

“For what?”

“For this. For listening. And for your help. I have so little to offer you, and what little useful information I can offer, I have already given you. And yet you remain. You continue the long march towards the Erdtree. You even seek out mounts for your companions simply to save me the indignity of traveling disembodied.” Her one eye closes for a moment, then shoots me a half-lidded look. “You are kind to me. And precious few have been so in a very long time.”

“Their loss,” I say.

She smiles. “I think, rather, that it is my gain,” she says. “But enough. Rogier and Sir Trinovar will be wondering at your absence.” She turns and points at a staircase to our right, leading up the tower. “Go. The Fingers are near.”

I take a deep breath, then walk past her and start up the stairs. I hear the telltale hissing sound of her fading back into mist as I leave the Site of Grace behind.

It’s only a couple dozen steps, winding around the outside of the tower, before a right turn takes me to the tower’s summit. Several stone obelisks line the perimeter or the circle, and in the center is a patch of dusty grey early. Sprouting like a plant from the patch of ground are two massive fingers, each twice as long as I am tall at least. They’re made of wood, but there are hairs sprouting from a few patches of grey, skin-like bark left between areas that have rotted away to expose the dry brown beneath.

They’re sitting splayed open, half-curled, the fingertips positioned like the heads of a fallen hydra. And between them is a glowing sigil of golden lines—a ring of light, containing a triangular pattern. It reminds me of the Celtic knots on some of the old Iron Lords’ equipment.

I walk up, feeling something inside me press against my chest, as if trying to reach the light. As I get close, I reach out. My fingers brush against the line of light. The power flows into me like water into a glass. It takes the shape of the Great Rune in my chest. And I see it.

Grafting does take more than just sticking your arm into a dragon’s head. But not for Godrick, bearer of the Binding Rune, the heart-rune of the Elden Ring, the central node that ties all the others together.

And now, that power is mine.

The last of the light flows into me, and I turn to head back down.

A minute later, I step outside to greet Rogier and Trinovar. “Well,” says the Crucible Knight, a smile in his voice. “I see that thou hast successfully reawakened the Great Rune. ‘Tis clear in the Grace that surrounds you.”

“Yeah,” I say. I think I could probably see it now, too, if I knew what to look for. I suspect the next time I see a Shardbearer, I will. “Shall we?”

We head back across the bridge and through the portal. As we step outside the gatehouse, I hear a growling from my left.

“Oh, blast,” says Rogier, leaping away. “The lion!”

But I hadn’t forgotten it, is the thing. I turn to face it as it lunges, and reach for the new paracausal power inside me, just as I’d reach for Light or Darkness.

It staggers to a halt just inches from me, whimpering and cowering before the golden light coalescing in my palm. “Yeah,” I say softly. “You know to fear this, don’t you? That’s why you stay here, why you guard his castle. Because he taught you to fear him. To fear his Rune.”

It takes two hesitant steps back, mewling pathetically. The manacles nailed to its legs scrape against the stone. It freezes as I step towards it, then kneel down. I touch its paw.

“It’s okay,” I tell it, reaching for my Solar knife. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.

It yelps as I cut away the manacle, then falls to its belly as I start tearing out the nails. But its whimpering quiets as I drop a healing orb of Solar Light between us. The wounds close as fast as I open them, and it stares down at its paws as, one nail at a time, I make it free.

After a minute, it’s done. I throw away the broken manacles and stand up. “There you go, big guy,” I say.

It stares up at me for a long moment, then rises to its feet. It towers over me for a moment before bending down and bumping its shaggy head into my chest.

“Cute,” says Winchester dryly. “You wanna keep it?”

“Well,” I say. “We do need a couple more mounts, right?”

Chapter Text

“It shall not be long now ere thou’rt brought before the Fingers, sister.”

“Aye, Brother Miquella. Mother intendeth to present me to them a week before my birthday.”

“Very soon indeed! Doth the notion excite thee? Art thou eager to hear their judgement?”

“Eager…? I suppose so. But even if I were to be named Empyrean, I could not dream of competing with thee, or with Sister Malenia. Or with Cousin Ranni.”

Blaidd pants, leaning heavily on his blade where it rests, point driven into the earth just beside the evergaol. “There, damn you,” he growls, glaring at the corpse which had fallen from the shielded gaol with its inhabitant’s death. “Now you have faced justice.”

“Whatever his crimes, he fought well,” says his companion from behind him. Blaidd turns to see Alexander rolling his bulk back to his feet. Blaidd had found the warrior jar while searching for the traitor all over Limgrave. The living jar had gotten himself stuck in a muddy pit and had needed assistance to free himself. Assistance Blaidd had happily provided. That had been scarcely a day ago, and Blaidd’s generosity had immediately been repaid—for Alexander had encountered this evergaol while ranging towards the Weeping Peninsula, and had guided him to it.

Now Darriwil is dead, and Blaidd’s task is complete. “True enough,” he says. “Had to work for it, but it’s done now.” He pulled his sword from the earth and sheathed it on his back. “What’s next for you?” he asks. “The Radahn Festival? Or have you other business in Limgrave first?”

“No other business,” says Alexander. “Now that I’ve repaid your assistance, I’d best be off. The festival will not wait forever! And what of you, Sir Blaidd?”

“I’d best return northward,” says Blaidd. “My mistress will want to know of Darriwil’s death. Likely she’ll have new orders for me.” He glances up at the moon rising heavy in the night sky, and the storm clouds approaching from the west. “But the hour grows late, and it looks like rain. Come, let’s find somewhere to camp for the night before we part ways.”

“Gladly, my lupine friend!”

Blaidd leads the way down the hill, past the upright chains of lookout stones which have slowly started drooping now that their long vigil is ended. They follow the ill-kept road, past a groaning crucified wretch. Blaidd shoots the poor creature a glance as they pass him by. There had been soldiers defending the crucifix on the way up, but they’d been easily dispatched.

Now that Darriwil is dead, Blaidd finds himself contemplating the crucifix and its accompanying corpse. “Are there many of your kind left, Alexander?” he asks.

“Fewer every year, alas,” Alexander says, slowing and following his gaze. “We are hunted by the perfumers’ guild for our shards, which I am told are used in their vile alchemy. There are a few secret settlements left that they have not yet discovered.”

“It makes me wonder, is all,” says Blaidd, gesturing with a nod of his snout at the crucifix. “There are wretches like this one all over Limgrave. They’re easy to ignore in the daylight, but at night…” As if on cue, the corpse lets out an agonized scream. “I only wonder if it’ll ever be possible for these fellows to find the rest of Erdtree burial.”

“Not while my people have to hide from the perfumers,” says Alexander. “But you have my word, Sir Blaidd—if I can rid the Lands Between of the perfumer scourge, and my people are freed from their terror, then I myself shall lead a group of jars into Limgrave to take these corpses down and bring them to the catacombs to rest.”

“There’s no need for dramatic oaths,” says Blaidd, amused. Alexander, he has found, is pompous in the very best way. Good-heartedly proud, with an abiding commitment to a code of chivalry that has largely been lost these several centuries. “But I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

“I’m sure they would. Alas, I am a warrior jar. There is no room within me for such bodies as these.”

“I know,” Blaidd says. “I was not suggesting otherwise.” He bares his teeth in disgust at the corpses of Godrick’s soldiers, still strewn around the crucifix. “One day, things will be better. But this wretch has endured this long. He can endure today.” He turns away to survey the valley below. Ahead is Lake Agheel, and Blaidd is not so foolish as to camp directly on its shores. The dragon hasn’t been seen in some time, but the lake bears its name for a reason.

But to the left is an upturned fragment of old Farum Azula’s fallen wall, and beneath the curved chunk of ancient masonry he can see a small hollow. Given the coming rain, that would be welcome shelter. He points it out to Alexander. “Fancy some cover from the storm?”

“A little water holds little fear for me!” Alexander says. “Stone is rather waterproof.”

“Aye, true enough,” says Blaidd. “But fur isn’t, and I assure you, wet wolf is not an overly pleasant scent.”

“Ah, perhaps not,” Alexander agrees. “Well, I have no objections if you will be more comfortable with some shade.”

Blaidd leads the way across an open field towards the fallen wall. A battle seems to have been fought here recently. A small, smouldering bonfire marks where the corpses of several of Godrick’s soldiers, garbed in their red and green surcoats, had ben thrown to burn. Among them are the bodies of half a dozen demihumans. Blaidd suspects the demihumans won this battle. If they had lost, there would be far more of their corpses than those of the soldiers.

As they round a thick bush to reach the hollow, Blaidd stops short—for it seems their campsite has already been claimed. “Oh,” he says to the man seated beside a small campfire, who looks up as Blaidd comes into view. “Forgive me, I wasn’t aware anyone was camping here.”

“Nothing to forgive, stranger,” says the man in a low, rasping voice. He wears armor that might once have been ornate, but all its ornamentation has long since faded and rusted away. Over his head he wears a large, armored hat, made of interlocking crescents of shaped steel, and at his hip is a long, curved katana-blade in the style favored by travelers from the Land of Reeds. His eyes, barely visible beneath the helmet, are bright and shine faintly golden, marking him as a Tarnished. “You look disinclined to draw your blade, which already sets you apart from most in these lands.”

“I could say much the same to you,” says Blaidd, taking a cautious step forward. Alexander pushes through the bush beside him. “I’m Blaidd. This is Alexander, Warrior Jar.”

“How do you do?” Alexander adds with customary courtesy, make Blaidd smile slightly.

“Well enough,” rasps the man. “They call me Yura, hunter of Bloody Fingers. Forgive me, Blaidd, but you seem to have a snout for a head.”

Blaidd’s nose twitches awkwardly. “Ah, yes. They call me Half-Wolf for that reason. I’ll not elaborate on the story behind my visage, if you don’t mind. It’s a long one, and I’m sworn to secrecy on parts of it.” He can’t well reveal his nature as an Empyrean’s Shadow without also revealing Princess Ranni’s survival, and that’s something he cannot do.

“Fair enough,” says Yura. “We all have our secrets, in these dark days.”

“Hunter Yura,” says Alexander. “I hope you won’t mind our asking, but there will soon be rain. Might we share your campfire for the night?”

Blaidd hadn’t even considered asking. Yura doesn’t seem the type to care for unasked for company. But, after a long pause, Yura nods his head, the wide hat upon it making him look like a ringing bell. “There’s room enough, I suppose.”

“Our deepest thanks,” says Blaidd, approaching the fire and unslinging his sword from his back. He sets it on the ground, still sheathed, and sits beside the flame across from Yura. Alexander drops heavily beside him, rolling slightly on his rotund body.

“None needed,” grunts Yura. “I’ll not be staying at this campfire long, in any case. It’s time I headed north. I’ve heard rumor of a Bloody Finger camped near in the Murkwater. Pinned there by the dragon, perhaps.”

“You don’t mean to travel at night, and in the rain, surely?” asks Alexander.

“The better to catch my quarry unawares,” says Yura.

“And the better to be wandering the lake while the dragon hunts,” says Blaidd. “Agheel’s kin prefer to hunt by moonlight.”

“Is that so?” Yura asks. “I’d not heard this.”

Blaidd shrugs. “My mistress is something of a scholar,” he says. “I’ve picked up a fair few pieces of trivia over the years. You never know what knowledge might come in useful.”

“Knowledge can be a weapon as potent as any blade!” blusters Alexander.

“Precisely,” says Blaidd, grinning. “Tell you what, Yura. I happen to know of a spiritspring that will take you down to the Murkwater gorge from above. It’s on my way northward in any case, since I need to make for the Church of Marika to take the spiritspring there onto the Stormhill. If you wait for morning, I can take you to the spring so you needn’t brave the dragon’s territory on your hunt.”

“That… would be appreciated,” says Yura. “Very well, I’ll wait for dawn.”

“Excellent!” says Alexander, clapping his rough, stone hands together with a grinding sound. “I shall accompany you as far as the church as well, Sir Blaidd—I may be too heavy to use spritsprings, but I’ll need to find some way either over or under the Cael cliffs, unless there’s a ferry across the Limgrave Bay, ha ha!”

“Not to my knowledge,” chuckles Blaidd. “Well then. Once day breaks, we’ll head north. In the meantime, we should rest. I can take first watch.”

“Very well,” says Yura. “But if you attempt to attack me while I sleep—”

“I doubt I’d achieve much,” Blaidd says. “You’re Tarnished, aren’t you? You’d just return to a Site of Grace nearby, leaving me with a few Runes and little more for my trouble.”

“Runes are enough for many, these days,” growls Yura.

“Not for me,” says Blaidd.

“Nor for me!” says Alexander. “No, Hunter Yura. A warrior jar’s honor cannot be so cheaply bought.”

“I’ll believe it when I wake with all my blood still in my veins,” says Yura. He stands. “But very well. I’ll lay out my bedroll.”

It takes him a few minutes to make ready to sleep. Alexander, on the other hand, simply rolls onto his side and starts quietly snoring. But soon enough, Blaidd stands alone in the hollow, standing beside his watch-fire while his two temporary companions rest.

The rain comes not long after Yura’s breathing evens out. Blaidd hears it pattering on the rock over his head, streaming onto the grass outside the hollow, rattling in the bushes and the trees. The sound is soothing. Cool in his ears, the way ice over a burn can be. It soothes him, rejuvenates him nearly as much as sleep would. He finds himself smiling. He may not have had these companions long—Yura he’s scarcely known for a few minutes—but it’s good to have traveling companions again, even if it’s only for a little while. He still fondly remembers escorting the merchant, Kalé, south from Liurnia to the Church of Elleh.

“One would think,” comes a soft voice from behind him, sounding annoyed, “that a body of porcelain would have a better tolerance for cold and damp than one of flesh.”

Blaidd spins around. There, standing just outside the dim firelight, is Princess Ranni herself, wringing water out of her cloak with two of her four arms. The porcelain eye of her doll’s body watches her hands work. The ethereal eye of her spirit, only half-bound to the doll, watches him.

He kneels—quietly, so as not to wake his companions. “My Lady,” he says. “Forgive me. I did not expect to see you here.”

“I did not expect to be here,” says Ranni, “but expectations have been much upturned of late. Is thy task done?”

“It is,” Blaidd says. “Darriwil was in the evergaol on the hill just south of us. He is no more.”

“Good,” says Ranni. “One more traitor to my mother’s house seeth his due. Well done, my Blaidd.”

Blaidd basks in the warmth of her praise. “I intended to return to your tower to seek further orders,” he says. “But if you’ve come now does that mean you have something more urgent for me to attend to?”

“I have,” says Ranni. “Seluvis suspecteth that the way to Nokron will remain sealed until such time as the stars move once more. By his estimation, the stars govern the fates of all Empyreans, and as the Lunar Princess, mine own even more so. To facilitate that motion, he hath suggested that my brother, General Radahn, must be laid to rest.”

“He confided these suspicions in me before I left,” Blaidd says. “I told him he ought to bring them to you. But, my Lady, do you trust him? And his judgement?”

“It mattereth little whether I trust him or his judgement,” says Ranni. “There are things of greater import than the hunt for Nokron moving now. That Radahn’s death may progress our search is merely an added benefit—and a helpful excuse that Iji and Seluvis will accept.”

“Greater import than your destiny? Than your efforts to free yourself?” Blaidd asks. “What could be of more importance than that? And why must it be kept secret from Iji? Seluvis, the rat, I understand, but Iji is trustworthy.”

Ranni pauses. Blaidd looks into the ethereal half of her face and thinks he sees hesitance there. He suspects that she would be taking a deep breath if her body still breathed. “Iji is trustworthy,” she says. “But he was my mother’s servant before he was mine, and he hath never forgiven my father’s betrayal. Nor have I. But he may be more inclined to hold that sin against all of Queen Marika’s get.”

Blaidd frowns. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Ranni hesitates. It’s the first time Blaidd has seen her do so in a very long time. “Thou shalt go to Redmane Castle,” she says finally. “Thou shalt wait there for one to come seeking to free the stars from their stasis. He hath flesh of metal, and eyes of luminous blue. He carrieth weapons of strange make, which fling fire and death at great distance, and he wieldeth strange incantations or sorceries which he claimeth come from a power called the ‘Light.’ He goeth by the name of ‘Barrett Twelve.’”

“A strange name,” Blaidd comments. “Does it imply the existence of eleven other Barretts?” He doesn’t mind that Princess Ranni avoids answering his question. It’s her right. He is her servant, and she knows she can trust him. If she doesn’t wish to speak of something, it’s because she doesn’t know what to say—not because she doesn’t want him to know. He’s been with her since the Fingers named her Empyrean, all those centuries ago. They know one another.

“I know not,” she says. “But when he arriveth, thou’rt to give him this, and tell him that he and his companion are cordially invited to attend me at Caria Manor.” She reaches out, and in her hands is a tiny version of her own doll-body, barely larger than her small palm.

Blaidd reaches out and takes the small doll. “It will be done, my Lady,” he says. “But why should I not give the message directly to his companion?”

“Because thou shalt not see her,” says the Princess. “But she shall be there nonetheless. And she shall recognize her toy.”

“Her…?” Blaidd glances down at the doll, then back up at Ranni. “Who is this companion, my Lady?”

Ranni stares for a long time. Her porcelain eye meets his gaze. Her ethereal one is fixed on the doll. “I thought her dead,” she whispers finally. “I do not know if I shall ever forgive myself, Blaidd, that I stopped searching for her. That I allowed myself to believe that she was gone.”

Blaidd’s eyes go wide. “Princess Melina,” he whispers.

Ranni nods stiffly. “She lives,” she says. “And she travelleth with this Barrett Twelve. They make for Radahn once they are finished with their work in Stormveil. Thou shalt meet them there.”

“It will be done, my Lady,” Blaidd says firmly. “I’ll not fail you.”

“I know, my dear Blaidd,” she says. “And if it shall not delay thee overlong, thou hast my permission to participate in the battle with Radahn. If thou so wishest.”

 Blaidd glances at Alexander, sleeping soundly by the fire. “I… thank you, my Lady.”

“Thank you, my dear Blaidd,” says Ranni. “For thy loyal service.” She turns, and as she steps back out into the rain, her body fades into pale blue mist, glittering with starlight.

Chapter Text

“Why Dredgen Vile?”

“Dunno. It just felt right. Suitably intimidating. Why Dredgen Scythe?”

“…Same reason, I guess. And…”

“And what?”

“…Nothing.”

“Incoming call from Crow!” Pluvius’ voice, sharp with sudden excitement, snaps Thermidor out of his reverie. He jumps to his feet, bumping his unarmored hip painfully against the edge of the aluminum mess table.

“An ansible call?” Thermidor asks. That’s unusual—while he does keep in touch with the Foreguard Commander and his other friends both in and out of Sol, real-time ansible calls are expensive. Recorded messages or texts are more common. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” says Pluvius. “All I have is the call request. No context.”

Eido rises more smoothly than Thermidor did. She’s grown a lot in the past two years—physically grown, with the newly abundant ether and her baroness allocation. “The ansible chamber should be open,” she says, pale ether misting around her mandibles as she reaches for her mask. “Go ahead and take his call. I should speak with Vaskes about the irrigation systems.”

“You sure you don’t want me there for that?” Thermidor asks.

She laughs at him. “Are you worried that the damaged pipes will rise up to attack us? Go talk to your Vanguard, Thermidor. We can handle our farming.”

He grins at her, leaning in for a kiss. It’s not trivial to do—her mandibles and fangs make it difficult, sometimes, to follow his cultural instincts just as his soft skin and two eyes make it hard for her to follow hers. But they’ve been together for more than a year now, and they’re getting comfortable with it. “See you later,” he says, and ducks out of their temporary quarters, stepping out into the Riis sunlight. The sky overhead is a pale pink, stained with the differently-colored starlight filtered through the ether-rich atmosphere. Even now, more than a millennium after the Eliksni were first driven from their homeworld, the artificial ether enrichment remains in place on this world. The Traveler’s terraforming, and the Eliksni’s own efforts, were designed to last—and after the Eliksni were driven away, neither the Black Fleet nor the Hive had bothered to desecrate the planet further.

Thermidor crosses the encampment, nodding to a few Eliksni he recognizes as he passes. He’s the only human (technically neohuman, as an Awoken) with this expeditionary force. Officially, he’s here to represent the Sol Foreguard with the Riis Resettlement Initiative. Unofficially, he’s here as Captain Eido’s consort. He’s never been entirely sure which role earns him the other Eliksni’s respect.

Then again, it’s probably the whole ‘one of the seven Guardians who took down the Witness’ thing, actually.

The ansible’s been set up in a large tent practically bristling with antennae and satellite equipment. There are defenses surrounding it—automated turrets and regular patrols, mostly—but none of them have come into use. There are some Taken still around Riis, but they’re scattered and leaderless. There’s been no indication that any of them are going to mount an offensive.

Thermidor slips into the communications tent and approaches the ansible terminal. It’s a bulky thing, a far cry from the low-warp hologram communicators from the war. Those are able to send FTL communications between different parts of the same system, but across hundreds of parsecs they get spotty and unreliable. Instead, the Foreguard had adapted more advanced Cabal tech to produce the modern ansible. It’s too expensive, and too power-intensive, to use constantly, but it allows Crow to keep in touch with Foreguard agents over distances far vaster than any they’d had to worry about just two years ago.

He types his personal access key into the holographic terminal, the haptic feedback pushing back against his fingers as if his gauntlets weren’t even there. There’s a moment of anticipation while the ansible spins up, the Arc charge hissing as it runs through the receiver, and then the holographic projection lights up.

So do several others around the tent. This was a conference call, apparently. Thermidor barely has time to be surprised before the glow coalesces into people. One at a time, his fireteam appears before him.

There’s Blackwall, Throne-Cleaver slung over his back, clad in his intimidating red-on-black armor. The bright green amulet around his neck, gifted to him by a pre-warp civilization he’d helped out in the first months of the Foreguard’s operations, clashes brilliantly with it.

Lex is unarmored, their androgynous frame clad only in a tight white shirt with long sleeves over bulky grey pants littered with pockets. They idly toss what looks like a smoke bomb in the air repeatedly without looking at it. The projection washes out the pale violet color of their skin, but their brilliant green eyes are as bright as ever.

Parvati-9 is sitting cross-legged and hovering slightly above the projection, her red eyes intent as she looks around between the rest of them. The green paint over her black gunmetal face stands out against the faint blue overtone of the hologram.

Only Grant’s upper torso is in view, coming in from the side of his projected frame, clad in what looks like a silk pajama robe. He’s rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his mop of brown hair unkempt.

Crow is standing between them all, his hands clasped firmly behind his back, lips pressed into a thin line. Hawkmoon is bright on his hip, practically glowing even through the transmission.

“Hey, Thermidor,” Lex greets, giving him a jaunty wave. “We were just taking bets on who’d show up next.”

“Who won?” Thermidor asks.

“No one,” Parvati says, her melodious, accented voice amused. “No one bet against you.”

“The real game is whether Barrett or Silver will show up first,” says Lex. “I’ll put five hundred credits on—”

“It’ll be Silver,” Crow interrupts.

Lex blinks at him. “Okay, feels like you have some kind of outside knowledge for that one. No fair.”

The wors are barely out of Lex’s mouth before a sixth hologram appears around Thermidor and Silver appears. She’s clad in ornate robes in the Awoken style, reminiscent of those worn by Queen Mara’s techeuns, but not quite the same. Her yellow eyes take in the group quickly. “Fireteam,” she says softly, and Thermidor catches a glimpse of the unnaturally sharp teeth behind her seemingly Awoken lips. “Crow. What is it?”

“Sorry to bother all of you,” Crow says. “I just thought you all ought to know immediately. Barrett’s missed his last two check-ins.”

Blackwall breathes in sharply. He’s not the only one, but he is the one who speaks. “Active check-ins?” he asks. “Do you still have telemetry from the Lonestar?”

“No, nothing,” Crow says. “He’s gone totally dark.”

“Blast,” Blackwall grunts. “Any idea where he was going?”

“I don’t have an exact system,” says Crow. “Just a sector. You know how Barrett is.”

Lex snorts, but they don’t sound especially amused. “Yeah. ‘What’s the point in having a Hunter Vanguard if he’s actually going to keep tabs on me?’”

“What do we do?” Thermidor asks. “Are any of us near his sector?”

“You’re closest,” Crow says. “About… a week and a half out from the nearest system he might be in? There’s a few stars it might be, though. You’re just a few days farther away, Parvati.”

“Mm. I’m also currently overseeing some rather… sensitive local negotiations,” says Parvati. “Can you send anyone to take over for me?”

Crow turns to Thermidor. “Does Eido-Baron’s offer to send Eliksni out in support of Foreguard operations still stand?”

“I’d have to give her the details, but it should,” says Thermidor. “You want me to ask her to send a House Light scribe to Parvati’s system?”

“Please do. Tell her to contact either me or Parvati with any questions.” Crow looks around at the fireteam. “I know all of you are busy with your own operations—”

“Nothing that takes priority over our friends,” says Silver, her quiet voice cutting easily through the faint hiss of Arc energy in the transmitter. “I’ll make my excuses to the Queen.”

“You think we should all converge on Barrett’s last known location?” Blackwall asks. “Might be overkill.”

“Call it a hunch,” Silver says.

A shiver runs down Thermidor’s spine. “A hunch, or a hunch?”

Silver blinks slowly at him. When her eyes open again, they’re pitch-black, and full of stars visible even over the transmission. She blinks again, and they’re yellow again. “A hunch,” she says ominously.

“Great, good, fantastic,” says Grant. “Can you at least tell us whether he’s alive?”

“Do you wish to know, O teammate mine?” Silver asks.

“Yes,” Grant says, completing the invocation.

Silver breathes in, letting her eyes drift shut. “He’s still alive, for now,” she says. “I don’t dare look too closely—not over these distances, not without knowing what sort of paracausal interference might be in play. But for now, at least, he’s still alive.”

“Good enough,” says Blackwall. “Send over those coordinates, Crow. Rana will be in touch with all of your Ghosts to coordinate our search patterns.”

“Sounds good,” Thermidor says. “He’ll be fine. It’ll be a fun reunion.” He tries to sound more confident than he feels. It’s not that he doesn’t think Barrett can handle himself, or even that he has some perspective on just how dangerous the galaxy can be. It’s just that he’s felt like things have been going too well for a couple of years now and this feels uncomfortably like the other shoe is finally dropping.

“Yeah,” says Lex, grinning. If they share Thermidor’s misgivings, he can’t tell. “Barrett knows what’s what. Don’t worry too much. He probably just accidentally turned off the Lonestar’s telemetry reporter or something.”

“I can see Barrett messing that up,” says Grant doubtfully. “But Winchester?”

“Or maybe he just wants to keep us on our toes,” Lex continues. “Either way. He’s alive, and he’s damn good at staying that way.”

“True,” Blackwall agrees. He glances back over his shoulder. “I’ll disassemble my camp and head out. Should be starside in an hour and change.”

“Take me a bit longer,” says Thermidor. “Gotta make sure things are good without me here for a while.”

“And give Eido a proper goodbye,” Lex says, smirking.

Thermidor shoots them a look. “Sure,” he says. “That too.” He turns to Crow. “Thanks for giving us word, Crow.”

“Of course,” says Crow. “Keep me posted, fireteam.”

Thermidor logs off of the terminal and steps out of the tent. It takes him just a few minutes to find Eido, who’s now talking with a few of her captains on a hill overlooking some of the reclaimed farmland. Repurposed shanks glide over the neat rows of tilled earth, leaving a trail of water mist behind them. The water beads on the tiny stalks of the first crops grown on the reclaimed Riis, just beginning to poke their green tips from the loam. “Eido-Baron,” Thermidor calls up.

Eido turns to him. So do the three captains gathered around her. “Thermidor-Guardian,” she says formally. “You have orders from Crowkel?”

“Afraid so,” he says. “Barrett’s gone off the grid. The team’s coming together to look for him. Crow might call you asking for a skiff to relieve Parvati, she’s not too far from here.”

“Of course,” she says, nodding. “I’ll start gathering an expeditionary team. Will you return to Riis when Barrett has been found?”

“I plan to,” he confirms. “It’s about a week and a half each way before I can even start searching for him, and we don’t even know exactly which system he’s in. So I might be gone well over a month.”

She nods. “You will be missed,” she says. “But Riis is the Eliksni homeworld, and Eliksni can defend it.”

“Of course,” he says, unable to keep himself from smiling at her. He knows he probably looks dopey, but it’s not like their relationship is a secret—even if they do try to stay professional in public. “Send word to me or Crow if you need help, though. You have my comm codes.”

“I do,” says Eido, her outer eyes blinking shut in a gentle Eliksni smile. “Feel free to call my ansible as often as you can spare the power for.”

“Will do,” Thermidor promises. Before he can second-guess himself, he reaches out and gathers her up into a hug. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises.

“Of course you will,” she says, leaning into him. “The Witness could not keep you down. What possibly could? But hurry back, if you can.”

“I will.”

They part and, after a quick irellis bow—or as close as Thermidor can get, with only two arms—he starts down the hill and towards the shipyards.

Pluvius pops up over his shoulder at the base of the hill, emerging from his hammerspace in a flicker of blue light. “You’re worried,” he says, his voice calmly observant.

“Of course I’m worried,” Thermidor mutters. “It’s been two years since our last big fight. We’re overdue.”

“To be fair, more than a decade passed between Six Fronts and the SIVA massacre,” says Pluvius. “It was almost two decades between the end of the Great Hunt and the Battle of Burning Lake. You have a skewed view of how fast problems usually pile up.”

“I hope you’re right, buddy,” Thermidor says. “I just don’t think I’m that lucky.”

Chapter Text

“Thou summonedst me, mother?”

“I did, Daughter. Art thou prepared for thy meeting with the Fingers?”

“As prepared as I might be, not knowing what I ought to expect.”

“Art thou afraid?”

“Afraid? Nay. Nervous, perhaps.”

“’Tis understandable. Dost thou hope to be named Empyrean?”

“Nay. My siblings are Empyreans enough for these lands. Methinks I should prefer to be a more ordinary demigod.”

“…”

“Mother?”

“…Thy humility doth thee credit, Daughter.”

-x-x-x-

The sun’s set by the time we slip out of Stormveil’s front gate. I poke my head in the gatehouse, but the gatekeeper—Gostoc, I think his name was?—seems to have abandoned his post. Under the circumstances, I can’t say I blame him.

We make camp at the Site of Grace on the hill leading up to the castle, where Rogier and I fought Margit… Traveler, was that just this morning? Or did an entire night go by while we were exploring that I didn’t notice? It wouldn’t be the first time, especially since I left Sol—different solar cycles make it hard to keep track of the days. I was on a planet just a month and a half ago—Earth reckoning, to be clear—that had days that were only half an Earth hour long. It was rotating so fast it was hard to even land on.

The big lion lays down with its chin on its paws beside me while we bed down for the night. Trinovar takes off his armor to sleep—underneath it he’s wearing a padded black gambeson, and under that he’s in a shirt and trousers that might have been pretty fancy at one point, but by now look like they’ve seen better days. His face is solidly built—square-jawed, with cropped golden hair and a bit of stubble on his chin. His eyes are pale blue, but flicker faintly golden in the Erdtree’s light.

I keep the first watch. Rogier takes over for me after that, and Trinovar takes the last watch before morning. Melina apologizes, but points out that she can’t shake us awake if something happens. Which is a fair point, even if it clearly hurts her to have to make it.

Over breakfast the next morning—Rogier and Trinovar both have some rations with them, and they share them with the big cat while Melina feeds Torrent what looks like raisins—we talk.

“We have a mount now,” says Trinovar, gesturing to the lion while it savages a helping of some sort of pemmican. “And it might, perhaps, be capable of carrying two of us.”

“I’m heavier than the average human,” I say. “And so are you, with your armor. Two of Rogier, sure. But if it’s Rogier and one of us, I’m not so sure.”

Trinovar nods. “This is entirely possible,” he agrees.

“One of you could ride Torrent,” Melina says.

“Nope,” I say. I look the lion up and down. “Trinovar, does it have a name?”

“Not one that I have heard,” says the Crucible Knight. “I doubt it, to tell you true. Godrick seldom interacted with the creature, to my knowledge, and never with the sort of kindness thou hast shown it.”

I glance under the lion’s tail. “Him.”

“As thou sayest.”

I consider the big cat, which is playing with a small boulder, beating it back and forth between its powerful paws. “I think I’ll call you Rufus,” I decide.

Rufus looks up at me, blinking his big, yellow eyes. I ruffle his mane, then turn back to the group. “I say we head down to that encampment the mercenaries told us about yesterday. Hopefully they’ll have a horse we can buy off them. If not, we can figure something else out there. Part of me still wants to go back north once we’re across the river, hit that village the mercenaries mentioned—Summonwater, I think they called it.”

“To do battle with the Mariner?” Rogier asks.

“I don’t plan on shooting first,” I say. “But you can bet your britches I’ll shoot last.”

Trinovar chuckles as he affixes his helmet. “Summonwater is very near the border with Caelid,” he says. “It is on our way in any case.”

“Then that’s the plan,” I say. “We’ll head down the hill, meet the mercenaries, try to buy a horse off them. Once we have another horse—whether we get it from there or elsewhere—we’ll cross the river and head north to Summonwater. From there, east to Caelid.”

“And then southeast to Castle Redmane,” finishes Rogier. “To do battle with your second Shardbearer.”

“Assuming Radahn won’t listen to reason,” I interject.

“A safe assumption,” Melina says. Knowing what I do about her now, the small frown on her face looks unbearably sad.

We start down the hill. A pack of wolves scatters as we approach, especially after Rufus lets out a roar in their direction. The Gate of Storms isn’t quite unmanned—there’s still a few soldiers camped in the shadow of the large towers, but they make like the wolves and run when they see us. Can’t say I blame them.

“So,” I say once we’re through the gate, the old village’s ruins laid out in front of us. “Any idea where that encampment is?”

“Perhaps there?” Melina says, pointing at a small copse of trees north of the road. “I see smoke rising.”

I squint. Maybe I can see what she’s talking about? It’s fuzzy and indistinct in the daylight. I hadn’t even noticed it, and even if I had I’d have assumed it was fog. “You have damn good eyes, sweetheart,” I say. “Uh. Eye, I mean. Sorry.”

She chuckles. “I am not offended. But that is likely some sort of encampment, though I cannot say whether it is the one the Kaiden mercenaries mentioned to us.”

“Worth investigating,” I say. “Come on.”

We follow the road through the ruins, then turn left, heading for the trees. Now that we’re a little closer, I can see the smoke Melina pointed out clearly. It’s not coming from the trees, actually, but from a small, fortified encampment behind them, built in the shadow of another of those big chunks of fallen masonry that I’ve seen scattered around.

All of a sudden, I make the connection between the vision I had in the shadow of the Divine Tower and the chunks of marble I’ve seen all over the Lands Between. They’re chunks of the city in the sky—the city that the golden star hit on its way to the Erdtree. Farum Azula. It didn’t make sense that they’re all over the place, regardless of whether they resemble any of the ruins around them or if there even are ruins around them. I’ve been letting it slide because I’ve got bigger things to worry about, but this… this makes sense.

And although it’s far from confirmation of anything about my death-visions, it’s a good sign. It means that whatever’s trying to contact me through my impromptu thanatonautics is at least offering some kind of explanation for some of the things I’m seeing that don’t make any sense. Whether that explanation is true, well, too early to say.

As we approach the encampment, a shout goes up. A moment later, a man in the same armor as the mercenaries we encountered yesterday rides out of the wooden gate. A heavy, curved sword, five feet long if it’s an inch, is hanging from one hand while the other grips the reins of his charger. He gallops towards us, raising his sword, but when he gets about halfway he suddenly tugs the reins and turns slightly to bring his horse to a sudden stop. I’m not sure whether it’s because he saw whatever marker the Rune of Binding leaves on me, or because he saw all of us reaching for our weapons.

“Shardbearer!” he calls, sounding wary. His head turns, taking us all in—Trinovar with his sword half-raised, Rogier with his staff glowing, me with my rifle cocked, and Rufus with his hackles up. Melina’s the only one of us who doesn’t look squared for a fight. “So it is true, then. Lord Godrick is dead.”

“Yep,” I say. “We ran into a couple of Kaidens up the hill. We were wondering if we could talk to a Captain… Ivan?”

“Ivar,” Winchester corrects, popping into being over my shoulder.

“Ivar,” I continue, “about buying a horse?”

The man considers me for a long moment. His face is mostly hidden by the cloth mask under his helmet, but his black eyes glitter in the late morning sunlight. “I am Lieutenant Sigurd,” he says. “One of our band’s only two remaining horsemen. Captain Ivar shall not be parted from his steed, and I’ll not part from mine without his approval.”

“Then can we talk to him?” I ask.

“Wait here,” he says, then turns his horse and canters back into the encampment.

So wait we do. I lean back against a tree, folding my arms across my chest. After a moment, Melina spurs Torrent over to me, until she looms over me from his saddle.

“Something wrong?” I ask her.

“No,” she says. “Though I confess, I am concerned that these mercenaries would command a Shardbearer to wait like an errand-boy.”

I grimace. “Better that than the alternative. I’ve got this Great Rune because I need to it do what I have to. I’m not a demigod, not in contention for the Elden Ring, and don’t want to be. I don’t need their worship.”

“Perhaps not,” says Melina, “but surely you are owed their respect?”

“Maybe. Doesn’t really bother me.”

“I can see that.” She looks down at me with an unreadable expression in her face. “Why not?”

“Hm?”

“I have never known someone of your power not to crave respect. Not to feel it is owed to him, nor to resent it when he feels it is withheld. Your outlook on the world is wholly different from the warriors and magicians I have known. In the abstract, I understand that it is because your home, and your history, are so different from my own. But I would like to understand the details. What is it that made Barrett-12 so much more humble than any hero or knight of the Lands Between?”

I consider the question. “Don’t think there’s a simple answer to that. It’s my whole life. You’re asking me to point out why I am who I am. I can’t give you an answer that’s any shorter than the centuries that made me into that person.”

She hums softly. “I suppose not,” she says. “That should, perhaps, be an end to such questions.”

“Should?”

“I still wish to understand,” she murmurs. “Everyone is the product of all the years of their lives. But not everyone fascinates me as you do, Barrett.”

“Aw, shucks, sweetheart. You’re gonna make me blush.” I say it like a joke, but only because Exos can’t blush to begin with. If we could, I think I would be.

To my surprise, though, she actually does. Just a little. “I—that is not my intent. I merely…” She hesitates. The silence between us stretches, punctuated by the rustle of the wind in the trees. I notice that Rogier and Trinovar are giving us some space, talking between themselves a couple dozen paces away. “My mind circles endlessly back to a certain hypothetical,” she says finally. “I cannot help but wonder what the world would look like if you had arrived a few centuries sooner. If you had been there when I was small. If my family could have met you—have learned from your example, as I feel I already am. If you had been there the night I was…”

She trails off, but I have a sick feeling that I know where that sentence was going. “I’m sorry I wasn’t,” I say quietly. “I don’t know the story, Melina, and I’m not going to pry. But I wish I could have been here to help. To prevent whatever happened.”

“Even if it was necessary?” Melina asks, voice soft and tired. “Even if my blackened bones protected the world for a few years longer?”

“Did you volunteer?”

“No. Perhaps I should have.”

“Absolutely not,” I say firmly. “A world that would burn a girl alive just to keep itself going a little longer is one that doesn’t deserve to keep spinning.”

“And yet there are innocents in these lands,” Melina counters. “Children who have never known any world but the chaos of the Shattering. Parents whose only crime was ignorance or impotence. What right have I to bemoan my lot, if my sacrifice gave them their lives?”

“Doesn’t seem like their lives have been all that delivered to me,” I say. “I’m not saying that this world deserves to be purged. Not at all. I’m saying that there has to have been a better way.”

“Why should there be?” Melina asks. “The world is not kind.”

“The world isn’t a person. It’s as kind as we are—and as cruel.”

“Do you really believe it to be that simple?”

Yes, is the honest answer, but there’s an edge to her voice. I don’t want to make her feel like I’m trivializing her sacrifice, or questioning the story she’s told herself about why it was necessary. So I take a step back. “I don’t know what the world looked like when that happened to you,” I say after taking a moment to think. “It’s possible that, by that point, there really wasn’t anything better to be done. Maybe by that point things had gone too far for too long, and there weren’t any good options left. I’m not a kinderguardian anymore, I know that sometimes things just don’t work out. But the thing about those sorts of bad situations is that they were always set in motion a long time ago. No one ever takes just one step and finds them in a situation where all their choices are bad. It always takes more than one mistake, whether on the part of one person or the whole society.

“Maybe what happened to you really was necessary. Maybe there was no better choice. But if that’s the case, that doesn’t mean we have to settle for that. All it means is that we can start building a world, now, where that kind of choice isn’t necessary anymore.”

“How?” she whispers.

I reach up and put my hand on Torrent’s mane, just a couple inches below her own hands on his reins. It’s the closest I can come to touching her without passing straight through. “That’s the question,” I say. “If there’s a simple answer, then anyone who knows it ain’t telling.” I remember the Speaker and his sermons about the Traveler’s silence. The best voices… “My best guess, so far, is that if we just keep asking, and keep being kind to each other, that it’ll work itself out eventually.”

“I wish I had your faith.”

“Faith ain’t a thing you have, sweetheart. It’s a choice you make. Hope is where we plant our flag.”

She looks down at me, eye slightly wide, lips slightly parted. “Barrett—"

“Shardbearer!” The voice snaps out from the entrance to the camp. I glance over to see two men riding out towards us. One is Sigurd, the other is a slightly taller man in similar armor, though his has blue trim along the edges. “I am Captain Ivar, leader of this warband. I am told you wish to purchase a horse from us.”

“If you’re willing to part with one,” I say, pulling my hand away from Torrent and standing up. Rogier and Trinovar approach, apparently deciding that she and I don’t need privacy for haggling. “If not, I’d be grateful for a hint on who might be.”

“If you make war on the soldiers of Lord Godrick,” Ivar says, “some of his few remaining cavalry are even now escorting a carriage south along the eastern shore of the lake. But they’ll not be keen to sell.”

“I’m not keen to go killing people for their horses,” I say. “I’ve got runes, if you want to trade for them.”

Ivar’s silent for a minute, looking us all up and down. “I’ll not part with Fafnir,” he says finally, patting his horse’s neck. “But I shan’t forbid Sigurd from trading with you if he so wishes. That is his affair, and he may set the price he chooses.”

“Gullfax is fine horseflesh,” says Sigurd. “But we return northward soon, and runes will serve us better on the road than a horse when so much of the band lacks mounts. I’ll part with him for twenty thousand runes. No less.”

Trinovar snorts audibly.

“That a bad deal?” I ask him. “Never bought a horse with runes before.”

“If this horse were the mount of Queen Marika herself and the hero of a hundred campaigns, it might be worth such a price,” he says.

I take stock. I do have twenty thousand runes—that’s about the haul I got from Godrick, besides his Great Rune. But after that I’ll be down to about five thousand left. Which is probably fine—I haven’t needed them for much—but there’s no sense burning resources if I don’t need to.

“Gullfax is the finest stock of the hardy north,” Sigurd says sharply. “A finer steed you’ll not find anywhere south of Altus.”

“And yet we could take a horse a scant two hours’ walk from here with the escort for that carriage,” Trinovar counters. “Even if it is a lesser beast that we would find, it is scarcely twenty thousand runes lesser. Ten thousand.” He glances at me. “If I have leave to negotiate for you, Barrett.”

“Of course,” I say. “And thanks.”

They haggle for a while, but eventually they settle on fifteen thousand. I hand over the runes the same way I did to Kalé a few nights ago, and Sigurd dismounts and passes me the reins. “Treat her well,” he says. “She’s borne me these many years, and she’ll bear you many more if you care for her.”

“Of course,” I promise. “But I think—Rogier, you want the horse?”

“Happily,” he says, taking the reins from me. “I’ll have to find some way to repay you for all you’ve done for me, Barrett.”

“Don’t worry about it. Small price to pay for speeding up our whole trip.” I turn to Rufus. “You don’t mind carrying Trinovar, do you?” I’m tempted to put the Crucible Knight on my Sparrow and ride the temperamental—and traumatized—lion myself. But it’d take a while to train Trinovar in the controls, and there’s a serious risk of him crashing and burning through our very limited resources to repair it.

The lion chuffs and shakes out his mane.

“Good boy.” I turn to the Kaidens. “Thanks for doing business. We’ll get out of your hair. Chester, bring out Always On Time, would you?”

A few minutes later, the four of us are off. We cross the bridge to the east, speeding past a small encampment of soldiers who are still scrambling for their gear when we leave them in the dust. The main road turns south on the other side of the bridge, but following Rogier’s lead we turn north, following a terribly-maintained dirt road that’s so overgrown with grass that it’s barely there anymore. The road curves around as it descends a hill, turning further towards the east. As it passes under a massive archway of Farum Azula’s fallen masonry, I hear a voice calling from above us.

“Hello! Whoever goes there, could you aid us?”

I kick my sparrow to a stop, and that’s when the ambush hits.

More than a dozen small fellas appear in puffs of gray smoke with a shill war cry. They look… almost human, but shorter, with faces that more resemble an ape’s or a dog’s. All of them are carrying crude clubs or blunt swords. They charge at us, flailing their weapons.

I leap off of Always On Time, already reaching for a gun. At this range… “Chester, Death Adder!” I snap out, and Winchester responds in a heartbeat. The submachine gun comes up, and bolts of Solar energy pour out like water from a hose. The creatures’ war cries turn into shrieks of terror, then pain. Then silence.

I stare at the corpses, riddled with holes, as Rogier and Trinovar dismount beside me. “Well,” says Trinovar slowly. “That was… impressive.”

“They barely even had armor,” I say. “Why the hell would they attack us? They had to see we were harder targets than they could manage.”

“Many demi-humans have been driven every bit as mad as any human by the violence of these days,” says Rogier. “They may not have had the mental fortitude to realize they were outmatched.

For a moment, the demi-human corpses vanish, and I’m staring at a field of slaughtered Eliksni wearing the violet colors of House Dusk. Then Cabal, in the tattered armor of the Red Legion remnants. Then Hive, in the spiked carapace of the Lucent Brood.

Is demi-human even the name of their species? Or is it a slur, a slur that’s so common that people have forgotten it even is one? Am I calling my enemies Fallen again?

I turn away. “Let’s go see who was calling us.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Sara.”

“Hey, Barrett! Where’ve you been the past few days?”

“Out around Venus. Couple of guys went missing out near the Vault of Glass. Just doing some recon.”

“You were careful?”

“I’m always careful, sweetheart. Didn’t find anything, though.”

It takes us a minute to scramble up the arch of fallen masonry. Torrent handles it better than Rufus or Gullfax, and definitely better than Always On Time, so we tie the horse to a tree on the edge of the woods and climb up without them.

At the top of the arch is a small group of people gathered around what’s left of a campfire, though it’s only embers and smoke now in the mid-afternoon sun. There are four of them, and the first thing I notice is that one of them isn’t human. The little guy looks to be the same species as the poor bastards I just put in the ground, but where they were wrapped in dirty rags and strips of cloth, this fella’s wearing a jaunty little cap with a feather in it and clothes which, while still dirty, look well-tailored. Two of the others are wearing surcoats that look like they were originally embroidered with the same tree-and-beast heraldry as Godrick’s armies, but someone went to some effort to patch over the beast with simple red cloth, and then embroidered over that with a strange pattern of interlocking circles of golden thread.

Something inside me recognizes that sigil. I recognize my own Great Rune in the center of the pattern. For the first time since arriving in the Lands Between, I see what the people of Marika’s empire call the Elden Ring.

The final member of the little group is the best-dressed person I’ve seen in the Lands Between, if you don’t count armor. He’s wearing a violet, fur-lined overcoat over green robes embroidered with an abstract pattern in pale brown and red across his chest. The clothes are a little frayed around the hem, a little dirty, and starting to lose some of their rich color in patches, but they were clearly well cared-for until recently. The man’s hair is the color of straw in the fall, and his beard is just starting to break out of what was clearly once a very careful trim. His eyes are the same shade of gold as the Erdtree’s bark, visible behind him.

“Ah, thank you for your assistance!” says the well-dressed man, smiling widely and holding out his hands to either side as if to welcome us into a great hall. “I fear the demi-humans were likely awaiting reinforcements. I do not think we would have survived the night if you had not happened along!”

The ‘demi-human’ squatting just a couple paces from the man doesn’t react to the term. I have no way of knowing whether that’s because it’s not offensive or because he’s one little guy surrounded by people big enough to push him around.

“I am Sir Kenneth Haight,” says the man, “repudiator of the false, servant to the Golden Order. I—” He pauses. His eyes narrow as he looks me up and down. Then they widen. “Shardbearer,” he says.

The two soldiers scramble to place themselves between me and their boss. “Hey,” I say, tipping my hat an inch. “Barrett-12, Guardian. And, yes, Shardbearer. As of yesterday.”

“Incredible,” Haight says. “Then Godrick is dead?”

“Yep,” I say. “That a problem?”

“Not at all!” Kenneth Haight laughs, but there’s a slight edge to the sound, visible in the wary tension around his eyes. “No, Godrick was a poor excuse for the lord of Limgrave. But who are you, Master Barrett Twelve, who has taken up his Great Rune? For what purpose?”

“Just Barrett,” I say. “I promised Morna here that I’d help her get to the foot of the Erdtree, and I apparently need two Great Runes to get into Leyndell. That’s why I took it.” I look him up and down. “If you’re worried I’m gonna get between you and your throne, don’t be.”

“My throne—oh, heavens, no!” Haight laughs, sounding relieved. “No, no. While my blood is noble, certainly, I am no scion of the Golden Lineage. I have my seat at Fort Haight, and I have no desire to usurp the Eternal Queen’s get. I have been searching for some time for a lord of the proper lineage to replace Godrick.”

“Sure,” I say. “And if you can’t find any direct descendants of Marika to replace him?”

He grimaces. “Then I will have to settle for whatever I can find, I suppose,” he says. “It is a terrible thing for a land to be without a lord. Surely you have seen the decay and chaos that consumes Limgrave? This realm needs a proper ruler—someone who will truly lead it, not like that awful Godrick.”

“Right.” Settle for, he says. I wonder how long he’ll wait before declaring that there are no ‘proper heirs’ left to claim the throne in Stormveil and take it for himself. I’m betting that by the time I’ve got Radahn’s rune, he’ll be sitting in Godrick’s old chair.

“It is a strange company you have gathered around yourself, Sir Barrett,” Haight says, looking over our group. “A Tarnished, a Knight of the Crucible, and a finger maiden traveling with a steel-faced man. There is a story behind that, I’d wager?”

“A story for each of us, Sir Haight,” says Trinovar smoothly.  “For myself—I was sworn to the Golden Lineage, but with Godrick’s death that line is broken.”

“And yet you choose to follow the man who slew him?”

“I follow the man who gathereth the Great Runes and returneth them to Leyndell. Whether he intendeth to lay claim to the throne of Elden Lord or no, this act can only hasten the end of this unceasing war.”

Haight nods, looking serious. “True enough, true enough. And do you, Sir Barrett, seek to claim the throne? It is said that the Tarnished returned from across the Fog for exactly this purpose.”

“No, sir,” I say. “I just want to repair my ship and get Morna up to Leyndell. I’ll figure out what to do next after I’ve gotten that far.”

“Simple goals,” says Haight. “It is good for a man to be content with ambitions befitting his lot, but you are a Shardbearer now. Whether you want it or not, you are part of this war. The Elden Ring, like all things, seeks regression. Its shards seek to be reunited.”

“I’m sure someone can handle the actual reuniting part once I’ve done some of the work,” I say. “But, who knows, maybe I’ll keep at it once my ship’s repaired. Playing it by ear for now.” At this point, I think it’s pretty likely that I’ll stay around the Lands Between for at least a while once I’ve reestablished contact with the Foreguard and my fireteam. There’s a lot to do here, and it sure seems like no one’s done it for a real long time. I don’t like leaving jobs half done.

“Well, you must forge your own course through the world,” Haight says. “But bear in mind that man ignores the twofold Order at his peril—all things obey Causality and seek Regression.”

“So I’ve heard,” I say neutrally. Inside, I’m rebelling at the very idea.

He nods. “Well, my men and I must be off. We should rendezvous with the rest of my forces, if any of the demi-human patrols I stationed in the Mistwood survive. If you find yourself south of the Mistwood, seek Fort Haight on the coast. If I have successfully reclaimed it, you will have whatever hospitality I can offer. If I have not, your assistance would be welcome.”

“We’ll keep the invite in mind,” I say. “We’re headed in the other direction, unfortunately.” I glance over at the little fella who’s been avoiding looking directly at any of us throughout this conversation. “That little guy one of your… ‘demi-human’ soldiers?”

“Hm? Oh, no.” Haight reaches out and rests a hand, glittering with rings, on the little guy’s shoulder. “This is Boc. He was chased from his home by a local demi-human tribe, poor creature. I found him transformed into a tree by a demi-human queen’s sorcery.”

“Ah, y-yes,” says Boc, looking up at me with big, brown, nervous-looking eyes. “Sir Haight has promised to help me get back all the things I had to leave behind when the others drove me out of the cave. Just as soon as his fort’s secure.”

“Fort Haight was once a haven for human and demi-human alike,” says Kenneth Haight. “A place where any who wished could find sanctuary within the Golden Order, regardless of their appearance. A group of Godrick’s soldiers have driven us out for now, but we’ll soon reclaim it.”

I pause, giving him a look. “That so? You want your fort to be a sanctuary?”

“Yes.” He sighs. “Though I know not what state I shall find it in, when I manage to reclaim it. It may be the work of many months to make it a suitable place for refugees to find haven again.”

I give him a hard look. I’m not always the best judge of character, but I’m better at it than I was even two decades ago. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the centuries, it’s how to admit when I’m wrong. “I think I misjudged you, Kenneth Haight.”

“Oh?” He blinks at me.

“Yeah.” I stick out a hand. “We’re headed northeast to Caelid, to go after General Radahn. But if I have a chance, I’ll see if I can give your fort a visit sometime. I’ve got a soft spot for sanctuaries. Gentle places.”

He smiles. “A rarity, in these dark times. But it behooves those of us with the means and the lineage to rule to create fiefdoms in which the menials do not find it onerous to reside.”

Which is a bit of an odd way of looking at it, but hey. It takes all kinds of spears to ring a City. “Good to meet you, Sir Haight,” I say.

“And you as well, Sir Barrett. Thank you again for your timely rescue. I hope to hear from you again.”

We head back down the arch. As we go, Rogier falls into step beside me. “You think he was sincere?” he asks.

“I didn’t at first. But yeah, I do.”

“Hm. Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but I don’t think much of the Leyndell nobility.”

“He reminds me a little bit of a couple of friends of mine.” I think of Parvati and Shaxx. They really aren’t very similar to Kenneth Haight at all, but they saw their fiefdoms as Warlords the same way he sees his fort. Or at least, that’s how it looks. “I doubt I’d like most Leyndell nobility either. I don’t even think I like him. But I think he’s telling the truth about what he wants and what he’s trying to do, and those are goals I can respect.”

“That’s fair. It’s a rare man, and a rarer noble still, who cares one whit what happens to the demi-humans in these lands.”

“Is that the actual name for their species?” I ask. “It sounds… well, it doesn’t sound like something I’d like to be called.”

Rogier considers the question for a moment, then shrugs. “I’ve not encountered any other name for the creatures. It’s possible there is one, or was one long ago. But I’ve seen no records of it.”

Which… isn’t all that comforting. It’s all too easy to imagine an Eliksni people who spent so long chasing the Traveler that they forgot how to be anything other than Fallen.

We mount up and head east. A troll tries to chase after us for a couple minutes but we leave him in the dust without much trouble. We follow Rogier’s lead as he turns north when we approach a crumbling church,  riding straight into a copse of trees. Then he stops just past the treeline, and we all stop next to him.

“Here it is,” he says, gesturing at a patch of clear grass in the middle of the glade. “The spiritspring.”

I narrow my eyes. I can’t see much until a falling leaf drifts lazily over the patch of ground. It shoots up like a bullet, getting lost in the darkening evening sky. “That’s one hell of an updraft,” I observe.

“Indeed,” says Rogier. “And more than that, spiritsprings are enchanted. The landing from one is always soft. We need not fear breaking our mounts. Come.” And with that, he canters Gullfax forwards. As it steps into the updraft, it kicks its hind legs and goes flying into the air. I see it drop down up the hill, above the first of a few cliffs we’re going to have to ascend.

Trinovar goes next, on Rufus. The lion and the knight ascend just as easily as the much lighter sorcerer and his horse. Rufus, like Gullfax, jumps as he steps into the updraft. Which isn’t something Always On Time can do. “Can you use this thing without a mount?” I ask Melina. “Only my Sparrow can’t exactly jump.”

“Not as effectively,” she says. “I do not know whether it would be sufficient to bear you up the cliffs.” She shifts on Torrent’s back, and I realize she’s opening space on the saddle behind her. “Come, Torrent can bear your weight for the spring.”

“You sure?” I ask. “I can make my own way up—”

Her lips twitch. “Barrett, there’s no need for such hesitance. Come.”

For the third time in less than a week, I get the feeling I’d be blushing if I could. “Winchester, grab the Sparrow?”

As Always On Time vanishes behind me, I clamber onto Torrent’s back behind Melina. I can’t feel her there, even as my knee brushes into her thigh, dissipating the flesh into sparkling mist. But somehow her hands tug Torrent’s reins, and her heels dig into his sides. He trots forward, and for a moment I feel the updraft rippling through my cloak before he jumps.

We go flying. I clench my legs around Torrent’s barrel on instinct, and my hands snap forward, trying to grab for Melina’s hips. They go right through, so I catch Torrent’s reins just below her own hands instead. The reins are solid, even if she isn’t. But after a second, I realize the ride is much steadier than I’d expect. Torrent’s moving fast, and the initial acceleration is sharp, but we seem to be less affected by gravity than I expect. We land at the top of the cliff more smoothly than we should.

I pull away from her, trying to make sure that the bit of her hips and legs that were fading into mist around my body are solidifying again. “Sorry about that,” I say, a little roughly.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” she murmurs. “But do not dismount. There are multiple springs to ascend the Stormhill here.”

Sure enough, as she’s speaking, Rogier takes a second spring. A moment later, Trinovar does the same, and then it’s our turn.

Once we finally reach the top of the cliffs, I quickly hop off Torrent’s back. As I step away, Melina shoots me a look, unreadable under her hood in the twilight. “Thank you,” I tell her.

“You are most welcome,” she says. “If we have need of a spiritspring again, please do not hesitate. I’m pleased to offer whatever assistance I can.” As the spectral steed trots away, I see her hand brush momentarily against her side where my arm passed straight through her. I grimace and turn away.

“You’re a disaster, bud, you know that?” Winchester says, popping into existence over my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I drawl. “You want to give me a sparrow, or am I hammering you out into a slab and riding you like a board?”

“Sure I’m the one you want to be riding?” Before I can come up with a witty response to that, he summons Always On Time and disappears in a flash of blue.

“Well,” I say, staring at the sparrow. “There’s no need to be crude.”

He snorts over our private channel, but doesn’t say anything.

“Caelid is to the east,” says Trinovar as we reconvene, pointing. “The church there—the smouldering church, some call it, for they say the fire that destroyed it still burneth within the stones—marketh the boundary between Caelid and Limgrave. But if thou wishest to face the Mariner at Summonwater, that lieth to the west along the main road.”

“Let’s check out Summonwater first,” I say. “We’ll camp out after we’ve figured out what’s up with this Mariner, then head to Caelid in the morning. Sound good?”

As we’re coming into Summonwater, I see what has to be the ‘Mariner’ in the distance. And, honestly, I get the name. It looks like a guy in hooded robes sitting in a canoe on the lake in the middle of the village, only the guy and the canoe are both glowing. I can just make them out at this distance. But we stop before getting closer because that’s not the only person we see. Crouching in the cover of some trees is a man in gold and silver armor. He’s watching the Mariner in the village below, but he stands and turns to us when he hears us approaching.

“Travelers,” he says. “You’ve picked a poor time to visit Summonwater, I fear.”

Beside me, I see Rogier go visibly stiff. “D?” he asks sharply.

The man—D?—rears back. “Rogier? What in Marika’s name are you doing here?”

Chapter Text

“Hear ye the words of the Fingers, and the decrees of the Greater Will! Twice-born of flame, O one-eyed Melina, Daughter of Marika and Daughter of Radagon—the Two Fingers name thee Empyrean! The Greater Will accepteth thy service as a candidate for thy mother’s mantle of divinity! May thy sword be ever sharp in the contests to come!”

“Much the same as always, old friend.” Rogier dismounts from Gullfax and walks over to the stranger, shooting a wary look down towards the village. “Still searching for answers to the same questions.”

Summonwater Village is, like most other structures I’ve seen in the Lands Between, a ruin. It’s also half-flooded—although whether it was deliberately built on the water like a couple of cities in Old Europe I’ve been to, or if it was flooded after it was wrecked, I’ve got no idea. The Mariner is drifting on the lake, seemingly aimless.

“These questions will lead you nowhere good, Rogier,” D warns. As I dismount from Always On Time and draw closer, I see that his armor isn’t just gold and silver—it’s ornately forged to look like two interlocking sets of armor. A second helmet sprouts from his chest, and his left hand covers its eyes while his right rests on the hilt of his longsword. The sword, like his armor, is forged of interlocking gold and silver, and its point is buried half an inch in the ground at his feet. Honestly, if he wore that getup to one of the fashion shows in the Tower, he wouldn’t look out of place. Might even have a shot at the prizes. “Those Who Live in Death twist and corrupt all they touch, and you will be no exception.”

“My recent experiences… somewhat bear out that belief,” says Rogier. “I was briefly afflicted by the Death Blight, but thanks to the timely intervention of Barrett, here, I was restored.” He gestures to me. “D, this is Barrett—a friend, fellow traveler, and as of recently, a Shardbearer. Barrett, this is D, Hunter of the Dead, a onetime traveling companion of mine.”

“Pleasure,” I say, sticking out my hand.

D shakes it. “The same to you, Sir Barrett,” he says. “But if you have business in Summonwater, I must warn you that the village is not fit for the living any longer. Those Who Live in Death have claimed dominion over it, under the corrupted banner of a Tibia Mariner.”

“I saw,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve been hearing a lot about Those Who Live in Death, and I want to see them for myself before settling on any conclusions.”

“I see you are cut from the same cloth as Rogier, then,” D says, with an air of dark resignation. “Well, whatever incantation Rogier claims allows you to cure the Death Blight may serve you well for a time, but know this. Those Who Live in Death are a scourge upon the Lands Between. They are soulless, heartless creatures, possessed only of the singular drive to spread their unholy Deathroot. If you grow careless in their presence for even a moment, they will tear your bones from your flesh and raise you as another of their foul kin.”

“They’ll find that hard with me,” I point out. “Since I don’t really have bones, per say. Just more titanium. I’m planning on trying to talk to the Mariner. Just once. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll take it out. But I’ve killed people and regretted it before. I don’t want to write off Those Who Live in Death without at least trying to talk to them once.”

D sighs. “Marika save us from idealists and fools,” he says. “But I can see the Grace of a Great Rune upon you. Perhaps that will protect you from the consequences of your folly.”

“Will you help us do battle, D?” Rogier asks. “If it comes to combat, your sword and experience would be invaluable.”

“I will not stand idle while you attempt to speak with Those Who Live in Death,” says D. “But if it comes to battle, I will descend into the village to join you. Perhaps I will be quick enough to rescue you.”

“Hopefully we won’t need rescuing,” I say. “But we appreciate the help. None of you actually have to come down with me, though—I realize I’m the odd one out, here, wanting to talk to these guys. If you want to wait up here with D, that’s fine.”

“I confess myself curious as well,” says Trinovar. “I’ve seen little of Those Who Live in Death—my postings since they first appeared have not allowed me to indulge any curiosity. I’ll descend with thee, if thou objectest not.”

“And while I’ve never been able to communicate with Those Who Live in Death before, I’ve never had you with me while I tried,” says Rogier. “If nothing else, I’m curious whether Winchester will have anything to say.”

“I’ll remain apart,” Melina says. “There is no place for me on the battlefield, and I very much doubt that you will find anything else among these ruins.”

“All right,” I say. “Let’s leave the mounts—Rufus, be a good boy and wait for us, all right?”

Rufus chuffs, but sits back on his haunches obediently.

We start down towards the lake. We’re about halfway down the hill when the Mariner reacts to us. It turns its canoe our way sharply, paddling towards us with its one oar.

I raise my hand in greeting. “Hey there,” I call. “Been hearing a lot about you people. Hoping we can talk?”

The Tibia Mariner pulls its oar out of the water and raises it to its lips. It’s not an oar at all, I realize—it’s a horn, a long tube with a mouthpiece at the thin end and an open bowl at the other. Under the hood, I can see that there’s no face—just a pale, faintly luminous skull.

The Mariner blows into the horn. A shuddering sound echoes through the village, like the electrical hum of high voltage power lines. The water around the Mariner’s canoe starts splashing, and figures start to rise. Skeletons forming from beneath the water, the tatters of clothing and the rotting remains of flesh still clinging to them. Blood-red stars glow in their empty eye sockets.

“We can talk about this,” I say.

The Mariner turns its boat, and it fades into mist. I see it appear on the other side of the lake. The skeletal horde charges towards us.

I pull back the lever of DMT with a sigh. “Or not.”

The skeletons go down easy. Two taps to the head with the Dead Man’s Tale is plenty, and they’re not so fast that they’re hard to hit at this range. Unfortunately, after I’ve gotten through just a couple, the Mariner blows its horn again, and they knit themselves back together and start running again. Beside me, Rogier flings a spell at one that’s starting to get close. “Unfortunate,” he observes. “I had hoped… but, never mind. What now?”

I holster DMT. “Now? Winchester, give me my Taipan.”

I’ve always been a fan of the Veist weapon foundry in the City. Most of my favorite gear is either Veist or Tex Mechanica, and I try not to buy direct from Tex just because the people who run that foundry are proven dirtbags. Death Adder, the Recluse, the Funnelweb? All Veist submachine guns. Quickfang is a Veist sword. Not everything they make is a hit—I don’t much like their scout rifles, especially compared with DMT or some of Omolon’s stuff.

But their Linear Fusion Rifles are all top-notch, and the Taipan-4fr is one of the best.

The heavy weapon lands on my back. I pull it out, looking down the sight until I have a bead on the Tibia Mariner’s hooded head. I press down on the trigger. The gun starts vibrating under by hands as the Void bolt charges up, light and Light reflecting back and forth within the chassis as the energy builds. The Mariner, maybe reacting to some sixth sense for danger, turns sharply, but it’s far enough away that I can easily track its skull. The bolt fires.

The Mariner staggers within its canoe, flailing. The bolt disintegrates a chunk of its hood and skull, exposing a cold, black-and-orange mist beneath—the same color scheme, I can’t help but notice, as the Darkness tech used by the Witness and its Black Fleet. Before it manages to react, I’m already pressing down the trigger again.

The second bolt finishes the job. First the Mariner’s head, then the rest of its body, then even its canoe, disintegrate into violet nothingness. A moment later, the skeletons charging up at us tumble to the ground as inert bones.

I let out a breath as I holster the heavy weapon. “Well,” I say. “That’s a shame.”

Rogier chuckles. “It is,” he agrees. “But I admit, that you even attempt to communicate with these poor wretches is encouraging me. I think I’ve chosen a good man to follow, this time.”

I don’t have any response to that, so I just turn to face D and Melina as they come down the hill. “Well,” says D, looking me up and down. “I thought you an overconfident fool, but perhaps my judgement was hasty. There is a difference between hubris and pride, and that difference is power. Power you seemingly possess.”

I pat the Taipan’s stock over my shoulder. “You can afford to gamble a lot when you stack the deck.”

“Indeed.” D looks past me at the lake. “Come. That Mariner will have carried a bulb of Deathroot. It must be weeded.”

We follow him down into the water. It turns out to be mostly shallow—other than a couple of patches, it barely comes up to our thighs. He passes by the floating bones, slowly drifting apart where there were once assembled skeletons, and makes for where the Mariner went down. “You know,” I say, “whatever it was carrying might have dissolved with it. The canoe and horn did, after all.”

“Your weapon is powerful,” D says without looking back, “but I do not think it powerful enough to destroy a bulb of Deathroot. Such things are cursed beyond the skill of men to destroy.”

“What are they? The bulbs, I mean.” I rap my knuckles against an exposed growth of the same gnarled wood that formed a twisted face under Stormveil. The gnobs on the growth look unnaturally like squinting eyes. “I’ve seen the roots growing around, but I don’t know about these bulbs.”

“They are the vanguard of corruption,” D says. “Seeds from which the vile growth may spring. Those Who Live in Death carry them to places that are yet untainted, and where the bulb goes, the root follows. I have found bulbs hidden away in crypts where they may taint the very Erdtree’s roots, twisting all those souls who were offered up for burial into more of the deathless monsters.”

I look at Rogier. He nods grimly. “That bears with my observations,” he confirms. “When I parted with D some months ago, we had not yet determined the details of the Deathroot and its growth cycle. But while I have not seen one of these ‘bulbs’ myself, I have theorized that Those Who Live in Death can carry some form of cutting to begin new growth far away from the original source. It is the only way that the rapid spread makes sense.”

“Here,” says D suddenly, reaching down into the water. When he straightens, there’s a small, black bulb in his fist, gnarled and twisted. The water dripping off it looks blackened and oily as it drips down the gold of his gauntlet.

“That’s the bulb?” I ask.

“Just so.” D pockets it. “I must take this to Gurranq, the Beast Clergyman. If you intend to continue weeding Deathroot, I can introduce you.”

“So you did make contact with the Clergyman, in the end?” Rogier asks. “When we parted ways, you had not yet found him.”

“I did.” D looks at Rogier for a long moment. “Have you changed course, then? You seem to be traveling once more with someone who does not object to laying Those Who Live in Death to rest.”

“My course was never so different from yours as you believed, old friend,” says Rogier, a wistful little smile on his face. “I pity Those Who Live in Death. That does not mean that I would allow their corruption to spread throughout the Lands Between; nor does it mean that I objected to your efforts to stop them.”

“Our last conversation did not give that impression,” says D evenly.

“That conversation was an academic debate, to me. An abstract question of philosophy, discussed between friends. I have regretted ever since that we mistook one another so grievously.”

I look between them, take in Rogier’s small, sad smile, the way D’s shoulders have hunched as Rogier speaks. “Bad breakup?” I ask dryly.

Trinovar lets out a sound between a sigh and a chuckle.

“Where are you going next, then?” D asks, turning from Rogier to face me. “Now that your business here is concluded.”

“Caelid,” I say. “I need another Great Rune, and I need the asteroid field suspended above this planet dropped. Radahn can help me with both problems.”

“Hm. So he can.” D nods slowly. “I make for Caelid myself, though I’ll be taking another road. Gurranq lives in an old cathedral north of the Dragonbarrow. There is a teleporter hidden near the Church of Marika just south of here, but that would not shorten your path at all—and the new route would be far more dangerous. No, you would be better served taking the road east.” He hesitates. “But perhaps I shall meet you at Castle Redmane. If my course takes me by those rotting causeways.”

“You’d be welcome,” I say.

“More than welcome,” Rogier adds. “Word has been spreading of a festival of combat at Redmane for months now. Your aid might prove invaluable.”

“If I find myself there, you shall have it,” D says. “But for now, farewell. I intend to be at Gurranq’s cathedral when I make camp tonight.”

“Farewell, D,” says Rogier.

The man nods, turns, and jogs away, heading south.

I turn to Rogier. “Well,” I say. “That went better than most conversations I’ve seen people have with their exes.”

Rogier rolls his eyes at me. “We were traveling companions and friends,” he says. “Nothing more. Shall we make camp?”

“There is a Site of Grace at the Smouldering Church,” Melina says. “If it is not too much trouble, I… should like to be able to remain corporeal during the night.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” I say. “Just up the hill, right?”

It’s a bit more of a hike than I expect, but we get there in a little under half an hour once we’re mounted up. By the time we reach the ruined church, the skies have started to turn. The Erdtree is still glowing in the north, but its light is pale and washed out by a red haze that seems to linger in the air, painting the whole sky the color of blood.

The Smouldering Church is aptly named. The rocks of the buildings flicker slightly like embers in an old campfire, and a heat-haze rises visibly from the stones. When I test them, though, they’re cool to the touch, and the night breeze is just shy of chilly. Whatever heat we’re seeing, we don’t feel it at all.

“We are not yet in Caelid true,” says Trinovar as he removes his armor. “Thou canst see from the entry the foundations of the old walls where once the independent fief of the Storm Kings had its border with the lands of the dragon-cults of Caelid.”

He’s right. I did see the low wall on our way in, its stones licked by illusory flames just like those of the church. “It’s more dangerous than Limgrave, I’m gathering,” I say. “Caelid, I mean.”

“Far more so,” Trinovar confirms. “Though I’ve not spent more than a few days there since the fateful battle ‘twixt General Radahn and his half-sister, those few days were enough to lay to rest any desire I had for more.”

“You don’t have to come with us,” I point out.

He shakes his head. “Nay, I’ll not be left behind. There is naught left for me in Limgrave, and General Radahn was once a great admirer of Lord Godfrey. He trained with my order in his youth. I would see what hath become of him, and lay his memory to rest, if I can.”

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get to Redmane from here?” I ask.

“If we follow the road and pass unmolested? Two days at most, now that we have mounts to bear us.” He laughs darkly. “But to pass unmolested through the rotting trails of Caelid may be too much a miracle to hope for in these godless days.” With that ominous thought lingering in the air, he turns in for the night.

I sit down on my bedroll, looking up at the eastern sky. Melina settles beside me. “I’ve never been able to travel far into Caelid since I was burned,” she murmurs. “But nor have I much wanted to. The red sky is unsettling, to say the least.”

“It is that,” I agree. “The church doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Hm? Oh, the illusion that remains of its burning? No. No, I’ve never been bothered by flame. Not even now.”

“Really?”

She nods. “It is… a part of me, in a way,” she admits. “The day I was born was a day of flame. A fire tore through Leyndell even as my mother delivered me.”

“And you think that was, what, some kind of omen?”

“I do.” Her lips twist. “You have said that Guardians make their own fate, Barrett. But we children of Marika and Radagon are not Guardians, and the Outer Gods meddle ceaselessly in our destinies.”

“Do you resent them for that?” I ask. “I know I would.”

She hesitates for a long, long moment. When she finally says “Yes,” it’s in a small, almost frightened voice.

“Then we’ll have to see what we can do about getting you out of their control,” I say. “You’re paracausal, Melina. It can be done. It might be really hard, but it can.”

She looks at me, golden eye glimmering in the half-light. “I wish I could believe you, Barrett. I truly, truly do.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “We’ve got time. But one thing I’ll tell you for sure—we won’t break you out of your fate until you believe we can. You’re as strong as you believe you are.”

She doesn’t answer, and we lapse into silence for a few minutes. Finally I change the subject. “What’d you think of D?”

“He is a zealot,” she says flatly. “His particular crusade is against Those Who Live in Death, but it could just as easily have been any one of the uncountable causes championed by those who devote themselves unthinkingly to the Golden Order. He could easily have been exterminating the Misbegotten on the Weeping Peninsula, or slaughtering Albinaurics in Liurnia, if he were not weeding Deathroot.”

“Harsh.”

She shakes her head slowly. “Perhaps. It was an unflinching loyalty to the Golden Order just like his that placed me upon the pyre. Perhaps I have grown overly suspicious of all those who so dedicate themselves.”

“You’re allowed to hate the people who hurt you,” I say quietly. “I’d be traumatized, too. Hell, I was, for centuries after my first death. I still get uncomfortable around the Hive, even though some of them are our allies now.”

She’s silent for a long moment. “But I do not hate the man who burned me,” she whispers finally. “It would be so much easier if I did, Barrett. But I do not. I cannot.”

“Because you think he was doing it for a good reason?” I ask, remembering our conversation outside the Kaidens’ camp.

“In part,” she says. Hesitates. “And partly because I have never been good at hating my family.”

I blink at her. “Your…”

“My brother,” she whispers. “Godwyn the Golden.”

Chapter Text

“More of the guys gone missing. This time out in Jovian space.”

“You sound worried.”

“I am worried. You hear what they’re saying out in the outposts? About the Man with the Golden Gun?”

“That he’s after us? Let him come. His gun matched up against one Thorn fine, but let’s see him handle a few dozen. This time, The First Curse will fire second.”

“The what?”

“Hm?”

“The what will fire second?”

“The Last Word. You know, his gun?”

“Godwyn was the one who was assassinated, right?” I ask slowly. “At the Night of the Black Knives.”

“Just so,” Melina says, her strawberry blond hair stained crimson in the light of the Caelid sky. I know not the details of what happened that terrible night. It was only after the Shattering that Torrent found me. Until then I was trapped at the site of my pyre.”

“That must have been awful. I’m sorry.”

Her lips quirk slightly upwards. “It was,” she admits. “But it was not all bad. While I spent much of my time brooding, thinking of the last words I’d shared with those I knew, my pyre was in a truly beautiful place. Our road will not take us north of the Erdtree, but if we find ourselves there, I will show you.”

“You sure you want that?”

“You have a way of reframing my old pains, Barrett,” she says, shooting me a small, almost timid smile. My mechanical heart skips a beat. “You make me see my fears and troubles differently. You soothe the raw flesh of my spirit, allowing it to begin healing. Yes, I would like to visit my pyre with you, if we find ourselves in the forbidden lands north of Leyndell.”

 “Then… then we’ll go there,” I say. “One way or another, I’ll make sure we have a chance to visit before we part ways.”

“I should very much like that.”

I look away from her, turning my eyes on the Erdtree. “You made it sound like he thought it would somehow save the Lands Between. Why? What could possibly require him to burn his kid sister alive?”

“I do not know, exactly,” Melina says with a sigh. “But since the day I was named Empyrean, I have suspected that an Outer God besides the Great Will took an interest in me at my birth. At least two of my three fellow Empyreans had such a connection. Cousin Ranni was bound to the Dark Moon, an enigmatic spirit once worshipped by the Nox of the Eternal Cities. Malenia was tied to the God of Rot, which is even now sealed far beneath the earth. Miquella may have had no other god tying itself to him, but his connection to the Erdtree was always… different, from the rest of us. Certainly from me.”

“So you think Godwyn knew about this other god that was tied to you? And that he thought it needed to be stopped?”

“Just so. And…” She hesitates. “And if the god to which I am connected is the one I fear, I cannot blame him in the slightest.”

“It’s that bad?”

Her golden eye slides shut. “They call it the Frenzied Flame,” she says softly. “An outer god that has never been worshipped by any society in the Lands Between, for society is anathema to its nature. A god of chaos and madness. A terrible being which, if even a fragment of what I have heard is true, would burn the Lands Between entirely to ash, from shore to shore.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Can the motives of any god be truly understood?”

“You’d be surprised.”

She actually lets out a tiny laugh. “Perhaps I would. I do not have that answer, Barrett, but perhaps you will somehow find one.” Her face falls. “But have a care. The Frenzied Flame has turned even heroes to madness.”

“I’ve fought gods who did that before.” I think of the Witness and its splinters and Stasis. I think of Xivu Arath and her Cryptoliths. “I’ll watch myself.”

“Good.” Melina yawns. “It is nice to be able to sleep again. I think I shall indulge in it.”

“Have a good night, Melina. See you in the morning.”

I like her, Winchester says over our private channel as she lays her head down on the rolled-up cloak she’s using as a pillow.

I don’t answer for a long moment. Finally, I tell him honestly, I’m surprised.

Really?

Yeah. She’s still keeping secrets from me, even if she’s opening up a bit more with each conversation. And I know I’m putting myself in a position where she could hurt me a lot. I thought you’d be suspicious.

Eh. I was, sure. When she was keeping more secrets. But at this point I think she’s told you most of the big things. And besides… his voice turns more serious. I’m glad you’re letting yourself open up to her.

Even though I might get hurt?

Even then. Your last girlfriend was Sara, bud, and that was more than a century ago.

We’re gonna be leaving once we get her to the Erdtree anyway, though. Somehow I doubt she’s gonna be able to follow us. Whatever’s keeping her alive is probably pretty tied down to the Erdtree.

You could stay.

Right up until the next time the team needs me for an op. And then the time after that. Besides, I’d miss the sky too much. Face it, Chester, this girl and I… we’re headed for, at best, a bittersweet ending.

Remind me which side we fought on in the war?

I wince. “That’s not fair,” I whisper.

No more pain, no more joy. Winchester’s voice is frosty. You fought to stop the Witness. Don’t tell me you agree with it.

It’s not that simple.

Bud, it’s exactly that simple.

I don’t answer. And as our conversation subsides, I think about gods and their motives.

By the end, I even understood why the Witness did what it did. Agree, definitely not, but understand? Sure. It’s scary to live in a world without a built-in meaning. To face every day without knowing whether you’ll end it crying, laughing, or dead. The universe is a chaotic place, all rough edges and gritty surfaces, and as you get older it starts to wear you away. I’m only a few centuries old, and I already have days sometimes where I’m just too tired to face the universe. I can only imagine that something as old as the Witness would ache with that exhaustion, all the time. In that light, it almost makes sense that it’d try to transform the universe completely into a shape that wouldn’t hurt it. A shape without any pain at all, because it’s without anything to feel pain. Abhorrent, obviously, but almost understandable.

I’ve never completely understood the Traveler, though.

But I know two people who do. Thermidor understands it on an instinctive level—the moment Savathûn showed up as a Lightbearer, he immediately knew that she’d been chosen. And Silver… I don’t know exactly what she went through, the three years she spent in hiding after Riven, after she learned what she was. But she came back with some kind of insight. The Traveler was just part of it.

I asked them both to explain it to me, once. Thermidor talked about finding our own meaning in a meaningless universe, about proving that absolute power didn’t corrupt absolutely, about redemption and hope that the universe wasn’t created cruel. Most of it went over my head, but bits of it stuck with me.

Silver just gave me one of her looks, like she can see how my entire past led up to this moment and how it’ll shape the course of my entire future. And then she said just seventeen words.

The best voices never allow themselves to be heard. This lesson is worth teaching again and again.

A couple hours later, I wake up Rogier for his watch and turn in for the night.

The sun is setting behind the mountain. Its jagged, rocky teeth cut the light into fractal shapes, dappling the plain in patterns like firing synapses.

Before the notched mountain is a tree. Its leaves—teardrops of gold from the eye of a weeping world—fall in streams all over the plain. As they touch the barren rock, the leaves blacken, burning to charcoal in an instant.

There are only two other people on the plain with me this time, and one of them is already dead. Melina’s corpse is still burning, the flames somehow licking up out from under her dark cloak. Even though I can see her face, pale white in death, it doesn’t burn. It’s as though the fire is consuming her soul as fuel, but her body—illusory as it is—remains unaffected.

The other person there is someone I’ve never seen before. He’s wearing twisted, half-melted armor that might once have been well-made knight’s gear. A shortspear dangles from his right hand. Its bladed head flickers with a sickly yellow flame—not the same as the one burning Melina’s remains, but not completely different either.

“Invader,” says the man. His voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t used it in years.

“No,” I say.

“Turn back,” he says. “Leave this place while you can. Let the gods fight over their little fiefdom. Leave before you grow entangled in the roots, before the branches cover over you, hiding away the sky.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? My ship’s busted, and so is my transponder. I can’t even call for help.”

It’s unusual for me to be so in control of myself during a crypt vision. But I’m entirely myself today. There’s no animating force in my arms, in my brain, pushing me to kill the people I love. Just me.

“Then conclude your business and be off,” the man tells me. He’s speaking faster now, almost frantic, and the spear twitches oddly in his hand, almost as if it has a mind of its own. “Kill the general, call down the stars, repair your machines, and leave. Do not grow involved. Do not offer fealty to any god. Do not bring the Empyrean to the Erdtree.”

My eyes narrow. “I promised my help to Melina.”

“Then break your promise!” the man roars with sudden fury, and the spear is suddenly raised and ready to thrust towards me. But he’s still outside melee range, so I’m not worried. Yet. “Do not follow this road! It will lead only to ruin! If you are very lucky, only you and the maiden will suffer for it. But if you are not…”

Suddenly, he staggers. His hand twitches on his spear. His head lowers suddenly, like the muscles in his neck have given out. Then he looks up again, and even through the narrow slits in his visor, the yellow fire that’s filled his eye sockets is unmistakable. Tongues of flame lick out around the slits, scorching the metal of the helmet.

COME CLOSER, O MOTH MINE. APPROACH THIS FURIOUS FLAME.

The voice rings through my head like vibrations through a gong. I can feel it burying itself inside me, like a tick digging into flesh, determined not to be dislodged no matter how hard it’s pulled away.

THIS WORLD IS A STOLEN FOUNDATION. THE CITADEL BUILT ON SUCH THEFT MUST BE BURNED.

Behind the man who is not a man, the man who is a god, the Erdtree catches fire, burning yellow and terrible.

THE GREATER WILL HAS SET IN MOTION A TERRIBLE FATE FOR ITS STOLEN EMPYREAN.

I scream. Somehow, under the helmet, I can see the man’s face twisting into a rictus grin, flames bursting from behind his blackening teeth.

BUT GUARDIANS MAKE THEIR OWN FATE, DO THEY NOT?

Trinovar wakes me just after sunrise. “I fear we shan’t have any fair weather for some time now,” he says, glancing up at the scarlet sky. “But even in this foul land, we travelers must break our fast.”

“Right,” I say, looking down at my hands. They’re shaking. I clench them into fists until they stop. “Right. Breakfast.”

Breakfast turns out to be a small meal of dense bread and mutton pemmican. I’m silent for the start of the meal, still trying to pull my thoughts away from my dream. If you can call it a dream. The god’s booming voice still clings to me like the smell of smoke after leaving a burning building. I’m almost surprised that the others can’t hear it on me.

Fortunately, I don’t have to start the conversation. Winchester handles that, popping up beside me in a flicker of blue. “So,” he says. “Trinovar, you said we should hit Redmane Castle in about two days if all goes well?”

“Far from a certainty, in these lands, but aye.”

“Are the roads gonna be more dangerous than the rest of the place?” my Ghost asks. “If we can keep things safer by taking a longer route, that might be worth it.”

“I could not say,” Trinovar admits. “I have not spent time enough in Caelid to know such details.”

“Nor have I, I’m afraid,” Rogier says. “Marika, we should have asked D. If Gurranq is truly in the Dragonbarrow, he will surely know the safest paths in and out of Caelid, even if he usually uses a teleporter to travel to and from the Beast Clergyman’s hideaway.”

“Who is this Beast Clergyman?” I ask, finally managing to pull myself out of my brooding with the allure of unanswered questions. “You said D was looking for him while you were still traveling together.”

“Gurranq is said to be a cleric of the Golden Order who has undertaken vows to battle Those Who Live in Death,” Rogier says. “Rumor of him spread throughout the Lands Between after the Shattering, or so I have gathered. By the time I returned from beyond the Fog, they had long since settled. He’s not often spoken of, but most in the Lands Between have at least heard his name.”

“Even I had heard of him, little contact as I had with anyone who might deliver me such rumors,” says Trinovar. “I had always assumed him more an abstract rallying cry for those who sought to exterminate Those Who Live in Death than an actual man.”

“Well, he’s not a man, according to many of the rumors,” Rogier says. “Though of course, D and I never found any firsthand accounts. But he’s said to be a beastkin of some sort, going about wrapped in bandages and robes. There was no consensus, however, whether he was a beastman of lost Farum Azula, a misbegotten convert to the Golden Order, or something else entirely.”

“You think he can be trusted?” I ask. “How good a judge of character is D?”

“He’s not… it is not, perhaps, one of his strengths,” Rogier says diplomatically, with a small chuckle. “But if the majority of the rumors we gathered hold true, then Gurranq is truly devoted to the same cause that D has dedicated himself to. The extermination of Those Who Live in Death. He can be trusted to further that cause wherever possible, and to prevent those who would counter it.”

“Fair enough.” I stand up, brushing the crumbs from my breeches. “If we don’t have any reason to reroute, let’s hit the main road. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there won’t be anything blocking it.”

Trinovar nods and starts assembling his armor. “I require a few minutes to prepare,” he says. “And ye should all be aware: Rufus hath need of a saddle, at some point, if he is to bear me for more than a few days.”

“The ride uncomfortable?” I ask.

“For him,” Trinovar says. “I fear my armor chafeth against his shoulders. I am doing what I can to mitigate it, and I shall be cushioning myself with my bedroll today, but a true saddle would be better.”

“I’m sure he appreciates it,” I say, walking over and ruffling Rufus’ mane. The lion lets out a playful yowl and butts his head against my chest. “Hey boy,” I say, rubbing the fur behind his ears affectionately. “You’ve been very good to us, you know? I know you weren’t trained to be ridden, but you’ve taken Trinovar like a champ. We appreciate it, we really do.”

Rufus lets out a huff and sits back on his haunches, puffing out his chest proudly.

“You think he can understand you?” Winchester asks, floating over to us. Rufus’ eyes dart to him where he hovers by my shoulder, following him as he bobs gently up and down.

“Maybe not every word,” I say. “But he gets the gist. The Great Rune gives us a connection, I think. I guess being a Shardbearer has its perks.”

“Guess so,” Winchester says. He orbits me, coming to a halt just in front of my face. “Bud, what—gah!”

Before he can finish the thought, Rufus has batted him out of the air with a paw. Winchester sails down, catching himself before he hits the ground, then zips away before disappearing into my hammerspace.

Stop laughing, he grouses at me over our private channel.

I don’t.

I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you, Winchester complains.

Sorry, guess Rufus thinks it’s too early for serious conversations, I subvocalize, still cackling.

What’s he know? He’s just an overgrown housecat.

Be glad he can’t hear you. I don’t reckon he’d take too kindly to that.

Winchester sighs. He falls silent while we all mount up after he summons Always On Time for me, he speaks up again. What’s bothering you this morning? he asks.

I sober up quick. Crypt vision, I say. And I think an Outer God got into it.

There’s a long pause. Traveler, says Winchester. How sure are you?

‘Bout eighty, eighty-five percent? Too many things I’ve never seen to be a normal Crypt vision, and it alluded to my last one. But it might have been artificial. It didn’t have some of the usual Crypt-vision markers.

You think this Outer God wanted to give you a dream and make you think it was yours?

Could be. I gun the engine, and Always On Time shoots forward. And it gets better.

Shit. What else?

It tried to invoke the Anatheme.

You’re kidding.

O Moth mine, it called me. I know what I heard.

Winchester’s silent for a long moment. Bud, I’m starting to worry about how much attention we’re gathering.

“Me too, Chester,” I say under my breath, my words lost on the breeze. “Me too.”

We reach the low wall just a couple minutes later. Its stones, still smouldering, are laid along the crest of the hill. I dismiss Always On Time to jump over it and get my first look at Caelid proper. And, boy, it’s a view.

Just a bit down the hill is what’s left of an old… hovel? Is that the right word? It’s just two little wooden huts around an open patch of ruined flagstones. A guard post, if I have to guess—one that’s been abandoned for at least a few years. There’s a Site of Grace in the central area, just in front of a fence overlooking a cliff.

Down the cliff is a forest of what were once earthlike trees—conifers, like the ones in the EDZ—but they’re just spikes of dead wood now. Perched in one of the gnarled branches is a massive birdlike creature. It’s four times my size if it’s an inch, and its eyes are so sunken that I can’t tell if it even has eyes, or if they’re just empty sockets in its skull-like face. Its black feathers are falling out in clumps. Its beak is long and viciously curved, and either it has teeth in that beak or the beak itself is slightly serrated, and I’m not sure which option sounds worse.

Off to our left is another divine tower like the one in Limgrave, framed between two minor Erdtrees. The road turns north from here before curving around eastward again. In the crimson haze I can see structures in the distance, including a castle slightly south of due east, but I can’t tell if it’s the Castle Redmane we’re headed for.

Rufus leaps over the wall beside me. A moment later, Gullfax and Torrent follow. The four of us stop there for a moment, staring out at the rotting landscape.

“Welcome,” Trinovar says, “to Caelid.”

Chapter Text

“Little sister.”

“Oh! Brother Godwyn! What bringeth thou to my chambers so late?”

“Thou once askedst me what lay in the sealed lands north of the Erdtree. Art thou yet curious?”

“…I suppose I am. Wherefore askest thou?”

“Thou hast been named Empyrean. Come with me. I shall show thee those forbidden lands myself.”

“So,” I say, looking along the horizon at the red-cloaked landmarks. “Where are we going? What’s our route?”

Trinovar pads over to me on Rufus, pointing north. “The road passeth by the minor Erdtree there,” he says. “Thereafter it curveth eastward, and then southward, descending into the Aeonian basin. We shall follow it through the village of Caelem—likely long since ruined, by now—and past the waypoint fortress and the ancient Cathedral of Dragon Communion. Thereafter it shall fork, and we shall turn south again towards the bridge onto Redmane Isle and the castle for which it is named.”

“Mostly a straight shot, then? In terms of roads, I mean. Sounds like there’s only one major fork.”

“Just so,” Trinovar says. “Though I am, of course, relaying information from my travels before the Shattering. It is possible that the infrastructure of Caelid hath changed in the intervening centuries, but I doubt the Redmanes or the Sellians had much opportunity for roadbuilding during the war, nor that they had much capacity for it after the Rot came.”

“Fair enough. Winchester, Sparrow?” My Ghost summons Always On Time again, and I gun the engine.

Before we can leave the ruined homestead behind, though, I see something moving in a pile of hay and refuse. It rises on two rotting legs, growths of corrupted, bone-white lichens spreading across its tumorous red flesh, its ribs poking out from the meat of its torso. Its empty eye sockets turn towards us, and it starts stumbling slowly towards us.

It’s horrible, and horrific. It’s also unbearably sad.

I’ve been fighting the Taken for almost ten years now. Even with the Witness beaten, they haven’t all gone away. Every so often we find a pocket of them, aimless without their king or their god, but still vicious.

This thing isn’t much like the Taken.

The Taken are shells of people, hollowed out and filled with the Darkness-enforced single-minded hatred and drive of their god, now left over from that god’s death. They fill out the same silhouettes as they did before they were Taken, but the substance that fills that silhouette isn’t the substance of the person that once filled that space. They’re like petrified trees, every molecule of living matter replaced painstakingly with the sterile dark matter of the Ascendant Plane. If petrified trees wanted to claw your face off, I mean.

This is almost exactly not the Taken. Its silhouette is distorted by cancerous growths. Where the Taken are fast, clever enough to use cover, and animated by a god’s unrelenting hate, this thing is slow, blank, and I can tell in an instant that even if it was capable of thought anymore it wouldn’t know why it was coming at us. It shuffles its way towards us because that’s what it does. I don’t even think it’s hungry, though I suspect it would take a bite out of any of us if it got the chance.

And yet, unlike a Taken, I know that the person is still in there. Just like they were still trapped in those corpses strung up on crucifixes and burned to charcoal. This thing is undead in the most literal sense. It’s a husk that hasn’t been allowed to die.

I brake Always on Time. “Winchester,” I say. “Give me the Striga.”

Wordlessly, he drops the Weapon of Sorrow into my hands. I take aim and pull the trigger. Even as the gun exalts in its feast, I don’t think I’m imagining the soft sigh of relief that escape’s the dead man’s lips before they melt away into green soulfire.

I turn, jump back on my Sparrow, and start moving again, not waiting for Trinovar or Rogier’s questions.

I can’t get away from Winchester’s, though. You all right, bud?

Fine, I subvocalize.

He’s silent for a few seconds. Then, quietly, This place sucks.

I don’t answer.

You’re, uh, leaving the others behind, Barrett. Just so you know.

I hit the brakes, glancing over my shoulder. He’s right—Trinovar, Rogier, and Melina are all galloping after Always On Time as fast as their mounts can take them, left in the dust by the overclocked sparrow.

So I stop, waiting for them to catch up, unable to distract myself. Winchester takes advantage of the break to appear in front of me, his shell twitching worriedly. “Talk to me, buddy,” he says. “What are you thinking?”

I grit my teeth, because he’s asking me to figure out what I’m thinking. But it’s better than stewing all day long. So I take a deep breath and look towards the red horizon in the distance. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know why that bothered me so much more than… than the bodies on the crucifixes, or Melina’s story, or any of the other horrible shit we’ve run into.”

“But it does bother you more?” he asks. “Or is it just all of it compounding?”

“No.” I shake my head. “This is worse, somehow. It’s…” My mind flashes to Clovis Bray, then to the story I heard of the battle that unleashed the Scarlet Rot—the horror of which I’m only now beginning to understand. “I’m starting to see a parallel between Marika and Clovis,” I say finally.

“The pursuit of immortality?”

“Yeah.” Marika removed death from the logic of this world. Clovis Bray created the Exos to escape from death. And from what I’ve heard, both of them were megalomaniacs. “But it’s also… it’s the rot.”

“Is it just that it’s gross?” Winchester asks.

The others catch up, and I turn around and hit the accelerator, starting to move again before they can ask any questions, though this time I stay slow enough that they can stay just a few paces behind me without running their mounts into the ground. But I continue subvocally, speaking directly to my Ghost.

I’ve crawled through Hive nests. Weird flesh doesn’t bother me. No, it’s… I think back to those crucifixes in Limgrave, the corpses screaming helplessly into the night. …The bodies in Limgrave, they were there as a punishment. A punishment that was absolutely barbaric, that they didn’t deserve, but there was a reason. Someone put them there. Someone made that choice. This isn’t that intentional.

I see something ahead of me and slow to a stop. The others pause beside me.

“Ye gods,” murmurs Trinovar.

A horde of rotting bodies is stumbling down the road towards us. I can’t help but wonder how long they’ve been stumbling down this path, whether they’ve been following it since the rot first swallowed them up. Did they join each other, the same way Trinovar and Rogier have fallen into my orbit? What instinct drives them to keep going? Do they rest? Do they ever turn around?

I shoot Always On Time forward for just a moment, to bring them in range. Then I swing my leg off the sparrow, pull out the Osteo Striga again, and start firing. I can practically hear the gun laughing as it feasts.

Melina said that Malenia unleashed the Scarlet Rot to beat her own half-brother in a fight, I say, over the sound of toxic bolts being blasted through the air. Apparently she’d been trying to keep it contained for her entire life until that point, but she unleashed it here. And it’s not because she decided every poor bastard in Caelid deserved this. It’s because she wanted to win a fight.

We don’t have the whole picture, Winchester warns. Melina wasn’t even there.

What possible details could justify this? I demand.

Absolutely none, he says. We just don’t know if the fault is completely with Melina’s sister. We don’t know anything about anyone in that family besides what Melina’s told us, and she’s got plenty of reason to have a skewed view of some of them.

Which is true. But it’s also not really the point. Eventide was a city, in the Golden Age, I say. A city that hundreds of thousands of people lived in. Not all of them were Exos. Not all of them were going to be Exos. Maybe not all of them even worked for Clovis.

…Where are you going with this? Winchester asks.

Riis-Reborn was a city, too, I continue, ignoring him. Not every Eliksni in it was a combatant. Not all of them hated us the way Eramis did. Plenty of them just wanted a place to live. We know this, because some of them made it to House Light. They didn’t ask for this, Chester.

For… this? He doesn’t get it.

Clovis Bray opened his portal to the Vex machine-world to harvest radiolaria for his Exo project. He wasn’t even thinking about the people who would die when the Vex retaliated. They didn’t deserve his attention. Eramis wasn’t thinking about the noncombatants she was exposing when she summoned the Vex to attack us. She just wanted the Vex to kill us, and they didn’t even succeed.

And you think the Scarlet Rot is like that, he realizes. That these people were just caught in the crossfire.

Collateral damage, I say. Not even a sacrifice, because that implies they were considered. Malenia and Radahn were demigods. Whatever happened, I doubt they spared these poor bastards a second thought.

Suddenly, something touches my arm. I whirl around, raising Osteo Striga, but it’s just Torrent, his nose nudging against me. On his back, Melina looks down at me with something unreadable, but unmistakably pained, in her face.

“They are gone, Barrett,” she says softly.

I look down the dusty road and see that she’s right. There’s nothing left there, not even corpses, just a field of smouldering soulfire, already burning away in the crimson-tinted daylight. “Right,” I say, and I’m surprised when my voice comes out hoarse. “Yeah. We should keep moving.”

I see something moving in my peripheral vision, at my shoulder, but it’s not Torrent. I glance over and see that Melina’s reaching down, her hand fading into pale blue mist where it tries in vain to touch my shoulder. “Thank you,” she says. “And… I am sorry.”

“None of this is your fault,” I say.

“Perhaps not,” she murmurs. “But if even one of us had been blessed with your heart, Barrett… things might be different now.”

I want to tell her that there’s nothing she could have done. That it’s not her fault that her own brother decided to burn her alive. That she has no responsibility for what happened after that. But I don’t want to air it all out in front of the others. So I just silently pat Torrent’s neck beside where her hand rests on the reins, and then walk back over to my sparrow.

Trinovar and Rogier don’t try to speak as I mount up. Which I’m grateful for. But I’ve worked through the worst of it, now. I’m still upset—anger and sadness mixed up in my chest—but I no longer feel like I’m choking on it. “Sorry about that,” I say to them.

“No need for apology,” says Trinovar, glancing down at the gun in my hands. “That weapon…”

“It destroys them,” I say. “Completely. Not even the removal of the Rune of Death can prevent it. It’s… the only mercy I can really give, at some point.”

“More mercy than anyone else could offer,” Rogier says quietly.

“Maybe,” I say noncommittally. Because, the truth is, I might be able to do more.

Lumina was able to purify Rogier from the Death Blight. It might be able to cure the Scarlet Rot. But I don’t think it can fix those wretches. Their bodies are falling apart, bone held together by rot and not much else. Lumina can heal, but it can’t heal that. Light-based healing is typically a lot more effective on Lightbearers than on others—it stimulates our own regeneration as well as healing on its own. Lumina might be helpful if I encounter someone afflicted with the Rot whose body is still mostly intact, but not if they’re already well past what would, on any other planet, be a corpse.

I shake my head, slinging Osteo Striga onto my back. Chester doesn’t transmat it out—he and I are on the same page. We’ll probably have a lot more use for it before too long. “Let’s keep moving,” I say.

We do. A hill looms on our right, and the road curves around it. As we start around the bend, what looks like a ruined military encampment, complete with collapsed and burning palisades becomes visible from behind the hill. The road passes directly between the rocky cliff and the camp.

Between the two is a massive carriage. It looks more like a train car, especially with its giant wagon wheels fallen off the axles and lying in the dust beside it. The carriage probably had an escort, based on the corpses in blue and red surcoats lying in the middle of the road. None of that is what draws my eye.

No, what gets my attention is the trio of… things that are working on eating the bodies. They look a bit like dogs, but with the proportions all wrong. They have massive hind legs and tiny forelegs that dangle uselessly from their torsos. Their heads are enormous, easily a third of their entire bulk. Their fur is matted and mangy.

Without a single word to each other, we stop. “Hey,” I say. “What the hell are those?”

“Aeonian hounds,” Trinovar says. “They were never especially popular outside these lands, as they are larger than most lords would desire in a hound, and tend to be vicious.”

“So just a weird breed of dog?” I ask.

“Just so.”

I just sit there for a moment, leaning forward on Always On Time’s handlebars, staring at the animals. “Hey, Winchester,” I say finally. “Are you starting to piece together how any of this got on this world?”

“Nope,” says Winchester, popping up beside my shoulder. “Didn’t think it was possible for any of this to make less sense.”

I shake my head slowly. “Take a note of it, I guess. The evolutionary history of this planet has got to look insane, assuming any of this is natural.”

“Big assumption there,” Winchester says dryly.

“What are you discussing?” Rogier asks. “Evolutionary history? What is that?”

I sigh. “Remind me to give you a crash course on natural selection when we make camp,” I say. “For now, let’s keep moving. There a way around these things, you think?”

“I see a Caelic Raven feeding on the dead in the encampment,” says Melina. “That route will be no safer.”

“And Gullfax will not make it up that slope,” says Rogier, pointing to the rocky cliff on our right.

“Fine,” I say. “Winchester, give me… Hm. What have we got that’s loud?”

“You wanna try and spook ‘em?”

“Worth a shot, right?”

“I guess.” Winchester is silent for a moment. “If you don’t wanna burn power ammo, we’ve got your old Igneous Hammer?”

“That’ll do.” The hand cannon materializes at my hip. I draw it, flip it in my hand—it’s a habit, don’t judge—and fire a warning shot at the carriage between the hounds. The Hammer’s retort echoes off the cliff face, much louder than the rapid clicking of the Striga.

The hounds bolt upright. They look a bit like meerkats, looking around for the source of the sound. They look our way. Unfortunately, they don’t seem intimidated. They start bounding over like those wacky kangaroo things that wander around the Old Australian desert. Even worse, the raven Melina saw must have heard the gun too, because I see it take off. It rises above the encampment and flaps towards us on wings that, as it gets close enough for me to see details, look like they’re missing a few too many feathers to actually carry its weight.

“That didn’t work,” Winchester observes.

“Yeah, thanks, I noticed.” I sigh and call on the Light as I holster the Hammer. In its place, the Golden Gun falls into my hand. Four shots later, no more giant animals are coming our way.

As I dismiss it, Rogier trots Gullfax up to my sparrow. “You can destroy seemingly anything that stands in your way. And yet you are merciful to a fault.”

“Not a fault.” Never a fault.

“Why?” he asks.

I shoot him a look. “Would you do differently if you had this kind of power?”

“I do not know,” he says, and I realize he’s not judging me—he’s honestly curious. He wants to understand my logic. I get the feeling I know how his last conversation with D must have gone, before they parted ways.

So I take a deep breath and try to answer. “The first Lightbearers were warlords,” I say. “They built fiefdoms and ruled the mortal humans in them with an iron fist. Some were better. Many weren’t. And those warlords were stopped because there were a few Lightbearers who decided we had a duty to be better. We had all this power, and that gave us a duty to protect the people who didn’t, not just to rule them. I’m not one of those Iron Lords, but I follow in their tradition.”

“You see it as a duty, then?”

“And a privilege.” I remember Sara, and my time with the Dredgens. “I’ve been on the other side of that question, Rogier. I’ve been someone who saw his ability to do violence as a right. This is better. I like being a Guardian a lot more than I ever liked being… what I was before. I like myself as a Guardian better than I like who Barrett-12 was then.”

“And yet there must have been a reason you indulged in violence before,” Rogier says. “Was it a difficult sacrifice, to give that up?”

I never saw Sara die, and she didn’t leave a corpse. But I remember standing over Joni’s shell, after it was all over, wishing I could cry. “Yes and no,” I murmur. “Yes, it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. But by that point… I didn’t really have a choice, anymore. She was already gone.”

“…Ah.” Rogier falls silent.

I shake myself out of my reverie. “Anyway. Let’s get moving.”

Chapter Text

“Hey there, Scythe. Ya need somethin’?”

“Hope. Going somewhere?”

“Ah, you know me! I like my fresh air, is all.”

“Right. That’s why your room is completely empty. You even took your blankets.”

“Can ya blame me? I gotta find me a supplier for those blankets. Not a lot o’ soft things out in the black.”

“Hope. Where are you going?”

“Ah, Scythe, you gonna try and stop me from leavin’? Heard you ‘n Vile shot up a bar on the frontier a couple days back. Feel like addin’ one more body to your count?”

“…It wasn’t like that. We didn’t want a fight.”

“Maybe you didn’t, Scythe. So, how about it? We gonna have some fun?”

Caelem is more of the same. Mostly.

Sure, the poor, rot-infested zombies are on fire, here, and when one of them gets close enough to hit me it explodes like an incendiary grenade, but they’re still slow, and there’s enough delay before the one detonates that Trinovar can pull me away before it goes off. The next time one of them tries it, I’m expecting it, and I dodge before he goes boom.

Yes, two of them get close enough to blow up. There’s a lot of them.

Before too long, the four of us are standing in the middle of the ruined town, Melina still astride Torrent, the rest of us a few paces ahead of our mounts, as silence falls. A breeze rushes through the humid, warm air, carrying with it the sickly sweet scent of rotting flesh.

“Thanks for the save,” I tell Trinovar.

“Of course, Barrett.” The Crucible Knight sheathes his blade slowly, as if he’s half expecting another of the zombies to jump out from behind a building. But none does. The town is silent as the grave; even the soft hiss of flesh burning away into soulfire has faded away.

“I hate this place,” I say.

“I think you speak for all of us,” Rogier says, a little shakily.

I holster Osteo Striga on my back and walk back to my sparrow. The Weapon of Sorrow hums its satisfaction in the back of my mind—if it had a mouth, it’d be licking its lips. “Let’s keep moving,” I say. I shoot a glance up at the sky. “We should make camp before too much longer.”

It’s getting on into the late afternoon. We’ve been riding and fighting in a cycle for hours. Even I’m getting tired, mentally if not physically, and I can’t imagine anyone’s doing any better.

But Rogier surprises me. “We still have some hours of daylight,” he says as he pulls himself onto Gullfax’s back. “We can at least make it to the old Waypoint.”

“There may be worse than rotting wretches wandering these streets as we pass deeper into Caelid,” Trinovar warns. “It would not do to battle the Kindred of Rot while exhausted.”

“I have some hours yet in me,” Rogier says, avoiding our eyes. “As does Gullfax.”

The horse tosses his mane energetically, as if in agreement. But I’m still hesitant. “There’s no huge rush, is there?” I ask. “Radahn will still be there if we take a few extra days. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

Rogier grimaces. I can’t see anything but his mouth under the wide brim of his hat. “I… suppose not.”

Still, he pushes Gullfax a little faster as we continue. I let him set the pace, running Always On Time at a sedate hum behind him, my eyes on the back of his head.

About half an hour after we leave Caelem behind, we hit another crumbling wall like the one outside the smouldering church. This one, however, has an opening where the road passes through. My guess is that this wall was built before the Shattering, and wasn’t meant to contain something like the Scarlet Rot.

There’s also someone here. Just a few dozen paces from a Site of Grace is an old woman, perched on a wooden stool. Her proportions seem almost alien, with a bulbous head and a back bent double over herself, so that even though she’s squatting on her wide stool she still has to lean heavily on her staff or risk falling forward off of it. The staff has several hollow gourds dangling from its tip, and she cradles it with both hands and, oddly, one of her feet. Her robes are in tatters now, though they were once dyed in rich red and blue. None of that draws my attention half as much as the empty sockets where her eyes should be, which gaze blindly in our direction as we approach. “Ah, ah,” she gasps out as we approach, her tone reedy and desperate. “Travelers, travelers. Your fingers, please, your fingers… I can read them, yes, your fingers, please?”

Trinovar breathes in sharply beside me. We slow, even Rogier unwilling to just ride past without pause. “Even here…” the Crucible Knight murmurs.

“Who is she?” I ask.

It’s Melina who answers. “A Finger Reader,” she says softly, and there’s pity in her golden eye. “Once, they were honored clerics of the Two Fingers, who interpreted their movements to deliver the dictates of the Greater Will. But when most of the Fingers died, they remained.”

“There is a Reader in the Roundtable Hold, to interpret for the Fingers which remain there,” says Rogier. “But all those I’ve seen elsewhere in the Lands Between have been… sorrier creatures.”

“Guides,” says Trinovar, sliding off of Rufus’ back and walking over to the old woman, “without Guidance.” He begins fiddling with the straps of his gauntlet. “Reader, I offer thee my fingers.”

“Oh, blessings on you, blessings on you,” she mumbles with all the giddy joy of an addict offered another day’s worth of her drug.

Trinover pulls off his left gauntlet and holds out his bare hand to the woman. She snatches it, visibly shuddering in apparent ecstasy as her wrinkled skin touches his. “Ahhh… yes,” she whispers. “You seek gods in a land that seems all but godless. You think you have found them. You are right, and you are wrong. More than one divinity may lay claim to an Empyrean. The line between light and dark, O seeker mine, is so very thin.”

My whole body goes stiff with terror. In our private channel, I hear Winchester start chanting, Shit, shit, shit, shit…

No one else notices. And although I’m taking a deep breath to shout a warning, Trinovar just says, “I thank thee for thy guidance, Reader,” as he straps his gauntlet back on. Then he walks back to Rufus.

What do I do? I ask Winchester.

Shoot her in the head, he says flatly.

I can’t just do that, I protest. Just because someone uses the words doesn’t actually mean they’re invoking the Anatheme. It might be a religion that was founded by something that uses it, but the woman herself might not know how. Even if she does use it, it doesn’t necessarily make her evil. Look at Silver.

Then don’t, and let’s get the hell out of here, Winchester says. Before someone gets the bright idea to ask her for directions.

Exomind bodies are designed to mimic human functions, even unconscious ones. It’s synthetic saliva I swallow, odorless synthetic sweat I can feel breaking out on the specifically located artificial glands between my plates, but artificial or not, I’m still breaking out in a cold sweat. I wipe my brow and clear my throat. “Let’s… get moving,” I say.

Melina shoots me a curious look, but doesn’t protest as I gun my engine and lead us past the woman. I don’t relax until the wall fades into the distance behind us.

“They are unsettling, I admit,” says Trinovar, Rufus cantering beside me on his heavy paws. “It is a tragic fate they have suffered. But they mean no harm, and could do little even should they mean to.”

I clear my throat. “Do they always say that?” I ask. “‘O seeker’… uh, theirs?” I carefully don’t finish the invocation myself. I don’t think it’s possible to accidentally invoke the Anthem Anatheme, but I really don’t want to risk it. I’ve seen what it can do, both to the person making the wish, and to the one granting it.

“Not always,” says Trinovar. “But it is a common part of their service, I believe. Why?”

“It’s… the phrase has power,” I say hesitantly. “It’s… well, it’s really damn dangerous. And what she said about the line between light and dark… Someone else once said that to a friend of mine.” I still remember the mask of hate and grief on Lex’s face as they stood over Uldren, the Ace of Spades in their steady hand. “That person had also been exposed to that power. It’s… It worried me, let’s say.”

Trinovar shoots me a look. “More than worried, it seemeth,” he says. “Thou seemest positively afeard.”

I take a long breath. “I am,” I admit.

“Of the finger reader?” Rogier asks, slowing Gullfax. We all slow to a stop. “What do you fear she might do?”

I hesitate. “It’s… it’s called the Anthem Anatheme,” I say. “It’s old magic. Magic that has much further reach than most of the stuff I’ve seen in the Lands Between. Most of what you have here is local to this world. The Anatheme isn’t. It’s some of the oldest magic in the universe, that I know of.”

“And this invocation, ‘O seeker mine,’ is part of it?” Melina asks.

“Yeah. It—it traps the person in a rhetorical cage, putting them linguistically under your control. Or something like that, anyway.” That’s how it’s been described to me. The dragon—or other wish-granter—traps the wisher within a noun of their choice—seeker, in this case—sandwiched between the exclamation ‘O’ to command their attention and ‘mine’ to own them.

I’ve never been completely clear on whether the invocation offers direct control over the person making the wish—whether the invoker can manipulate the person into making a wish they otherwise wouldn’t, or otherwise mess with their minds. I’m also not sure whether that would be worse than knowing that everything that goes wrong around Ahamkara comes entirely from the desires of the wish-makers, without any outside interference.

“How does it work?” Rogier asks, leaning forward interestedly. “It sounds—”

That’s when the storm of needles hits me in the side and throws me off my sparrow.

They’re long—each six inches, at least—and although a bunch of them break against my shield, a few break through it and bury themselves in my synthleather armor and the metal of my side. They strike with enough force to knock the wind out of me and send me sprawling sideways. I react immediately, rolling to my feet and reaching for the gun on my back before I’ve even started to recover my breath.

There are two of them. They look a bit like giant, pale centipedes, at least from a distance. But that comforting illusion fades quick. They stand on only two legs—two human legs—and their bodies, although they look like the bulbous thorax and abdomen of insects, are made of skin and flesh, not chitin. What look initially like the hundred simple legs of a centipede are actually emaciated human arms, grafted to the underside of their bodies, twitching and writing. There’s a serrated glaive made of pale bone held in particularly long arms at each of their sides. They have no visible eyes—their heads are shaped like the shells of hermit crabs, and the only recognizable features are mandibles dangling from below their mouths. Only, they aren’t mandibles. They’re the chubby arms of a human infant or toddler.

All in all, maybe the most horrible things I’ve ever laid eyes on.

One of them charges at the group. The other one splays out its hundred arms, and needles shoot out from slits underneath them. The needles sail through the air, somehow guided, shooting straight towards me. I don’t feel like getting hit again, so I roll under the volley. A couple of them score across my back, but most of them can’t turn fast enough and thud into the ground behind me as I come back up to my feet. Then I start firing at the one in the back while Trinovar’s sword clashes against the glaive of the one in front.

At that point, it’s just a matter of time. They took us by surprise initially, but they’re not durable enough to stand up to the Striga, nor are they fast enough to deal with both Trinovar’s sword and Rogier’s spells at the same time. I deal the deathblow to mine after just a few moments of sustained gunfire, and less than a second later the other one falls with one of Rogier’s magic darts in its back. I hit it in the dome with a burst from Osteo Striga for good measure.

As both creatures melt into soulfire, I turn to my companions. “So,” I say conversationally as I pick needles out of my armor. “What the hell were those?”

“Kindred of rot,” Trinovar says. “They are strange creatures—worshippers of the sealed Rot-God. They are not native to Caelid—I believe their home is deep underground, at the site where the Rot-God was originally sealed, centuries ago.”

“They look grafted,” I say. “Any relation to Godrick and his creations?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Trinovar says slowly. “But there are many secrets in these lands. It is possible that the art of grafting was originally learned from the Kindred, I suppose. It is certainly not a magic that cameth originally from the Golden Order.”

“It seems all too likely,” says Rogier thoughtfully. “But surely the Scarlet Rot would have infected Limgrave if grafting were magic sourced from its god?”

“Maybe not,” I say. “It’s possible to separate a paracausal power from the being that provides it, even if it’s not always easy or obvious how.” We did it with Stasis, after all. The Witness tried to give us Darkness powers to pull us to its side, and we wound up using them to freeze its minions. It didn’t work for everyone, and Stasis is still dangerous for some people if they’re not careful, but it didn’t inherently tie us to our enemy.

“I suspect that would require more circumspection, and more insight, than I would guess Lord Godrick possessed,” Rogier points out.

“Godrick was not the inventor of grafting,” Trinovar counters. “He merely inherited it from his ancestor, Godefroy, another disgraced scion of the Golden Lineage.”

“Was Godefroy smart enough to do that sort of work?” I ask.

“I could not say,” Trinovar says. “I never served him. I know not whether he was even the inventor of grafting himself, or whether some cantor pioneered it in his employ.”

“Cantor?” Rogier asks. “Grafting is a form of incantation?”

“So I have heard,” says Trinovar. “Though I have never attempted to perform it myself. My magical training lieth entirely within the Aspects of the Crucible that are the heritage of mine order.”

“Incantations draw power from outside, right?” I ask. “As opposed to sorceries, which use your own paracausal abilities.”

“Just so,” Rogier confirms. “Though the line is not so clean as that. The incantations of Fundamentalism, pioneered by the Elden Lord Radagon himself, notably require both faith and intellect.”

“So maybe it wasn’t a cantor that learned to graft without letting the Scarlet Rot escape,” I say. “Maybe it was an Outer God imitating the Rot-God’s abilities.”

There’s a pause. “It is difficult to imagine one Outer God imitating the abilities of another,” says Trinovar slowly. “They are each entirely different, according to all scripture. Would they not find such imitation anathema?”

“And yet the Golden Order adopted the lightning incantations of the dragons after the fall of Gransax,” Rogier counters. “It is the greatest strength of the Golden Order, that in its golden age it could adopt the qualities of those who lived outside it.”

Trinovar shifts on his feet. “Thy point is… well made,” he acknowledges slowly. “The Aspects of the Crucible themselves predate the Golden Order. Yet the dogma that appeared in the latter days before the Shattering began to turn against all those adopted traditions—lightning incantations, lunar sorceries, and the Crucible alike.”

“And in so doing, weakened the Order,” Rogier says.

My mind is wandering. That finger reader invoked the Anthem Anatheme. She works for the Greater Will, at least indirectly. Last night, a different Outer God—the Frenzied Flame, probably—invoked it.

“I’m starting to get the feeling that the Greater Will is unusual,” I say aloud.

“Of course,” Trinovar says. “‘Tis the greatest of the Outer Gods.”

“I mean in that it seems to assimilate other paracausal abilities,” I say. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it… adopted grafting from the Rot-God. And I had a vision, last night, of a different Outer God using the Anthem Anatheme.”

“You did not mention this,” Melina says quietly.

“I hoped it wouldn’t matter,” I say honestly. “The Anatheme is dangerous, but it’s less dangerous to me than to most people. Exposing all of you to it didn’t seem wise. But then that Finger Reader used it, and now it seems like I might not have another option.”

“What is it?” Trinovar asks. “What power exerteth this Anatheme over the world?”

“It grants wishes,” I say. “‘The triumph of the subjective will over the objective universe,’ I’ve heard it called. There’s an entire race of beings—Ahamkara, wish-dragons—who evolved to draw sustenance by eating the space between the reality that exists before and after a wish is made. But using the Anatheme can drive someone insane, if they’re not really careful with their limits. The bigger the wish, the more power you get from granting it, if you can—but the more power you get, the more it twists you up. It makes you want to grant more. And if you’re not careful, that addiction can become the only thing you care about.”

“Have you ever used it?” Rogier asks.

“No,” I say. “I don’t even really know how, although I might be able to figure it out. I have a friend who’s used it before. She’s always really, really careful with it.”

“And which god was it that appeared in your dream?” asks Melina. Something in her voice tells me she’s already guessed.

“I’m…” I hesitate, meeting her gaze. “I’m not… completely sure.”

“The Frenzied Flame,” she says softly.

Trinovar inhales sharply. “The Yellow Fire is aware of thee?”

“I think so,” I say. “I dreamed of a knight carrying a flaming spear. He tried to tell me to leave the Lands Between, and then partway through the dream the Outer God… possessed him. That’s when it tried to invoke the Anatheme.”

“A knight with a flaming spear…” Trinovar says slowly. “I know not who that might be. Rogier, Me—Morna, have ye any inkling?”

“It might be Vyke,” says Rogier before I can do more than notice Trinovar stumbling over Melina’s name. “He was one of the first Tarnished to return to the Lands Between, mere days after the Shattering. The few surviving records suggest that he nearly became Elden Lord, but stumbled near the end of his journey. I know not what became of him after that, but one manuscript I read in Liurnia implied that he had been consumed by the Flame of Frenzy.”

“Vyke,” I say. “I’ll keep the name in mind. But regardless—that makes two Outer Gods who are associated with the Anthem Anatheme. One of which is the Greater Will. Maybe it learned that from the Frenzied Flame?”

“It is possible,” says Melina softly.

“Though it seemeth unlikely that the Greater Will would learn anything from the Yellow Fire, of all gods,” says Trinovar. “Of all the Outer Gods, none are so anathema to the Greater Will as that one.”

Silence falls between us for a moment. Then I shrug. “I don’t reckon we’re gonna get any answers standing around,” I say, jumping back onto Always On Time. “Let’s keep moving. We’ll keep our eyes open.”

“Agreed,” says Melina. “We should find a Site of Grace to make camp for the evening.”

At this point, the sun’s nearly setting. Even Rogier doesn’t complain at the prospect of taking a break, and we don’t have to wait long. We follow the road for just a few more minutes as it curves around to the left before we pass some ruins on our right. “The Caelid Waypoint,” Trinovar says as we pass it. “Or what remaineth of it.”

“There is a Site of Grace not far from here, then,” says Rogier. “In a hollow just west of that hill ahead of us.”

I look over at him. “I didn’t think you’d been here before,” I say.

His mouth is set in a hard line. “I have not,” he says.

“But you remember it?”

He doesn’t answer, and I remember what he told us a few days ago. Some Tarnished lose much or all of their memories upon their return from beyond the fog, he said. I am such a one.

“Guardians lose their memories when we’re first resurrected,” I tell him quietly, bringing Always On Time abreast of Gullfax. “But the process isn’t always perfect with Exos like me. I know how it feels to remember something, and not remember how.”

He nods stiffly. “It is… discomfiting.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

We reach the hill, and sure enough there’s a Site of Grace nestled against the hillside. We stop, and Winchester dismisses my sparrow while the others tie and feed their mounts. Within a few minutes, we’ve set up watches, and Rogier and Trinovar are laying out their bedrolls.

I sit down beside Melina, the golden flicker of Grace casting long shadows in front of us on the red sand. As the others drift off, we sit in silence together.

“I am sorry,” she says suddenly into the night.

“For what?”

She hesitates. “I fear I may have drawn the Frenzied Flame’s attention to you,” she whispers. “I wish I had said nothing of it.”

“I’m glad you did,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t have to carry that alone.”

“You should not have to be drawn into it, either,” she counters.

“I’m a Guardian. That’s the gig. Besides, I’d already been getting visions—when I tried to touch the Site of Grace, just after we met, almost every time I died. Clearly some Outer God had already noticed me. I don’t see any reason to assume you telling me your story would have made it any worse. I can handle a few bad dreams.”

“Please do not dismiss the danger,” she says. “The Frenzied Flame is a terror unlike any other Outer God. The others wish only to rule. The Frenzied Flame wishes to destroy.”

“I’m not dismissing it,” I promise her. “But in my experience, something like that only sends dreams and visions if it can’t do direct harm. I’ll keep an eye on it, I promise, and I’ll let you know if I see more. But I’ve dealt with gods trying to manipulate me before.”

She lets out a breath. “Perhaps I seem cowardly to you,” she whispers. “You have fought gods which span the stars, and here I am, fearful of one which holds sway over little more than a continent.”

“You don’t seem cowardly at all. Just because I haven’t encountered the Frenzied Flame before doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. The universe is a really big place.”

“I suppose it is. Larger than I could have imagined, before I met you.”

We lapse back into silence for a moment. Then I remember something else from my dream last night. “There was… one other thing,” I say. “Something the Frenzied Flame said.”

She looks at me sharply, but says nothing.

The words are still perfectly framed in my memory. Psychic interactions have a way of sticking with you. “It said that the Greater Will had a terrible fate in store for its ‘stolen Empyrean.’ Do you think it was talking about you?"

She frowns. “Stolen Empyrean? How can an Empyrean be stolen?”

“No idea. Any idea what the terrible fate it was talking about is?”

She looks away. “No,” she says.

She’s lying. The better part of me wants to let her have her secret. But… “The most dangerous thing these visions can do to us is sow mistrust,” I say. “Don’t lie to me, sweetheart. Please.”

She grimaces, hugging her knees, then buries her face in her arms. “Yes,” she whispers, muffled. “I do know the fate of which it speaks. I can almost feel it pulling me forward.”

“We will break you out,” I promise her. “We make our own fate, remember?”

She’s silent for a long moment. “And if my sacrifice is the only way to end the stagnation of these lands?” she asks quietly. “If my fate is the cost of a rebirth for these lands?”

“Then we find another way,” I say simply.

“What if there is no other way?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. I wonder if I could use Strand to break people’s connection to the Erdtree and its local cycle of death and rebirth? We could bring in a fleet and a few hundred Guardians. We might be able to just evacuate this whole planet.”

Her head shoots up from her arms to stare at me. “You… you could empty the Lands Between?”

“It’s a big universe,” I say. “And the war with the Witness is over. There’s a lot of empty garden worlds, and no crusading fleet looking to keep them lifeless. If the only way to make life better for people in the Lands Between is to keep sacrificing people, then maybe it’s time to try taking the people to a better life somewhere else.”

She’s silent for a long moment. “Many would protest,” she says.

“I’m not gonna force them to leave. But they don’t get to force you to die, or whatever else this fate is, so that they don’t have to.”

She lets out a soft breath. Then she sniffs. I look over at her, but she’s looking away again, and I can only see her sealed eye as a single tear leaks out and runs a trail down the tattoo. “My mother visited me after I was burned,” she whispers. “She told me the fate for which I was born. She told me that the Golden Order would soon collapse, that the line of Elden Lords would be broken, and that a new Order would need to be forged.”

“Which is why the Tarnished were called back, right?”

“Just so. But there is another step to the process. One the Tarnished do not know.” She wipes at her eyes. “The Erdtree has sealed itself closed. Its thorns will allow none to pass. The Elden Ring does not wish to be reforged, for to be reforged is to be reborn, and rebirth can only follow after death.”

“Wait…” I frown. “But if the Elden Ring itself doesn’t want to be reforged, then who is calling back the Tarnished? And how are they supposed to succeed if they can’t get inside the Erdtree?”

“Through me,” Melina whispers. “The Finger Maidens believe that any of them might serve. They are wrong. Only I can open the path. Only I shall be kindling enough to burn the Erdtree.”

My breath catches. “She wants to burn you again?”

“Yes. At the summit of the highest mountain in the far north, on whose foothills I was burned the first time, is the Flame of Ruin. It is my fate to ascend that mountain, reach the flame—and offer myself as kindling to burn the Erdtree.”

Silence falls. I stare at her, trying to come up with something—anything—to say. “I won’t let it happen,” I tell her finally. “I won’t.”

She turns her head to look at me. Her one eye is a drop of gold swimming in unshed tears. But as she meets my gaze, the tiniest beginning of a smile twitches in the corners of her mouth. “I am almost beginning to believe you,” she whispers. “Barrett, I—”

A roar echoes through the valley. Both of us leap to our feet.

“By all the gods!” Trinovar shouts, rolling out of his cot and scrabbling for his sword.

“What the hell was that?” I demand, looking around. The sound was so loud and echoed so heavily that it feels like it came from every direction at once.

“On the other side of the hill,” Winchester says, popping up beside me and summoning Always On Time. “Unless the echo did wacky things to my triangulation.”

I jump onto the sparrow. “I’ll be right back,” I tell the others, then gun the engine. It takes only a minute to get to the top of the hill. I crest it, then stop, staring at the valley on the other side.

There, rubbing its tumor-encrusted back against a dead tree, is unmistakably a dragon.

Chapter Text

“I remember these gates being guarded.”

“They are guarded. I bade the guards make themselves scarce ere I came to fetch thee.”

“Then we are to pass alone into the forbidden lands, without guards or soldiers?”

“I am the slayer of Gransax, and thou art Empyrean. There is naught in these lands so dangerous as that which we bring with us.”

Now, when I say dragon, depending on where you’re from, you might have a couple of very different images in your head. So let me clarify a little.

The poor bastard has tumors and growths of Scarlet Rot blooming all over his body. His back looks less like scaly flesh and more like a patch of grey lichens on the bark of a tree. Similar tendrils of grey growths cover his face like cancerous mutton chops, and blossom in petrified curls from the tips of his horns. The membranes of his wings are mottled and lumpy, with strange red honeycombs bumbling along the edges where they give way to the scaled flesh over his wingbones. His eyes are sunken, black and bloodshot.

What he doesn’t have are tentacles, or a bunch of black, bulbous eyes luminous with ethereal starlight, or an unfolding armor plate over his face. This is a Lands Between dragon, not an Ahamkara. Maybe there’s a common ancestor, maybe not. Maybe this is another case of strange crossover with Earth’s history—I know, peripherally, that dragons featured in human mythology long before we had any recorded interaction with Ahamkara. Maybe this comes from those myths somehow.

(Maybe those myths come from the Ahamkara.)

Okay, says Winchester over our private channel before he’s even finished vanishing into my hammerspace. What do we do with this?

Go around? I suggest. But even as I say it, I can tell that’s not going to be as simple as it sounds. To my right, a ridge extends past the dragon’s valley, but there’s little to no cover if he takes flight, and on the ridge’s other side is a sheer cliff down into the southern ocean. To my left, the land descends into a putrid jungle in a long downward slope. There’s a lot of cover on the other side of the road, but it’s all low ground—to get far enough from the dragon for me to feel confident that he won’t see it, we’ll have to go a mile or more out of our way. And that cover we can use against the dragon is also cover anything else could use against us.

Winchester’s come to the same conclusion. Where? he asks.

All I can do is shrug helplessly. Plan B, then. Do we try to purify it?

What, with Lumina? Bud, it’s a ten-ton flying lizard. You want to try and bring it down with a handgun? You out of your damn mind?

I sigh. We still don’t know if dragons are sapient, I say.

Winchester emerges from my hammerspace to stare me dead in the face, his shell twitching. “Barrett,” he says seriously. “You know what else we don’t know? We don’t know if the Scarlet Rot can infect you. Or me. We don’t know if resurrections will cure it. We don’t know if it’s safe for us here. You’re gettin’ a little too used to having the biggest gun on this world, bud. That is a dragon. For all we know it might share ancestry with Ahamkara. We do know it’s infected with a contagion that we don’t understand that looks at least as dangerous as any biohazard we’ve dealt with back home. You know I appreciate and admire your idealism, but now is not the time.”

I look past him. “You make a good point,” I say. “Now please get back in my backpack.”

His blue eye blinks. “Tell me the big guy didn’t hear us.”

The dragon has turned and is staring up at us with sunken, beady eyes. “Okay,” I say. “I won’t tell you. Backpack please. And pass me Ascendancy.”

Without another word, Winchester slips into my hammerspace, and I feel the comforting weight of my rocket launcher fall onto my back. As the dragon flaps its wings and takes to the air, I tug it out and rest it on my shoulder.  I check the breech—loaded—and take aim. The dragon breathes in, rising above the hills.

I fire, then tense up, bracing to roll out of the way of a jet of flame. Unfortunately, it’s not flame that comes at me. When the dragon exhales, a thick red mist pours out of its mouth, flowing into the air, choking the already blood-red sky in scarlet fog.

Oh, shit, I think in the instant before the haze swallows me whole. I clench my mouth shut and hold my breath. It’s not a hard thing to do, for an Exo. We do need oxygen—partly just because needing to breathe is one of the many ways our bodies fight off DER, and partly because the oxygen’s used in reaction with our h-cells to provide power for our bodies—but we can last a lot longer without air than a human or Awoken. That goes double for Lightbearers who can live on Light and nothing else, if needed.

It doesn’t help. The red mist seeps into my eyes, slipping into the gaps between my plates, passing through seals that are supposed to be airtight, getting under my metal flesh like a parasite under skin. I feel it seeping into my blood—

—liartraitorinvaderinvaderVEX—

—I scream as Solar Light courses through me, burning away the contagion. I find myself on my knees, gasping for breath, surrounded by a conflagration of burning particles of crimson dust. I force myself to my feet.

The dragon looms over me. Its wings are spread to either side like the arms of a praying mantis. Its head is cocked slightly as it watches me stagger to my feet. A massive crater has opened in its side where my first rocket struck, bleeding unnaturally viscous blood. It takes a deep breath. I wince, but all it does is roar at me—screaming rage and pain into the night.

I send my second rocket into its gullet, then pass out as its throat explodes.

SO THIS IS THE POWER IT SO FEARS.

I look up. I’m standing on the same hill, in the same dead forest, but instead of rot and corruption all that surrounds me is black ash. The dragon still looms over me, but instead of mottled grey flesh and blossoming red rot its entire body is yellow flame.

YOU MAY REJECT THE INFECTION, BUT ANOTHER PLAGUE ALREADY PUMPS THROUGH YOUR VEINS.

I’m suddenly horribly, intimately aware of the millions of inert radiolaria carrying my consciousness through my artificial body. Every single one skitters down the highways of my Clarified bloodstream, a tiny seed of machine death, mechanical cancer harnessed—barely—to the whims of a single, human mind.

The Yellow Fire leans its burning head down to look me in the face. It whispers, and even that is deafening.

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND. WE ARE KINDRED. FELLOWS IN RESISTANCE. YOU WILL BURN WITH US EVENTUALLY.

ALL WILL BURN WITH US EVENTUALLY. BETTER TO BURN YELLOW THAN TO TARNISH GOLD.

I come to with a gasp, Light thundering through me as Winchester brings me back.

“Well,” says my Ghost, hovering over me. “I got good news. Resurrection does purge the Scarlet Rot.”

I close my hands around myself, fingers clutching tightly at my upper arms. “That is good news,” I say, and I can’t keep my voice from shaking.

“Shit,” Winchester says, descending to study my face. “You saw something.”

I look past him at the ruined carcass of the dragon. “Yeah,” I whisper.

“The Rot-God they’ve been talking about?”

I shake my head. “The Frenzied Flame again.”

Which, now I think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“Why would the Frenzied Flame talk to you after you were killed by the Scarlet Rot?” Winchester asks blankly.

“I have no idea,” I say. “But remind me to be more careful of the Rot in future, all right?”

“I can do that.” Winchester’s voice has softened. “Barrett. Are you all right?”

I swallow, at once admiring and hating the slightly viscous artificial saliva that fills my mouth. Sometimes the Exomind body is just perfect enough to hurt, just wrong enough to make everything worse. “No,” I say hoarsely. I catch my right hand scratching frantically at the plating of my arm, as though I could tear the radiolaria out of my body. I force it to fall still. “It knew about the Vex, Chester. It knows what I am.”

“What you—bud, you’re not a Vex.”

“I’m closer to it than most people can get without getting assimilated,” I say. “It recognized the radiolaria, Winchester. The Frenzied Flame knows what radiolaria are.”

My Ghost is silent for a long moment. “Shit,” he says finally. “All right. We have to assume that’s important—that it’s not just pulling things out of your mind to unsettle you. Because if the Vex are involved in all this somehow, we have to respond accordingly.”

Somehow, Winchester taking all this seriously—and thinking through it, properly and calmly—helps to cut through my panic. I take a shuddering breath and let go of my own arms. “I haven’t felt like this since the Crypt,” I mumble. I still remember the first time I met Atraks-1’s eyes through the glass in the orbital station, knowing just what I was looking at, and then looking down at the helmet Lex had found on the way in, with the ghastly skin of an Eliksni’s face stretched across the metal.

In that moment, it had been all too easy for me to imagine reaching out my own metal fingers to tear the skin away from a face that used to be mine.

My legs are a little shaky, but they hold me up. “Let’s get back to camp,” I say. “I should at least let them know I’m still alive.”

The others aren’t surprised to see me, though Melina looks me up and down as if half expecting to see a tumor of Rot spreading somewhere on my body.

“We saw the dragon crest the hill,” says Trinovar grimly. “Is it slain?”

“It’s dead,” I say, stamping down the sparrow’s parking brake. “Apparently if you infect a dragon with Scarlet Rot, it breathes rot spores instead of fire. Just a fun little nightmare to keep me awake the next few nights.”

Rogier goes pale. “Truly?”

“Yep.” I take a deep breath. The synthetic adrenaline is already leaching away. Only two minutes ago I felt wired, like I was never going to sleep again. Now it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. “Anybody mind taking the rest of my watch?”

“Not at all,” Rogier says. “Rest, Barrett. There’s not likely to be another dragon anywhere near here. They are territorial creatures.”

“Great,” I say, sliding off my sparrow and trudging back towards my bedroll. “Hopefully it didn’t have a mate or anything.”

By the time I’m on my back, my eyes are already blinking shut.

When Trinovar wakes me to a sky that’s a much brighter shade of red than it was after nightfall, I’m feeling much better. A good night’s sleep with no Crypt visions or eldritch visitors to your dreams will do that for a guy. We have a quick breakfast, then mount up and continue down the road.

As we ride, Melina spurs Torrent into step beside Always On Time. “Are you well?” she asks, just loud enough to be heard over the hoofbeats and the humming of my sparrow’s engine.

“I am now,” I say.

“You worried me last night,” she says. “Was it a difficult fight?”

“The fight wasn’t the hard part,” I say. “Any idea why the Frenzied Flame would contact me after I got infected by the Scarlet Rot?”

Her head whips around to stare at me, her golden eye wide. “Infected with—!?”

“Chester purged it. I’m fine. But I thought there was a separate god of the Rot. Why would the Frenzied Flame be involved?”

She looks disturbed. “I… have no idea. “Are you certain of this?”

“Sure as taxes.”

She lets out a breath. “What did the Flame say to you?”

I grimace. “It’s…” Shit, how do I even explain? I’m tempted to refuse to answer, but I’ve asked her questions that were at least as personal and gotten answers. I owe her this much. “Exos like me, our bodies are partly made out of something called radiolaria. If that stuff isn’t purified in a very specific way, it’s a contagion not that different from the Scarlet Rot that turns anything that it infects into something called a Vex. The Frenzied Flame… knew about that. Knew about the Vex, and how I’m related to them. That scares me.”

She frowns. “Because it implies that these Vex have already found their way to the Lands Between?”

“And that they have a connection to the Outer Gods here, yeah. That’s worrying. The Vex are some of the most dangerous enemies I have left.”

“What are they, exactly?”

“It’s hard to explain,” I say. “They’re machines built around a core of white fluid. That white fluid is the radiolaria, and it’s where the actual Vex consciousness is held. The machine is just a vehicle they pilot around.” I glance at her. “You ever seen something like that?”

“Never,” she says, shaking her head.

“Good. Hopefully you never will.”

A few hours into our travels for the day, we hit a crossroads. There’s a small firepit beside the road, just below a wooden signpost that’s too rotted away to be legible. The embers are still trickling a thread of smoke, and the man beside them is still strapping the pot he used to douse the flames onto his mule when we stop beside him. He looks us up and down as we come to a halt. He’s one of Kalé’s people, I recognize immediately—he’s got the same greying skin and yellow eyes, hidden under a veil and cap. A strange musical instrument, a bit like a cello, is strapped to the side of his mule.

“Hail, travelers,” says the man.

“Merchant,” says Rogier. “This is a most strange land for a traveling salesman. Surely the Rotted can offer few runes in barter.”

The merchant snorts. “I’ve not come to trade with the infected,” he says. “But Castle Redmane will soon hold a festival, and there will be travelers from many distant corners of the Lands Between come to take part. Some of them may have runes to spend. You yourselves are here for the festival, I assume?”

“We’re just here to talk to General Radahn,” I say.

The merchant laughs. “The General isn’t much for talking, these days,” he says. “But if you wish to, ah, engage with him, the festival will be your opportunity—or at least, such is the rumor. Radahn has been locked away for some time, but I’ve heard he’s to be unleashed then.”

“When is this festival set to begin, then?” Trinovar asks.

“The redmanes I spoke to some days ago said it would be held in a little under a week’s time,” the merchant says. “You’ve some days yet.”

“Better early than late,” I say.

“Hm.” Rogier, I notice, isn’t looking at the merchant. Nor is he looking at the road south, which should lead towards Castle Redmane if I understand the geography. He’s looking down the other path at this fork, which runs east and then curves northward as it passes a hill in the distance.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

He blinks at me. “…I think I have been here before,” he says quietly.

All of a sudden, I’m back in Eventide, standing over a frozen cot in an apartment that’s been abandoned for centuries. “Oh.”

He grimaces. “I know we’ve other business here,” he says. “I know we must see the General; I know how important your work is, Barrett, even if I don’t yet understand how it all fits together with the other problems facing the Lands Between. But if there’s yet a week before we can even see Radahn…”

“What’s down that way?” I ask, gesturing at the east road.

“Ah, that’d be Sellia,” says the merchant. “Town of Sorcery, as they call it.”

Rogier takes a slow breath. “Sellia,” he murmurs.

And, well, that makes the decision for me. “Sure,” I say. “What is it, a day out of our way? We can spare that.”

Rogier shoots me a grateful look. “I could come here myself, after the festival…”

“I’d rather no one wander around Caelid on their own,” I say. “Come on. Let’s go see your hometown.”

Chapter Text

“Always knew Hope was too soft for this work.”

“Cull—”

“No! You too, Scythe! All of you, ‘cept Vile! You’re all too damn soft!”

“What do you want from me, Cull?”

“I don’t need anything from you, Scythe. I’m done. I’m done tiptoeing along the edges of the pit. I’m gonna step over the threshold.”

“Don’t do something you’ll regret.”

“If we’re all too scared of doing something we’ll regret, we’ll eventually regret not doing anything.”

It’s hard to describe travel in Rot-blasted Caelid as uneventful. And we did run into trouble a few times over the next day and a half. Another group of Kindred of Rot jumped us just after sunset on the first day, and a wandering gaggle of the Rotted swarmed us just after setting out on the second. But we were ready for those.

We weren’t ready for the troll, standing atop a cliff, throwing massive ceramic jars full of some kind of magical explosive compound down at us.

At this point we’re only a couple miles out from Sellia. We can see its stone gates, reminiscent of the massive Gate of Storms back in Limgrave, just down the road. It stretched between a sheer cliff in the east and a steep, rocky mountain in the west. Two watchtowers loomed high even over the plateaus. A heavy portcullis hangs—raised—over the archway.

And it’s about a mile too far for us to make it under fire.

But this is something I’ve done before. It reminds me of the assault on Soteria’s spire in the Martian desert, with Parvati and Grant beside me while the others focused on the war with Xivu Arath over the scattered bones of Clovis Bray’s failed usurper-god.

(Maybe that’s an uncharitable way of looking at Rasputin. Especially in light of his sacrifice. But Lord Saladin helped me get my feet back under me after everything went to hell with the Dredgens. I might never have known the other Iron Lords, but I knew him. And I never saw it as my right to forgive Rasputin for the slaughter of the Iron Lords when Saladin hadn’t.)

The canyon on the way to Soteria’s spire was swarming with Vex, and had been for a while when we got there. Which meant they’d had time to entrench. There were half a dozen cyclops turrets firing massive blasts of Void down at us. There were heavy minotaur frames chasing us into every building we tried to take cover in. There was a horde of light goblin frames providing covering fire every time we thought we had an opening to attack. And there was a swarm of explosive harpies coming at us like intelligent, vengeful grenades.

This wasn’t nearly that bad. It was just one artillery emplacement, albeit one we had to face with very limited cover from the gnarled, twisted trees growing on the west side of the road. So I did what made sense.

We scattered when the first explosive struck just a couple dozen paces from us. Melina and Torrent vanished into blue mist. “Get to cover!” I ordered Rogier and Trinovar, who obeyed at once. We spurred our mounts across the road and into the rotting valley. We had to dodge a couple more blasts before we found any really good cover, and I found myself hiding behind a tree alone while Rogier and Trinovar pushed Rufus and Gullfax down behind a massive rock a couple hundred feet away.

When the next pot struck their cover instead of mine, I knew I had an opening. The troll artilleryman up on the cliff wasn’t Vex—it couldn’t change firing solutions as easy as breathing. Once he’d nearly struck one target, he’d keep iterating on the angle and strength of his throws until he hit behind their cover and flushed them out. Which meant he wasn’t going for me.

Obviously, that’s a fatal mistake. Rogier and Trinovar can’t kill at a thousand yards. I can.

“Give me my Eye of Sol,” I tell Winchester.

The sniper rifle drops onto my back. I pull it out, duck out of cover, and aim down the scope.

It takes me almost a full second to find the artillerist. To be fair—this is longer range than I’m used to, most Crucible and Gambit arenas aren’t this big,

…But the troll is also about eight times bigger than another Guardian. I might be a little out of practice.

Still, once I find it, my crosshair snaps to its head. I pull the trigger. It staggers halfway through reaching for a jar. Then it falls on its own munitions. I wince as the explosion sets off the entire pile of jars beside it.

“Guess there’s no need to double-tap,” I mutter.

“No need anyway,” says Winchester. “You just got some runes. Also, remember we have limited ammo.”

“For now.”

“For now,” my Ghost agrees.

I holster the sniper rifle and step out from behind cover. Rogier and Trinovar are leading their mounts over to me.

“Well struck,” says Trinovar, looking across at the small landslide which the detonating munitions have unleashed from the cliff. “Or at least, I assume so.”

“A little slow, honestly. Good to know that one shot to the head is enough for a troll, though. At least if it’s followed up with half a ton of exploding jars.”

There are no more obstacles between us and Sellia’s gates. We pass through them and are greeted with a sight unlike any I’ve seen in the Lands Between.

Because Sellia—unlike Gatefront, Summonwater, or Caelem—isn’t a ruin. The buildings aren’t what I’d call well-kept, but they’re intact. The conditions here look better than the state of the Botza district when we first gave it to House Light.

The streets are also deserted. Nothing moves between the stone buildings. Nothing stirs in the dusty lanes. Sellia is a ghost town.

But there’s one exception. A shack looms on a hill to our right, overlooking the town. It’s made of stone, with a wooden roof, but its rough, irregular walls are nothing like the smooth, white brickwork and flat roofs of Sellia proper. We can’t see into the shack from here, but outside stands an Aeonian hound, its massive head perfectly still as it looms over its disproportionate body, staring over at us. Around its neck is a spiked collar, and it’s chained to a comically small post outside the house.

“Is that thing… a guard dog?” I ask.

“It would appear so,” Rogier says slowly. “I… do not remember that shack.”

“Do you remember the rest of the town?” I ask him.

“No,” he admits. “But I feel as though I remember the absence of that shack.”

“Hm. Could be new.”

“But who would build a new homestead in the Caelid Wilds?” Rogier asks.

“Good question. Let’s go find out.”

The hound lets us get within a couple dozen paces of it before it starts growling. Even when it does, it remains still, like a guardsman standing at attention.

“Hush, Savah,” a reedy voice calls from inside the house, though no one is visible in the window. “There’s no need to harass our guests.”

The dog falls silent at once.

“Hey there,” I say, approaching the door. When I’m standing in front of it, I catch a glimpse of the house’s occupant through the window, reclining in an armchair with his head leaning back against its backrest, the pale flesh of his throat exposed. He wears a red hood over black robes, and his eyes are pale yellow.

“Come, enter,” he says. “The door is not locked.”

I hesitate for just a moment before turning the handle and stepping inside. Rogier and Trinovar follow me in. Torrent can’t fit through the door, so Melina stays outside.

The shack is only one room. There is no bed. There is no stove or firepit. There is nothing there besides the chair the man is sitting in. The house doesn’t even have a wall opposite the door, or not much of one—most of it is taken up by an opening onto what can charitably be called a balcony—little more than a fence and a few boards across the red dirt of the hill.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” says the man in his thin voice, eyes intent on me, barely glancing at the other two. “I am Gowry.”

“Barrett-12. These are Rogier and Trinovar.”

“An eclectic group you have gathered. An eclectic group indeed.” Gowry’s head has barely moved since we came in. If it weren’t for his eyes and mouth, I’d mistake him for a corpse. “What business brings you to Sellia, young man?”

It’s weird to be called young man. Among Guardians, age isn’t really a matter of the number of years we’ve seen. Those stop mattering after a while. It’s more about the events that filled those years. A Guardian who was at Six Fronts, even if they were first raised just the week before the battle, is still probably older, in our way, than a Lightbearer who was just camping out somewhere else in the system at the time even if they’d been around for years.

In years, I am young. Just a couple of centuries. I was resurrected right around the time the legend of Dredgen Yor was first spreading, before the Man with the Golden Gun appeared to give that story its ending. I wasn’t there for most of the big events in our history—Twilight Gap, the Great Disaster, Burning Lake. I’m the third-youngest member of my fireteam, after Grant and Thermidor—and the gap between even me and Silver, the next youngest, is almost as long as I’ve been around.

But there are Guardians who have been around as long as Silver who are younger than me. They didn’t walk into the dark. They didn’t take up the poisoned mantle of the Dredgens. They didn’t enter the shadows with Thorn in their hand, and leave them again with a Golden Gun in their fist. Even the past fifteen years have aged me more, the way Guardians see it, than the previous forty.

When Lex calls me kid, it’s not because they’ve got more than half a millennium of sunrises on me. It’s because they were the person holding Taniks back while Andal Brask died in Cayde-6’s arms.

Many inhabitants of the Lands Between—possibly excepting the Tarnished and Melina—have been alive longer than I have. But I don’t care if Godrick’s been around as long as Parvati; I’ve seen things he wouldn’t believe.

So it brings me up short to be called young man by this pale, yellow-eyed stranger in a shack in the middle of this world’s equivalent of hell on earth. But I don’t know his story. Maybe he’s earned it. I’m not about to confront him on it. It doesn’t even bother me, exactly.

It’s just… odd. Something about the way he’s looking at me—the small, thin-lipped smile; the stillness of his hands as they rest, palms up, on the front of his robes; the way his black pupils seem too small for the yellow of his irises, yet seem deep enough to swallow me whole—puts me on edge.

“Just thought we’d stop by while we waited for a festival in Castle Redmane,” I say. “That a problem?”

“Of course not. Quite the contrary. I’d been hoping a visitor might stop by. We get so few, nowadays.”

“Can’t imagine the depths of Caelid make for an attractive tourist destination.”

He chuckles. It’s a creaky sound, like footsteps on the floorboards of a house that’s been empty for a long time. “No indeed. Few can see any appeal to these lands. Only the Tarnished come with any regularity, and they merely take the direct road to Castle Redmane, if they make it that far. I had hoped one of them might think to visit Sellia, while they were nearby—and I see that one has, in your companion. For I require some assistance from a strapping young warrior whose limbs can still carry them where mine can no longer bring me.”

“What do you need?”

“There is a young girl resting in the church overlooking the town. Her name is Millicent, and she has been tragically stricken by the rotting sickness.”

“Didn’t think there was much we could do for people who caught the Scarlet Rot.”

“Not in most cases. But if it is caught early enough… there is an artifact hidden deep in the scarlet swamp to the west. A small needle, forged of unalloyed gold.” Something in the way he says those last two words is different from anything he’s said so far. His lips twitch, but I can’t tell whether they’re trying to go up or down. His voice wavers, but I can’t tell whether it’s in some kind of displeasure, or because he’s holding back a laugh. “If that needle is embedded in her flesh… she will not be cured, but she can hold the rotting sickness at bay.”

“I see.”

“Then will you do this thing?” Gowry asks. “Will you find the unalloyed gold needle, and bring it up to her? If you do, I shall repay you.”

It’s easy to keep an Exo’s face expressionless. “With what?”

“I will share with you the secret of the town of Sellia,” he says. “There are many things hidden in this place. Many things that the naked eye cannot find.”

I nod slowly. “Interesting. You ever hear the expression, finding a needle in a haystack?”

His lips twitch again, and this time it’s in unambiguous amusement. “No, but I can gather its meaning.”

“I can’t promise anything. Haven’t been down to look at the swamp, or up to look at the church. But we’ll see what we can do for this Millicent.”

“Your kindness is appreciated,” Gowry says. “Do be cautious as you pass through Sellia.”

“Those hidden things you mentioned?”

He smiles. “The town is not so vacant as it appears from a distance.”

We leave his shack. Once we’re past his hound, Rogier speaks up. “An… interesting fellow.”

I hold up a hand without looking at him, trying to convey without words that he should be quiet. He understands and says nothing more.

The thing is, Gowry heard a dog growling at that distance. He even knew what it was growling at, somehow. Unless that was a lucky guess… but I don’t think it was. The old man’s senses are sharper than they seem, and I don’t trust anything that can hear me when I don’t expect it to.

So I wait until we’ve made it all the way back to the road before I speak. “I don’t trust him.”

“Wise,” says Trinovar quietly. “I would have been tempted to strike him, though I feared the blade might pass through him without leaving so much as a mark.”

“You think he’s a ghost of some kind?”

“I know not what he is. But he is not an ordinary man.”

“Obviously. The question is whether the ways he’s weird are dangerous.” I sigh. “Either way, we can help this girl. Probably.”

“The way you aided me?” Rogier asks.

“Exactly.” I shake my head. “Anyway. We’re here now—Sellia. How do you want to do this? It looks empty.”

“Appearances may be deceiving,” Rogier says quietly. “We should approach with caution.”

I nod slowly. “Not on the main road then? We could curve around, hug the hillside on the left.”

“The town stands on the banks of the swamp on that side.” Rogier shakes his head. “There is nowhere to hide.”

“Not much cover on the other side, either,” I point out.

“True.”

“How about we get to the lip of that bluff on the left,” I say, pointing. “Then I’ll go invisible, go up to the outskirts of town, look around a bit, then come back before my invisibility breaks.”

“A good plan,” Rogier says. “Thank you.”

We do that, setting up on the bluff. Both Rogier and Trinovar are tensed for a fight, while Melina sits as sedate as ever on Torrent. I take a deep breath, then drop a smoke bomb. The Void curls around me, and my arms vanish from my view.

I jump down, landing at the base of the bluff in a small puff of dust, then move forward—quickly, but quietly, trying to keep my boots from skidding against the loose dirt of the ground. I’m just a few paces from the nearest buildings when, as if stepping out of a shadow that isn’t there, a group of figures fade into being in front of me, all staring up at the bluff where my friends are hiding.

I’m not the only invisible person in Sellia.

Chapter Text

“There is a fell light in the air.”

“…Describe it.”

“Ah—streams of red, like the guidance of Grace, but stained in blood.”

“Thou seest these streams of bloodstained Grace?”

“Aye—dost thou not, brother?”

“…Let us speak no more of this.”

I stand there for a long moment, frozen, before I can force myself to move. But even if I’m a damn good Nightstalker, I can’t keep invisibility up permanently.  So, careful not to kick up dust, I turn around and jump back up the hill. There’s a slight sound as my foot impacts the Light-platform for my double-jump, but no bolt of magic shoots my way.

I land back up with the others, crouch down, and allow my invisibility to dissipate. “They’re watching us,” I say quietly. “They have some kind of proximity-based invisibility—you can only see them if you get close.”

“Fascinating,” murmurs Rogier. “Do you think they are likely to attack us?”

“I don’t think they want to risk walking into a trap,” I say. “They didn’t seem like they were planning on moving. But if we try to go in, I’d bet money they’ll fire on us before we can see them.”

“And they would be wise to do so, in most cases,” murmurs Trinovar. “Caelid is not a kind country, as we have seen. Better to strike first than to risk destruction.”

“Dark forest theory,” says Winchester, emerging from my hammerspace. He looks at me. “We’ve seen how that goes. Our entire war with the Eliksni was built on it.”

“So how do we overcome it?”

“If Sellia is truly my… my home,” Rogier says, “perhaps they will allow me to approach?”

“Not gonna risk your life on that,” I say.

“Recall, Barrett, that I am a Tarnished. Death is no more permanent for me than it is for you. There is a Site of Grace perhaps a mile behind us.”

“Good point. But… well, why make that mile walk if we don’t have to?” I look at Winchester. “You wanna take a risk?”

“Just walk up to ‘em? Hope that the rez makes them think twice about gunning you down again?”

“It’s an option. Or we could sneak in under invis again, pop up right in the middle of them.”

“Just trying to intimidate them into submission.” Winchester considers for a long moment. “Rogier, if we take their staves, can they still sling spells at us?”

“Not effectively,” Rogier says. “It is possible to perform Sorceries without a staff, but it is generally an arduous process, requiring additional preparation.”

“Great.” Winchester turns back to me. “How’s your hand-to-hand, bud?”

My eyes narrow at him. “Just try to disarm all of them without hurting them?”

“If it doesn’t work, we can always default to the rez. I just worry. Generally the first rez is safe against new enemies—but the second one is a lot riskier.”

“It’s worth a shot.” I look at the others as Winchester slips into my backpack. “Don’t follow me in until I signal that it’s safe, or until they kill me a second time. If that happens, you might need to cover Winchester before they can destroy him.”

Trinovar nods stiffly. “We shall come to assist thee, should it prove necessary.”

“Great. See you all soon.”

“Be careful, Barrett,” Melina murmurs.

I drop a smoke bomb and jump down the hill again. Then I walk forward.

Six figures fade into my vision one at a time. They wear masked headpieces that look like they’re made of stone, each carved in the shape of a giant head. Each one is carrying a staff not unlike Rogier’s. I can’t see their eyes under the masks, but their heads are tilted upwards, and I’m confident that they’re looking up at the hill where my friends are hiding.

I walk between them. A couple off them glance to the side as I pass, feeling the displaced air, but none of them react beyond that. I wonder if they have true invisibility in the Lands Between, I project to Winchester.

If they do, these guys must not have encountered it.

Once I’m right in the middle of the group, I take a deep breath. Then I let my invisibility fall.

The ones in the back—the ones I’m in front of, rather than behind—snap their heads down to look at me in shock. They seem to be so startled that it takes them a moment to process what’s happened before they can shout.

“Hey,” I say. “Let’s talk about this.”

I reach out, close my fist around one of their staves, and pull. The man’s grip tightens around it, and there’s the shouting. I turn, rotating the staff and using it—attached sorcerer and all—to smack the fingers of another man where he grips his staff.

Oops, sorry, she, if the high-pitched grunt she lets out as it falls from her bruised fingers is any indication.

A bolt of magic strikes me in the back of the shoulder. Without missing a beat, I throw myself backward. The movement finally wrenches the staff away from the man who’s been clinging to it for dear life. I strike the one who shot at me with all the weight of an Exomind and hear them stumble. Then I spin, twirling the staff in my fingers like an Arcstrider’s, batting away those of the sorcerers around me.

One of them creates a massive sword of blue light—eight feet long if it’s an inch—with their staff for its hilt, and swings it in a wide arc. They’re clearly not a trained swordsman, and the sword is clearly close to weightless, so the swing comes out wild and fast. I roll under it, then trip the one who swung it as I return to my feet.

I have to dive out of the way of three magical knives flying through the air—I think I’ve seen Rogier use that spell—and then kick the fallen staff away into the bushes just before its owner can grab it. Then I turn and bash another sorcerer’s fingers. This one keeps their grip after the first hit, so I strike them again, and that does the trick. I catch the staff in my off hand as it falls, then turn to look back at the rest of the sorcerers.

Three disarmed—one crawling towards the bush where I kicked her staff—and three remaining. One of them is prone, scrambling to his feet with all the grace of a drunken civilian. Clearly, these people don’t train in martial combat all that often.

One of the two that’s still standing raises his staff. I don’t see anything, but on instinct I duck anyway, and feel a projectile I can’t see pass directly over my head. Invisible projectiles. Fun. I have to disarm the rest of them quickly, or I’ll be stuck trying to dodge half a dozen people’s worth of projectiles I can’t even see.

With that cheerful thought, I leap back into action. I snap out both staves and close them like scissors around one of the remaining sorcerers’ hand. He yelps and drops the staff. I kick it away, then feel a knife strike me in the back. I stagger, then spin, swinging the staff in my left hand hard into the hand of the last sorcerer standing. The bulb at the top of the staff hits him in the wrist, and the staff goes flying out of his hand. I take a smooth step backward, turn, and kick the man who’s finally managed to rise to his knees in the chest. He goes down again and, carefully, I plant my foot on his throat.

“Hey there,” I say, looking down into the dark eyeholes of his mask. “I really do think we can talk about this.”

There’s a long pause. “Talk?” he finally says, in the thin voice of someone well and truly terrified.

“Yeah. You know. Chat. Negotiate. Parley. One of these words has to ring a bell, right?”

On your right, Chester warns me.

I drop the staff in my right hand and reach for my hip. My fingers find Austringer there. I tug it out and point it to the right, at the woman who’s finally managed to grab her staff. “Let’s not,” I advise her.

She freezes.

“So,” I say. “I really don’t want to hurt any of you. Or anyone in Sellia. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m just here because a friend of mine wanted to visit the town. He’s from here, you know. Just wanted to visit his hometown.”

“Who?” The man under my foot seems to be rallying. “Who is the sorcerer who holds your strings, puppet?”

I take a slow breath. Then I move my gun a couple inches and fire. The bullet drills into the rock beside the woman a few feet away with a sound like thunder. “Don’t call me that,” I say over the sound of hyperventilating sorcerers. “No one is holding my strings, because I am not a puppet. Understand?”

“Y-yes,” whispers the man at my feet.

“I’ve been traveling with a Sorcerer named Rogier. The name ring a bell?”

There’s a pause. Then one of the sorcerers—a woman off to my left—mumbles “The Tarnished?”

“That’s him,” I say. “I hear people tend to… dislike Tarnished in these parts. That true here?”

There’s a long pause. I get the feeling that the ones behind me are looking at each other. “It’s… complicated?” One offers.

“Let me simplify it, then,” I say. “Let’s say I let you up and put away my gun. Let’s say I let you all pick up your staves. If I call my friends down here, is anyone going to try and kill them?”

Another pause, but this one’s shorter. “No,” says the man at my feet.

“Great,” I say. “For the record, if you’re lying? Anyone who shoots at Rogier, I’ll put in the ground.”

I feel the man’s throat move as he swallows. “Understood.”

I move my foot, drop the staff in my left hand, and step back. As the sorcerers pick themselves up and grab for their staves, I turn to the hill. “We’re good! You can all come down!”

A minute later, three figures on three very different mounts ride into Sellia proper. Rufus growls at the nearest sorcerer as he passes. The sorcerer in question looks about one strong breeze from fainting.

Rogier’s face is expressionless as he takes in the sorcerers, the moment they become visible. His eyes move from one to another slowly, as if he can see some difference between them despite their masks being basically identical.

One of them clears his throat—the one who turned his staff into a sword. His robes are a different shade of ethereal blue, and his mask is subtly different. “Sorcerer Rogier,” he says. “We did not expect to see you return.”

Rogier looks at him for a long moment before speaking. “I did not expect to return, I think. My memories are not… whole. The return from beyond the Fog has stolen most of them. I did not remember Sellia at all until we passed through Caelid.”

“That…” The man trails off. Then he sighs and reaches up to pull off his headpiece. Blond curls fall around his face. “I should not be surprised,” he says. “We have not heard much since the Scarlet Rot blanketed these lands, but it was rumored that those Tarnished who yet retained strong ties to their former homes often retained their memories, and those who did not… lost them.”

“And I do not have strong ties to Sellia?”

“Not anymore,” says the man. “Come. We should speak to the Master.” He turns and leads us into Sellia.

The Master of Sellia is an old man, with a long gray beard, situated in a study whose window overlooks the town’s one long road. Before we can go in, our guide goes on ahead to announce us. We’re ushered in when the door reopens. Melina, of course, has to remain outside. There’s no room for Torrent inside the building. I can see her through the study’s window, her hood up, her cloak obscuring her from the world like the shell of a cocoon.

“Welcome, travelers,” says the Master, his shrewd golden eyes darting between us. “And to you, Tarnished—welcome home. I am Robart, Master of the Town of Sorcery.”

“Our thanks, Master Robart,” says Rogier, a little stiffly. “I have a few questions.”

“So do I,” I add.

Robart’s eyes dart to me for a moment before focusing on Rogier again. “Ask them, Sorcerer.”

“Am I known to the people of Sellia?” Rogier asks.

“Aye,” says Robart. “You are known. Sevran tells me your memories have largely faded?”

“Yes. He mentioned that I have no strong ties to this place.”

“He speaks truth.” Robart’s lips thin as he chooses his next words. “You once had a family in this town. Parents, a sister. But your parents died in the long wars in the north, and your sister left to study at Raya Lucaria rather than here among her people. By the time you became Tarnished, you were alone in this place.”

“And so, presumably, it was easy to drive me off.”

“No. Never easy. It was the dictate of the Golden Order that Tarnished be banished from the Lands Between. Despite our removal from Leyndell, we were still beholden to that Order. To the demands of Queen Marika.”

“She would not have shown much mercy,” says Trinovar quietly, “hadst thou failed to obey. If she were willing to banish her own husband, she must surely have had cause to enforce that judgement on all the Lands.”

“Just so were our thoughts,” Robart says. “It must be cold comfort to you now, Sorcerer Rogier, but you understood the need as well as any of us at the time. We did not drive you away at sword-point. You left this town with head held high, just as you now return to it.”

“…You are right. It is cold comfort. My family—you said my parents perished. What were their names?”

“Marien was your mother. Your father was called Renier. Your sister was named Sellen. No word has come from her since the Academy shut its gates at the outset of the Shattering. If she yet lives, she is likely cloistered away there among the other sorcerers of Raya Lucaria.”

“You speak as though you are not of the Academy,” says Rogier. “Yet those sorcerers who patrol the streets wear glintstone crowns, just as the scholars of Raya Lucaria do. Even you have one on display here.”

I follow his gesture to see another of those stone headpieces in a display case on one wall. I notice, now I can look closer, that it’s not all stone. The ‘scalp’ of the stone head is covered with a growth of blue-violet crystal, as though the gemstone is growing out of the mask itself.

“Sellia has a long alliance with Raya Lucaria,” says Robart. “Though they may have forgotten us, left us for dead in the wake of the Scarlet Rot, we have not. If they called, we would answer—with some anger and bitterness, to be sure, but we would answer, nonetheless. Near everyone in this town once studied in the Academy—or from those of us who did, and who have the authority to bestow upon them the right to wear a glintstone crown of one Conspectus or another.”

“Was I ever inducted into a Conspectus?”

“Aye. You studied under the Twinsage Conspectus. You took your crown with you into exile—was it not on your person when you returned?”

“It was not.”

“It must have been lost, then, somewhere beyond the Fog. I may be able to find a spare twinsage crown—”

“No,” Rogier says firmly. “The man who studied the intricacies of glintstone sorcery is no more, nor do I wish to take up his mantle. I am Rogier, Tarnished Sorcerer. No more, and no less.”

Robart looks him in the eye for a long moment before nodding slowly. “I understand,” he says quietly. “Know that, as far as I am concerned, the Shattering has brought about the end of Queen Marika’s laws, if not the Golden Order itself. You shall not be driven from Sellia again while I am its Master.”

Rogier nods, then turns to me. “Barrett. You had questions of your own?”

“Just a couple.” I clear my throat—a grating, metallic sound for an Exo. “First, uh, Sevran? That’s the guy who led us here, right?”

“Aye.”

“He said that Sellia’s opinions on Tarnished were complicated. Can you elaborate?”

Robart sighs. “Some of our number believe that Queen Marika must have had good cause to banish the Tarnished. They believe that, even if she is no longer able to enforce the edict, it remains our duty to enact her will. I disagree. I believe that the mere fact that Tarnished are returning to the Lands Between demonstrates that something has changed, and that her edict is no longer valid.”

“And those who believe I should be banished again are a minority, I gather?” Rogier asks.

“Indeed. Perhaps one in five of us, here in Sellia. No more.”

“Great,” I say. “Not going to worry too much about that, then. Second question, what’s a Conspectus?”

“A school of thought regarding the underlying nature of sorcery,” Robart says.

“The founders of Raya Lucaria each held their own beliefs on the underlying source of sorcerous power,” Rogier elaborates. “To the twin sages, sorcery was a worldly thing, rooted in crystallized glintstone itself. To Azur Karolos—founder of the Karolos Conspectus—it was the domain of passing comets, ephemeral and energetic. To Lusat Olivinus—a native of Sellia himself, and the founder of the Olivinus Conspectus—it had its source in the distant stars, cold and eternal.

“Each of these masters taught their own students, each set of students formed their own Conspectus, and each Conspectus developed different branches of sorcery. Most of the spells I use are glintstone sorceries, though I know several others—including a few Carian sorceries which I presume I did not learn here.”

“The Carian sorceries are not often taught here, no,” says Robart. “I could not say where you learned them.”

“You’re probably not the only Tarnished sorcerer out there,” I say. “You might have learned them outside the Lands Between.”

“It is as good an explanation as any other.”

“Okay, next question.” I turn back to Robart. “How have you kept the Scarlet Rot out of Sellia?”

“With great effort and vigilance,” says Robart grimly. “Sellia was once much larger, but much of the western side of the town has crumbled into the swamp. Sorcerers patrol the streets constantly now in an effort to catch any infection before it is given the opportunity to spread. We purify all our food and drink before we eat it, and we grow our crops in untainted soil. Even so, we lose some to the Rot every year.”

“That sounds difficult.”

“It is more than difficult—it is impossible. Our numbers dwindle slowly, but they do so inexorably. But just as impossible would be evacuating the entire town—including our children, our elderly, and our noncombatants—from Caelid. Besides—this is our home. Even if the struggle is doomed, it is ours.” He sighs. “I presume it was you who slew the guard-troll on the hills outside the town?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. That was me. Sorry.”

“It is to be expected. The troll was not taught to ask questions of those who attempted to enter Sellia—he was taught to destroy them, as efficiently as he was able. You could not have entered without either killing him or somehow slipping past unseen. We will find an alternative—we always do. Perhaps one of our Hierodas sorcerers will undertake an expedition to Limgrave to hire a new guard-troll, or we shall build an automaton to fill the role.”

Robart reminds me of an old Titan—one of the tough-as-nails ones, who placed the stones of the Wall themselves, who defended them at Six Fronts. He has the same determination, the same grim will to survive in the face of all odds. “Last question,” I tell him. “Or two questions, I guess. The old man outside the town—Gowry. You know him?”

“We have met.” Robart’s face twists in distaste. “He built that shack after the Rot came to Caelid. He seldom mingles with us. Many believe him to be a Rot-worshipper. But his hound helps to defend Sellia’s gate, so we tolerate his presence.”

“Well, he asked us to help a girl in the church above town,” I say. “Named Millicent. Is that name familiar to you?”

“I fear not. But that church is infested with the Scarlet Rot. If she has not already succumbed, it is only a matter of time.”

“That, I might be able to help with,” I say.

Robart gives me a dry, skeptical look. “Do you believe yourself capable of curing the Scarlet Rot? Many have tried. It is said that even the Empyrean Miquella was unsuccessful.”

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but I won’t know if curing the Rot is one of them until I’ve tried.” I don’t want to promise anything, not just yet.

“I trust you’ll share your cure in the unlikely event that you are successful?”

“If I succeed, I probably won’t have a cure so much as being able to cure it. It’s not something I can produce and hand out. I’d have to administer it personally. But—if it works—I’d be willing to do that while I’m here. And if I can do it, I have friends who could as well. I’d make sure one of us comes by fairly often.”

“It would be… appreciated,” says Robart, with all the understatement of a man who has absolutely no faith in me.

Fair enough. I’d feel the same if the City had been beset by a plague for a century and someone showed up claiming to be able to cure it. No sense arguing about it—either I’ll be able to cure Millicent, or I won’t. “Do you know a way up to the church?”

“Aye—there is a road, the entrance to which has been sealed these many years to prevent the Pests from climbing down from the hill—or from the drakes of the Dragonbarrow from assaulting us. It would not stop a full-grown dragon, of course—those could fly over the wall entirely—but most young drakes are yet flightless.” Robart glances past me at Sevran, hovering in the doorway.

“Would it be possible for us to get through that seal?”

“Certainly. But if you wish, we can host you for the night. We have little to share, but what we have is open to you.”

It is starting to get dark outside—as dark as the red sky ever does. I look at the other two. Rogier’s face is still mostly expressionless, but Trinovar shrugs at me, his pauldrons clanking. I turn back to Robart. “We’ve got our own rations, we don’t need to steal your food,” I say. “But a few beds to sleep in, if you’ve got spares? We won’t say no.”

Chapter Text

“You gonna tell me what we’re doing here? Somehow I doubt you’re planning on playing Pilgrim Guard for a village of refugees.”

“Obviously, Scythe. These people are hiding something. Something powerful. Maybe a Hive artifact. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it in the leader’s hut.”

“…What are you planning to do about it?”

“Whatever I have to.”

“Sara—”

“Dredgen Vile. I need to know if you have my back on this, Scythe. Are you willing to do whatever it takes, or not? Are you a Dredgen or aren’t you?”

But, of course, it’s not that simple.

“I can remain outside,” Melina says. “It is no trouble, Barrett.”

I shake my head, turning to Robart. “Morna here can only corporeate when she’s either on her steed or near a Site of Grace,” I say. “Do you have one of those near here?”

Robart spreads his hands to his sides. “I could not say,” he says. “We have no Tarnished, nor any cantors, to identify Sites of Lost Grace. They are invisible to us sorcerers.”

“We’ll take a walk around town, then,” I say. “There’s bound to be a Site somewhere around here, right? Rogier, Trinovar, you two coming?”

The two of them look at each other. Something passes between them, but I couldn’t tell you what. “Methinks we shall take advantage of the offer of a bed,” says Trinovar. “It hath been many years since last I had the opportunity.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “See you boys in the morning, then.” I turn and start walking down the street. When I don’t hear hoofbeats, I turn around and give Melina a quizzical look.

“You need not do this for me,” she says. “I can survive a night spent bodiless. I’ve survived many in the past.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“And you should not have to forego the comfort of a bed.”

I rap my knuckles against my wrist. The metal clangs. “I won’t miss it. I doubt they’ve got beds built for Exos here, anyway.” There are beds designed for Exos in the City. It’s more complicated than just making the mattress firm—they have to straddle the same line as for humans, providing enough support to keep the joints and spine aligned while also having enough give to be comfortable. That’s harder when the body sleeping on the bed is about two or three times denser than a human’s. But it is possible, although the best mattresses tend to be made of more exotic materials. Turns out you can weave spinmetal into a mesh lattice that’s soft as a cloud, if your body’s heavy enough to overcome its stiffness.

She looks at me for a long moment, then spurs Torrent on to follow.

It doesn’t take us long to find a Site of Grace. There’s one on the west side of town, where the buildings that haven’t already collapsed into the swamp are derelict and abandoned. Melina dismounts there, and we set up our bedrolls. She sits on hers but doesn’t lay down. Her golden eye fixes out into the swamp, looking at nothing.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I ask.

She blinks. “…Penny?”

“Unit of pre-Golden Age currency. Uh. Rune for your thoughts?”

Her lips twitch upward. Then they drop again. “I am… frustrated. And ashamed.”

“Because I came out here with you instead of taking a bed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s your right. But… really, I’d give it even odds that any bed they gave me would break anyway. And I really don’t need a bed. This body’s good at imitating a human one, but there are things that don’t work as well. A soft mattress just doesn’t do as much for me as it would for Rogier or Trinovar.”

“And yet it would not be unwelcome, I gather.”

“Sure. But I don’t miss it, either. I’ve slept in a real bed maybe one night in a hundred this past century. I could do it more often if I bothered to try—if I planned my days out so that I’d be back in the City by nightfall. I don’t. I like it out in the wilds. I’m a Hunter—that’s where I belong.”

Her jaw flexes suddenly as she clenches her teeth behind thin lips. It’s only the second time I’ve seen her express real frustration or annoyance—the first time was when I poked her too much after finding out her identity. “And yet you would take the bed, if only I were not such an inconvenience.”

“Is that why you think I came out here? Because I felt like I had to? Like I was responsible for you in some way?”

“Is it not?”

“No.” I let the silence stretch until she turns her gaze on me. “I came out here because I’d rather be out here with you than in a bed designed for a human back in town. I’m here because this is where I want to spend the night, sweetheart.”

A pretty flush spreads across her cheeks, barely visible in the deep red of the evening. “Why?”

I look away from her, down into the flickering gold of the Site of Grace. “I like your company. It’s not complicated.”

It’s not what I’d have said to Sara if I were sitting around a campfire with her in the wilderness. But then there’s a lot I wish I could say to Sara now. A lot I’ll never be able to. And none of it has anything to do with why I don’t tell Melina straight out that I’m interested in her.

Fact is, like I told Winchester, she and I are headed straight for a bittersweet ending at best. But it’s more than that. She doesn’t have a body. That bothers me a little, but more importantly it really bothers her. It weighs on her constantly. And the part that really bothers me is that there’s nothing I can do. All the paracausal power of the universe at my fingertips—Light and Darkness, Hive magic and a Splicer gauntlet, an Ahamkara for one of my best friends—and I can do nothing to help her. Not yet, not here, not now. Maybe one day, but for now…

I’m not blind. I know my feelings are at least somewhat reciprocated. If Melina and I were both Guardians we’d have gone on a few dates already. But we’re not. I’m not going to force her to confront this unspoken thing between us—not with the specter of her incorporeality hanging over it all. What good would it do to start a relationship, when every moment of it would burn her with her inability to hold my hand, to hug me, to kiss me?

It feels a little selfish to make that decision for her. To let this thing stay unspoken, unaddressed, because I think it would hurt her to bring it into the open. It is selfish. I know as well as anyone that uncertainty can be as painful as anything stable. Sometimes it’s better to fall than to be stuck on ground you don’t trust. I know that.

But she’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions. She’s got eyes—well, one eye—and she can see me as clearly as I can see her. If she wants to bring it up, that’s her right, and I’ll be honest with her. But—selfishly—I’m not going to be the one who opens that Pandora’s box. I’m just…

…I hate being the reason someone is hurting. I had enough of that with the Dredgens.

Something moves in the corner of my eye. I glance over and blink at the way Melina’s hand fuzzes into blue mist where it rests on my arm. I can’t feel it at all.

“I enjoy your company as well, Barrett,” she says softly.

I’m suddenly ashamed, and I don’t even fully understand why. So, like a coward, I change the subject. “You’ve got to have some stories from before the Shattering that aren’t depressing,” I say. “I’ve heard so much about how things went wrong. Tell me about a happy memory.”

She lets her hand fall, though it stays resting, palm down, on the ground between us. “I do not think I have told you much about my favorite of my many relatives,” she says. “My cousin Ranni.”

“You called her that before—cousin. Isn’t she your half-sister?”

“Indeed. But I always thought of the children of Queen Rennala as cousins. They were so removed from myself, Malenia, and Miquella. They did not feel like siblings in the same way.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“But even Malenia and Miquella were… remote, to me. They had each other and were more than a century my senior. They often seemed closer with Godwyn than with me, though he had millennia on them.” Her eye turns to the flicker of Grace beside us. “It was often that way. Everyone looked up to Godwyn. To Malenia and Miquella, he was a mentor and an example to aspire to. To Rykard, he was a rival to respect and surpass. To Radahn, he was a link to the idolized Lord Godfrey. And to me… to me, he was the glory of the Golden Order personified. I wanted nothing more than his respect. His love.”

“Don’t dwell on it,” I say softly. “Please. I didn’t mean to make you think of him.”

She smiles slightly, sadly. “He casts a long shadow. All my memories lead me back to him in one way or another. Part of the reason I so loved Cousin Ranni was that she, alone among my siblings and half-siblings, did not idolize Godwyn the Golden. She preferred me. I was her favorite of the trueborn children of Queen Marika. She would bring me gifts every time she was in Leyndell. Everything from candies, to poetry, to toys. I remember fondly a doll she gave me for my eighth birthday—it was modeled after a tutor of hers, or so she told me. It was small, blue of skin and garb, with four arms.”

“Unusual tutor.”

“True enough. I believe she was a snow-witch from the far north, though I know little of her. Ranni told me she never learned the witch’s name. I named the doll Renna, in her honor. I wonder what became of that little doll.”

I wince. She can’t help circling back, can she? Even her happiest memories are stained with ashes. She’s still smiling as she looks down into the flickering Grace, but there’s a deep melancholy in her eye and voice. “My turn?” I offer.

“Hm?” She glances up at me.

“You want to hear one of my less depressing stories?”

Her whole expression brightens. “Nothing would please me more.”

“Well…”

I have happy stories—more than you’d think, given how depressing I know I can be when I’m brooding. I remember bantering with Thermidor on the way back from the Vault of Glass. We’d only known each other for about a day and a half at that point, but fighting Atheon brought all of us together like nothing else could have. I remember a ramen-eating competition with Cayde, just a few months before he went into the Prison of Elders for the last time. They didn’t even let non-Exos compete against us—it wouldn’t be safe. He won, of course.

There’s also a few… weirder stories. I still cackle when I think of the look on Grant’s face when Rhulk kicked him off the Upended like a soccer ball. I remember Lex swearing up a storm when the platform under them disappeared while we were fighting the Sanctified Mind in the Black Garden, and when Cassidy rezzed them they came back still cussing as if they hadn’t even noticed they’d died. I remember Silver moving the lower jaw of Calus’ puppet-robot around while imitating his gravelly voice.

But there’s one story that comes to me easily as laughing, and that requires almost no explanation even to someone with as little background as Melina has.

I tell her about the day my fireteam shared Eris Morn’s first batch of pine-apple fried rice.

We meet up with Rogier and Trinovar, leading Rufus and Gullfax, just after sunrise the next morning. They’re accompanied by Robart, as well as three other sorcerers clad in stone masks. “Be warned,” Robart tells us as we follow him through the town. “Once you pass the seal, we will close it behind you. The area north of Sellia is more dangerous even than the rest of Caelid. It is the domain of the Elder Dragon Greyoll, Mother of Drakes. Even the Kindred of Rot fear to tread much of that realm. We will open the seal for you again only if you are not pursued. We cannot allow the enemies of Sellia to creep in behind you.”

“We understand,” I say. “Don’t worry—we won’t lead anything to you.”

They lead us to a glowing blue wall with a symbol etched into it in lines of white light. The four sorcerers each place a hand on it, and mumble something in sync under their breath. The symbol flashes, then fades, and the wall follows—revealing an open archway and a path behind it. The path curves off to the right as it ascends a slope, climbing the hill in a series of switchbacks.

“The church you seek is at the summit of the hill at Sellia’s east side,” Robart says. “Follow the road in that direction, and you shall find it. Be warned—the road is trapped. There are hidden sorcerous tripwires which will summon iron balls to crush you. If you are alert, they are simple enough to avoid or dodge.”

“Got it. We’ll be careful.”

Winchester summons my sparrow, and I mount up. Rogier and Trinovar do the same. Then, with a last nod at Robart, we ride out of Sellia.

Robart wasn’t kidding about the iron balls. They’re about ten feet across and every once in a while one will just pop into existence in a flash of a blue glyph on the ground. But, fortunately, they’re stationary until the glyph disappears. That gives us long enough to get out of the way before the ball starts rolling. It takes caution, but we manage to get up the hill without incident.

Soon we’re looking at the church in the distance. But Melina sees something that’s still too distant for me to pick out. “There are Kindred of Rot outside the door,” she says. “They appear to be standing guard.”

“Standing guard?” I ask. “That’s not behavior we’ve seen from them before.”

“We’ve not seen anything they would want to guard, presumably,” Rogier says. “It is said that they worship the Rot itself. Perhaps they are standing guard over this Millicent as the sickness convalesces within her?”

“But then why her, and not every other poor bastard who’s getting eaten alive by the Rot?”

“I could not say.”

“I suspect Gowry hath not told us all he knoweth,” says Trinovar grimly. “I fear we may be walking into a trap.”

“Maybe,” I say. “I don’t trust that guy as far as I can throw him. But that’s why I didn’t tell him about Lumina. Even if we are walking into a trap—there’s no way they’ll expect that.”

“True. But be wary, Barrett.”

“Always.” My hand descends to my hip and finds Lumina there. “This might be a good thing. I need to kill something to charge a Noble Round anyway. Let’s get them.” I gun the engine of Always On Time, and the others follow me in.

By the time I’m close enough to see the Kindred of Rot, I’m also close enough for them to see me. I see them shift their grip on their glaives, getting ready for a fight. I jump off my Sparrow without bothering to park it, letting it skid forward as I take aim with Lumina midair. The first round catches one in the gut. The second one, as I adjust my aim, gets him in the skull. He goes down.

I land on my feet just as the second Kindred sends a storm of seeking needles my way. I roll under them, come up already aiming, and fire again. The Kindred’s brains scatter across the stone of the church’s wall.

I’m just starting to calm down when another one rounds the corner, coming from behind the church’s left side. At a gesture the hound at its side, its flesh mottled and twisted by the Rot, leaps to shred. Lumina rings out twice more, and then falls silent.

The gun in my hand is radiant with pale mist as I step inside the church. Millicent—for who else could it be?—is slumped against the wall, her side covered in congealing blood from the stump of her recently-severed right arm. Her red hair is matted with sweat and grime as it hangs limp around her too-pale face. When she forces her head up to look at me, her eyes are a subtle battleground as gold and yellow fight over the territory of her irises.

“Who…?” she whispers hoarsely. “No—stay back. My flesh writhes with the Rot. It will not be long before it consumes me again.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, taking aim. “I’m here to help.”

Lumina sings.

Chapter Text

“There are ruins here—buried in the snow.”

“Aye, so there are.”

“But what people lived in this frozen waste? And what became of them?”

“Many peoples have lived here, over the many ages of this world. Many things became of them. These ruins in particular were once peopled by the Zamor tribe. They were allies of the Golden Order in the war against the giants and their fell god.”

“And what became of them?”

“Some have been assimilated into the peoples of Leyndell. Some yet live in other villages among these mountains. Many more died in failed rebellion against the Golden Order.”

“Why would they rebel against the very Order they once fought to defend?”

“…The Greater Will asketh of its servants many things, sister. Not all have the strength to give them.”

If I’m honest with myself—and I try to be—I was pretty confident that Lumina would be able to cure the Rot.

After all, it was able to cure Rogier’s Death Blight. The way everybody around here talks about them, they sound similar. They’re both paracausal ontological contagions. Neither one is directly affiliated with Light or Darkness, either of which could potentially have unexpected interactions with Lumina’s Noble Rounds. There’s no reason to suspect the results would be different this time.

So when Millicent’s face spasms in sudden pain, her eyes squeezing shut, I worry. When she relaxes, I relax with her. Turns out, that’s premature on my part. Because when her eyes open again, their irises are a sickly red.

She looks up at me, but I don’t think it’s Millicent behind those eyes anymore. “Thou knowest not what thou hast done.”

I slowly shift my grip on Lumina, aiming it—no Noble Round this time—between her eyes. “Starting to suspect that. Care to elaborate?”

Her lips twitch into a smile. It’s not a pleasant expression. “Thou hast insertedst thyself into a thing thou dost not understand. A struggle for power and identity where thou knowest neither the combatants nor the stakes. A conflict with no victors—only he that loseth existence, and he that loseth himself.” Millicent’s head cocks. Her eyes haven’t blinked. “But thine aimless stumbling… hath offered opportunity. It may yet offer more. Let it not be said that the Rot is not a gracious god to him that offereth service, even unwitting.”

My fingers tense on Lumina. “The Rot?”

The smile on Millicent’s face widens. Then she twitches, shudders, and slumps forward. She’s still for a long moment before she looks up, and her eyes are clear and gold. “Ah…” she murmurs. “I feel… the Rot still writhes under my skin, but the madness and hunger have abated. I did not thing I would ever feel such clarity again.”

I’m silent for a long moment. So is everyone else. Millicent blinks, looking around. “…What has happened? Did you not expect your cure to succeed?”

“No,” I manage, holstering Lumina. “No, it’s… it’s nothing. The Rot… had an odd reaction. That’s all.”

“I doubt there is a usual reaction to the cleansing, or even the abatement, of the Scarlet Rot.” She winces, and her hand crosses her body to cradle the missing space at her right side. “I… remember little. If you were hoping for some aid, I fear you may be disappointed.”

“No, no. We came here to help you, not because we were looking for help from you. Knowing that Lumina works on the Scarlet Rot”—or at least that it does something with the Scarlet Rot—“is as much as we were hoping for.”

“Lumina? Is that the object you carry?”

“Yeah.” I squat down beside her. “So. You said you don’t remember much?”

“Precious little. My name—Millicent. Some general knowledge. I know that I am in Caelid, a land which has been blighted by the Scarlet Rot since the great battle between General Radahn and Malenia. I remember what those names mean.” She pauses. “And I remember that one of them meant something to me. The story of Malenia had… personal importance, once. But I cannot remember why.”

“I know what that’s like,” I say gently. “Don’t let it bother you too much. Try to focus on now, and what you’ll do next.”

“I… thank you for the advice.” She looks between us. “Might I know the names of my saviors?”

“Right, right. Slipped my mind. I’m Barrett-12, call me Barrett.” I gesture at the others, hanging back behind me. “That’s Morna, riding Torrent. Those are Rogier and Trinovar. The horse is Gullfax, and the big housecat is Rufus.” I gesture, and Winchester appears hovering over my palm. “And this is Winchester.”

“Hey,” he grunts.

“An honor and a pleasure,” Millicent says, blinking at him. Then her face sets. With some difficulty, she forces herself to her feet, supporting herself with her remaining hand on the wall beside her.

“Hey, easy,” I say. “Take your time, there’s no rush. You’re safe here.”

“Nowhere in Caelid is safe, Sir Barrett. But though I trust that you will keep this place safer than any other in this land, I still wish to rise.” Hesitantly, she lets go of the wall, and seems almost surprised when her legs carry her. She pushes her matted hair out of her face. “You have given me back my life. I would use it.”

I grin. “Good for you. What’s next for you then?”

Her gaze fixes on the middle distance, her brow furrowed as she thinks. I can’t say whether she’s trying to remember something, or just trying to examine her own wants and needs. “I wish to leave Caelid,” she says finally. “I’d like to ascend the Altus Plateau and see the great city of Leyndell. Perhaps I have seen it before—but if so, I think I would be glad of the chance to see it for the first time again.”

“We’re going the same direction. We have a bit more business in Caelid—I need to talk to General Radahn—but after that I owe Morna a trip up to Leyndell. You’re welcome to travel with us, if you don’t mind the detour to Castle Redmane.”

“Ah…” she hesitates, looking between us. “If no one has any objections, perhaps. I wouldn’t wish to inconvenience anyone.”

“Certainly not, Lady Millicent,” says Trinovar. There’s something odd in his tone, but I can’t see his face under his helmet. “We would be honored by your company, I am sure. But, Barrett, we have no spare mounts.”

I grimace. “Right. Somehow I doubt it’ll be as easy to find a horse in Caelid as it was to find Gullfax back in Limgrave.”

Millicent looks between us. “But Sir Barrett has no steed.”

“I do,” I tell her. “My sparrow. It’s… not here right now. It’s where Winchester was before I summoned him.”

“‘Summoned.’” Winchester echoes mockingly. “Could you make it sound any more like magic? It’s just transmat. Completely causal.”

“Shush, you. Transmat might be, the hammerspace isn’t.”

“She may ride Torrent,” Melina offers.

I look at her. She avoids my gaze. “Nope,” I say, turning back to Millicent. I look her up and down. She looks pretty light… “You can ride behind me on my sparrow,” I say. “At least until we can find you something else. Maybe they’ll have something at Castle Redmane.”

“Can this… sparrow bear the additional weight?” she asks. “I know that birds travel lightly.”

“Oh, it’s not—it’s not literally a sparrow. That’s just what we call them. And I’ve seen a sparrow carry an Exo like me in heavy power armor without struggling. It’s not the weight that’s the issue, it’s safety. Always On Time isn’t meant to have two passengers, but we haven’t been traveling at anything like its top speed. It’ll be fine.”

She hesitates for a long moment. “Then… I would be honored. Thank you.”

A couple hours later, we make it back to Sellia’s gates. When we first arrive, a few sorcerers raise their hands to us in casual greetings. I can see the way their arms freeze in place when they realize that we’re accompanied by a new face.

I bring Always On Time to a stop just inside the gate. As four sorcerers jump into action to reseal the passage behind us, I see Robart coming towards us, his invisibility fading as he draws near. “Well,” he says, watching me and Millicent dismount from my sparrow. Then, as if he can’t decide how to continue that sentence, “Well.”

“So,” I say. “I have good news and bad news.”

He turns his attention on me. His eyes are intense under his bristly eyebrows. “I take it this is… Millicent? The maiden you were seeking?”

“Aye, good sir,” says Millicent with a short bow. “If you are the master of Sellia, forgive me—my memories are largely gone. If I knew your name before, I can recall it no longer.”

“If you did, I would not know. I’ve not seen you before.” He looks her up and down, then turns to me. “I… presume that she had not yet succumbed to the Rot when you found her?”

“Ah… that’s not how I’d put it.”

“The Rot had all but consumed me,” Millicent offers, shuddering visibly. “It is only thanks to Sir Barrett that I can speak with you now.”

That sends a ripple through the sorcerers surrounding us. I can only see a few of those nearest us, but I can hear the murmurs spreading halfway down the street. Robart stares me down. “Then you can cure the Scarlet Rot.”

“Well… sort of. That’s the good news. The bad news is, uh, I wouldn’t recommend it right now.”

He frowns heavily, his beard seeming to expand like the back of an angry old cat. “You would not recommend a cure for the Scarlet Rot?”

“More like I wouldn’t recommend making plans around it. Um.” I glance at Millicent, then back at him. “She had a bit of a… reaction to the cure.”

“You mentioned this in the church,” Millicent says. “I had assumed it was merely unpleasant—a purging of fluids or of cancerous flesh, perhaps. But you make it sound more… ominous.”

“Ominous is a good word for it,” I say. I fidget a little, trying to find a way to explain this in a way that won’t risk causing, well, a religious panic. “So the Outer God of the Scarlet Rot might have spoken to us through you for a minute there?”

Millicent staggers away from me. So do half the sorcerers, many of them fading from view as they pull farther than the radius limit of their invisibility. Robart himself is perfectly still, and even though he’s not wearing one of their glintstone crowns his face might as well have been carved from stone.

“You spoke with the Outer God of the Scarlet Rot,” Robart says. “And you brought its avatar here?”

“She’s not its avatar.” I’ve seen divine avatars before—many times. Arguably I am one. Millicent doesn’t feel like a Disciple, or even like Pluvius did when the Witness was possessing him. She doesn’t feel like any of the more local highly-paracausal beings we’ve encountered—Shardbearers and demigods and the like. She feels human. Mortal. “We’d be able to tell—Winchester and I. We’ve got good senses for that sort of thing. She hasn’t been cured, is all. It’s dormant in her, or something. The problem is that it—well, it implied that it was choosing to let my ‘cure’ work. That it was choosing to let Millicent go. And I have no guarantee that it’ll keep doing that.”

He studies me with hard, suspicious eyes for a long moment, before turning them on Millicent. For her part, the girl looks practically shell-shocked. “The Rot… let me go?” she asks. “Why would—how? And you spoke with it?”

“You’d be surprised how often that happens to us. If you don’t want to travel with us, given that—”

“No! No, I…” She trails off, looking back at the others. I can’t see Trinovar’s face under his helmet, but both Rogier and Melina meet her eyes steadily. “If this is true,” she says softly, “then all the more for me to travel with you, Sir Barrett. I want to give the Rot-God no reason to retract its mercy.” She looks at me, and I can see the horror in her conflicted golden eyes. “But why?” she asks. “Why would it let me go at all? Did you convince it somehow?”

I look her in the eye. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I intend to find out.”

“I agree with you,” says Robart suddenly. We turn to him. His expression is grim, now, as if he’s come to a difficult decision. “We cannot trust this cure. Not if it calls the direct attention of the very Outer God which has beset Caelid these many years. Nor can we risk that you will draw its attention on us.”

“Ah,” says Rogier softly. “Will you banish me again, Master Robart?”

Robart’s eyes flick closed momentarily, as if the words are a glaive to his chest. But when he opens them, they fix on Rogier. “No,” he says. “If you would remain, Rogier, you are welcome. If any of your companions choose to remain, they are welcome. But you, Sir Barrett, and you, Lady Millicent—you have earned the attention of a God. A God whose attention we cannot afford.”

“I understand,” I say. “I can’t fault you. Can I ask for shelter for one more night, and we’ll leave in the morning?”

“There is no reason to believe that the Rot-God is paying any further attention to you,” Rogier protests. “This is mere guesswork into the motivations of a being who, need I remind Sellia’s Master, is his enemy.”

“The Gods are not enemies for men to fight, Sorcerer Rogier,” says Robart quietly. “They are storms for men to weather.”

“Agreed,” I say. “Really, Master Robart—I don’t blame you. I might make the same decision in your place. You have people to look out for—vulnerable people. Your first responsibility has to be to them, not to the strangers who stumbled into your town a day ago. I’ve been there. I get it.”

He looks me in the face. “Your understanding does not make it any easier to do what I must, Sir Barrett.”

I grin. “Hey, if it’s any comfort—I couldn’t really afford to stay more than a day or two anyway. I have business in Redmane that won’t wait. If you want, we can head out now. I’d just like to camp out somewhere a little more defensible than the rest of Caelid for one more night, if you’ll have us.”

He sighs. “Of course. I will not begrudge you the defenses of Sellia’s walls for one more night, if you intend to leave come the morrow in any case. But as I recall, you and the lady Morna did not even rest within the town last night?”

“And tonight, nor shall I,” says Rogier stiffly. “I find little comfort in Sellia’s dubious hospitality now, Master.”

“Hey,” I say. “He’s just doing what he has to.”

“He has to do nothing of the sort. You invited Millicent to join us, and none of us gainsaid you. Why should his cowardice be excused?”

“This isn’t cowardice.” I gesture around us at the town. “Do you know what I see when I look around these streets, Rogier? I see my home. I see the City I fought for centuries to defend against armies that would have torn it down and butchered everyone inside. Only, when I first came around, the Last City was already more than five centuries old. It could fit Sellia inside it a few hundred times over. Its walls were almost a hundreds of feet high, and dozens wide at their thinnest point. There were millions of Guardians watching over that City. We couldn’t have built that unless we took as few risks as possible. Just building it at all was risk enough. Robart has to protect his people. He can’t risk anything that might let the rest of Caelid creep behind his walls.”

Rogier grimaces and looks away. He doesn’t say anything more, so I turn back to Robart.

“We’ll be out of your hair tomorrow,” I say. “Me and Millicent, at least; I can’t speak for the others.”

“In this, I think thou canst,” Trinovar interjects firmly.

I wave that away. “Either way, we appreciate your hospitality to this point. Thank you, and I’m sorry I can’t be more help with the Rot right now. I’m going to keep looking into it—if I find a more sustainable solution, I’ll come back.”

Robart holds my gaze for a long moment. “You are a noble man, Sir Barrett,” he says finally.

“I know a thing about gentle places, and what they cost to build. That’s all.”

Chapter Text

“You find what you were looking for?”

“Yep. A sword. Definitely Hive—you can feel the power in it.”

“I heard gunfire.”

“The villagers didn’t want to give it up. You got a problem with that, Dredgen Scythe?”

“If I say yes, am I going to get a poison bullet to the head?”

“Probably.”

For completely understandable reasons, the Sellians don’t want Millicent sleeping in one of their beds. Just in case. Rogier and Trinovar, I guess out of some kind of indignation, decline the town’s hospitality and join us at our campsite by the Site of Grace among the ruins on the west side of town. We scrounge up a bedroll for Millicent, buying it from a sorcerer for a handful of runes, and lay out our camp around the golden light.

“Shall I keep watch?” Millicent asks.

“You’ve had a hell of a day,” I tell her. “Get some sleep tonight. We’ll fold you into our watch rotation tomorrow.

And so I’m left sitting up on my bedroll, looking out at the swamp while Trinovar, Rogier, and Millicent doze off nearby. Melina settles beside me, her back to the Site of Grace.

“What’re you thinking?” I ask her quietly.

She lets out a pensive hum before speaking. “It was… unsettling. Hearing the voice of an Outer God, spoken within the spheres of this world. If indeed that is what we heard.”

“You think it might’ve been something else?”

“I have no better idea for what it might have been,” she says. “But even without another guess, it is difficult to believe that the Scarlet Rot itself spoke to you. Let alone that it relinquished one whom it had claimed.”

“You heard her. She said it was still there—still ‘writhing under her skin.’ Hell of an image.”

“Indeed. But even so. And…” She trails off.

“What?”

She glances back at the others before leaning closer to me. “Something is odd about her. More than simply the voice this morning.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“It is not—I have no particular distrust of her, no. It is only… Barrett, she is the spitting image of my sister.”

“Your…?”

“Malenia.” Melina’s tone is grim. “The Blade of Miquella. The woman who first unleashed the Rot on Caelid.”

“You don’t think she is Malenia, do you? Traveling in disguise?”

“No. I think if Malenia were so far gone with the Rot as Millicent was, we would have far more to contend with than an unnatural voice claiming to be an Outer God. She is an Empyrean, and her connection to the Rot is stronger than any other’s. But there is some connection between our newest traveling companion and my Empyrean sister—I am certain of that.”

“What do you think we should do about it?”

“…Nothing, for now. Merely keep your eyes open, Barrett. Be wary. If Millicent is connected to my sister, and my sister is connected to the Rot…”

“The Rot might have some reason for letting her go that we haven’t figured out yet. I get it. Yeah, we’ll keep our eyes open.”

“Good.” She hesitates. “But whatever secrets are buried within the Rot in her flesh… I doubt very much that she knows them. She seems… innocent.”

“She reminds me of a blueberry. A new Lightbearer, fresh out of the grave. All wide-eyed confusion and wonder.”

“Just so. All the awe of a child facing the world for the first time, but with an adult’s mind to comprehend it.”

“You seem to like her.”

She shrugs. “I cannot say I know her yet. But she seems more likely to be a martyr to the Rot than to be its willing agent.”

“Hopefully neither.”

“Hopefully.” And with that word, spoken wryly, she turns in for the night.

“I know this place,” Millicent says softly, running her hand along the rough, splintery wood of the doorframe.  Her golden eyes run over the inside of Gowry’s shack, taking in the water-stained floor and the single empty chair by the window. “I… recognize it. I remember walking through this doorway. Many times.”

“The guy who lives here told us you were up in the church. Name of Gowry. You remember him?” I’m leaning back against the wall. My hand is twirling Lumina. It’s partly just a fidget of mine, something a lot of Hunters pick up with our trusty hand cannons… but it’s also something I do when I want my gun ready to hand without making everyone uncomfortable.

The shack is empty. Gowry isn’t here. But somehow I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being watched.

She frowns, brow furrowing in concentration. “I have heard the name before. But… no, the memories are gone. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I say. “If we want to look for answers, we’ll find them eventually. And the nice thing about forgetting—sometimes it gives you an excuse not to remember.”

“An… excuse?”

I shrug. “Guardians—people like me—are resurrected by our Ghosts without any memories of our past lives,” I say. “Our leaders have forbidden us from looking into who we were before we died for centuries. It didn’t always make sense to me. It does now. I’ve seen too many people who ignored that rule regret it. There’s no sense being haunted by a life you didn’t live.”

“But I did live it.”

I shake my head. “A girl named Millicent lived it,” I say. “Just like a guy named Barrett signed away his life to an experiment on Europa, and a guy named Rogier walked out of this town a few centuries ago. None of us are those people anymore. We’re a combination of our nature and our experiences. Forgetting the experiences changes who we are. Sometimes that’s a gift.”

“But there is no reason to believe that I committed any terrible sins or had any awful regrets,” Millicent counters. “Should I be afraid to investigate the person I once was just because there might be something awful buried there?”

“I think you should do what feels right. Not what you feel you owe the person you used to be. Not what you think you should want. What feels right.”

The shack falls silent.

When Thermidor, Parvati and I first followed the Black Fleet’s trail to Europa, we’d split up while exploring Eventide. Thermidor was investigating the actual mission—looking into House Salvation and their connection to the Pyramids. Parvati and I… had more personal motives. Motives Thermidor understood—he’d probably be the same if we ever found our way into the Distributary.

Parvati and I have never talked about what we found. I don’t know where she ended up in that cold blizzard. I know that I found myself huddled in an apartment on the half-buried ground floor of an old tenement, curled around a journal whose last entry was signed Barrett-0, wishing I had never gone looking.

Clovis Bray was a monster. But if he ever forced people to become Exominds, I never heard about it. He wouldn’t have had to. There were always plenty of willing test subjects. Some of them wanted immortality at any cost. Plenty more… just wanted the opportunity to forget.

The flesh-and-blood human who signed his last journal entry Barrett-0 was definitely the latter.

Finally, Millicent turns away. “I feel that there is nothing left for me here,” she says softly. “Whatever I’m seeking, I will not find it in this place.”

She leaves the shack. I’m halfway through the doorway myself before I glance back.

Gowry smiles at me from the chair that was empty less than a second ago. His sickly yellow eyes sparkle with dark humor.

I hold his gaze for a long moment, my fist tightening on Lumina. I don’t know if I can take him alone—he’s clearly not completely human—but I’m damn tempted to try. Instead, I turn and walk away.

Because here’s the truth: Millicent probably lived in this shack, with this old man, not that long ago. This old man, who lives outside a town that’s slowly succumbing to the Rot, but who doesn’t fear it himself. Who knew she was infected, and had an idea for how to cure her, but made no move to do it himself. Who knew where she was, when that location was a church sealed off from this town and guarded by Kindred of Rot.

The fact is, everyone who walked into the Deep Stone Crypt did so because they were running away from something. For some of them, it was mortality. For most, it was memory.

I have a feeling, like a centipede in my gut, that the girl who lived in this shack with a man who knows the Rot too well and fears it too little, walked into the Aeonian swamp for the same reason.

Sure, I might be wrong. Of course I might be wrong. And the obvious counterargument is true: Millicent has a right to know about this. She has a right to know that Gowry is here, watching her search for him in this hut. That he’s deliberately hiding from her and laughing silently as she fumbles around.

I hate making this kind of decision for other people. I really do. But I hate watching a tragedy unfold in front of me even more. And if there’s one thing I learned from what happened with Sara, it’s this: if you make the choice that abdicates personal responsibility every time, it won’t make the guilt you feel once it’s all over any easier to bear. Life is all about decisions made in the dark, with incomplete information. Sometimes, not knowing everything is no excuse for not acting on your best guess.

I may not know everything about Gowry, or about Millicent. But my best guess is that, even if he has completely different reasons, Gowry is totally right about one thing. The best place for Millicent is away from him.

The road out of Sellia is a lot more uneventful than the road in, mostly because we don’t have a troll throwing giant exploding jars at us as we go. Millicent, who was holding onto me like a vise as we rode Always On Time down from the church yesterday, is much more relaxed today. We also don’t encounter any Kindred of Rot, and the few Rotted wretches we do encounter go down to Striga before they can get anywhere near us. We follow the road as it curves back to the west until we hit the crossroads where we met the merchant a few days ago. Then we turn south.

By this point it’s mid-afternoon, although it’s hard to tell with the crimson sky. But as we continue south, the road gets worse over the next several miles. We descend a slope first and have a narrow miss with a mudslide about an hour after we pass the crossroads. Then we start to come across wrecked encampments—the ruins of canvas tents, knocked over and left where they fell, smoldering remains of palisades and trebuchets, some of them fallen directly across the road.

There’re stranger obstacles, too. We see boulders still smoking, as if they were just covered with pitch and launched from a catapult. At one point we pass a crater, surrounded by blasted corpses still in their blackened armor, as if a meteor fell in the middle of a company in formation. But in the center of the crater all I see is a steel sword, its point buried in the ground.

And then we start to find trouble.

There are still people here—people still wearing red-and-violet surcoats which the Rot has fused onto their flesh, their tumorous hands still clutching war picks and spears. At one point, half a dozen of them jump at us from behind a broken trebuchet. One of them nearly catches Rufus in the side with his spear before the big guy can jump out of the way.

After that, we have to slow down. And still we haven’t seen a Site of Grace since the crossroads. The sky starts to darken as the sun sets, and still there’s nowhere to camp.

I catch my first glimpse of Redmane Castle after another skirmish with the Rotted former soldiers. It’s perched atop a rock southeast of us. It’s smaller than Stormveil, but not by much—and because it’s built atop that rocky outcrop and not shrouded by mist and rain, it’s even more imposing.

“We draw near,” Trinovar says, drawing Rufus abreast of me and following my gaze. He’s pulled out a torch, and the firelight flickers over his armor. It’s still twilight, but here in Caelid even twilight is a dull, bloody red. The torchlight doesn’t actually help much, it just twists the shadows on his armor, making the creases between the plates writhe like things alive.

“And still nowhere to camp.”

“If all else fails, we can make camp anywhere,” says Melina softly from my other side.

“If all else fails,” I agree with a sigh. “Let’s keep going until we lose the light.”

Fortunately, that last half hour is enough. As we pass by a derelict siege tower the telltale golden flicker of a Site of Grace flares before us. But this time, we’re not the only ones taking advantage of it.

A figure glances up as we approach. He’s tall, six feet if he’s an inch. Then he stands up from the ruined wall where he was seated, and now he towers over all of us. He’s wearing fur-lined armor in blue and grey. A massive sword is sheathed on his back, almost a foot wide and probably six long. But what really gets my attention is his face, which isn’t human. Intelligent eyes look us over from inside a wolf’s head. Behind him are two other figures—a man wearing a slotted metal hat, whose wide brim makes it look more like a shield than anything, and a massive stone pot with arms and legs that look like they’re made of gravel poking out from its sides and bottom.

There’s no way a wolf’s muzzle should be able to form English words, but when the wolf-man speaks, his voice is deep and smooth. “Welcome, travelers,” he says. “Come for the festival as well, have you?”

Chapter Text

“This is far enough.”

“Far enough for what, brother?”

“Help me build a bonfire, and I shall tell you, Melina.”

I dismount from Always On Time cautiously, Millicent following me to her feet. “Hey there, stranger,” I say, waving with my left hand while my right hovers close to Lumina’s holster at my hip. “I’m just here to talk to General Radahn, but most of the people I’ve met seem to think that’s not going to be an option.”

“It seems unlikely,” the wolf-man agrees. “The General’s not been seen since his battle with Malenia, but what little I’ve heard of that day suggests he was right at the center of the blast when she unleashed the Rot. If he’s still in control of his faculties, it’d be a miracle.” He walks over to us, his stride almost unnaturally long, but his movements are smooth and slow, as if he’s well used to setting people at ease. He probably is. He cuts an intimidating figure, with his scarred muzzle and easily seven and a half feet of height. “The name’s Blaidd,” he says, holding out a hand. I half expect to see a paw, but his gauntlets cover hands with the usual four fingers and opposable thumb. “The others are Yura and Alexander. Alexander’s the jar.”

I shake his hand. “Barrett-12, call me Barrett. These are Trinovar, Rogier, Morna, and Millicent.”

“Honored,” Blaidd says, nodding to each of them in turn. “If you were planning on going on to the castle tonight, I’d advise against it.”

“We weren’t,” I say, rolling my shoulders. “It’s been a long day already. Mind if we share your camp?”

“Not at all!” says a jolly voice behind Blaidd. The jar’s—Alexander’s—hand beckons. “The more the merrier! Yura tells me there’s a Site of Lost Grace here somewhere. If any of you are Tarnished, I’m sure that will be a comfort to you!”

“Indeed,” says Rogier as he and Trinovar dismount. Melina spurs Torrent slowly past me until she draws near the Site of Grace, then slides off his back. The Spectral Steed—I still can’t figure out if that’s a title or a species—vanishes into blue mist behind her.

“Ah… forgive me if this is crass,” Millicent says suddenly from behind me. I glance at her. She’s craning her neck to look up at Blaidd, her eyes wide. “But you appear to have a wolf’s head, Sir Blaidd.”

Blaidd bares his teeth. It takes me a second to realize he’s grinning. “Aye, so I do. They call me the Half-Wolf, Miss Millicent. But there’s no cause for alarm. I may have the face of a beast, but I’m no more a feral animal than you.”

“You certainly speak better than most animals I can recall meeting,” Millicent admits, blinking up at him. “Not that I can recall meeting many.”

I chuckle as I pass Blaidd and approach the campsite. Rogier is laying out bedrolls for himself and Trinovar while the Crucible Knight removes his armor. I kneel on the other side of the Site of Grace. “Chester, bedrolls?”

Winchester pops out of my backpack to transmat in bedrolls for me and Melina. His sudden appearance startles Alexander, and I see Yura’s eyes, glittering beneath his wide, bladed hat, following the Ghost’s movements. “That’s a strange device you have there,” the man comments in a voice raspy with long disuse.

“He ain’t a device. This is Winchester, my Ghost.”

“At some point we should consider not advertising that,” Winchester says dryly.

I shrug. “Not like people in these parts know what a Ghost is.”

“Still.” He wiggles his flaps at me before vanishing back into my hammerspace.

I turn to Alexander and Yura as Melina sits down beside me. “So. You three are here for the festival?”

“Indeed!” Alexander says. His voice is loud and boisterous. He reminds me a little of Lord Shaxx, if Shaxx was a giant clay pot with arms and legs. “It’s to be a grand celebration of combat! A fitting place to test the might of Alexander, the Iron Fist!”

…He really reminds me of Shaxx. How I imagine Shaxx was when he was younger, before he’d proven himself—a young, idealistic warrior, like in Parvati’s earliest stories.

Yura’s head shakes under his hat. I can’t see his eyes well in this lighting and under that eye-catching fashion statement, but I get the feeling they’re rolling. “I’m here mostly because Alexander offered me aid in my own work if I joined him. I’ve little patience for a so-called ‘celebration of combat’, myself.”

“Bah! We’ll improve your opinion of honorable combat yet, Yura, my friend! Not all warriors are honorless curs like that Nerijus and his fellows!”

I sit back on my hands, grinning, and let their banter wash over me. I’ve missed this. Sitting around the campfire with the rest of the fireteam while we tracked a Wrathborn through the wilderness, or during a long tour through the Cosmodrome. My nighttime chats with Melina are nice, don’t get me wrong, and Rogier and Trinovar are decent enough company. But my little troupe doesn’t have someone like Alexander, who can make any night in the wilderness feel like a party.

That was Lex, back with the team. I wonder how they’re doing—Lex and the others. They’ve got to be aware I’ve dropped off the grid by now. The Lonestar should’ve been sending telemetry to Crow this whole time. He’d have noticed when it stopped, and he’d have told the rest of the team. I wonder if they’ve identified the system I went missing in. Probably not—the galaxy’s damn big, and I have a bad habit of not following Crow’s organized exploratory patterns. I try to tell him which systems I’m going to when, but I don’t send him updates every day. I can’t even remember how long had passed between my last message to him and the crash.

They’ll find me eventually, I’m sure, even if I can’t get a message out to them. But I’d better have dealt with that invisible debris field before they do, unless I want to start increasing the number of stranded Guardians on this rock. Still, even if that happens, we could probably get a pickup from a Coalition ship…

…Huh. I think we might be decently close to Riis here, actually. Last I heard, Thermidor and Eido had made landfall with a House Light ketch and were working on salvaging the ruined infrastructure from the Eliksni golden age. It’d probably be them who came by to evacuate us, if any more Guardians get trapped around here. I imagine an Eliksni strike force dropping out of a skiff in the middle of Limgrave and having to deal with roaming bands of humans with medieval weaponry and no translators. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that—I’d trust House Light with my life, but failures to communicate effectively with the Eliksni haven’t gone well for either them or humanity, in the past.

There’s a sudden clinking rustle of fur on chainmail as Blaidd crouches down beside me and Melina. “I assume you’d rather keep your own watch rather than trust us to watch your backs,” he says in that smooth voice of his.

“Yeah,” I confirm. “Not that I don’t trust everyone I meet in the middle of Caelid after ten minutes, it’s just that I don’t trust everyone I meet in the middle of Caelid after ten minutes.”

He chuckles. It’s an oddly fierce sound—still recognizably human, but somehow reminiscent of the growl of a wolf. “Wise of you. I have to say the same.  You’re the leader of your little band, aren’t you?”

“I mean, I guess? Not sure it’s that formal. But I’m most of the reason we’re traveling together.” Rogier is here because he’s curious about me, and because he feels like he owes me for curing the Deathblight, and because he thinks he’s more likely to find the secrets he’s looking for with me than on his own. Trinovar is with me because he’s looking for information on his old boss from any Tarnished he happens to meet, and possibly because he thinks I might be an Empyrean and he wants to see where that goes.  Millicent is with me because she thinks I’m her best chance at safety from the Scarlet Rot. And Melina is here because I’ve promised her help getting up to Leyndell in exchange for her help dealing with Radahn and getting that debris field down.

“In that case, when is your watch? I’d like a word in private, while the others are sleeping.”

I shoot him a look. “I take first watch, typically. Although, that reminds me that we need to fold Millicent into the watch rotation…”

“A new member of your band, is she?”

“Yeah. Picked her up outside Sellia just yesterday. Hey, Millicent! You want to take last watch?”

“Certainly,” she answers, looking up from where she’s smoothing out her own bedroll. “I’ll take over from Trinovar shortly before dawn, then?”

“Yep. Trinovar, sound good to you?”

“Aye.”

“Great.” I turn back to Blaidd. “I usually share my watch with Morna, but I guess we can go a few paces away. Not too far, of course.”

“Of course. But I’d not mind if the lady were present for our conversation. What I have to say concerns her as well.”

My eyes narrow. If you’ve never seen an Exo glare at you, take my word for it—it’s something we’re pretty good at. Parvati’s better at it than me, with her red eyes, but I’m not too shabby. “Does it?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate.

I meet Melina’s eyes. Her brow is furrowed, but along with the confusion and wariness is something I don’t expect to see. Something I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen on her face.

It looks like hope.

“So, Sir Yura,” says Trinovar suddenly, setting his helmet neatly on the rest of his armor and taking a seat on his bedroll.

“Just Yura,” the man rasps.

“Very well, Yura. Heard I correctly that thou canst see the light of Grace?”

“Sites, aye. The Guidance of Grace, no. Not for many years.”

“Then thou’rt Tarnished?”

“I am. That a problem, Crucible Knight?”

“Not at all. I only wish to ask after another Tarnished—if thou knowest whether he hath returned to these lands.”

“Elden Lord Godfrey,” Yura guesses. “I’m afraid not. I remember meeting the Elden Lord once, though I can’t remember exactly what was discussed. But I’ve no idea if he’s returned from beyond the Fog, or where he’s gone if he has.”

“But you did meet him?”

“Unless you know of another nine-foot wall of a man with a lion on his shoulder.”

“Sorry,” I interject. “A lion on his shoulder? Like Rufus?”

Yura blinks at me. “…Rufus?”

I point at the big cat, who currently has his head buried in a bowl of pemmican stew.

“Ah—no.” Trinovar answers that one. “Serosh was Lord Godfrey’s regent in the days before he became Tarnished. He was as wise as any man, and far smaller than dear Rufus. He clung to Lord Godfrey’s back as part of a pact between them—one on which I am sworn to secrecy, I fear.”

“Fair enough.”

The conversation starts to wind down after that. One by one people turn in—first Alexander, then Millicent, then Rogier, and finally Trinovar and Yura, who seem to get along better than I’d have expected. Yura seems prickly, but I guess the novelty of a Crucible Knight who just wants to talk to the Tarnished—something I’m gathering is pretty rare in the Lands Between—is enough to intrigue him.

But before too long, it’s just me, Melina, and Blaidd left sitting up in the flickering light of the Site of Grace. When Yura’s breathing evens out—Trinovar tends to fall asleep real quick once he lays down—Blaidd stands and walks a few paces away. Melina and I stand as well, and she lets out a soft whistle to summon Torrent. We join him a couple dozen feet away—still close enough to hear Alexander mumbling in his sleep, but far enough that if we’re quiet, it’d be hard for them to make out what we say.

Blaidd turns to us. “It’s an unexpected stroke of fortune,” he says, “that our paths should cross so perfectly as too meet here, just across the Greatbridge from Castle Redmane. Were I inclined, I might even call it fate.”

I frown. “I don’t follow.”

“Alexander is here to fight in the Radahn Festival. I’d be happy to join him. But that’s not why I’m here. I came here to find you, Barrett Twelve. You and your companion.”

I go still. Melina breathes in sharply. But before I can come up with something to say, she beats me to it. “Did you indeed, Half-Wolf?” she murmurs.

“Yes.” He reaches into a pouch at his belt and pulls out a small object. Melina lets out a small sound of recognition—a low keening that makes me want to scoop her up in my arms and whisper into her hair that everything’ll be okay—before I can even register what it is. It’s a small doll, with blue skin and four arms, wearing white robes and a furry, wide-brimmed hat. “I was bade by my mistress to give this to you,” he says, holding the doll out to Melina. “And to deliver a cordial invitation to join her at Caria Manor… Lady Melina.”

Melina reaches out with a shaking hand. It falls apart into blue mist before it can touch the doll. “Ranni,” she whispers, Tears glitter in her eyes, stained like blood in the ruddy light. “Oh, Ranni.”

Blaidd looks at the mist where her hand should be. It’s hard to read the expression on his wolf’s face, but if I have to guess, he looks terribly sad. “Mistress Ranni warned me I’d not be able to see you,” he says. “I imagine this is why.”

“Yes,” Melina whispers. “Only my spirit lingers here, so distant from my blackened bones. Only dear Torrent can touch me, now. Without him, I would still be trapped on the mountainside. Oh, Blaidd, I did not dare to hope you would remember me.”

“You two know each other, then?”

Melina starts, as if she’d forgotten I was there. But Blaidd just gives me a nod. “I am Lady Ranni’s Shadow,” he says, and I can hear the capital letter. “Just as Maliketh was to Queen Marika, and as Serosh was to Lord Godfrey. Lady Melina was very dear to Mistress Ranni as a child. When she vanished… it broke her heart, Lady Melina. When she told me of your return, she said she might never forgive herself that she stopped searching for you.”

“There would have been nothing to find. Nothing but ash and bones on a long-doused pyre in the forbidden lands.” She turns to me, and I see a tear fall, fading into blue mist before it hits the ground. “Please, Barrett… take the doll. For me.”

I do. “Should I give you two some space?” I ask. “Let you catch up in private?”

“No,” Melina says, shaking her head with more vehemence than I’d expect. “No, Barrett, I… No.” She turns to Blaidd. “Of course I will come to Caria Manor, If Barrett is willing to make the detour.”

“Absolutely.” How could I say anything else?

“Good,” says Blaidd. “But if you’ve business with General Radahn first, I’m happy to help however I can.”

“Apparently he’s keeping the ‘stars’ suspended above this world,” I say. “I need them down. Melina and Rogier both mentioned killing him might do that, if he can’t be reasoned with.”

“A fellow servant of Mistress Ranni, the Preceptor Seluvis, suspects the same. He also claims that the Mistress’ plans cannot progress until the stars which govern her fate are allowed to move again.”

That sounds like superstitious nonsense to me, but to be fair, I have a bit of a skewed perspective on fate. “Then, if we can’t talk to Radahn… you might be a big help in bringing him down. I’m getting the feeling that Godrick wasn’t half as tough as he’s going to be.”

“You’d guess right. I’d heard Godrick the Grafted had fallen, but he was but a distant descendant of Godwyn.” Some corner of my mind takes note that Blaidd, who’s been careful about using the proper titles for everyone, doesn’t give one to Godwyn. I wonder if he and Ranni know what happened to Melina? “General Radahn is Mistress Ranni’s brother—and, more to the point, was known as the mightiest of the demigods in his day. Even if he was never named Empyrean, no one but Lady Malenia could ever hope to match him in a pitched battle. And even she could only win by dishonoring her oath to hold back the Scarlet Rot.”

“Do you intend to try and cure the Rot, if he is afflicted with it, Barrett?” Melina asks suddenly. “We have not discussed it.”

“Well, we got some… mixed results last time we tried.”

“I’m sorry. Cure the Scarlet Rot?” Blaidd rears back slightly.

“Yeah. It’s… I have a weapon that can purge magical contaminations. It worked fine on Deathblight when Rogier caught it, but we tried with Scarlet Rot and… well, it sort of worked. Millicent claims she can still feel it, but it seems to be in remission.”

“Miss Millicent had the Scarlet Rot?” Blaidd looks down at me blankly, then glances past me at the campsite. “But she seems so… well, I’ve never heard of the Rot being cured, but I certainly can’t imagine anyone suffering from it being so coherent as she is.”

“Yeah… it, uh, spoke to us when we tried to cure it. The Outer God, I mean. Spoke to us through her. Implied that it was letting her go out of gratitude for something I’d done. No idea what it was talking about, but it was damn creepy.”

“More than a little concerning,” Blaidd murmurs. “But it might be worth trying if the General can’t be reached any other way. Mistress Ranni would be glad to have her brother back, especially after all that’s happened with Rykard…”

“What has happened with Rykard?” Melina asks, a little hesitantly. “I’ve heard rumors…”

“Likely true,” Blaidd growls, his teeth baring in sudden anger. “They call him the Lord of Blasphemy, now. I can respect his rebellion against the Golden Order of the Erdtree, but his Recusants wander the Lands Between for no cause beyond their own bloodlust, and call it noble resistance.”

“Sorry, Recusants?” I ask.

“Tarnished who have come into the service of Rykard and his Volcano Manor,” Blaidd explains. “They claim to be rebelling against the Erdtree, but I’ve seen no evidence of any attempt to take up arms against Leyndell as Godrick the Grafted did, nor to build any lasting order as Prince Miquella did with the Haligtree. No, they merely hunt down and kill other Tarnished to satiate their lust for violence. The only thing that separates them from the Bloody Fingers Yura is hunting is that they claim, falsely, to serve a noble cause.”

Become the destroyer of hollow things. In a bolt of inspiration, I understand what the Recusants Blaidd is talking about are. I should. I was one of them once. “I see.”

“So, yes. If you think it might work, we should try this cure for the Scarlet Rot.” Blaidd snorts. “What a thing to say. What a time we live in. And you appear to be at the heart of all of it, Barrett Twelve.”

“I told you, just Barrett.”

“Very well, Barrett. I look forward to joining you when you face Starscourge Radahn.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Scythe—Barrett. Sorry for pushing you like that, earlier.”

“...Yeah.”

“I knew you weren’t ready for something like that. I shouldn’t have made you come with me to that village. There’s always less grim work that needs doing.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t worry. We can find other things you can do to help us out—things that sit a little easier. Until you’re ready for more.”

“Mhm.”

“I gotta run. One of the big shots—Dredgen Vale—is coming by our cell tomorrow, and I gotta make sure everyone’s ready.”

“Sure. See you around, Dredgen Vile.”

The sun rises red over Caelid. Millicent and Yura wake the rest of us with it. In the scarlet sunlight, I can see the barricades on the far side of the massive stone bridge connecting the rocky island on which Castle Redmane stands to the mainland. Among the wooden palisades are ballistae, pointing directly at the bridge.

“The fortifications are unmanned,” Melina says, frowning at the distant walls. The bridge is probably almost half a mile long. I certainly can’t make out individual people at that distance.

“You sure?” I ask her.

“Yes. I can see signs of the General’s soldiers—lingering smoke from doused watch-fires, tents still standing—but their gear has been removed. They have cleared our path.”

“A so-called ‘festival of combat’ will draw all types,” Yura observes grimly. “Presumably whoever is in command of the garrison, whatever their reason for calling the festival, has no desire to see all their men butchered for the sport of cessblood like the Bloody Fingers or the Recusants.”

“This works to our benefit, at least,” Blaidd says. “We can cross the bridge without fear of the ballistae.”

“What was the plan if they hadn’t cleared out?” I ask him.

He bares his teeth in a fiercely animal grin. “Run and pray.”

“Ah, it would have been a worthy test of our skill! Our speed, our dexterity!” Alexander says.

Big guy probably has to choose between those two, Winchester mutters over our private link. I can’t imagine he’s very dexterous when he’s rolling on his side, but he’s probably damn fast.

I snort quietly. You’re not funny.

I’m also not joking. Ask him if he gets dizzy.

Absolutely not. “I have a feeling we’ll get plenty of testing once we’re inside,” I say aloud. “Shall we?”

Blaidd and his group don’t have mounts, so it’s slower going across the bridge than I’m used to. We move at a decent jog—a speed that Yura, Millicent, and Alexander can keep up without much trouble. (Alexander doesn’t roll, he jogs along heavily beside Yura.) Blaidd, also on foot, doesn’t even have to jog—his long-legged, loping stride is smooth and relaxed.

It’s eerily silent as we cross the bridge. It feels like we should be getting shot at. This is a defensible choke point as we approach a fortified position—there’s something that sets my nickel-alloy teeth on edge about being allowed to just ride my sparrow up to those unmanned barricades.

“Were they here yesterday?” I ask Blaidd. “Did you actually get fired on when you tried to cross the bridge?”

“It was already getting dark when we arrived,” Blaidd says. “We had only made camp perhaps half an hour before you joined us. We decided to wait until daylight, where perhaps a white flag might be both visible and recognized. So I can’t say whether they had already evacuated.”

“But where could they have gone?” Millicent asks. “Are they simply cowering in the castle, or have they gone somewhere else in Caelid? And if they are in the castle, it seems… futile, to abandon their fortifications if they are going to be behind them in any case.”

“They might just be hiding in the buildings,” I say. “Trying to stay out of the way of any marauding killers here for the festival. I don’t know why they’re running this festival at all, but I’m assuming they need those people here for some reason. They can’t just abandon the castle completely, so they might have decided their best hope is to just… stay out of the way. Let the monsters have the run of the place for a while, and hope they won’t go looking for more people to kill.”

“A poor and foolish choice,” Yura rasps. “Those who crave bloodshed don’t turn aside in the face of locked doors and empty courtyards.”

I shrug. “Not sure if they have any better options. I still don’t know why they thought inviting everyone in the Lands Between to this festival was necessary.”

We reach the castle gate. Just on the other side, padding around the courtyard, are gray lions like Rufus. One of them turns towards us, standing just past the raised portcullis. It growls.

Beside me, Rufus roars a challenge. I tense up, half expecting both beasts to lunge at us. For a moment, they consider it, but then both of them cower away slightly and back away to make room.

“The same enchantment which hung over Castle Stormveil is in place here as well,” Melina says. “Torrent and I will not be able to join you inside. Not visibly, at least.”

“Got it,” I say. “I’m sure there’ll be a Site of Grace in there somewhere.”

“Most likely.” She takes a deep breath. “Good luck, Barrett. All of you.”

I shoot her a grin. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

She and Torrent vanish into blue mist. The rest of us dismount before stepping over the threshold and into Castle Redmane, leading Gullfax and Rufus as we go.

As we pass the lions, Rogier nudges me. “Will you try to tame these ones as well?”

“If I have a chance,” I say. I assume nailing blades into a lion’s wrists makes it a fearsome combatant, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with people doing it.

Other than the two lions, who watch us warily as we cross the courtyard, there’s no visible resistance. There are several locked and barred doors in the buildings to either side of the straight path, some of which show signs of damage, as if people tried to force them with everything from spears to fire. But the doors seem to have survived.

We ascend a stairway and reach a sort of parade ground, maybe about the size of a soccer field. Tables have been set up two neat rows going down the dusty yard, and there’s a whole feast laid out on them. A pale mist flows over the food, almost invisible in the bloody daylight. Preservative magic, maybe?

There’s already several people spread out around the field. There’s a woman in red robes, which have started to fade back into dingy white around the edges where the dye has leached away. A bald man in plated leather armor is squatting in the corner, beady eyes darting over our group before skittering away to the rest of the people in the courtyard. In another corner, a man in splint mail glowers at the rest of the attendees through the eyeholes of a mask in the shape of an old man’s grimacing face.

Two men in heavy armor are sitting and talking over plates of food. One of them is, uh, very round. His chestpiece is almost spherical to account for his gut, and he wears a flat, wide-brimmed metal hat that looks more like a repurposed buckler than anything. The other has two massive horns built into his armor, the chiral keratin—if that’s what they are—forged into the armor above his hips and curving up around his shoulders.

And at another table are another pair, even more mismatched. One of them is a bit like Blaidd, in that he has the head of an animal—a red-maned lion, in this case—over a vaguely humanoid body. He looks a little less human than Blaidd does, though. But the other is wearing familiar armor.

“Votadia!” Trinovar exclaims, leaping off Rufus’ back and striding over to the other Crucible Knight.

“Trinovar?” The knight looks up, an unmistakably feminine voice emerging from their helmet. She pulls it off and shakes out a braid of long brown hair. “Can it be—what bringeth thee here, of all places?”

“‘Tis no short tale,” Trinovar laughs, stepping forward and throwing his arms around her. “Suffice to say that Lord Godrick hath met his match, and I chose to follow his heir rather than die needlessly on the cliffs below Stormveil. But what of thee? What bringeth thee from Castle Morne?” He nods at the lion-man beside her. “And who is thy companion?”

The lion-man has taken a few hasty steps back, his furry hand going up to the hilt of the broad sword at his back. But he hasn’t drawn it. His eyes look Trinovar up and down, then glance back at the rest of us, before he clears his throat with a sound like a growl. “Ralegost,” he says in a deep, rumbling voice. “Servant to Lord Edgar.”

“The Lord sent us hither when the summons came out to this festival,” says Votadia. “He deemed it his duty to send aid to this most war-torn of the provinces, the Weeping Peninsula having escaped the Shattering nearly untouched. But what of thine own party? Many strange folk have you—”

Suddenly a resounding clang rings out across the courtyard. I turn on my heel, reaching for Lumina at my hip. Yura has leaped forward, locking his katana with that of the man in the face-shaped mask. “Okina,” he growls, and I can recognize the fury in his voice. It’s the same anger I heard in Lex’s voice as they stood over Uldren’s prone body.

“Yura,” the man—Okina—says in a thin, reedy voice. But his arm isn’t so much as shaking as Yura presses against his katana—a katana which somehow drips steaming blood onto the ground at his feet, as if the blade itself is bleeding. “My prodigal pupil. Have you at last felt the call of bloodshed?”

Yura lets out a wordless roar of fury, stepping back and slashing forward again with his blade. But the weapon drops from his hands before it connects. So does Okina’s, as a golden light descends upon the courtyard.

“Enough of that,” calls a voice from above. The man speaking stands atop the gate between this courtyard and the castle’s central keep. His hands rest on the hilt of a heavy two-handed sword. It reminds me of the zweihander we made for Thermidor to celebrate the seven-year anniversary of his resurrection. Hero of Ages, we called it—Parvati’s idea. Blackwall did most of the actual blacksmithing while Lex, Grant, and I went out and gathered the hadium and spinmetal to make it. Silver was still… away from the City, at that point.

“You can all feel free to kill each other outside this castle,” says the man. His armor is weirdly colorful—it’s tattered and ragged, but the red, yellow, and blue stripes of his leggings are still brightly visible. He wears a brown hood and breastplate over a matching gambeson, and a bushy gray mustache and beard grow out from under an impressive nose. “But if you are here for the General’s festival, you will save your aggression for the battle to come.”

Yura growls, but he reaches down, picks up his sword, and turns on his heel, stalking back towards the rest of us. Behind him, Okina picks up his own and sheathes it again.

“Now then,” says the man on the gate. He speaks loudly, projecting to the far side of the courtyard, but it’s difficult for him to make himself heard over that much distance outdoors. “Welcome, champions, one and all, to the Radahn Festival! The mightiest demigod of the Shattering, General Radahn himself, awaits you beyond this keep! Here is your task: Together, you shall all enter the field! You will battle the General, achieve glory, and the one that deals the final blow shall claim his Great Rune! We’ve received word of no other champions approaching the castle, so we will proceed to the battleground shortly! Any who have questions may approach me and ask!”

I take a deep breath as the announcer falls silent. “So,” I say quietly to Blaidd. “Guess that answers my question about how Radahn’s doing.”

“His surviving men intend to give him a noble end,” Blaidd says. “Noble, I suppose, by some standards.”

“Is it? How many of the people here are going to die for it?”

Blaidd shrugs. “It’s not as though anyone is here who didn’t volunteer. It would be one thing to conscript poor footmen with no hope. But here we have Alexander, and men like him. I’d not deny him the chance to prove his mettle, would you?”

“I think I might be about to deny him this chance,” I say. “I’ve got to talk to that announcer fella.”

Blaidd nods. “Do you need support? Backup?”

“Nah. Just cover for me.”

I split from the group, crossing the courtyard and climbing the stairs up to the gatehouse. The hooded man turns, his striped shoulders cutting a brilliant contrast against the dull red sky. He’s a couple inches shorter than me, and up close I can see the tired slump of his shoulders. “I’ve had word of you, Barrett-12,” he says in a quiet voice faintly roughened with age.

I raise a metal eyebrow. “Oh? From who?”

“A man named Gideon Ofnir. He helped me get word out regarding this festival in the first place. They call him ‘the All-Knowing.’ I relied on him to inform me when all the champions arrived.” He extends a hand. “Jerren. Castellan of Redmane.”

“Barrett-12. Guardian.” I shake his hand. “If you’ve heard I was coming, do you already know what I’m about to ask?”

He snorts. “Certainly not. Sir Gideon told me the names and faces of those who were coming, and took note of you for your unique nature. But if he had any further details, he did not share them with me. He’s a bit of a miser, Sir Gideon. He gives what knowledge he must, and hoards the rest.”

“I know the type,” I say, thinking of Queen Mara. “Well. I gather the General’s contracted the Scarlet Rot?”

“Aye, just so.” Jerren lets out a long sigh. “He has long since lost his mind. He no longer recognizes friend from foe, but gorges himself on the flesh of both, left scattered on the field of his last great battle. It is a piteous fate—and one from which it is my duty to release him. It was for that purpose that the surviving Redmanes and I conceived this festival.”

“I may have a better option.”

His eyes glint as he shoots me a look under his hood. “Speak.”

I pull out Lumina, keeping my finger off the trigger. “This is Lumina,” I say. “I’ve used it to cure the Deathblight once. I was able to suppress the Rot once, too, although the results were mixed. I want to try to use it on Radahn.”

He stares at the gun in my hand, then at me. “I had considered appealing to the Haligtree,” he whispers. “It’s said that Miquella developed a substance that could suppress the Rot in his sister. But after that very sister caused all this suffering… no. The General wouldn’t thank me for prostrating myself before her brother and master in his name. But if you offer a different route, one that has nothing to do with Miquella…”

“It doesn’t. Have anything to do with Miquella, I mean.”

“How does it work?”

“Complicated answer. It—”

“I mean, what is necessary,” Jerren interrupts. “I have little patience for the theorizing of sorcerers, these days. What will you do, in concrete terms?”

“Oh. Well, Lumina needs to kill something to charge its healing ability. So I’ll need something other than Radahn on the field that I can take out with just a couple shots.”

“There are a few combatants who would not be missed, but I cannot in good conscience suggest you kill men whom I summoned here in good faith. Not even for the General.” He hesitates. “There may be… one other option. Though I do not think the General will thank you.”

Chapter Text

“That will be timber enough.”

“Then shalt thou now explain?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! What—brother, unhand me—”

“When thou wert born, many ominous portents greeted thee into the world. I am old, dear Melina, gentle Melina. Old enough to have seen the beginning of this Golden Order—old enough to remember, in my earliest youth, the wars my sires fought to bring it about.”

“Brother, please—why dost thou bind my hands—stop—”

“I will not also see the Golden Order come to an end. And if it is thine own destiny to burn it to ash, then I shall rob the of thy destiny, sweet sister.”

“But I have no desire to destroy the Golden Order!”

“I know. It took me many years to understand this, but I do know, beloved Melina. But we are all of us in thrall to the dictates of fate. What thou desirest now hath as little bearing on what thou shalt one day do as doth a drop of water on the course of a rushing river.”

“No—Brother Godwyn, please, do not ignite—”

“Mine only hope for the preservation of this age of Gold is to rob thy destiny from thee. Or, perhaps, to rob thee from destiny’s clutch. And so I shall destroy thee, render thee down to ash and dust so completely that there shall not be enough of thee left for a living jar to find thee and bring about Erdtree burial. Destined Death may have been removed from the Elden Ring—but thou shalt die, nevertheless.”

“Ah—ah! It burns!”

“It shall burn worse ere all is done, my darling sister. And I shall remain with thee all through. Scream at me. Rail, rage. Hate me. I am more than deserving.”

“All I wanted—agh—all I desired was thy good regard, Godwyn!”

“I know. Do not forgive me, Melina. For though I know this is what I must do, I shall never forgive myself for doing it.”

A few minutes later, I descend back into the courtyard at Jerren’s side. “Winchester,” I say. “Can you amplify my voice? I don’t want to have to shout too much.”

“Sure,” says my Ghost, emerging from my hammerspace.

“Everyone!” I call, and my voice booms from Chester’s shell. “I have a plan, but I need a word with all of you!”

Slowly, the group gathers around me. A few hang back—the bald man, Okina, Ralegost—but everyone gets close enough to hear and gives me their attention. I wave at Winchester, who takes the cue to duck back into my backpack, and continue.

“I might—might—have a way to cure Radahn’s Scarlet Rot,” I say. “I want to give it a try.”

“A cure for the Rot?” Votadia asks. “Not Unalloyed Gold, surely? Would that even affect the General, given his enmity with Lord Miquella’s sister?”

“Not Unalloyed Gold,” I confirm. “Something else—something of mine. It might work—it’s successfully cured Deathblight in the past, but it’s only ever been able to suppress the Scarlet Rot. It’s possible it won’t be capable of that against a demigod, or that something else might go wrong.”

“You wish to rob us of the opportunity to test our blades against a son of Radagon?” asks Okina in his reedy voice. He doesn’t even sound angry—just mildly amused. “We came here for a reason, puppet.”

Somehow, this isn’t like the few times someone has called me a puppet without knowing better since I got to the Lands Between. This man knows I’m not some mindless automaton—and he’s deliberately winding me up. Somehow, that makes it easier to keep my cool. “I know your type,” I tell him. “You’re here because you believe you get stronger by fighting and killing powerful opponents, right? Hone your sword against others.”

His eyes glitter under his mask. “Just so.”

“Cool. How about this—I’ll fight you. If you win, I’ll stay out of your way.”

“If I win, you will be dead.”

“Sure, whatever. But if I win, you won’t get in mine.”

He snorts. “You’ll never match me if you don’t intend my death.”

“I figure someone else has a better claim on your life than I do,” I say, nodding at Yura. I don’t know exactly what their quarrel is, and I don’t need to. I know Okina’s type.

Okina studies me for a long moment, then nods slowly. “I accept your terms.”

“Great. We’ll handle that first.” I turn to the rest of the group. “Anyone else have any objections?”

“I, too, came here to test my mettle against the mightiest of the demigods,” Alexander says. “But if his mind could be restored, why—that would be a work of true heroism! A test of might against the General in full control of his faculties would be a far grander thing, in any case!”

“Not an objection,” says Trinovar. “But—Barrett, hast thou considered that the General may not be willing to do what thou wilt ask of him? Even if thou curest him?”

Honestly, not really. I’ve been thinking in terms of let’s try curing Radahn so we can talk to him about bringing down that debris field. I haven’t exactly been assuming that he’ll be willing, but I haven’t spared much thought to what I’ll do if he isn’t, either. Maybe I should have before I told Jerren my plan.

…No. No, I won’t fall into that trap. Taking what I need because negotiating for it is more difficult or too complex—that’s the Dredgen talking.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell Trinovar. “This is the right thing to do. If he won’t help me afterward, I’ll make a new plan then.”

A few minutes later Jerren has led the group down an elevator in the keep to the small stretch of sandy shore between outcrops of the castle’s rocky foundation. A thin strait, maybe half a mile across at most, separates us from the mainland. A blasted plain is on the other side, lifeless sand strewn with thousands of discarded weapons, armor, and corpses.

The moment we step off the elevator, Melina and Torrent reappear. Several of the festival attendees who haven’t met her yet startle, but she doesn’t look away from the dunes on the other side. Her lips are twisted in grief. “I can see him,” she whispers.

I try to follow her gaze, but whatever she’s seeing is too distant for me to make out. “Radahn?”

“Yes.” She watches for a long moment, then shudders and averts her eyes. They find mine a moment later. “I hope you will succeed,” she says. “But if you do not… promise me you will give him a better death than this.”

Part of me wants to ask what she just saw. Fortunately, most of me isn’t that cruel. “Of course.”

“I believe you have another responsibility first,” says Okina from behind me. I look over to see him fingering the hilts of his katana and his shorter, offhand blade.

(There’s a name for those—shorter, curved blades in the Old Nipponese style. Can’t remember it for the life of me. Blackwall was into pre-Golden Age military history for a while.)

“Rather placing the carriage before the horse, aren’t you?” he asks. “Perhaps, as a puppet, you think you have nothing to fear from Okina, Demon of the Crimson River.”

I look him in the eye. “Nope. Should I?”

His eyes flash under his mask. With a high-pitched scream of sudden frenzy, he leaps at me, both blades coming out in a flash of ringing steel. Scarlet trails off the longer sword, leaving arcs of red in the air as it swings towards me.

I catch it on my Arc Blade.

The smaller blade comes at me from another angle, embedding itself in my side, penetrating the synthleather of my armor and cutting a shallow gash into the metal of my side. It hurts like hell, and unfortunately the blade doesn’t break like I was hoping it would.

So I go for plan B. I snap my left hand out and try to catch his wrist, but he reacts too quickly, the blade skidding painfully against my side as he withdraws it. He takes a quick step back then comes at me again, hoping to catch me with the same trick—two blades from different angles so I can’t block both.

I have to make a decision. It’s tempting to just let both blades hit me and take advantage of the opening to stab for center mass. One good hit from a Light-supercharged Arc blade will probably be enough to take Okina down for the count. It takes down most Guardians in one hit in the Crucible. But it’s risky. I know I can survive quite a few hits from that smaller blade. No worries there. It’s the bigger one, dripping with blood and as obviously paracausal as anything in my arsenal, that I’m worried about. I’d probably be fine if that hits me. Probably. But I don’t want to chance it.

So instead I dive past him, catching myself on my hands and springing up again behind him, kicking up a cloud of beach sand. He spins around impressively quickly, blades already coming up to parry my next blow, but I’ve already tossed my Arc blade into my left hand to sheathe it while my right reaches for my shoulder. FILO, Chester.

The shotgun appears under my hand, and I pull it out as Okina leaps for me again. I jump over his attack—thank you, Marcus Ren, for the gift to all Hunters that are the Stompies—and point my shotgun at center mass. I pull the trigger.

Okina’s faster than any unenhanced human. (And I need to remember to figure out how he was enhanced, and how far that can go in these parts.) But he’s not fast enough to dodge an Arc-charged slug at under three paces when he doesn’t even know what to expect.

People make different sounds when they’re shot in different places. Catch someone in the right part of the brain without shielding, and they’ll drop without so much as a grunt. Hit someone through the lungs with something high-penetration, and they won’t be able to find the breath to let out much more than a wheeze.

I catch Okina in the gut. The initial impact is enough to knock the wind out of him. Then he let out a groan. I know from experience the pain’s too much for even the most stoic son of a bitch to keep in entirely. But he doesn’t drop. Doesn’t even go to his knees. Whether it’s because of the adrenaline, or because he’s enhanced in more ways than just speed, he comes at me with renewed desperation, that red sword carving a weeping gash through the air as it swings towards my head.

But it is a desperate move. Powerful, but telegraphed. I duck under the swing, already aiming a little higher for the next shot. This one catches him through the right lung.

And that’s that. He tries another attack, but the attempt pulls him off his feet. He falls face forward onto the sand, growling in pain and rage. The wheezing has already started, as he tries to breath and only gets half the oxygen he’s used to.

I put my foot under his shoulder and roll him onto his back. He glares up at me through his mask. In the little hole over his mouth, I can see his bared teeth. “Well?” he demands between wheezing breaths. “Will you finish it, or are you too much a coward?”

I’m tempted. Not least because Lumina is going to need a kill before too long. But the sheer size of that crater across the water tells me I’d lose the charge by the time I find Radahn anyway. The desert stretches from horizon to horizon, miles across. Lumina can’t keep a charge that long… and there’s another way to give this death value.

I look up, away from Okina. “Yura,” I say. “I don’t know your problem with this guy, but I can guess. What do you want?”

Yura looks at me, his face checkered in shadow by his hat. Then he steps forward, drawing a comically long katana.

Okina lets out a ragged laugh. “Will you take the scraps left to you by a greater warrior?” he asks Yura. “Pathetic. Too weak to take, so you grovel and beg to be given. Small wonder Eleonora saw no more—”

Yura buries the point of his katana in Okina’s shoulder. Okina chokes on the rest of his words. “Keep her name out of your mouth, filth,” he says. His voice is almost toneless—no spitting with rage, no ragged triumph or grief. Just grim resolve. “Your taunts are as empty as your philosophy, and your philosophy is as hollow as your curatives.”

“And none are so empty as the very world!” There’s a mad gleam in Okina’s eyes now, and he is spitting—blood and spittle visibly staining his lips under his mask. “I die as I lived—by the sword!”

Yura raises his katana.

“Aiat!” screams Okina.

The sword pierces his heart. With one last, long exhale, Okina dies.

…My hands are shaking.

Shit, Winchester whispers in my head. Shit.

Yura pulls his sword out with a wet, scraping noise. Without looking at anyone, including the corpse at his feet, he pulls out a cloth and starts wiping it clean. “Thank you, Sir Barrett,” he says in his raspy voice. “I was not seeking Okina in these parts. I never even hoped to see him dead, so famed was his swordsmanship. I owe this to you.” After a long pause, he turns to me. “Sir Barrett?”

I still can’t answer. The inside of my head is white noise, shock and fear warring with toxic excitement.

Because, yeah, part of me is excited. Excited at the prospect that maybe I’m not the first person from the wider universe to land down here. Excited at the prospect of facing the Hive again, the way they were at their height, before we gutted them, cut down their gods and tore out their worms and broke their thrones. Excited at the prospect of fighting the only war that ever mattered again.

“Barrett?” another voice says from behind and above me. I blink and turn to see Torrent’s head inches from mine, his big, dark eyes watching mine with a kind of slow, thoughtful empathy. On his back, Melina looks down at me, a concerned frown on her face. “Are you well?”

I swallow and force myself back to the present. “Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “Yeah, I’m fine. I…” Aiat. He said aiat. How the hell did a swordsman on this uncharted world learn Hive liturgy? And does it have anything to do with how humans ended up here? I turn to Yura. “Do you know what that last word he said means?”

Yura frowns. “No. He and the followers of his cessblood took to muttering it to themselves at times, as I recall. Particularly after battle.”

“But you don’t know where they learned it?”

“I assume most learned it from him. But where he learned it, no. It’s familiar to you, then?”

“It’s…” How did Parvati explain it to me? “It’s a religious exultation, for a cult that worships death. That’s… an oversimplification, but it’s the basics.”

“Suitable, then, that the Bloody Fingers should use it,” Yura says darkly. “You’ve fought this cult in the past?”

I helped slaughter their entire pantheon, one twisted god after another. “More than once, yes. They were… dangerous.” And, with that bit of spectacular understatement out of the way, I turn towards the water and the mainland across it. “But that can wait. We have work to do.”

Chapter Text

“Vile? I heard gun—”

“That’s far enough, friend.”

“…Ha. Shin Malphur. The Man with the Golden Gun.”

“That’s me. You must be Dredgen Scythe. Got any last words?”

“Is Vile already dead?”

“Yep. Ghost too.”

“Good.”

“Not the reaction I was expecting.”

“She crossed a line yesterday. It wasn’t her first time crossing it. It was just the first time I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening. The girl I loved died a while ago, I think. It’s the real Thorn, you know, not one of the replicas. I guess what happened to her must have happened to Dredgen Yor all those years ago.”

“Yeah. It did.”

“So, thanks. For doing what I was too blind to try.”

“…Why Scythe?”

“Hm?”

“Why’d you call yourself Dredgen Scythe?”

“Because I thought that was the point. Become the blade that harvests the grain, so others can eat. But I guess those ideas die after a while. Walk in the dark long enough, you start to forget what sunlight felt like.”

“Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it.”

“You gonna shoot me, or…?”

“…No. No, I don’t think I am. Give me your Thorn. Good. How do you feel about learning to use your own Golden Gun?”

“The hell are you saying?”

“Walk in the dark long enough, you forget what sunlight felt like. But you’ve been in the dark as long as Vile was, and you haven’t forgotten, have you?”

“…”

“Come on outside, Dredgen Scythe. Come feel the sun again. And then I’ll teach you how to bring it back down with you.”

“That teleporter will transport you across the strait into the crater,” Jerren says, pointing at a stone obelisk with a circular hole through the center right on the edge of the water. It’s smaller than I’d expect—only about up to my shoulders. The opening is luminous with swirling white energy, looking more like a small ether storm than a Vex gate. I could dive through it headfirst or throw myself in feetfirst, but Trinovar and Votadia would have a lot of trouble getting their bulky armor through and both Bliadd and Alexander don’t have a chance.

That doesn’t seem to stop them, though. Everyone begins moving towards the portal, including the people who can’t possibly fit. I catch up with Blaidd, jogging a little to match his stride. “I don’t know how to use the teleporter,” I say.

“It’s not difficult,” Blaidd says. “Simply rest your hands on the obelisk and stand in the vortex.”

“The vortex?”

“The mist flowing into the portal.” He points, and I squint. It’s a little difficult to see in this lighting, but there is a stream of that same pale mist flowing into the opening.

“Huh. Okay, thanks.”

He nods, grinning down at me. “You’ll not get out of this quite so easily, I’m afraid.”

I just shake my head with a laugh. The tension is starting to ramp up—the bald guy who I haven’t spoken to yet is practically shaking in his boots, and Ralegost is clinging to Votadia’s armored wrist like it’s the only solid thing in a hurricane.

Jerren stabs his sword into the sand beside the teleporter, turning to face us. “Be wary,” he warns. “Once you cross the portal, you will be in the General’s domain. You may not be able to see him immediately. He will be able to see you. And his greatbow can strike a target almost as far as the horizon. Take cover behind the dunes and make your way towards the center of the crater with all haste. He will find you thereabouts. His mind is gone, and he will not employ advanced tactics. That does not mean that a single blow from one of his swords will not render you into so much meat and dust. But keep courage, and act with wisdom, and you may succeed.”

I take a deep breath. Before I can step forward, Alexander already has. “I shall be the first into the field!” he says proudly. “Come, friends, and let us battle a demigod!”

He stands in front of the portal, puts his stone hand on the obelisk, and falls still for a moment. Then, as I watch, his body dissolves into pale mist and swirls into the opening. A moment later, a similar obelisk on the other side of the water spits out a large puff of mist, which coalesces into the Warrior Jar. He turns and beckons us, then lumbers out of the open into cover behind a nearby dune.

Blaidd goes next, and I’m right behind him. Teleporting feels almost exactly the same as transmat—there’s a momentary break in the continuity of consciousness as the body is transferred, and then I pop back into existence on the other side.

I follow Blaidd and Alexander into cover. As I jog the few steps to the dune, a flicker of blue mist blooms beside me as Torrent and Melina appear. She doesn’t look at me—her eye is fixed at something too distant for me to see, deep in the crater. “He has not seen us yet,” she says quietly. “But I do not doubt that he will, when he looks up from the corpse he is devouring.”

“Can you do me a favor?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Can you see if there’s any sign of life, anywhere else in this crater?”

She traces her eye along the horizon silently. Then she looks down at me. “I fear not,” she says quietly. “There is a tomb on the crater’s far side, but I see no indication of anything living within. It is possible that Those Who Live in Death may have claimed it… but that would require one of them to have brought Deathroot through this battleground, and I do not think Radahn would have allowed them to pass.”

“And if it’s on the far side of the crater, that’s gotta be miles away,” I say. It should be over the horizon, honestly, but I’ve just come to accept that Melina’s vision isn’t completely causal. “Even if something’s alive in there, I don’t know that I can make it back to Radahn before Lumina loses its charge anyway. And that whole time he’ll be shooting at us.”

“Why does that matter?” Yura asks. He’s joined us behind the dune while Melina and I talk, as have most of the others.

“If Lumina’s going to be able to cure the Rot, I need to kill something to charge it up.” I sigh. “Okay. Back to plan A.”

Melina looks past me, eye fixed on that point where her half-brother is apparently eating a corpse. She looks unbearably sad. “He loved that horse dearly,” she whispers. “He must love it still, and be loved in return, for the two of them not to have killed one another even as the Rot claimed their minds. Leonard is its name.”

“The horse is there, then?”

“He is. Radahn is returning to the saddle now.” She takes a deep breath. “I must go. He has seen me.”

“If we should die today,” Trinovar says something, stepping up beside me and looking up at Melina, “know that it hath been an honor to ride in thy service, My Lady.”

Melina locks her eye with the dark opening in Trinovar’s helmet. Surprise flickers in her expression, but only for a moment. Then she inclines her head to him. “Thou hast honored thine order, Trinovar of the Crucible,” she says. “We shall speak again after the battle is won. Go with my blessing.”

Then she vanishes into sparkling mist. A moment later, a seven-foot metal arrow flashes through the mist before it can fully dissipate, sending glittering eddies scattering.

Several voices let out startled yelps. I tense, startled, but force myself to relax. “We need to get closer to him.” I look around. “You all ready?”

“Ready and overflowing with anticipation!” Alexander exclaims.

The bald guy has gone missing. No point calling attention to that, though. Everyone else is nodding, or drawing their weapons, or otherwise indicating that, yes, they’re ready to go.

“All right, fireteam,” I say, turning around. I don’t often run this kind of debrief. Used to be Parvati or Lex handled that. Lately, it’s been Thermidor more often than not. But none of them are here today. It’s just me. “Not a lot of cover, but those arrows aren’t that fast. Move erratically and he’ll probably miss more often than he hits. Stay close enough together that we can support each other, but don’t get in each other’s way. Last thing we want is to trip each other up. It’s a long run, so don’t try sprinting the whole way—save it for when you start to get close enough that you can react to the arrows.” I roll my shoulders and pull Lumina out of her holster. “Let’s go.”

I jog around the dune and start running. After a couple seconds I turn forty-five degrees, then keep going. I’ve barely made the turn when an arrow blows past me, kicking up rolling waves of sand in the wake of its passage, spearing right through where I would have been.

Wish we had a Titan, Winchester says. Imagine marching up there behind Thermidor’s Banner Shield.

He wouldn’t be able to keep it up this whole distance, I point out.

Probably not. Still, might get you close enough to start making shots with Lumina from behind a Barricade.

Even that’s a stretch, I say as another massive arrow sails past.

Eh, you’re probably right.

Almost two dozen more arrows shoot past me before I catch sight of Radahn. Or, more correctly, before I realize that the dark lump I’ve been seeing for the past half a mile is actually a giant of a man, the size of a small house. It takes a little longer before I can make out the movement of his arms as he draws back another arrow to fire.

 At that point, I can see the horse underneath him. Any other time, I’d say it was comically undersized for its master—it’s a big beast, almost twice the size of a normal Earth horse, but its master is easily ten times the size of a regular rider.

Somehow, there’s nothing funny about it now.

The General raised his horse from foalhood, Jerren had said. His original purpose in learning Gravitation sorceries was simply to allow him to ride once he outgrew the beast—or at least, so he told me many years ago. No, I do not think he shall thank you for trading the beast’s life for his mind.

Then he can take it up with me after he’s able to argue about it again, I’d answered.

The words tasted like bitter dust then, and they still do now.

Radahn fires an arrow up. At the apex of its arc, it splits, then keeps splitting, into a swarm of dozens of arrows that fall in a swarm to the ground, carpet-bombing the dunes in a line leading away from him. We scatter, parting around the hail of steel like a school of fish before a shark. It’s a bigger fireteam than I’m used to, though I have served in operations of this size once or twice.

A few more arrows sail past before my jog turns into a sprint. I dash up a dune to get height, looking down at Radahn. His eyes—sickly yellow—glare up at me from the shadows of his tusked helmet. It reminds me of Cabal ceremonial wear, like the set that Caiatl’s champion wore during the Rite of Proving a few years ago.

I roll out of the way of an arrow, then take aim with Lumina, holding the gun steady with both hands. I put the horse’s dark eye in my iron sights and pull the trigger.

The bullet strikes true. The horse—Leonard, he deserves for me to refer to him by name—rears back with a pained whinny. Radahn bellows in rage and spurs forward, dropping his bow to the sand and reaching to his sides to draw two curved swords. They’re massive, forged of black metal engraved with gold.

I draw my Arc Blade into my left hand, keeping Lumina in my right. As Radahn charges me, I raise it in a guard, firing Lumina at Leonard’s center of mass as quickly as I can pull the hammer back. Radahn swings both swords down at me. I can’t parry them—just one of them is heavier than I am—but I use my Arc Blade to push against the sword to get myself out of the way, still firing.

Then Blaidd is there, his own enormous sword swinging. “We’ll cover you!” he growls at me, animal ferocity in his voice.

“Just don’t shoot us,” Yura adds, leaping into the fray behind him.

The group converges on Radahn, and I fall back, taking careful aim with Lumina. I can’t get as many shots as I’d like without risking friendly fire, but it does mean that every shot I do get is directly into Leonard’s head. Still, he survives blow after blow, viscous blood dripping from the craters I’ve put in his face. The eye I hit the first time is a ruined, gaping mess, but I can see it’s even starting to heal around the edges.

And while I do this, Radahn is pummeling the hell out of my team. Blaidd goes flying after a crushing blow from the flat of one scimitar. One of the heavily-armored guys—the one with the massive horns coming out of his torso—gets cut open by the other. I see Trinovar’s armor dent under an attack.

This isn’t working.

Do we have a Tractor Cannon? I ask Winchester. I could knock Radahn off Leonard’s back.

Nope. It’s in the vault.

Shit. I don’t want to risk using Ascendancy, not when there’s a chance it would kill Leonard outright. How about a machine gun?

Rather than answering with words, I feel the weight settle on my back as Winchester transmats a gun there. Lumina goes into its holster at my hip and Commemoration comes out—a Braytech gun I salvaged from the wreck of the Deep Stone Crypt. I take aim and hold down the trigger.

Void-charged rounds hammer into Leonard’s head and neck like rain. The horse staggers, trying to get away from the rain of death, but I hold the gun steady and keep it trained on him. After an agonizingly long moment, he falls, and Radahn is thrown off his back.

The moment he goes down, I drop the machine gun onto the sand, already pulling out Lumina again as I sprint forward. Leonard’s chest is rising and falling rapidly as he breathes, struggling weakly in an attempt to rise. Radahn is rolling to his feet, turning back to face me as I race towards his horse. But he’s on Leonard’s other side, and I beat him there.

I fall to my knees, force Leonard’s mouth open with one hand, and shove Lumina inside with the other.

The world isn’t a person. I’d told Melina. It’s as kind as we are—and as cruel.

The thing about those sorts of bad situations is that they were always set in motion a long time ago, I’d said. No one ever takes just one step and finds themselves in a situation where all their choices are bad.

I pull the trigger. The bullet buries itself in Leonard’s brain. The horse shrieks in pain once, then falls silent, and I feel Lumina grow warm under my hand.

Radahn lets out a bellow of rage and pain, swinging for me in a wide arc. I jump backward, dodging out of the way, then take aim.

Radahn, for the first time since the fight started, is standing still. He holds his place over his horse’s ruined body like a guard standing vigil over a bier.

He must love it still, Melina had said, and be loved in return, for the two of them not to have killed one another even as the Rot claimed their minds.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and pull the trigger again. The Noble Round strikes true.

For a moment, as the Light seeps beneath Radahn’s armor, nothing seems to happen. I keep a bead on the big guy’s head, hesitating. Then he staggers suddenly, as if a weight just lowered itself unexpectedly onto his shoulders. He almost falls sideways, but catches himself. His swords tumble from suddenly slack hands. Jerkily, as if he’s afraid of what he’ll see, his head turns to look down at the body at his feet. Then he sinks to his knees, gathering Leonard up in his arms, his head dropping to rest on the horse’s bloody chest.