A man cannot kill a god.
The thought percolated, stuck upon a stone in the river.
How could a man hope to kill a god?
Searing madness intruding upon his mind, the howl of the accursed gathering within his ears. A shrill shout of defiance toward the heavens. Shabiri! Gideon hissed within the solitude of his own thoughts. The Three Fingers! He should have slain that blasted Tarnished from beyond the sea when she was a toddling neophyte!
It all has a purpose, he just had to see it. He had to see it. What purpose was heresy? What purpose was madness loosed upon the world, aimed at her greatest champions?
She has high hopes for us…
The metal of his gauntlets groaned from his death grip. The ink upon his metal fingers slid away. The scent of old books hung upon him like a shroud, his very own funeral adornment. The reek of smoke clung to him, already his funereal pyre before he had even seen it. All-knowing indeed! More like the All-foolish!
The scent of madness burned his eyes. He could still feel them, boiling and bursting within his head. Chaos! Endless. Burning. Recursion of the world. The great golden expanse burned back, the world converging into a scene of terror and discord, chaos wrapped upon chaos, blighting and boiling.
A man cannot kill a god.
Maybe a blasphemy could.
All his vaunted tomes, every grimoire, every secret torn from unwilling lips. Every iota of knowledge plundered and devoured and it still fell short of the prize, from the looming specter of lordship. From the very start, when the grace of gold had stirred him from dark dreams Sir Gideon Ofnir knew that it would be him that stood at the foot of the Erdtree, every part of his life for this purpose! In all his lives, endlessly marched forward, always making progress toward the goal as great warriors of renown fell by the wayside, the grace of gold dimming in their eyes!
Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-knowing!
The brute from the Badlands could be defeated with a stolen blade, Nephali of the line of Loux, to challenge the sire of her line. He could have done it. Bitterness twisted his lips beneath his enchanted helm. It was not to be. Even as the thought percolated, twisted within his mind like errant serpents, he knew it was folly.
For a man could not kill a god.
Gideon surmised that he could defeat Horah Loux, even if the battle was well fought. The crown would be warranted by strength, the strength of the mind. Some might have deigned to accuse Gideon of cowardice, but they were fools of the highest order. What might lay in confrontation upon an even field? What might lay in uncertainty? Instead, all the disorder was made orderly, everything laid and placed for the ultimate showdown.
He'd taken the measure of his fellow Tarnished. Let the Dung Eater plot, until his latest obsession defiled him in turn. Let the Deathbed Companion peddle her blasphemous lusts. Permitted the Goldmask to wander to and fro in the wilderness, an aimless pilgrim. Stifled the search of Godfrey, led him astray until he arrived after the die was cast.
Each of the demi-gods lay dead, except for the blasted Witch. Morgott and Mohg. Malenia and Miquella. Godwyn and Godrick. Radahn and Rykard. Only Ranni remained, and he could taste the fabric of her spells upon her champions, but she had been of no consideration.
Scorned the grace of gold, scorned the Great Rune Marika carved from her own chest to cast to an ungrateful stepdaughter.
The water sloshed about his armored boots. Sir Gideon Ofnir lifted his eyes, the comforting weight of his scepter resting in his palms as a balm upon his mind. What was this? His thoughts drifted from form and memory.
It was a city?
The greatest scholar of the known world racked his mind, filled with more edicts and tomes than the greatest libraries. What was this new heresy?
Where was the light of the Erdtree? Pale eyes peered heavenward at a storm-filled sky. Obscured. Perhaps not all was lost, he gripped the fingers of his scepter tightly, and Sir Gideon Ofnir might still see it done.
The buildings were a pale grey or made of rustic baked brick, held together with no spells but the spoils of the earth, mud, and dirt. Truly a depraved city, second only to the cold harsh ruins of the Nox. His feet, clad in armor, carried him into the street, or what he surmised to be a street in passing.
There was a wailing in the air, a distant screech, almost like a clarion call, but stretched, looping as if the caller had no need for the luxury of breath. The wind and rain pelted Gideon's armor, finding its way beneath the gaps in his armor to penetrate his armor and dampen his gambeson.
"Hey!" Someone, a woman, called out and Gideon's slow pondering walk ceased, his aged eyes flickering around the empty street before rising toward the voice. His free hand held his scepter in a loose grip.
It was a girl, not a woman. Gideon grimaced with distaste. She was floating on a chunk of stone. Impressive, Gideon noted to himself, especially in one so young, perhaps a Selian sorcerer? Gravity magic was something those lackwits embraced after General Radahn saved them from the evil portents of the stars.
"Hey!" The girl said again, "Do you need a lift? We need everyone on hand!"
"A lift?" Sir Gideon Ofnir replied, his mind working more slowly than usual.
"Yes, just climb aboard!" The girl replied promptly, yet her fingers twisted and twined around themselves as she anxiously clenched her fists.
Slowly, Gideon nodded, inclining his head. Part of him grated at being all bit conscripted into whatever this sapling girl needed, but the cold pragmatic side of him whispered that he did not recognize the city he had found himself after his ignoble defeat. The man who held himself as the All-knowing did not recognize the clothing that the sorceress wench was clothed in and Gideon had traveled all the way to the land across the sea, to the distant Land of Reeds and the Badlands further on.
And the fact remained. Sir Gideon Ofnir did not recognize something. How long had he lingered in a state of undying within the Lands Between? Had so many years passed? His grip along his scepter tightened in his gauntlets.
With a spryness that belied the years he had toiled within his body, Gideon leaped onto the platform of stone which had begun to lower toward him, reaching it in a single bound. His gauntlets dug into the stone and he had to reprise his estimates. It wasn't stone, it crumbled beneath his fingers like gravel. Gideon shook his head slightly, trouble for another time, perhaps.
"Lead on, sorceress," Gideon ordered, rising from the half-crouch he found himself in.
"I'm not a sorc- wait- are those ears?"
Gideon did not even blink.
"A thousand ears and two, enough to hear all the knowledge of the world," his response was pithy, a common saying attributed to him, which he had easily used to his advantage. The battles that he had not had to fight solely because of his reputation the All-hearing meant it was time well spent.
It did betray his identity -but even here in a distant land he'd evidentially never been to, besides the peculiar fact that the tongue the sorceress spoke was the same -they would have still heard of him. A myth propagated farther than its sire, after all.
"You -what -whatever," the girl said, arms twitching, pulling the hunk of faux-stone into the sky, where it was pelted mercilessly by the wind and rain.
"Leviathan spotted in M-14," a voice spoke as clear as day. Gideon startled, and a spell of repulsion half-formed, held within his mind as his head rotated quickly, eyes cast about for the speaker. A Black Knife? A sorcerer utilizing Unseen Form? A Nox?
"Good," the sorceress with him said, "That's in chink territory."
Then she seemed to realize what she said and glanced toward Gideon. Gideon, for his part, frowned, he was missing some context, assuredly. And what was Leviathan? A beast? Were they hunting a beast? A manhunt? A dragon?
Gideon's frown deepened, his brows furrowing. The platform lurched and started in a direction directly against the wind and rain. The girl next to him turned her head away from the rain so she could speak.
"Who are you supposed to be anyway? Some kind of knight? An ear-knight?" The girl asked, before adding under her voice, "Gross."
"I am Sir Gideon Ofnir," Gideon replied without inflection.
"Got it, a knight," the girl murmured before raising her voice, "Well, I'm Rune, so that's that."
Rune? Who'd name their child after the fragments of the Golden Order? The greatest tragedy to befall the entirety of creation and the cosmos? Gideon had no words, just a frown that was continuously etched upon his aged face beneath the ensorcelled darkness of his helmet.
A great winding shriek went up in the air and the newly named Rune flinched. Gideon twitched, before ducking as well, a curse upon his lips, as a great metal dragon swooped down from above. Thunder broke the air, spats of flashes bursting from the dragon's maw as it crashed down between two buildings. Rune immediately swung the platform in that direction and Gideon tightened his grip around the handle of his specter.
Something dark skittered across his mind and then he blanched. His first thought was that the dragon was their quarry, for all that it was a scrawny specimen, but now he saw that it was not so. Instead, the dragon was more akin to the Ancient Dragons, allies of man and the Golden Order. Its talons dug into a beast, unlike anything Gideon had ever seen before.
Gangly limbs tipped with cruel talons, scales adorning limbs that stretched too far. A mirror figure of water clung to the creature's surface, following each movement unerringly like a malformed silver mimic, as liquid as the lake that sloshed beneath its taloned feet.
The creature swayed, glancing up toward Gideon, and Gideon noted in an instant that its face was similarly malformed, asymmetrical, with an odd number of eyes on one side, three on the right, and one on the left.
Its limbs moved, a great limb scything forward to slip effortlessly through the flesh and bone of a figure who lingered in front of the beast overlong. The dragon tried to swerve in between and the creature feinted, limb pulling backward only for the mirror image of water to catch the dragon and pull it forward into the talons of the creature.
Metal shrieked and groaned, and the dragon came apart, Gideon raised his brow. A marionette dragon? A golem dragon? Gideon considered the dragon a second, before dismissing it as immaterial. The dragon tumbled into the water, sparks leaping from its metallic flesh.
Rune inhaled sharply, the air seeming to almost rattle into her lungs, she turned to Gideon, voice wavering, "Do you need me to get you closer?"
Gideon paused, staring down as the beast flitted, almost faster than he could see toward another. A man in blue spat spells without forming glyphs from his hands. Knives and swords grew from the side of the building like a vine forced to endure all the years of its growth at once.
Gideon wavered. He knew nothing of the beast. He had to return, return to the Erdtree and stop that blasted frenzied Tarnished from destroying the Erdtree.
He was the All-knowing and this was an enemy that he did not know.
Yet…
He was Sir Gideon Ofnir, greatest of the Tarnished!
"This will suffice," Gideon replied, voice as cold as the Consecrated Snowfields.
His mind clutched at the amber of the cosmos, glintstone boiling within his veins, he lifted his scepter-staff, cerulean light pouring into the aperture with a wooshing noise. He fixed the primal patterns of star and comet within his mind, holding it for an instant.
A man in steel armor stood before the creature, its tail swinging to scythe straight through the man when Gideon unleashed his sorcery upon the waking world. A beam of pure glintstone, of pure starlight burned into existence, scalding the very air, and slammed into the creature, Leviathan, with the force of a comet.
The ground seemed to shake and the creature leaped free from the beam, which continued on, slicing through the building behind him and boring a hole in the street below. The ground rumbled and a towering building behind the beast listed to the side, starting to slide downward.
"What the eff was that?" Rune screeched, lifting her hands from her eyes.
"Comet Azur, the most inelegant of the primal sorceries," Gideon hissed, the steam rising into the air, obscuring his vision for a moment. He gathered his power again, his blood turned to ice as he waved his hand, and a cold breeze, sorcery of Old Zamor, turned the vapor to crystalline ice which fell to the ground below instantly.
It was just in time for Gideon to see the creature as it bounded up the building next to Gideon and Rune, gangly limb outstretched, tipped with a taloned hand, in a single powerful swipe.
It would fall short… except for the echoing water which followed it. Gideon thought, mind already racing through more spells than the greatest of Raya Lucarian scholars had ever known.
Golden Discs of Fundamentalism formed, one above his head, and one over each of his pauldroned shoulders. The Golden Glyph formed between his fingers and the discs careened outward, slicing through the echo of water with an instant of thought, destabilizing it before they boomeranged back even as Rune juked her platform to the side with a strangled shriek.
The creature fell to the ground below, without a single sound, and Gideon released a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding.
Gideon gathered his mind and power, as the creature seemed to almost skate across the water to strike at a man in armor with a halberd, who dodged at the last second, skirting to the left. Gideon eyed the distance in between the two and then grinned a grim smile, desiccated lips pulling back over teeth yellowed with age.
He lifted the scepter once more, as the creature stabbed outward with a taloned hand toward the armored man.
A reddish glyph, burning, almost smoldering in the air, formed around him, reminiscent of an eye, before it swelled and burst. The glyph formed instantly around Gideon's frame, overlaid over Gideon's body.
"Knowledge Above All," Gideon murmured to himself, feeling inordinately proud. Leviathan, the beast below, seemed to stutter, twisting to stare at Gideon. Gideon swung his scepter, glintstone bolts forming with barely an exertion of will, slipping forward, homing toward the creature which danced away, almost evading the cerulean bolts. They impacted with the sound of crushing glass and Gideon frowned.
All the while the creature still stared upward at Gideon, seeming almost troubled and Gideon returned the twisted gaze levelly. He took his will and mind in hand again, grasping past the Fundamentalism, past the primeval glinstone. With the careful fingers of his mind, he grasped at the essence of the Goddess of Rot, drawing it within his soul but stopping it just short of corrupting his own essence.
A Scarlet Aeonia. A manifestation of decay and entropy visited upon a living land. With the sheer force and power of his will and mind, Gideon rose into the air for an instant, taking in the eyes of the creature upon him, the water-filled clone seeming to still in place with its master. The man it was fighting stared upward with a scowl upon a bearded face.
Gideon jumped. The orange petals formed around his form as he fell, and the butterflies of rot twisted into being, spontaneously generating from the remnants of Rot that swirled around him.
The creature swerved away for an instant, before it stilled, sensing an opening, and reached forward with a clawed hand to bisect Gideon with an enormous clawed hand. Gideon did not flinch, did not move as the claw crept closer and closer in full motion.
The bloom burst. The pollen of Rot spread outward in a wave, multicolored butterflies erupted into the air, and fragments of rot and orange essence splashed outward. One solitary speck, the smallest of such fragments alighted on Leviathan's outstretched talons.
Leviathan's hand continued onward, and Gideon tried to duck, to dive under the outstretched limb, but did not quite succeed, instead, the claw carved a gouge in his armor, straight along his belly and he stumbled, arm slipping into the water.
Ah, so this is how Gideon ends for the last time, slain by an ignoble beast, he thought sardonically.
Yet the next blow never came.
Leviathan had frozen in place. All four of his eyes were fixed on the spot of flesh where the Essence of Rot had graced his form. The eyes lifted toward Gideon, and something like intelligence glittered there.
Let the Rot take the beast, it was annoying enough already, Gideon spat, what would one more source of Rot in the world matter if that blasted Tarnished burned it all to Cinders?
The great beast towered above Gideon, three, almost four times as tall, a looming spectre of twisted limbs and water and Gideon waited, arm clutched at his side and then Leviathan shuddered. The creature turned, water swirling around him, and took a shuddering step and then another, and fled, leaving Rot in its wake.