Empyrean [Elden Ring/Destiny]
- Thread starter Lithos Maitreya
- Start date
- Crossover
Gonna be interested to see how Barrett reacts to Best Girl, since they both have artificial bodies.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A lovely update!
And an interesting family dynamic is revealed. Melina thought Ranni distant, perhaps even indifferent towards her. But here, we see Ranni feeling guilty for having thought Melina dead when she was really alive. It's giving "distant but protective older sibling" vibes.
And that's ignoring whatever trauma bond they may have as a result of their (apparently unhealthy/controlling/possibly emotionally abusive) mother.
Very interested to see all this play out! ^.^
And an interesting family dynamic is revealed. Melina thought Ranni distant, perhaps even indifferent towards her. But here, we see Ranni feeling guilty for having thought Melina dead when she was really alive. It's giving "distant but protective older sibling" vibes.
And that's ignoring whatever trauma bond they may have as a result of their (apparently unhealthy/controlling/possibly emotionally abusive) mother.
Very interested to see all this play out! ^.^
- Location
- none of your business
Taking your word for it as I'm going in blind on the Elden Ring part
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's also why he goes murderously insane later, since he doesn't actually have free will and is caught between trying to fulfil Ranni's goals and the compulsions he was created with to serve the Greater Will (specifically, to assist Ranni with furthering the Greater Will's goals).
- Location
- Germany
IIRC she does not know Ranni was involved. She just knows that she never forgave her father or stepmother for what they did.
16. Interlude - Thermidor
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Many thanks to @Keltoi, @DemiRapscallion, and @BinaryApotheosis for betareading and fact-checking.
"Why Dredgen Vile?"
"Dunno. It just felt right. Suitably intimidating. Why Dredgen Scythe?"
"…Same reason, I guess. And…"
"And what?"
"…Nothing."
"Incoming call from Crow!" Pluvius' voice, sharp with sudden excitement, snaps Thermidor out of his reverie. He jumps to his feet, bumping his unarmored hip painfully against the edge of the aluminum mess table.
"An ansible call?" Thermidor asks. That's unusual—while he does keep in touch with the Foreguard Commander and his other friends both in and out of Sol, real-time ansible calls are expensive. Recorded messages or texts are more common. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know," says Pluvius. "All I have is the call request. No context."
Eido rises more smoothly than Thermidor did. She's grown a lot in the past two years—physically grown, with the newly abundant ether and her baroness allocation. "The ansible chamber should be open," she says, pale ether misting around her mandibles as she reaches for her mask. "Go ahead and take his call. I should speak with Vaskes about the irrigation systems."
"You sure you don't want me there for that?" Thermidor asks.
She laughs at him. "Are you worried that the damaged pipes will rise up to attack us? Go talk to your Vanguard, Thermidor. We can handle our farming."
He grins at her, leaning in for a kiss. It's not trivial to do—her mandibles and fangs make it difficult, sometimes, to follow his cultural instincts just as his soft skin and two eyes make it hard for her to follow hers. But they've been together for more than a year now, and they're getting comfortable with it. "See you later," he says, and ducks out of their temporary quarters, stepping out into the Riis sunlight. The sky overhead is a pale pink, stained with the differently-colored starlight filtered through the ether-rich atmosphere. Even now, more than a millennium after the Eliksni were first driven from their homeworld, the artificial ether enrichment remains in place on this world. The Traveler's terraforming, and the Eliksni's own efforts, were designed to last—and after the Eliksni were driven away, neither the Black Fleet nor the Hive had bothered to desecrate the planet further.
Thermidor crosses the encampment, nodding to a few Eliksni he recognizes as he passes. He's the only human (technically neohuman, as an Awoken) with this expeditionary force. Officially, he's here to represent the Sol Foreguard with the Riis Resettlement Initiative. Unofficially, he's here as Captain Eido's consort. He's never been entirely sure which role earns him the other Eliksni's respect.
Then again, it's probably the whole 'one of the seven Guardians who took down the Witness' thing, actually.
The ansible's been set up in a large tent practically bristling with antennae and satellite equipment. There are defenses surrounding it—automated turrets and regular patrols, mostly—but none of them have come into use. There are some Taken still around Riis, but they're scattered and leaderless. There's been no indication that any of them are going to mount an offensive.
Thermidor slips into the communications tent and approaches the ansible terminal. It's a bulky thing, a far cry from the low-warp hologram communicators from the war. Those are able to send FTL communications between different parts of the same system, but across hundreds of parsecs they get spotty and unreliable. Instead, the Foreguard had adapted more advanced Cabal tech to produce the modern ansible. It's too expensive, and too power-intensive, to use constantly, but it allows Crow to keep in touch with Foreguard agents over distances far vaster than any they'd had to worry about just two years ago.
He types his personal access key into the holographic terminal, the haptic feedback pushing back against his fingers as if his gauntlets weren't even there. There's a moment of anticipation while the ansible spins up, the Arc charge hissing as it runs through the receiver, and then the holographic projection lights up.
So do several others around the tent. This was a conference call, apparently. Thermidor barely has time to be surprised before the glow coalesces into people. One at a time, his fireteam appears before him.
There's Blackwall, Throne-Cleaver slung over his back, clad in his intimidating red-on-black armor. The bright green amulet around his neck, gifted to him by a pre-warp civilization he'd helped out in the first months of the Foreguard's operations, clashes brilliantly with it.
Lex is unarmored, their androgynous frame clad only in a tight white shirt with long sleeves over bulky grey pants littered with pockets. They idly toss what looks like a smoke bomb in the air repeatedly without looking at it. The projection washes out the pale violet color of their skin, but their brilliant green eyes are as bright as ever.
Parvati-9 is sitting cross-legged and hovering slightly above the projection, her red eyes intent as she looks around between the rest of them. The green paint over her black gunmetal face stands out against the faint blue overtone of the hologram.
Only Grant's upper torso is in view, coming in from the side of his projected frame, clad in what looks like a silk pajama robe. He's rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his mop of brown hair unkempt.
Crow is standing between them all, his hands clasped firmly behind his back, lips pressed into a thin line. Hawkmoon is bright on his hip, practically glowing even through the transmission.
"Hey, Thermidor," Lex greets, giving him a jaunty wave. "We were just taking bets on who'd show up next."
"Who won?" Thermidor asks.
"No one," Parvati says, her melodious, accented voice amused. "No one bet against you."
"The real game is whether Barrett or Silver will show up first," says Lex. "I'll put five hundred credits on—"
"It'll be Silver," Crow interrupts.
Lex blinks at him. "Okay, feels like you have some kind of outside knowledge for that one. No fair."
The wors are barely out of Lex's mouth before a sixth hologram appears around Thermidor and Silver appears. She's clad in ornate robes in the Awoken style, reminiscent of those worn by Queen Mara's techeuns, but not quite the same. Her yellow eyes take in the group quickly. "Fireteam," she says softly, and Thermidor catches a glimpse of the unnaturally sharp teeth behind her seemingly Awoken lips. "Crow. What is it?"
"Sorry to bother all of you," Crow says. "I just thought you all ought to know immediately. Barrett's missed his last two check-ins."
Blackwall breathes in sharply. He's not the only one, but he is the one who speaks. "Active check-ins?" he asks. "Do you still have telemetry from the Lonestar?"
"No, nothing," Crow says. "He's gone totally dark."
"Blast," Blackwall grunts. "Any idea where he was going?"
"I don't have an exact system," says Crow. "Just a sector. You know how Barrett is."
Lex snorts, but they don't sound especially amused. "Yeah. 'What's the point in having a Hunter Vanguard if he's actually going to keep tabs on me?'"
"What do we do?" Thermidor asks. "Are any of us near his sector?"
"You're closest," Crow says. "About… a week and a half out from the nearest system he might be in? There's a few stars it might be, though. You're just a few days farther away, Parvati."
"Mm. I'm also currently overseeing some rather… sensitive local negotiations," says Parvati. "Can you send anyone to take over for me?"
Crow turns to Thermidor. "Does Eido-Baron's offer to send Eliksni out in support of Foreguard operations still stand?"
"I'd have to give her the details, but it should," says Thermidor. "You want me to ask her to send a House Light scribe to Parvati's system?"
"Please do. Tell her to contact either me or Parvati with any questions." Crow looks around at the fireteam. "I know all of you are busy with your own operations—"
"Nothing that takes priority over our friends," says Silver, her quiet voice cutting easily through the faint hiss of Arc energy in the transmitter. "I'll make my excuses to the Queen."
"You think we should all converge on Barrett's last known location?" Blackwall asks. "Might be overkill."
"Call it a hunch," Silver says.
A shiver runs down Thermidor's spine. "A hunch, or a hunch?"
Silver blinks slowly at him. When her eyes open again, they're pitch-black, and full of stars visible even over the transmission. She blinks again, and they're yellow again. "A hunch," she says ominously.
"Great, good, fantastic," says Grant. "Can you at least tell us whether he's alive?"
"Do you wish to know, O teammate mine?" Silver asks.
"Yes," Grant says, completing the invocation.
Silver breathes in, letting her eyes drift shut. "He's still alive, for now," she says. "I don't dare look too closely—not over these distances, not without knowing what sort of paracausal interference might be in play. But for now, at least, he's still alive."
"Good enough," says Blackwall. "Send over those coordinates, Crow. Rana will be in touch with all of your Ghosts to coordinate our search patterns."
"Sounds good," Thermidor says. "He'll be fine. It'll be a fun reunion." He tries to sound more confident than he feels. It's not that he doesn't think Barrett can handle himself, or even that he has some perspective on just how dangerous the galaxy can be. It's just that he's felt like things have been going too well for a couple of years now and this feels uncomfortably like the other shoe is finally dropping.
"Yeah," says Lex, grinning. If they share Thermidor's misgivings, he can't tell. "Barrett knows what's what. Don't worry too much. He probably just accidentally turned off the Lonestar's telemetry reporter or something."
"I can see Barrett messing that up," says Grant doubtfully. "But Winchester?"
"Or maybe he just wants to keep us on our toes," Lex continues. "Either way. He's alive, and he's damn good at staying that way."
"True," Blackwall agrees. He glances back over his shoulder. "I'll disassemble my camp and head out. Should be starside in an hour and change."
"Take me a bit longer," says Thermidor. "Gotta make sure things are good without me here for a while."
"And give Eido a proper goodbye," Lex says, smirking.
Thermidor shoots them a look. "Sure," he says. "That too." He turns to Crow. "Thanks for giving us word, Crow."
"Of course," says Crow. "Keep me posted, fireteam."
Thermidor logs off of the terminal and steps out of the tent. It takes him just a few minutes to find Eido, who's now talking with a few of her captains on a hill overlooking some of the reclaimed farmland. Repurposed shanks glide over the neat rows of tilled earth, leaving a trail of water mist behind them. The water beads on the tiny stalks of the first crops grown on the reclaimed Riis, just beginning to poke their green tips from the loam. "Eido-Baron," Thermidor calls up.
Eido turns to him. So do the three captains gathered around her. "Thermidor-Guardian," she says formally. "You have orders from Crowkel?"
"Afraid so," he says. "Barrett's gone off the grid. The team's coming together to look for him. Crow might call you asking for a skiff to relieve Parvati, she's not too far from here."
"Of course," she says, nodding. "I'll start gathering an expeditionary team. Will you return to Riis when Barrett has been found?"
"I plan to," he confirms. "It's about a week and a half each way before I can even start searching for him, and we don't even know exactly which system he's in. So I might be gone well over a month."
She nods. "You will be missed," she says. "But Riis is the Eliksni homeworld, and Eliksni can defend it."
"Of course," he says, unable to keep himself from smiling at her. He knows he probably looks dopey, but it's not like their relationship is a secret—even if they do try to stay professional in public. "Send word to me or Crow if you need help, though. You have my comm codes."
"I do," says Eido, her outer eyes blinking shut in a gentle Eliksni smile. "Feel free to call my ansible as often as you can spare the power for."
"Will do," Thermidor promises. Before he can second-guess himself, he reaches out and gathers her up into a hug. "I'll be back soon," he promises.
"Of course you will," she says, leaning into him. "The Witness could not keep you down. What possibly could? But hurry back, if you can."
"I will."
They part and, after a quick irellis bow—or as close as Thermidor can get, with only two arms—he starts down the hill and towards the shipyards.
Pluvius pops up over his shoulder at the base of the hill, emerging from his hammerspace in a flicker of blue light. "You're worried," he says, his voice calmly observant.
"Of course I'm worried," Thermidor mutters. "It's been two years since our last big fight. We're overdue."
"To be fair, more than a decade passed between Six Fronts and the SIVA massacre," says Pluvius. "It was almost two decades between the end of the Great Hunt and the Battle of Burning Lake. You have a skewed view of how fast problems usually pile up."
"I hope you're right, buddy," Thermidor says. "I just don't think I'm that lucky."
-x-x-x-
Interlude - Thermidor
-x-x-x-
Interlude - Thermidor
-x-x-x-
"Why Dredgen Vile?"
"Dunno. It just felt right. Suitably intimidating. Why Dredgen Scythe?"
"…Same reason, I guess. And…"
"And what?"
"…Nothing."
-x-x-x-
"Incoming call from Crow!" Pluvius' voice, sharp with sudden excitement, snaps Thermidor out of his reverie. He jumps to his feet, bumping his unarmored hip painfully against the edge of the aluminum mess table.
"An ansible call?" Thermidor asks. That's unusual—while he does keep in touch with the Foreguard Commander and his other friends both in and out of Sol, real-time ansible calls are expensive. Recorded messages or texts are more common. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know," says Pluvius. "All I have is the call request. No context."
Eido rises more smoothly than Thermidor did. She's grown a lot in the past two years—physically grown, with the newly abundant ether and her baroness allocation. "The ansible chamber should be open," she says, pale ether misting around her mandibles as she reaches for her mask. "Go ahead and take his call. I should speak with Vaskes about the irrigation systems."
"You sure you don't want me there for that?" Thermidor asks.
She laughs at him. "Are you worried that the damaged pipes will rise up to attack us? Go talk to your Vanguard, Thermidor. We can handle our farming."
He grins at her, leaning in for a kiss. It's not trivial to do—her mandibles and fangs make it difficult, sometimes, to follow his cultural instincts just as his soft skin and two eyes make it hard for her to follow hers. But they've been together for more than a year now, and they're getting comfortable with it. "See you later," he says, and ducks out of their temporary quarters, stepping out into the Riis sunlight. The sky overhead is a pale pink, stained with the differently-colored starlight filtered through the ether-rich atmosphere. Even now, more than a millennium after the Eliksni were first driven from their homeworld, the artificial ether enrichment remains in place on this world. The Traveler's terraforming, and the Eliksni's own efforts, were designed to last—and after the Eliksni were driven away, neither the Black Fleet nor the Hive had bothered to desecrate the planet further.
Thermidor crosses the encampment, nodding to a few Eliksni he recognizes as he passes. He's the only human (technically neohuman, as an Awoken) with this expeditionary force. Officially, he's here to represent the Sol Foreguard with the Riis Resettlement Initiative. Unofficially, he's here as Captain Eido's consort. He's never been entirely sure which role earns him the other Eliksni's respect.
Then again, it's probably the whole 'one of the seven Guardians who took down the Witness' thing, actually.
The ansible's been set up in a large tent practically bristling with antennae and satellite equipment. There are defenses surrounding it—automated turrets and regular patrols, mostly—but none of them have come into use. There are some Taken still around Riis, but they're scattered and leaderless. There's been no indication that any of them are going to mount an offensive.
Thermidor slips into the communications tent and approaches the ansible terminal. It's a bulky thing, a far cry from the low-warp hologram communicators from the war. Those are able to send FTL communications between different parts of the same system, but across hundreds of parsecs they get spotty and unreliable. Instead, the Foreguard had adapted more advanced Cabal tech to produce the modern ansible. It's too expensive, and too power-intensive, to use constantly, but it allows Crow to keep in touch with Foreguard agents over distances far vaster than any they'd had to worry about just two years ago.
He types his personal access key into the holographic terminal, the haptic feedback pushing back against his fingers as if his gauntlets weren't even there. There's a moment of anticipation while the ansible spins up, the Arc charge hissing as it runs through the receiver, and then the holographic projection lights up.
So do several others around the tent. This was a conference call, apparently. Thermidor barely has time to be surprised before the glow coalesces into people. One at a time, his fireteam appears before him.
There's Blackwall, Throne-Cleaver slung over his back, clad in his intimidating red-on-black armor. The bright green amulet around his neck, gifted to him by a pre-warp civilization he'd helped out in the first months of the Foreguard's operations, clashes brilliantly with it.
Lex is unarmored, their androgynous frame clad only in a tight white shirt with long sleeves over bulky grey pants littered with pockets. They idly toss what looks like a smoke bomb in the air repeatedly without looking at it. The projection washes out the pale violet color of their skin, but their brilliant green eyes are as bright as ever.
Parvati-9 is sitting cross-legged and hovering slightly above the projection, her red eyes intent as she looks around between the rest of them. The green paint over her black gunmetal face stands out against the faint blue overtone of the hologram.
Only Grant's upper torso is in view, coming in from the side of his projected frame, clad in what looks like a silk pajama robe. He's rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his mop of brown hair unkempt.
Crow is standing between them all, his hands clasped firmly behind his back, lips pressed into a thin line. Hawkmoon is bright on his hip, practically glowing even through the transmission.
"Hey, Thermidor," Lex greets, giving him a jaunty wave. "We were just taking bets on who'd show up next."
"Who won?" Thermidor asks.
"No one," Parvati says, her melodious, accented voice amused. "No one bet against you."
"The real game is whether Barrett or Silver will show up first," says Lex. "I'll put five hundred credits on—"
"It'll be Silver," Crow interrupts.
Lex blinks at him. "Okay, feels like you have some kind of outside knowledge for that one. No fair."
The wors are barely out of Lex's mouth before a sixth hologram appears around Thermidor and Silver appears. She's clad in ornate robes in the Awoken style, reminiscent of those worn by Queen Mara's techeuns, but not quite the same. Her yellow eyes take in the group quickly. "Fireteam," she says softly, and Thermidor catches a glimpse of the unnaturally sharp teeth behind her seemingly Awoken lips. "Crow. What is it?"
"Sorry to bother all of you," Crow says. "I just thought you all ought to know immediately. Barrett's missed his last two check-ins."
Blackwall breathes in sharply. He's not the only one, but he is the one who speaks. "Active check-ins?" he asks. "Do you still have telemetry from the Lonestar?"
"No, nothing," Crow says. "He's gone totally dark."
"Blast," Blackwall grunts. "Any idea where he was going?"
"I don't have an exact system," says Crow. "Just a sector. You know how Barrett is."
Lex snorts, but they don't sound especially amused. "Yeah. 'What's the point in having a Hunter Vanguard if he's actually going to keep tabs on me?'"
"What do we do?" Thermidor asks. "Are any of us near his sector?"
"You're closest," Crow says. "About… a week and a half out from the nearest system he might be in? There's a few stars it might be, though. You're just a few days farther away, Parvati."
"Mm. I'm also currently overseeing some rather… sensitive local negotiations," says Parvati. "Can you send anyone to take over for me?"
Crow turns to Thermidor. "Does Eido-Baron's offer to send Eliksni out in support of Foreguard operations still stand?"
"I'd have to give her the details, but it should," says Thermidor. "You want me to ask her to send a House Light scribe to Parvati's system?"
"Please do. Tell her to contact either me or Parvati with any questions." Crow looks around at the fireteam. "I know all of you are busy with your own operations—"
"Nothing that takes priority over our friends," says Silver, her quiet voice cutting easily through the faint hiss of Arc energy in the transmitter. "I'll make my excuses to the Queen."
"You think we should all converge on Barrett's last known location?" Blackwall asks. "Might be overkill."
"Call it a hunch," Silver says.
A shiver runs down Thermidor's spine. "A hunch, or a hunch?"
Silver blinks slowly at him. When her eyes open again, they're pitch-black, and full of stars visible even over the transmission. She blinks again, and they're yellow again. "A hunch," she says ominously.
"Great, good, fantastic," says Grant. "Can you at least tell us whether he's alive?"
"Do you wish to know, O teammate mine?" Silver asks.
"Yes," Grant says, completing the invocation.
Silver breathes in, letting her eyes drift shut. "He's still alive, for now," she says. "I don't dare look too closely—not over these distances, not without knowing what sort of paracausal interference might be in play. But for now, at least, he's still alive."
"Good enough," says Blackwall. "Send over those coordinates, Crow. Rana will be in touch with all of your Ghosts to coordinate our search patterns."
"Sounds good," Thermidor says. "He'll be fine. It'll be a fun reunion." He tries to sound more confident than he feels. It's not that he doesn't think Barrett can handle himself, or even that he has some perspective on just how dangerous the galaxy can be. It's just that he's felt like things have been going too well for a couple of years now and this feels uncomfortably like the other shoe is finally dropping.
"Yeah," says Lex, grinning. If they share Thermidor's misgivings, he can't tell. "Barrett knows what's what. Don't worry too much. He probably just accidentally turned off the Lonestar's telemetry reporter or something."
"I can see Barrett messing that up," says Grant doubtfully. "But Winchester?"
"Or maybe he just wants to keep us on our toes," Lex continues. "Either way. He's alive, and he's damn good at staying that way."
"True," Blackwall agrees. He glances back over his shoulder. "I'll disassemble my camp and head out. Should be starside in an hour and change."
"Take me a bit longer," says Thermidor. "Gotta make sure things are good without me here for a while."
"And give Eido a proper goodbye," Lex says, smirking.
Thermidor shoots them a look. "Sure," he says. "That too." He turns to Crow. "Thanks for giving us word, Crow."
"Of course," says Crow. "Keep me posted, fireteam."
Thermidor logs off of the terminal and steps out of the tent. It takes him just a few minutes to find Eido, who's now talking with a few of her captains on a hill overlooking some of the reclaimed farmland. Repurposed shanks glide over the neat rows of tilled earth, leaving a trail of water mist behind them. The water beads on the tiny stalks of the first crops grown on the reclaimed Riis, just beginning to poke their green tips from the loam. "Eido-Baron," Thermidor calls up.
Eido turns to him. So do the three captains gathered around her. "Thermidor-Guardian," she says formally. "You have orders from Crowkel?"
"Afraid so," he says. "Barrett's gone off the grid. The team's coming together to look for him. Crow might call you asking for a skiff to relieve Parvati, she's not too far from here."
"Of course," she says, nodding. "I'll start gathering an expeditionary team. Will you return to Riis when Barrett has been found?"
"I plan to," he confirms. "It's about a week and a half each way before I can even start searching for him, and we don't even know exactly which system he's in. So I might be gone well over a month."
She nods. "You will be missed," she says. "But Riis is the Eliksni homeworld, and Eliksni can defend it."
"Of course," he says, unable to keep himself from smiling at her. He knows he probably looks dopey, but it's not like their relationship is a secret—even if they do try to stay professional in public. "Send word to me or Crow if you need help, though. You have my comm codes."
"I do," says Eido, her outer eyes blinking shut in a gentle Eliksni smile. "Feel free to call my ansible as often as you can spare the power for."
"Will do," Thermidor promises. Before he can second-guess himself, he reaches out and gathers her up into a hug. "I'll be back soon," he promises.
"Of course you will," she says, leaning into him. "The Witness could not keep you down. What possibly could? But hurry back, if you can."
"I will."
They part and, after a quick irellis bow—or as close as Thermidor can get, with only two arms—he starts down the hill and towards the shipyards.
Pluvius pops up over his shoulder at the base of the hill, emerging from his hammerspace in a flicker of blue light. "You're worried," he says, his voice calmly observant.
"Of course I'm worried," Thermidor mutters. "It's been two years since our last big fight. We're overdue."
"To be fair, more than a decade passed between Six Fronts and the SIVA massacre," says Pluvius. "It was almost two decades between the end of the Great Hunt and the Battle of Burning Lake. You have a skewed view of how fast problems usually pile up."
"I hope you're right, buddy," Thermidor says. "I just don't think I'm that lucky."
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Parvati-9 was described as having blue eyes in Barrett's Grace-vision earlier in the story. That scene will be edited because I decided that red eyes were a more suitable Aesthetic™ for her.
- Pronouns
- whatever you want
Ok, what are the chances that the crew shows up slightly after barret defeats the elfen beast.
I'm betting that they arrive expecting danger and Barret to be in need of rescue just to find him sitting atop a throne attempting to figure out how to explain that he's kind of a king now.
Hopefully with an (unburned) Melina by his side.
I'm betting that they arrive expecting danger and Barret to be in need of rescue just to find him sitting atop a throne attempting to figure out how to explain that he's kind of a king now.
Hopefully with an (unburned) Melina by his side.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
do you have any idea how hard it is to write a protagonist who can use the anthem anatheme. no. you don't. none can know my suffering
Raiden891
Certified Nightmare Killer
- Location
- Yharnam
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
What difficulties do you face, O author mine?
- Location
- none of your business
*Loads Sweet Business with religious intent* Not on my watch you goddamn snake
mackhaon
Blame it on my misspent youth
- Location
- Kyiv
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ah, what a lovely death flag we have here, yes-yes.
17. Simple Answers
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Many thanks to @DemiRapscallion and @BinaryApotheosis for betareading and fact-checking.
"Thou summonedst me, mother?"
"I did, Daughter. Art thou prepared for thy meeting with the Fingers?"
"As prepared as I might be, not knowing what I ought to expect."
"Art thou afraid?"
"Afraid? Nay. Nervous, perhaps."
"'Tis understandable. Dost thou hope to be named Empyrean?"
"Nay. My siblings are Empyreans enough for these lands. Methinks I should prefer to be a more ordinary demigod."
"…"
"Mother?"
"…Thy humility doth thee credit, Daughter."
The sun's set by the time we slip out of Stormveil's front gate. I poke my head in the gatehouse, but the gatekeeper—Gostoc, I think his name was?—seems to have abandoned his post. Under the circumstances, I can't say I blame him.
We make camp at the Site of Grace on the hill leading up to the castle, where Rogier and I fought Margit… Traveler, was that just this morning? Or did an entire night go by while we were exploring that I didn't notice? It wouldn't be the first time, especially since I left Sol—different solar cycles make it hard to keep track of the days. I was on a planet just a month and a half ago—Earth reckoning, to be clear—that had days that were only half an Earth hour long. It was rotating so fast it was hard to even land on.
The big lion lays down with its chin on its paws beside me while we bed down for the night. Trinovar takes off his armor to sleep—underneath it he's wearing a padded black gambeson, and under that he's in a shirt and trousers that might have been pretty fancy at one point, but by now look like they've seen better days. His face is solidly built—square-jawed, with cropped golden hair and a bit of stubble on his chin. His eyes are pale blue, but flicker faintly golden in the Erdtree's light.
I keep the first watch. Rogier takes over for me after that, and Trinovar takes the last watch before morning. Melina apologizes, but points out that she can't shake us awake if something happens. Which is a fair point, even if it clearly hurts her to have to make it.
Over breakfast the next morning—Rogier and Trinovar both have some rations with them, and they share them with the big cat while Melina feeds Torrent what looks like raisins—we talk.
"We have a mount now," says Trinovar, gesturing to the lion while it savages a helping of some sort of pemmican. "And it might, perhaps, be capable of carrying two of us."
"I'm heavier than the average human," I say. "And so are you, with your armor. Two of Rogier, sure. But if it's Rogier and one of us, I'm not so sure."
Trinovar nods. "This is entirely possible," he agrees.
"One of you could ride Torrent," Melina says.
"Nope," I say. I look the lion up and down. "Trinovar, does it have a name?"
"Not one that I have heard," says the Crucible Knight. "I doubt it, to tell you true. Godrick seldom interacted with the creature, to my knowledge, and never with the sort of kindness thou hast shown it."
I glance under the lion's tail. "Him."
"As thou sayest."
I consider the big cat, which is playing with a small boulder, beating it back and forth between its powerful paws. "I think I'll call you Rufus," I decide.
Rufus looks up at me, blinking his big, yellow eyes. I ruffle his mane, then turn back to the group. "I say we head down to that encampment the mercenaries told us about yesterday. Hopefully they'll have a horse we can buy off them. If not, we can figure something else out there. Part of me still wants to go back north once we're across the river, hit that village the mercenaries mentioned—Summonwater, I think they called it."
"To do battle with the Mariner?" Rogier asks.
"I don't plan on shooting first," I say. "But you can bet your britches I'll shoot last."
Trinovar chuckles as he affixes his helmet. "Summonwater is very near the border with Caelid," he says. "It is on our way in any case."
"Then that's the plan," I say. "We'll head down the hill, meet the mercenaries, try to buy a horse off them. Once we have another horse—whether we get it from there or elsewhere—we'll cross the river and head north to Summonwater. From there, east to Caelid."
"And then southeast to Castle Redmane," finishes Rogier. "To do battle with your second Shardbearer."
"Assuming Radahn won't listen to reason," I interject.
"A safe assumption," Melina says. Knowing what I do about her now, the small frown on her face looks unbearably sad.
We start down the hill. A pack of wolves scatters as we approach, especially after Rufus lets out a roar in their direction. The Gate of Storms isn't quite unmanned—there's still a few soldiers camped in the shadow of the large towers, but they make like the wolves and run when they see us. Can't say I blame them.
"So," I say once we're through the gate, the old village's ruins laid out in front of us. "Any idea where that encampment is?"
"Perhaps there?" Melina says, pointing at a small copse of trees north of the road. "I see smoke rising."
I squint. Maybe I can see what she's talking about? It's fuzzy and indistinct in the daylight. I hadn't even noticed it, and even if I had I'd have assumed it was fog. "You have damn good eyes, sweetheart," I say. "Uh. Eye, I mean. Sorry."
She chuckles. "I am not offended. But that is likely some sort of encampment, though I cannot say whether it is the one the Kaiden mercenaries mentioned to us."
"Worth investigating," I say. "Come on."
We follow the road through the ruins, then turn left, heading for the trees. Now that we're a little closer, I can see the smoke Melina pointed out clearly. It's not coming from the trees, actually, but from a small, fortified encampment behind them, built in the shadow of another of those big chunks of fallen masonry that I've seen scattered around.
All of a sudden, I make the connection between the vision I had in the shadow of the Divine Tower and the chunks of marble I've seen all over the Lands Between. They're chunks of the city in the sky—the city that the golden star hit on its way to the Erdtree. Farum Azula. It didn't make sense that they're all over the place, regardless of whether they resemble any of the ruins around them or if there even are ruins around them. I've been letting it slide because I've got bigger things to worry about, but this… this makes sense.
And although it's far from confirmation of anything about my death-visions, it's a good sign. It means that whatever's trying to contact me through my impromptu thanatonautics is at least offering some kind of explanation for some of the things I'm seeing that don't make any sense. Whether that explanation is true, well, too early to say.
As we approach the encampment, a shout goes up. A moment later, a man in the same armor as the mercenaries we encountered yesterday rides out of the wooden gate. A heavy, curved sword, five feet long if it's an inch, is hanging from one hand while the other grips the reins of his charger. He gallops towards us, raising his sword, but when he gets about halfway he suddenly tugs the reins and turns slightly to bring his horse to a sudden stop. I'm not sure whether it's because he saw whatever marker the Rune of Binding leaves on me, or because he saw all of us reaching for our weapons.
"Shardbearer!" he calls, sounding wary. His head turns, taking us all in—Trinovar with his sword half-raised, Rogier with his staff glowing, me with my rifle cocked, and Rufus with his hackles up. Melina's the only one of us who doesn't look squared for a fight. "So it is true, then. Lord Godrick is dead."
"Yep," I say. "We ran into a couple of Kaidens up the hill. We were wondering if we could talk to a Captain… Ivan?"
"Ivar," Winchester corrects, popping into being over my shoulder.
"Ivar," I continue, "about buying a horse?"
The man considers me for a long moment. His face is mostly hidden by the cloth mask under his helmet, but his black eyes glitter in the late morning sunlight. "I am Lieutenant Sigurd," he says. "One of our band's only two remaining horsemen. Captain Ivar shall not be parted from his steed, and I'll not part from mine without his approval."
"Then can we talk to him?" I ask.
"Wait here," he says, then turns his horse and canters back into the encampment.
So wait we do. I lean back against a tree, folding my arms across my chest. After a moment, Melina spurs Torrent over to me, until she looms over me from his saddle.
"Something wrong?" I ask her.
"No," she says. "Though I confess, I am concerned that these mercenaries would command a Shardbearer to wait like an errand-boy."
I grimace. "Better that than the alternative. I've got this Great Rune because I need to it do what I have to. I'm not a demigod, not in contention for the Elden Ring, and don't want to be. I don't need their worship."
"Perhaps not," says Melina, "but surely you are owed their respect?"
"Maybe. Doesn't really bother me."
"I can see that." She looks down at me with an unreadable expression in her face. "Why not?"
"Hm?"
"I have never known someone of your power not to crave respect. Not to feel it is owed to him, nor to resent it when he feels it is withheld. Your outlook on the world is wholly different from the warriors and magicians I have known. In the abstract, I understand that it is because your home, and your history, are so different from my own. But I would like to understand the details. What is it that made Barrett-12 so much more humble than any hero or knight of the Lands Between?"
I consider the question. "Don't think there's a simple answer to that. It's my whole life. You're asking me to point out why I am who I am. I can't give you an answer that's any shorter than the centuries that made me into that person."
She hums softly. "I suppose not," she says. "That should, perhaps, be an end to such questions."
"Should?"
"I still wish to understand," she murmurs. "Everyone is the product of all the years of their lives. But not everyone fascinates me as you do, Barrett."
"Aw, shucks, sweetheart. You're gonna make me blush." I say it like a joke, but only because Exos can't blush to begin with. If we could, I think I would be.
To my surprise, though, she actually does. Just a little. "I—that is not my intent. I merely…" She hesitates. The silence between us stretches, punctuated by the rustle of the wind in the trees. I notice that Rogier and Trinovar are giving us some space, talking between themselves a couple dozen paces away. "My mind circles endlessly back to a certain hypothetical," she says finally. "I cannot help but wonder what the world would look like if you had arrived a few centuries sooner. If you had been there when I was small. If my family could have met you—have learned from your example, as I feel I already am. If you had been there the night I was…"
She trails off, but I have a sick feeling that I know where that sentence was going. "I'm sorry I wasn't," I say quietly. "I don't know the story, Melina, and I'm not going to pry. But I wish I could have been here to help. To prevent whatever happened."
"Even if it was necessary?" Melina asks, voice soft and tired. "Even if my blackened bones protected the world for a few years longer?"
"Did you volunteer?"
"No. Perhaps I should have."
"Absolutely not," I say firmly. "A world that would burn a girl alive just to keep itself going a little longer is one that doesn't deserve to keep spinning."
"And yet there are innocents in these lands," Melina counters. "Children who have never known any world but the chaos of the Shattering. Parents whose only crime was ignorance or impotence. What right have I to bemoan my lot, if my sacrifice gave them their lives?"
"Doesn't seem like their lives have been all that delivered to me," I say. "I'm not saying that this world deserves to be purged. Not at all. I'm saying that there has to have been a better way."
"Why should there be?" Melina asks. "The world is not kind."
"The world isn't a person. It's as kind as we are—and as cruel."
"Do you really believe it to be that simple?"
Yes, is the honest answer, but there's an edge to her voice. I don't want to make her feel like I'm trivializing her sacrifice, or questioning the story she's told herself about why it was necessary. So I take a step back. "I don't know what the world looked like when that happened to you," I say after taking a moment to think. "It's possible that, by that point, there really wasn't anything better to be done. Maybe by that point things had gone too far for too long, and there weren't any good options left. I'm not a kinderguardian anymore, I know that sometimes things just don't work out. But the thing about those sorts of bad situations is that they were always set in motion a long time ago. No one ever takes just one step and finds them in a situation where all their choices are bad. It always takes more than one mistake, whether on the part of one person or the whole society.
"Maybe what happened to you really was necessary. Maybe there was no better choice. But if that's the case, that doesn't mean we have to settle for that. All it means is that we can start building a world, now, where that kind of choice isn't necessary anymore."
"How?" she whispers.
I reach up and put my hand on Torrent's mane, just a couple inches below her own hands on his reins. It's the closest I can come to touching her without passing straight through. "That's the question," I say. "If there's a simple answer, then anyone who knows it ain't telling." I remember the Speaker and his sermons about the Traveler's silence. The best voices… "My best guess, so far, is that if we just keep asking, and keep being kind to each other, that it'll work itself out eventually."
"I wish I had your faith."
"Faith ain't a thing you have, sweetheart. It's a choice you make. Hope is where we plant our flag."
She looks down at me, eye slightly wide, lips slightly parted. "Barrett—"
"Shardbearer!" The voice snaps out from the entrance to the camp. I glance over to see two men riding out towards us. One is Sigurd, the other is a slightly taller man in similar armor, though his has blue trim along the edges. "I am Captain Ivar, leader of this warband. I am told you wish to purchase a horse from us."
"If you're willing to part with one," I say, pulling my hand away from Torrent and standing up. Rogier and Trinovar approach, apparently deciding that she and I don't need privacy for haggling. "If not, I'd be grateful for a hint on who might be."
"If you make war on the soldiers of Lord Godrick," Ivar says, "some of his few remaining cavalry are even now escorting a carriage south along the eastern shore of the lake. But they'll not be keen to sell."
"I'm not keen to go killing people for their horses," I say. "I've got runes, if you want to trade for them."
Ivar's silent for a minute, looking us all up and down. "I'll not part with Fafnir," he says finally, patting his horse's neck. "But I shan't forbid Sigurd from trading with you if he so wishes. That is his affair, and he may set the price he chooses."
"Gullfax is fine horseflesh," says Sigurd. "But we return northward soon, and runes will serve us better on the road than a horse when so much of the band lacks mounts. I'll part with him for twenty thousand runes. No less."
Trinovar snorts audibly.
"That a bad deal?" I ask him. "Never bought a horse with runes before."
"If this horse were the mount of Queen Marika herself and the hero of a hundred campaigns, it might be worth such a price," he says.
I take stock. I do have twenty thousand runes—that's about the haul I got from Godrick, besides his Great Rune. But after that I'll be down to about five thousand left. Which is probably fine—I haven't needed them for much—but there's no sense burning resources if I don't need to.
"Gullfax is the finest stock of the hardy north," Sigurd says sharply. "A finer steed you'll not find anywhere south of Altus."
"And yet we could take a horse a scant two hours' walk from here with the escort for that carriage," Trinovar counters. "Even if it is a lesser beast that we would find, it is scarcely twenty thousand runes lesser. Ten thousand." He glances at me. "If I have leave to negotiate for you, Barrett."
"Of course," I say. "And thanks."
They haggle for a while, but eventually they settle on fifteen thousand. I hand over the runes the same way I did to Kalé a few nights ago, and Sigurd dismounts and passes me the reins. "Treat her well," he says. "She's borne me these many years, and she'll bear you many more if you care for her."
"Of course," I promise. "But I think—Rogier, you want the horse?"
"Happily," he says, taking the reins from me. "I'll have to find some way to repay you for all you've done for me, Barrett."
"Don't worry about it. Small price to pay for speeding up our whole trip." I turn to Rufus. "You don't mind carrying Trinovar, do you?" I'm tempted to put the Crucible Knight on my Sparrow and ride the temperamental—and traumatized—lion myself. But it'd take a while to train Trinovar in the controls, and there's a serious risk of him crashing and burning through our very limited resources to repair it.
The lion chuffs and shakes out his mane.
"Good boy." I turn to the Kaidens. "Thanks for doing business. We'll get out of your hair. Chester, bring out Always On Time, would you?"
A few minutes later, the four of us are off. We cross the bridge to the east, speeding past a small encampment of soldiers who are still scrambling for their gear when we leave them in the dust. The main road turns south on the other side of the bridge, but following Rogier's lead we turn north, following a terribly-maintained dirt road that's so overgrown with grass that it's barely there anymore. The road curves around as it descends a hill, turning further towards the east. As it passes under a massive archway of Farum Azula's fallen masonry, I hear a voice calling from above us.
"Hello! Whoever goes there, could you aid us?"
I kick my sparrow to a stop, and that's when the ambush hits.
More than a dozen small fellas appear in puffs of gray smoke with a shill war cry. They look… almost human, but shorter, with faces that more resemble an ape's or a dog's. All of them are carrying crude clubs or blunt swords. They charge at us, flailing their weapons.
I leap off of Always On Time, already reaching for a gun. At this range… "Chester, Death Adder!" I snap out, and Winchester responds in a heartbeat. The submachine gun comes up, and bolts of Solar energy pour out like water from a hose. The creatures' war cries turn into shrieks of terror, then pain. Then silence.
I stare at the corpses, riddled with holes, as Rogier and Trinovar dismount beside me. "Well," says Trinovar slowly. "That was… impressive."
"They barely even had armor," I say. "Why the hell would they attack us? They had to see we were harder targets than they could manage."
"Many demi-humans have been driven every bit as mad as any human by the violence of these days," says Rogier. "They may not have had the mental fortitude to realize they were outmatched.
For a moment, the demi-human corpses vanish, and I'm staring at a field of slaughtered Eliksni wearing the violet colors of House Dusk. Then Cabal, in the tattered armor of the Red Legion remnants. Then Hive, in the spiked carapace of the Lucent Brood.
Is demi-human even the name of their species? Or is it a slur, a slur that's so common that people have forgotten it even is one? Am I calling my enemies Fallen again?
I turn away. "Let's go see who was calling us."
-x-x-x-
Simple Answers
-x-x-x-
Simple Answers
-x-x-x-
"Thou summonedst me, mother?"
"I did, Daughter. Art thou prepared for thy meeting with the Fingers?"
"As prepared as I might be, not knowing what I ought to expect."
"Art thou afraid?"
"Afraid? Nay. Nervous, perhaps."
"'Tis understandable. Dost thou hope to be named Empyrean?"
"Nay. My siblings are Empyreans enough for these lands. Methinks I should prefer to be a more ordinary demigod."
"…"
"Mother?"
"…Thy humility doth thee credit, Daughter."
-x-x-x-
The sun's set by the time we slip out of Stormveil's front gate. I poke my head in the gatehouse, but the gatekeeper—Gostoc, I think his name was?—seems to have abandoned his post. Under the circumstances, I can't say I blame him.
We make camp at the Site of Grace on the hill leading up to the castle, where Rogier and I fought Margit… Traveler, was that just this morning? Or did an entire night go by while we were exploring that I didn't notice? It wouldn't be the first time, especially since I left Sol—different solar cycles make it hard to keep track of the days. I was on a planet just a month and a half ago—Earth reckoning, to be clear—that had days that were only half an Earth hour long. It was rotating so fast it was hard to even land on.
The big lion lays down with its chin on its paws beside me while we bed down for the night. Trinovar takes off his armor to sleep—underneath it he's wearing a padded black gambeson, and under that he's in a shirt and trousers that might have been pretty fancy at one point, but by now look like they've seen better days. His face is solidly built—square-jawed, with cropped golden hair and a bit of stubble on his chin. His eyes are pale blue, but flicker faintly golden in the Erdtree's light.
I keep the first watch. Rogier takes over for me after that, and Trinovar takes the last watch before morning. Melina apologizes, but points out that she can't shake us awake if something happens. Which is a fair point, even if it clearly hurts her to have to make it.
Over breakfast the next morning—Rogier and Trinovar both have some rations with them, and they share them with the big cat while Melina feeds Torrent what looks like raisins—we talk.
"We have a mount now," says Trinovar, gesturing to the lion while it savages a helping of some sort of pemmican. "And it might, perhaps, be capable of carrying two of us."
"I'm heavier than the average human," I say. "And so are you, with your armor. Two of Rogier, sure. But if it's Rogier and one of us, I'm not so sure."
Trinovar nods. "This is entirely possible," he agrees.
"One of you could ride Torrent," Melina says.
"Nope," I say. I look the lion up and down. "Trinovar, does it have a name?"
"Not one that I have heard," says the Crucible Knight. "I doubt it, to tell you true. Godrick seldom interacted with the creature, to my knowledge, and never with the sort of kindness thou hast shown it."
I glance under the lion's tail. "Him."
"As thou sayest."
I consider the big cat, which is playing with a small boulder, beating it back and forth between its powerful paws. "I think I'll call you Rufus," I decide.
Rufus looks up at me, blinking his big, yellow eyes. I ruffle his mane, then turn back to the group. "I say we head down to that encampment the mercenaries told us about yesterday. Hopefully they'll have a horse we can buy off them. If not, we can figure something else out there. Part of me still wants to go back north once we're across the river, hit that village the mercenaries mentioned—Summonwater, I think they called it."
"To do battle with the Mariner?" Rogier asks.
"I don't plan on shooting first," I say. "But you can bet your britches I'll shoot last."
Trinovar chuckles as he affixes his helmet. "Summonwater is very near the border with Caelid," he says. "It is on our way in any case."
"Then that's the plan," I say. "We'll head down the hill, meet the mercenaries, try to buy a horse off them. Once we have another horse—whether we get it from there or elsewhere—we'll cross the river and head north to Summonwater. From there, east to Caelid."
"And then southeast to Castle Redmane," finishes Rogier. "To do battle with your second Shardbearer."
"Assuming Radahn won't listen to reason," I interject.
"A safe assumption," Melina says. Knowing what I do about her now, the small frown on her face looks unbearably sad.
We start down the hill. A pack of wolves scatters as we approach, especially after Rufus lets out a roar in their direction. The Gate of Storms isn't quite unmanned—there's still a few soldiers camped in the shadow of the large towers, but they make like the wolves and run when they see us. Can't say I blame them.
"So," I say once we're through the gate, the old village's ruins laid out in front of us. "Any idea where that encampment is?"
"Perhaps there?" Melina says, pointing at a small copse of trees north of the road. "I see smoke rising."
I squint. Maybe I can see what she's talking about? It's fuzzy and indistinct in the daylight. I hadn't even noticed it, and even if I had I'd have assumed it was fog. "You have damn good eyes, sweetheart," I say. "Uh. Eye, I mean. Sorry."
She chuckles. "I am not offended. But that is likely some sort of encampment, though I cannot say whether it is the one the Kaiden mercenaries mentioned to us."
"Worth investigating," I say. "Come on."
We follow the road through the ruins, then turn left, heading for the trees. Now that we're a little closer, I can see the smoke Melina pointed out clearly. It's not coming from the trees, actually, but from a small, fortified encampment behind them, built in the shadow of another of those big chunks of fallen masonry that I've seen scattered around.
All of a sudden, I make the connection between the vision I had in the shadow of the Divine Tower and the chunks of marble I've seen all over the Lands Between. They're chunks of the city in the sky—the city that the golden star hit on its way to the Erdtree. Farum Azula. It didn't make sense that they're all over the place, regardless of whether they resemble any of the ruins around them or if there even are ruins around them. I've been letting it slide because I've got bigger things to worry about, but this… this makes sense.
And although it's far from confirmation of anything about my death-visions, it's a good sign. It means that whatever's trying to contact me through my impromptu thanatonautics is at least offering some kind of explanation for some of the things I'm seeing that don't make any sense. Whether that explanation is true, well, too early to say.
As we approach the encampment, a shout goes up. A moment later, a man in the same armor as the mercenaries we encountered yesterday rides out of the wooden gate. A heavy, curved sword, five feet long if it's an inch, is hanging from one hand while the other grips the reins of his charger. He gallops towards us, raising his sword, but when he gets about halfway he suddenly tugs the reins and turns slightly to bring his horse to a sudden stop. I'm not sure whether it's because he saw whatever marker the Rune of Binding leaves on me, or because he saw all of us reaching for our weapons.
"Shardbearer!" he calls, sounding wary. His head turns, taking us all in—Trinovar with his sword half-raised, Rogier with his staff glowing, me with my rifle cocked, and Rufus with his hackles up. Melina's the only one of us who doesn't look squared for a fight. "So it is true, then. Lord Godrick is dead."
"Yep," I say. "We ran into a couple of Kaidens up the hill. We were wondering if we could talk to a Captain… Ivan?"
"Ivar," Winchester corrects, popping into being over my shoulder.
"Ivar," I continue, "about buying a horse?"
The man considers me for a long moment. His face is mostly hidden by the cloth mask under his helmet, but his black eyes glitter in the late morning sunlight. "I am Lieutenant Sigurd," he says. "One of our band's only two remaining horsemen. Captain Ivar shall not be parted from his steed, and I'll not part from mine without his approval."
"Then can we talk to him?" I ask.
"Wait here," he says, then turns his horse and canters back into the encampment.
So wait we do. I lean back against a tree, folding my arms across my chest. After a moment, Melina spurs Torrent over to me, until she looms over me from his saddle.
"Something wrong?" I ask her.
"No," she says. "Though I confess, I am concerned that these mercenaries would command a Shardbearer to wait like an errand-boy."
I grimace. "Better that than the alternative. I've got this Great Rune because I need to it do what I have to. I'm not a demigod, not in contention for the Elden Ring, and don't want to be. I don't need their worship."
"Perhaps not," says Melina, "but surely you are owed their respect?"
"Maybe. Doesn't really bother me."
"I can see that." She looks down at me with an unreadable expression in her face. "Why not?"
"Hm?"
"I have never known someone of your power not to crave respect. Not to feel it is owed to him, nor to resent it when he feels it is withheld. Your outlook on the world is wholly different from the warriors and magicians I have known. In the abstract, I understand that it is because your home, and your history, are so different from my own. But I would like to understand the details. What is it that made Barrett-12 so much more humble than any hero or knight of the Lands Between?"
I consider the question. "Don't think there's a simple answer to that. It's my whole life. You're asking me to point out why I am who I am. I can't give you an answer that's any shorter than the centuries that made me into that person."
She hums softly. "I suppose not," she says. "That should, perhaps, be an end to such questions."
"Should?"
"I still wish to understand," she murmurs. "Everyone is the product of all the years of their lives. But not everyone fascinates me as you do, Barrett."
"Aw, shucks, sweetheart. You're gonna make me blush." I say it like a joke, but only because Exos can't blush to begin with. If we could, I think I would be.
To my surprise, though, she actually does. Just a little. "I—that is not my intent. I merely…" She hesitates. The silence between us stretches, punctuated by the rustle of the wind in the trees. I notice that Rogier and Trinovar are giving us some space, talking between themselves a couple dozen paces away. "My mind circles endlessly back to a certain hypothetical," she says finally. "I cannot help but wonder what the world would look like if you had arrived a few centuries sooner. If you had been there when I was small. If my family could have met you—have learned from your example, as I feel I already am. If you had been there the night I was…"
She trails off, but I have a sick feeling that I know where that sentence was going. "I'm sorry I wasn't," I say quietly. "I don't know the story, Melina, and I'm not going to pry. But I wish I could have been here to help. To prevent whatever happened."
"Even if it was necessary?" Melina asks, voice soft and tired. "Even if my blackened bones protected the world for a few years longer?"
"Did you volunteer?"
"No. Perhaps I should have."
"Absolutely not," I say firmly. "A world that would burn a girl alive just to keep itself going a little longer is one that doesn't deserve to keep spinning."
"And yet there are innocents in these lands," Melina counters. "Children who have never known any world but the chaos of the Shattering. Parents whose only crime was ignorance or impotence. What right have I to bemoan my lot, if my sacrifice gave them their lives?"
"Doesn't seem like their lives have been all that delivered to me," I say. "I'm not saying that this world deserves to be purged. Not at all. I'm saying that there has to have been a better way."
"Why should there be?" Melina asks. "The world is not kind."
"The world isn't a person. It's as kind as we are—and as cruel."
"Do you really believe it to be that simple?"
Yes, is the honest answer, but there's an edge to her voice. I don't want to make her feel like I'm trivializing her sacrifice, or questioning the story she's told herself about why it was necessary. So I take a step back. "I don't know what the world looked like when that happened to you," I say after taking a moment to think. "It's possible that, by that point, there really wasn't anything better to be done. Maybe by that point things had gone too far for too long, and there weren't any good options left. I'm not a kinderguardian anymore, I know that sometimes things just don't work out. But the thing about those sorts of bad situations is that they were always set in motion a long time ago. No one ever takes just one step and finds them in a situation where all their choices are bad. It always takes more than one mistake, whether on the part of one person or the whole society.
"Maybe what happened to you really was necessary. Maybe there was no better choice. But if that's the case, that doesn't mean we have to settle for that. All it means is that we can start building a world, now, where that kind of choice isn't necessary anymore."
"How?" she whispers.
I reach up and put my hand on Torrent's mane, just a couple inches below her own hands on his reins. It's the closest I can come to touching her without passing straight through. "That's the question," I say. "If there's a simple answer, then anyone who knows it ain't telling." I remember the Speaker and his sermons about the Traveler's silence. The best voices… "My best guess, so far, is that if we just keep asking, and keep being kind to each other, that it'll work itself out eventually."
"I wish I had your faith."
"Faith ain't a thing you have, sweetheart. It's a choice you make. Hope is where we plant our flag."
She looks down at me, eye slightly wide, lips slightly parted. "Barrett—"
"Shardbearer!" The voice snaps out from the entrance to the camp. I glance over to see two men riding out towards us. One is Sigurd, the other is a slightly taller man in similar armor, though his has blue trim along the edges. "I am Captain Ivar, leader of this warband. I am told you wish to purchase a horse from us."
"If you're willing to part with one," I say, pulling my hand away from Torrent and standing up. Rogier and Trinovar approach, apparently deciding that she and I don't need privacy for haggling. "If not, I'd be grateful for a hint on who might be."
"If you make war on the soldiers of Lord Godrick," Ivar says, "some of his few remaining cavalry are even now escorting a carriage south along the eastern shore of the lake. But they'll not be keen to sell."
"I'm not keen to go killing people for their horses," I say. "I've got runes, if you want to trade for them."
Ivar's silent for a minute, looking us all up and down. "I'll not part with Fafnir," he says finally, patting his horse's neck. "But I shan't forbid Sigurd from trading with you if he so wishes. That is his affair, and he may set the price he chooses."
"Gullfax is fine horseflesh," says Sigurd. "But we return northward soon, and runes will serve us better on the road than a horse when so much of the band lacks mounts. I'll part with him for twenty thousand runes. No less."
Trinovar snorts audibly.
"That a bad deal?" I ask him. "Never bought a horse with runes before."
"If this horse were the mount of Queen Marika herself and the hero of a hundred campaigns, it might be worth such a price," he says.
I take stock. I do have twenty thousand runes—that's about the haul I got from Godrick, besides his Great Rune. But after that I'll be down to about five thousand left. Which is probably fine—I haven't needed them for much—but there's no sense burning resources if I don't need to.
"Gullfax is the finest stock of the hardy north," Sigurd says sharply. "A finer steed you'll not find anywhere south of Altus."
"And yet we could take a horse a scant two hours' walk from here with the escort for that carriage," Trinovar counters. "Even if it is a lesser beast that we would find, it is scarcely twenty thousand runes lesser. Ten thousand." He glances at me. "If I have leave to negotiate for you, Barrett."
"Of course," I say. "And thanks."
They haggle for a while, but eventually they settle on fifteen thousand. I hand over the runes the same way I did to Kalé a few nights ago, and Sigurd dismounts and passes me the reins. "Treat her well," he says. "She's borne me these many years, and she'll bear you many more if you care for her."
"Of course," I promise. "But I think—Rogier, you want the horse?"
"Happily," he says, taking the reins from me. "I'll have to find some way to repay you for all you've done for me, Barrett."
"Don't worry about it. Small price to pay for speeding up our whole trip." I turn to Rufus. "You don't mind carrying Trinovar, do you?" I'm tempted to put the Crucible Knight on my Sparrow and ride the temperamental—and traumatized—lion myself. But it'd take a while to train Trinovar in the controls, and there's a serious risk of him crashing and burning through our very limited resources to repair it.
The lion chuffs and shakes out his mane.
"Good boy." I turn to the Kaidens. "Thanks for doing business. We'll get out of your hair. Chester, bring out Always On Time, would you?"
A few minutes later, the four of us are off. We cross the bridge to the east, speeding past a small encampment of soldiers who are still scrambling for their gear when we leave them in the dust. The main road turns south on the other side of the bridge, but following Rogier's lead we turn north, following a terribly-maintained dirt road that's so overgrown with grass that it's barely there anymore. The road curves around as it descends a hill, turning further towards the east. As it passes under a massive archway of Farum Azula's fallen masonry, I hear a voice calling from above us.
"Hello! Whoever goes there, could you aid us?"
I kick my sparrow to a stop, and that's when the ambush hits.
More than a dozen small fellas appear in puffs of gray smoke with a shill war cry. They look… almost human, but shorter, with faces that more resemble an ape's or a dog's. All of them are carrying crude clubs or blunt swords. They charge at us, flailing their weapons.
I leap off of Always On Time, already reaching for a gun. At this range… "Chester, Death Adder!" I snap out, and Winchester responds in a heartbeat. The submachine gun comes up, and bolts of Solar energy pour out like water from a hose. The creatures' war cries turn into shrieks of terror, then pain. Then silence.
I stare at the corpses, riddled with holes, as Rogier and Trinovar dismount beside me. "Well," says Trinovar slowly. "That was… impressive."
"They barely even had armor," I say. "Why the hell would they attack us? They had to see we were harder targets than they could manage."
"Many demi-humans have been driven every bit as mad as any human by the violence of these days," says Rogier. "They may not have had the mental fortitude to realize they were outmatched.
For a moment, the demi-human corpses vanish, and I'm staring at a field of slaughtered Eliksni wearing the violet colors of House Dusk. Then Cabal, in the tattered armor of the Red Legion remnants. Then Hive, in the spiked carapace of the Lucent Brood.
Is demi-human even the name of their species? Or is it a slur, a slur that's so common that people have forgotten it even is one? Am I calling my enemies Fallen again?
I turn away. "Let's go see who was calling us."
- Pronouns
- whatever you want
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm not near my computer right now so I can't fire up destiny and check) but isn't death adder a void submachine gun? The one with the hex site, angled trapezoid type grip and a purple theme?
aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's Funnelweb. Same weapon model as Death Adder, different element.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Ain't no SMG like a Veist SMG.
aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Subsistence/Frenzy carried me through Witch Queen Legendary campaign, so damned good.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
I always have trouble using SMGs, especially in PvE. I'm just more comfortable at longer ranges, so scouts are my go-to primary weapon. I think my Witch Queen legendary campaign loadout was mostly done with Guiding Sight and a blinding breechloaded GL, can't remember which.
mackhaon
Blame it on my misspent youth
- Location
- Kyiv
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Undefined time later, Melina and Ranni band up, seize Elden Ring, and twist Golden Order in such manner that Exo now can and must blush.