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This time when John went to meet Sihlas, John remembered to bring some writing supplies. He had forgotten them yesterday and had to write down his notes in the morning.
Today writing everything down was even more important. John felt compelled to make a record of Sihlas, of the misbegotten boy's life. He didn't know why he felt compelled to do so, but he did. Well, actually, that was a lie. John wouldn't lie to himself. He knew exactly why.
Sihlas may have been insignificant in terms of the bigger picture of the Lands Between, but to John personally Sihlas felt important despite not having interacted with the kid for a handful of hours. John knew he had a soft spot when it came to kids; they always reminded him of his own childhood.
John did not know if Sihlas would survive the rebellion that would eventually break out. Maybe it would be months or just as likely years.
He had no idea how many years ahead of canon he had first arrived or was at the moment. He'd already been here for half a decade and nothing had really happened. It could be more than a hundred years until it was time for the Chosen Tarnished to finally arrive, and the misbegotten rebellion to start.
But John had a sneaking suspicion that who or whatever had arranged for him to wash up on that beach with the Church of Elleh less than a day away, hadn't just done it for without rhyme or reason. That he was placed sometime relatively close, emphasis on relative, to when the Chosen Tarnished arrived. And he knew that he had arrived before the Chosen Tarnished did because certain timely events had yet to happen, like the very rebellion John wanted to stop.
Maybe if he was actually the Chosen Tarnished, placing him there at any arbitrary time would maybe make sense. But because John wasn't the 'main character' of this 'story', his placement temporally and geographically probably was calculated in relation to the 'main character' by whatever had put him here. The odds that he randomly arrived at this particular point of time in all of history was astronomically low.
Those first few months after John had washed up he had been expecting the Chosen Tarnished to show up any minute, but that thought in the back of his head had stopped wriggling after the first year. Instead John had a different, irrational, fear that had been slowly growing over the years that he had kept in check by his knowledge that he was still ahead of the 'canon' arrival time of the Chosen Tarnished. That the Chosen Tarnished would never arrive.
But if that turned out to be the case, he could address it in the future. Worrying in general was useless, and worrying about something that may never happen was especially useless. So John put his thoughts back into the here and now.
After the past couple of days of soaking in how people here did things, and asking the locals some particular questions, John had figured out how he was going to move forward with warning Castle Morne that the misbegotten were probably planning a rebellion. He'd walked through some parts of Clifftown to try and see if he could discretely discover some clues himself since he knew it was happening and so was looking out for anything suspicious, but that had been completely fruitless. Sticking out like a sore thumb there made it impossible to just blend in or be subtle at all.
And he couldn't just make vague claims like just outright telling them that there was a rebellion brewing and not give them any actual evidence. He had to have specifics they could act on or look for. Which is why he'd been looking for clues, but he'd realized something.
The misbegotten's weapons. They were the key.
You don't let your slaves have weapons, and yet the misbegotten who rebelled were armed somehow. And considering the scale of Morne in real life, there had to be a large amount of them. A massive stockpile of weapons. And there were none of those teleportation gates anywhere near Morne.
John had asked some locals and now knew that slave rebellions were somewhat of a semi-regular occurrence across the Weeping Peninsula.
So this was not at all out of the question, and the claim of large amounts of weapons was something that could be checked. He had other claims he could add as well, but that was the most significant one in his mind.
John wanted to have this last conversation with Sihlas, and then after Kalé was done with his business, wait for the next rainy day to execute his plan. It wouldn't take long at all with how often it rained in the Weeping Peninsula. Then there would be nothing else for John to do in Morne.
He and Kalé could head back to Limgrave, and Kalé get get his payment from Duran. Then John could keep following Kalé around and build runes through hunting and trading, allowing him to slowly 'level up' as he waited around for the Chosen Tarnished to eventually arrive.
John really needed a new name for when he empowered himself. Using such a mundane term for something so potent and sublime felt almost sacrilegious. The feeling when channeling the runes felt like far more than just his body becoming slightly more powerful.
It was like sticking a hand behind the curtain of reality and faintly touching the face of God, of something unknowably and incomprehensibly grand yet still infinitely vital with life. John wasn't a believer nor religious, but he couldn't deny that something about it had felt divine.
He'd decide on one later. He still had quite a few runes to go til he could strengthen himself again.
Speaking of getting stronger, maybe John could convince Kalé to go to southern Liurnia, so John could hunt down Thops. He had to actually start learning how magic worked if he wanted to start on making a mending rune at all. And maybe he could even learn some spells! Not only would that just be cool, but everything would become safer if he had more ranged firepower against all the hundreds of different things that wanted to kill people in the Lands Between.
John put his thoughts on the future aside as he arrived at the meeting spot and saw Sihlas had beaten him there.
After a quick greeting John dived right into his questions, writing implement and parchment ready.
"So tell me the story of Sihlas."
"What do you mean?"
"The story you tell yourself about your life. Who are you, where you were born, how you have arrived at where you are now, that sort of stuff."
Sihlas was obviously uncomfortable with John's question. His response was very barebones.
"I was born in Castletown. I don't know to who. I have lived for 15 winters, and I've always been a servant of Castle Morne. My life story... It isn't interesting. There isn't much more to tell."
John blankly nodded his head, playing dumb to Sihlas trying to deflect attention.
"Okay. Can you tell me what the first tasks you remember getting were?"
"Laundry. I would help wash clothes in the castle as soon as I could understand orders."
"How old-"
John went about asking Sihlas about his life. With Sihlas's cutting out details with his repeated denials about how significant his life was in various ways, it was like pulling teeth. But as they kept going and John kept asking about details, Sihlas spoke more and more smoothly with more details and less and less objections.
Soon enough, the teen was actually telling his story without John prompting him at all.
John learned about how Sihlas once nearly broke his wing when he was first learning to fly while carrying things. How he had been cornered a few times by hateful servants looking to punish him for being born misbegotten. How he had gained and lost friends for various reasons. How twice he had gotten incredibly sick and nearly died but had recovered. And many other such things.
It closely resembled the upbringing that could be expected from someone of a slave caste reviled by society and barely considered human but were kept around because they could be used as almost free labor.
As Sihlas told his tale, John internally remarked that Sihlas had been right. There were not any deeds or events that would have marked Sihlas as exceptional or glorious, the most impressive thing he had ever done being lifting a particularly heavy box.
Even so, John did not hesitate as he wrote down the tale of Sihlas the Misbegotten.
"And then you approached me that day in the alley, and well, you know the rest." Sihlas finished.
John wrote down the last bit of the tale and glanced at the sky. It was getting close to time for John to return to the inn.
He could delay things for a day or two to talk to Sihlas some more, but there really wasn't much more John had to talk to Sihlas about. It would just be procrastination because John knew that he would probably never see the boy, the young man, in front of him ever again, and permanent partings like this left John ever so slightly melancholic.
But that would just be him wasting both their time for his own indulgence.
It was time to say goodbye. And since they were parting, there was no harm in fishing for a bit of information.
John looked at Sihlas and offered him a smile.
"So I do have one last thing to ask, not about you" John started. "I'm curious. I have heard of misbegotten that are covered in red hair, but I have not seen any here. Just little tufts of orange or the smallest patches of red. There must be a few thousand misbegotten around Castle Morne and the nearby area, yet I've not seen a misbegotten with lots of red hair. Have you ever seen one?"
Sihlas froze up for a moment when John mentioned red-haired misbegotten, but relaxed as John continued. Sihlas quickly glanced around and licked his lips before he replied.
"Well, red-haired misbegotten are rare John, and when they are born or found, they are killed on sight."
"Really?" John blinked in surprise, he did not know that. "Why?" he asked.
Sihlas squirmed at the question.
Seeing this, John suspected Sihlas had had a bad experience about this subject. Maybe he had come across a sight like John had in those woods near that village. For someone so young it would have been traumatic to see.
"I don't know. Maybe they grow too big or strong or something."
Despite Sihlas being uncomfortable, John needed to ask.
"So you've never seen one before?"
Sihlas didn't seem to notably react to the question except John spotted the blood involuntarily draining from the boy's face.
"No. I've never seen one John."
Seeing how uncomfortable Sihlas clearly was and his reaction, John decided to stop there. The boy was clearly lying, but John didn't think what he was lying about the Leonine Misbegotten.
Hiding a hulking bright red misbegotten would be impossible in a place like Clifftown. It was completely cut off from any avenue in, except through Castletown or Castle Morne. John suspected that the Leonine Misbegotten, with how eye-catching he would be, would arrive after the rebellion started, or his arrival would be what signaled its start.
There were many possibilities and he could be wrong, but John was making a bet that hundreds or thousands of weapons weren't brought on the same day that the rebellion started. Much easier to sneak them in over time somehow.
"Alright," John said, not calling him out for lying. "Well Sihlas, I know it is a little earlier than usual, but let's call it in early today." John stood up and offered a handshake to Sihlas once again out of habit.
Sihlas knew what to do this time and used his scaly hand to give John's a shake. Despite the gesture being foreign to the Lands Between, Sihlas seemed to understand what it implied.
"This is the last time we'll meet?"
John nodded.
"Yes. That was everything. It is time for us to go our separate ways."
At this John saw Sihlas frown and shift his weight from foot to foot. Sihlas was extremely conflicted, and John knew why.
From Sihlas's story, John could already tell from a couple of different things that unlike other misbegotten Sihlas had mentioned, the boy had few if any friends left due to a series of misfortunes. In short, the boy was lonely. He must not have wanted to part yet, but John couldn't indulge the boy.
Who knew when the Chosen Tarnished would finally arrive. John wanted to be able to quickly hunt him down whenever he appeared and join as a follower of his. He had to try and prevent the man from choosing one of the horrifying endings.
"It was nice meeting you Sihlas. Thanks for putting up with all my questions, and goodbye."
At this, Sihlas looked even more conflicted. The moment hung in the air. One of those moments that felt like forever but was over in an instant.
"Goodbye John."
"Have a nice life." John said as he raised a hand in goodbye, turned around, and started down the walkway.
As he got close to turning the nearby corner-
"John!" Sihlas called out, like it was involuntarily pulled from him.
John turned around.
Sihlas shuffled from foot to foot. He opened his mouth as if to ask or say something, before a look of pain came over his face, and he changed whatever he was going to say.
"You too."
John stood there paused for a moment to see if there was more. When nothing came, John nodded and left, feeling sorry for Sihlas. Having such a hard life, being lonely, and probably going to suffer some consequences one way or another if the rebellion was discovered or if it went off successfully. The kid was born shafted and when he was gonna be screwed over again. His life was truly pitiable.
If he could, John wanted to help the misbegotten, omen, albinaurics, and others like them. Those hated and considered just because they were outside the Order.
Of all the demigods, John felt that Miquella the Kind had definitely been the one on the most right track and was very sympathetic towards the demigod's actions, but unfortunately the only kindhearted demigod had gotten kidnapped and killed by his blood-crazed rapist brother. His dead body resting in its cocoon in Mogh's palace, torn from the Haligtree.
Truly, GRRM's influence showed through. And Miyazaki's equal penchant for giving altruistic characters bad endings. Except this was real life and that had really happened, which made all that disturbing instead of humorous.
Well John was determined to get a good ending even if he was insignificant with little power, screw GRRM and Miyazaki! Even if he had to risk his life!
As John walked away from the meeting place with Sihlas, he put the boy away in a mental box to never think of again like he had many other things in his life.
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The next few days John spent relaxing and just enjoying the foreign culture of Castletown and Clifftown as he waited for Kalé to finish his business. He ate at different places that served foods he had never eaten before made using the strange produce in the Lands Between. Turtle neck meat stew with rowa fruit, or spiced, roasted land quirt flesh. Land squirts were those barnacle-pimple creatures in the waterways that squirted poison in the air like miranda flowers.
He tried these and other such foreign ingredients and dishes. Some were good, some bad, but all of them were strange. Wanting to conserve his runes He did not go anywhere particularly expensive or upper-class.
A few times throughout the day as he talked to random people he had even been asked if he would like to join a group of men at a pub for drinks despite being a foreigner, but he had turned them down.
John was a teetotaler. Really, he never smoked, drank, or did anything else that impaired his mind like that unless it was absolutely necessary. He prized what self-control he had too much and was too paranoid to put it at risk. And besides that, as a foreigner getting drunk with strangers in a foreign country was not very smart. It would leave him practically helpless and would be an unnecessary roll of the dice to see if they wished to rob or harm him or not.
Besides just relaxing, he workshopped on what he was gonna write to hopefully stop the rebellion before it even began, though John doubted it would all be stopped without violence.
The letter would be to Edgar Morne, the High Marshal in charge Morne, who John was sure was the same Edgar as the npc. John had tried a few different drafts and ways to write the letter and ways to deliver it but had in the end decided that simpler was better for this sort of thing, following the axiom of 'Keep it simple, stupid'. Unnecessarily complex plans were much less likely to succeed.
So he was just going to hide his identity and deliver an anonymous letter to a guard for his boss and hope the chain of command worked its magic.
As for the contents of the letter, at first John was going to just write the events that could have happened like they had in the games, but he'd changed his mind as that would be much less believable than other alternatives. He had decided in the end to just claim to be someone that overheard misbegotten talking about 'their plans' to rebel and then gave some details for things the guards could look for.
How they would use bows with flying misbegotten and crude cleavers for the regular sized misbegotten. That a scarlet red-haired large and strong misbegotten was involved. How they were planning to steal the legendary blade of Morne that Edgar was in charge of defending. And most importantly, how there should be weapons somewhere they could find and see for themselves that a rebellion was coming.
All this wasn't the truth of course, John hadn't overheard a single misbegotten say anything besides complaints about whatever tasks they were doing. But it delivered the same information but in a way John hoped was much more effective and believable to whoever read it.
John also threw in one outright lie. That the misbegotten were going to specifically target Edgar's daughter Irina to kill as revenge for their treatment as slaves. That they even had plans and misbegotten outside Morne to hunt her down if she fled or was sent away from the Castle. He hoped it galvanized Edgar to act on John's letter but not do certain things like send her off with an escort.
With the letter done, John went out and bought a plain brown leather cloak that would keep most of the rain and weather off of him, a set of rough durable cloth tunic and pants, and a pair of leather shoes. A set of the exact same type of clothes he had seen the townsfolk wearing.
With a rainy night and the addition of the cloak to help hide his eyes, he should easily pass as a normal townsfolk, instead of the rough low quality armor he usually wore around town that was out of place, though he left his helmet in the inn when he went out into town so people could see his face when they were talking. He had even practiced what he was planning to say to try and get the local accent down.
Almost like fate, after a few days on the very evening Kalé returned to the inn and told John that he was finished and that he was ready to leave whenever John was ready as well, came the soft pitter patter of rain that quickly grew louder into the heaviest downpour John had yet experienced in the Peninsula.
John spoke with Kalé about his day over dinner and then they retired to their respective rooms.
John changed his clothes to his townsfolk outfit and threw on his leather cloak. He tucked his letter in another palm-sized wooden box to protect it from the rain, tucking it away safely on his breast behind the water-proof leather cloak and his tunic. Then he made his way outside into the downpour.
It was late evening and the sun was setting, turning the sky purple. The deluge of rain combined with the fading light made it hard to make out any details about the people John saw scrambling to make their way quickly in the heavy rain. Perfect.
John made his way through the zigzaging, irregular streets of Castletown, a result of the city not being centrally planned but instead organically growing.
He almost got lost as the rain and fading light made it harder to recognize landmarks but he made it to the main entrance of Castle Morne.
Despite the rain, there were four guards covered in waterpoof cloaks at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the main entrance of Castle Morne, which was guarded by more soldiers. All the guards looked bored and miserable as one would expect with guards, many barely paying attention to anything happening around them as they achieved a zen-like state of existing unpleasantly.
John approached one of the guards on the fringe and abruptly handed him the wooden box with the letter inside, keeping his head tilted to obscure his face in the shadow of his cloak and the rain. John spoke loud enough that the other guards would definitely overhear what he was saying.
"This has an urgent letter to Lord Edgar. Bring it to your superior immediately."
Before the guards could react to his ambush, John turned around and walked away briskly. By the time the guard oriented himself called out for John to stop and come back, he had already made his way down the street and disappeared in an alleyway.
John kept going steady waiting for the clanking of plate on mail to approach, but after a couple minutes of no one pursuing him, he relaxed.
It seemed his plan had gone off without a hitch. Now all he could do is hope that something gets done by whoever reads the letter.
John returned to the inn and undressed down to his underclothes. He had long gotten used to sleeping his clothes and armor in the wilderness for years by himself, but in town there was no reason to keep his armor on in case of a wild animal attack.
John laid down in his bed. Tomorrow morning he would tell Kalé that he was ready, and they could leave.
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John's eyes shot open as a scream pierced the night and was suddenly cut off. Groggy, John rolled off the bed and ran over to his window ignoring his head pounding from the lack of sleep as adrenaline thundered in his veins.
Opening his room window and looking out into the street, it was pandemonium. The heavy rain had let up meaning sounds were no longer being drowned out. He could just make out indistinct yelling and screaming in the city from all directions. Not screams of anger, but of fear and pain.
People were running up and down the street pointing in different directions. In the distance John saw a small orange glow pierce the night over the rooftops.
John immediately jumped into action. He threw the few things he had left out on the table into his bag and started putting on his armor as the sound of the chaos that was unfolding outside came in through the window. It felt like forever as he put on his layers of armor, and once he was done, John double checked to make sure he had his whetstone knife on him. Leaving his cloak and other clothes behind, he raced out of his room to the room nextdoor and started slamming his fist into Kalé's door.
Kalé opened the door, the metal bow for his rebab in his fist, raised to strike! He saw it was John and turned back around to continue filling the half dozen bags he had with his stuff. John helped him pack the stuff away and threw a couple of the bags over his shoulder.
They walked out into the main room of the inn and saw the few other patrons looking around fearfully. They went out the back door to the shed. As Kalé put on Rabbit's saddle, John looked out of the alleyway towards the main street. He saw people all running away in the same direction, some yelling and pointing behind them as they did. With the cacophony of noise, John couldn't make out what they were saying, but he soon saw.
A drunk person stumbled and fell in front of the mouth of the alley. The running crowd left him behind, and after the last of the crowd ran past right behind them a gang of almost a dozen misbegotten with weapons came into view. They pounced on the drunk man and started hacking into his body as he screamed. Most were curved cleavers, but some were the various weapons he had seen the soldiers of Godrick using like hammer or swords.
Once the man's screams were cut short, John saw some of the misbegotten raise their weapons and scream a cry of victory before they all started running off after the crowd once again, the blood on their weapons gleaming in the moonlight and the water on the street turning red with the man's blood.
Looking at the mutilated corpse at the mouth of the alley and now realizing what was happening to cause this chaos, John drew his whetstone knife holding the hilt so hard his knuckles turned white.
Had his letter been too late, or was this all the result of his letter? John didn't bother thinking about it, about how this had all gone wrong. He and Kalé had to get somewhere safe as soon as possible.
Kalé finished saddling Rabbit, and he and John then quickly tied all the bags onto the saddle. As they did so, John could now see multiple small orange glows reaching over the rooftops, and the original one was already twice as large, the barest licks of flames shooting far enough up that John could make out their tops.
"Kalé, there are fires starting everywhere and the misbegotten are rebelling and slaughtering people! We have to get out of here!"
Kalé hopped up on a stirrup on Rabbit and looked around with increased height before hopping off!
"Marika's bones!" Kalé cursed, "The fires are starting all over the town. We are too close to the castle to be able to make it out of the city before the fires cut us off! We have to take shelter in Castle Morne!"
John nodded in agreement, and he and Kalé ran out onto the streets with Kalé pulling Rabbit by his reins.
Before they began heading south towards Castle Morne, John poked his head into the inn.
"It's not safe here! There's murderous misbegotten running around and fires are starting all around the city! I'm heading to Castle Morne for safety. Follow me!" John declared to the scared people standing in the inn's main room.
About half of the patrons, all lone men, along with the owner of the inn and his daughter moved to follow John, but the other half stayed. He and Kalé then hurried down the streets towards Castle Morne, their entourage following.
John's head was on a swivel as they made their way through the streets.
Some lone stragglers saw his group passing by and joined them. As they approached a particular intersection, they were brought to a halt as their group was stopped as another similarly sized group ran across the intersection in front of them. A pair of misbegotten armed with cleavers followed right on their tail, their chimeric steps lumbering and awkward, but quick.
As the misbegotten ran in front of him, John saw their heads turn to see his group only a couple steps away from them. As their eyes lit up, John acted. He leapt forward grabbing the closer misbegotten and pulled the misbegotten man into his chest, holding the arm holding the cleaver still, and began stabbing into the misbegotten's back over and over again.
The other misbegotten who was still turning his momentum away from the other group to John's saw this and reacted. They threw their whole body into leaping at John cleaver raised. John shoved the body of the misbegotten he was holding forward, and the two smashed into each other both dropping their cleavers as they went down.
Heart pounding, John quickly grabbed one of the cleavers, its mass heavy and poorly balanced, and began hacking into the two misbegotten on the ground. They both wriggled around trying to escape, but when they put a limb on the ground to lift themselves John chopped. Their screeches as they screamed in shock and pain from the blows even worse than the drunk man's earlier, but John kept going and going until they both stopped moving.
His arms were burning from the weight of the cleaver, his blood was pounding in his veins, his clothes and face were splattered in blood, and he couldn't say if that whole encounter had been thirty seconds or five minutes, but John was okay.
He looked around him and saw that the group the misbegotten had been chasing had stopped running and were looking at him.
"Follow me! We're heading away from this chaos to Castle Morne!"
They stepped forward to join his group and John pointed to the biggest man among the combined group.
"You! Take the other cleaver!"
As the man moved, John picked his whetstone knife up and sheathed it. Now three of them were armed. Him and the other man with cleavers, and Kalé with his metal rebab bow capped with a small metal hand.
John and his group kept heading towards Castle Morne and as they passed through intersections they saw that people, alone and in groups, were running every which way in the chaos as gangs of misbegotten small and large prowled the streets. A few more lone stragglers joined as they went, but as they made their way towards the castle there were less and less lone individuals, misbegotten or not, as everyone sought safety in groups. They even passed certain streets and buildings that groups had taken over to act as safe zones from the misbegotten in the chaos.
John led the group he had somewhat accidentally made himself the leader of to stay away from the roving misbegotten as much as possible, but they still ran into a few more as they went. All of them were alone. They took a look at their group, armed with John covered in blood, and ran, except for one.
That misbegotten, looking crazed and furious, his body littered in scars, charged at them roaring barely not paying their greater numbers any mind.
John stepped forward and blocked the obvious overhead chop with his own cleaver. The misbegotten tried to hop up and disembowel him with its clawed feet but his gambeson protected his stomach. The misbegotten landed awkwardly and impotently fell over despite its rage. Then John and the man beside him furiously began chopping at the downed misbegotten, the man shouting at the top of his lungs cursing the misbegotten out in a panicked frenzy.
John gave the next biggest man that misbegotten's cleaver, bringing them up to four armed people.
As they went through the streets they passed buildings some of which had fearful faces peeking out of windows. The city streets were littered with more and more bodies as time passed. Corpses lay discarded on the ground, some townsfolk, some misbegotten, and some of Godrick's soldiers with their weapons missing.
Without further incident as they ran through the dark city with screaming in the distance as their backdrop.
Then they finally arrived at the front entrance of Castle Morne only to see a battle that left them stunned.
What looked like a solid wave of misbegotten were swarming the entire entrance area surrounding and attacking the men who once guarded the entrance.
There were at least fifty men to combat what had to be hundreds of misbegotten. However the men were divided and trapped in small pockets of a handful of men standing in a circular formation fighting against the tide of misbegotten coming at them from all sides. They were like beetles being swarmed by ants.
For every man there were five or more misbegotten. The regular soldiers, in their red and green surcoat covered plate and chainmail, acquitted themselves well with their well practiced strikes and moderate armor. The misbegotten despite being numerous were individually weak and could barely swing their cleavers properly. So with their fairly heavy armor, any strikes that made it past their shield were mostly stopped by their armor if there was not a lucky hit.
However among them were two large plate-armored knights who stood at half again the stature of a normal man towering over the battle. They wore elaborately engraved armor, and their swords and shields were wreathed in storming winds as if a tornado was wrapped around their weapons. With every blow the fury of the storm would be released, the wind shearing their flesh and tossing their bodies. They might as well have been gods compared to the misbegotten.
John recognized them as Banished Knights and he watched as they battled with impunity against the misbegotten.
The misbegotten on the other hand with their chimeric and varied bodies and complete lack of any training could not go toe to toe with Godrick's men. Each individual getting into each other's way or dodging to use their fellows as meat shields, unable to hold any semblance of a defensive line at all.
Despite all this, the numbers of misbegotten were just too many. They would occasionally get a strike past the men's shields and through their armor. Sometimes when a man was truly struck he would pull out a golden flask filled with a red liquid and drink from it before continuing to fight on, but others had to fight on as they bled.
The worst was when a man was struck hard in the legs or finally succumbed to their injuries. As they fell to the ground, the misbegotten could rush at the rest of the groups' backs, and they would quickly fall.
When one of the men from one of the groups that held a banished knight was knocked down, misbegotten around them rushed into the knight from the back. He managed to stand tall and more storm gathered around him as the misbegotten piled on, until another misbegotten, this time a large muscular one, hit his knees from behind taking him to the ground and dispersing the storm. As he toppled the misbegotten nearby went into a frenzy and swarmed over top of him.
The knight twice tried to rise, but the weight of the misbegotten attacking him, their cleavers like raindrops, made him drop back down. On his third attempt to rise, his helmet, bent and dented from repeated hits, gave way as the large muscular misbegotten's cleaver embedded itself deep into his helmet!
Seeing his ally go down, the remaining knight reacted.
"MEN!" the remaining knight ordered once his ally fell, "WE RETREAT TO THE LIFT!"
The knight lifted his sword and let out a warcry. The storm covering his storm sword became more intense as he brought it down! A burst of concentrated storm flew forward like a cannon shot crashing into the crowd of misbegotten erupting into an explosion of blood as the wind sheared and blasted the misbegotten apart and knocked tossed them aside for nearly fifteen feet in front of him!
"FOR MORNE!" the knight screamed as the storm on his sword didn't abate and he rapidly launched volleys of storm blades into the misbegotten clearing the way between his men and the entrance, each one going off with half the strength of the very first he had performed.
This opening with many of the enemies in their way cleared, the soldiers began making an embattled retreat to the castle entrance, fighting as they retreated backwards.
Seeing his escape route into Castle Morne being cut off, John realized they were all in extreme immediate danger staying there.
He turned around and marched back down the street the way he came, his group following. As they retreated, John's mind was whirling. He looked back towards the horizon north towards the exit of the city, but by now the fires weren't small orange glows. John could see raging flames climbing over the rooftops into the sky.
John and his group didn't stop running until after they were far away from the entrance to Castle Morne and the army of misbegotten besieging it. Once he thought they weren't in immediate danger of being attacked by anything in the chaos that had engulfed the city, John stopped and turned towards his group.
"We need to get into Castle Morne through one of the entrances in Clifftown! Do any of you know a way to get to one of those castle entrances!?" John asked, raising his voice to be heard over the screams still howling through town.
John looked into the crowd, but no one spoke up or held his eyes. John resisted the urge to start cursing furiously.
"Then we start heading there and hope we find someone who does or get lucky! And we have to go fast!"
John led the group east through the streets towards the half of Clifftown he was familiar with.
They were nearly half way there when a trio of winged misbegotten wielding kitchen knives suddenly fell upon them from above and landed right in the middle of their group of nearly twenty, slicing around themselves wildly.
His group scattered in all directions screaming in surprise and fear. As the others ran in all directions to get away, John instead stepped towards the three winged misbegotten. They had managed to knock over five of their group when they landed and were now stabbing away at them.
The closest misbegotten was turned around attacking a man laying below him. They didn't see John as he approached and brought his cleaver onto the misbegotten's head and bisected it halfway down.
John ripped his cleaver out with a squelch as the other two misbegotten responded by charging and attacking John at the same time.
John managed to bring his cleaver around just in time to manage to land it in the second misbegotten's neck who immediately toppled taking the weapon with him. The third misbegotten's knife landed squarely on John's shoulder as his body crashed into John's. John felt the knife part his gambeson and bite deeply into his shoulder as he fell down onto his back with the misbegotten on top of him.
As the misbegotten raised its knife once again this time aimed at his unarmored face, someone tackled his attacker off of him from the side before one of the two men with a cleaver finished the last misbegotten off.
Ignoring his own shoulder which he could feel a deep stinging pain, John got to his feet and looked at the people who had been knocked down. Two lied still, already dead.
One was gasping, trying to breathe but spitting up blood. His entire chest was slick with blood where he had been stabbed multiple times. With the number of holes in his chest where his lungs were, it was obvious he wouldn't be making it. The fourth was perfectly fine, and the last was bleeding heavily from his chewed up arms that he had used to defend himself from the misbegottens' frenzied stabs.
John pointed at the inn owner.
"You and your daughter. Get that man's arms bandaged up. Use the cloth from people's shirts." John didn't hesitate as he turned and addressed the rest of the group while the inn owner scrambled to do what John told him.
"Everyone, as we go pick up weapons! Sticks, boards, large bits of metal, something, anything! The longer it is the better! You need to be able to react if something else like this happens!" John ordered.
Everyone looked around and people grabbed the nearest weapon-like objects they could find. As they did this John had wrapped the wound on his shoulder and put his now damaged gambeson on once again and looked back at the group.
A few took the misbegottens' knives, but the others who did end up with something ended up with rocks.
"Good enough for now. Just remember, if you see something as we go, grab it!" John said.
They listened, and by the time they had made their way to the edge of Castletown most of them were holding improvised clubs. Unfortunately they hadn't had anyone else join their group, so they had no one to show them where to go to a castle entrance in Clifftown.
Looking down, a lot of the moonlight was blocked by the building, throwing the area around them into shade even at night, so he couldn't see as well as in Castletown. John saw unmoving dark shapes strewn everywhere, corpses, as hundreds of little microcosms of shadowy figures chased each other through Clifftown, John unable to see which were misbegotten and which weren't despite his improved eyesight.
Some of the few wooden constructions in Clifftown were ablaze, and all the lifts John could see across the cliff's edge had their ropes cut and were missing their wooden platforms.
Looking upwards towards their objective rather than down. Down couldn't see much besides the top of buildings at this angle, but he spotted the orange glow of braziers above. One of them had to be an entrance to Castle Morne.
John led the group upwards through the labyrinthine streets of Clifftown towards where he could see the closest light coming from.
As they made their winding way upwards, any dark figures in the distance would see them and clear out of the way long before his group got close enough for John to tell if they were friend or foe.
Until they came across an imposing figure blocking the way in front of them next to the stairs up to the part of the walkway they needed to go to.
It was a large misbegotten woman, at least a quarter again as big as a regular man. Almost entirely covered in tough scales, a series of a dozen thin scratches which slowly oozed blood spread over her body. Around her in the street was a trio of dead soldiers and some civilians with crushed heads. And she was holding a warpick he had taken from one of the fallen soldiers.
John could immediately see that the way they needed to go was on the other side of the misbegotten woman. Their eyes met, and John saw her eyes were full of fear. At that same moment she squared up and looked to be able to charge them. John only had a split second to react.
"We just want to get to those stairs!" John pointed to the stairs behind her.
That caused her to pause. She narrowed her eyes and kept her weapon ready but slowly backed off to the side.
"Everyone, keep to the other side!" John ordered without taking his eyes of the misbegotten as they made their way past her and up the staircase a short ways away.
Thankfully, they didn't run into anyone else as they made their way up the streets and staircases and arrived at where the light was coming from.
It was their first lucky break since all this started!
It was a large plaza with entrances on three sides, two to streets of Clifftown but one that was an entrance to what must have been the bowels of Castle Morne.
Even more encouraging was that the entrance was guarded by around forty grimacing soldiers in a line formation blocking the entrance. They looked prepared for war. And there was a halberd wielding banished knight standing in the center of their formation, helm adorned with a roaring dragon.
There was a pile of at least twenty misbegotten corpses in the middle of the plaza showing that this area had seen fighting.
John relaxed. He never thought he would be happy at the sight of Godrick's men.
"We're from Castletown! Misbegotten have overrun the castle's main entrance and fires have started up in town!" John announced.
The soldiers stood unmoved in a show of their discipline, and the knight spoke up.
"Come! I'll have one of my men take all of you to the castle courtyard. That is where the townsfolk are being gathered for safety. And you," he pointed at John, "Stay. Tell me about the castle entrance being taken."
As the soldiers broke their line to let them through, Kalé turned around and looked at John with a question in his eyes. John nodded and tilted his head towards the castle. Kalé dipped his head in acknowledgment and followed the rest of the group as one of the soldiers began leading them into Castle Morne.
The banished knight approached John, standing at a towering eight feet, and looking down towards him with his helmeted head.
"So you said the Castle Morne's front entrance has been taken by the misbegotten?" the knight asked.
John turned and started telling him as the others disappeared from John's sight.
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