Mytha, does wine have any effect on you? I doubt even the strongest of poisons will do anything to you as you are now.

Mytha takes a thoughtful sip.

"Well, no. Perhaps I would have handled my disgrace and exile better if I had been able to drink myself to nirvana. No matter; all was for the best.

My constitution allows me drink entirely for the flavor. That said… don't… don't underestimate Bel. I remain unconvinced that she did not replace her liver with a small furnace. Without limbs, she should have a much lower tolerance than the average human – not enough to compete with Gyrm!"

About the only decent options for banter were a cat, a hag, and a shifty old git holding himself up by his stomach.

Bel shudders.

"Ugh. The 'laddersmith.' We had to work with him on one of Aldia's new pet projects not long ago. Another secret world like the fake Drangleic. Except this one was in a painting instead of a lake reflection.

Would you believe that that lunatic, that laddersmith, loves his craft so much – loves wood so much – that he married a tree woman?

Well, 'married.' They have a son, and the laddersmith hasn't totally abandoned the pair. Kid's eyes are creepy as hell, though."

The Twin Dragons, were they the Old Paledrake and the Black Dragon?

"Yeah. More generally, the ideas ascribed to the two became the overriding philosophies for thought within the kingdom. Vendrick followed the White school and tried to find a very direct, rational solution to the Curse. Aldia followed the Black school and tried a bunch of esoteric shit that mostly resulted in unspeakable horrors."

I'm honestly not sure how long we sat there. I could probably run the numbers based on the rate of burning, but the short of it is that we left only once we had used all the easy firewood in the area.

Like I said earlier, it was humanizing to just have a "normal" moment. Even if we couldn't sleep, just having a campfire conversation and time to reflect set things right. I'd put my armor back on just as soon as it was dry enough. Nothing was going to get truly dry with the rain. Damp-but-not-dripping was fine. It would preserve my body heat.

Mytha had a bit more trouble with her enormous, cold-blooded body. She ended up wrapped around the fire (and me) to try and spread the heat. I'd sometimes get up for more wood. Needed to give it plenty of time to dry next to the fire before we put it on. Otherwise, I held onto her head most of the time, keeping her awake with my body heat.

It probably should have been more awkward, but we were both in "holy hell, this is cold" mode. Once you've warmed up once, you really start to notice the chill. We were reluctant to leave when we did, but the fire just wasn't going to last.

Now, while it was sputtering, I took some fallen branches too long to burn (since we didn't have an axe) and collected some tough ivy. Mytha and I tied the branches to her tail. When we finally left, she waddled on top of that "shoe," walking rather than slithering. Of course, there's a proper way for snakes to slither through mud, but it works a little differently with her upper body.

We fought through the rain until we reached the tunnel of the sealed mountain pass. The mud gave way to stone and carved steps, though the tunnel itself was a little short for Mytha. On the other side, the defenses weren't mercenaries, but the kingdom's own elite, the royal swordsmen. Or… they'd been the elite when I still knew the kingdom.

They were armed with crossbows rather than the gonnes I'd expected. Little surprise there. I couldn't truly expect hollows to keep up the powder production, and in this rain, they'd have needed the gonnes I'd made for the invasion force rather than the standard. Only my best would keep the powder dry.

Up we went, and the two of us saw the castle for the first time. Even for someone without faith, seeing Drangleic Castle was something of a religious experience. A black castle in black night, limned by an obscured moon. This was the Dark of Man.

Mytha said something unflattering about the King and his mother instead.

I noticed something familiar about the statues I saw atop the arch but couldn't place the memory yet. As we passed under and saw the Primal Knights ahead, I… wasn't as careful as I should have been.

At best, I knew about the King's golems. I had seen old Ferran's soulbound armors and Mytha's manikins, but it hadn't occurred to me that a statue could up and move. The joints were the problem, of course. Iron pins can move in their sockets, but stone shouldn't bend. The problem is that they weren't golems at all.

The trick is that the King's men were all closer to the stone dragons than Aldia's creations ever were. The trick is that the dragons are eternal because they've detached from the world. So many of the castle's servants had done so as well. They cared only for the King, and without him there…

They turned to stone.

They remembered their mission, though. As we approached the Primal Knights, they shook off their petrification and started to block our path. I yelled to Mytha, and she tackled one off the stairs while I blasted the other.

Approaching the gate, we didn't have as much trouble. I shot one of the royal swordsmen as he was getting into position, which showed the mechanism of opening the gate by feeding the golems with souls. We activated the second pull and rushed inside before too many hollows came against us.

This interior was grand but also decayed. And rain was falling through a very deliberate hole in the roof which I'd have pegged for a major architectural flaw. Certainly, an atrium with a skylight was common in ancient Thorolund, but those atriums normally have pools to catch the rain!

Well, as you know, the King's chancellor and majordomo was standing there, arms crossed in thought. Very poised in spite of everything. Always ready to serve the King, just as he had served the King's mother as Queen of Venn. Certainly a handsome man and the very image of a Drang noble, if that image were also a ghost.

How much research have you done with Aldia? Enough to learn that "ghosts" are created by exposure to Dark which has not been perverted to an Abyss? Of course, there was an Abyss beneath the castle and a Daughter of the Abyss living in its upper chambers. The dedication Wellager had – the same determination which had turned the other servants to stone – had instead quieted the Abyss which tried to take the King's inner circle.

The pair guarding the secret Throne below had begun to corrupt, as you saw when you took their souls. As did the King's shield – and his sword, long exiled. Only Wellager resisted, and you saw what it did to him.

"The silversmith…" he said as I climbed the stair to him. "By whose order have you come? I have not been informed of any deficiencies in our diningware."

He paused for a moment and stared down at Mytha. He had trouble focusing. All the symptoms of hollowing, save bodily rot.

"Queen Mytha… Your son the Duke was long ago confined to his manor. Now that he has disappeared from that place, I could not tell you of his whereabouts even if my Lord ordered it. Only, my Lord…"

He was fading. I snapped near his face to get his attention.

"Chancellor, focus," I said. "We need to speak with Queen Nashandra. Do you know where she is?"

"The Queen…" was all he said.

There was something wrong. He was suffering under the dreamlike peace of unperturbed Dark, sure, but something about the Queen was like a rock in his shoes. He struggled to process it, before his head snapped either direction as if he'd fallen asleep.

"You are guests of the Queen and this castle," he said after a moment. "How strange for her to invite the prior Queen of Alken. Queen Nashandra had been close to the Queen of Venn, His Majesty's mother… Both you and Queen Mytha are machinists, are you not? Does the Queen seek to expand the mechanisms of the upper tower?"

I shrugged internally but showed no outer disagreement. No sense in arguing with someone on the edge of hollowing.

"Yes," I said. "Where is Queen Nashandra?"

"The Queen…" he said again. "She used to sit alongside our Lord. Now… she waits in a tower apart… Where she has taken him, we do not know. The knights… dedicated to the kingdom's protection… spend their days guarding the Queen… To protect her… or to protect the kingdom from her… I cannot tell."

We knew we weren't going to get much more out of Wellager, so we moved on. Of course, I could handle one Syan Knight alone, so with Mytha, they weren't much of an issue. I wonder what the King was thinking when he commissioned such heavy knights. Even the King's hands had little use of shields in the war with the giants.

Well, there was a bit of awkwardness getting Mytha down the ladder, and there were some low ceilings in places, but the castle's defences weren't anything to speak of. It was baffling. Old King Ferran's samurai were a much more bothersome threat.

Well, we made our way up. Past the pool of acid created by the acid cannons with broken safeties. Past the spooky mask room which shoots poison darts. Past the giant, pointless painting of the Queen which curses you so as to leave no doubt that she's an evil bitch.

Then we came before the Queen of Drangleic herself, in all her glory. The stained glass windows about her were all aglow with moonlight, and a pair of braziers illuminated her front. Incidentally, they were magic braziers which also kept her trapped in that room until she got desperate and broke through to kill you.

Now, I'd tried to think of a proper way to ask our questions without revealing too much, but then Mytha up and said, "You look just like the harlot who ruined the kingdom of Shulva! It is little wonder this place is more empty than the look on your face. I've heard nothing of the King leaving any heirs. I trust your marriage bed was likewise as still as the grave."

Now, I had to stop and think about what sort of education a priestess-princess would have had to produce this level of insult. Maybe politics was a worthwhile field of study after all.

Of course, the Queen didn't take that sitting down. Or I guess she technically did, since she never stood while we were speaking with her.

Anyway, she said, "What is that hissing I hear? Is it a harmless garden snake or so much hot air escaping from a bloated cow? I'm afraid I have no time for a breeding sow long past its prime."

"You forget we were both sold as chattel. At least I produced something of value to the kingdom and not merely a ruinous war. My husband was taken from me – you lost yours to your own game, just as your sister lost my brother. Failure must run in the family. Perhaps we should thank the ancient dragons that your blood didn't stain the royal line."

"You!" the Queen hissed, arms rising on her throne as she tried to appear calm. "I did not lose my husband!"

"Ah, you are correct!" Mytha said, smirking. "The good chancellor thought he was with you. You simply must have misplaced him. Perhaps in a cupboard with that giant princess?"

"It was not like that!", Nashandra yelled as she snapped the armrests with her bare hands. "It was… it was my price to pay. He had to find her, just as his father did. Yet, there was one great difference between them. Blood, the essence of Dark.

A bond to kin is an affinity greater than any other. No illusion such as love would hold a Man like Vendrick. And so I lost him."

At the end of her outburst, her voice was starting to sound strange. Low and echoey. You'd recognize it as the voice of her true form.

Well, regardless of how it was done, Mytha had managed to get something out of the Queen. Vendrick was kin to the giants but not Ferran? So it was his mother Berengel, who'd forced Mytha out of Alken.

Bel gives a long sigh.

"Alright, this is the point where we start the hard drinking. Get settled in."

She tilts her head back and chugs the remainder of her rice wine.

"Now, how much do you know about roles of a regular royal family?

An unwed king's marriage prospects are often arranged by his mother. She handles the work of meeting with the bridal candidates and organizing their maids and such. Not really something that warrior-kings enjoy spending time on.

Queen Nashandra just sort of appeared. But if anyone had met her before King Venrick, it would have been Berengel."

Bel takes an architect's pencil from a belt slot and begins sketching on an unused cloth napkin. She draws ridiculous-looking tiny caricatures of the main characters here: Vendrick with an oversized beard, Nashandra as a skeleton with an enormous bustle, and a hooded figure with crow's wings and enormous breasts you assume must be Berengel.

"A Queen who appears from nowhere and convinces the King to muster all his forces against a legendary threat on a phantom isle? It almost sounds as mad as that Thoron emperor who ordered his legions to strike at the sea.

Either Queen Nashandra held unnatural power over the King – and yes, she did, to be totally fair – or she had someone speak to her credit. Vendrick wasn't exactly going to be staying at court to manage his affairs when Drangleic needed subjugating. Wellager and all – they were among his mother's own court."

Bel draws Wellager with an enormous moustache – as well as your former enemies, the Throne Watcher, Throne Defender, and Fume Knight – as children hugging the crow woman's waist.

"All the sons of the prior king of Venn had died, of course. How do you think Vendrick took the throne as son of the king of Alken? There were no other male heirs. So the throne passed to the eldest daughter. A ruling queen who passes the throne to her son – and her court with it? How much power did Berengel have in the end?

How long had she planned to unify Drangleic? Why did she introduce Nashandra to the court? What was the land of giants, and who was their princess? How was she related to Berengel, and why did Vendrick need to meet her?"

Bel draws an eight-petaled flower and a cracked egg.

"Frankly, I didn't care then. But I'm sure you do now."