What did I care for the spoils of battle? Had we not won? Could we not abandon unnecessary strength and return to our domains to build lives without celestial intervention?
It could not be so simple. How many would die? How many would live to grieve and die within? What little scraps we had rebuilt were yet still based upon the strength of runes.
These ageless, heartless beasts would take all from us. Our priests who tended the wounded and sick. Our astrologers who planned the growing season.
What of the lands over the sea where the Tarnished had fought in darkness? Did they still stand? Would these runeless outlands overrun us? What of the numen, from whom the likes of Marika had been groomed in secret? If all things were cyclical, then a new tyrant would surely rise.
My son looked to me. I wished he could have been born in peace. Not a second deicidal campaign. Already, I could see the edges of the cycle, I thought. I had so long ago regretted raising my daughters in rebellion against the Erdtree. I could save my son now but damn his children's children.
What would become of my wife, a creature so tied to powers beyond mortal reckoning? I held her then, exhausted and shaken but returned to her normal size.
I had to reject the offer, but to do so would kill us all. What was one Rune I could not recognize against the gathered might of the archdragons?
No. All but one.
I addressed her. I had completed my pact. The reward was mine. The wisdom of the Moon.
She smiled in the same terrifying way she had when we had first bargained. All my knights turned to me. I asked for the secret of dragonslaying. Not just the power they allowed their cult to wield in their name. Their truest weakness.
She generated a tiny spark of the archdragons' red lightning and placed it in my hand. She tapped me lightly on the chest and gave a knowing look.
Ah. That was it. It really was so common.
Even then, the choir of archdragons was impassive. They did not think anything of us. What was a gifted dragonbolt from a failure?
But I recognized my Rune now. I, who had once held back Ruin, now held Perfect Order. Perhaps this was exactly what they sought, a way to complete their cruel opera. Giantsflame burned in my soul. I had hidden when Marika had come to the North. I had rejected my own Ruin and allowed it to come to others.
Not this time. I rejected their cycle, cost be damned. I Perfected my Order.
Breathe in. Out. Stoke the inner fire. Feel the indignation of a conquered people.
The red lightning crackled in my hand.
In. Out. Feel the fire on your skin and in your blood.
The bolt sputtered and burnt me.
In. Out. Feel the weight of it. The understanding that mistakes were fatal. This was power and emotion in the raw.
The lightning flowed in and out of time like the flames within the kiln.
In. Out. In.
I raised my spear to the sky, and a pillar of light erupted, piercing the fog cover for the first time in years. Red-gold sunlight fell upon the Lands Between.
And we fell upon the dragons.