After leaving the Pilgrimage Church, the Tarnished pondered the mystery that had troubled him most since his return to the Lands Between: the Night of the Black Knives, when Godwyn had died.
As far as he knew, Godwyn had been immensely powerful, surpassed only by the likes of Marika, Godfrey, and himself at his prime-a handful of the very strongest. Godwyn had ranked among the greatest warriors in the Lands Between at the time. Who could have killed the eldest prince of the Golden Dynasty?
And how had the Rune of Death been stolen? The Black Blade was no pushover. As Marika's shadowbound beast, his strength was beyond question. Taking the Rune of Death from him could not have been easy.
He simply could not imagine who could have stolen Death and murdered Godwyn when the golden lineage was at the height of its power.
There was only one possibility: an inside job. The chances of an outside assault succeeding were practically nonexistent. Even the Ancient Dragons, rulers of the previous age, had failed to breach Leyndell completely. Other forces stood even less of a chance.
"What a mess. What I know right now isn't enough to piece together the whole story." Still, his preliminary conclusion was that it had begun from within.
And what role had Marika played in it? For now, he had no way of knowing.
As the Tarnished pondered, he spotted a purple glow in the distance. "What's that?" Drawn by the light, he approached and discovered a group of snakelike creatures made of round, rocklike segments.
They stood rigidly around a circular magic array.
"Could this be an evergaol?" He had heard of the idea back during his campaigning days: a place designed to imprison dangerous individuals. Ordinary prisons could not fully restrain them, so a more sophisticated prison had been devised, sealing both soul and body within.
"Looks like they finished it. Those stone snakes beside it must anchor the seal." The Tarnished approached them, but they did not react. Then he planted a foot on the evergaol, and they still showed no response.
"What's going on?" Whatever he did, the stone snakes remained motionless, standing there blankly.
"If you aren't going to move, I'm going in." The Tarnished stopped bothering with the dull-witted creatures and approached the Imp Statue, giving the matter some thought. He happened to have two keys, but using one here would make things awkward with the double-statue seal that had caught his interest earlier.
After mulling it over, he finally took out a Stonesword Key.
"I'm rather curious how good this evergaol is. Besides, there's always a way around a problem." He inserted the Stonesword Key, and the barrier shattered with a crash. Then he reached out to touch what appeared to be the array's core. Sure enough, a terrifying suction dragged him inside.
He found himself in a strange space. Time seemed imperceptible here, and the soil and vegetation looked distinctly unreal. This was likely an artificial space constructed by the array.
"If the array's active, someone must be imprisoned here." He looked around and found no one, but he did spot an enormous, ghostly blue fissure. As he approached, a tall figure emerged from it.
"What? A Samar?"
The Samar were another race that lived in the snowy mountains, warriors who embodied ice. Mortal enemies of the Fire Giants, they had provided considerable aid to the Erdtree's forces during the War of the Giant.
"He ought to have been honored for his service. Why is he locked up here?" It was understandable that those traitorous Trolls were unwelcome; they had betrayed their own race, after all. But the Samar and the Erdtree shared common interests. Unlike the Fire Giants, they posed no threat to the Erdtree, and their population was small. Marika had seen no need to suppress them.
"..." Like a walking corpse, the Samar attacked the Tarnished without hesitation.
"All right, I get it. You've gone mad." The Tarnished dodged the slash and immediately understood. This Samar, too, had been blinded by slaughter.
The Samar did not answer, merely breathing a freezing blast from his mouth. Knowing how dangerous the move was, the Tarnished hurriedly leaped back. The icy breath struck the ground. Fortunately, this space was artificial; otherwise, that blast would have been enough to freeze the land solid.
The Samar before him was a warrior of heroic stature. Though his long imprisonment had weakened him, traces of his former valor remained.
"That curved sword is just my style. Mind lending it to me?" The Tarnished darted to the Samar's side and swung his sword, leaving a horrific wound across his body.
"..." The Samar swept out a large hand, and a storm of ice swirled around him, forcing the Tarnished back.
"Interesting." The Tarnished knocked the thick ice off his wrist and flexed it. Meanwhile, the Samar clutched the wound along his side, looking exhausted. Clearly, that attack had drained a considerable amount of his stamina.
"You haven't got much time left." This evergaol continually consumed the strength of the soul. Anyone imprisoned here long enough would have their soul slowly dissipate with time.
"!" The Samar stamped hard on the ground, blue light filling his eyes. He was clearly enraged.
"Getting worked up won't help." The Tarnished charged and knocked the curved sword out of the Samar's hand with an upward slash. "I've got less than a tenth of my strength left myself, but it looks like I'm still the stronger one." Then he drove his sword into the Samar's throat, and the warrior fell.
The Samar's body gradually dissolved, and something resembling a golden-red eyeball dropped from it.
"What is this?" The Tarnished had never seen the pattern engraved on the eyeball. It seemed to be something that had appeared after he left the Lands Between, but he could sense an intensely golden aura within it.
As though sensing the prisoner's death, the array's barrier began to collapse. The Tarnished was immediately transported outside, while the stone snakes surrounding it scattered, losing their vitality and becoming ordinary stones.
"A single-use device? What a waste. Or did I use it wrong?" The Tarnished looked at the nearby Imp Statue again, and an odd idea came to him.
Generally speaking, a Stonesword Key could only be used once, because it could not be pulled out after insertion. Conversely, if he could break open the Imp Statue and retrieve the key inside, he could use it again.
Every key fit the Imp Statues scattered throughout the Lands Between.
"This thing's pretty tough. How should I do this?" The Tarnished surveyed his surroundings for something that could break the statue. Finally, his gaze settled on one of the lifeless stone snakes nearby.
"This looks hard enough. Let's try it." He picked up the stone and smashed it straight down onto the statue. After dozens of blows, a thin crack appeared in the statue, but the stone gave out first and split apart.
So he picked up another stone and continued hammering. After going through five stones, he finally smashed the Imp Statue and retrieved the Stonesword Key inside.
"Perfect." The Stonesword Key was completely intact and could be used again. The Tarnished was thoroughly pleased.
Together with the key he had bought from the Wandering Merchant earlier, that still gave him the two he needed to open the first Imp Statue seal he had found. He picked up the curved sword the Samar had dropped nearby and carefully wiped it clean. Its blade was long and exceptionally sharp. Though it fell short of his Wolf Fang, it had the advantage of being a curved sword.
Curved swords were the most renowned weapons of his homeland. Though the Tarnished was proficient with every kind of weapon, curved swords remained his favorite. Apart from paired blades or paired swords, they suited his fighting style best.
"It's sharper than the straight sword I'm using. Time for a replacement." He had made a rather good haul this time: a weapon and a mysterious eyeball.
Just as the Tarnished was about to move on, a deafening rumble reached him from afar.
"A bell?" The bell rang loud and clear. Then a palace-like structure as enormous as a mountain began to move, shaking the earth with every step.
"What is that thing?" He had never seen anything like it in the past. It was utterly unheard of.
The Tarnished cautiously approached the mountainous giant, until its true form became clear to him.
It resembled a turtle with limbs made of enormous rocks, carrying a moss-covered palace on its back. Beneath its body hung a massive golden bell.
"When did the Lands Between get something like this?" The Tarnished wanted to move closer, but he spotted numerous headless spirits wandering around the giant.
"Headless Knight spirits?" The knights roamed beside the giant as though escorting it. The sight left the Tarnished completely baffled; he had no idea what these things were. As he puzzled over them, he noticed dense clusters of gray skulls covering the giant's limbs, with an aura of death emanating from them.
"Something to do with death again? And why do I feel like this giant is trying to shake those skulls off?" The sight reminded the Tarnished of enormous sea creatures infested with barnacles.
He drew his hand crossbow, aimed at the skulls, and fired several bolts in succession. With a series of cracks, the skulls clinging to the stone were knocked loose, falling to the ground and shattering.
"I'm a merciful man. Let me give you a hand." Shortly after he spoke, the giant stopped moving. Then its limbs bent, and it crouched down.
"Now that's interesting." The nearby Headless Knights no longer followed the giant around. Instead, they surrounded it, as though determined to defend something to the death.
"The more you do that, the more curious I get about what's inside that palace."
There were twenty Headless Knights before him-a considerable force. Charging in recklessly would not be wise. Just as the Tarnished began considering a plan, their figures flickered, then soon vanished where they stood.
The Tarnished surveyed his surroundings. Could they have spotted me? In the end, however, he had been overthinking it. The knights had simply left.
"I couldn't ask for better." The Tarnished swiftly darted out and approached the giant. Even crouching, it stood half as high as a small mountain. He climbed up the vines, and when he opened the palace's tightly shut doors, the sight inside startled him.
This was no palace at all. It was a Walking Mausoleum, a shrine dedicated to the dead.
"Is this... a Demigod's corpse?" Even the changes wrought by time could not erase that distinctive aura. Marika's children had not been limited to Godwyn and his two brothers; those three had merely been particularly exceptional. Marika and Godfrey had other children as well, and those children had descendants of their own.
Every one of those descendants was a Demigod. What lay inside this palace-like Walking Mausoleum was the corpse of an unknown Demigod. Stranger still, he... had no head.
"A headless Demigod's corpse... no wonder there were so many Headless Knights outside. They must have been soldiers who served him in life." He knew nothing of what had happened in the Lands Between since his departure, nor what had become of Marika and Godfrey's lineage. But there was one thing he did know.
The Demigods had begun to fall. Even those once-exalted beings could not escape the shadow of death.
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