Chapter Text
“My thanks, dearest cousin. She is beautiful.”
“She is modeled after a tutor of mine, little cousin. She ought to be beautiful indeed.”
“What is her name?”
“The witch, or the doll?”
“Both?”
“The witch never revealed to me her name. ‘Twas a tradition of her people, or some such. But the doll? The doll is thine, and so it is thine to name as thou wilt.”
“Then I shall call her Renna. In thy honor, Cousin Ranni.”
My eyes snap open. My gel-tissue lungs expand with a sudden gasp of breath. Spluttering and coughing, I force myself upright—can’t immediately remember what killed me, this time, so for all I know this is a mid-combat rez.
“Easy there, Barrett,” says Winchester, hovering in front of me. The ghost’s shell of burnished wood and polished gold whirs around his core. “We’re safe for now. No need to rush.”
I nod, still coughing, and lean back against the wreckage of my ship, clutching at my chest as I try to get my breath back.
…Wait.
I stand up and turn around. Yep, that’s the Lonestar, all right—absolutely smashed to bits.
“What the hell happened?” I ask hoarsely.
“How much do you remember?” Winchester answers my question with a question, which is both rude and just like him.
I force my mind back. I always have a little trouble remembering the immediate details before a death, and the problem tends to be worse outside of combat. Privately, I blame Clovis Bray. Not for any particular reason, it just seems like a safe bet.
“We were… investigating a goldilocks world, right?” I ask slowly. “Had that big megaflora anomaly, visible from space.” It looked like a massive tree, with boughs stretching over an entire continent, all glowing gold. “Then we… hit an asteroid, or something? Kind of lose it after that.”
“That’s most of it,” says Winchester. “The moment we enter the planet’s gravity well, suddenly there’s a whole-ass debris field hanging in geosync orbit, like every meteorite to approach the planet in decades just froze in place and was somehow cloaked until we got too close to avoid ‘em. Ship smacks one, goes into a tailspin, and hits at least half a dozen more on the way to the ground. Think you died around the third impact when it buckled the cockpit.”
“Shit.” I look over the ruins of the Lonestar. “Tell me the radio unit’s still salvageable, at least?”
“Sure, I can tell you that,” says Winchester. “Be lying, though. Well,” he adds, “it might be salvageable, if we had either the raw materials I need or an engram decoder so I could program our glimmer. Unfortunately, our decoder is definitely not salvageable, so unless you know where I can find a whole lot of gold, iridium, and carbon insulation…”
“Iridium and gold we can probably find in the asteroid field,” I say.
“Yeah. The debris field that is, and I cannot stress this enough, not accessible from planetside.” Winchester always gets colorful like this when he’s frustrated. “ And even if we could get there, we still couldn’t get through without getting torn up by the meteors again. We need the debris to get the ship working, we need the ship to get the debris, and we need the debris out of the way to—wait. Hang on.”
“What?” I ask, turning back to face him.
“Thinking,” snaps Winchester. “Going through the telemetry logs.” A pause. I wait patiently. Or, well, sort of patiently. So maybe my foot’s tapping, can you blame me? “Okay, so I have good news.”
“Lay it on me, bud.”
“The debris field is being suspended off-planet.”
I frown. “…Suspended?”
“The Lonestar should have at least knocked some of that debris out of geosync,” says Winchester. “It didn’t. Somehow, none of the debris started drifting towards the planet—all of it either maintained constant altitude, or drifted away.”
“Some kind of barrier? Force field? A barricade left by a really big Titan?”
“Ha, ha.” Winchester grumbles. “No—things didn’t bounce off of anything. If I’m reading the data right… the impacts that should have sent the debris into a downward spiral instead sent it parallel to the ground, maintaining constant elevation. It’s not a force field, at least not as we think of it—it’s a… a weaponized gravitational anomaly. Or something.”
“Winchester, that don’t make any goddamn sense.”
“Barrett, if it made any goddamn sense, I wouldn’t be talking about it!” Winchester lets out a grumpy sound, halfway between a grunt and a chirp. It’s cute. As much as my ghost can be an ornery bastard, I gotta admit he can be damn adorable. Privately, of course. I don’t need him refusing to rez me.
“Okay.” I sigh. “Have we got hammerspace capacity to drag the wreck with us, or do we need to leave the ship here?”
“We don’t even have the space for all the stuff we already had in hammerspace,” Winchester groans. “Dammit, half the arsenal was uploaded to the ship’s computers!”
“Is it recoverable?”
“Let me check.” Winchester darts past me and slips inside a smashed hole in the Lonestar’s hull. I take advantage of the momentary silence to look around.
It looks like we smashed through the rock ceiling of a cave, but that isn’t what gets my attention. “Holy hell,” I mumble, staring at the emaciated corpses practically covering the floor. “Holy hell.”
“You say something?” Winchester says, emerging from the ship.
“That’s a lot of bodies.”
“You’re not paying attention,” Winchester says grimly. “It’s a lot of bodies, but it’s really a lot of human bodies to be on a planet that wasn’t on any of the Coalition’s starcharts.”
I feel my brow plates shift as my eyes widen. “Oh, shit, you’re right. How is—”
I’m spinning on my heel before I’ve even completely registered the sound I’m hearing, and Winchester’s already transmatting my gun onto my back when I reach for the stock. I tug it off its magnetic holster and bring it to bear, snapping its lever into place.
There’s a woman there, sitting astride a horse. No, wait, it’s got horns; I have no idea what the hell it is. She’s wearing a hooded cloak that hides everything from her ankles to her throat, and even her face is in shadow. All I can see is a hint of strawberry blonde hair and a single eye, gold and wary.
I keep the Dead Man’s Tale loosely at my hip, partly to keep from seeming too threatening, but mostly because the DMT works better when I’m pumping the lever from the hip anyway. “Hey there,” I say, jerking my chin upward in greeting. “You startled me.”
“So I can see,” says the woman. Her voice is soft and a little raspy. It reminds me a little bit of Silver when she’s flirting. I’m immune to it from her—partly because Silver’s one of my oldest friends, and partly because I avoid sleeping with actual dragons—but turns out I’m not immune to it from this stranger. Not that a pretty voice and a pretty eye is enough to get me to put down my gun.
The lady’s also speaking English. Which is deeply weird. It’s not even the nu-English of the City, and Winchester’s translation suite isn’t kicking in to feed me the details of what she’s saying. She’s speaking straight-up English.
“I came to investigate what appeared to be a star, falling from the heavens,” says the woman. She looks past me at the wreck of the Lonestar. “I gather you are the source of the disturbance?”
“That’s me,” I say. “Sorry about that. Wasn’t exactly planned.”
She nods slowly. Her one eye looks me up and down, appraising. “You… are unlike any denizen of the Lands Between I have ever beheld,” she says. “Nor, I think, are you like any inhabitant of those remote places beyond the Fog, far from the Erdtree’s light. What manner of being are you?”
I realize two things at once.
The first is, not only is this lady talking straight-up English, she’s talking old straight-up English. It’s like a character walked out of one of those plays Shaxx collects. He hides the books, but we all know about them.
The second is, uh, shit. Not only is there apparently human life on this world several dozen light-years from Earth, and not only does that life somehow speak pre-Golden Age English, but apparently the local civilization is pre-warp. At least, that’s the implication. That don’t make any sense at all, but things stopped making sense about half an hour ago and they ain’t started up again yet. “Uh,” I say eloquently. “I… think you either wouldn’t understand my answer or wouldn’t believe it.”
The woman’s eye narrowed slightly under her hood. The gold was ever so slightly luminous, visible beneath the hood even as the rest of her face was hidden in shadow. “Are you some form of animate doll?” she asks. “A puppet, or marionette, perhaps, like those wielded by the sorcerers of Raya Lucaria?”
Okay, she probably doesn’t have any way of knowing that calling an Exo a doll or puppet is a great way to get a solid metal fist to the teeth, but that doesn’t mean it’s nice to hear. We got enough of that shit from old grandaddy Clovis, even if none of us really remember that anymore. “Excuse you,” I manage to grind out. “I’m an Exomind, thanks very much, not anyone’s doll.”
She blinks. “I have offended you. I apologize. As I said, you are unlike anything I have seen before.”
Aaaand now I feel bad. A little bad, at least. “No harm done. That’s my ship,” I say, taking my left hand off the foregrip of the DMT to jerk my thumb back at the Lonestar. I’m watching her as I do, waiting for any sign that she’ll try to take advantage of the opening. Doesn’t look like it, so I relax a bit. “We were dropping into your planet’s gravity well to investigate the big-ass tree you’ve got out front when a meteor sucker-punched us. Ship goes down, now we’re here.”
Her eye narrows in thought. “Am I to understand, then,” she says slowly, “that you have descended from beyond the very stars?”
“Well, that’s a melodramatic way of putting it, but, uh, yeah. Sure.”
She considers me for a moment. “In the days before the Shattering,” she says, “General Radahn, whom some called mightiest of the demigods, made war on the stars, and halted their movements in the heavens. Since that day, they have hung cold and still in the night sky. Yet you have somehow circumvented his forbiddance.”
“Wait, that must be what we ran into!” Winchester says suddenly. The woman visibly starts when he rises from behind my shoulder to speak. “Whatever this Radahn guy did must be what’s causing the weird gravity field and the debris suspension.”
I frown. “Is there a way we can convince General Radahn to let the stars, uh, move again?” I ask the woman. “Only I’m kind of stuck if that meteor field stays hanging up there like that.”
“It is possible,” she says. “But I am no great scholar of sorcery.” She watches me for a moment, looking as if she’s considering something. Then she shrugs and dismounts from her horse-thing. She reaches up and lowers her hood—
Oh, shit, she’s pretty. This is gonna be a thing, ain’t it? Damn. That smoky voice is matched with smooth, elegant features and soft, flawless skin.
...Mostly flawless skin. As her hands lower again, I see that they’re slightly mottled, as if they got burned real bad a long time ago.
“My name is Melina,” she says. “And I would offer you an accord.”
“Pleasure, Melina. I’m Barrett-12.” I raise a metal eyebrow. “And I’m listening. Go on.”
“I will aid you however I can in undoing the stasis General Radahn has placed upon the heavens,” says Melina. “In return, I ask that you bring me to the base of the Erdtree. I had intended to come here in search of a Tarnished to aid in this. You are no Tarnished… but like those banished warriors, you come from beyond the Lands Between. Like them, you are bereft of Grace, though theirs has been restored of late. I may not know what fate lies in store for you… but I have no doubt that it will lead you to the Erdtree, by one road or another. All paths eventually do. I ask only that you bring me with you, and that you survive the course.”
“I make a habit of surviving,” I say before I can stop myself.
All the principles in the world won’t save you from a knife in your throat. There is only one law that matters, Dredgen Scythe, and you must learn to embody it.
I force myself out of the memory. “Or at least, I make a habit of coming back when I don’t.”
“Then you stand outside the ravages of Destined Death?” Melina asks, sounding surprised. Her one golden eye widens a little, and I notice that her missing eye isn’t missing at all. It’s closed, as if it’s scarred shut by a strange tattoo over the eyelid. “This is a trait normally afforded those possessed of Grace. You are Graceless, yet Destined Death has no hold on you?”
“I’m a Guardian, sweetheart,” I say. The affectionate nickname slips out before I can bite it back. Damn it all. “Coming back from death is, like, half the job description.”
“This is good,” says Melina. I’m mostly relieved that she doesn’t seem to have noticed what I called her. Mostly relieved, and just a tiny bit disappointed, because I’m an idiot like that. “The Lands Between have become extremely dangerous in these latter days since the Shattering. To escape Destined Death may prove necessary, if you seek to reach the foot of the Erdtree or to challenge General Radahn.” She nods to herself. “Then, Sir Barrett, if you will have me, I offer you my services. I am no Finger Maiden, but even if I cannot offer the guidance of their faith, I can offer the power of their abilities—the power to turn Runes to strength. I can offer whatever knowledge I can of the Lands Between and their state as things now stand. In exchange, I ask only that you bring me to the base of the Erdtree. Have we an agreement?”
I look at Winchester. Winchester looks back at him and rotates his petals in an approximation of a shrug. “Don’t look at me,” he says. “I don’t know half of the proper nouns she just used, but I’m also not sure it matters. Your call, bud.”
I turn back to Melina. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll take you to the foot of the Erdtree, whatever that means, and you can help me undo whatever this Radahn guy did.”
Melina gives me a small, soft smile. Somehow, that feels like the most important thing to happen this morning, and I just crash-landed on one of the weirdest worlds I’ve ever seen with no way to phone home. Damn it all. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time in a while. I thought I’d outgrown this!
“Then,” she says, reaching into a pouch under her cloak, “I offer you this ring.” She holds out a small band of twined gold. “It represents a contract with Torrent, the spectral steed.” She pats her horse-thing on the snout, turning her gentle smile on it. “He will gladly bear you wherever you must go.”
“No need, you can keep him,” I say. “Winchester, tell me we have at least one functioning Sparrow?”
“You really think I’d risk losing Always On Time to data corruption?” asks Winchester dryly. “Of course we do.”
“Nice. Let’s get outside, then you can decrypt it. We’ll leave the ship here for now.” I grimace at what’s left of the Lonestar. Poor old girl. “Hopefully nobody comes by to scavenge her.”
“The experimental cloak is still in working order,” says Winchester. “I could try and hide it? The Arc battery will probably hold for at least a few weeks.”
“Anyone watching will have noticed how we literally dropped out of the sky,”I say. But then again… “Ah, damn it all. Sure. Can’t hurt. I can always shove my Arcstaff into it if it needs a jumpstart once we get the parts we need.”
Winchester bobs up and down in an approximate nod, then turns and dives back into the ship. After a moment, a flicker of Arc energy flares around the ship and the prototype Eliksni cloak snaps into place around it, hiding it from view.
“Here’s hoping that holds,” I say as Winchester floats out again. I turn to Melina, who’s still standing beside Torrent.
“I do not need Torrent to accompany you,” She says quietly. Her smile’s gone. She looks almost mournful, and I can’t help but wonder why.
“I don’t need a horse to keep up with you,” I counter. “Keep him, seriously. Let’s get outside, and I’ll show you—I’ve already got a ride.”
She frowns at me, but nods after a moment. She mounts Torrent again, and the horse thing (spectral steed? Is that, like, its species?) follows me and Winchester out through the crater the Lonestar tore through the roof of the cave. We emerge onto a sandy shoreline overlooking a wide, blue ocean.
“Winchester?” I prompt, but he’s already on it before I can ask. The Always On Time appears in a flare of blue transmat. I swing my leg over it and look up at Melina, seated in Torrent’s saddle. “Well?” I ask. “Where to first?”
She stares at me for a moment, expression unreadable. “That is your decision,” she says. “Northward lies Stormveil Castle, and beyond it the lake-bound realm of Liurnia. That road leads us to the Altus Plateau and the base of the Erdtree. To the east is rotting Caelid, where the greatest battle of the Shattering was fought between General Radahn and his cousin Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. If we wish to follow Radahn’s trail, that is where we should begin.”
I frown. “Wait. So your goal and mine are in completely different directions?”
“Not entirely,” Melina says. “The Royal Capital of Leyndell is barred to any who do not already possess enough Great Runes to overcome the wards its new king placed upon it. Two should be sufficient, and General Radahn holds one such.”
“Great. Where can I find another?”
“Two others are within your reach, that I know of. The first is the rune taken by Godrick the Grafted, lord of this land, Limgrave. The second is that given to Queen Rennala of Caria in Liurnia to the north.”
“Great.” Only it’s not. I stop my sparrow at the base of a bluff with what looks like a stone mausoleum on top of it, and turn to face her. “Okay, Melina,” I say. “I need you to understand that I don’t even recognize half of the words you’re saying.”
She flushes. Shit, it’s cute. “I apologize, Sir Barrett. If you have any questions, please, ask. I shall answer all I can.”
“I think I just need a general primer,” I say. “Is there a good place to make camp? There’s a lot to talk about.”
“I might suggest up here,” calls a voice from above. For the second time in an hour I grab the DMT off my shoulder and spin to face someone new. A face is looking down at us from up the steep hill. The man’s wearing tattered clothes in white and grey, and a bone-white mask is affixed on his face. “Only,” he adds, “you are directly within sight of the patrol route of an Erdtree Sentinel, and there is a Site of Grace here.”
“An Erdtree Sentinel?” Melina asks sharply. “What is one of Leyndell’s most deadly defenders doing so far south?”
“I had not thought to ask him,” says the man in the mask. Now, I’ve got absolutely zero context, as I just made clear to Melina. But even without context, his sarcasm sticks out enough to trip over. “You are welcome to do so. Particularly if you are not especially attached to your entrails.”
“I like my entrails right where they are, thanks,” I say. “We’ll come up.”
“Ah, the strange creature does speak!” says the man. “A pleasant surprise indeed. Come, join me here. There is no sense in shouting halfway from here to the Church of Elleh.”
The man turns and vanishes behind the crest of the hill. I glance at Melina. “You know that guy?”
“I do not,” she says. “But I can tell you that he is Tarnished. That does not necessarily make him either ally or enemy to you. Most whom you encounter, here in the Lands Between, will be dedicated to one or another demigod, lord, or cause. Most will, if they do not immediately recognize you as sharing their loyalty, attack at once. Tarnished alone are unbound from such fealty, though some take it up of their own volition. You are more likely to find Tarnished willing to speak with you than you are to find others willing to do the same.”
That’s… actually helpful. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I have a whole world to catch up on, gotta start somewhere. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s have a word with him, then.”