Lily
Looking at my teacher’s damaged, shackled body was both strange and reaffirmed to myself that there truly was no worse fate than death. Had the Starscourge not inadvertently prevented her death, my teacher would’ve died a miserable death. Instead, while she’d had to suffer, she had endured and would be free once more soon enough. Had she died, she would never have gotten to experience that freedom again.
Sure, she probably had to suffer for millenia considering how long ago the Shattering was and the fact that her capture probably hadn’t been particularly recent with how set up she’d been in that ruin I’d met her in but clearly she was fine.
“My apprentice, thank you for coming.” She greeted me, keeping her voice as firm as she could despite the pain I was sure she had to be in. “I have no doubt you will triumph over the Starscourge. Once you do, someone may come for my life as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“I could kill Jerren.” I offered but Sellen shook her head, not seeming all that surprised that I knew who, exactly, would come to kill her.
“This body of mine has been damaged greatly already. Not to mention the fact that I cannot remove these shackles. Not without a key that I have no doubt was destroyed the moment Jerren realized what it would take for me to die. No, I shall entrust my primal glintstone to you. Whether you will place it in a new body or neglect it or do anything else with it is up to you. I trust you to treat it with care but it is ultimately your choice.” Sellen probably didn’t know the effect these seemingly simple words ‘I trust you’ had on someone who, to be frank, refused to trust anyone at all.
Holding back the rush of emotions I felt would’ve been difficult before my willpower had been infinite but, now, it was a simple matter of applying it. “Very well. I will take good care of it.” I didn’t mention that I could probably sever these bindings that were designed to counter mages and warriors but not shinigami or dovah. The part of me that refused to trust even after that touching little speech wanted to see proof.
If Sellen handed me her soul, I would trust her much as she trusted me. Nothing less was acceptable. Nothing less could be tolerated. Not in the face of someone handing me the very essence of their being.
And, indeed, Sellen reached into her own chest and pulled out a clump of glintstone, weakly holding it out towards me, “Treat it with care…my apprentice. What you hold…is my very being…” After she finished saying those words and I had taken the primal glintstone, her body slumped over like a puppet with its strings cut.
For a few moments, I just stared at the bloody crystal cluster in my hand, struggling to comprehend that this had really just happened. Then, I cast a spell to carefully clean the crystals and placed them in my inventory where no dirt could reach them.
Following this, I burnt her body and gathered the ashes in a jar that was in the ruin after emptying and cleaning it through spells. She’d at least get to keep her remains even if her body was no longer her vessel.
And Jerren would not survive my encounter with him. No need for my teacher to bother with him in the future.
“Seluvis’ puppet probably isn’t good enough, either.” I decided, figuring that making a gigai that had glintstone mixed into its materials would be better. It’d push back my other gigai-related projects a bit but that was fine. Besides, Seluvis was not to be trusted and therefore his creations certainly weren’t trustworthy, either.
“I suppose it’s time to get Azur and Lusat settled in before fighting Radahn.” I concluded after thinking about whether or not I’d forgotten anything and being unable to remember anything. Radahn’s death would change much but everything that might impact my plans for the Lands Between had already been taken care of.
Radahn was a man large enough that the bow he used could use spears as arrows. He wasn’t as titanic as in the game, certainly, but he was still quite a lot larger than the average person and even his ‘Consort Radahn’ version since that one had used Mohg’s body.
Part of me wanted to kill Leonard and see if the mind that had been stripped from the demigod by the Scarlet Rot could still grieve but I actually respected Radahn. I couldn’t fight him at his best so I’d at least fight him at the closest he was going to get to that.
Not to mention the fact that I was fairly certain he’d do something drastic if I did so and I was fighting him partially to witness his mastery over gravity sorcery and, while the constant display in the sky was letting me improve just by witnessing it from the point at which it began, drawing out the fight would let me improve even more.
Instead, as it stood, he ‘merely’ bombarded me with spears that each were empowered by gravity sorcery to such a degree that they created dust clouds where they landed. Each of them was also fast enough that I had to use Shunpo to dodge them. Well, I could’ve risked dodging them without it but it’d have been a close call.
Getting closer and using High Probability to get some more detail on his mana also showed me something I hadn’t really considered – that being how his Great Rune was literally burning to fight off the Scarlet Rot. It was why, despite all the mutations so many others in Caelid had suffered and Radahn having been at the epicenter of the Scarlet Aeonia, Radahn’s body remained seemingly untouched. His mind wasn’t and maybe his feet hadn’t been because those had been lost at some point over the millenia he’d spent here but most of his body, even to my detailed scan, showed only traces of infection on the outside.
To the naked eye, he would likely have been perfectly fine. To my senses, he had to be in constant agony as his Great Rune was always creating fire to burn the Scarlet Rot before it could spread. Not to mention the fact that his insides were, in fact, rotten, which was probably also why he was so mindless. His brain wasn’t functional. It was probably just his soul and his Great Rune that kept him going.
It was certainly something interesting to witness considering my interest in curing Millicent but the flames the Great Rune created were only good for preventing further spread. The initial infection, they had been unable to get rid of even after all this time and it definitely prioritized keeping him capable of movement despite the infection over anything else.
‘I suppose I’ll have to stick to my current plan for that.’ I mused before focusing back onto the fight just in time for Radahn to put away his bow and draw his swords.
I knew without trying it that challenging him to a contest of strength would’ve been stupid beyond belief. I’d have to dance around him, wear him down slowly and there was a certain irony to that. ‘Someone capable of using Scarlet Aeonia, who can heal by harming others, is fighting Radahn with a katana and what may as well be a dex build.’ Yes, that was certainly amusing.
And a battle against the Starscourge was no place to be holding back even if I was going to stall quite a bit. Not when I had plenty of reiryoku, at least. “Han’eiseyo, Tenkuu Niwa.” I activated my Shikai, not really using it for anything yet. It was active in case I needed it but, ultimately, I wanted Radahn to die to a thousand paper cuts not because I didn’t respect him but because it’d let me take in as much of his gravity sorcery as possible.
Sure, a great deal of what he was doing now wasn’t particularly complicated but it wasn’t those spells that I was studying. No, it was his act of holding the stars in place. Astel using gravity alone to create portals was simpler to copy than this.
Admittedly, part of it was just that Radahn had several times more mana than I did, a great deal of which came from his Great Rune but a good amount of which did stem from his own strength. And, by now, I was almost certain that the degree of divinity one possessed influenced the strength of one’s Great Rune because Radahn’s held a lot more power than Godrick’s and, admittedly, Godrick’s had also held a bit more power when he’d held it than it did now, I just hadn’t been sure if it had been because of all that Godrick had grafted onto his body or because of his divine blood.
Radahn, even if he wasn’t Marika’s child, had been considered a demigod of the Golden Order. Meanwhile Godrick barely had any divine blood to speak of.
And Radahn got far more power out of his Great Rune than either Godrick or I got out of mine so the conclusion was a simple one to reach. Alas, there wasn’t exactly a demigod whose soul I could easily get my hands on to try and copy whatever traits the Great Runes looked for in them. The mausoleums specifically carried the dead, soulless husks of nameless demigods, after all.
Still, while I likely wouldn’t have the mana to stop all the stars at once even once I got my hands on his Great Rune, I’d take having the ability to do so if I ever got my hands on the amount of mana required so I dodged blades, rocks and a horse that had been on its last legs millenia ago all while studying the spell that had given Radahn his title and occasionally slashing him with my sword.
Part of the difficulty laid in the fact that the spell stretched so far above us but quick uses of Shunpo got me closer so I could spend a few moments inspecting the upper parts of the spell and go back before I had to worry about spears being used as arrows again.
And then, eventually, Radahn turned himself into a meteor and that was at least mildly interesting. Not much so since it was just basic gravity sorcery taken to the extreme and applied to himself with very few safeguards due to his insane durability taking care of the rest but it was still a display of mastery that I found interesting to witness. It was just also a simple matter for me to escape the blast radius since I could just form air platforms and use Shunpo to get away very quickly.
In general, a mindless Radahn could not hurt, much less defeat me so it was only a matter of time until I, using almost a quarter of my mana, reached out to a star, wrenched control away from Radahn and held it in place in his stead to prove to myself that I had accomplished my goal for coming here, if with much greater inefficiency than I’d have liked.
With a wide smile on my lips, I turned towards my opponent, the man actually seeming confused in the way someone would be if a simple fact of reality simply stopped being true. Radahn may have lacked the mind to comprehend the meaning of it but he recognized that that singular star was no longer under his control and that had stunned him for a moment, a mistake I was sure he wouldn’t have made had his mind not been eroded by the Scarlet Rot.
With an application of Shunpo, I ended up on Radahn’s shoulder, my blade stabbing into his neck. “Let us meet again in Enir-Ilim. I hope you’ll give me a better fight there.” I carved through as much of his neck as I could before he lashed out with his blades and I had to get away. Apparently, be it through his mana, his muscles, his Great Rune or a combination of all three, decapitating Radahn was quite difficult and, even with such a grievous wound, the Starscourge was still moving.
A Comet Azur to the wound put a stop to that after several moments of further tearing into the wound I’d created in his neck. Much as in the game, what followed was a beautiful sight of the stars racing into motion as if to catch up on all the movement they had missed out on, one in particular racing towards Limgrave to open the path towards Nokron.
Allowing myself to deactivate my Shikai, I let out a sigh of both relief and disappointment. Relief because this fight had gone a lot better than my fight against Godrick and disappointment because, well, it had been boring. Radahn had moved with traces of skill but the best way to describe it would be a wild animal that knew how to use swords. His marksmanship had been great but, understandably, he’d used swords in close combat rather than his bow.
“To activate my Great Rune or to get rid of Jerren first? Hmm, quite a conundrum but I suppose I better get rid of him before he can start travelling towards Sellen’s body and find her to be dead. No need to have him make a nuisance of himself.” I decided, warping towards the castle in which Radahn’s forces still remained despite what Caelid had become.
Witch-Hunter Jerren
“It has been quite some time since someone last dared to try and challenge the General on their own, you know? Back then, that fool was torn apart by the first arrow.” I commented as someone joined me on the balcony from which I’d borne witness to General Radahn’s final battle.
The telescope I’d used only made it clear to me that the clear foreigner had been the one to pick a fight against the mightiest of the demigods and win seemingly without issue. Even in his diminished state, that had been no mean feat. One only had to look at the many previous Radahn Festivals to be certain of that.
“What can I say? I’m just stronger than whoever that was.” She replied, smiling at me when I turned away from the place where Radahn’s body still laid.
I nodded, conceding the point. “And you have my gratitude. Now, General Radahn can finally rest. And I suppose you are the one who defeated Godrick, too, so the path to the capital should be open to you now.” Tales of the devastation of parts of Stormveil spread far and wide through the Lands Between, especially because it meant that someone had managed to claim one of the elusive Great Runes.
“That it is, though I might wait a bit before going there. The one who is standing before the Erdtree is quite dangerous, after all.” She told me.
“I suppose seeking to improve beforehand is not unwise. It would be a shame for you to put the General to rest only to fall in the capital.” I agreed, positively surprised to see such patience in one so young.
She nodded before turning towards me with a questioning look, “And what will you do now?”
“Just some old business. A task I haven’t been able to complete in all this time. Once the General’s body has been laid to rest, I will finally be able to see to it.” I answered vaguely, eager to finally rid the world of the Graven Witch.
“That business wouldn’t have anything to do with Sellen, would it now?” The girl’s tone remained pleasant but the question in and of itself made me raise my guard.
“And if it did?” I replied, wary now.
The girl’s smile remained but her katana appeared in her hand. “Then I will have to kill you. My teacher trusts me, you see, and it’s rare enough for me to be able to say that with any amount of certainty that I’m willing to remove her enemies for her while she’s indisposed.”
“She is the most dangerous mage in the entire history of Raya Lucaria! She has to be stopped now that it is possible!” I argued, drawing my flamberge despite knowing the futility of it.
“She is my teacher and I feel like that outweighs whatever crimes you feel she has committed.” The girl argued, smile still on her lips before simply vanishing from my sight.
Honed instincts, kept sharp through regular spars and Radahn Festivals, warned me to move but it was irrelevant. I was not General Radahn. I was not a demigod.
The last sight I saw was that smile remaining unchanged even as blood splatters reached it.
Emily Piggot
‘In three days, the Slaughterhouse Nine will reveal themselves in Brockton Bay.’ The message had come from Watchdog in the morning and was perhaps the last thing any PRT director wanted to receive, not to mention the fact that, normally, people didn’t. The Nine just showed up and then began their sick games.
Apparently, this time, the thinkers managed to figure something out in advance.
Only, it didn’t just stop at a warning and a promise of resources, including some that were usually reserved for different cities or emergencies, which this certainly qualified as, but it had an order attached, too. ‘Discretely inform the Travelers Guild of the threat. Otherwise, Alexander and Alice Biron will be targetted. Do not set up a meeting, only inform one person.’
The obvious solution was to just send a message to Lilian Biron and, rather than overthinking it, that’s what I did. Jack Slash having thinker and/or master aspects to his magic was, while unconfirmed, already heavily suspected at this point due to him surviving an encounter with someone who had fully intended to kill him before he’d started talking and it was also known that Lilian was a blindspot for all thinkers.
If there was anyone I could safely inform, it was probably her. However much I might’ve disliked her rapidly growing influence, I disliked the idea of the Birons snapping because the Slaughterhouse Nine targetted their parents even more.
Not being able to set up a meeting about it would make things harder for me but at least I was being given access to just about everything short of the Triumvirate. Now, if only most of these people hadn’t failed to deal with Jack Slash already.
Welp, arc 4 is very close to being over. About one chapter and one interlude left and then it will go to arc 5. And the Slaughterhouse Nine still exist, Jack just had to pull enough bullshit that people eventually went ‘alright, he has to be using magic to be able to keep getting away with this’. They just don’t advertise that knowledge because they don’t know if he himself is aware of it
Anyways, hope you enjoyed and let me know if you have any feedback