19 - A Grand Glimpse
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
19 - A Grand Glimpse
As she sank into the dark, she felt a twinge of embarrassment. Christ, was she the kind of person to pass out after a little bit of sleep deprivation and a friendly wrestling session with a murderous Tarnished? Though, thinking about that Tarnished… why had she been so relaxed? Surely she had been on a mission, had she just ignored her orders, or was she working separately to the people on the bridge? No, she'd come prepared for the climb, had come over at the exact right moment, they were definitely in cahoots. No doubt about it. So why… maybe she's succeeded. Maybe just getting to the castle had been enough. Maybe she had a partner that was helping her out, going round the other side. If so, Telavis should have taken care of it, but, who knew? Not her, that was for sure. Or maybe it had all been a matter of confidence. Ten Tarnished were on that bridge, and they'd all be back, ready to tell the story of the time a Tarnished managed to get past the new defences through a simple distraction. If one could do it… why not another ten? Why not bring every Tarnished in town, overwhelm the defences, sneak past Margit in the confusion, infiltrate the castle and burrow inwards like ticks on a dog, growing swollen and fat from the strength of Runes. She sank deeper, and the image of bloated Tarnished, gluttons dining on the strength they stole instead of earned faded away. Worries departed. All that was left was peaceful unconsciousness.
Time passed.
More time.
And Taylor found herself growing annoyed. She was unconscious, she didn't want to just float in a dark void for a while, she wanted to sleep - hadn't she earned a little snooze after all of this? Wait - if she was going to float around here like some… gangly jellyfish (God she really needed to get some sleep), she might as well do something productive with her time. The gold - she hadn't exactly had time to focus on it lately, too busy depriving herself of rest because an invisible woman had pissed her off. She focused on its elegant contours, the way it was infinitely fractal yet utterly smooth. The shade which seemed beyond any kind of mundane perfection… and what was that thing, that axiom it had more or less screamed at her? Something like… 'To alloy without corrosion is the validation of Order'. The words echoed in the empty space, and she tried to pick them apart, really drill to the core of their meaning as best she could.
To alloy without corrosion. To add something and strengthening it in the process, instead of weakening it. Steel is stronger than iron, a pure metal is usually soft and yielding… gold is beautiful, but without something to reinforce it, it's light and easily bent out of shape. The image of Godrick and Crawa came to mind - grafting, adding something to make someone stronger. Her mind reeled from the idea of the gold and the grafting being somehow connected - the gold was effortlessly beautiful, and even after (presumably) centuries of training, grafting hadn't achieved a fraction of that. And in that, maybe, was something worth holding onto. The same principle, but applied completely incorrectly. Instead of genuinely varied elements being added to reinforce one another, Godrick had simply added more in an attempt to solve a weakness. What he couldn't see was that the weakness was in the limbs themselves, and adding more wouldn't rectify it one little bit. Maybe Crawa had a point - use grafting to actually go beyond the limits of a human, add elements from animals to genuinely gain something worthwhile. Alloying oneself to become stronger, taking up foreign ideas and augmenting without losing any purity.
The gold emerged as she thought, unfolding in the dark. And now it was larger, bigger than ever. If she had a physical body here, she'd have blinked. She hadn't done this before - every time she called on the gold, it had been superficial, imagining its appearance instead of the principles underlying it. She'd treated it like it was a power, some physical thing she needed to drag to the surface like… like a fish in a frozen-over lake. As the gold expanded, bloomed, exploded into branches, she understood that this wasn't her power. This was something else. And yet… she couldn't bring herself to be angry at that conclusion. The gold was simply too perfect to be hated, looking at it reminded her of the scraps of happiness she'd found in this place. In its infinite fractals were reflected the comforting sight of the Erdtree which remained constant, even as chaos escalated. A glimpse of getting drunk with Angharad, a shred of Onager's acerbic voice flitting through the air, the pangs of sympathy from her interaction with Crawa, and the reassuring solidity of Telavis. Potiphar was there too, naturally, a kindly, bumbling thing that followed her around even as she acted like a colossal coward. Everything was here, embedded in the boundless pattern. It had a place for all of them.
Something changed. And suddenly it all went wrong. The orderliness dissolved, the harmonious arrangements unravelled. Onager's voice fell silent, and the gold seemed to recoil from the idea of him being present. Crawa was next. Telavis followed soon after. Huge, indistinct figures fell around her, crumbling with groans of pain. For a second, Taylor felt something dark and cold, the feeling of being trapped with thousands of others, screaming all as one - she retreated from that vision with frantic speed, unwilling to pursue it any further. And abruptly the order was colder, harder. Its edges reminded her of Nepehli's axe, dripping with strangely coloured matter - and that was something, it had edges. Once, just smooth contours, and now, something far more terrifying. Something was at its centre, too - there hadn't been a centre, once. That was something she could only realise now that its opposite was in front of her, the contrast laying it plain. Once, the pattern had been endless, and the idea of a centre was pointless - everything emanated from itself, every pattern could infinitely generate more. This? It all stemmed from one point, and as she looked closer, she saw-
She saw-
She saw the end that should not be.
Her mind snapped back, and the pattern seemed to become covered in thorns directed at her, hostile to this thing which had decided to intrude on it. Taylor couldn't even remember what she'd seen, only a feeling of terror and the sensation of a… a hammer, that was it. A shining hammer crashing down, over and over, utterly relentless and savage in a way that made Nepheli seem urbane. The new pattern was hostile, that much was clear. It was funny - a few days ago, Taylor might have curled in on herself, tried to shut out the strange pattern that was warping into something utterly hostile. But… this was her head, wasn't it? And a little anger was blossoming - the perfection of the previous pattern had suppressed it, but now it was surging up through her stomach and into her throat, almost burning her tongue. This wasn't her power. God-fucking-dammit, she'd been focusing on this stuff for over a week, and now it wasn't even hers? How much time had this thing meant for her to waste on it, how long was it going to stop her from getting back home? Had it been interrupting her progress? The image of her dad, alone, came back as strongly as it did when she first arrived. She was pissed, oh, she was royally pissed.
And that gave her strength. Not much, just a tiny scrap of power that resisted the encroaching pattern, forced it backwards. And… that was it. The false pattern faded, the perfect pattern returned, and it shivered in something resembling happiness. Taylor was still pissed. The gold sung of something new, an axiom boring into her mind with absolute certainty:
To emanate without a centre is-
"No, go fuck yourself!"
Oh shit. She'd spoken. She didn't know she could speak here. And she'd sworn at the gold, which seemed like a poor decision. Well, if no-one else was listening, and this was a void without consequences…
"Seriously, what? Are you going to show up, yell cryptic things, and then vanish? Again? Leave me here to work for Godrick, to worry about assassins, I'm fifteen! Can't you harass someone old enough to drink?"
She let out a breath. That… that felt good. God, how long had she been holding all of this in? How much frustration had she let build up over the last few weeks? It felt like there was a knot of tension always present, just beneath her solar plexus, building and building until it had to explode out. And as it turned out, being brought to the brink of dying, getting wrestled with by an insane Tarnished, spending time around Godrick, almost getting screamed deaf by his surprisingly pleasant daughter, getting bound to a knight by a debt she formed while wildly panicking, getting stuck with a perfumer who probably had some untreated PTSD floating around, getting intimidated by an invisible assassin, dying, being compelled to make nuclear bombs for a medieval warlord, not necessarily in that order… huh, now she thought about it, it was a miracle she hadn't gone completely nuts yet. The gold was silent, and it seemed to be… staring. Appraising her.
Doubt is necessary for faith.
Taylor blinked. And like a lightbulb turning off, the gold was gone. She was fairly certain she imagined the loud 'click'. Great, more cryptic bullshit and then a vanishing act, how original. A hole opened at the top of the endless void (well, not quite so endless if there was a 'top' to open, but she wasn't really thinking about the spatial logic of her hallucinations), a hole that widened and bloomed, light streaming through. Not gold, though. Normal light. Greys, blues… the shades of Stormveil. With a grumble at the idea of having wasted time dealing with something that wasn't her power and couldn't get her home, she floated upwards. She was done with esoteric visions for the day.
Potiphar was the first thing she felt - a quivering mess of a creature, poking frantically at her face in a desperate attempt to get her to wake up. Her hands automatically moved to pat him on his wax seal, stroking him like he was a particularly large cat, moving before her exhausted brain could really process what the hell was happening. Everything felt… soft, like it was wrapped in cotton wool. Even Potiphar's hard stone hands felt like giant q-tips bumping against her cheek. She was in a bed - her bed, that was it. She almost didn't recognise it, hadn't exactly slept here for a little while. Potiphar was here, she knew that much - Telavis too, standing guard beside the door. Angharad was missing… no, she was right there, almost invisible in a patch of shadow. And in her hands was a bottle. A half-empty bottle, with some liquid remaining that glowed slightly. The perfumer twitched eagerly on seeing her wake up, and scurried over with the bottle in hand.
"What-"
"Ah, I do apologise, but you looked exhausted, just a muscle relaxant, it-"
"Is this why everything feels fuzzy?"
"...yes."
Taylor tried to do a small Margit-esque grumble, but it didn't quite come out right - just made her sound drunk and rambling.
"Don't suppose there's any side effects?"
"Drink plenty of water and you'll be fine."
"If I don't?"
"Kidney stones."
Angharad barely had time to blink before Taylor was frantically glugging from a pitcher of water by the side of the bed, her eyes burning with the terror that only pre-modern kidney stone removal could incite. Telavis's bearded face crept into something resembling a smile, but otherwise he remained completely stoic. Potiphar was having a grand old time, of course, performing an impromptu victory dance on the bed. This was… strange to witness, largely because he was a very large jar and the bed was very soft, and he kept sinking into it, stumbling, half-falling over, rolling close to the edge, then springing back up and repeating ad nauseam in a variety of combinations. Very entertaining to watch out of the corner of her eye while the water poured down in a blissful river. After a solid ten seconds, she set it down and took a deep breath, wiping her lips with a dusty sleeve. Oh, great, now her bed was covered in dust from the fight. And a little dried blood. Well, not like she was sleeping in it anyway.
"How long?"
"Just a few hours. You're incredibly sleep deprived, I'm surprised you even got up to the wall."
"I don't really remember getting there."
"...precisely my point. You need to sleep - why have you been staying up in the first place?"
Taylor considered this. Angharad was… well, not quite a friend, but certainly an ally. Bound to Taylor, willing to work with her, even willing to get drunk with her. She'd been a pleasant bit of company after that first attack, when… oh. Thinking of the first attack she'd helped defend against made her think of the one that had just concluded. And that made her think of putting her spear through Nepheli's arm, seeing her men butchered in front of her, feeling death hovering above. The pitcher was abruptly repurposed as a vomit bucket, and Taylor vaguely felt Angharad softly patting her on the back.
"There, there. All over now."
Taylor felt oddly annoyed at that. It wasn't all over, this would be happening for the foreseeable bloody future. She was being weak, she was vomiting when she should be coming up with a proper lie to cover up her whole plot with the assassin, trying to keep her cover as a competent… fuck, she was vomiting in a pitcher, there was no way her cover was still intact. Angharad was centuries older than her, she could almost certainly see through some of it. Enough to realise that she was inexperienced at a whole host of things, even if she had miraculous books at her disposal. Taylor sighed internally. Being utterly alone in the face of Nepheli, completely doomed if it wasn't for Margit… well, if the assassin had made her paranoid, then Nepheli had made her positively conspiratorial. The idea of sending allies away when they could stick around as protection, as soldiers that knew how to fight as unorthodox a foe as the Tarnished… it rubbed her up the wrong way. Banishing Angharad back into the castle, ignorant of the assassin, felt like she'd be depriving herself of a vital ally.
"...OK, this is going to sound strange. One moment, actually - Telavis, could you fetch the thing?"
"Hm."
He was gone, and Angharad twiddled her thumbs awkwardly while they waited for him to return. Taylor glanced around the room, checking her tripwires - none of them were broken. With three people and a jar in the room, surely the assassin couldn't get inside? Paranoid thoughts raced through her head, and she tried to will her fuzzy limbs into motion - just in case. Her attempts were stymied by Telavis's return - damn, he was fast, the man must have jogged (or sprinted) the entire way. And in his hands was a dirt-streaked burlap sack… and inside, a spiralling golden torch. Angharad kindly lit the thing using one of her smaller tools, and it flared into life, eerily bright. No shadows remained in the room, none at all, everything was turned a bland monochrome by the apparently enchanted torch. And there were no assassins standing around looking surprised. Taylor was oddly disappointed, she really wanted to sleep.
"Alright, so this will sound very weird, but there's a Black Knife assassin in the castle."
Angharad squeaked.
"What?"
"It's fine, she hasn't tried to kill me yet."
"G- what- eh?"
"And now we have one of those torches, so Telavis and I are going to ambush her."
Angharad shut down completely at the idea of ambushing a Black Knife assassin.
"...eh?"
"If you want to help, we'd appreciate it. Fine if you don't want to."
"...you want to ambush a godkiller."
"She tried to intimidate me into giving information on Godrick. I guess she can't get close enough herself."
"There are so many problems with this plan. What if she fights back? What if she kills you both, permanently? What if she escapes and brings her sisters?"
"Telavis should be able to handle it."
"He's a man, like anyone else! They're not even properly human, they're bloody Numen. And they killed Godwyn like that."
Taylor almost stopped the conversation - Numen? Not properly human? That… raised questions. She decided to ignore that for now, focus on the immediate objection. If she started asking questions about the Black Knives, any scraps of her perceived competency would go out the window - only an idiot would challenge an assassin she knew almost nothing about. And Taylor knew… enough? Maybe? Hopefully. And if Angharad thought she was an incompetent playing with forces she didn't understand, then she might do something stupid, like… say, tell Godrick, who'd learn about the torch, get pissed, and do something everyone in the splash zone would regret. Angharad wasn't a bad person, but she'd been here for a very, very long time. Breaking that stability was probably unthinkable to her.
"And no other demigods. Maybe they were weakened by fighting Godwyn, maybe their numbers were reduced, but either way, I don't think they're on the same level they were at back then."
"Stop it! Stop trying to logic your way out of it, there is no logic which could justify ambushing a Black Knife assassin."
"The alternative is to wait around until she gets bored with me and decides to tie up a loose end."
Angharad didn't have a response to that, and Taylor was feeling a little petty. At the end of the day, if Angharad wasn't going to help with this, then Taylor had another purpose she could fulfil - God, 'purpose she could fulfil', she was starting to think like these people spoke. Not good, not remotely good.
"If you don't want to help - which is fine, by the way - could you take care of something else for me? I'm a little busy, and I want someone else to handle this."
"...alright, what is it?"
"I need you to get the biggest birds you can find in the castle."
"Weird request, but manageable."
"And then you need to chop off their wings."
"Quite fine, I've dissected before, but-"
"And then you need to give them to the Scion."
Angharad let out a low moan of pained confusion.
"...why?"
"She wants some."
"She?"
"Oh, she's called Crawa. Be nice. She's practically a kid."
"No! No she's not! She's an abomination of grafting, she's a walking war engine, a whirring mass of swords that can chop anyone to-"
"She saw us back when we got drunk."
Angharad sank into the chair, burying her face in her hands. She was murmuring something - praying, Taylor realised.
"Eternal Marika, what did I do to deserve this? I've been a good perfumer, I serve your descendant, can't I have some peace in return? Why are you so angry?"
A pulse of sympathy. She knew that feeling very well, and had been feeling it more or less since her arrival. The feeling of 'why me' that sounded simultaneously entirely reasonable and intolerably petulant. She shuffled out of her bed and patted Angharad on the back, trying to be as comforting as she could while still covered in far too much blood for anyone's comfort - especially her own. Potiphar saw what she was doing and tried to help, by whacking her repeatedly on the knee in a manner that was probably meant to be a pat - little fellow was getting a little overexcited, probably overcompensating after his companion (master? Owner? Keeper? Pot-sitter?) almost died. A sharp look from Taylor led Telavis over to pat her on the head - she hadn't meant for him to do that, Taylor just wanted the knight to keep an eye on the door, how did he interpret- no, never mind. Angharad looked more stressed now, with two people and a pot patting her in the least comforting way possible. With a sigh of utter defeat, she glugged from the bottle and sagged back into a pile of robe-wrapped limbs and hazy eyes. She muttered blearily:
"...maybe master had a point."
Taylor let out a long sigh. Sleeping forever sounded appealing… then again, her dreams were weird enough that being trapped with them forever was probably just about the worst fate she could think of.
"You'll do it though, won't you? I'm sorry, it's-"
"No, no, I understand. Too busy with one insane plan. At least you know you can't balance two insane plans at once."
"If it helps, just imagine Crawa - the 'walking war engine' - with a mass of wings."
"That's the most horrifying thing someone has said to me since 'there's a Black Knife assassin in the castle'."
"OK, imagine the Tarnished seeing that."
Angharad perked up.
"...you know what, that actually doesn't sound half bad."
"Now imagine giving her all the weird unstable chemical weapons you have."
"...goodness me. She could be a… a… ah, I can't find the word."
"The word back home would be 'heavily armed bomber'. Or 'attack helicopter'."
Angharad was looking downright intrigued now, and her fingers were twitching excitedly.
"Ah, ah, I'm having ideas. To deploy offensive concoctions without the need for a catapult or engaging at dangerously close range… my, my. The Tarnished from earlier today would be nothing in the wake of such an assault."
Taylor was rapidly regretting this course of action. Maybe it was the blurriness from her weird visions, maybe it was just plain old stupidity with no extraneous explanations, but Angharad had clearly been affected by the experience of the Tarnished attacking. Understandable. And if she'd seen evidence of Nepheli arriving… hm.
"...be nice to her. I was just asking you to collect some wings."
"Maybe wings from some of the giant bat species… ah, to harvest from a Chanting Dame. And if Lord Godrick's dragon project works-"
"Bird wings. Get her bird. Wings. Think about the other stuff later."
"But the possib-"
"Angharad!"
Taylor knew what she had to do. Godrick would be expecting to talk with her, and she didn't want to keep him waiting. Until then, though, she wanted to rest, if only for a moment. Potiphar was curled in her lap, and she quietly inspected his outer casing. A little chipped, a few spiderweb cracks… but nothing dramatic. Hell, the only reasons she could notice them was their relative freshness. The little dude was riddled with cracks, weathered by age until they were the same tone as the rest of him. How long had he been around? Hundreds of years, most likely… a part of her imagined him wandering around for over a century, gathering bodies, returning them to catacombs, doing it over and over again. He was clearly sentient, sapient… she'd never really grasped the difference between the two, honestly. And it wasn't like she could read any dictionaries here, hell, if she thought about language here in general she started getting a cluster headache. Sapient, sentient, both of them Latin words adapted to English. Did this world have a people that spoke Latin, and then did the current civilisation come along at the precise right moment at the precise intersection of dozens of languages all forming English? She saw the living jar in her lap, and came to the reasonable conclusion that this world had enough mystical bullshit, language was probably the least bullshit thing she'd seen so far.
But they all sounded like they were from different parts of Britain and- gah. Stop thinking about it. Potiphar glanced up at her - well, he angled himself slightly differently - and seemed to communicate the same basic command. Thinking about it wasn't productive.
Thinking about strategy, though… the gold in her vision had been weird. As usual. And it wasn't her power. If she thought about that too much, she started to feel despair creeping into everything, a hungry animal that devoured thought and motivation both, sapped her of strength and left her ready to collapse into her bed and not re-emerge for a long, long time. Had to set it aside. She had a power, she… if she didn't, then how was she going to get home? Unless something else had brought her here… but if she thought about that for too long, she started to feel incredibly small, insignificant, and ultimately, despairing. Had to focus on strategy. If she focused on strategy, she could get on by just fine. Just like she'd been doing for the last week, focus on the comfortingly simple minutiae to distract herself from the generally overcomplicated, largely unknown, and overwhelmingly unpleasant big picture.
Ten Tarnished attacking from the front, most of them armed with huge, flame retardant shields to protect against archers and fire pots. A few dedicated specialists intended to keep Margit busy. A final Tarnished to sneak around and infiltrate the castle from inside. The way Nepheli had acted, though… too casual. Too relaxed. It seemed ridiculous to imagine that the same force which organised ten Tarnished into a fairly effective squad capable of weathering her defences would send someone so lackadaisical to perform, quite possibly, the most vital role in the operation. Unless… she'd already succeeded by arriving. Could have been a test to see if they could, but if so, she'd seemed fairly blase about losing the element of surprise in any future infiltrations.
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a probe. They'd assessed her defences, gained knowledge of where she was strong and where she was weak - she, Christ, she was taking too much credit for this work, trying to assert control in a situation where control was conspicuously lacking. The next attempt might be more stealthy, or they could send more troops to handle the infiltration, or they could bring a small army to overwhelm Margit completely. At the very least, Godrick couldn't go leaping around like a hero, he was the reason this castle was still standing. Their next attack might just focus on slaughtering him at all costs - he needed to stay in the back, where he couldn't die to something stupid. Well… if they were clever enough to assess her defences and adapt to them in less than a day, they were probably clever enough to realise that Godrick wouldn't always jump into their clutches.
Hopefully. Hopefully Godrick wouldn't do something so catastrophically stupid again. She clung to that hope, it kept her feeling stable. That and Potiphar.
…oh. Shit. She'd just realised something. Who knew how long these Tarnished had been around? Maybe they were recent arrivals, but if the half-dead soldiers around the land knew what they were, they'd probably been around for a long while. If they were old hands, they'd know the status quo in and out, enough that a disturbance to it was keenly visible. The Black Knife had said as much. And they'd attacked, seen that Margit was still here, Godrick was still around and as crazy as ever… and Nepheli had seen her. A kid. Clearly out of place. Clearly still with her wits about her. Clearly with some kind of command over the soldiers. And if she went back and told whoever had organised this whole mess about her… she could imagine the meeting now, as clear as day.
Nepheli would stride in, and describe infiltrating successfully, killing a few guards, and the weird terrified child that ordered those same guards around, and even contributed to the fight a little. Not a soldier, not a Tarnished, someone new. And there'd be debates, people would suggest that maybe she was just a bystander, a sign that Godrick was desperate for new recruits, a person they'd simply never seen before given that they'd never infiltrated the castle (presumably, given that Tarnished with this level of organisation would have been able to infiltrate the pre-Taylor Stormveil with relative ease and killed Godrick like that). Someone would say it, right as the issue was being dismissed, right as she was about to be deemed 'beneath notice', and therefore, out of harm's way. What if she had started this mess? What if she was responsible for the movement of troops, the fortification of the gate… what if she did more? What if Stormveil became inaccessible by a straightforward assault, what if Godrick became utterly unreachable by the Tarnished? Sure, she looked young, but in a place like this, she might still be mentally ancient. Some would dismiss the idea. Others would tap into it. Arguments, more debates, and eventually someone would stand up - maybe Nepheli - and say it.
Neutralise her anyway. It couldn't hurt.
And they'd do it. Kill her in a way that she couldn't recover from. Harass her defences until she broke down, or Godrick cast her out for incompetence. They had forever to work, after all… and she could only build so many walls, post so many guards, lay so many traps.
She'd set herself against an immortal army that got stronger the more it killed, which had a damn good reason to attack the castle she lived in.
She could have hugged the servant that came to tell her that Godrick wanted to see her. The world was a vast, frightening place, and she felt further than home than ever before. She needed to act, to reassert some kind of control over this castle. Even if she was covered in blood and her breath stank of vomit, she could still do something. Right? God, the many-armed warlord was becoming a stable axis to orient herself around. This was surely something that would never bite her in her boney, bruised ass.
Right?
As she sank into the dark, she felt a twinge of embarrassment. Christ, was she the kind of person to pass out after a little bit of sleep deprivation and a friendly wrestling session with a murderous Tarnished? Though, thinking about that Tarnished… why had she been so relaxed? Surely she had been on a mission, had she just ignored her orders, or was she working separately to the people on the bridge? No, she'd come prepared for the climb, had come over at the exact right moment, they were definitely in cahoots. No doubt about it. So why… maybe she's succeeded. Maybe just getting to the castle had been enough. Maybe she had a partner that was helping her out, going round the other side. If so, Telavis should have taken care of it, but, who knew? Not her, that was for sure. Or maybe it had all been a matter of confidence. Ten Tarnished were on that bridge, and they'd all be back, ready to tell the story of the time a Tarnished managed to get past the new defences through a simple distraction. If one could do it… why not another ten? Why not bring every Tarnished in town, overwhelm the defences, sneak past Margit in the confusion, infiltrate the castle and burrow inwards like ticks on a dog, growing swollen and fat from the strength of Runes. She sank deeper, and the image of bloated Tarnished, gluttons dining on the strength they stole instead of earned faded away. Worries departed. All that was left was peaceful unconsciousness.
Time passed.
More time.
And Taylor found herself growing annoyed. She was unconscious, she didn't want to just float in a dark void for a while, she wanted to sleep - hadn't she earned a little snooze after all of this? Wait - if she was going to float around here like some… gangly jellyfish (God she really needed to get some sleep), she might as well do something productive with her time. The gold - she hadn't exactly had time to focus on it lately, too busy depriving herself of rest because an invisible woman had pissed her off. She focused on its elegant contours, the way it was infinitely fractal yet utterly smooth. The shade which seemed beyond any kind of mundane perfection… and what was that thing, that axiom it had more or less screamed at her? Something like… 'To alloy without corrosion is the validation of Order'. The words echoed in the empty space, and she tried to pick them apart, really drill to the core of their meaning as best she could.
To alloy without corrosion. To add something and strengthening it in the process, instead of weakening it. Steel is stronger than iron, a pure metal is usually soft and yielding… gold is beautiful, but without something to reinforce it, it's light and easily bent out of shape. The image of Godrick and Crawa came to mind - grafting, adding something to make someone stronger. Her mind reeled from the idea of the gold and the grafting being somehow connected - the gold was effortlessly beautiful, and even after (presumably) centuries of training, grafting hadn't achieved a fraction of that. And in that, maybe, was something worth holding onto. The same principle, but applied completely incorrectly. Instead of genuinely varied elements being added to reinforce one another, Godrick had simply added more in an attempt to solve a weakness. What he couldn't see was that the weakness was in the limbs themselves, and adding more wouldn't rectify it one little bit. Maybe Crawa had a point - use grafting to actually go beyond the limits of a human, add elements from animals to genuinely gain something worthwhile. Alloying oneself to become stronger, taking up foreign ideas and augmenting without losing any purity.
The gold emerged as she thought, unfolding in the dark. And now it was larger, bigger than ever. If she had a physical body here, she'd have blinked. She hadn't done this before - every time she called on the gold, it had been superficial, imagining its appearance instead of the principles underlying it. She'd treated it like it was a power, some physical thing she needed to drag to the surface like… like a fish in a frozen-over lake. As the gold expanded, bloomed, exploded into branches, she understood that this wasn't her power. This was something else. And yet… she couldn't bring herself to be angry at that conclusion. The gold was simply too perfect to be hated, looking at it reminded her of the scraps of happiness she'd found in this place. In its infinite fractals were reflected the comforting sight of the Erdtree which remained constant, even as chaos escalated. A glimpse of getting drunk with Angharad, a shred of Onager's acerbic voice flitting through the air, the pangs of sympathy from her interaction with Crawa, and the reassuring solidity of Telavis. Potiphar was there too, naturally, a kindly, bumbling thing that followed her around even as she acted like a colossal coward. Everything was here, embedded in the boundless pattern. It had a place for all of them.
Something changed. And suddenly it all went wrong. The orderliness dissolved, the harmonious arrangements unravelled. Onager's voice fell silent, and the gold seemed to recoil from the idea of him being present. Crawa was next. Telavis followed soon after. Huge, indistinct figures fell around her, crumbling with groans of pain. For a second, Taylor felt something dark and cold, the feeling of being trapped with thousands of others, screaming all as one - she retreated from that vision with frantic speed, unwilling to pursue it any further. And abruptly the order was colder, harder. Its edges reminded her of Nepehli's axe, dripping with strangely coloured matter - and that was something, it had edges. Once, just smooth contours, and now, something far more terrifying. Something was at its centre, too - there hadn't been a centre, once. That was something she could only realise now that its opposite was in front of her, the contrast laying it plain. Once, the pattern had been endless, and the idea of a centre was pointless - everything emanated from itself, every pattern could infinitely generate more. This? It all stemmed from one point, and as she looked closer, she saw-
She saw-
She saw the end that should not be.
Her mind snapped back, and the pattern seemed to become covered in thorns directed at her, hostile to this thing which had decided to intrude on it. Taylor couldn't even remember what she'd seen, only a feeling of terror and the sensation of a… a hammer, that was it. A shining hammer crashing down, over and over, utterly relentless and savage in a way that made Nepheli seem urbane. The new pattern was hostile, that much was clear. It was funny - a few days ago, Taylor might have curled in on herself, tried to shut out the strange pattern that was warping into something utterly hostile. But… this was her head, wasn't it? And a little anger was blossoming - the perfection of the previous pattern had suppressed it, but now it was surging up through her stomach and into her throat, almost burning her tongue. This wasn't her power. God-fucking-dammit, she'd been focusing on this stuff for over a week, and now it wasn't even hers? How much time had this thing meant for her to waste on it, how long was it going to stop her from getting back home? Had it been interrupting her progress? The image of her dad, alone, came back as strongly as it did when she first arrived. She was pissed, oh, she was royally pissed.
And that gave her strength. Not much, just a tiny scrap of power that resisted the encroaching pattern, forced it backwards. And… that was it. The false pattern faded, the perfect pattern returned, and it shivered in something resembling happiness. Taylor was still pissed. The gold sung of something new, an axiom boring into her mind with absolute certainty:
To emanate without a centre is-
"No, go fuck yourself!"
Oh shit. She'd spoken. She didn't know she could speak here. And she'd sworn at the gold, which seemed like a poor decision. Well, if no-one else was listening, and this was a void without consequences…
"Seriously, what? Are you going to show up, yell cryptic things, and then vanish? Again? Leave me here to work for Godrick, to worry about assassins, I'm fifteen! Can't you harass someone old enough to drink?"
She let out a breath. That… that felt good. God, how long had she been holding all of this in? How much frustration had she let build up over the last few weeks? It felt like there was a knot of tension always present, just beneath her solar plexus, building and building until it had to explode out. And as it turned out, being brought to the brink of dying, getting wrestled with by an insane Tarnished, spending time around Godrick, almost getting screamed deaf by his surprisingly pleasant daughter, getting bound to a knight by a debt she formed while wildly panicking, getting stuck with a perfumer who probably had some untreated PTSD floating around, getting intimidated by an invisible assassin, dying, being compelled to make nuclear bombs for a medieval warlord, not necessarily in that order… huh, now she thought about it, it was a miracle she hadn't gone completely nuts yet. The gold was silent, and it seemed to be… staring. Appraising her.
Doubt is necessary for faith.
Taylor blinked. And like a lightbulb turning off, the gold was gone. She was fairly certain she imagined the loud 'click'. Great, more cryptic bullshit and then a vanishing act, how original. A hole opened at the top of the endless void (well, not quite so endless if there was a 'top' to open, but she wasn't really thinking about the spatial logic of her hallucinations), a hole that widened and bloomed, light streaming through. Not gold, though. Normal light. Greys, blues… the shades of Stormveil. With a grumble at the idea of having wasted time dealing with something that wasn't her power and couldn't get her home, she floated upwards. She was done with esoteric visions for the day.
* * *
Potiphar was the first thing she felt - a quivering mess of a creature, poking frantically at her face in a desperate attempt to get her to wake up. Her hands automatically moved to pat him on his wax seal, stroking him like he was a particularly large cat, moving before her exhausted brain could really process what the hell was happening. Everything felt… soft, like it was wrapped in cotton wool. Even Potiphar's hard stone hands felt like giant q-tips bumping against her cheek. She was in a bed - her bed, that was it. She almost didn't recognise it, hadn't exactly slept here for a little while. Potiphar was here, she knew that much - Telavis too, standing guard beside the door. Angharad was missing… no, she was right there, almost invisible in a patch of shadow. And in her hands was a bottle. A half-empty bottle, with some liquid remaining that glowed slightly. The perfumer twitched eagerly on seeing her wake up, and scurried over with the bottle in hand.
"What-"
"Ah, I do apologise, but you looked exhausted, just a muscle relaxant, it-"
"Is this why everything feels fuzzy?"
"...yes."
Taylor tried to do a small Margit-esque grumble, but it didn't quite come out right - just made her sound drunk and rambling.
"Don't suppose there's any side effects?"
"Drink plenty of water and you'll be fine."
"If I don't?"
"Kidney stones."
Angharad barely had time to blink before Taylor was frantically glugging from a pitcher of water by the side of the bed, her eyes burning with the terror that only pre-modern kidney stone removal could incite. Telavis's bearded face crept into something resembling a smile, but otherwise he remained completely stoic. Potiphar was having a grand old time, of course, performing an impromptu victory dance on the bed. This was… strange to witness, largely because he was a very large jar and the bed was very soft, and he kept sinking into it, stumbling, half-falling over, rolling close to the edge, then springing back up and repeating ad nauseam in a variety of combinations. Very entertaining to watch out of the corner of her eye while the water poured down in a blissful river. After a solid ten seconds, she set it down and took a deep breath, wiping her lips with a dusty sleeve. Oh, great, now her bed was covered in dust from the fight. And a little dried blood. Well, not like she was sleeping in it anyway.
"How long?"
"Just a few hours. You're incredibly sleep deprived, I'm surprised you even got up to the wall."
"I don't really remember getting there."
"...precisely my point. You need to sleep - why have you been staying up in the first place?"
Taylor considered this. Angharad was… well, not quite a friend, but certainly an ally. Bound to Taylor, willing to work with her, even willing to get drunk with her. She'd been a pleasant bit of company after that first attack, when… oh. Thinking of the first attack she'd helped defend against made her think of the one that had just concluded. And that made her think of putting her spear through Nepheli's arm, seeing her men butchered in front of her, feeling death hovering above. The pitcher was abruptly repurposed as a vomit bucket, and Taylor vaguely felt Angharad softly patting her on the back.
"There, there. All over now."
Taylor felt oddly annoyed at that. It wasn't all over, this would be happening for the foreseeable bloody future. She was being weak, she was vomiting when she should be coming up with a proper lie to cover up her whole plot with the assassin, trying to keep her cover as a competent… fuck, she was vomiting in a pitcher, there was no way her cover was still intact. Angharad was centuries older than her, she could almost certainly see through some of it. Enough to realise that she was inexperienced at a whole host of things, even if she had miraculous books at her disposal. Taylor sighed internally. Being utterly alone in the face of Nepheli, completely doomed if it wasn't for Margit… well, if the assassin had made her paranoid, then Nepheli had made her positively conspiratorial. The idea of sending allies away when they could stick around as protection, as soldiers that knew how to fight as unorthodox a foe as the Tarnished… it rubbed her up the wrong way. Banishing Angharad back into the castle, ignorant of the assassin, felt like she'd be depriving herself of a vital ally.
"...OK, this is going to sound strange. One moment, actually - Telavis, could you fetch the thing?"
"Hm."
He was gone, and Angharad twiddled her thumbs awkwardly while they waited for him to return. Taylor glanced around the room, checking her tripwires - none of them were broken. With three people and a jar in the room, surely the assassin couldn't get inside? Paranoid thoughts raced through her head, and she tried to will her fuzzy limbs into motion - just in case. Her attempts were stymied by Telavis's return - damn, he was fast, the man must have jogged (or sprinted) the entire way. And in his hands was a dirt-streaked burlap sack… and inside, a spiralling golden torch. Angharad kindly lit the thing using one of her smaller tools, and it flared into life, eerily bright. No shadows remained in the room, none at all, everything was turned a bland monochrome by the apparently enchanted torch. And there were no assassins standing around looking surprised. Taylor was oddly disappointed, she really wanted to sleep.
"Alright, so this will sound very weird, but there's a Black Knife assassin in the castle."
Angharad squeaked.
"What?"
"It's fine, she hasn't tried to kill me yet."
"G- what- eh?"
"And now we have one of those torches, so Telavis and I are going to ambush her."
Angharad shut down completely at the idea of ambushing a Black Knife assassin.
"...eh?"
"If you want to help, we'd appreciate it. Fine if you don't want to."
"...you want to ambush a godkiller."
"She tried to intimidate me into giving information on Godrick. I guess she can't get close enough herself."
"There are so many problems with this plan. What if she fights back? What if she kills you both, permanently? What if she escapes and brings her sisters?"
"Telavis should be able to handle it."
"He's a man, like anyone else! They're not even properly human, they're bloody Numen. And they killed Godwyn like that."
Taylor almost stopped the conversation - Numen? Not properly human? That… raised questions. She decided to ignore that for now, focus on the immediate objection. If she started asking questions about the Black Knives, any scraps of her perceived competency would go out the window - only an idiot would challenge an assassin she knew almost nothing about. And Taylor knew… enough? Maybe? Hopefully. And if Angharad thought she was an incompetent playing with forces she didn't understand, then she might do something stupid, like… say, tell Godrick, who'd learn about the torch, get pissed, and do something everyone in the splash zone would regret. Angharad wasn't a bad person, but she'd been here for a very, very long time. Breaking that stability was probably unthinkable to her.
"And no other demigods. Maybe they were weakened by fighting Godwyn, maybe their numbers were reduced, but either way, I don't think they're on the same level they were at back then."
"Stop it! Stop trying to logic your way out of it, there is no logic which could justify ambushing a Black Knife assassin."
"The alternative is to wait around until she gets bored with me and decides to tie up a loose end."
Angharad didn't have a response to that, and Taylor was feeling a little petty. At the end of the day, if Angharad wasn't going to help with this, then Taylor had another purpose she could fulfil - God, 'purpose she could fulfil', she was starting to think like these people spoke. Not good, not remotely good.
"If you don't want to help - which is fine, by the way - could you take care of something else for me? I'm a little busy, and I want someone else to handle this."
"...alright, what is it?"
"I need you to get the biggest birds you can find in the castle."
"Weird request, but manageable."
"And then you need to chop off their wings."
"Quite fine, I've dissected before, but-"
"And then you need to give them to the Scion."
Angharad let out a low moan of pained confusion.
"...why?"
"She wants some."
"She?"
"Oh, she's called Crawa. Be nice. She's practically a kid."
"No! No she's not! She's an abomination of grafting, she's a walking war engine, a whirring mass of swords that can chop anyone to-"
"She saw us back when we got drunk."
Angharad sank into the chair, burying her face in her hands. She was murmuring something - praying, Taylor realised.
"Eternal Marika, what did I do to deserve this? I've been a good perfumer, I serve your descendant, can't I have some peace in return? Why are you so angry?"
A pulse of sympathy. She knew that feeling very well, and had been feeling it more or less since her arrival. The feeling of 'why me' that sounded simultaneously entirely reasonable and intolerably petulant. She shuffled out of her bed and patted Angharad on the back, trying to be as comforting as she could while still covered in far too much blood for anyone's comfort - especially her own. Potiphar saw what she was doing and tried to help, by whacking her repeatedly on the knee in a manner that was probably meant to be a pat - little fellow was getting a little overexcited, probably overcompensating after his companion (master? Owner? Keeper? Pot-sitter?) almost died. A sharp look from Taylor led Telavis over to pat her on the head - she hadn't meant for him to do that, Taylor just wanted the knight to keep an eye on the door, how did he interpret- no, never mind. Angharad looked more stressed now, with two people and a pot patting her in the least comforting way possible. With a sigh of utter defeat, she glugged from the bottle and sagged back into a pile of robe-wrapped limbs and hazy eyes. She muttered blearily:
"...maybe master had a point."
Taylor let out a long sigh. Sleeping forever sounded appealing… then again, her dreams were weird enough that being trapped with them forever was probably just about the worst fate she could think of.
"You'll do it though, won't you? I'm sorry, it's-"
"No, no, I understand. Too busy with one insane plan. At least you know you can't balance two insane plans at once."
"If it helps, just imagine Crawa - the 'walking war engine' - with a mass of wings."
"That's the most horrifying thing someone has said to me since 'there's a Black Knife assassin in the castle'."
"OK, imagine the Tarnished seeing that."
Angharad perked up.
"...you know what, that actually doesn't sound half bad."
"Now imagine giving her all the weird unstable chemical weapons you have."
"...goodness me. She could be a… a… ah, I can't find the word."
"The word back home would be 'heavily armed bomber'. Or 'attack helicopter'."
Angharad was looking downright intrigued now, and her fingers were twitching excitedly.
"Ah, ah, I'm having ideas. To deploy offensive concoctions without the need for a catapult or engaging at dangerously close range… my, my. The Tarnished from earlier today would be nothing in the wake of such an assault."
Taylor was rapidly regretting this course of action. Maybe it was the blurriness from her weird visions, maybe it was just plain old stupidity with no extraneous explanations, but Angharad had clearly been affected by the experience of the Tarnished attacking. Understandable. And if she'd seen evidence of Nepheli arriving… hm.
"...be nice to her. I was just asking you to collect some wings."
"Maybe wings from some of the giant bat species… ah, to harvest from a Chanting Dame. And if Lord Godrick's dragon project works-"
"Bird wings. Get her bird. Wings. Think about the other stuff later."
"But the possib-"
"Angharad!"
* * *
Taylor knew what she had to do. Godrick would be expecting to talk with her, and she didn't want to keep him waiting. Until then, though, she wanted to rest, if only for a moment. Potiphar was curled in her lap, and she quietly inspected his outer casing. A little chipped, a few spiderweb cracks… but nothing dramatic. Hell, the only reasons she could notice them was their relative freshness. The little dude was riddled with cracks, weathered by age until they were the same tone as the rest of him. How long had he been around? Hundreds of years, most likely… a part of her imagined him wandering around for over a century, gathering bodies, returning them to catacombs, doing it over and over again. He was clearly sentient, sapient… she'd never really grasped the difference between the two, honestly. And it wasn't like she could read any dictionaries here, hell, if she thought about language here in general she started getting a cluster headache. Sapient, sentient, both of them Latin words adapted to English. Did this world have a people that spoke Latin, and then did the current civilisation come along at the precise right moment at the precise intersection of dozens of languages all forming English? She saw the living jar in her lap, and came to the reasonable conclusion that this world had enough mystical bullshit, language was probably the least bullshit thing she'd seen so far.
But they all sounded like they were from different parts of Britain and- gah. Stop thinking about it. Potiphar glanced up at her - well, he angled himself slightly differently - and seemed to communicate the same basic command. Thinking about it wasn't productive.
Thinking about strategy, though… the gold in her vision had been weird. As usual. And it wasn't her power. If she thought about that too much, she started to feel despair creeping into everything, a hungry animal that devoured thought and motivation both, sapped her of strength and left her ready to collapse into her bed and not re-emerge for a long, long time. Had to set it aside. She had a power, she… if she didn't, then how was she going to get home? Unless something else had brought her here… but if she thought about that for too long, she started to feel incredibly small, insignificant, and ultimately, despairing. Had to focus on strategy. If she focused on strategy, she could get on by just fine. Just like she'd been doing for the last week, focus on the comfortingly simple minutiae to distract herself from the generally overcomplicated, largely unknown, and overwhelmingly unpleasant big picture.
Ten Tarnished attacking from the front, most of them armed with huge, flame retardant shields to protect against archers and fire pots. A few dedicated specialists intended to keep Margit busy. A final Tarnished to sneak around and infiltrate the castle from inside. The way Nepheli had acted, though… too casual. Too relaxed. It seemed ridiculous to imagine that the same force which organised ten Tarnished into a fairly effective squad capable of weathering her defences would send someone so lackadaisical to perform, quite possibly, the most vital role in the operation. Unless… she'd already succeeded by arriving. Could have been a test to see if they could, but if so, she'd seemed fairly blase about losing the element of surprise in any future infiltrations.
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a probe. They'd assessed her defences, gained knowledge of where she was strong and where she was weak - she, Christ, she was taking too much credit for this work, trying to assert control in a situation where control was conspicuously lacking. The next attempt might be more stealthy, or they could send more troops to handle the infiltration, or they could bring a small army to overwhelm Margit completely. At the very least, Godrick couldn't go leaping around like a hero, he was the reason this castle was still standing. Their next attack might just focus on slaughtering him at all costs - he needed to stay in the back, where he couldn't die to something stupid. Well… if they were clever enough to assess her defences and adapt to them in less than a day, they were probably clever enough to realise that Godrick wouldn't always jump into their clutches.
Hopefully. Hopefully Godrick wouldn't do something so catastrophically stupid again. She clung to that hope, it kept her feeling stable. That and Potiphar.
…oh. Shit. She'd just realised something. Who knew how long these Tarnished had been around? Maybe they were recent arrivals, but if the half-dead soldiers around the land knew what they were, they'd probably been around for a long while. If they were old hands, they'd know the status quo in and out, enough that a disturbance to it was keenly visible. The Black Knife had said as much. And they'd attacked, seen that Margit was still here, Godrick was still around and as crazy as ever… and Nepheli had seen her. A kid. Clearly out of place. Clearly still with her wits about her. Clearly with some kind of command over the soldiers. And if she went back and told whoever had organised this whole mess about her… she could imagine the meeting now, as clear as day.
Nepheli would stride in, and describe infiltrating successfully, killing a few guards, and the weird terrified child that ordered those same guards around, and even contributed to the fight a little. Not a soldier, not a Tarnished, someone new. And there'd be debates, people would suggest that maybe she was just a bystander, a sign that Godrick was desperate for new recruits, a person they'd simply never seen before given that they'd never infiltrated the castle (presumably, given that Tarnished with this level of organisation would have been able to infiltrate the pre-Taylor Stormveil with relative ease and killed Godrick like that). Someone would say it, right as the issue was being dismissed, right as she was about to be deemed 'beneath notice', and therefore, out of harm's way. What if she had started this mess? What if she was responsible for the movement of troops, the fortification of the gate… what if she did more? What if Stormveil became inaccessible by a straightforward assault, what if Godrick became utterly unreachable by the Tarnished? Sure, she looked young, but in a place like this, she might still be mentally ancient. Some would dismiss the idea. Others would tap into it. Arguments, more debates, and eventually someone would stand up - maybe Nepheli - and say it.
Neutralise her anyway. It couldn't hurt.
And they'd do it. Kill her in a way that she couldn't recover from. Harass her defences until she broke down, or Godrick cast her out for incompetence. They had forever to work, after all… and she could only build so many walls, post so many guards, lay so many traps.
She'd set herself against an immortal army that got stronger the more it killed, which had a damn good reason to attack the castle she lived in.
She could have hugged the servant that came to tell her that Godrick wanted to see her. The world was a vast, frightening place, and she felt further than home than ever before. She needed to act, to reassert some kind of control over this castle. Even if she was covered in blood and her breath stank of vomit, she could still do something. Right? God, the many-armed warlord was becoming a stable axis to orient herself around. This was surely something that would never bite her in her boney, bruised ass.
Right?
