The mixed group had not only caught me unawares. Each one of my people was suddenly at bladepoint. They had risen from the ash like corpses. Obviously, I could not see much more than blades about my own throat, but I later came to see they were all fellow blasphemers. There were the bleak clerics of the Godslayers; the malformed and hated Omens, including members of the Dynasty of Blood; and even surviving Black Knives, deicides all.
At my throat were a mismatched and balanced pair of knives. One was a golden numen knife, shining with the light of the Erdtree. The other was a silver knife like a curled spine, dripping with rotted blood. My bodyguard's head tilted, and he growled at the woman holding them rather than the Omen twice his size pinning his own arms.
I didn't have to think on who could have gathered this menagerie of god-haters. The decoy approached. She trailed soot behind her like black snow. I met her eyes. One was the dull gold of a hero betrayed by the Erdtree's vile master. The other was nightfall itself.
This was the Gloam-Eyed Queen. Impossible of course. Her death marked Queen Marika's ascension and the beginning of immortality only recently ended. A witch dead long before Marika had broken my people. Had she been kept alive or reborn?
Her words were not what I expected.
"Please. Forgive my discourtesy. We are alike, you and I. We both have been betrayed by the one we trusted most."
She called each of us by name and by secret. It was as if she had walked among us unseen or could see into our very souls.
She offered us a deal. She too wished to kill the Lord of Chaos. The ancient bearer of Destined Death, she certainly had the means. Only, she she could not approach the final Lord's abode. The Erdtree was a burnt hollow. The Lord now dwelled at the bottom of the sea boiled dry. At its center was a sunken tower of the flying city Farum Azula, now exposed. There, the Lord plotted a final ritual to cast a second purging wave of Flame.
She asked us to be sacrifices. To hold the line against the Lord's minions and keep the attention of the Frenzied Flame's great eye, that her assassins might reach the throne.
It was blunt, but it would have been true regardless. No doubt my own plan would have devolved to a knife in the dark. Better that professional killers make the attempt, for we would only have one.
Only, how could we trust them? True, I too had sought to undermine the Order of the Erdtree. My people's plans were only more halfhearted. I did not begrudge the killers their violence. My concern was what powers they would draw from the body of the Lord who had consumed the Elden Ring entire.
The Queen smiled.