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The celebrations in Leyndell had continued, by Barreck’s reckoning, for at least three weeks now. News had traveled across the Lands Between that the years-long anarchy had ended, a new Elden Lord had taken the throne, and that people might finally have a chance at employment in an occupation besides the military. Hundreds, maybe thousands flocked to the capital, hoping to take advantage of the new life that the Lord had breathed into the country and find something to do besides sit and stare glumly at the ground in front of them. Barreck and his newfound fellows were among them, correctly assuming that they could find work rebuilding Leyndell after the new Elden Lord had not only singlehandedly caused the collapse of virtually every other employer in and below the Lands Between but also created a large surge in demand for laborers since he had more or less slaughtered the entire population of Leyndell by himself.
And so Barreck sat at a pub in the recently reconstructed uptown Leyndell, gulping down a tankard of beer with his four drinking companions for the twenty-first—or was it twenty-second?—night in a row. Customer service establishments like the one they were at were really the only types of businesses to survive not only the Shattering and the years of anarchy that followed it but also the living, breathing economic recession that was known to all as the Tarnished—no, thought Barreck, Elden Lord now, though he was still referred to by most people as the Tarnished—who barrelled through and wiped the slate clean. The reasons for this, as far as Barreck could tell, were that not too many people were alive to compete for the use of fruit or grain, and more importantly, that as long as there was misery and woe in the world the people who were alive would want to drink about it. And so it was that the pubs, not the kingdoms, not the armies, not even the gods themselves, were the only ones who made it through the Shattering from start to finish.
“Waiter! I’ll have another!” Barreck’s friend Harmond hollered over the crowd. There was beer all down the front of his golden Leyndell tabard, but the waiter pretended not to notice as he took Harmond’s runes and exchanged them for a fresh tankard of mead.
“I as well,” said the man sitting on Barreck’s left, Locke, who was considerably less drunk. Locke still wore the green-and-red surcoat of his former employer Godrick the Grafted, despite now working for the Elden Lord. The Tarnished’s efforts had led to considerable gaps not only in Leyndell’s defenses but also in their supply chain. New recruits to the army were urged to supply their own armaments and wait a little while to be paid while what remained of Morgott’s officials struggled to resolve the logistical nightmare of reclaiming an entire city from both a metric ton of ash and the previous rulers’ general disregard for urban renewal projects. It was said that the Tarnished was the only man in the Lands Between who could cast himself off a roof and live to tell the tale, but that had not stopped numerous members of Leyndell’s increasingly beleaguered bureaucracy from trying to replicate the Tarnished’s success, or rather, his failure.
“Make that three,” Barreck said. He passed the runes to the waiter and sipped his new beer. It tasted like rowa fruit, which was not his preference, but it was a damn sight better than distilled Liurnian lake water. “Anyone else want anything?”
“I’m good for now,” said Rosby, his companion from the Haligtree army. He was still chipping away at his third drink and looking worse off for it.
“Jareth?” Barreck asked. Jareth, the fifth member of their set and a veteran of the Redmane army, shook his head. He had barely touched his beer. Normally Jareth went one of two ways: he would get riotously, post-traumatically drunk or he would stare at the wall and barely finish one drink. Tonight looked to be the latter case, to the relief of both Barreck and his pocketbook. As wandering around a rot-filled swamp was not exactly profitable, the other four rotated who would pay for Jareth’s drinks. Tonight was Barreck’s night.
“Well, if we’ve got no other takers, I say we have a toast,” Barreck said. “To our new employment, and our new employer. Long may he reign!”
“Long may he reign!” said Harmond, swaying as much with drink as with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, may Marika bless the fucker,” Locke said under his breath as he swigged his new beer.
They were an odd lot, the five of them, and a motley crew at that. Locke was from Limgrave, Jareth from Caelid, Harmond from Leyndell, Rosby from the Haligtree, and Barreck himself from Liurnia, all rolling in each night at the same time, each wearing their old surcoats proudly and out of necessity. The other regulars had taken to calling them the “full house” on account of this, some with affection, others with exasperation. Some nights they would have a good time and bum a few free drinks off the other patrons in exchange for tastefully embellished war stories. Other nights one of them, usually Harmond or Rosby, would start getting too drunk and Barreck would have to step in to calm them down.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Harmond said, which was never a good sign. “About the Elden Lord.”
“No doubt with gratitude for your new employment,” Barreck said, hoping to avoid any topics too inflammatory.
But Harmond was not to be dissuaded. “You ever think about what kind of man it takes to become Elden Lord? Starting off as a Tarnished, mind you, not a demigod, not even a fucking regular guy like us. It must have taken some serious fucking balls to just crawl out of his grave and start running around killing shit.”
“Or he’s just fucking insane,” said Rosby, who was evidently farther through his drink than he was when Barreck last checked.
“Oh, I can vouch for that,” Harmond said. “He’s a fucking madman. A lunatic if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Careful, Harmond,” Barreck chided. “He’s a popular man around here. And your employer, might I remind you.”
“Sanity’s got nothing to do with either of those things, as I reckon,” Harmond retorted, and took a fat swig of his drink. “I should know. I saw him in action.”
“Everyone’s seen the Tarnished, Harmond,” Locke said. “Every soldier from here to the Haligtree has got a story about seeing the Tarnished, the ones that survived at least.”
“Yeah, seeing him in action is one thing, but seeing all the crazy shit he does on the side is another,” Harmond said. “Look, just an example: we had this crazy Tarnished locked up in the sewers, right? The Dung Eater, as he called himself.”
“Hold on, you locked him up in the sewers?” Rosby asked.
“He called himself the Dung Eater?” Jareth said, back in the land of the living.
“Crazy bastard,” Harmond muttered. “But yeah, we locked him up in the sewers. If he’s running around calling himself the Dung Eater, well, we figured he’d be pretty happy there.”
“Who the fuck cares if he’s happy or not?” Locke asked. “And why keep such a lunatic prisoner anyways? I’d just lop off his head and be done with it.”
“Well, as you may know, Tarnished have this bad habit of not staying dead,” Harmond said. “And good King Morgott, may he rest in peace, being a former prisoner himself, lobbied pretty hard for prisoners’ rights when he took the throne.” Harmond shook his head. “The Erdtree caucus wasn’t happy about that, but what were they going to do?”
“I heard King Morgott was an Omen,” Barreck said. He thought he was terribly subtle whenever he made one of those statements that’s really a question in disguise. He was incorrect.
“Yeah, so have I,” Harmond said. “Personally, I think it explains a lot. No public appearances, no private audiences—”
“And you people never thought something was up?” Rosby asked. He took an aggressive swig of his beer and Barreck made a mental note to cut him off soon.
“Well, the official explanation was that he had social anxiety,” Harmond said.
“Social anxiety?” Locke scoffed. “Who ever heard of a leader with social anxiety?”
“Actually, social anxiety is an extremely common phenomenon that can seriously interfere with your obligations and social life,” Harmond said. “I’ll have you know that King Morgott conducted a very effective mental health awareness campaign.”
“Mental health is very important,” Jareth said.
“You too?” Rosby looked shocked.
Jareth nodded solemnly. “General Radahn made it a point of policy that every detachment had at least two trained therapists on hand at all times.”
“God knows they needed it,” Barreck whispered to Locke. He’d never forget the haunted look on Jareth’s face when, some nights ago, the waitress had served them complimentary samples of a new cocktail the establishment had tastelessly named the ‘Scarlet Rot.’ Jareth had led a short-lived but successful crusade to have the name on the menu changed to something less provocative, and the Crimson Tear cocktail was now the most popular order at that particular tavern.
“But anyways,” Harmond said. “The Dung Eater, well-known for unsavory things like mass murder and for the even less savory things he did to the bodies. He tells the Tarnished to let him out of prison, explicitly so he might kill the Tarnished and defile his corpse, and the stupid bastard, long may he reign, does it! I mean, for fucks’ sake, he was wearing an Omen’s skin as armor and carrying around a disembodied spine as a weapon!” Harmond shook his head and took a sip of his drink. “So far the Tarnished is a good Lord, but man, sometimes I question his track record of decision-making.”
“So did anything come of his release?” Locke asked.
Harmond shrugged. “Not really. The Tarnished beat his ass, as I recall correctly, but not before the Dung Eater killed an old buddy of mine from my days in Liurnia who was prawn-fishing by the outer moat.”
Barreck gasped. “Not Big Boggart?”
“‘Fraid so.”
Barreck shook his head. “I’ll drink in his memory.” Barreck and Harmond were the anchor of the group, and had known both Big Boggart and each other from their days in a bandit gang in the south. They had roamed together for a few months, but after watching one of their friends get mashed into paste by a crab in Limgrave and another trimmed into ribbons by a lobster in Liurnia, they had both opted for different employment. Barreck, in spite of the risks, quite liked highway robbery, and so chose to join the only establishment he could think of that would not only let him get away with it but pay him to do it: the Knights of the Cuckoo. Harmond, however, chose to return to Leyndell, believing that battlefield salvage wasn’t quite worth the risk of an extremely messy, painful, and frankly embarrassing death by crustacean.
“Hold on, Harmond,” Jareth said, having briefly escaped from his trance. “Did you say he was wearing Omen skin?”
“I’m not sure it was skin, but some kind of, I guess outerwear?” Harmond shrugged. “Looked close enough, I guess.”
“Come to think of it, I think I might have seen him myself,” Jareth said.
“Oh really?”
“Pretty sure,” Jareth said. “I was standing outside Fort Gael when he summoned a guy who looked just like that. Except it wasn’t a normal spirit summon. It was a puppet.”
“A puppet?” Locke asked.
“Yeah,” Jareth said, looking grim. “Some sorcerers know how to turn people into living puppets. We used to have a guy from Sellia who did it to deserters and we sent them up to Fort Faroth. I was surprised to see someone else do it.”
“So did you fight them?” Rosby asked.
“Yes,” Jareth said. “The Omen hewed through our lines, and when one of our Giantsflame tanks arrived on the scene the Tarnished jumped on top of it and blew it up.”
“Wait, what?” Rosby said. “He jumped on top of it—”
“And blew it up.” Jareth nodded, as if it made perfect sense. “I was knocked out in the blast. When I came to, I was the only survivor…” The faraway look returned to his eyes and he took a deep sip of his beer.
“You know,” Barreck said, pivoting like a bad axle, “I’m surprised to hear people outside of Liurnia using puppets. I’m also glad to hear that your sorcerers found such a… practical use for it.”
“As opposed to what?” Locke asked.
“Well, from what I heard of the Carian royal family,” Barreck said, “it was originally a sex thing.”
“A sex thing?!” Rosby exclaimed. Despite his gravelly nature, his long time at the Haligtree had left him with a deep tendency to moralize.
“Of course it fucking is,” Locke said, and drank. Harmond burst into laughter. Jareth continued staring at the table in front of him.
“Does this imply that the Tarnished is… that kind of person?” Rosby asked.
“He means a kinkster,” Locke said. Harmond laughed even harder.
“Please never repeat that word,” Rosby said, strained. “I would use the word pervert myself. Of royal proportions, apparently.”
“Maybe. But who can fathom the mind of our dear new Elden Lord?” Barreck said. “But yes, you can imagine the shit that royalty gets up to.”
“That why you overthrew them?” Locke asked.
“No, actually,” Barreck said. “The sex stuff was kind of nasty, but by and large, we Liurnians are open-minded people. No, Queen Rennala ran afoul of the Raya Lucaria Academy staff after she slashed the teachers’ paid leave to pay for the rehabilitation of the Frenzied Flame lands.”
“I heard the Tarnished snuck into the sewers and made a deal with the Frenzied Flame,” Harmond interrupted. “Couple of the boys were talking about it after he came to Leyndell.”
“Harmond,” Locke said. “A quick question.”
“Shoot.”
“Has the world ended?”
Harmond blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Has the world ended? Has the apocalypse happened? Yes or no.” Locke stared at him.
Harmond pursed his lips. “...no.”
“Well then, I’m willing to bet he didn’t make a deal with the all-evil, world-ending power, huh?” Locke gestured to Barreck. “Please continue.”
“Yes. The teacher’s pensions weren’t the only unpopular policies Rennala pursued.” Barreck leaned back. “After that debacle, she doubled down by passing a right-to-work law that pissed off the marionette mechanic’s union.” He took a casual sip from his mug. “So they hired us to overthrow the government. Circle of life.”
“Ah, the democratic process at work,” Locke remarked. “Makes you kind of grateful for kings and queens, huh?”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Grabby-hands.” Barreck spread his fingers in imitation of Locke’s old boss Godrick. “I got paid just fine. And besides, the royals let all sorts of violations fly that the unions have better standards for.”
“Like what?” asked Rosby.
“Like letting a giant man wearing the skin of people he’s stitched together wander around your private property.” Barreck took another sip. “I don’t know what specific code that violates, but it’s gotta be a violation of some kind.”
“Wait, you guys had Godskins too?” Harmond asked. “I thought it was just us.”
“Godskins?” Locke asked.
“Big buggers that make their clothes out of people’s skin,” Harmond said. “We have a whole village that worships them not far west of here. They have this festival every year where they lure travelers in and skin them. Then they give the big guy clothes made out of the skin. Wretched place.” He took a big gulp. “Great party though.”
“You mean you went to the skin-sacrificing village and survived?” Rosby scoffed. “I know you like your tall tales, but you’re stretching it now.”
“Oh, it’s true.” Harmond nodded enthusiastically. “I was the only one of my group to survive.”
Rosby raised an eyebrow. “And how did that happen?”
“I had acne.”
A brief silence fell over the table. Rosby’s eyebrow inched even higher up his forehead. “What does your acne have to do with this?”
“Well, when you’re skinning people to make clothes out of, would you want a shirt with zits on it?”
Rosby sighed. “I suppose not. But this does explain your chronic aversion to skincare.”
Harmond held a hand to his zit-pocked cheek. “Hey, wiseass, it saved my life once. And you don’t have to be such a prick about it, Mr. Eight-fingers.”
“Fuck you, asshole!” When Rosby had first made his way to the Haligtree, he had lost both of his pinkie fingers, one to frostbite and one to a particularly hungry Misbegotten he stumbled across in a cave. It had left him with a deep insecurity and a deeper prejudice against Misbegotten.
“You know, all this Godskin talk reminds me of another story about the Tarnished,” Jareth interjected.
“Please,” Barreck said, desperate to avoid another bruising fight between Rosby and Harmond. He wasn’t quite sure Rosby had recovered from the last concussion Harmond gave him yet, and as for Harmond, his drinking had killed too many brain cells to let Rosby rattle him around another time.
Jareth obliged. “So we had a Godskin, as you call him, in the basement of the Caelid Divine Tower.”
“What was your name for him?” Locke asked.
“The big fucker downstairs,” Jareth said without a hint of irony. “I was never stationed there, but I knew some guys who were. Every now and again they’d see him prowling around down there. Scared the shit out of them.”
“And nobody went down there to take him out?” Rosby said.
“Why would we? The elevators were too small to carry him up. Far as they were concerned, he’s creepy for sure, but he’s still stuck down there. No harm, no foul, right?” Jareth shrugged and took his first sip of the evening. Barreck involuntarily glanced at his coin pouch.
“Anyways, this isn’t my story, but the same guy who told me about the Godskin also told me that he and another guy saw the Tarnished climb down the inside of the tower, dressed in Godskin himself, to go and take the guy out.”
Rosby raised his eyebrow once again. “He dressed himself in the flesh clothes that another guy made? That’s, like, double-fucked.”
“Fucked-squared,” Locke agreed.
“I dunno,” Harmond said. “That’s kind of a power move. I dig it.”
“So, did he kill him?” Barreck asked.
“Don’t know,” Jareth said. “Apparently nobody went downstairs to check.”
“Wait, what?” Rosby said. “No one went downstairs to check? How the fuck did the Redmane army give Malenia this much trouble? Aren’t you all supposed to be superhumanly courageous?”
“Hey man, don’t get personal,” Jareth said. “I only joined for the health insurance.”
“The health insurance?” Locke asked.
“Yeah, man, the health insurance.” Jareth took another small sip. “We lived alongside giant dogs and waded through swamps of what I can only describe as ‘giga-cancer.’ We needed health insurance.”
“Marika’s tits,” Locke muttered. “I would have killed a man for health insurance. Well, I would have killed more. Harmond, you get health insurance?”
“All members of the Leyndell armed services do,” Harmond said. “Part of King Morgott’s efforts to expand healthcare availability. He was pushing for universal healthcare when the Tarnished, you know…” He drew his finger across his throat and made a grim death rattle.
“Unbelievable,” Locke said. “Rosby?”
“On paper, yeah,” Rosby said. “One of Miquella’s big decrees: Thou Shalt Have Healthcare. Fat lot of good it did us. I get all the way through the hidden path, you know, dodging those little saw-toothed shits and giant octopuses—”
“Octopi,” Harmond corrected him.
“Wrong, but we’ll deal with that later. Through the hidden path, across the Consecrated Snowfield, where I lost two of my fingers mind you!” He wriggled the blackened stumps of his pinkies. Locke suppressed a gag. “And finally make it across to the Haligtree. And you know what? They had no fucking doctors there.” He slammed the table. “Oh, that pissed me off. They had everything else in spades. They had giant ants, they had bug people, they had Misbegotten out the wazoo, but you know what? Zero fucking doctors. Fuck am I supposed to do with health insurance if there’s no providers?” He sighed and took a big gulp of his drink. “Fuck Malenia. That cheap bitch.”
“Fuck Malenia.” Jareth raised his mug in solidarity.
“Fuck Malenia,” Harmond echoed with a completely different meaning.
“Just my luck that I pick the one employer that didn’t provide health insurance,” Locke said. “Barreck, if you tell me you had health insurance, I will lose my goddamn mind.”
Barreck grinned. “I did—”
Locke threw his hands up in the air. “Fuck me! Even the glorified land pirates are giving it out! Just my goddamn luck!”
“—but not through the Cuckoos,” Barreck finished.
Locke left his hands up in the air but turned his head to face Barreck. “Come again?”
“I used to moonlight as a repairman in the marionette mechanic’s union,” said Barreck. “I joined the union. I wasn’t in long enough to get a pension, but I’m still covered.”
“What a surprise,” Rosby said. “The ‘glorified land pirate’ is also committing insurance fraud.”
“Not my fault they never took my name off the roster,” Barreck said. “Besides, that reminds me: I’ve got my own story about the Tarnished.”
Locke sighed, still mired in the depression of the uninsured. “Fine, let’s hear it.”
Barreck smiled. “Well, one night I was in Raya Lucaria Academy, fixing up some of the avionettes because the sorcerers were too middle-class to do it themselves, when I see a guy coming down the waterwheel. The Tarnished, of course.”
“Coming down the water wheel?” Jareth asked.
“We used it as an elevator,” Barreck said.
“An elevator?” Locke exclaimed. “What happened to all that shit about safety violations before?”
“Well clearly,” Barreck sneered, “the Academy, whatever other flaws it might have had, did not have a dedicated safety supervisor. Boy, did it definitely not. I mean, the number of railing violations alone would have cost them a small fortune. But that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, he goes straight on down, so I peek over a cliff and I see he’s landed in the big pit at the bottom.”
“What’s so special about this pit?” Harmond asked.
“It had one of those big iron things that the Volcano Manor likes to put in the most inconvenient places,” Barreck said. Jareth, Locke, and Harmond groaned collectively, understanding all too well what Barreck was talking about.
“Wait, what the fuck?” Rosby said. “Is this normal for you guys? What is he talking about?”
Barreck ignored Rosby and continued. “Anyways, the Tarnished goes right on down there and I figure I’m about to see the fight of my life. But instead, you know what he does?”
“Nothing?” Harmond asked.
Barreck paused. “Alright, apparently you do know. Yes, he did nothing. He stood there while the thing cut the poor bastard up and dragged him inside itself.”
“Seriously, what the fuck is this thing?” Rosby asked.
“Off to Volcano Manor, then,” Jareth said. “Maybe that was his plan?”
“Then either he’s a masochist or he’s just insane. Or both are wrong and he’s just suicidal.” Barreck shrugged. “Who am I to say?”
“Well as long as we’re all sharing our stories of the Tarnished, I have one too,” Rosby said. “And it ties in nicely to your little tale about Raya Lucaria, Barreck.”
“Joy,” Barreck said. Rosby was many things, but a good narrator was not one of them.
“Okay, so have you guys ever seen the Erdtree Avatars?” Rosby asked.
“The giant walking trees?” Locke asked. “Kind of hard not to.”
“Marika’s tits, man, I’m setting the scene. Unclench your asshole, please.” Rosby cleared his throat. “Anyways, we had a couple of them patrolling the walls, when the Tarnished decided to pick a fight with one of them.”
“Wait, this is the inner fortifications?” Jareth asked. When Rosby nodded, he continued, “so I presume he had to, well, cut his way through the whole village beforehand?”
“Well, I suppose so.” Jareth frowned. As much as he detested Malenia and her ilk, he had a soft spot for civilians. Rosby continued “But there’s no one there that really matters. Giant ants, some Misbegotten” —a table of Misbegotten patrons sent a nasty glare in Rosby’s direction— “and a few wizards. Oh! And Loretta. She was a badass, I’ll give her that.”
“Wait, Loretta?” Barreck asked. “As in, rides on a horse, sorceress, wears—”
“Wears that stupid fucking circle on top of her helmet?” Rosby nodded. “The very same. Are you acquainted?”
“The Cuckoos were looking for her for a while,” Barrack said. “Our records said she was taking a paid sabbatical to research the Albinaurics. I guess we know where she went for that.”
“Wait, rides a horse?” Locke asked. “Isn’t the path to the Haligtree, like, super tiny? How’d she get it through?”
“My man, she shoots magic arrows off a magic bow. I don’t doubt she can lead a horse up a few staircases.” Rosby huffed. “Anyways, back to my story. The Tarnished—”
“—was fighting the Erdtree Avatar,” Harmond offered. He finished his drink and signaled for another.
Rosby sighed. “Can I finish?”
“Just trying to be helpful.”
“Anyways. I’m up on a parapet watching this, just above him. The Erdtree Avatar is patrolling. Sees him from across the gap between the outer and inner walls and stops, just to stare at him. Tarnished sees this, walks up to the edge of the inner wall. Stops. Puts on a mushroom hat.”
“Riveting stuff,” Locke whispered to Barreck. Barreck snickered.
“A mushroom hat?” Jareth asked, suddenly agitated. “As in—”
“Yes, as in the Scarlet Rot,” Rosby said, ignoring Jareth’s sudden distress. “Anyways, he reaches into his bag, and pulls out handfuls of shit. And when I say shit, I don’t mean, like random stuff. I mean poop. Feces. Dung.”
“We get the point,” Harmond said.
“And how could you tell what it was from such a distance?” Barreck asked.
“Well, I’m down two fingers, not two eyes,” Rosby bristled, “And it smelt to high heaven too, and that’s a damn huge feat when the whole place smells like plant rot and Misbegotten dander. So he’s taking these handfuls of shit and just chucking them behind him until I can see a literal cloud of flies gather around him. All of a sudden, he stops. He takes out a flag. A big flag. Starts waving it around and screaming.”
“What’s the point of all this?” Harmond asked.
Rosby shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, Harmond. Anyways, he’s not done. After he’s done with the flag, he puts it aside. Takes off the mushroom hat. Puts on a white mask. And then starts stabbing himself in the stomach.”
“What the fuck?” Locke asked.
“Maybe he does have problems after all…” Jareth muttered.
“Too bad he killed all our healthcare providers,” Harmond replied.
Rosby continued unabated: “Now, after a few good stabs, he’s finished. He’s standing there, covered in blood and shit, and puts away the sword. Pulls out a seal. Now his eyes start to glow and he’s screaming again. And I’m not talking like, a manly war cry like the last one. Like, full-on, bloodcurdling, just-shat-blood type screaming.”
“And you didn’t think to attack him while his back was turned?” Barreck asked. “Or after he had just given himself severe blood loss?”
“Well, first of all, if he killed Loretta, he would have definitely beaten my ass, no matter what state he’s in,” Rosby said. “Second of all, I was on break. Not my responsibility. Third, I kinda wanted to see what was going to happen.”
“Fair enough,” Harmond said, for once in agreement with Rosby.
“And the Erdtree Avatar just stood there too?” Barreck asked.
“They’re giant trees, Barreck. However strong or magical they may be, at the end of the day, they still don’t have a goddamn brain. Anyway, once he’s done screaming, again, he stops. Puts the seal away. Pulls out a staff.”
“Where is he keeping all this stuff?” Jareth asked. Barreck shrugged. At the very least, Rosby was finally saying something interesting.
“So he’s got this staff. Swings it around. The ground underneath him turns blue and starts to glow. He puts the staff away. Pulls out an axe. Screams again, but this time it’s nice and short.”
“Unlike this story. Marika’s tits, how long did this take?” Locke asked.
“It’s only gonna take longer if you keep interrupting me! Be patient!” Rosby calmed himself with a breathing exercise he had learned in Ordina. He liked to think it calmed him. What it actually did was make him look like a douchebag. “Now, the Tarnished is done with the staff. He puts the axe away. Takes out another hat.”
“My god, he missed his calling as a haberdasher,” Barreck said.
Harmond squinted into his beer. “The fuck is a haberdasher?”
“A hat-seller,” Rosby said, impatient to finish. “Anyways, this isn’t any regular hat. This is a big-ass headdress. A giant crystal, and he puts it on his head. Now, finally, he takes out his sorcery staff, leans back, and sends a giant fucking beam of energy into the poor Erdtree Avatar. Vaporizes it on the spot.”
“All that just to kill one guy?” Locke said. “Seems like a pain in the ass.”
“Look, man, I didn’t make this story up,” Rosby said. “I’m just telling it like it is.”
“And what it is is boring,” Harmond slurred. Barreck glanced into Harmond’s mug and noted that it had very quickly emptied itself over the course of Rosby’s tale.
“Man, what the fuck do you want from me?” Rosby’s voice was quickly reaching a soprano pitch, as it tended to do when he got frustrated. “He stabbed himself, shoveled piles of shit out of his bag, and screamed into the void at, like, two in the afternoon. What part of this was normal?”
“I don’t know, what better time is there to scream into the void?” Barreck quipped.
“I prefer the early evenings myself,” Jareth said, and gave a weary smirk. Locke and Harmond chuckled. Barreck didn’t, because now he knew what all the neighborhood noise complaints had been about.
“Ah, all in all, not a bad story, Rosby.” Locke began circling the rim of his mug with his finger. “But I have one that’ll make it look normal.”
“Oh really?” Rosby said. “And how many times have you seen the Tarnished? Hm?”
Locke let out a mirthless chuckle and met his gaze. “More than a hundred times.”
“Horse shit!” Rosby exclaimed.
“A hundred times?” Jareth asked.
Harmond spit out a bit of his drink and laughed in disbelief.
“I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have made us hear this story a thousand times over if this were true,” Barreck said.
“It’s a bit of a sore memory for me,” Locke said, “but as long as we’re on the subject, I may as well tell it, because it’s way more interesting than any of your shitty stories.”
“Okay, Locke. I’ll bite,” said Barreck. “Let’s hear about these hundred Tarnished sightings.”
“Alright then.” Locke put down his mug to free his hands for the appropriate dramatic gestures. Locke always got animated when he told a story, mostly to positive effect, but not always. Barreck still had the bruises from the bar fight that resulted after a winged Misbegotten patron mistook a particularly spirited impression of a bird for a gross racial caricature.
“Our story begins way back at the beginning of the Tarnished’s journey, in Limgrave. Now, I was a soldier with Godrick the Grafted at the time, on account of I was dirt broke, he seemed like he wasn’t, and I figured that the, ahem, rumors about him were either propaganda or grossly exaggerated.”
“Implying that there is a tolerable amount of limbs to graft onto oneself,” Barreck quipped. He prided himself on a comparatively calm temperament, but was even more proud of his quick wit. Barreck suspected that he had evolved one to balance out the other, but it was anyone’s guess as to which came first.
Locke scowled. “Well, when your only option for legitimate employment is the military, you’d be surprised at how much you can stomach. And in any case, that is a fat crock of shit coming from a man who joined the payroll of who, again? The Cuckoo Knights, in service to the Raya Lucaria Academy? So in addition to choosing the army with the stupidest fucking name, you sided with a bunch of nerds who overthrew the government. Yeah, a lot of ground to stand on there!” Locke settled into his seat and took another sip of beer, his tirade over.
“At least I got health insurance,” Barreck retorted. Locke grunted like he had been hit. The other three chuckled.
“Man, that was a low blow. Fuck you. Nonetheless,” Locke continued, “on the way up to Stormveil Castle, our main fortress, there’s a big gate that acts like a checkpoint. All our caravans stop there while we can herd some trolls down to drag their loot back up the hill. Meanwhile, we have a decent amount of men camped out in the ruins nearby, protecting the caravans while they wait for the trolls.
“But here’s the thing,” Locke said, leaning closer over the table and bringing his voice down to a more conspiratorial tone. “One day, a patrol heads over there, just to check in and see how things are going, and they discover that the whole encampment has been massacred. A dozen men, a couple of war wolves, and the knight in command, all dead. The caravans were looted too, for good measure. And nobody can figure out just what the fuck happened.”
“The Tarnished happened,” Harmond interjected. “Or, sorry—the Elden Lord. Long may he reign!” He hiccuped.
“Long may he reign,” came the automatic response, even from Jareth.
“But we didn’t know that at the time,” Locke continued. “All we knew is that a full outpost of fit and fighting men, including an accomplished knight, up and died with no explanation. There were zero other casualties, see, so we could rule out demi-humans or bandits, since a full contingent of men would have taken at least one of those fuckers with them, and as a rule those two groups aren’t keen on collecting their dead. Our next thought was a surprise attack by our neighboring armies, who, as we all remember, hadn’t quite settled their differences on the matter of succession yet. We thought maybe the Liurnians had done it, but we were too far into Limgrave and way too far past our fortifications for that to be possible. Our other option was the Redmane army, but seeing as how they were too busy setting everything in Caelid on fire—”
“Ssssh!” said Rosby and Barreck at once. Even Harmond gave Locke a dirty glare.
“What?” Locke asked.
“You’re not supposed to say the f-word in front of Jareth, remember?” Harmond scolded.
“What, fuck? When the fuck did you start caring about—”
“Fire, idiot,” Barreck hissed. “Have you forgotten about what he did down there in Caelid?”
The four of them turned to Jareth, who seemed not to have heard them. Instead, he was staring into the candle at the center of the table, his face entirely slack. Next to him, his mug remained nearly untouched.
“What a waste,” Rosby sighed, eyeing the mug.
“Of a man or a drink?” Harmond asked.
“Each man must answer that for himself,” Rosby said, and offered his own opinion on the matter by finishing his drink in a single greedy gulp.
“In any case,” Locke said, clearly displeased with the continuous interruptions, “we could rule out our neighboring armies as well. Our only other option was a single, particularly trained assassin. Stealth was the only way someone could have taken that outpost without any casualties. So we asked around the local scouts and the Kaiden sellswords we had on retainer to tell us if they had seen anything strange in the area.”
“And?” Barreck said.
“And, one of the sellswords reported that he had seen some naked fuck with a stick riding on a horned steed wander out of a nearby mausoleum and promptly get run into the ground by a Tree Sentinel a few dozen times. Swore up and down it was the same guy each time. We laughed him off.”
“But the Tarnished can return from the dead,” Harmond volunteered, “as long as they can see Grace.”
“Yeah, Grace. Fat fucking help that was to us,” Locke said. “But more on that later. So we decided, whoever it was, they were just after the loot. We posted a new detail at the ruins outpost and left it at that. I was one of the guys who was posted there.”
“I can’t imagine that did much for your nerves,” Barreck said. When he wasn’t drinking, Locke was one of the most jumpy people around, a perfectly understandable trait, he considered, given his previous employment to a man who would cut off people’s arms and sew them onto himself.
“On the contrary,” Locke said. “There is no place in the world as secure as a freshly looted camp. Know why?” Harmond was halfway through asking why when Locke interrupted him: “Because there’s nothing there that anyone is willing to kill for, and even less that people are willing to die for. So I figure, fuck, this isn’t bad at all. Just me and my mates, chilling in front of the gate. Nothing more to do than play cards, check in the occasional caravan, and avoid the real fighting. Pretty sweet gig, overall. But then” —Locke flourished with his hands and almost clocked Barreck in the face— “enter the Tarnished.”
“I could be halfway to Limgrave by the time you get to the fucking point,” Rosby muttered.
“Allow me to set the scene,” Locke said, pointedly ignoring Rosby. “It’s a crisp Limgrave morning. All the men are up. A few of the boys are cooking breakfast, our commander and most everyone else is on watch or patrol, and I myself have sat down in front of one of the empty caravans to have a think.”
“Figures you spent most of the time in the army on your arse,” Barreck jibed. “So much has changed.”
“Well, not all of us were busy smashing Albinaurics into the ground and stealing their shit to pawn off, can we? Noble service yourself, ah? Mr. Union-insurance-fraud.” Barreck merely grinned in response.
“But anyways, there I am, sitting in front of the caravan, when I hear something off to my right. So I pick up my greatshield and spear, thinking it’s gonna be a demi-human or somesuch, and turn to face it, but what is it instead?”
“The Tarnished?” Jareth asked.
“Why yes, Jareth. It was the Tarnished.” Locke was far less sharp with Jareth than with any of the others. When Barreck had introduced Jareth to the rest of them, Locke had offered a toast of red wine, not knowing that Jareth’s overlong tour of duty with Caelid had left him with an earth-shattering fear of all crows, dogs, and red liquids in general. Jareth had immediately drawn his sword and smashed the bottle to pieces before locking himself in the pantry for an hour. Locke had done his best to be kind to him ever since, partly out of compassion, and partly out of self-preservation.
“So I get the opportunity to take a good look at him, and sure enough, it’s our guy. He’s got a few more shreds of cloth on him than the sellsword made it sound like, but there he is, riding a horned steed, waving a giant fucking stick around, barrelling at me on horseback. And I put my shield up and my spear out, but I’m thinking to myself, this is it. This is how I go. A greatshield can stop a lot, but there’s only so much it can do when some lunatic with a tree branch runs his horse over you.
“But he doesn’t ram me. He doesn’t attack me. He doesn’t even fucking acknowledge me. He kicks his horse and the damn thing does a running jump straight over my goddamn head. I turn around, thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t just turned into Limgrave’s freshest pile of ground beef, and I watch him fly down the main causeway.”
Locke was getting into it now, and Barreck could tell that the beers were beginning to take hold. He had assumed an odd position over the table: hunched over, arms placed perpendicular beside him, as if he were still ducking from the Tarnished’s steed. “He zips past the sentry on duty too, who I was sure was a goner. The madman flies right on down the causeway, ignoring everyone else, beelining it to the knight in charge, who’s got his back to us. He just barely has time to turn around before the Tarnished hops off his horse, caves the man’s head in with his club, gets back on the horse, and rides back.”
“Why didn’t someone stab the horse while he was killing the captain?” Rosby asked.
“Well, it’s a magic horse, obviously,” Harmond said between loud slurps of his drink.
“Obviously,” Barreck echoed, more to needle Rosby than to agree with Harmond’s stunning display of logic.
Rosby harrumphed. “Assholes. How am I supposed to know? It’s not like he was riding his horse around the Haligtree.”
“It had horns, Rosby,” Harmond said, as if that made everything obvious.
“So? I worked with people who had horns at the Haligtree. My next-door neighbor was a fucking bug. Forgive me if weird shit like that doesn’t bother me anymore!” Rosby, for a man who had a gender-inconsistent boss and a woman with chronic disabilities as head of security, could be remarkably prejudiced.
“Anyways,” Locke continued, “we figured we had it figured out. This Tarnished, apparently, was political. He had a bone to pick with Godrick the Grafted and had begun his one-man guerilla campaign by eliminating all the regional commanders.”
“A political Tarnished?” Barreck scoffed. “What an idea. Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”
Locke sneered. “Well first of all, this particular Tarnished is both our new boss and our new Lord, as you were so fond of reminding us a few minutes ago, so yeah, I guess a political Tarnished isn’t outside the realm of possibility. And second of all, with all the crazy shit that the other Tarnished get up to, what with the enslaving ghosts and getting jiggy with corpses and murdering each other for some cosmic pedophile living underground, is a political Tarnished really that unusual?”
“When you put it that way, yes, it does,” Barreck said. “He sounds sane, which the others clearly weren’t.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Locke said. “He won’t sound sane for long. Now, the death of our commander was unfortunate. He was stern, but we liked the guy, so we gave him a decent burial and sent word to the nearby fortifications to send a knight our way because we needed a new commander. So a new guy shows up a couple days later, we get acquainted, all that. He spends, I dunno, maybe a day and a half in command? Then it happens again. I’m sitting with my mates, playing a hand of cards, when we hear this awful sound. We all stand up, and lo and behold, right in the middle of the causeway our new knight is dead and that bumblefuck with a stick is standing over the bloody mess. We chase him, he gets away, and we are left thoroughly confused. But alright, we think. Maybe he’s been shadowing us. Maybe he’s got more of a grudge against Godrick than we think to have been tracking the movements of his commanders. Fine and good. We send word to send another commander over and we bury this one.”
“When’s it get to the good part?” Harmond asked Jareth, as if Jareth would be the one to give him a good answer, or any answer at all.
“Hey, stop bothering Jareth. I’m getting there.” Locke took another swig of beer and slammed the near-empty mug on the table with entirely too much force. “Once is a tragedy. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. A third knight arrives at our encampment, introduces himself, all the good stuff. No more than a few hours go by before the Tarnished, our now-beloved employer, sails down the causeway, crushes the man’s ribcage like a turtle shell, and rides off into the sunset.” Locke’s face hardened into an expression of deep anxiety. “And he just kept doing it.”
“Doing what?” Harmond asked.
“Killing our fucking commanders!” Locke yelled, earning him the irritated glances of the people at the next table over. “Like it was a ritual, or some sick fucking joke! Every time we’d get a new commander, a new knight, all dressed up in their fancy green armor, he’d be there, like night follows day, like a cockroach follows crumbs, and he would gallop out of the fucking mists like all the hounds of hell were on his tail, fly up to our commander, kill him, and gallop away. Like fucking clockwork! He’s a madman!” He exhaled, and settled down. “Sorry, I’m getting the better of myself. Get me another drink, Barreck?”
As Barreck motioned to the waiter, Locke continued his story. “We had buried somewhere in the range of fifteen to twenty knights before someone up the chain had the better sense to ask why their commanders were dropping like flies, and so they sent a knight from Stormveil Castle to figure things out. He gets down there, pulls me aside, and gently but firmly asks me why it is our outpost in particular has seen a 150% casualty rate increase in the span of a month. I kindly corrected him that if you were a rank-and-file like me, this place was probably safer than Stormveil Castle, all things considered. If you were a knight like him, however, you were a marked man by some sick lunatic with a proclivity for tree branches and you should measure your future lifespan in days if not hours. Luckily, he took this warning to heart.” The drinks arrived. Barreck covered the tab. It wasn’t often that Locke got going like this and he wanted to see how long it lasted.
“So the next night we set up like usual: the knight on patrol, the rest of us either on guard or taking their breaks. We hear the gallop of what we can only assume at this point is the long-lost fifth horseman of the apocalypse, the Horseman of Fucking With Us Poor Bastards in Particular, and one of the guys signals our knight that it’s now or never.”
The whole table leaned in to hear Locke’s increasingly distressed storytelling. For once, everyone, even Rosby, listened with rapt attention. For once, Locke was not thrashing about like a bird stuck in a glue trap, instead staring straight ahead, a haunted glint in his eyes.
“Our man turns around, and as the Tarnished is flying towards him, he knocks him in the stomach with his spear, and while the bastard is on the ground, he crushes his head with his shiny boot. Peace in the valley at last! We went fucking wild. As far as we were concerned, that knight was Radagon incarnate. He was our fucking hero.” Locke’s manic smile quickly dissipated.
“But the Tarnished can return from the dead,” Jareth said.
Locke nodded solemnly. “Yes. He can. But we didn’t know that at the time. We were over the fucking moon. We woke up all our boys and started scrounging for any spare provisions we had, because we were gonna throw a feast for our new commander.” His face darkened even more. “And that’s when it happened.”
“What happened?” Harmond asked. Barreck shushed him.
“Nobody was paying attention. We were all either scrounging for food or asleep. So our captain, the hero of the hour, was heading up the causeway just to make sure that nobody was left out of the festivities, when the Tarnished struck again. He flies down the causeway with murder in his eyes. Before anyone can react, before half of us even realize who he is or what’s going on, he jumps off his horse, caves in our captain’s skull, rips his greaves off his corpse and disappears into the night.”
“Hold on, he ripped his greaves off?” Barreck asked. “And none of you were quick enough to catch up with him?”
“You don’t understand!” Locke said, now genuinely distressed. The beer certainly wasn’t helping, and Barreck was beginning to regret buying him that last drink. “He was so fast! All he did was crouch over the man’s corpse, reach for his greaves, and they were off almost fucking instantly. We were barely out into the road when he galloped off, bloody club in one hand, pilfered pants in the other.”
“And how long did this go on for?” Barreck asked.
“Long enough for the Tarnished to cross a line from ‘strange but actionable game plan’ to ‘plain fucking lunacy.’ You know what they say about insanity, right? He was well past that with how many knights we buried at that point.” Locke sighed one of those long sighs that indicates a man, for better or worse, is reaching the end of his tether. “Long enough for us to get a reputation too. As if having a guy with three and a half dozen arms for a boss wasn’t enough of a scare, apparently our outpost turned into a boogeyman for the knights. ‘If you don’t kill enough demi-humans, if you don’t protect your caravan, watch out folks! You’ll get reassigned to the ruins post and that’ll be the end of you!’” Locke looked like he was close to actually crying. “Marika’s tits. What a shitshow it was. You know, they actually rotated us out for a little bit. When fortyish of their best men died at one specific outpost, they naturally started to suspect that the rank-and-file there, who I will remind you had not suffered a single casualty in two months by this point, might have been to blame. So we got posted to Stormveil Castle while some other poor schmucks got to enjoy the Tarnished merry-go-round in our stead.”
“Wait, you were posted at Stormveil Castle?” Rosby asked. “And this was somehow more traumatizing for you?”
“I mean, Stormveil wasn’t that bad. Sure, the interior decorating left something to be desired, and there’s only so much you can do about the stench, but there were decent rations and a roof over your head at least. Godrick kept to himself and as long as you weren’t drunk on duty you’d never have to come face-to-face with the man.”
“Or arm to arm,” Barrack quipped. “I imagine not drinking on duty was tough for you, of all people.”
“Har har,” Locke said joylessly. “Truth be told, that was the longest stint I’ve ever done without drinking. Better than the alternative.” To punctuate his statement, he took a long sip from his tankard.
“But I digress. Eventually we got rotated back after the higher ups discovered that no, it wasn’t our fault, and decided that it was easier and more efficient just to pay a tax of roughly one knight a week rather than try and figure out how the fuck they were going to stop some immortal madman from enacting his sick designs upon the world. And we got back to a front row seat of the butchery in all its glory!” Locke laughed, a breathy, shuddering laugh that is usually done to conceal pain or stop a man from crying. “After the sixty or seventy mark, plus or minus however many were taken down while we were reassigned to Stormveil, we started experimenting. We figured out that the Tarnished would only appear when we had a knight on duty. We don’t know how he knew, whether he was stalking us or hiding or it’s just some sick magic unknown to the rest of the world, but he did, somehow. So we started fucking with the timetables a bit. When our boy had killed his latest knight, we buried the guy, had a nice little service, and waited. If somebody came down to talk to our commanding officer, we drew straws to put on his armor and pretend to be him for a while.”
“You drew straws?” Harmond asked, ever slow on the uptake, slower still after three beers. “What the hell for? I’d have loved to pretend to be my commander for a day. Not like he did anything but sit on his ass…”
“We drew straws,” Locke said with as much patience as he could muster, “because we didn’t know whether the Tarnished could tell the difference between a real knight and a fake one. I had to do it once while I was talking to some asshole who paid us a social visit, thinking I was the actual guy in charge. Do you know how fucking tense that is? Having to laugh along with this inbred imbecile’s stupid fucking remarks while I’m trying not to shit myself at the prospect of becoming another tally on that sick bastard’s kill count? The anticipation alone must’ve been terrible for my heart.”
“So your liver finally has some competition, huh?” Barreck’s attempt at levity fell on deaf ears as Locke drained his mug in lieu of a response.
“Anyways,” Locke continued, gesturing to the waiter for another, “we did that for about three weeks before we called in for a replacement. Three weeks. No knight, just us, and the Tarnished is nowhere to be seen. As soon as we call in for the new guy, the very fucking moment the knight gets there, the Tarnished appears on the horizon. We hadn’t even seen him for more than a minute, maybe two. Hadn’t given us his name, hadn’t said hello, hadn’t even gotten all the way up the road to introduce himself when whaddaya know, Ol’ Faithful comes over the hill, crushes the guy’s sternum, rips his helmet off the guy’s shoulders before he’s even hit the fucking ground, and leaves.” The waiter gently set the tankard in front of Locke and collected his pay. Locke took up the mug and sipped while the rest of them waited for him to continue.
“Another time, we sat down and did the math on how long it took us to walk from Stormveil Castle and Fort Haight. Then, when our knight was inevitably slaughtered, we sent two guys out, one to each location, with very specific orders as to what to say and do, when to leave, et cetera. There would be no more than a half hour break in between two knights getting there, and we wanted to see how fast the Tarnished worked. Guy from Stormveil gets there, gets offed in fifteen minutes. Fine. We’re used to it by now. We haven’t even finished burying the first knight when the second knight comes up the hill, sees what’s going on and asks for an explanation.”
“What did you tell him?” Harmond asked.
“Nothing,” Locke said, and laughed mirthlessly. “Weren’t you paying attention? Our experiment was a resounding success. The Tarnished fucking killed him. Immediately. End of story.”
“Does this story have a resolution?” Rosby asked. “As much as I love hearing the myriad ways the Tarnished killed your commanding officers, I’d like to move on.”
“Yes,” Locke said. “It was around the one hundred mark that we realized what was going on. You don’t kill that many people without a purpose. He had graduated from just plain insane to having some incomprehensible design, and we finally figured out what it was.” A big gulp from his mug, then another. He continued. “One night, I guess the Tarnished had had enough of just crushing our guys to pieces because he came out with a katana instead of that big club he loved so damn much. And I don’t know how they make katanas nowadays but the shit he did to that poor knight was disgusting. He landed three hits on the guy: one, two, three” —Locke knocked the table for emphasis— “and his victim exploded with blood. When I say exploded, that’s not for dramatic effect. This was no ooze. This was no jet. The man fucking detonated. I’ve seen internal bleeding, but this was something else entirely. Blood gushed out of every chink in his armor. Like a fountain. I don’t even know how that’s fucking possible. It was bloody disgusting.”
“I’ll say,” Rosby said. “I’m fucking drinking.”
“Heh,” Jareth said. “Bloody disgusting. Clever.”
Locke managed to crack a weak grin. “Thank you, Jareth. In any case, we’re all standing there, reeling from the shock of watching a man literally fucking explode inside his armor, when the Tarnished tears off the man’s bloodied breastplate and ride off. And that’s when it clicked for me. He’s not after the knights themselves. He’s after what they’re wearing.”
“Wait, their armor?” Barreck said. “You mean to tell me he waged this campaign of terror over the man’s fucking suit of armor?”
“I know it sounds bizarre, but it was all we had to go on!” Locke exclaimed. His eyes were wide with genuine distress.
“So why didn’t you just leave out some armor for him to take?” Rosby asked.
“That’s exactly what we did!” Locke said. “Well, sort of. You see, the Tarnished had killed so many knights that the smiths at the Castle were actually running out of steel to make their armor, so they asked in the future, instead of burying the knights, that they just load their bodies up into the cart and send it back up with the caravans. Since we didn’t actually have much on hand, we dug up the fresher knights and laid their armor out in a big pile near the gate where the Tarnished always vanished, so he could have his pick of the set and leave us the fuck alone.”
“Did that solve it?” Harmond asked.
Locke shook his head sadly. “No, it did not. He ignored it. It’s not like it was too dirty for him, given that he pried the breastplate off the last poor bastard while it was still dripping red” —Jareth tensed and took a large swig— “so I can only assume that, for whatever reason, the sick bastard needs to pry it off a living person.”
“So what did you do?” Barreck asked.
“The only thing we could do,” Locke said. “Put in for a replacement and pray it would be over quickly. Luckily, it took only a few more go-arounds. I tell you, when we finally saw the fucker bend down over his latest bloody work and pry the gauntlets off his hands, it was the greatest day of our fucking lives, you have no idea. You remember the celebration that happened when we first heard there was a new Elden Lord? That was fucking nothing compared to how happy we were. As soon as we realized that this sick loop was over, we went nuts. We were singing, cheering, one guy was even dancing. Even the Tarnished seemed happy, since he opted to do somersaults all the way up the road instead of just riding off on his horse.”
Locke sighed another long sigh, this time seeming genuinely relieved. “And that was it. After many, many weeks, after many, many deaths, after losing the sanity of every single man at that posting and more knights than I even dared imagine our army fucking had, the Tarnished had a full set of Godrick knight armor, and we had a sound night’s sleep.” His relieved smile wavered. “And it only took the bastard a hundred and nineteen tries.”
“Marika’s tits,” Jareth muttered.
“A hundred and nineteen?” Rosby asked. “Are you sure?”
Locke shrugged, his face impassive. “Well, I suppose I don’t have an exact count on how many died while I was up at Stormveil, but yes. One hundred and nineteen. We were all counting. A dozen men can’t be wrong.”
“And what did he do after that?” Barreck asked. “Did he wear it? Keep it as a trophy?”
Locke laughed a mirthless laugh. “He wore it through Stormveil Castle and killed Godrick with it on.”
Barreck blinked. “Why?”
“Why? Why? Why the fuck would I know?” Locke asked, animated again. “Maybe it was a false flag attack to misdirect us? Maybe it was some sick power move? Maybe the armor was just the best he could have used, because all the brains in our army ended up with the fucking blacksmiths? Clearly whoever ran our logistics didn’t have any!” Locke paused and took a moment to collect himself.
“I don’t know, gentlemen,” he said, calmer and more melancholy. “I really don’t. I don’t know why he had to kill a hundred and nineteen men, probably more, to get himself a single armor set. I don’t know how he disappeared every time we chased him. I don’t know how he got his magic horse, I don’t know how he returns from the dead, and I especially don’t know why he used a giant fucking stick instead of a proper weapon the first hundred and five times. I just…” He sighed. “I don’t know. The only thing I do know,” his voice rising with drunken confidence, “is that whatever else that man is or can do, he is a fucking maniac. That much I can say for certain.” Locke finished his drink and with a flick of his wrist, dropped the empty tankard on the table. “Fuck, man. That’s all I have to say.”
A silence fell over the table. The evidence was mounting that the reigning Elden Lord, the man they all depended on for employment and stability, may in fact be clinically and irrevocably insane. The implications were disquieting.
“You know what, gentlemen?” Barreck said. “Let’s have a toast.”
“To whom?” Jareth asked.
“To our Elden Lord, of course.” When he saw his fellows’ expressions, he continued: “sure, he might be a lunatic. A mass murderer. Mentally ill, a sexual deviant, and at the very least either extremely overconfident or borderline sociopathic. But you know what?” He knocked on the table to emphasize his point. “He’s the best we’ve got.
“I mean, what were the other options? Either terminally ill, clinically insane, or hated by a majority of the population, and more often than not they were more than one of those things. Plus, really, they were all upper-class. The Tarnished is one of us. He had to work to get where he is. So no matter how much of a fucking madman he is, he’s a damn sight better than the alternatives, and a whole hell of a lot better than what we deserve. Agreed?”
“Heh,” Harmond said. “Fair enough. He won’t bow to lobbyists in any case.”
“And at least there’s doctors,” Rosby added.
“And health insurance,” Locke agreed.
“And no more terrible, manslaying abominations that live in a killer swamp,” Jareth finished. He smiled gently. “You’re right, Barreck. This is hardly the worst we could have had.”
“Then it’s decided,” Barreck said. He lifted his tankard to the ceiling. “To our new Elden Lord. Long may he reign!”
The others laughed and raised their tankards too.
“Long may he reign!”