Covenant of Fire [Elden Ring]

AN:

Enjoy the chapter!

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Kalé patiently sat in his room wondering if the sun had set yet. All his and John's things were neatly packed and organized in the corner. As he waited, his thoughts turned to everything that had happened recently.

He had fought in his first-ever battle. He had seen some from a distance and scavenged from even more, but he had never fought in one before that terrible, desperate battle in the courtyard.

He had hated it.

Wearing that uncomfortable, weighty armor. Twice he had nearly been struck by one of those winged misbegotten who had flown up the cliffside onto the ramparts to ambush them. Thankfully both times he had dodged out of the way just in time and the person behind him had been struck instead.

When that mad pumpkin had come charging out and shattered the stone ramparts' crenellations, he had been only a few groups of levies over and had nearly dropped his weapon in surprise.

Kalé did not have the heart of a warrior. Something he had long known and which had been doubly confirmed in that battle where he had just wanted to run from before it even began.

Many would call that cowardly, but Kalé thought it was the only sane response one could have to danger. Just compare him to his more brave friends and all those battle hungry lunatics he had met over the centuries. He was still alive. They were not.

During his first youthful century, he had learned to fight and had been in many small scraps with angry villagers chasing him and his fellows out of town and villages for their curse, or those on the road who took nomadic merchants for easy marks.

Kalé knew how to fight, but he would much rather not.

He had never been in a proper battle before this and had taken great pains to avoid being in them as much as possible.

The closest he had come was the numerous times Kalé had scavenged battlements for wares to ply over the centuries.

But now he had fought in one, and that battle was more than enough for him.

Despite how much he disliked battles, he was sure following John to finally achieve his goal and learn the truth of his people's fate would lead him to many more. He would have to endure for his goal.

Speaking of John, since that battle his friend had been slowly packing and prepping what few things he had acquired during the rebellion as well as the items from their travel packs he had previously taken out to make use of.

This was not strange or out of the ordinary.

The misbegotten had been decisively beaten and the reinforcements getting closer by the day. Of course John would begin making arrangements for whenever Edgar Morne released him from his temporary service.

What was unusual was how John had been acting the past three days. Especially stark were the previous night and the morning that followed.

Last night, John had hurried to finish packing the last of his possessions that he did not keep on him and did not need for his officer duties. Almost five times the amount of packing he had done on any other particular day.

His friend and hopeful future leader had not said anything to him, but Kalé was no fool. He could recognize what John's behavior meant because he had done the same many times before. John was prepping for an imminent exit.

Kalé had been slowly packing as well since the battle. He had thought that John would not be released by the High Marshal until after the reinforcements had arrived and took over all the stewardship of the castle from the garrison. In the mess, he had not overheard anything of the irregulars being released early.

It was peculiar. Kalé did not know why John felt the need to prepare to leave so suddenly. There could be any number of reasons why, from innocent to dire, but Kalé did not need to know why to see what was happening in front of him and ready himself.

So he followed his friend's example and had packed all his own things slowly over the days. Much more subtly than John had.

Then after the previous night of John packing the last of his things, earlier this morning John had shown up before dawn had even come, and using Kalé's lantern, the man had read through a few of his extensive collection of personal journals written in that strange foreign language of his that only John could read. He had kept reading and murmuring things under his breath in his language until the sun had risen and he was pulled away to his officer duties.

Before this morning, John had not come to his room before dawn even once.

Certainly out of the ordinary.

Kalé was not sure when they would be leaving. Soon, but how soon? A few hours, two days? Kalé did not know, so he made sure to be ready at any time.

As John had earlier that morning, Kalé continued his duties for the day. It was a particularly busy day in the mess. Same as the day before had been due to having to make meals for their misbegotten prisoners. If that gruel could be considered a meal.

It would keep them alive, but the taste... Kalé jested to himself that the High Marshal was trying to get the misbegotten to starve themselves to death voluntarily.

After a busy day with his duties, he had come back here to his room and enjoyed relaxing, but Kalé kept an ear out in case that evening did indeed become the time that they would depart.

The evening was the time John attended the officer meeting with the lord, Edgar Morne. It was the most likely time that John would have the opportunity to be released from service or otherwise find cause to need to make a quick departure.

But the usual time for the meeting to end had passed nearly an hour ago, and John had come.

Kalé was sure that if the sun had not set when he had begun pondering all this, it had to have now that he had spent some time on these thoughts. It seemed John would not have them leaving just yet.

Just when Kalé had concluded that nothing would be happening, he heard it. A commotion out in the corridor.

Casually looking out the doorway, he spotted a man leading a donkey-Rabbit!- down the corridor towards his room.

It seemed he had been impatient in his conclusion that this evening would not be the time.

When the man reached Kalé , he handed over the simple rope reins they had made for his longtime steed.

"Here you go. Orders came down from the Quartermaster. We're releasing your donkey back to you. You'll be responsible for it again from now on. If you want supplies to feed it, you'll have to secure them yourself or buy them from the castle."

Kalé nodded to the man.

"I understand."

The man nodded back, turned, and left them.

The first thing Kalé did was look over Rabbit for any injuries. He paid particular attention to her hooves. Thankfully, whomever had been looking after his companion had done well, and he did not find any issues.

Kalé took the reins off Rabbit, as he did not need any to direct her while riding, and then began saddling her and loading up their packs.

After Kalé was finished, he did not have to wait for long before he heard a single man coming down the corridor.

This time it was John.

His friend arrived, stepping through the doorway. Kalé could immediately tell from John's urgent bearing that his conclusion of this being the evening was correct.

John looked at Rabbit and Kalé standing there already ready to go and did not hesitate a moment.

"Ah. So you did figure it out. Good. Sorry about springing this on you Kalé . It's been super busy the last few days. No time to talk. I'm sure you know."

Kalé did indeed know. His days had been much the same, though not to the same degree.

"We are leaving tonight?" Kalé prompted.

John nodded.

"There is something else as well," John hedged. "It won't be just us two. Sorry for not discussing it with you, but again, no time. The others coming with us, one is a misbegotten kid named Sihlas I befriended before everything went off. There will be a young woman named Irina coming as well. Maybe up to a handful of irregulars from my twenty if they end up deciding to come, but I won't be surprised if none of them show up."

Kalé's eyes widened at hearing that, something that John noticed even in the dim light of the room lit up by enchanted torches. Even if he misunderstood Kalé's reaction as being upset as he kept speaking.

"Again, sorry for not talking with you about it, but I had to move quickly. I didn't expect my talk with the High Marshal to go how it did or I would have gone about things differently. I didn't expect us to have to leave tonight. I thought we'd still have a few days.

"But the... negotiation for a reward he promised me got very heated, and I want to move on as soon as possible to not give him the time to have a change of heart. Though, I think you'll like that I managed to wring a bunch out of him."

To hear that John and the lord had a row was concerning. Kale could guess what it was over. The misbegotten John had mentioned. He had little doubt the Lord Morne wanted a misbegotten from the rebellion near his daughter, not only from the general danger but also because, as word had spread from John's letter on the rebellion, they were specifically planning on targeting her.

Kale did not know why John would risk everything over a single misbegotten, even one he had befriended and spoke to shortly shortly before the rebellion. It did make sense on the face of it nor match how John had acted previously.

John had not struck Kale as a particularly sentimental man, loyal more to those close to him than people who had only briefly made his acquaintance. If it could be sentimentality then for what reason had John risked everything over one misbegotten?

Kale did not know, and that troubled him. Maybe the source of these actions stemmed from John's unnatural knowledge?

On the matter of others joining their caravan, his friend's apologies were unneeded. Kalé was surprised, not upset, at John getting more people to join them. He had thought of it as inevitable. He had not expected it to happen so soon.

Less than a year had passed since Kalé had realized what John would eventually become, and John only yet had the strength of an impressive soldier, yet he was already collecting more followers. But that was not what had surprised him so.

No doubt as John's fate and nature as a champion, a hero, on par or greater than the demigods started to show many would flock to his cause. Kalé had just been the first.

No, what surprised Kalé was this woman named Irina. Did John mean Irina Morne, Edgar Morne's daughter? John had to, as she was the only woman named Irina in the castle at the moment as far as Kalé knew. Why and how was the lord's daughter coming with them?

And though John bafflingly thought he and Kalé were in some sort of equal partnership, though Kalé had yet to dissuade him of that notion yet, Kalé already considered John his leader and would keep doing so as long as he seemed to be continuing down the path that led to Kalé getting closer to his own goal. Thus Kalé did not mind his friend making unilateral decisions about who joined them.

It was good to hear that John had gotten much out of the castle's lord for his deeds.

"I am interested to see what you managed to procure from Lord Morne," Kalé said.

John laughed.

"Ha! I thought you would!"

John's amused laugh swiftly fled and he looked with a heavy countenance.

"Before we go to check out what I got and meet up with our new companions, we need to talk about something."

The gravity with which John spoke could only mean one he was speaking of one talking of one topic. The time had come for Kalé's accounting. Of how John knew of the rebellion and any other secrets his friend had kept to his chest that were of concern to Kalé .

Out of habit Kalé went and double checked the corridor despite knowing that no one would be in this area of the castle this late in the evening. But there was no reason to get lazy with such things. Laziness, complacency, and being emotional were how secrets were spread. John stayed where he was as Kalé did this.

Having confirmed no one would be able to hear them, Kalé went back to his usual spot.

John wasted no time.

"I'm sure you've wondered why I felt guilty about getting stuck in the rebellion. About how I knew about it before coming here.

"Well, there is no delicate way to say this, so I'll just be blunt. I have a lot of knowledge about the future," John said gravely, seriously making a claim of something most would consider unbelievable.

It seemed that his impossible conclusion about John's knowledge was not so impossible after all.

If his understanding of what John had meant was accurate. His friend had claimed he would be direct, but he had still been vague.

"You mean you truly know what will happen, not that you divined the future with techniques like the astrologers?" Kalé asked, deliberately treating the claim seriously to show John that he believed him.

John blinked, as if surprised by Kalé's reaction before he snapped his fingers.

"Ah. Yes, I forgot. You guys in the Lands Between already have future readers. I guess it isn't as unbelievable as I thought."

Kalé shook his head in denial of John's words.

"No. It is as unbelievable as you thought. The power of oracle from astrologers and all other future reading techniques comes from the fate written in the movement of the stars.

"Stars which have been frozen since a millennia before my own birth long ago, in fear of the Starscourge's might. And even before Radahn, the Goddess Marika had fettered the stars to command fate as the Golden Order saw fit, causing the power of astrology to wane.

"To claim to be able to divine the future despite the stars having arrested their movements is an impossible claim. It is as if you are saying you can see without having eyes. Yet I must say I believe you all the same."

John was relieved at Kalé's words.

"Thank god. It would get awkward if you thought I was a madman. Well, my knowledge of the future is limited and... inflexible. I don't know how the astrologers or others do their future reading, but I doubt it is the same as happened with me. I got my future knowledge from..."

John frowned as he tried to find the right way to tell Kalé , before he shook his head.

"Here, let me start from the beginning with what is going on with me. That will be the easiest way. The future knowledge is only part of it. Maybe you will think I'm mad after all, after you hear all of it."

John gave a short bark of a laugh.

"I am not from this world. This universe even. Even the stars in the sky are fundamentally different where I come from. They are utterly mundane material objects, not... alive like your stars are. And no one can read the future from them, though fools and charlatans try anyway.

"I do not know how I came to be in the Lands Between exactly. I just woke up on that beach. When I saw a land octopus I knew I was not in my world any longer and was now in the Lands Between."

That left Kalé utterly stunned. He had to make sure his mouth was not agape like a fool.

At first he did not believe it, but then certain small details he had observed about John surfaced in his mind.

The language he had never seen or heard before, despite meeting hundreds of foreigners that had come to the Lands Between from many far flung kingdoms. The peculiar morals he seemed to hold and the odd assumptions John sometimes made about how the world should work and the questions he would sometimes ask Kalé .

If that had all been an act for years, then John had Kalé thoroughly fooled.

John was not done talking as Kalé processed what John had told them.

"All that isn't directly relevant though it is necessary background. The exact form my knowledge of the future took is hard for me to describe to you. Have you ever read or heard a series of tales about a specific character who does a bunch of important things, but it isn't a straightforward chronological story?

"Instead everything is broken up into snippets, chapters, or isolated tales that may or may not have happened, and there is a great variance in the order of events and if any of those particular things had happened. Yet despite this, there are certain things that must have occurred at what must be a later time because previous events necessitated it."

Kalé nodded to show he understood. Despite John's clumsy and wordy description, Kalé knew the sort of story he was referring to.

Something like "Knight Bodrin's Questionable Adventures in Strange Lands", a popular comedy of various tales about a fictional knight. Made not by any one particular author but a number of authors over the space of a few centuries.

"You do understand? Great. That makes this a lot easier to explain. My future knowledge is like that, but instead of being about some fictional character or something, it is about the 'Chosen Tarnished' and their journey where they defeat the demigods on their way to ending the Shattering and becoming Elden Lord."

Kalé's mind raced at that revelation. Suddenly, John was no longer a puzzle. With this and John's background, everything puzzling Kalé had noticed about his friend over the years could be explained.

A 'Chosen' tarnished? Whomever it was could not be John as he was not a tarnished.

This must have been why John had refused to leave the Church of Elleh for so long. He had been waiting for this tarnished. It looked as if John planned to join up with this tarnished destined to be Elden Lord.

That fit as John was not slated to have a mundane fate either, even if he was not a 'chosen one' of the typical sort. This just doubly confirmed to Kalé his decision to ride John's coattails was the correct one.

That brought up another question. 'Chosen'? Chosen by who? The Greater Will? And what sort of Order did this Chosen Tarnished establish? What about Lord Radagon and Goddess Marika?

As the enormity of what this information meant began to settle on him, he realized that John should not have told him this.

If a secret was to be kept between two men, make sure to kill the other's crows first. His own people's version of a saying he had heard from many cultures throughout his life.

Meaning if one wanted a secret to stay secret, then they had to tell no one. Every person who learned of a secret greatly compounded the chance that the secret would not stay so.

Kalé nearly chastised John at that moment, but then a thought crossed his mind. Knowing of such a journey by a tarnished, that tarnished interacting with those at the heights of the world, it would mean John knew many secrets, such as the face of the Veiled Monarch and other hidden and obscured things. Maybe even...

"Your knowledge of this Chosen Tarnished, does it touch on the history of the Lands Between?" Kalé asked, careful to keep himself from getting his hopes up.

John shook his head.

"Not much at all. It mostly touches on events and subjects that were relevant to the Shattering and afterwards and touches on things related to what the Chosen Tarnished did on his journey. Very little but the most general historic things before the Shattering.

"I have just barely enough knowledge to get a very simple understanding of generally how things were, and even that is spotty. I wouldn't say I have a real understanding of the Lands Between yet and definitely not its history."

Kalé nodded and held back a sigh.

Of course his goal would not be fulfilled that easily. The Grand Caravan had disappeared from the world long before the Shattering; the knowledge buried and forgotten. From what Kalé had learned, it had happened at a point in history so distant that the time had faded from people's minds. Or had been deliberately forgotten like so many other things had been.

He and his fellow wanderers did not presume the regard of others, and they did not lament or make bones for not receiving such. But likewise, they would not forgive transgressions. Only when whomever had committed that great trespass against them was punished would he and his people be freed from their karmatic debt for their failure to punish their ancestors' transgressors.

As the fundamentalists of the Golden Order preached about the Law of Causality: all things were linked in a chain of relation.

Kalé and his people had not acted to correct the transgressions against their ancestors long ago, and so their debt had grown and was being extracted from them. Manifesting first long ago as a curse on their blood that would, eventually, spread to any who closely associated with them, and as the unpaid debt had grown over the eons, now his people faced unprecedented misfortune.

Never had they wanderers been in such dire straits. Kalé found fewer and fewer burial crows each year. That meant fewer than ever of them were dying. One who did not think deeply would celebrate that, but Kalé knew it was a bad omen. It meant that there were fewer of them were being born, rather than them dying less often. After all, the world had not grown more merciful to his people.

John, with what he had revealed, was not going to be able to feed Kalé his desired answer like a mother did a babe, but he had not been expecting such. Things remained as before. He would follow John faithfully in his rise, until he could discover what he should do to learn the fate of the Great Caravan.

No doubt the demigods and others would kill John if they knew he had such knowledge. No one should be told of this.

In fact, Kalé did not wish to learn any more even if questions about the 'Chosen Tarnished' burned feverishly in his mind.

"It must be that no one else learns of this!" Kalé insisted to John. "Do not speak a word further of it to anyone. Do not tell me a word more. It is better, less perilous, for both of us. If anyone of import was to hear of this, one way or another fates worse than death await us. Just imagining Rykard's inquisitors makes my skin crawl," Kalé warned.

"You don't want to know anything at all?" John asked seriously.

"Nothing!"

John nodded sharply.

"Very well. My lips are sealed. I know a secret like this is very important. It's why I haven't said anything until now.

"I haven't been telling you all this just to run my mouth. That is only part of the reason I have told you this. I also need your help, and hiding this from you is no longer feasible. What I need help with, it's right up your alley," John smirked at him, "I know the locations of some valuable items and equipment, and I want to get them."

Kalé smiled. Even if they were not to sell any of what John wished to retrieve, it was in his nature as a merchant that he was ever interested in more wealth of any kind.

"Splendid. How can I lend my aid?"

"I need your help with the others who will be joining us. How should I go about retrieving this stuff while hiding the fact I have knowledge of places I shouldn't as a foreigner? I have my own ideas, but you have been doing this sneaky stuff for far longer than I have. What do you think is the best way we go about this?"

Kalé's eyes gleamed.

"The best way is to not explain at all. You going to get these things is nothing out of the ordinary. You are a foreigner wandering and scrounging the land to sustain yourself, and I am one of the oldest and most widely traveled nomadic merchants. It is known that my people collect and sell information and rumors about such things to enterprising individuals."

A look of realization came over John's face.

"Now that you mention it, I do remember that you nomadic merchants do sell bits of information that lead to things."

Kalé remembered the bits of information he kept on sale for tarnished who wished to purchase them. Two of them stuck out to him. The rumors he had heard over the decades about someone living out in the Waypoint Ruins. He was very curious about who was hiding there.

And more recently some information about a wondrous physick that had turned up in the abandoned Church of Marika north of the Mistwoods.

He did go to the Church of Elleh because he liked to help any tarnished who arrived with a little assistance due to the camaraderie he felt between their peoples, whether they arrived from the Chapel of Anticipation from the tarnished summoning rite or on the shores of Limgrave through a boat. For a price of course.

Many needed it if they were to escape Godrick, the Night's Cavalry, and all the others who hunted them.

The tarnished were some of his more valuable customers and many often remembered the help he offered them. The past few years the tide of their arrivals had reached a low, but these things waxed and waned over the decades, usually arriving in waves. More tarnished would arrive after some time when the Churches of Marika in other lands had gathered more tarnished to revive and send here through rite.

Kalé was glad of his chosen strategy because it let him meet and save a particular strange man before he perished from his own lack of survival skills. And that strange man had gone on to prove to be Kalé's biggest hope in a millennia.

Kalé was curious if this 'Chosen Tarnished' of John's would purchase that rumor of the Waypoint Ruins from him and go on to learn who had been lurking there. Kalé could ask him. That potentially would sate his curiosity.

But he did not ask. He had already made his decision about not wishing to know more of John's dangerous knowledge. Instead he turned his mind back to what John wanted his assistance with.

"Indeed. It would not be the first or second time a pair like us were traveling and trying our luck in searching for treasures. If anyone wishes to pry further, just point to me and say that you paid good runes to get your information and you are not giving it away. Or just refuse to speak on it further. No one is entitled to steal your treasure from you."

"Then we'll go with that if anyone asks us. Much better than my idea," John flashed a quick grin at him before shifting to a serious, piercing gaze, "Now that I have spilled my guts and shared my biggest secret, is there anything I should know about you now that we are on the subject of secrets?"

Kalé thought the question over.

He had already revealed to John that he was involved in transporting messages for some of Godrick's forces.

It could not be about the maddening sickness. Everyone in the Lands Between knew that it had plagued his people's blood for as long as anyone had known.

It was the very reason why his people were so reviled and why they were spurned by grace and the people of the Erdtree. Not abided to travel or gather together as a people, nor allowed to settle the land even if they abandoned their nomadic traditions. Forced to forever remain as lonely wanderers only briefly crossing each others' paths.

His people and the tarnished were kindred spirits of sorts.

All the rest of Kalé's secrets were not relevant to John or of any real import. His dealings with Duran, Quartermaster of the Stormgate, were his most important and only secret that was in any way relevant to John or potentially the Chosen Tarnished.

"No. I have already told you of my dealings with Duran. Nothing else I have not mentioned is of significance. Unless you wish to know of my youthful indiscretions or the number of runes I possess," which was a surprisingly significant amount due to his much longer than typical life for a nomadic merchant and never having stopped diligently plying his wares.

John looked deeply at him for a few seconds as if searching to see if Kalé was telling the truth before relaxing and nodding in acceptance.

"Alright then. I guess you have nothing else. If that's the case, then that was all I wanted to talk to you about before we get this show on the road. Anything you wanted to talk about?" John asked.

Kalé thought it over for a moment. There were two things he still felt he needed to know.

"Yes. I have two questions. Why is Lord Morne's daughter coming with us, and what about this misbegotten compels you to go as far as rowing with the lord?"

"The first is easy. The High Marshal believes that Lord Godrick will severely punish him for the events here at Morne. Even so far as to execute him and attaint Irina after, which will end badly for her due to politics.

"All the men he would have trusted with this duty died in the rebellion. I was the next best thing, so I am her guardian. Unless Edgar turns out to be wrong, then we will give her back.

"Either way, we keep the stuff he gave me for it. As for your second question about Sihlas..."

John frowned as took a moment to ponder.

"It is hard to explain properly why I care, so sorry if I ramble a little. The people of the Lands Between might consider the misbegotten cursed or whatever, but to me, they are just people. Maybe it is the values of my homeland, but I don't someone less just because they look different than me. Before the rebellion, Sihlas told me his life story.

"I even wrote it down, as I suspected I would never meet him again. That he would die from his work as a slave, that he would die soon after I snitched on the rebellion and the lord purged all the slaves for rebels, or he would die later in the rebellion I knew would eventually come if the Lord Edgar didn't stop it.

"Sihlas... he had a very hard life growing up. When he was just a baby, his parents abandoned him, and despite all his efforts, the circumstances around how he was given up made it impossible for him to discover their identities.

"Sihlas was born wrong. Not just that he was born a misbegotten, but there was also something about him, some unseen quality, that made even other misbegotten children reject him.

"To deal with this loneliness, he started devotedly worshiping the dragon and the sky like the fringefolk. Even sometimes going hungry and sleepless to sacrifice food and sleep to the Dragonlord and his kin. But after many years of enduring terrible things, he realized that the dragons would not bless him or ease his burdens. That his gods cared not for him.

"It was in this disillusioned state I met the boy. Looking at him and hearing his life story, I felt for him. However, I knew that there was nothing I could do. I was just a single civilian foreigner. So I left him to die."

Kalé nodded along to John's story. That is what he would have expected from John. It did not explain why John now acted so strangely attached to the misbegotten. Kalé redoubled his attention as John continued.

"Then the sally happened. I followed Knight Lieutenant Carth into Clifftown. When they slaughtered those innocent children, hearing their high-pitched howls of pain and fear, their begging for mercy or help, as each new scream joined the cacophony, I couldn't stop wondering if that one was Sihlas or not."

The grimness on his face vanished for a moment as John gave Kalé a sardonic grin.

"I thought I had grown immune to people trying to emotionally manipulate me. Turns out I have a weakness for children... They were just kids man... They should have been running around playing. Not that..."

John shook his head and the grimness returned.

"Anyways, what the men did to those kids wasn't simply killing them, many of the men and the sadistic pleasure as they did all they could to make them suffer. Let me put it this way, I'm glad the misbegotten killed them all."

Kalé was not surprised to hear of the slaughter the men had done. Many similar such things happened in sacks of villages and towns, though this one did sound particularly vicious if they targeted the children.

Whether or not a man could remain a soldier often came down to whether or not he could numb himself to such things. Some could and some could not. After every campaign, there were often men who begged off of a lord's service.

"The point though, is that I thought Sihlas was going through it. I couldn't save him or any of those kids. It made me feel like a failure.

"No. Not feel like; I was a failure. I hid away in that church for five years, scared of doing anything in fear I'd mess something up. I didn't just give up five years of my life for 'safety'; I gave up control," John spat onto the ground in disgust as he sneered at himself, "My cowardice caused me to remain weak. And the weak obey the strong. They endure what they must while the strong do what they want."

"Anyways, after that the siege continued. I fought and my fear of soldiers and lords, of authority, faded. After the final battle in the courtyard when I was escorting the misbegotten to become prisoners, I discovered that Sihlas was alive.

"I knew then that I wouldn't leave him die again. That it was within my power to save him. And it turns out I was right. If I had to burn a bridge with a lord, so be it. Not that I thought Lord Edgar would be that stubborn about things at the time.

"Turns out I had misjudged him and so getting him to let go cost me more than I thought it would. But still, it was worth it," john smiled.

Kalé tilted his head. He could almost see how those events could compel someone to become attached to a person, but this was John. Kalé knew the man had lived by himself for five years in his youth, his first century, with little difficulty.

That was not something a man whose heart was open to others did. There was more to why John had acted the way he had.

However, Kalé did not think John had lied to him. It seemed not even John completely understood why he was so attached to the life of

"Is there anything else?" John asked again.

Kalé shook his head. He did not think asking any more questions would give him useful answers.

"Then grab Rabbit and follow me to the courtyard."

As John began heading out the doorway, Kalé used a hand gesture to get Rabbit's attention and began guiding her down the corridor behind John.

They moved at a quick pace and only passed a few people as they made their way to the courtyard and stepped out into the night air.

There was no rain or clouds; the moon shone down onto the courtyard illuminating everything with its ethereal light.

While the courtyard had been cleaned up since the battle, it still carried scars.

The front quarter of the yard was wet dirt and mud where the craters from the explosives had been filled in and where the battle had churned the ground into mud, and the stone walls around the courtyard had chips and deep scratches where the bodies and equipment had crashed into them.

They walked past a large pike in the center of the courtyard with a too-large bestial head impaled on it, the faded gold of its one eye sparkling from the moonlight.

They approached the lift down to the Castletown entrance.

Standing on it was a canvased wagon.

It was not one of those gargantuan supply wagons that trolls pulled. Those would not be able to fit on the lift, but it was as big as a wagon designed to be pulled by a single livestock could reasonably be with a bench on either side lining the inside of the wagon. The back had bags and boxes of supplies.

He could not make out the contents from just their outer packaging though he could guess at some from his familiarity of how Godrick's forces packaged their supplies.

"Edgar hasn't brought Irina yet, huh? I thought I was already running late. Well, here."

John handed Kalé a small stack of parchment holding onto one for himself.

"Take these writs in case a guard shows up and bothers you before I get back. I'm taking this one and going to get Sihlas from the dungeons. I'm not sure how long it will take if someone decides to cause problems."

John hurried off back into the castle corridors with that single writ in his hand, leaving Kalé and Rabbit alone with the wagon. Kalé's first instinct was to start going through cataloging everything, but he was not lacking patience. That could come later.

Instead Kalé contented himself with watching the moon as it made its way across the night sky.

Soon he saw an armored man enter the yard escorting a shorter charge, but it was not John with his misbegotten.

Into the moonlight marched the Lord of Morne himself, High Marshal Edgar Morne, arguably the second most powerful man in the Greater Limgrave region after Godrick himself. He was carrying his halberd and a few sacks in one hand.

A step behind him holding his other hand was a fair and comely young woman he recognized as Irina Morne, and she held a sack as well. She was dressed oddly for a young noblewoman in a simple and drag dress made of rough fabrics and rope and a cloth blindfold.

A disguise? So whomever they were protecting her from may actively search for her.

It needed some work. They would have to rub a bit of dirt on her when they were away from her father. All her clothing was spotlessly clean and so was the young woman herself. Details that would not pass unnoticed by anyone if they were looking for the young woman and things they would have to consider to hide her identity from others.

Thankfully, Irina was a common fringefolk name. There was no need to change it and potentially make a mistake and say the wrong name later.

Kalé bowed as the lord walked up to the wagon a few feet away from him, leaned his halberd against the wagon, and began depositing the bags he was carrying into the wagon. The lord paid Kalé no mind besides a perfunctory glance.

As he straightened from his bow, Kalé carefully kept himself neutral and casual. Interacting directly with people as high up in the ranks of power of a region as Edgar Morne was invariably dangerous just from how far-reaching his hand was.

It was amusingly ironic. John had been afraid of Duran and Knight Commander Torrin, yet soon into the siege he had no longer felt extreme wariness when he met the High Marshal every evening. Yet Edgar was in command of far more than a single fort, if Godrick's most important one, like Torrin. The High Marshal was around two levels of power above Torrin and much higher ranked.

Kalé would be careful to not say or do anything that could draw any displeasure from the man.

After the lord was done with his daughter's packs, he turned to Kalé .

"Where is John White?"

Kalé gestured toward the door John had left.

"He left to go retrieve a misbegotten from the dungeon."

Edgar frowned but did not comment on his answer. Instead, he turned to his daughter and held her hand with both of his.

Kalé took another glance at Irina Morne. She had a fragile, fake thing on her face that could almost be called a smile.

Kalé did not know much about her.

From what he had heard from some of the cooks in the mess, she was nice to all the servants, even the misbegotten ones before the rebellion, and she had apparently been exceptionally well educated. Much more than a girl normally received and at significant expense from Lord Morne.

Unfortunately she had been afflicted with some weakness of sight since she was little. She was practically blind.

He knew that many knights, heirs, and lords had been vying for her hand for the past five years as she had grown to maturity. Some of them, like Kenneth Haight, were especially powerful and would use her for their own ends.

From what Kalé could see with his own eyes in front of him now and what he could infer from not yet giving away her hand, Edgar clearly cared for his daughter, especially if he had waited for so long to secure her a good match.

The man's fierce love for his daughter... Until Edgar Morne's death was final, Kalé would make sure he, John, and the misbegotten boy John was grabbing, tread carefully around her. It would not do for Edgar's daughter to be called back and any secrets of theirs' to leak from her to the lord and his master, or their treatment of her to engender a grudge with a lord whose reach was far.

With John still at the beginning of his hero's journey, the might the lord could bring to bear was enough to annihilate them.

They all waited quietly, until they heard the sounds of someone coming echo out from a corridor into the courtyard.

This time it was John, and he was guiding a misbegotten boy. More of a young man really from his estimation, now that Kalé laid eyes on him. Though someone had not truly matured into a full adult until they passed their first century, if they lived that long.

The misbegotten had large wings and may have been able to fly. That combined with what he had learned of what John's unit had done to the misbegotten children in their sally down into Clifftown, it meant that despite being a 'child' this misbegotten had likely fought against them in the rebellion.

If the misbegotten had been in the ambush of the levies on the walls, he had most likely killed a few of them. Though he was not one of the misbegotten Kalé has engaged. His features were wrong.

Despite being freed from the dungeon and his ownership having been given to John, his friend according to John himself, the slight misbegotten did not seem the slightest bit happy. Instead, he seemed conflicted and melancholy as he kept his gaze lowered.

Kalé could not guess as to why, and he did not waste any time on speculation as something more important grabbed his attention.

John approached them misbegotten in tow, and stopped once he got closer to Kalé who was being nuzzled by Rabbit, and Edgar who still held his daughter's hand.

As John came to a stop, he and Edgar stood just slightly too stiffly and slightly too far away from one another. Their eyes met and while they were not hostile Kalé could see they regarded each other with a cold distance.

Kalé had heard that John possessed the favor of the High Marshal. Receiving higher rank and increased regard from the lord personally through the rebellion.

It seemed that was no longer the case, which was worrying. It seemed John's negotiation with the lord had indeed soured things. And yet still Edgar was placing his daughter under John's protection. Edgar must have been quite certain of his coming capital punishment to do this.

From the way Edgar looked at the misbegotten meekly following a step behind John and then glared down at him, which caused the misbegotten to cower and look directly down at the ground, the misbegotten almost certainly had something to do with the breakdown in relations between the two men.

"Miss Irina, Lord Edgar," John saluted, apparently from habit, forgetting that he should bow rather than salute now that he was no longer in Edgar's service. Kalé would have to teach him proper courtesies again. "It's good you two are here already. With Sihlas here, and if Miss Irina has already packed her things, we are good to go."

"Her things are indeed loaded onto the wagon," Edgar glared at the misbegotten for a few more moments before he turned to his daughter whose hand he was still holding.

As he looked at his daughter, the cold hard look in his eyes faded into something softer.

"It is time for you to go now, my little cloud," Edgar said with a gentle voice.

At that, the dam that young Irina had been holding burst. Her fake smile fell from her face, and she started sobbing quietly and pressed herself into her father with a hug.

Edgar hugged her and cooed.

"It will be okay. Do not worry, it will all be okay. You'll be fine," Edgar reassured as he kept patting her on the back.

The girl turned her eyes up to Edgar's face despite her blindfold. In the moonlight her blindfold sparkled slightly, wet with tears. When she spoke, her voice was wet.

"It won't be okay, father. They're-they're going to kill you. I'll never see you again."

Edgar grit his teeth, trying to keep his composure for the daughter in his arms. But he could not stop the thickness that filled his voice.

"Maybe so, Irina, maybe so. But tell me, will you forget about me?"

"NO!" Irina objected as she pushed herself away, upset and horrified, gripping onto his surcoat so tightly her hands turned white as she 'looked' up at him, "I could never forget about you father!"

Edgar smiled despite the fact his daughter could not see it.

"Then no matter what happens, they can never truly take me from you. Part of me will always be with you. Now let's get you up into the wagon."

Irina sobbing renewed even harder than before but she complied with Edgar's gentle prodding as he moved her toward the back of the wagon.

They all kept silent and respectfully watched as the lord helped his daughter for what would probably be the last time.

After Irina was safely up into the back of the wagon, Edgar pulled away but was stopped by one of Irina's hands still holding onto the fur of his surcoat.

Irina had stopped sobbing and Edgar rubbed his daughter's hand for nearly a minute until she let go and leaned back into the wagon bench, her sobs not stopping.

Edgar turned back and looked at them, and that was the signal that they could continue.

John nodded.

"Alright. Sihlas, you're in the back. Kalé ... shit, with so much going on I forgot to check, but you've said that you used to haul your ware with a wagon in the past. Do you think Rabbit will be able to pull this one?"

Kalé glanced and looked it over.

"Yes. Rabbit does not like reins, but she can pull this."

"Good. I'll have you teach me-"

John abruptly stopped talking as his hand went to his waist where he normally kept a knife sheathed but was empty at the moment, turned, and took a step towards Edgar as if ready to pounce.

Kalé looked. The High Marshal had grabbed Sihlas on the shoulder as he had prepared to jump up into the wagon. The lord was glaring meaningfully back and forth between the misbegotten and the wagon.

No words were spoken, yet all except the still-sobbing blind Irina could hear the unspoken threat.

Looking back to John, Kalé nearly wanted to strike him!

What was he thinking!? He was unarmed and Edgar had his halberd and was a lord in his castle!

Even if the High Marshal was unarmed in the middle of nowhere and John was the one who was armed, the High Marshal would rend him into a bloody mist with his ability to call the storm.

But after a few moments for the threat to sink in, Edgar let go of the misbegotten's now bruising shoulder and stepped away. John relaxed, and the young man wasted no time in jumping up into the wagon.

Edgar picked up his nearby weapon, turned to John and Kalé none the wiser about John's reaction, and walked over.

"One last thing before you leave John White," Edgar looked and John and gave him a look of begrudging respect, "If you are going to protect my daughter on your travels, you can't keep using a weapon of mundane steel. Against any true threat such a weapon will be irrelevant. I don't want my daughter to become crab or bear food."

Edgar reached out and forced his holding his orange-tinted fringefolk-style halberd into John's hand.

John scrambled not to drop the heavy weapon that had been thrust onto him. After he had gotten ahold of it, he still seemed to awkwardly struggle with the weight of it in comparison to the partisan spear that he had long trivialized. The weapon had much more metal than his partisan.

Kalé watched as John, as surprised as he was, looked over his new weapon.

The halberd was of the same length as John's partisan overall with the spear blade coming out of the top of the weapon's head being a forearm's length, similar to John's partisan as well.

The halberd head itself was beautifully engraved with the flowing and curving designs of beasts, plants, and dragons that the fringefolk favored. The shining silver steel had a heavy orange tint from being imbued with smithing stones.

The head had three sides with a different weapon on each side. Out of the top, was the previously mentioned spear, but out of the sides were an axe and a spike. The axe blade was simply a thick and fat straightforward half-crescent blade while the spike out of the back wickedly waved like a kris dagger and came to a hard, sharp point.

Below the head where the wooden shaft met the head were long eye-catching golden tassels that sparkled even in the moonlight. The shaft itself had a simple spiral carved down it, and the bottom foot of the halberd was capped with a golden-alloy handle.

An utterly beautiful weapon.

"With the haste you have been going about these matters, you may not have read through every writ I wrote you, White. One of them is for this halberd. Do not lose the writ. That polearm is imbued enough that no officer would allow you to keep it when they discover it unless you can prove you have an allowance."

This was incredibly good for John. Kalé knew that if he was to rise to the level of the greatest champions, one of John's great obstacles would be obtaining stronger weapons.

Weapons imbued with smithing stones were very powerful and valuable, and the more imbued the weapon was, the more powerful and valuable it became. The most incredible of weapons, and blacksmiths able to work smithing stones, were controlled as tightly as possible by lords.

Many of Kalé's most profitable sales had been selling lords such weapons he had scavenged from battlefields.

Unless he aligned himself with a demigod or a lord of significant power, John would be unable to avail himself of stronger weapons without challenging warriors who held greater weapons, which was dangerous and challenging for many reasons.

The High Marshal's halberd with the intensity of the orange, while it was not the most imbued weapon Kalé had seen with his eyes, was not far. And it was certainly not just the typical imbued weapon that would be handed out to the rank and file when they achieved some feat of note.

And with the writ for it, unless another High Marshal or Lord Godrick, there would be no one who could legally take it from John in Limgrave or the Weeping Peninsula.

Not that such actions were common. Often those who were able to acquire and keep such heavily imbued weapons were great warriors. To attempt to take a weapon from such a warrior, with or without a writ, almost certainly meant a battle. Something only the most powerful, brave, greedy, or foolish would do.

Even if a lord or officer were successful that person would have to deal with the social and political consequences when word got around that they had started stealing imbued weapons from people.

No. Only the easily 'disappeared' had to worry about such underhanded actions. Something that still applied to John. For now.

"Thank you so much Lord Edgar-"

"If you are grateful," Edgar roughly cut John off, "then make sure to protect Irina."

John nodded seriously.

Edgar gave a single nod back and then walked away.

After he left, Kalé and John looked at each other. Kalé gave John a nod and got to work.

He and John started loading Rabbit's bags and saddle into the wagon while the young noblewoman cried and the misbegotten did his best to disappear into the wagon bench.

Their time at Castle Morne had thankfully come to an end. Kalé did not want to see the cursed place again for another few centuries.

___________________________________________

AN:

This chapter exposes one of the areas where John trying to avoid giving hints about his meta-knowledge is screwing him.

He has almost completely avoided mentioning the Frenzied Flame at all ever, especially around Kalé or when speaking of the nomadic merchants, to avoid giving any hints to things he thinks are secret.

He has wrong assumptions about the merchants and their relationship to the Frenzied Flame.