It's nice to see a successful romance every now and then; you two seem to get along well.

"It helps that there's no pressure. No politics. No fate of the world. Just lots of oil, mechanical or otherwise."

Also, actual, legitimate relationship discussions. We're from very different time periods, social statuses, and religious backgrounds. We have no business even being in the same room, much less sharing one."

The less said of Alken and Venn, the better.

"Oh, but we're just getting started! Don't you want to hear about King Vendrick's parents?"

Was the Brotherhood of Blood active in its current state, or was it more of a conventional gladiatorial arena?

"You'd have to go back pretty far for them to be anything other than raving lunatics. They were much quieter during Drangleic's height, but that was about all."

Why did you avoid bonfires so consistently? Even if you consider them a crutch that leads to complacency their usefulness is undeniable.

"Oh, it's nothing that fancy. I've seen undead get trapped before. You rest at a bonfire that looks convenient, and then something unexpected happens. Like that Creighton fellow you mentioned getting trapped in the Huntsman's Copse because he attuned to a bonfire that was inside a cage."

I must admit I spent far too long admiring the bridge to the hinterlands of old Alken. It was higher quality than the last and hadn't suffered the same degradation. Truly, it was a sign of the civilization of the land beyond.

I did eventually cross and made my way to the top of the hills at last. From there on, it seems to be a rocky wasteland. The hills and fields are barren of dirt – just exposed bedrock – and even the trees themselves are petrified. You know this.

Do you realize how impressive it is that anything was built there at all? The imports of food and water to sustain a workforce would have been staggering. Even after the land has decayed so far, one can find the remains of carts on the supply lines.

Do you remember what you felt when you emerged from the crevice leading out of the hills and toward the main plateau? Where the rocks part and force you to look up at the central tower? Where the scent of acid and poison catch the wind and overwhelm you?

I felt so alive! (Though that might have also been the device in my chest purifying my hollowing.) It was just like the old days, when I led my team to forge siege weapons for the kingdom. Cannons to breach walls! Bombs to clear passages! Great moving carts of iron to shield our men on the approach!

…none of which were adequate for the attack on the giants. But that will come later.

The great central tower, ruined as it was, inspired an awe in me. It was singularly taller than anything the King had ordered constructed, as if it clawed at the heavens themselves. It was primitive, perhaps, but it showed an ambition and earnestness.

You've seen the King's castle? The great work of flawless black stone atop a lonely mountaintop? Isn't that so telling? I always respected the King. Yet, does he not seem afraid? That everything must be perfect and flawless and lonely?

Well, I suppose this is all philosophy. Practically speaking, I just walked to the gate. Poison pond in front of the bonfire? My legs can't be poisoned. Poison fog? Nothing I don't already have a breathing mask for. I shot a few skeletons and the parasitic overseer, then walked.

Now, I definitely hesitated as I approached the gate. I'm not saying that the women of Catarina are homely. I am saying that I was pent up, and that prostitutes usually wear more than the desert sorceresses of Jugo.

I'm not going to say that I exploded. …I did definitely get vamped, though.

Well, one trip from the bonfire later, I shot both of them, just to be sure. The rest of the journey was quite boring. I shot some hollow blacksmiths and entered the tower. Inside the tower, I made certain not to break any pots, because whatever was in them definitely smelled poisonous. I shot some more hollows, another sorceress, and a headless, jumpy thing which I later learned was a manikin.

Then, I came upon a soul fog. I was not about to go through another chase around a circular room. Fortunately, there was a ventilation shaft off to the side. I popped the grille off and climbed up, trusting in my ability to hold my breath and not pass out from fumes.

I climbed out not terribly far from the bonfire above. After linking with it, I continued upward. Now, the manikin ambush on the stairs did nearly get the better of me, but I already had my dragóns ready in those close quarters. Crossing the bridge above wasn't an issue – I just short the archers.

Now, the grave warden? Shot him too. Silverblack isn't the sturdiest of metals, so I had no trouble puncturing even a larger shield. Only… why was a grave warden present in a heavy metals refinery? It's an awfully long way from the the Undead Crypt, and there's not really anything related to the Great Dead One in old Alken.

Your contact turns.

"Care to explain, darling?"

"Blood of a dragon, if tainted and thin. The Great Dead One has always been closely associated with things which cannot die and with the Deep Waters. The Sunken Kingdom is not far to the west. The mines of Harvest Valley dug deep indeed and touched upon the poisons which destroyed the Sanctum City.

A serpent is an imperfect dragon. The mistress of the tower was in more than one respect, the heir to the Slumbering Dragon of the Sanctum. A dragon's heir is a precious thing indeed. It goes without saying that the servants of the Dead One would guard her, to preserve that lineage from extinction."

"Darling, that is a lot of words. I know that our good Monarch has been to the Sanctum City, but…"

Your contact turns to you again.

"Did slowly you walk through and investigate those old ruins, or did you just loot the place like the King's men? Well, anyway, the story is off track now. I was kind of aiming for a consistent narrative, but now there's this thing about dragon heirs that won't matter until the end. Maybe. Let's pretend we didn't do this. We're just going to ignore the grave wardens."

"Honestly, dear, there's not a simple answer."

"I respectfully disagree, but I am going to return to the story."

So anyway, you've been in the tower. You know it's full of ambushes from manikins, and they're stabby and quick and have throwing knives. Sounds like a bad time for me. However, since they only came in pairs, I mostly just shot them. Mind, without heads, there wasn't an obvious weak point. So I shot their legs. As they limped toward me, I reloaded and shot again. It gave me plenty of practice reloading both gonnes at once.

That wasn't the problem. The sorceresses and grave wardens weren't a problem. The poison pools weren't a problem. The problem was that there was a clown following me.

A clown. Yes, that one.

Thomas.

The Old Iron King's favorite jester.

He had a habit of playing with switches throughout the tower, setting things on fire, exploding toxic vats, luring enemies to you… You know. Clown things.

I didn't even get to appreciate the tower as much as I would have liked. Can you imagine such large-scale machinery, exposed to the elements and all manner of corroding chemicals, continuing to function for upwards of two hundred years? Without maintenance! In spite of its seeming crudeness, it showed a dedication to craftsmanship which is so rarely seen.

But every time I tried to stop and admire a cog or a turbine, the damned clown would jingle his bells and explode a pot of chemicals.

I did eventually manage to reach the pinnacle of the tower without the clown driving me mad. Of course there was a fog wall, and of course, there was nowhere else to go. I needed to reach Iron Keep, and the paranoid old king ensured there was no means of getting into the Keep's caldera save through some ridiculous secret passage in the tower.

So, I remembered Aldia's advice and set all three gonnes to use firedrake stones. Only, it was peculiar. Why was Jester Thomas, a former inhabitant of the Keep, spending time in the tower outside? Why was the clown attached to me? Why was a pyromancer so near at hand as I approached a battle which would surely require fire? This was the opposite of the situation with the ill-prepared warlock.

I passed through the fog with the clown and found myself in a truly massive pool of poison. Before I could take stock of the situation, the fool began conjuring fire.

"Hold, jester," I said.

To his credit, he stopped. Of course, that didn't stop the monster whose den we'd just entered. This gorgeous green gal with the lower body of a snake lunged at us. I almost got impaled on some old, magical symbol stuck on the end of a pole. Now, it did take me a moment to notice she was decapitated, and that thing in her other hand was her head.

Her body was quite thoroughly reptillian, but her face was totally unblemished. I mean, she had dragon horns coming out of her hair, but that was a minor detail. The poison had dyed her flesh so that she seemed to be wearing high-class (if a bit old-fashioned) makeup.

You might have noticed that throughout the story I freeze every time a beautiful woman attacks me. Well, it happened again. Since I wasn't moving, she swept me into the air with the inside of her spear, then bound me in her tail.

Of course by now, I'd realized who it was – Aldia's priority target, the former consort of King Ferran. That is, Princess Mytha of the Sanctum City. Well, she certainly looked like the illustrations I'd seen of the poison dragon at the heart of the Sanctum.

I thought for a moment as I started blacking out from air loss. The Sanctum City may have been full of insane dragon worshipers, but the monuments they had built to the dragon were complex works of stone machinery. What information about these devices could be salvaged from the Sunken Kingdom were standard texts in the training for the Royal Drangleic Engineer Corps.

Given that, was it possible that the princess had been the mind behind the tower? Was it that no maintenance had been performed for two hundred years or was it that the original designer was still directing regular maintenance? So I took a gamble.

"Is this based on the rising defense columns outside the Sanctum?" I squeezed out.

The coils loosened. She raised her head to my level and met my eyes. Her own were almost blank, from the madness adjacent to hollowing. Yet they focused just so slightly.

"What do you know of sunken Shulva?" she said, every bit the queen in spirit, even if she'd been divorced and apparently beheaded at some point.

I'm making some progress, so I just continue, "Precious little, princess. Only what King Vendrick could-"

And she threw me across the room. My legs are immune to poison, but I just swallowed a crapton and am face-down in it. At this point, I'm poisoned for sure, so I grab for one of my lifegems. Only, I had let them sit in a chest for a hundred years or more, so they're all big, beefy ones now. I absolutely should have left wine in there too.

Anyway, I pop the lifegem and stand up. The damned clown had been distracting the princess, but he apparently was still following orders and hadn't just turned the poison pool into a sea of fire.

I almost made the mistake of asking what beef Mytha had with the King. That was the problem, really. Beef – the old bull. Old King Ferran. Setting aside several daughters who probably died terribly, he had two sons: the Duke of Aldia and King Vendrick.

What's the Duke of Aldia's name?

Now, in these inbred royal families, everyone is named after everyone else. The original Vendrick was the idiot king who effectively founded the kingdom and then ruined it for everyone by dividing it into Alken and Venn at his death. Ferran of Alken, the Old Iron King, fought against his cousin, Ferran of Venn.

I cannot state enough how much monarchy is a crapshoot.

So naturally, the Ferran we care about – the Old Iron King with aspirations of world conquest – names his firstborn son "Vendrick" after the ancestor who founded the kingdom. Sure, fine. Then there's the fiasco with his remarriage, and he names his new heir "Vendrick" as well.

Reminding the mother of the elder brother Vendrick that she was disgraced and her son disinherited had been a mistake on my part. But then I realized.

That bastard Aldia had told me to kill his own mother.

I mean, the casual cruelty wasn't surprising. It's Aldia. It was how bold he was in asking.

Before, I'd been curious about whether Princess Mytha could be reasoned with. Now, I wanted to convince her to stop fighting out of spite. I'd get her to go into hiding or something so that that rat bastard couldn't win.

I'm sorry. That was rude to the Rat King. A rat would never do this.

Anyway, I might have taken longer than I should have to think on what I needed to say. Part of it was because what I said next would decide the fate of the kingdom. But also it was because I wanted to watch the damned clown struggle for a little longer.

"This tower is beautiful!" I yelled, waving around. "It's a little rough, for certain, but it may be the only industry left in Drangleic!"

She turned her head to me without turning her body from its attacks on the clown and said something like "What would you know, usurper-servant?"

And so, going back to what I mentioned earlier, "I know that gear trains don't maintain themselves. Or if they do, then that's really impressive engineering, to be totally honest. Like your magic poison makeup or whatever's going on with that. I'm no alchemist, but I know enough to recognize how complex something so precise and enduring would be."

And Mytha just stops.

Your contact pauses for dramatic effect, only to be interrupted by the tall woman.

"Truthfully, that was the first time I realized why I was so bitter."

She raises her veil to reveal a powder-green face with lips and eyes that shine malachite green – like the old, toxic cosmetics.

"I wanted him to see me, to want me. That wasn't why it hurt so. A broken heart can mend. Even betrayal becomes dull with time. What drove me to such desperation was that in all he did, he denied my efforts.

The machines of the Sanctum City, he took for his own purposes. The magics of our stone guardians, our art of binding the dead. My son and daughters. I had given him all I had and been his faithful companion. He left me alone with nothing, a traitor to my people."

"Mytha."

The pair clasp hands, and your host smirks at you through the mask.

"Well, you can see there was a happy ending in my journey. But it took some doing. I'll go ahead and get back to the point."

Right, so I'm not going to say she started crying, but it kind of felt like it. I asked if she wanted to talk about it. The usual sort of thing. It was one of my duties as a captain to help walk my men back from the terrors of "nostalgia" when they began to suffer flashbacks or other attacks. Not quite the same issue here, but I did my best.

Now, I was so occupied that I didn't notice the clown go missing. Good riddance. I hope you put him in a shallow grave. But that wasn't the last of him, for sure.

Anyway, Mytha took some time to regain her royal dignity. In the meanwhile, we actually ended up roasting the King. I mean, the fall of the kingdom was his fault. I didn't lose most of my limbs to a dragon just so he could run off and hide from his wife. Not that I knew at the time; I was mostly just taking the piss.

We also might have gotten more than slightly drunk. Alcohol is a type of poison, my friend, and Earthen Peak produces all types of poisons.

Mytha had her issues with the "usurper" of course. And his mother. But the more we talked, the more we settled on it being Ferran's fault. Queen Berengel was wily, but she only preyed on the weakness already present in a tiny man who fancied himself a raging bull.

All things considered, King Vendrick couldn't really be blamed for all that happened. He even patched things up with his elder brother once his power was secure. And then the two of them accidentally destroyed the Sanctum City, but that's a story for another night.

And I definitely still blame the King for Knight Syan's death. And for the other thing with Knight Syan that I'll tell you later.

To the point, Mytha and I decided that Ferran had some explaining to do. I needed a map; she needed closure. And also someone to help her fit through normally-sized doors. Let me tell you: with her size, the elevator ride later was cozy.

We moved on to what I was doing there in the first place. Aldia experimented on me. Aldia ordered her killed. Also, Aldia promised to get me a boat so I can make a suicide attack on a dragon.

In the end, she had some choice words about Aldia which I don't think either of us will repeat.

"I do not wish for venomous feelings to feed my poison. The specialists in Catarina say it may only be a handful of years before they can completely purge the filth from my body. There is a young doctor with her own clinic who has developed a sophisticated centrifuge which may serve to extract much of the toxins from my blood."

"It is quite exciting."

So again, the two of us decided that we would seek Ferran together. Obviously, the relationship the old king had with his sons was not spectacular either. If I just waltzed in and told him that the disinherited son wanted a map, I wasn't going to be any more successful than if his ex-wife asked in person.

Now, I didn't know what Mytha's ultimate goal was at the time, and as we discussed, we're not going to break up the story with multiple character arcs. As it happened, I was still on track to getting a boat so I could return to the land of giants and fight the dragon that blasted off my arm and legs and killed all my men.

All I had to do now was reach the bottom of a burning caldera while standing next to a highly-flammable poison woman and carrying enough firebomb powder to destroy Thorolund. The Old Iron King didn't know it yet, but I was already his favorite person, by sheer likelihood of exploding.