Many thanks to
@Keltoi,
@DemiRapscallion, and
@BinaryApotheosis for betareading and fact-checking.
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The Gate of Storms
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"Ah. Sister."
"Hello, Brother. Might I ask you a question?"
"If you must."
"There's no need to be unkind, Godwyn. Greetings, Lady Melina."
"Greetings, Lord Fortissax. Brother, I asked my tutors when the lands north of the city were barred, and why. He bade me ask you."
"Ah. I had them barred."
"Why?"
"That overly curious young demigods would not uncover secrets that better remain buried."
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We slow to a halt as we clear the treeline at the crest of a small hill. The woods behind us were patrolled by soldiers wearing padded armor emblazoned with red and green heraldry. Soldiers in the employ of Godrick the Grafted, apparently.
There's a small complex of ruins ahead of us that might once have been a hamlet, though only stone foundations remain. But to the left is a massive stone gate that looks more well-maintained. The portcullis is raised, though, and part of me suspects it's stuck that way. The patrols I see marching back and forth in the ruins out front certainly don't seem like they want to let just anyone traipse on by.
"What am I looking at?" I ask Melina.
She shakes her head. "If this village had a name before the Shattering, I do not know it," she says. "The Gate of Storms is one of the few ways up the cliffs from lower Limgrave onto the Stormhill. Castle Stormveil is built at the summit of the Stormhill."
I look past the sheer stone cliffs and point. "Is that part of the castle?"
Melina follows my finger. "No," she says. "That is the Divine Tower of Limgrave. In the days before the Shattering, a bridge connected the tower to the castle so that its ruler might go to consult with the Two Fingers at its summit. But that bridge has been broken, and I rather doubt the Fingers survived. Many sets of Fingers were killed when the demigods went to war."
"Why?"
"I know not. I was not free to investigate at the time. Some say that the demigods themselves slew the Fingers to prevent them selecting any upstart as an Empyrean rival. Others claim that the Shattering itself killed the Fingers, for their connection to the Elden Ring is what sustained them. I cannot say whether either story is truth."
"Huh." I shrug. I have bigger fish to fry than questioning the details of how a group of paracausal grippers died centuries ago. "Gate looks heavily defended," I observe.
"Yes," Melina agreed. She leans forward on Torrent's back, frowning at the gate with narrowed eyes. "It is likely that there are more defenders in the canyon behind the gate, as well." She looks over at me. "There are other ways onto the Stormhill, if you would prefer.
"How far out of the way?" I ask. Daylight is weird here—the Erdtree fucks with the lighting in ways I don't expect, making morning and evening less dark than I feel like they should be—but the sun's a bit past noon already. This planet's day-night cycle is a little shorter than Earth standard, but not by enough that I'm tempted to force Melina and Torrent out of their circadian rhythm. I can work with shorter days and nights, I've done it before.
"We would have to cross the Murkwater," Melina says. "There are spiritsprings on the eastern side that Torrent can use to ascend the hill."
I frown. "Will those work with my sparrow?"
Melina's face falls slightly. "I do not know," she says, "but it will not matter. You can ride Torrent, and I will follow."
"How?"
Her lips thin. She visibly debates with herself about how to answer. So, I raise a hand. "Don't worry about it," I say. I remember now—she offered me Torrent at the beginning, told me she had her own way to keep up. But she clearly doesn't actually
like taking that option, whatever it is. "There's no need to go that far out of the way, anyway. We can just take the gate."
"Are you certain?" she asks.
"I want to try talking to the soldiers anyway," I say. "I know you said they probably wouldn't listen to a word I said before trying to gut me, but I wouldn't feel right going after Godrick if I hadn't at least tried, you know?"
She considers me with an unreadable look in her golden eye. "I suppose I understand," she says. "It has been a terribly long time since any in the Lands Between had the luxury of such principles, Barrett."
"I'm a Guardian of the Last City," I say, swing my leg over the
Always On Time and standing up. "Principles ain't a luxury for me. They're the wall and the people behind it. Stay back here, I'll come get you when it's safe."
"…Thank you," she says, with visible reluctance. It's odd—she vanished the moment the fight against the Sentinel started yesterday, but she doesn't seem to like staying out of fights.
"Do you want to come with?" I ask.
"I fear I would not be able to offer any assistance," she says. "No, it is best you face them alone. As frustrating as my current state is, it is one I must come to terms with."
"Your current state?"
"Go, Barrett," she says. "We can speak more later."
I shrug and start on down the hill.
She's keeping secrets from you, Winchester says from the safety of my localized hammerspace.
No shit, I answer.
That don't bother you?
Some, I admit.
But not enough to want to burn the only damn bridge I've built on this planet. We'll keep our eyes open. It'll be fine.
Winchester doesn't give any more answer than a grunt.
Once I've crossed about half the distance to the ruins, one of the soldiers finally spots me. I raise a hand when I see the man start, looking in my directions. "Hey there!" I call. "I'm—"
The man raises a trumpet to his lips and blows, cutting me off. Every other soldier in the ruins, whether they're hanging out around a campfire or patrolling around one of the massive carriages, jumps to attention. It takes some of them a minute to figure out where the trumpeter was looking, but eventually they all spot me. And once they do, every damn one of them draws their weapon and charges.
I sigh.
This ain't looking good.
No shit, Winchester says dryly.
I don't draw my weapon until the first guy reaches me. "I'm not—" I try to say, but he doesn't even slow before swinging his sword at my head. I channel the light around me, thinning the air the way Aparajita-4 taught me all those years ago, throwing myself backwards and rolling, the air offering as little resistance as vacuum. I roll back to my feet. "I just want—"
He swings again, and, well… I'm a Guardian, not a pacifist.
I channel Solar Light into a weighted knife. It coalesces in my right hand, warm as a hearth and hot as napalm. I parry the blade, then swing mine into the soldier's chest. He lets out a choked, guttural scream, then falls. But as he does, I notice something.
That wasn't a totally human sound. The guy's skin is grey. And, mostly hidden by his helm, his eyes are bloodshot, with irises that are unnaturally black. I… don't think these people are completely human anymore. And I say
anymore deliberately.
There's nothing that can be as inhumane as something that
was once human.
A couple of wolves are charging me now. Guess these soldiers must have domesticated them. But they've got nothing on war beasts.
I throw the knife at the first. It buries it in the beast's skull. By the time the other reaches me, I've pulled out the
Dead Man's Tale. Two shots to the head are plenty to put the wolf down.
Then I turn the gun on the people behind them. The half-dozen or so soldiers go down in three headshots apiece. The last one gets wise enough to start zig-zagging, but I've been training in the Crucible for centuries. It doesn't help him.
There's a guy in heavier armor behind them. He starts hiding behind his big shield when he sees what my gun is doing to his men, advancing at me slowly with his spear extended towards me. I fire a couple experimental shots at the shield, but the bullets
ping off it with hardly any impact. If they even dent it, I can't see it from this distance.
It's a damn heavy piece of work, wider and thicker than the shields Hive Knights sometimes carry. And I'm talking
objectively wider and thicker—relative to the guy holding it, who's a good three feet shorter than a Knight morph, it's comically oversized. But the guy doesn't seem to be struggling with it hardly at all. I mean, obviously he's moving a little slowly, but that's mostly because he's half-crouched behind the shield, not because the shield itself is so heavy.
I put away the
Dead Man's Tale. I briefly consider asking Winchester for a fusion rifle or grenade launcher, or something else that might get through the shield or disintegrate the guy behind it. But the thing is, without our ship's engram decoder, my ammo is limited to what Winchester can fabricate from the materials we can salvage.
Kinetic ammo—or even the liquid ammo of my simpler Omolon weapons—is easy. Winchester could probably fab a full mag of bullets for the
Striga from a handful of dirt. But for more advanced stuff? Grenades, charged ammo for my directed energy weapons, or RPGs for my rocket launchers? Those will take resources I'm not even sure we can find planetside. Once we get that debris field down here it'll be possible, but once we get that debris field down here I'll have a distress call out anyway.
So instead of burning limited resources on one guy with a metal barn door strapped to his arm, I call on the Light. Flames lick up my arm as a grenade coalesces in my hand. I throw it. The Solar Grenade blossoms into life around the man and his shield. He screams, stumbling, then falls. A moment later, he falls silent as he cooks in his armor.
I grimace as the scent of burning human flesh reaches my synthetic olfactory receptors. Most of the time, I'm glad that DER forced Clovis Bray to make us Exos simulate most human functionality. But it's times like this that I wish we could have some kind of toggle for some of our senses.
I turn around and fall back to where Melina is watching me astride Torrent. "Most impressive," she says.
"Thanks," I say. "Guess you were right. Will they just… linger? Like the poor bastards on the crosses?"
"Only very briefly," Melina says. "They are not being kept from the earth, and so the earth can reclaim them. Their road back to the roots of the Erdtree will be longer than some, but they will find their way back, just the same."
"That's good." I hadn't been looking forward to pulling out the
Striga again. "What's up with their skin?"
"Their skin?" Melina asks. "Ah—were they grey of flesh?"
"With black eyes, yeah."
"It something I have only seen a few times before," she says. "I suspect it is more common now. The dark eyes are a marker of those who have lost the Grace of Gold. The graying skin occurs after someone remains so afflicted for long enough. It usually takes years." She grimaces. "I imagine, after all these years of constant warfare, most of the armies of all the demigods must have greyed, decaying flesh by now."
"Is that how that works?" I ask. "Does trauma lead to the loss of Grace?"
"The process is poorly-understood," Melina says. "But it is most common in those who lose a sense of purpose and hope. The First Elden Lord, Godfrey, lost his Grace after he ran short of lands to conquer. In the days before the Shattering, it was more common in soldiers than in other professions."
"Damn," Winchester grunts, popping out of my hammerspace. "A paracausal punishment for depression. That's fucked."
"Agreed," I say. Then I shrug. "Once we get the fireteam back together, we can start looking into fixing things."
"You have said such things a few times now," Melina says. "There are more warriors like you, then? Once you have escaped the barrier Radahn has placed upon the stars, will they wish to involve themselves in the wars ravaging these lands?"
"Can't promise anything for everyone else," I say, "but I became a Guardian because I wanted to give people a safe place to live. There's people here, and it doesn't sound like they've got one. So even if I leave, I think I'll probably come back before too long."
She smiles. It sends something swooping in my stomach. "I am pleased to hear that," she says. "If you would not object, I would hear something of your homeland, Barrett. A place defended by men like you must be a goodly place."
"It's getting there," I say. I point at the gate. "Let's get through there and up onto the Stormhill. You told me about the Lands Between when we made camp last night. I'll return the favor when we make camp tonight."
Unfortunately, getting through the Gate of Storms ain't that easy.
With the ruins' garrison dealt with, Melina and I ride down to a Site of Grace just outside the gate. Then we take cover behind the gate and poke our heads around the corner to get a look at what's on the other side. It doesn't look good.
There's multiple layers of barricades blocking the narrow path up the canyon. I can only see a couple of soldiers, mostly armed with crossbows, but I'm willing to bet there's more, taking advantage of the dim lighting and abundant cover to keep hidden.
Speaking of the dim lighting, there's what looks like a massive, crumbling chunk of ancient masonry wedged across the walls of the canyon, forming a bridge across the gap above us and throwing the whole path in shadow. And there's something up on top of that bridge. I duck back behind cover and look at Melina. "Above the path. Tell me that's a statue."
She looks again, and when she looks back at me, her expression is grim. "I'm afraid not," she says. "That looks to be a troll."
"Great," I say. "Big fella."
"Yes. He is not likely to be as much a threat as the Erdtree Sentinel you fought yesterday, however."
"Really?" I ask. "He looks bigger than that guy was. Maybe not if you include the horse."
"Trolls are large, but they are also slow," Melina says. "And those in this part of the world largely lack advanced training in warfare or magic. Before the Shattering, many trolls were used as little more than beasts of burden. I would guess that the one here was freed by Godrick in exchange for his service."
"Beasts of burden? These trolls are intelligent, right?"
"Enough to speak. I was once told that they were markedly less intelligent than men, but I could not say whether this is so."
Intelligent beasts of burden. Don't like that. I'm starting to get the feeling that this world wasn't exactly sunshine and roses even before the Shattering.
"Those barricades didn't look all that sturdy," Winchester says. "We might be able to bust right through them if we hit 'em with
Always On Time."
I look at him. "We sure there's a clear path? I don't want to get pinned against a locked gate with that whole garrison behind us."
"I could check," he offers.
"Absolutely fuckin' not. We have no idea what kind of paracausal shit they have in play. I'm not risking you going like Sundance did."
He grunts, and I get the feeling that if he had a face, it'd be grimacing. "Fair enough. So what—you wanna kill everything in the path?"
"Not really," I admit. It's not like I enjoy killing people, even if they seem to have lost some of what makes them people. It was easier, once, and I don't want to go back to that.
"Could try invisibility," my Ghost suggests.
"I'm not Lex. Can't chain smoke bombs long enough to keep both me and Melina invisible the whole way through that." I consider. "Maybe combine strategies, though. Try and dash through, then use a smoke bomb to get us out if things get hairy?"
"I have my own way of escape if things grow violent," Melina says. "You need not concern yourself with my safety, Barrett."
"You don't seem to like that
way of escape, though, sweetheart," I tell her.
She flushes slightly, as if she didn't expect me to notice. "Nonetheless. If it is a choice between my comfort and your life, the choice should be obvious."
Which is fair. "Fine, sounds good." I mount back up on
Always On Time, and Melina pulls herself up onto Torrent's back. "Follow me," I tell her, "and holler if something goes wrong."
"I will," she promises.
That said, I turn the sparrow towards the gate and gun it.
Fortunately, there
is a clear path. Mostly clear, anyway. Unfortunately, the last barricade is reinforced. After busting through half a dozen of the things already, I don't notice how much sturdier it is until my sparrow hits it dead-on. The barricade comes apart—but a bit of wood reinforced with iron flies into my engine, and my ride comes apart too.
Always On Time explodes under me, tearing through my shields and ripping gashes through the plating of my legs. I go flying and hit the ground hard.
"Barrett!" Melina screams, slowing Torrent.
I wave her on. "Go! I'll catch up."
She hesitates, so I palm a smoke bomb and toss it on the ground beside where I've fallen. The vaporized Void Light hisses as it forms a haze around me, I see my own hands fade from view.
She blinks at where I've disappeared, then sets her face and leans into Torrent. The spectral steed gallops onward, leaving me, the wreck of my sparrow, at least a dozen soldiers, and a troll, which has jumped down onto the path and is jogging up the hill after us.
Nice driving, Winchester says caustically.
Shut your flaps, I tell him. The Light's already knitted my legs back together, enough to stand up at least, so I pull myself to my feet. A couple of soldiers—the ones who had been behind that reinforced barricade—are trying to figure out where I went, but the rest of the force seems to be headed up the hill after Melina.
Hate to break it to you, bud, says Winchester,
but I don't have the resources to re-fab that sparrow from scratch. We need to salvage the wreck.
I sigh and draw Quickfang.
Figures.
The soldiers go down fast. A hit from the Void-charged sword is enough break their shields if they have them, and another cuts them down. I take a few hits from their crossbows, but I pull the bolts out and heal up by the time the troll reaches me. I get my first good look at him and…
…I don't actually know what I'm looking at. The big guy looks like a giant scoop got ripped out of his torso. It almost looks like something's embedded in his exposed guts, like a slab of stone, held inside by his entrails. Sounds fucked, but in this lighting that's what it looks like. He tries to slam his fist down into the ground on me, but I roll to the side.
I take stock once I'm back on my feet. Most of the soldiers are dead now, and the four that aren't are still halfway down the hill aiming at me with crossbows. The troll's the only thing still trying to engage me in CQC, so I roll between his legs, sheathing Quickfang and pulling out the Dead Man's Tale. I aim from the hip and fire off four shots. The surviving crossbowmen go down.
I roll out of the way of the troll's foot as he tries to step on me, then hit him a couple times in the dome with DMT. He flinches, but takes the shots like a champ, trying to backhand me away. I jump over his hand, switching weapons in midair to my First In, Last Out, and hit him with that.
My FILO was designed to take out a Titan in the Crucible in the middle of his Super. If it hits the radiolarian core, it can take out a Vex Hydra with one slug. The troll, poor bastard, doesn't stand a chance.
By the time he's finished falling to the ground—it takes a while, with how big he is—Winchester is already halfway back to the wreck of
Always On Time. "I'm not gonna be able to rebuild this thing that many times," he warns me. "Not without our decoder."
"I know," I say.
"So be fuckin' careful with it, then," he snaps.
"I will. No more crazy charges without seeing the course in advance. Promise."
Winchester just grunts as he finishes decompiling the wreck. "It'll take me a few hours to reconstruct it," he says. "You're gonna have to run to catch up with the girl."
"Fine," I say as he disappears into my hammerspace.
There's a pack of wolves on the road just as I come out of the canyon, but I go invisible and slip by them without much trouble. Nice thing about paracausal invisibility like we Lightbearers use is that it muffles
all of the senses, not just sight. If I'd been using an Eliksni cloak, like the one we used to hide the
Lonestar, they'd have been able to smell me just fine. Even so, I see one of the wolves sniff the air as I pass it. Invisibility is never completely perfect.
I pass them by, and then pass a tiny glowing sapling on the side of the road. Looks like a miniature Erdtree. Gotta ask Melina about it when I catch up. It takes a few minutes before I see what looks like a small, dilapidated cottage up ahead. As I get closer, I see that Torrent is out front, munching on a berry bush. The spectral steed looks up as I get close. His eyes have rectangular pupils, like a goat's. Probably some evolutionary significance to that, but I ain't a Warlock. I give the animal a nod, and I swear he nods back as I duck into the shack.
The walls have mostly rotted away, but the roof is still mostly held up by four supports at the corners. Melina is there, her hood up as she sits beside another Site of Grace. There's another girl, wearing a hooded cloak that looks like it's made of red velvet. They both look up as I come in, but the new face looks back down again a moment later.
"You made it," Melina says. "I was somewhat worried. There were far more soldiers there than at the ruins."
"Nothin' I can't handle." I nod at the girl in red. "Who's this?"
Melina glances over. "We have not spoken much. She says her name is Roderika."
"Hm." Did she really come in here, get the girl's name, and then just sit down in silence? Huh. First giving Varré a fake name, then barely talking with Kalé, and now this. I'm starting to think Melina has hangups about talking to people. I approach Roderika. "Hey. I'm Barrett."
She looks up at me. "Are you a man?" she asks. Her hair's blond, and her eyes are blue. Her skin is very pale, to the point that a faint redness in her cheeks, probably from the cold wind, stands out sharply against the rest of her face.
"Yeah, last I checked. An Exo, which is why I look," I rap my knuckles against the metal of my cheek, "like this."
She nods slowly. "I suppose you've nothing to fear from grafting, then," she says, looking away.
I sit down across from her. "People have mentioned that a fellow named Godrick the Grafted rules this territory," I say. "But nobody's actually explained what that means."
"It happened to my companions," Roderika says softly. "Everyone who crossed the sea with me. Their arms, their legs, even their heads. Taken, and grafted to the spider."
It takes me a second to even guess at what she means, and once I do the image in my head is almost too grotesque to imagine. "You mean… their body parts were attached to this 'spider'?"
"Aye. They say if you're grafted by the spider, you become a chrysalid. I'm sure it'll happen to me before long." She hugs herself with shaking arms. "I should've just gotten it over with then, with my men. But I—I was too much of a craven to do it. I wasn't ready. I'm still not ready."
"Hey. There's no shame in wanting to live."
"But this way, I'm all alone," she says. "I want to be like everyone else. To become a chrysalid. But it's scary."
"Fear is the mind's way of warning us. Telling us that we need to be careful. That we might be making a mistake. Sometimes we need to push through it, but sometimes…" I shake my head. "I don't think your men would want you to suffer their fate. I think they'd want you to survive."
She sighs. "I don't know what to do, if not to become a chrysalid. I'm alone now. What can I do alone?"
"Everyone's alone. Find someone to be alone together with."
She frowns. Meets my eyes. "How?"
I shrug. "Where were you headed before? Why'd you come to the Lands Between in the first place?"
"Same reason as any other Tarnished, I suppose. My men hoped I'd become Elden Lord. Much good that did them."
"Well, I promised her—" I jerk my thumb back at Melina, who's sitting silent and watching us "—that I'd get her to the base of the Erdtree. You're welcome to tag along." I glance back at Melina. "She is welcome, right?"
Melina considers me in silence for a long moment before she nods. The hesitation is long enough for me to regret not at least consulting her before offering a space in my little fireteam.
But it doesn't matter. Roderika shakes her head. "I'm too scared even to leave my ward," she whispers. "No, I can't climb to the Erdtree. Not like this."
"All right," I say, standing. I offer her my hand. "I'm Barrett, anyway. Let me know if I can help you."
Hesitantly, she takes my hand. "Thank you for your kind words, Barrett," she says.
I return to the Site of Grace and Melina. "You all right?" I ask her softly.
"Well enough," she answers.
"Sorry I didn't talk to you before—"
"There is no need to apologize." Melina cuts me off. "I cannot fight with you. It is only fit that you should have the right to seek out companions who can."
"That wasn't why I offered to travel with her. Or with you, for that matter. I'm a Hunter, I'm used to ranging out on my own. But it's better with friends, even if I'm fighting alone."
She considers that for a moment. Under her hood, I see her one eye reflecting the irregular light of the Site of Grace. Then she looks at me. "You said you would tell me something of your homeland," she says. "Are you still willing?"
"Of course, sweetheart. What do you want to know?"
"What does it mean to be a Guardian?"
I let out a breath. "Well now, starting with the
big questions."
"Can you not tell me?"
"It'll take a bit to explain."
Melina gestures at the sun, sinking low in the sky. "I believe we have time."
"Guess we do."
