Covenant of Fire [Elden Ring]

AN:

With this we should be caught up to the backlog I promised you guys for now.

So the last couple of chapters I have added some new word-processing software to my editing process. Those of you that were noticing mistakes can tell if things are better now (such as little/no mistakes) or if a bunch of mistakes still stand out to you guys.

Enjoy the chapter!

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Over the next couple of days John got to see exactly how bad the damage to their defense was. The misbegotten used their greater numbers to force them to not have time to properly rest and recover. They had inflicted immense casualties on the misbegotten during the siege from their use of this strategy, but despite their much diminished, the misbegotten still far outnumbered them.

Now with all the forward intersections taken by the enemy, the garrison was only defending two chokepoints, but the relentless attack of the enemy meant that their men's crimson tear saturation, and their fatigue, had begun to build up.

After a few days, even with rotations and rest shifts, they were drinking crimson tears faster than the magical energy was processed through their bodies. Soon, within the next day or two, they would reach a tipping point where many men's injuries could not be treated because their bodies will have been completely saturated.

That would be the death-blow to their defense. The point where no hope of survival would be left. And it was fast approaching.

Those six twenties of men who had died to the leonine misbegotten's most recent gambit also had the unfortunate effect of giving the misbegotten a lot more weapons and armor. About 160 sets of them, which went a long way with the misbegotten's reduced numbers and the equipment they had already accumulated from earlier battles.

Now almost every misbegotten was armed with a castle steel weapon, superior to their poorly forged cleavers which were made large and unwieldy to be even somewhat effective against the soldiers' armor because of the crude weapons' poor metallurgy.

With over a thousand soldiers dead between the regulars and irregulars, the misbegotten now had enough scavenged armor that every single one of them was armored wherever on their chimeric bodies they could make the pieces fit. For most of them that was the chest, arms, and upper legs. The back if they lacked wings. And few of them still wielded the crude weapons they had begun the rebellion with.

There were enough of them, that the misbegotten elites had actually had time to lightly train a small amount of their untrained forces.

These troops still paled in comparison to even an irregular, but compared to the beginning where before a single irregular was worth at least four or five misbegotten, now two misbegotten could beat an irregular if they were to battle each other without any crimson tears or the like.

The enemies' armor helped most in blunting the overwhelming advantage that their own fringefolk knights gave them. The storm was far more effective on flesh than armor, and with the constant battle and being down to under ten of them left, the knights couldn't sustain using their storm arts long-term, and even the limited amount of storm they could use wasn't quite as effective as before.

Their storm arts took something from the knights as they fought. It made them more mentally tired as they used it, draining their willpower and ability to properly concentrate.

This resource their magical arts drained was a type of mental stamina they called focus, and just like how if one pushed their body too hard their movements would become sloppy and they would black out, the same was true of the mind with the using of one's focus.

It naturally restored itself with time, and especially with sleep, but this process wasn't quick. An entire day and night's sleep may not be enough to completely restore one's mental tank if they severely drained it, taking a handful of days if one drained themselves to the point of blacking out.

The knights were quickly approaching those depths of focus depletion. Before the recent disaster caused by Crann, they had already used up the very limited amount of cerulean tears that Morne kept on hand. They kept far fewer cerulean tears than crimson in the castle's stores, with John having learned upon asking a clerk of the Quartermaster about the subject that most of the blue tears were being shipped to Stormveil for Godrick's use.

If things continued like this for the defense, they would be dead within three days, and their smoke-signals told them that that would not be enough time for the reinforcements to arrive.

That was what occupied John's mind that day as he fought off and on against the misbegotten with his twenty through the day, as the defense frequently rotated to best use the numbers they did have, with John making his own efforts within his twenty to do the same on the micro scale.

At this point, even the townsfolk that had not volunteered to join the garrison, which were mostly women and children, had realized that things were dire. Every time John saw one of them they had looks of worry and unease. There was a palpable tension in them, and now even in the mess the soldiers were not as spirited.

When evening came around, John went to the officer meeting. Entering the room, only half of them were there. The other half currently fighting or acting as on-hand back-up in case of emergency, and they would be briefed in the morning while John's half relieved them and fought during the morning shift.

Edgar looked like he had been run over. There were dark circles under his eyes and his body was clearly fatigued. John knew he had barely slept as his work running everything in the defense had doubled as Crann had been helping him manage things.

The meeting started as usual with any particularly important developments being announced first. Then everyone discussed how they could best make use of the people and supplies they still had to last. But even as they all made efforts to try and find a solution to the jaws slowly closing over their necks, John could see none of them believed that it would be enough, even if they refused to just give up and die without a fight.

As they went on about the minutiae of the defense for another day in a row without any real or significant changes, as if they had all agreed to pretend that their imminent defeat and deaths were not to be acknowledged, John finally had enough and decided to speak up in one of these meetings without prompting for the first time.

"Sirs, my lord, this isn't enough," John announced loudly enough to address them all at once, interrupting all their small discussions between each other.

The officers all turned toward John to see what he was going to say.

"All of this"-John gestured between and out towards the rest of the castle-"it isn't enough. Men, supplies, we just don't have enough. With what we have been doing, even if we ordered our men perfectly and the misbegotten didn't change or counter what we are doing, we will still lose. At this point, these orthodox strategies won't bring us victory. We need to do something different."

The neutral stoic air they all had maintained for the past few days cracked as John aired the almost forbidden conclusion that they all knew, his words causing a grim air to fill the study. Everyone looked at John blankly for a moment at his bold words that bordered on being a faux pas for breaking their unspoken agreement, before a knight, emboldened by John's words, grit his teeth and spoke up.

"I fear Sergeant White is right, despite his inexperience. We all know that what we have been doing is not enough, but it is the best we can do. If you Sirs have something else you believe we can do, please speak of it."

The air stilled as they all decided whether or not to voice the more outlandish ideas that the pair's words no doubt provoked now that John and the knight agreeing with him had asked them to break any taboos they might normally have upheld.

"We could levy the rest of the townsfolk," suggested a knight.

"They are mostly women and children with a few artisans. Almost all the men are already irregulars," objected another knight to the first's suggestion. "Even if we did levy them, we cannot train or arm and armor them, we have already used up almost all the supplies arming the irregulars."

The knights all raised and argued the points of several ideas, but no matter what any of them suggested, another knight would explain how it would not be enough to turn the tide. No idea of what they could do seemed like it would work to let them survive till the reinforcements came.

John was frustrated that there seemed to be no way they could get out of this. Even if these more unusual ideas panned out, no matter how much better they did, it seemed their efforts wouldn't be enough.

And it was that thought that made John have a realization.

"Sirs," John said loudly, once again gaining the room's attention, "If no matter what we do, our efforts will not be enough, then instead of us harnessing some hereto unseen genius and performing some brilliant move flawlessly, we need to somehow cause the enemy to make the wrong move.

"We have to once again make a blunder and expose an opportunity to strike us to the enemy, but this time it will be a trap for them rather than an opening. And we have to do it now, while we still have the strength to punish that mistake.

"Taking advantage of our mistakes is how the enemy have so far reduced the garrison down to what remains. We need to force them to make the wrong move in attacking us and then make them pay for it. Punish them hard enough to make it so that we can survive till our reinforcements arrive."

Many of the eyes in the study lit up at this suggested strategy.

"That... that is a good idea," said a knight thinking aloud, "But what should we do exactly? What tactic do we utilize?"

John fell into thought as others discussed their own ideas.

"We could do a series of fake retreats and ambush them from the side using the empty rooms. Maybe cut off large portions of their forces and destroy them."

"We could retreat to the last staircases and pour boiling water on them."

...

The knights had all sorts of ideas. Dozens of them. Some even seemed like they would be effective, but none were quite good enough to satisfy all them that they would be enough.

None of them were reliably able to deal with the one obstacle that kept popping up and seemed to loom above all others in their efforts to destroy the enemy. The leonine misbegotten.

They not only needed to take care of the misbegotten's great numbers, but also their champion. And they needed to take care of both in one fell swoop as they could no longer afford to pull off multiple risky gambits in succession after their most recent loss of men.

To force their enemy into making a mistake, they would have to give up ground in some way, losing men or the only chokepoints that were preventing the misbegotten from overrunning them. They already had their backs against the wall.

If they couldn't deliver a crushing blow to the enemy, army and champion, that would cripple the enemy when they exposed themselves, then any proposed gambit would instead bring about their own downfall rather than that of the enemy.

As Edgar and the knights kept proposing, debating, and ultimately rejecting ideas, John thought of some ideas of his own, but none were any better than things the others had already proposed. Any idea that may deal with the enemy's numbers didn't deal with the leonine misbegotten, and the vice versa was true as well.

John started really scratching his head to try to think of something that would really work to see them all through this. He thought over everything they had at their disposal in search of what might be the key, if one did indeed exist at all. Something that would blow wide open the trap that was closing in on them.

He thought of their numbers, the specific men and women he knew of with their unique skills and qualities. He thought of all the strategies he'd see used in what he knew of real history and in fiction. He thought over their supplies and the castle, and everything else available to them that could possibly be used.

As he thought of all this, he recalled one tiny particular almost-irrelevant detail he had heard in conversation a scant number of times, and suddenly an idea sparked in his mind.

And when John opened his mouth and voiced this idea to everyone else, he saw a savage smile come over Edgar's face.

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The preparations that started that night took an entire day and some change to complete. Unfortunate because of how close to the edge they already were, but it was necessary. Another day in which their forces were pushed further towards the brink and more men fell in battle.

It also took longer because they had to make sure that the misbegotten would not be able to discover their preparations, made much easier by the intense storm that had raged and prevented any of the misbegotten flyers from scouting anything they were doing.

If John believed in such things he would have thought it divine providence. Many of the fringefolk officers certainly thought it was the blessing of Placidusax if what they had said while helping with the preparations was any indication.

And now as dawn rose above them the day after and the storm petered out into the usual light drizzle that was so common to the Weeping Peninsula, John was standing on the battlements surrounding the castle's courtyard with his twenty, which was more like a sixteen at that point, by his side. He was looking out over all the people that they were able to muster for the coming battle.

Standing next to them was Edgar, along with another knight and his twenty who were the lord's escort.

The entire garrison of men, besides the two twenties on the battlements by John and Edgar and those that were fighting in the corridors right at that very moment, were gathered into a battleline in the courtyard. When those in the corridors fell back and Edgar went back down with the other knight's twenty, it would bring the total men they were fielding in the courtyard up above two hundred.

Above the men in the courtyard filling up the battlements were all the five hundred-odd townsfolk who had not volunteered to become irregulars at the beginning of the siege. Those non-volunteers were almost entirely women along with a few artisans with valuable skills like blacksmithing and the odd man completely unwilling to fight like Kalé.

They had been levied the previous evening and had been given whatever supplies the garrison had left. Damaged and tattered pieces of armor and damaged weapons, along with all the crossbows and bolts that they hadn't had a chance to use yet in the siege and which would be their primary weapons.

Most of the war supplies had been consumed already in fueling the constant battles of the garrison besides those crossbows.

There had also been a number of children in the non-volunteers, and they had hidden them away in a safe area. Edgar's blind daughter Irina being left to-Ha!-watch over the kids. That left them with over four hundred and fifty fresh levies manning the battlements.

John didn't know where Kalé was stationed, and his friend's distinctive red clothing would be covered by the tattered armors they had on the levies. Even if he did, there was not anything John could do to help his friend in the fight to come. Kalé 's life was in his own hands. John just had to hope his friend would make it through.

Altogether, the entirety of every person they could call on to battle here in the courtyard and the battlements amounted to a total force of nearly seven hundred people. Many were covered in dried mud, dirt, and grime or were still fatigued from intense battling these past days.

A motley remnant of what had once been the Morne garrison of a little over a thousand men before the rebels' initial strike and before any levies or irregulars would have been taken into account.

From what their lookouts had counted, the misbegotten had suffered nearly as direly as they had. They had known that Morne had roughly somewhere around three thousand misbegotten before any of this had started, with some wriggle room having not kept an exact count on their slave numbers, but now their lookouts estimated the misbegotten's numbers had dropped below a thousand.

With the levies they had raised, that brought their own numbers to the closest thing to parity it had been to the enemy so far.

That should have been good news and showed they would win the coming battle as they had outperformed the misbegotten more than two-to-one the entire conflict so far, but circumstances were severely different now in a number of ways.

The original force of men that had done so well against the misbegotten after they began defending against the misbegotten were about a third of their original numbers now, worn away by attrition and treachery. Those men were tired, many were lightly injured, and most had limited amounts of crimson tears left as their limited supply of the substance was now being strictly controlled to only be used on severe injuries.

That meant the numeric bulk of their force were the levies who were mostly women, who were far physically weaker than men, even misbegotten, sans magic bullshit being involved. And those levies had less training than the misbegotten had at this point.

The gravity of this was hard to convey to a layman.

Training wasn't just how good you could swing a sword. It was also eliminating weaknesses and mistakes, learning how to move in a fight, what to do and not to do in battle, the conditioning of one's physique, and also mental discipline about how not to break nerve in the heat of battle.

While their regular and irregulars still had good equipment, the levies had patchy equipment as they didn't have enough fresh or repaired equipment for everyone. Most of the equipment on hand was damaged and in need of repair at this point. Despite being triple their numbers, the levies would be far less effective in this battle than the regulars and irregulars, but they were still far better than nothing.

On the other hand, now the misbegotten had been given some light training over the weeks of siege. They had scavenged enough equipment from the dead that they had better equipment on average than Edgar's levies had. They had more elites, as the misbegotten had prevented most of their large members from dying while Edgar's forces were down to under ten knights due to all their mistakes and misfortunes.

So things still looked quite dire for the defenders despite now being closer than ever to finally reaching parity in pure numbers with the misbegotten forces.

And this battle where they were weaker than ever before in this siege was going to be it for them. They were betting it all and throwing everything they had left at this gambit. This battle would pen their victory or their defeat.

And all those calculations so far that had been swirling in John's head as he looked out into their forces weren't including what John thought was the biggest threat to them: the leonine misbegotten.

Frankly, they didn't have anyone who could match her when she wasn't restricted to a confined corridor. Their most powerful knight, Crann, the only one who might have proved a match to her prowess, had been defenestrated.

So they were almost defenseless against her here in the courtyard in this more open environment. They knew that, and they knew she knew that. Which is exactly what they were counting on.

You needed bait to lure prey to a trap after all.

Right now John's twenty were set up in the battlements off to the side of the courtyard entrance that the misbegotten would be forced to come through. This side of the battlements he and his men were on also happened to be the walls next to the cliff that faced the burnt ruins of Castletown which the misbegotten had made into one of their two major bases, the other being the bottom of Clifftown.

John's twenty was here to protect and operate the only scorpio they had.

In the initial attack of the rebellion, while many misbegotten's first strikes had been against soldiers and knights, the misbegotten in the castle had sabotaged the castle's defensive artillery beyond repair.

This older scorpio was one the townsfolk had found abandoned and forgotten in a storage room when they had been evacuating all the supplies from the bowels of the castle.

Now they had it set up here. But there is a reason this scorpio had been buried and forgotten down there.

It was very old and was of an outdated design. It only shot one bolt instead of the three that the other newer scorpios were able to. But this weapon was far better than nothing.

The levies stationed up on the battlements above where the misbegotten would be funneled into the courtyard also had many rocks, pieces of broken furniture, and other heavy objects stockpiled near them. They would be raining those down onto to misbegotten below as they tried to charge into the courtyard.

Finally, there was also a large, tall wooden box big enough to hide a big statue that they had constructed last night beside this stockpile. It was a shoddy construction with clay filling up many gaps and seams in the box's wood, which accounted for much of the dirt and mud covering many of the soldiers and levies.

That particular section of the battlements that surrounded the courtyard required someone to pass by where John's twenty were positioned to reach it. And the stairs to John's section of the battlements were behind their main battlelines, so before the enemy could take the stairs to reach John's half of the battlements, the defenders would have almost assuredly already lost the battle.

The other half of the battlements could not be reached without going even further into the castle, so the storming of the battlements from that side was of no concern to them either as that also would mean they had lost the battle already if the enemy was able to reach that area in the first place.

A short distance away from John and his twenty, looking out over the remains of burnt Castletown, was Edgar. Nearby but at a polite distance from him was a knight with his twenty who were awaiting further orders from Edgar.

"Sergeant White, come here," John heard Edgar call, "I wish to speak to you."

John took one last look at everything they had amassed to throw at the misbegotten and made his way over to Edgar, joining him in looking down at the few dozen misbegotten wandering around the burnt ruins.

"I never would have guessed my last battle would be one so small," Edgar admitted to John. His tone was tender, almost fragile.

"After I became High Marshal I always imagined that I would die in a grand battle against one of the demigods like many of my predecessors. Or maybe the forces of the academy. Something like the battle between Melania and General Radahn or the Defenses of Leyndell.

"I never imagined my long time serving under Lord Godrick would come to an end here, in a battle as... humble as this. High Marshal of over seven thousand troops-half of Lord Godrick's forces-and I fall to a minor rebellion of the menials because of a traitor's sabotage.

"Thoughts of what is to come has left me feeling reflective these past few days. Especially of the mistakes that led me here."

Edgar shook his head and sighed. He turned to John, and his stormy grey eyes met John's brown. He tilted his head as if remembering that John was a foreigner.

"Caelid has not always a red blight upon the Lands Between. I remember when Caelid was green, you know? Over a millennia ago. The beastmen were almost entirely wiped out by the rot.

"The region was their homeland, and their people had been nearly completely driven out of other regions and become reclusive. This all had happened far before I had been born, before the Shattering, as the attitudes of the Golden Order changed eons ago and they began looking down upon the past rather than revering it.

"But Caelid was indeed once green. Some of the most beautiful land in the lands between. Before Melania arrived to do battle with Radahn.

"My uncle had just died in his own duty as a High Marshal when Lord Godrick had ordered him to assault the demigoddess's forces as they were making their way through Liurnia to prevent them from reaching Stormveil.

"This was before Lord Godrick bowed before her and begged for mercy. Before he agreed to let her pass unmolested.

"My uncle was slain by one of her Cleanrot knights. His head sent back to our forces. I remember opening the box, and how the blood drained from my lord's face as he realized that his forces were outmatched. That he could not rely on his forces' greater numbers to bring down a champion like Melania when our more mundane forces had met their match. He was more affected by that head than I was!

"I think that day was when the first seeds of what would eventually blossom into his obsession with grafting were planted and his later groveling only watered them. We would only learn later the true depths of our lord's cowardice.

"He would spend the following decades neglecting his court and instead studied scrolls, tablets, and tomes in the privacy of his room. He would not speak of what they contained when asked, and we all assumed he was attempting to learn sorcery.

"In the coming centuries we would learn of how wrong we were as he began experimenting on his distant relatives with that horrible forbidden craft to learn how to perform it. The coward wouldn't even dare risk himself!

"When his distant relatives died to the last, he moved onto closer and closer kin, until he arrived at his sons and daughters. And when they died, he practiced on his grandchildren.

"Thankfully, by then it had been centuries and he had somewhat mastered the craft. His grandchildren were made into abominations, but they lived. I haven't been to Lord Godrick's court since he began touching his progeny. How could a man stomach doing such things to his children and grandchildren..."

Edgar stopped there and looked up into the rainy sky.

John wasn't sure what was going through Edgar's head. If he didn't know better he would have thought Edgar was going to leap off the battlements to his death. He went to speak up, but Edgar lowered his head and continued speaking.

"I have heard through missives that in the past few years he has finally started to graft parts onto himself. The image of him being one of those abominable spiders he is so fond of crafting is disturbingly fitting."

"But it seems I have lost track of the original point of my story. This was supposed to be about my own mistakes, not my lord's.

"After my uncle's demise, Lord Godrick then made me the next High Marshal in command of all of his men from the Weeping Peninsula. My previous rank as a Knight Commander was lowly in comparison. Within that year as I was still learning my duties and fearful of taking any risks, Melania and Radahn had their battle and the scarlet rot, the disease that Melania had so long kept at bay by herself for so long with her stoic endurance, was unleashed onto the world.

"Not much was known then about the scarlet rot. All we could see was people dying, and the forests and the landscape warping. Even the mightiest dragon outside Farum Azula, Greyoll, was felled.

"The long reclusive beastmen tried to escape it. They begged in court for sanctuary from the disease. My lord refused to let them into Limgrave, but he did not care if I risked everything and allowed them into the Peninsula.

"But to my shame I did not. And I did not know that by doing so I was condemning their people. Our brothers in covenant thought not blood.

"I did not realize how devastating and widespread the scarlet rot would turn out to be, nor did anyone yet know that the beastmen were particularly susceptible to the blight. But that is no excuse. Even if I had, the man I was at the time would not have risked it.

"Their people have never recovered since. I rarely see them anymore."

Edgar paused there, which was good because John was absolutely stunned at that revelation. John had no idea that Caelid was the homeland of beastmen, though the Bestial Sanctum being where it was made more sense now, and he did not know that the scarlet rot had been what wiped them out.

It all made sense. Caelid was the dragon region and the beastmen worshiped dragons. Of course Caelid was their homeland.

As John processed that, Edgar continued.

"We Mornes have served the Golden Lineage since Lord Godfrey offered us clemency in return for service, and we have been the wardens of the Revenger's lands for Golden Lineage from the beginning of their dominion over this region.

"I am not nearly old enough to remember those days, but I have served Lord Godrick for a very long time, like the rest of my bloodline has.

"I am confident that no group of men has been more loyal to a patron than us to the Golden Lineage, with the exception of the Oathseekers, though they have faded just as my bloodline has.

"I wasn't always the Lord of Morne. I have watched as my bloodline has slowly been whittled away, until one day I was lord of this castle and these lands and a High Marshal under Lord Godrick, among his closest generals.

"And from high above I watched as no matter what I did, my family gave themselves in pursuit of our duties, until it was just me and my daughter left."

Seeing where this seemed to be going, and noting the tone Edgar'd had for his entire monologue, John spoke up.

"Lord Edgar, quit speaking as if we are certain to die in the coming battle. I think we have a chance of living through this day."

Edgar shook his head.

"You misunderstand me, Sergeant. No matter if I live or die, this will be my final battle, and the end of the Mornes.

"We fringefolk might serve the Golden Lineage faithfully due to our blood oaths, but we know that those of the Golden Order view us as little better than savages.

"Due to their reverence of their forefathers Lord Godfrey and Lord Godwyn, the Golden Lineage does not share an aversion to all things that are outside the Erdtree. They make exceptions for things like the Crucible and our reverence of dragons, embracing their origins instead.

"The blood of the Golden Lineage do not hate the fringefolk on base principle like the rest of the Golden Order. But I am under no illusions that Lord Godrick is a kindhearted and merciful lord.

"After this colossal failure, he will surely condemn me. Strip me of my position, my honors, and imprison me. But I do not believe he will stop at that.

"Lord Godrick is not a man known for his restraint; he will want blood for a failure of this magnitude. Despite my long time serving him, I am but of middling ability in command and in direct battle. I am not irreplaceable. I am certain I will be executed."

John was surprised again. He'd heard Edgar speak obliquely of getting punished before, but John had assumed he meant he would lose his military rank and be demoted and banished or something. Not be killed!

Still, hearing this made his respect for Edgar rise somewhat. The man took duty and loyalty seriously. Something that John wasn't used to at all in his old life where those things were in short supply, replaced in favor of other things. He could scarcely imagine many people choosing to remain loyal and dutiful even when they know it will not be returned.

Even if John disagreed with giving loyalty to the disloyal, pearls before swine, he could still respect Edgar for having the strength of character to do so.

When Edgar kept speaking John could hear the slight smile on his lips.

"I am glad you proved to be the most able among my men in operating the scorpio. If another man had been up here with me, I would not have felt free to drop decorum enough to speak of these matters."

Damn. This guy must have been lonely as if he thought that way about John who he had known for nearly a month more than any of the men he had known for years.

"But enough of my ramblings. We have a battle to begin," Edgar turned from John to the knight standing a short distance away.

"Send the word to the men in the corridors. Begin the retreat to the courtyard, and execute the preparations for our last stand here."

The knight saluted and left with his twenty to follow Edgar's orders.

Edgar leaned out of the crenellation towards the ruins of Castletown and held a large ivory horn to his mouth. Its shape was vaguely similar to a megaphone.

"MISBEGOTTEN OF MORNE!" Edgar's amplified voice came from the horn and echoed down the cliffside towards the burnt city, "YOU WISH TO KILL ALL OF US WHO TAKE SHELTER IN CASTLE MORNE? YOU WILL SOON HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY! LIKE THE REVENGER BEFORE US, WE WILL BE MAKING A STAND TO THE LAST! GOING OUT IN A GRAND BATTLE RATHER THAN HUNTED DOWN AND CORNERED LIKE RATS!

"WE INVITE YOU ALL TO JOIN US IN THE COURTYARD! YOUR COWARDLY LEADER IS WELCOME AS WELL, IF HE IS DONE HIDING BEHIND YOUR BODIES THAT IS!"

Nothing happened at first, but after nearly a minute of waiting, they saw changes in movement in the ruins below.

Edgar stepped back and dropped the horn onto the ground, its immediate usefulness exhausted. He picked up his halberd laying beside him with its orange-tinted metal.

"All that is left is to wait," Edgar said before he began walking down to join the main body of soldiers as planned, leaving John and his twenty.

John nodded and made his way back to his scorpio. Everything that could be done, had been done. All they had left to do for now was wait. This plan, that John had given the seed of, and that all the rest had improved in every way they could think of, was as prepared as they were able to make it.

All that was left was to see if it would be enough.

Everything settled into quiet as it continued to lightly rain, the clouds casting everything grey.

A few minutes later, John heard the sounds of explosions begin to go off in the castle, and select sections of the castle collapsed. Small sections of empty battlements falling inwards spread out all around the castle. As these sections collapsed, sometimes small chain reactions of other walls and rooms fell as well.

When the explosions were over, and the dust settled, about a fifth of the castle had been collapsed.

So it began.

All the paths from below that led up into the castle were now cut off. All except a single path that now led only to the courtyard.

Now came the most precarious part of their gambit. They had to see if the misbegotten, and the leonine misbegotten, would take the bait.

The men who had collapsed the areas of the castle poured back into the courtyard and joined the defensive line in the field below.

Then John could hear it. The sound of many feet and boots slamming down into stone getting closer.

The forty men who had been holding the misbegotten in the corridors below while the others had been executing the beginnings of the plan began streaming out of the corridor.

And hot on their tails was the horde of misbegotten. Their screams and warcries echoing out of the courtyard entrance to them all.

At once John saw the men in the courtyard raise and brace their arms, immediately becoming totally alert. The levies on the battlements raised their crossbows to their shoulders and hefted their improvised projectiles.

And then John saw the men from the corridors below running out of the entrance threshold and making their way to the main battleline that stretched across the entire courtyard.

After the last of the men crossed, they didn't have to wait but a few seconds before the first of the misbegotten entered the courtyard right behind the retreating men and right behind was the swell of the horde pouring out into the small grass field.

The levies opened fire with their crossbows, and the first hail of bolts joined the water raining down on the misbegotten.

Many misbegotten took a bolt or two, their charge barely disturbed, but a dozen misbegotten fell immediately, their backs and sides pincushioned with bolts. This did nothing to dissuade their brethren as their fallen bodies were immediately swallowed and trampled by the stream of misbegotten pouring out of the entrance behind them.

The first of the retreating men reached their prepared battle line stretching across the courtyard.

The exhausted men were let into the ranks, but as soon as the last of their men made it past, the gaps in their wall of shields closed just in time to meet the charging misbegotten who slammed into them!

As the men in the courtyard below began fighting the final battle for the defenders' ultimate fates, John turned towards the men of his twenty.

"Now's the time! The scorpio, as we practiced! Butcher, Baker! You two will wind it and replace the bolts! The rest, square formation around the scorpio! Defend us against any threats. And if any of you see something I should know about, tell me!"

John took up position behind the scorpio and began aiming.

The misbegotten were already filling up 'their' half of the courtyard, so John had plenty of targets to choose from, and enough bolts to last more than a dozen scorpios in a siege.

John spotted one of their elites, the large misbegotten standing above the rest of the misbegotten. The misbegotten elites pouring through the entrance already outnumbered their own elites, the knights, two-to-one, and more were still coming.

With a crash of wood-into-wood, John fired the scorpio. The bolt flew through the air and slammed right into his target's head. The misbegotten's skull was so tough that the bolt got stuck halfway through, leaving the bolt impaled through his head with both ends of the bolt visible on either side as his large body was taken off his feet and tossed onto the ground with a spin.

The misbegotten around him turned and looked at where John stood with the scorpio as Butcher and Baker started operating the winch to pull the bow-arms back.

After a few moments of glaring up at them impotently, the enemy howled about how their savior would ensure their victory and turned back to making their way to join the front lines and do battle.

And it was a chaotic battle. The men roared as they struck down at the fully armored and well-armed misbegotten, and the misbegotten screamed for their deaths for their savior and used their awkward but strong bodies to fight back just as hard.

The fringefolk knights, few though they were, had their swords and halberds coated with storm. Every strike shooting shearing explosions of wind that wounded and tossed all misbegotten near where the storm blades landed.

Meanwhile, the more numerous large misbegotten elites would use their incredibly strong bodies to smash at the shields and armor of the defending soldiers, who did all they could to defend to hang onto their lives in the face of such physically powerful foes.

Every twenty to thirty seconds John's twenty would have the scorpio ready to fire again, and John would unleash another bolt that struck down another large misbegotten elite.

John's accuracy was unerring in this, his hallowing now finally showing its true power to him. More powerful than the small increase in strength and speed, and even more useful than enduring a bit longer, was the improvements to John's perception and mind.

It did not just give him slightly better eyesight that could see more detail a little farther away, but also improved how precisely he could grasp distances. It didn't just improve his sense of sight; it improved his spacial sense. His sense of distance.

Because of this, the rain didn't affect him nearly as bad as it did others, John noted as he loosed another bolt that struck down another misbegotten elite for good.

Here, his hallowing showed to John that its true power was not in the base and straightforward improvements it provided to his body, but the other less obvious, more esoteric improvements.

A demigod could train their body to be stronger than John could ever make himself. But not even General Radahn could improve his eyesight or his ability to see the magical Grace of Gold directly.

Already his hallowing had revealed to him the hidden wisps of grace that made sites of grace that only some Tarnished were granted sight of. What other veils that he did not even know of would his improved perception allow him to pierce?

The strength of one's arm was power, but knowledge was power as well.

John wasn't born with the body of a demigod. Not even close. He could see now that trying to overcome such a disadvantage in a direct manner would be foolish. He would never be able to overcome any demigod in a contest of direct strength of arm. It would be like a woman trying to overcome a bodybuilding man in raw strength by becoming a bodybuilder herself. Doomed to failure.

Instead, if John wished to help the Chosen Tarnished against such foes he would have to contest them where they were weak or had little advantage. There his hallowing would allow him to dominate.

John now knew where his path to power was if he was going to walk it.

John smiled as he struck another misbegotten elite down with scorpio and felt the runes flow into him.

As a result, after his practice yesterday, John had a perfect understanding of where and how the bolt would fly. He would not be missing a single one of his bolts!

Another bolt flew through the air and pierced the helmet and skull of yet another misbegotten, the runes for the kill flowing into him, joining the swirling mass in his gut that had built from the battles he had undergone for the past weeks.

But even with the revelations John had and the elites he struck down, he was ultimately just one piece of the battle raged in the courtyard. He alone with this single scorpio would not be able to turn the tide by himself, even if his headhunting was a huge help to prevent the front line from collapsing.

The misbegotten below threw themselves at the men, but the men threw them back just as hard, like the waves crashing against the cliffs of Morne and being rebuffed only to do so again and again. Every time the waves would crash against the cliff, they would erode them just the smallest bit. And no one knew for sure when, but one day the day would come that the cliff gave in and collapsed.

Only a few minutes into the battle, the grassy courtyard was transformed into a mess of mud as the rain fell and boots, greaves, and chimeric feet churned the field into mud.

As wounds built up, men would fall back and heal, and now some of the misbegotten would do the same with their scavenged flasks. Though there were few with crimson tears.

But despite their valiant efforts, the men were simply far fewer and already beaten and bruised from the unrelenting assault of the previous days. The misbegotten with their greater numbers would have clearly crushed them in due time from attrition, if it wasn't for the levies.

The women on the walls, and a small number of men, nearly two hundred of them raised crossbows and fired bolts into the backs and sides of the misbegotten.

Most bolts bounced off the armor, but some struck unarmored limbs or punched through the armor to leave grisly, impeding wounds, taking a limb out of the fight, or deflecting off their thick skulls, leaving bleeding rivulets of blood impairing the misbegotten's vision. Rarely, rather than glancing off their skulls, a crossbow bolt would strike true and the misbegotten would drop instantly.

The misbegotten quickly learned that leaving the bolts in their flesh was better than ripping them out, as some unwise misbegotten quickly bleed out after doing so with bolts that struck arteries.

The rest of the levies picked up the pieces of heavy debris they had available and launched them down at the heads of the misbegotten. These were less effective than the crossbows, but a rock to the head or limbs wasn't conducive to keeping their bones and blood where they should be.

So as John and the fringefolk knights focused on taking out the elites, and the soldiers and levies piled injuries on the smaller misbegotten, the battle was swinging in their favor.

Then the leonine misbegotten showed herself. Far earlier than they had predicted, having expected their champion to wait until their losses had built up before entering the battlefield.

She emerged from the corridor into the courtyard in all her grotesque, naked glory; yet her body still somehow possessed a fierce beauty. The beauty of a lion rather than a woman.

Her height was slightly greater than that of the fringefolk knights despite being hunched, and her bulky yet sleek body belied the sheer mass of her. In her hands, looking like a bastard sword rather than the colossal sword that it was, was the Grafted Blade Greatsword.

As she stepped into the muddy courtyard, a presence radiated from her very form even through the rain, washing over all on the battlefield like a wave. It was a feeling in your gut, pressing into you to tell you that something primal, savage, and powerful was in front of you. The feeling a man gets when he finds himself in front of an apex predator alone and with no tools.

The men and misbegotten did not stop fighting, the levies did not stop shooting, but none on the battlefield missed her stepping onto the field.

It was like a mythical monster stepped onto the battlefield such was her influence by just appearing.

And this was just what John had been waiting for since the start of the battle. Before she had taken more than a handful of steps into the courtyard a scorpio bolt was ready, and he fired.

Instantly, her eyes shot to John and she channeled the power of the Grafted Blade Sword.

It seemed like the air, no, the very fabric of the world, rushed into her for just a fraction of a moment imbuing her flesh with a mysterious almost-transparent power, leaving an intense milky-white aura over her body.

The bolt struck her head and shattered into splinters that deflected off her body, leaving little more than a small bloody prick that oozed a couple of drops of blood.

John's men immediately began reloading the scorpio again.

Not even a second later, the glow's intensity halved revealing the leonine misbegotten furiously glaring at John and roared!

The force of the sound made the ground quake, and the sound that immense sound that was something sounded between a lion's and a man's roar, and a lizard's screech, echoed across the battlefield, so loud that for a moment it drowned out the clashing of steel and warcries.

"Shit!" John cursed.

As the leonine misbegotten turned to face him, a blade of storm shot right towards her. With unnatural speed, she turned and deflected the storm blade, most of the shearing blast being bounced away from the sword and her and annihilated a misbegotten charging past her.

"Your fight is with me, beast!" shouted Edgar across the battlefield from her over the heads of the misbegotten. "You call yourself their savior!? Your efforts were doomed from the start. Even if you had taken Morne on that first night, Lord Godrick and his forces would have exterminated you to the last!"

Edgar stepped forward performing a spinning slash, his orange-tinted halberd parting the armor of the misbegotten in front of him as if it was leather rather than steel, and came to a stop, his storm-cloaked weapon pointed at her.

"Now that you are done hiding in the shadows and ambushing, let us see if you have what it takes to stand up to me in a fight."

"Hahaha!" responded the leonine misbegotten, her inhuman, garbled alligator voice echoed over the battlefield, "You fools truly know nothing. The truth of this world is deeper and darker than your small minds could imagine.

"This was all only the first step. That coward Godrick has already been accounted for! All we need to do is kill the last of you, and the ultimate liberation of my kind will begin."

Done with the grandstanding, she charged over to Edgar at the front line, stepping between the fighting misbegotten like a cat stepping through a floor covered in debris.

As she moved across the battlefield, the milky glow covering her slowly faded in intensity much less quickly than the initial intense glow.

It took but a few seconds before she reached Edgar and swung her legendary blade down at Edgar.

"ARGGH!" Edgar grunted out as he swung his halberd empowered by storm up to meet her strike.

The weapons clashed, and unlike before where John saw the grafted blade sword slash through steel like it was aluminum foil, Edgar's weapon screeched and chipped but held.

Edgar himself wasn't so lucky. Her immense strength drove him to his knees. If it wasn't for the power of the storm offsetting much of her strike's power, he could have defeated then and there as the leonine misbegotten slashed down at him again as he was recovering.

The scorpio was reloaded at just that moment, and John, already prepared, shot it instantly. The bolt flew through the air, but the moment the noise of the scorpio sounded out across the battlefield, the leonine misbegotten reacted.

With almost impossible speed and a bestial grunt, once more the world was pulled into her for a brief moment, her skin infused with full glow of that translucent power.

The bolt struck her arm and shattered again, leaving little more than a scuff and some small splinters. This time she didn't even deign to look at John this time.

It was good she didn't as the storm surrounded Edgar and he moved with preternatural speed and struck back up at her!

She moved almost as quickly to block the strike.

Despite seeing his bolts doing nothing to her, John smiled.

The cat has taken the bait. Now they just had to wait for the right time to spring the trap!

The duel between Edgar and the leonine misbegotten continued on for a handful of seconds. The translucent power quickly halved in intensity. As it did, it allowed the storm wind from Edgar's strikes to leave scratches across her body once again, though her preternatural speed and strength stayed as the less intense glow faded much more slowly.

If she timed the intense glow correctly, she could ignore his hits with impunity and strike Edgar down in a single maneuver.

After a few more seconds of dueling with the misbegotten in a flurry of storm and sparks, nearby being crushed and killed with every strike, it appeared Edgar had the same thought as John.

"OPEN THE BOX!" Edgar bellowed as he continued battling with the leonine misbegotten!

Up on the battlements above the courtyard entrance, next to the large shoddily constructed wooden box construction, some of the levies stopped attacking and dropped their weapons.

They turned and began heaving on one of the boards that were barring one of the box's walls like a castle door, preventing it from falling away from the rest of the box. The wooden wall facing the courtyard.

After a few seconds of struggle, they pulled the board away, and immediately ran to get away from the box.

The wall fell forward; it hit the edge of the battlements, flipped, and came crashing down into the crowd of misbegotten below.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" an inhuman roar every bit as powerful as the leonine misbegotten's had been, drowned out the battlefield and shook the earth!

The front half of the box was shattered into splinters as a huge body smashed right through it, shattered edges of crenellations as it jumped through them, and came crashing down in the middle of the misbegotten horde covering the battlefield.

For just a moment, the battle stopped.

Standing, the behemoth revealed himself as he stood up from his crouched landing.

His feet standing in the crushed paste that had once been a pair of misbegotten, there stood an absolutely massive man wearing only a loincloth with a metal pumpkin encasing his head.

He stood as tall as two men on each other's shoulders, but the sheer monstrous amount of muscle on him made him look stocky.

As the fringefolk knights were to regular soldiers in terms of size, and as the leonine misbegotten was to the fringefolk knights, the pumpkin head was to the leonine misbegotten herself.

Looking at the hulking mass breathing heavily next to them, the misbegotten beside him froze and cowered, hoping not to attract his attention.

Seeing this on the battlefield below, John smiled viciously.

"Summon bigger fish."

And just like that, the lull ended and the crash of steel on steel and warcries rang out as the battle continued.

Instantly the pumpkin head was agitated by the noise, and started smashing and crushing who or whatever was around him wildly without regard to anything happening around him. Thankfully he was behind the misbegotten's lines as planned, as he immediately started a massacre of the enemy troops rushing into the courtyard.

He picked up a greatsword from a misbegotten whose head he crushed between his hands like a grape and started swinging it around like it was a shortsword, the force of his swings crushed the steel armor of the misbegotten as his weapon tore through their bodies.

After just a few swings the greatsword was a twisted wreck that snapped in half, but in those few seconds he had been on the battlefield seven misbegotten lay still, cut, smashed, and crushed.

The mad pumpkin immediately discarded his destroyed weapon, picked up another one, and kept swinging.

Very quickly the misbegotten refused to get anywhere close, already the constant stream of misbegotten into the courtyard started to stall as the pumpkin was right in front of the entrance, but their hesitation did little as the frenzied behemoth just came to them to continue wreaking havoc.

The leonine misbegotten was forced to react to this as the numbers around he began thinning quickly. She disengaged from Edgar and turned and started making her way to the mad pumpkin behind her front line.

Halfway on her way to the pumpkin head, the scorpio was ready, and John fired another bolt of her. This time it shattered off her sword that she lifted to intercept it, rather than use that aura to enhance her flesh to be able to endure it.

She didn't stop making her way to the pumpkin, but she still angrily snorted and looked at John to growl at him for his efforts.

It didn't take her long to reach her target, who had picked up yet another weapon, but was not paying much attention in his frenzied madness.

As he used his warpick to smash down at another misbegotten, she arrived and swung her weapon at his, shearing the warpick in half, and causing him to miss the smaller misbegotten who scrambled to get away from the two titans near him.

Her sword didn't just stop when she destroyed his weapon. It crashed into the pumpkin head's side leaving a deep, messy, bloody gash and showering the scrambling, retreating misbegotten with blood.

But the pumpkin didn't seem to feel any pain as he grabbed the leonine misbegotten's arm, stopping the blade before it could bisect him.

The pumpkin head used his other fist to smash into the leonine misbegotten. With every strike, the thumping sound of a fist striking flesh and of bone crunching reverberated across the battlefield, loud enough to be made out over all thge other noise.

The leonine misbegotten tried to pull her arm away, but even with the aura enhancing her the pumpkin head proved physically stronger than her, holding firm to her arm and delivering more strikes onto her, breaking more bones.

Instead of continuing to try and pry her arm away, the leonine hopped her legs up, and like a big cat, dug her claws into his gut, disemboweling him.

The pumpkin head let go of her and, screaming in pain, held his arms to his gaping stomach as his guts sloshed out of his body. It seemed the pumpkin head felt pain after all.

Free again, the battered and bloodied leonine misbegotten lifted her sword to finish him, but before she could, a storm blade crashed into her side ripping heavy tears across the side of her torso.

She whipped her head around to see Edgar prepping another storm blade, and then looked back at the pumpkin head whose sudden scream faded into a blubbering whimper.

It had only been a few short moments, but the pumpkin head was already recovering from his pain and had started charging at her.

She dodged out of the way and took another swipe at the pumpkin as Edgar launched yet another blade.

Then the scorpio was once again loaded. Seeing that they had not been effective so far and that Edgar and the pumpkin had the leonine at bay, John decided to pick one of the misbegotten elites and moments later planted a bolt through their head.

As he waited for another bolt to be loaded, John watched as the leonine misbegotten danced around, trying to stay away from the pumpkin head and take swipes at him. Unfortunately for her, she couldn't deliver any more truly severe blows that matched her first two because Edgar would launch storm blades at her when she tried to do so.

The pumpkin was no pushover either. He was much bigger than the leonine and even unarmed could almost match her reach. Seeing her try to avoid him and take potshots, it was like watching a matador evade a charging bull that would crush their bones to dust if they misstepped.

Any time she failed to dodge far enough away or was dodged through his arms, he would land a bone-pulverizing strike that resounded over the battlefield.

With every move, every charge and swing, they decimated any misbegotten foolish or unlucky enough to be nearby, turning the middle of the battlefield into a mulch of twisted and sheared steel and pulverized chimeric flesh.

Before John could fire the next bolt, something took his attention away from the battle in the courtyard.

"Sergeant! They are flying over the ramparts!"

John spun around and saw that dozens of winged misbegotten, lightly armored and carrying weapons, were flying over the ramparts. Some had already dived into the levies on the wall!

The levies were almost all armed with only ranged weapons, and the misbegotten began slashing through them with their weapons despite the levies' far greater numbers!

They were flying up the cliffs! The leonine misbegotten's howl must have been a signal!

Damn it all! This wasn't part of the plan!

"Levies, behind you! Target the flying misbegotten!" John cupped his hands and shouted over the din of battle, hoping as many of them would hear as listen as possible.

Many of the levies who hadn't yet been attacked or noticed the commotion, turned around and began firing on the other side at the misbegotten who were flying up to attack them. However some remained ignorant of what was happening and kept firing down into the misbegotten below.

The levies who had misbegotten fly into their ranks devolved into chaos as their discipline broke. Some dropped their crossbow and ran, creating chaos and confusion, while others in a panic shot their crossbow at the misbegotten attacking them and missed, hitting other levies behind the misbegotten.

While this was happening the winged misbegotten found the levies much easier pickings than any of the men of the garrison as they began pouncing on the panicking levies around them.

It was a slaughter, and John wanted to help, but there wasn't anything else he could do. He'd already shouted and got as many to notice as he could

John's own men began engaging winged misbegotten who saw him standing by the scorpio and came to take out their only artillery.

John trusted them to handle it, and turned back to the scorpio which Baker and Butcher just finished reloading. John took aim and killed yet another elite misbegotten.

He turned his attention back to the wider situation in the courtyard.

The soldiers were already suffering losses, the damage from the days of nonstop battle finally catching up with them. He could already see a number of their men who lay dead or wounded, having been dragged back behind their lines.

The disemboweled guts of the pumpkin head had caught on debris laying on the grounds been completely ripped out and lay scattered in bits and bits through the muck, yet that did not seem to have stopped him, as he kept angrily charging at the leonine misbegotten, his gut a cavern of gore.

She dodged between the pumpkin head's arms again and spun around behind him with her own back towards Edgar. She lifted her sword to deliver a clean strike onto the behemoth's back. As she raised her sword a storm blade from Edgar howled at her own back.

Instead of dodging or spinning and deflecting it like she had a dozen times before, she raised her tail. The wind blade struck the meaty middle of her tail and messily sheared it off in an explosion of blood, flesh, and bone.

Yet that sacrifice allowed her to execute her downward strike, and she sliced the pumpkin's right arm off through the bicep.

The pumpkin charged for a few more steps before stopping and holding his right arm stump in pain. He began howling madly into the sky, ignoring the fight he was in.

The leonine followed behind the pumpkin, dodging another storm blade from Edgar, and just like Andren many days ago, impaled the pumpkin head from behind.

The colossal sword goring out the entire center of the pumpkin's torso and erupting from the front of his ribcage in a shower of blood and hunks of flesh, organs, and bone.

The pumpkin head let out a final great groan of pain and fell forward limply, dragging the leonine misbegotten to the ground with him by her sword.

John's men were just finishing pulling back the bow-arms of the scorpio once again as she struggled to dislodge herself from under the pumpkins immense form while avoiding storm blades from Edgar.

"Fuck, he died already!? Butcher, load the explosive bolt!"

Misbegotten were already streaming back through the entrance at full speed once again. They stepped through the crushed remains of their fellows and started filling the yard. Despite the pumpkin head being dead for only a handful of seconds, they were already reacting to his death.

The battle had been in their favor, but with the death of the pumpkin head and with the levies being assaulted by the flying misbegotten, the tide had turned.

Thankfully, Butcher didn't pause for even a moment to question John's orders. He put their only explosive bolt on hand into the scorpio.

As the leonine misbegotten struggled with her back to him, managing to rip her sword back out of the body of the pumpkin head and dodge yet another storm blade, John felt a bead of sweat drop down his forehead as he aimed before it was washed away by the rain.

He lined up the primitive sights.

Perfect.

John loosed the bolt.

Hearing the scorpio fire once again, as if by a sixth sense knowing it was coming at her, the leonine misbegotten spun to face John, holding her blade across her body to intercept the bolt.

Except no bolt struck her blade and shattered. It struck a few feet in front of where she stood, the incredible force behind the bolt making it sink deep into the muddy ground.

In the fraction of a second before the bolt exploded, the leonine's eyes met John's from across the dim overcast field, filled with confusion.

Then the explosive tip far into the ground blew, and for an instant the courtyard was light up like the sun!

A massive explosion consumed the misbegotten's half of the courtyard. Hunks of earth, torn bodies, shattered steel flew through the air in every direction! The earth itself quaked, the shockwaves from the blast throwing everyone off their feet and tossing the men and misbegotten on the front line backwards from the force!

The explosion was so loud that as John lay on his back surrounded by his men who had also been knocked off their feet like everyone else, it caused his head to ring.

As he lay there stunned beside everyone else for the next few seconds, all he could hear was a deep static ringing in his ears.

John came to after a few moments as clods of dirt, mud, meat, and metal began raining back down from the sky in little chunks.

He felt a painful throbbing in his chest and looked down, holding his arm over his face and head as the debris made its way back down.

Bursting through his breastplate, he saw a massive splinter of wood the size of his forearm sticking from his chest right above his heart! A shattered fragment of the scorpio's bow arms, he recognized by the particular knob at the end of the hunk of wood.

Freaking out at the sight and still dazed and not thinking clearly, John pulled at the chainmail at his neck and stuck his arm down to feel around his chest for the damage.

Above his heart his hand touched wood. Pain radiated out at the touch, but he could feel no blood with his hand.

Carefully, feeling a little more, John realized that the wood he was feeling wasn't the rough wooden shaft from the splinter, but a smooth, small square wooden box.

In his confusion it took him a few moments to puzzle out what was going on, but then it clicked in his head.

His armor and Silhas's drawing box had saved from being skewered through the heart!

John let out a sigh of relief. He had gotten lucky. He would only have a massive bruise instead of being impaled.

John grabbed hold of the huge splinter of wood with both his hand, and with a grunt of pain, he ripped the splinter that was stuck in the ruined metal of his breastplate.

Head still buzzing even as he tried to force his mind to straighten itself out, John rolled over onto his hands and knees.

John went to stand, and nearly fell over again as his legs didn't want to cooperate. Instead he used the side of the battlements to prop himself up as his wobbly legs stabilized.

As he gazed out at the battlefield and tried to take stock but his mind still was unable to process what was going on, he abruptly realized he was being stupid. He grabbed his flask from his hip and took a drink.

Immediately, sound and his balance returned to him, as the fuzz in his mind cleared up.

Looking next to him, as the debris continued to rain back down from the sky, he saw that the scorpio was completely gone, probably having been thrown from the battlements entirely.

He looked back to his men and saw they and the levies around the battlements as well as all the winged misbegotten were laid out on their backs. They were all lying there dazed and fighting to come back to proper awareness as well.

Seeing the incapacitated forms of their enemies his twenty had been fighting, John picked up his partisan that had been knocked to the ground. He started stabbing them to death one by one as his own men began recovering. Some of the misbegotten vaguely recognized what he intended to do and tried to shuffle out of the way, but they all were still too incapacitated to stop him.

After a few short moments as the sky continued to rain dirt and bits of flesh and hunks of steel all around him, John finished off the last misbegotten nearby.

Immediate dangers taken care of, he hurried back to the wall and looked at the courtyard.

One entire half of the courtyard was completely torn up with large craters where the barrels of explosive stone had been buried. Those barrels had been all the supply that Castle Morne had kept stored from its mines of the substance.

Most of the valuable material was sent up north to be used by the wall that blocked the scarlet rot from escaping Caelid, with Stormveil taking a small portion for their own uses as well.

The men in the courtyard had been knocked off their feet just like everyone on the battlements. Some of the men have been bodily thrown back, into other men or onto the ground. Almost all of them seemed mostly okay as they shifted on the ground trying to get their bearings, having been positioned a distance away from that part of the courtyard on purpose.

But even with their attempt at caution by placing the battle line where they had, John saw some lay unmoving. Some with head or chests smashed by a piece of stone or metal debris, but others lay still despite no visible sign of why. The shockwave or an unlucky landing doing them in.

The misbegotten had completely stopped pouring through the entrance. Those who had been crossing the threshold, and presumably many more in the corridor itself, had been forcefully tossed back and and now clogged up the way to the entrance.

The misbegotten in the courtyard had fared far worse than the men. The ones directly above the bombs had been turned into slurry with bits of them now raining down from the sky.

Those unlucky enough to be close but not right on top of the explosives had instead been launched away at every angle at the velocity of a speeding car and had been turned into broken heaps of twisted and ripped-off limbs as they smashed into the ramparts and fell to the ground. Some misbegotten had instead been launched directly into the air and came crashing down to the ground.

Those who still lived despite being dashed against the earth and architecture would probably never be able to walk or eat again if the men Morne spared their lives after the battle, which John was doubtful would happen.

The leonine seemed to be of the last sort. Surprisingly, her flesh had been tough enough to not have been liquefied by the force of the explosives going off below and all around her.

John and the other knights had been sure not even she could survive such forces, which was why they had all gone along with his explosives idea, but it seemed her body's toughness exceeded all their expectations.

Instead of being reduced to jelly, it looked as if she had been one of the ones who was launched into the air and came crashing back down.

She lay down chest first in one of the bomb craters, her arms spread out. The Grafted Blade Sword was nowhere to be seen. Her upper half had all her fur burned off and was littered with cuts and patches of coal-black third and fourth-degree burns covered her body.

Even for her though, she couldn't completely escape the force of the explosions. Her legs had been ripped from their sockets and tossed who-knows-where, leaving only her waist up of her body left as she lay completely still, rapidly bleed from her grievous wounds onto the mud below and mixing with the puddles small puddles of rain already beginning to build in the crater.

They had won.

They had won!

THEY HAD WON!

THEY WERE GOING TO LIVE!

John felt such a huge wave of relief and triumph flood him that it almost made him delirious!

Then John saw her body twitch.

No... No!

What absolute fucking bullshit! How could anyone survive that? It didn't make any sense!

But the world didn't care about what made sense to John as the leonine misbegotten began stirring.

John looked around but saw that everyone down below in the courtyard was still out of it.

He clenched his fist so hard he heard his gauntlets creak. He couldn't let this happen!

"Someone down in the courtyard! The leonine misbegotten isn't dead! Quickly! Finish her before she recovers!" John yelled!

But no one below reacted besides some groans and men wriggling! They were all still too dazed by the explosion!

As John kept shouting to try and get someone down there to do something, the leonine shook her head and looked around, stopping briefly on John yelling for someone to put her down for good. Laying right next to her, was an armored misbegotten torso with an almost entirely full flask strapped to it.

John watched helplessly as the leonine pried the flask off the corpse and chugged it down in a few gulps. He could do nothing as he watched as the gashes across her body closed leaving small white scars, and the burns on her body were extraordinarily reduced in severity and reach.

Even though there were still patches of blackened skin after the crimson tears, much of her body became covered in healthy, red, puckered scar tissue.

The bleeding from her stumps where her legs used to be almost entirely stopped. John could only thank God that her legs didn't regrow as crimson tears couldn't replace limbs.

The leonine began dragging herself up the side of the crater towards the courtyard entrance to escape.

John was tempted to jump down from the battlements to chase her, but the ramparts were just too tall. All he would accomplish would be breaking his legs as he still had too much crimson tear saturation left over from the battling in the days before, so he couldn't recover from such an injury using crimson tears.

He could do nothing but watch and yell for those below to move.

A few of the levies, who had begun to recover earlier than those in the courtyard had because of their increased distance from the explosion, tried to fire a couple of crossbow bolts at the leonine, but in their still dazed state had them miss by quite a margin as the leonine misbegotten crawl across the entrance threshold and disappear into the ranks of the dazed misbegotten.

The misbegotten in the entrance who were now recovering as well began moving to retreat back down the corridor, and the winged misbegotten that were left on the battlements and hadn't been killed by the levies began hopping into the air and gliding back down the cliffside.

John watched everyone began to pull themselves together again. Far more men on the lines still stirred than they had thought they would have at this point of the battle.

John remarked that their plan had exceeded their expectations in some areas. The number of their men that survived and how quickly the leonine misbegotten entered the battlefield.

But the fact that the leonine misbegotten's corpse wasn't on the ground cooling was a serious problem.

He could only hope that the losses and crippling was enough. It had to be enough.

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