We didn't really fit around the roundtable, but we made do. We discussed responsibilities over the next twenty years or so. The Prince of Death could watch the Lord without fear of reprisal. Anywhere there were dead, he could find an eye.
The Lord of Chaos was rebuilding some old tower of Farum Azula. We could see the structure even from here, at the center of the dry sea. Yet, for all the power of the stolen Elden Ring, the Frenzied Flame could not build anything. Just as before, the outcasts had gathered around it in resentment. The merchant clan was all dead, and the Omens had mostly chosen the Queen. That left the pygmies of the vulgar militias.
With their frailty, the tower's completion would take many years. We would use those, as best we each were able.
The Prince of Death volunteered first. His flesh was still the flesh of a demigod, rife with the power of the Crucible, however perverted. He had gathered all the dead smiths of the Golden Lineage, and they would forge arms from his Death-stained meat and black blood.
The Witch of Chaos was bringing to bear new forms of twisted life and stood on the brink of new magics. They would be hammer and shield at once. Their monsters would tear through the pygmies' ranks, and the witches would ward us from Flame and Frenzy.
To my people fell the task of being the main force. Those Who Live in Death, the skeletons and such, would bear the brunt of the sacrifice, but that was all they could accomplish. Ours was the sword and bow, the staff and talisman. Our knights would be the first to strike and the last to fall.
The Gloam-Eyed Queen, former candidate for living god, would ensure we all kept to our tasks and did not work against the others.
So we swore on Destined Death.
It was quiet as we departed. There was much to be done. Aside from the preparations themselves, I needed to describe all this to a people who were only now finding their feet in this world of ash. Before we turned away for the final time, my wife asked what manner of building the Frenzied Flame would need to construct.
Of course the Witch would want a rotting, burning Tree for her insects and beasts. Yet the Lord of Chaos was incarnation of a god and only used its people. What could it possibly need from mere stone? I had seen such before, in the North, for another Flame.
"It's a kiln."