Did you ever meet Alonne? Probably the politest person I've ever fought to the death.
"Afraid not. Never needed to interact with him (or steal any of his things). Certainly fought plenty of samurai recently, though."
I guess Vendrick's huge size wasn't just due to his magnitude of souls? Was Aldia's enormous head not just due to his ego?
"Ha! Well, it certainly helped. But his sword reaches its maximum power at a million souls, right? You never got huge from a million souls."
Was the Pilgrims of the Dark shrine there before the castle was built, or did it come after?
"Those are remnants of a heresy in the time of Heide. Rebellion against the 'gods' is as old as worship of them."
How does Grandahl manage to resist the Dark to such a degree without losing himself?
"Inner peace, to an extent. The Dark is an ocean. If you've ever come close to drowning, you know that struggling against the current only makes you die faster.
However, the Darkdiver is also personally quite powerful and quite aware of the nuances to Dark. He's so much more lucid than that idiot Felkin because he knows not to let the Dark rule him. He moves with the current and lets it guide him to the surface when he needs air.
'May the Dark shine your way.' Shine. He sees a glimmer of light even that close to the Abyss."
What was that being hidden within the Chasm, that Darklurker?
"Ah. The angel. That was one birthed in Drangleic. I encountered them as well… in the land of giants."
Things were getting heated between Mytha and Nashanda. That wasn't exactly conducive to our goals.
"Look, Your Highness," I said, stepping between them, "apparently everyone in the kingdom had a shitty marriage. We're not here to make it a contest. You and Aldia got rid of the giants' princess. Or, actually, it was mostly you.
Aldia was willing to give her, but after the Giant Lord was beaten, you made sure the Duke's men turned her over in spite of the giants' retreat. Before the exchange, you had that woman with the pearl crown here in the castle, didn't you? Let's talk about that."
I was stretching a little, to be totally honest. I was just hoping I'd hit the nail on the head, and she'd fill in.
"Foolish undead," she said. "You were there. I can see the echoes in you. Yet you have learned nothing."
I shrugged and gave her a smug look before saying, "And yet you who know everything are just waiting here. For what? An undead like me? That's about all you'll get, after all."
That got a rile out of her: "Not like you. You lack the strength of purpose. You survive only by the Duke's device."
"You need an undead," I said again. "As I can tell, I'm the only one present."
I crouched and wiped some of the thick layer of dust off the floor. Honestly, I'm not sure why there was dust covering the floor of a windswept outdoor area which hadn't seen any creatures to make the dust in years. But it served my point as I held it up.
"It might be me or nothing," I said. "Maybe you do need a stronger undead for your main plan, but I'm here now. I imagine there have been things you've wanted to do but haven't been able to. I can run an errand or two while you wait for your hero."
"What is it you desire?" she said coldly.
"I want to go back to the land of giants," I said. "I have the song-map and a ship. I need to be able to get to shore without them introducing me to more boulders than a Mirraian brothel madam."
The Queen didn't appreciate my metaphor. She frowned and furrowed her brow. The look of abject disgust on her face was actually pretty funny. No human contact for a hundred years or whatever, and then she gets a pair who insult her and make lewd references.
After she recovered her composure, she said, "So be it. Every would-be Monarch has sought to claim the source of this world's illusion by force. Only that man, Vendrick, succeeded. You do not have the least of his strength.
That isle is a prison sealed by the Lord of Light. Only those entrusted to guard it may enter and leave. The giants are the lowest of its jailers, and the blind servants of Light would sooner destroy them than allow them pass with intruders. You must fool them.
Descend from the balcony opposite this one. Beneath this castle is a shrine most foul, the site of a ritual to seal truth. The shrine is attended by blind maidens crafted in imitation of the princess. With the voice of the milfanito, you may deceive the sentries of the Ringed City, for their magic is replica of its own."
She looked smug and like she had finished, so I asked, "Is that all? What do you want in return?"
"This task benefits us both," she said. "You have need of their voices, and I wish them gone. Only, you must fight through Vendrick's trials in order to reach the shrine. They are suitable tests for a Monarch. You may not endure."
"Well, we'll see," I said.
I gave a curt bow and turned away. Mytha hesitated but followed.
"What sort of monster did I pick a fight with?" she said.
"Berengel or Nashandra?" I said.
She sighed and said, "The men in that family are warped with such taste, clearly. I never had any hope for husband or son, did I?"
That was a disturbing thought.
"What, did Aldia have a terrible romance as well?" I said.
"I should hope not," she said. "I shudder to think what sort of woman would captivate that son of mine."
So I wrapped up with, "Well, here's hoping your next romance is better."
"Am I better?"
Mytha quirks her lips and gives a wry look.
"You could stand to put on some muscle, dear. It's not satisfying playing with-"
"That's not what I asked, and you know it!"
We walked around and into the treasury. Not sure why it's on the outside like that. Or on the uppermost storey. Of course, those dragonriders were there, guarding what was left of the plunder from the invasion.
They did recognize me, though. Saluted and mumbled "Captain" as we passed. It was a little sad to see the best of Drangleic's knights hollow. I mean, I guess that would have been the Syan Knights, but like I said, that order was founded after my time.
We had to look around a little bit, but we did quickly find the right way to continue. The elevator to the tower was still locked in place, of course. We were both interested in the mechanism, but it wasn't special enough to keep our interest. After all, it was a relatively simple mechanism – the interesting part was just how compact it was.
Mytha of course took a moment to look wistfully into the mirrors on the walls. She hadn't seen her reflection much, and we'd hurried past the other mirrors in the castle and in Aldia's manor. For a while, she was still coming to grips with being a giant snake. Learning to slither is one thing, but seeing that you are covered in scales is quite another.
Well, I told her she looked fine. Still gorgeous, even so far from the poison pools.
So, there's the matter of the locked door to the King's Passage and finding the key requiring you to see the gimp upstairs. Quite the character, the King was. But no. I picked the lock like a normal person. I'm honestly impressed that you went through your whole adventure without a decent set of tools.
After the first hall, there's that chamber where you can prepare before approaching the balcony. There's a bust of a knight with a thin greatsword before it. Behind it, there's a relief of a tree which shines over two figures.
It's a sign, however small. The King did some things he shouldn't have. But in the end, he learned more of the truth than anyone else. Even Aldia. But that's a long and boring story about trees.
There's that rhyme about "all the king's horses and all the king's men." Well, the horses came next. I'm really not sure what those horse-helmed knights are meant to be. They were the chaplain's men, though where the horse head came from, I have no idea. You could gather them and Ferran's bull-helmed golems to start a battle-farm.
There wasn't much of an issue. For whatever reason, they seemed especially vulnerable to magic. Mytha made short work of them.
More concerning was what they resembled. A long hall of kneeling knights, leading to an elevator, above which was a trapped, blind songstress? At the other end of the passage, the King and the mausoleum.
We passed through the fog wall. You might be expecting that I had a bad time with the "Looking Glass Knight's" opening lunge. I didn't. He didn't attack. The thing shuddered, and the silver armor tinkled like a windchime. It held its great mirror-shield toward us, the edges bound in thorns and faces.
What did you see in the mirror?
I saw myself – my true self. The form I hide, even now. The King's Mirror shows a Dark reflection. I saw what I could be if I didn't reject what Aldia has done to me. Powerful, driven… but an abomination. It was a premonition of what would come later.
"Darling, care to explain the hocus pocus little more in-depth?"
Mytha nods and folds her hands.
"It is a mirror of truth and Dark, o Monarch. It is also a mirror of Want. However, it is not a mirror of dreams. Such illusion is the domain of the Nameless Moon. It shows only what is true, ideals drawn from within oneself.
As such, I did not see myself without my poison. At that time, it was so much a part of me that I could not escape it, no matter how I wished. Yet, I was no mere serpent within the visage. I was a dragon crossbreed of such beauty and strength that the world would break at my utterance.
I was transfixed for but a moment. I soon realized that I was still alone in that mirror world. I drew away for lonliness at the same time Bel turned in revulsion."
We both looked away as best we could without taking our eyes off the big, spooky knight. I leveled my mosquete and Mytha held her spear at the ready. The thing gurgled and black sludge poured from the helm's eye sockets.
"G-g-g-g-g-g-g-gooooooooooood," it groaned. "F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-fiiiight thhhhhhhe Daaaaaaark."
It was a horrible racket, gurgling and howling like a wind trapped in that armor. To make it worse, I knew that voice.
"Syan!" I said.
You've heard that all the Syan Knights went mad shortly after earning their armor, right? No surprise, there. Syan's fate echoes in the image of the replica armors.
The Primal Knights – they were the first attempt. You see the four wings on their shields, same as on the Looking Glass Knight's back? There's not much human in those suits. Or maybe they're too human. Too much of the Dark. Each of those is the result of an attempt at human resurrection. What gets called up is usually some beast of the Dark.
But Syan wouldn't abandon the King, even in spite of death. His spirit alone was strong enough to come back. Only, it didn't simply go back into a "normal" human body. That's a thing of Light.
You see how when you take a Primal Knight's equipment, the long snout isn't part of it? That the snout belongs to the knight? Well, stronger than any of the Primal Knights by far, Syan's spirit required a more monstrous body.
You collected his soul, right? And saw how it wasn't corrupted at all? Well, his strength roiled the Dark and burned it. The thing Syan had become was an oozing mass of Dark bound in human shape only by his armor and pressured to the point of bursting. Have you heard of it? The Pus of Man?
Well, after the usual stuttering (which I'm going to skip from now on), Syan replied, "Yes. Hello Bel."
It sounded like speaking really exhausted him, so I decided to keep things short.
"Who did this to you?"
"I did," he said.
The actual answer was more complicated, involving the King, the Royal Sorcerer, and Berengel. It used some of Aldia's work, but the Duke himself had already been consigned to his manor.
In any case, I accepted that Syan wouldn't tell me – which meant that it was definitely the King.
I grumbled pretty loudly and clenched my fists as I lowered my gonne and asked Mytha to stand down as well.
"Well," I said, "it looks like that invasion didn't go so well for anyone. I'm impressed you still have any desire to fight for the kingdom. Say… I'm going back, over the sea. Is there anything I could do for you?"
His head twisted around so that the sad mask of the three on his helm faced forward.
"Survive," he groaned.
Bel leans back in her chair.
"Well, that's most of the interesting stuff. That's as good a stopping point for the Drangleic part. We went downstairs and kidnapped a songstress. Mytha complained loudly that the whole shrine was a cheap knockoff of Shulva."
Mytha coughs to interrupt, then says, "I will admit in retrospect that it was an adequate dream for ought based mostly on an oral narrative.
"In any case," Bel continues, "we didn't go any further. We didn't need to go see the King or bother the Undead Crypt. If we had, we would have learned a little more. They had a few bits of legend about a 'death goddess' which would have been useful when we got to Courland.
Anyway, we went back to Aldia with our captive and everything and then spent a few weeks gathering supplies and making preparations while the Duke tried to get his mad scientists to built a boat that didn't immediately catch fire.
I… may have also stolen most of the working gonnes left in Drangleic. Sorry about that."