Covenant of Fire [Elden Ring]

AN:

Now that we have caught up to my backlog we'll be moving to 1 chapter a week minimum for the foreseeable future. I will post if/when that changes.

Also, I have cross-posted this story on over a half dozen other sites as well, same username and story title. Some of them support pics and colored text, so I use those to spice up the story. So if you are interested in that and read on other sites, trying searching. It might be posted on there. But if you are strictly a phone app reader, the story is designed to be perfectly fine without that as well.

Enjoy the chapter.

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John stood in one of the food lines with his bowl and two pronged wooden fork, talking and getting to know the other 4 men in his five.

The tallest of his five, the only one taller than John, was a baker's assistant. Another man hauled goods around for various traders and shops. One was a leatherworker. And the last was a simple laborer for hire.

As for how they acted, to use a British expression, they were a bunch of lads. They were pretty typical for what you would expect for a bunch of blue collar guys.

Not that that was a bad thing. John was more interested in intellectual pursuits personally to use his free time on, but there was nothing wrong in his view with being more interested in just having a good time at the pub, hanging out with friends, and chasing women.

The food line shortened as they got to know each other, and the rest of his five were in front of him and got their food. When it was John's turn to get his bowl of stew and small loaf of bread, he turned to the two men who would be giving him his stew and bread and saw someone he had been looking out for.

It was Kalé in his familiar red clothing, and he was the one giving out bread.

John got his food and stepped over to his friend who was serving a separate line.

"Kalé!"

Kalé looked over and his bored expression shifted to shock, then relief.

"John!"

Kalé looked back and forth before leaning forward and whispering to John.

"When I heard rumors that the men who sallied out did not return and I did not see you at dinner yesterday with the rest of the militia, I feared the worst had happened."

Kalé leaned back and spoke normally again, smiling.

"I am glad to see I was wrong. You are with the rest of the irregulars now?"

"Yes. That is a long story. It was a pretty close call out there though. And yes, I'm with the rest of these guys. I'm a fivier now."

"I see. Do-"

"Kalé!" Interrupted the stew ladeller next to Kalé, glaring at him and gesturing at the tray of bread in front of Kalé and the line of people still waiting to be served.

"I'll meet you here in the mess after you're done for the day," John said.

Kalé nodded and gave John his bread.

John followed his men out of the noisy mess hall that already had all its tables filled. They went to a nearby room filled with more tables and sat down.

They traded stories back and forth of wild and humorous things that had happened to them. John suspected that the baker was exaggerating his stories, but it was all in good fun, and it made the food more enjoyable.

The stew and bread were a little light, but it was much more than John would have expected for siege rations.

After they were done eating they put their bowls and forks into the wooden boxes the mess staff used as bins to collect the kitchenware. By this point the men and women running the mess hall were already done passing out food and were working on collecting bins and cleaning things.

As John's five went to leave, he didn't join them.

"I'm gonna wait here for my friend to be done. I've got something to talk to him about. I'll meet you guys at the barracks."

John and his men, and didn't that still feel weird to be in charge of some guys, split and John started waiting for the kitchen to get done. After a few minutes of standing around doing nothing, John decided instead to volunteer to help the mess staff.

John took off the outer layers of his armor to keep it clean and spent at least an hour helping the mess staff.

Eventually, Kalé was finished with his duties and approached John. John spotted him and turned towards the people he had been helping.

"Hey guys, my friend is here. I'm done." The people thanked him and John turned his attention to Kalé.

"John. Let us go to my room. It is more quiet there."

John nodded and put his armor back on. A few minutes later they were in an emptied storeroom that only held Kalé's bedroll and the bags of goods his friend had kept on Rabbit. The room was in an internal corner of the castle, relatively close to the mess hall, but in a corridor that wouldn't see much traffic.

Upon sight of the bags, John realized that he hadn't seen Rabbit since he and Kalé had separated.

"Where's Rabbit?" John asked.

Kalé gave John a deadpan look.

"Oh? This is the first time we have spoken since we separated and you nearly had to take a crow's feather in that battle, and the first words you say to me are to ask about Rabbit? Is Rabbit the one who is your friend and not me?"

Crow's feather? That had to be a nomad euphemism John didn't know yet. John didn't allow that turn of phrase to distract him.

John turned to Kalé, a serious look on his face.

"Alright, you got me Kalé. Our friendship is a lie. I've only been talking to you for these years to get close to her. I think it was love at first sight, you see. The way her dirt-crusted fur swayed in the breeze as she was in the bushes-"

John kept up the serious tone as he spoke, but he couldn't help the grin that broke through his serious expression.

Seeing John's lips quirk, Kalé dropped his deadpan look and chuckled at John's nonsense. John joined him.

As they began chuckling, it was like the tension from the last few days found a release valve. What started as a few chuckles, grew into chortling and then full blown belly cramping laughs. Their laughs at this moderately amusing bit of wit built and built, and didn't soon neither of them could even stand, and they fell to the floor holding their stomachs and trying to breathe.

They stayed there for some time, laughing uncontrollably, and every time it seemed to die down, one of them would look at the other, repeat a line, and they would start laughing again.

Only minutes later when they had laughed so much the lack of breath was causing their chest to hurt did they begin regaining control of themselves.

As their laughs subsided, they sat up from laying on their side, and Kalé wiped a pair of tears from his eyes.

"Ah. I needed that bit of levity after these past few days. To answer you about Rabbit, John, Rabbit is being used to help move supplies around the castle. I was told I would be given her back once the siege ends.

"Now tell me, what has happened to you these past few days? What happened with the sally?"

John told Kalé what happened since they separated, including his account of their sally. This time when he recounted what happened, he was much more brief with less detail than the report he had given Edgar for the sake of brevity, but John did include how he had begged for the misbegotten children's lives.

After John was done, Kalé was silent for a few moments processing everything.

"That strike that hit you in the chest. How far did the cleaver cut into you?" Kalé asked.

John showed him with his hand.

"Holy Marika! That was only a few inches from your heart!" Kalé exclaimed and became very animated!

"Well, I did have some crimson tears left after I healed it. I would have been fine if it nicked my heart."

Kalé shook his head vehemently.

"Not if you died before you had the chance to drink any! And be careful! Crimson tears are not perfect. They have flaws and ways to prevent them from being effective.

"I have scavenged enough battlefields to know that a common method of preventing an enemy from surviving using crimson tears is to leave a blade inside someone's heart so that they can not heal the wound even if they drink tears. Then after a short time, they will die even if they consume a whole flask."

Seeing how serious Kalé was taking this, John acknowledged his point.

"Fair enough. It is not like I am being reckless or blase about my life. I am not an idiot. I am just stating that in that particular situation, it may have been very dangerous, but it was only a light brush with death."

Kalé let out a breath as he calmed down.

"You are right. It is just... I just worry for you my friend. You have to promise me that you will not die."

John shook his head.

"I can't promise that Kalé," John said, thinking about Irina, "There are some things that are more important than my life."

"There is nothing more important here than your life," Kalé denied emphatically. "You cannot allow yourself to die," he almost begged.

John shook his head denying Kalé's plea, but didn't voice a reason knowing he couldn't convince Kalé without spilling the beans about his meta-knowledge.

Kalé had no doubt survived for centuries to become one among the older people still alive by not placing any cause or ideal above his own life, but there were more important things to John than his life. Like preventing a potential path that could result in the entire would and the souls of everyone from being melted away.

"There are more important things. You just don't understand Kalé," John said to drop the argument.

Kalé shook his head as well in response.

"Neither do you, my friend. Neither do you."

They fell into silence as neither of them had a response to the other's disagreement.

They may have disagreed, but it wasn't a resentful disagreement. So the the silence they settled into was companionable.

After a few minutes of just being in each other's company, it was John who spoke up.

"So have you just been helping in the kitchen?"

"Yes. It was one of the tasks that they did not mind a nomadic merchant performing."

"Well, you do have talent at making food. Much better than me."

"Thank you, but that is just experience. I have no actual talent for cooking. I have never made a novel dish in my life and I have no passion for it.

"I decided on the mess instead of any of the other choices they gave me because everyone eats and talks there, so you overhear nearly everything that is going on in the castle. Sometimes even things that the men shouldn't be talking about."

"Oh really? Anything I should know?"

Kalé looked out in the hallway to make sure no one would overhear before he answered.

"Yes. The misbegotten leader? The red-maned misbegotten Lord Edgar spoke of in the courtyard? Well, early yesterday morning most likely right after your unit started down Clifftown, he infiltrated the castle.

"The misbegotten had dug a tunnel under the floor of the treasury and broke in from below. They looted it, and the leader took the legendary armament of Morne: the Grafted Blade Greatsword. With it, he cut a path through the castle killing many knights who were caught off guard and made it to the front entrance.

"From what you told me about how easily he killed that powerful knight and what he did here in the castle itself, I believe the misbegotten leader may have had a hand in why all of the units that left the castle yesterday died to the last man, except for you and the man you saved."

That made a disturbing amount of sense to John. The misbegotten leader had hunted down a number of their knights, who the rank and file misbegotten would not be able to touch.

And now John had the answer to how the misbegotten had gotten ahold of the Grafted Blade Sword. He had never thought about where the legendary armament would be stored exactly, but it definitely wouldn't be kept down on the beach with the misbegotten.

"That tunnel, have you heard what has happened to it since?"

Kalé nodded.

"Yes. It was collapsed by the lord's men, and half the garrison spent most of yesterday searching every block in every room on the ground floor and through the lower levels of the castle for more tunnels. They found a handful of other tunnels that they also collapsed. There are now lookouts placed on every discovered tunnel to make sure that they aren't dug out once again."

Well, that was good. He didn't want to have to worry about misbegotten coming out of the walls or floor every moment of the day.

However there was one more thing that stuck out to John about what Kalé had told him.

John looked at his friend.

"Do you think it is weird how the misbegotten's leader knew to attack then, right as the castle lost many extra men they could have used to prevent the leonine misbegotten's rampage?"

At that, Kalé froze for a moment before he frowned.

"That is... disturbing. Maybe the misbegotten had overheard from one of the tunnels about the plan to for those men to sally. plenty of loose lipped people spoke of it openly all throughout the castle. I know I had heard about it in the mess by that evening even if I did not get any details beside that there would be six groups."

"That is true. They could not have overheard from the lord's study because it is above the ground floor, but I know my Knight Lieutenant briefed my group at least twice not making sure that the information was kept secret.

"Once he even spoke in the hallways as we went downstairs and another time when we were down at one of the Clifftown entrances to the lower parts of Castle Morne.

"They could have easily overheard it in the castle where everyone thought there was no reason to not speak about the sallies."

And that frustrated John.

The men of the garrison had all sown the seeds of their fellows' deaths, being frivolous with such information because they had thought the enemy so far below them that they could do nothing. Pride and arrogance co-signing their deaths.

And maybe the misbegotten hadn't even overheard them in the castle's tunnels.

They'd had lookouts watching the streets for any misbegotten who came down the streets or who scaled a cliff, but the misbegotten could have had a winged misbegotten flying below the lip of the cliff by the castle entrance as a scout listening who could have heard Carth or anyone else talking about the sallies or anything else they were doing.

Fighting an enemy who could fly and had been preparing this rebellion freely, for what must have been years if they had an entire tunnel network, was very frustrating. They would have to start fighting harder and smarter, and stop being sloppy, if they wanted to get through this now with all the losses they had taken.

And the men of the garrison weren't the only ones that had been sloppy.

John should have seen the possibility that he and Kalé could have been caught up in the rebellion, but he hadn't considered the possibility that it could kick off before he handed over his letter, or that it might do so happen that it did on the exact same night.

Just a single day's difference could have seen him and Kalé completely avoid this.

Hell, before he had delivered it, John had considered the possibility that his letter could cause things to pop off immediately, but had dismissed the idea as too unlikely. If he had committed to leaving immediately after he had delivered it instead of putting it off until the next morning, they'd be on their way north enjoying a relaxing walk on the road.

But now they were both trapped in this castle as a genocidal horde that outnumbered them three to one plotted their deaths.

And John's lack of consideration had endangered the life of his only friend, Kalé. It wasn't his fault that the rebellion was happening, but it was his fault that they had even been able to be caught up in it when it wasn't their business.

He should have found a better way to try and prevent Irina's death instead of heading into what he knew would soon be an active war zone. John had screwed up, and now Kalé may have to pay for it.

"Hey Kalé, I'm sorry for pushing for us to come here. We should have stayed far away from Morne. Or at least, I should have come myself."

Kalé shook his head.

"Do not be ridiculous John. Our plight is not your fault. Come by yourself? There is no way you could have known this was going to happen."

As Kalé finished what he was saying, John stayed silent, not agreeing or disagreeing with what Kalé had said.

Noticing that John had responded, Kalé turned and his questioning gaze met John's utterly serious one.

John said nothing as they held each other's gaze. As they did, the nonchalant air that had been between them started to grow heavy. And as this weight in the air built and they looked at each other, John saw something in Kalé's gaze begin to change.

For nearly a minute, they kept that heavy stare filled with something unsaid but still spoken.

Then Kalé let out a dark chuckle as he broke the gaze with a shake of his head.

"You really have to stop letting things like this slip John."

John waited for more. And waited. But Kalé said nothing else.

No accusations. No condemnation. No blame. No questions about what or how or why.

They just sat still across from each other in that room looking at each other, the air between them heavy and filled with more meanings than flat spoken words would have been able to convey.

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The next morning John was forced to do some heavy drills as a punishment from his twentier. He hadn't ended up going back to the barracks that night, and now was suffering the consequences.

He didn't mind though. Even though his body was only half recovered from the previous day, John wasn't afraid of working his body till it dropped. He had no problem with heavy exercise, it had just never been his interest.

After an especially tough morning, John joined the rest of his five in training as they did their drills and spars.

"Irregulars!" shouted their twentier, "You are called that for a reason! Put your backs into it! Strike like your life depends on it, because it does!

"The enemy outnumber us twice over, so you have to be more than twice as good! Or they'll not only kill you, but the men around you! And soon after the women and children running this place while you laze around out here!

"We're going to beat you irregulars until you've straightened up enough that no one could tell you weren't regulars!" their twentier declared.

And their twentier did his best to make good on his word.

He ran them harder and harder every day. Even as their bodies grew stronger, and their hands and feet performed the actions required of them easier and more naturally with every drill, each day they would return to the mess even more tired than the last.

When their twentier saw them begin to meet his demands that had been impossible for them on the first day, he took that as a sign to intensify their training more.

Things settled into an uneasy routine for the next week. They would wake up, eat breakfast, train all day until they could barely hold a weapon, then they would eat dinner, and have a couple hours of free time before they returned to the barracks and went to sleep. Then they'd do it all over again the next day.

John spent half his free time socializing with the men in his twenty and the other half with Kalé, though he always returned to the barracks after that first day.

During his conversations with Kalé and the men, John learned that misbegotten after a couple of days started a continuous assault on the various corridors that led up into Castle Morne proper that the regulars were fighting as John and the rest of the irregulars trained.

The Clifftown entrances had been abandoned after the six groups that had been sent out were annihilated and misbegotten overran them. A devastating blow, as they no longer had the ability to prevent the misbegotten from accessing the heavily connected lower depths that had been filled with all much of the supplies that Morne had built over the years for sieges.

Instead those corridors in the bowels of Castle Morne had become the new battleground since the misbegotten couldn't use the lift to come up through the main entrance as it had been pulled up and dismantled. Meaning the only way up into Castle Morne left was through the corridors.

But that fighting was the regulars' problem at the moment. For now, John focused his attention on what he and the rest of the irregulars could do, which was to improve themselves as quickly as possible.

Normally, such an intense amount of training, over 8 hours a day of it everyday, would cause a person's body to break down rather than build up.

But here their twentiers brought out their secret weapon: a sip of crimson tears.

Not enough to relieve all their aches and pains, but enough to get rid of any blisters, bruises, or minor wounds, and to let their body recover just enough to be able to do it all the next day.

This is one of the myriad of reasons that John had been punished for not sleeping in the barracks. He had skipped his first sip of crimson tears meant to help his recovery. Seeing as he wasn't supposed to have any crimson tears yet, John quietly hid the flask he already had in his chest, and didn't use it to make anything easier on himself.

One might think all this training would be mind numbing, but it was actually the opposite. They weren't in a gym lifting weights or running around a track where they could blank their minds. They were practicing martial drills and doing many various forms of sparing, solo and in groups. It was a lot more like a really intense high stakes 'game' than a 'workout'.

This week also is when John really noticed what his 'hallowing', as he'd decided to call his 'leveling up', had brought him.

He was just always that little bit stronger, reacted just that little bit faster, could last a little bit longer.

And most importantly to John, when it came to his martial practice he seemed to grasp things before the others and his mind and body retained them better. He found he also could dig deeper and force himself to push two more steps than anyone else could despite being just as exhausted, eking out just that bit more progress every day.

None of these individual things made a huge difference, but all of them added together, over a period of time? That is what allowed his hallowing improvements to shine, showing itself to be exponential rather than linear.

Linearly, add two to itself, and after five times you get ten. Exponentially, multiply two with itself five times and you get thirty two. The hallowing and his training wasn't even close to that extreme of being three times as strong as a regular man, but the principle still applied.

Sure, he couldn't lift three times as much weight as an ordinary man as John might have been able to do if he had the same runes-to-strength ability as Melina would give the Chosen Tarnished, but being ten percent better in a half dozen categories made him almost twice as effective overall.

After a week of this sort of performance, the difference his hallowing played was noticeable.

This was really shown when on their seventh day, John actually beat their twentier, a man with over a century of experience, in a spar a couple times in a row.

"John," said their twentier as he after he finished his last spar with John, "Are you sure you are from common stock? That you are not an illegitimate child of some noble scion?"

"No, Sir."

The twentier didn't look entirely convinced as he shook his shield arm to get rid of the throbbing.

"If you say so. The Erdtree must have especially blessed you then, because after this week with you I am certain you are not just another townsfolk or farmer. Nothing approaching an Omen, but your martial ability is clearly not typical."

"Thank you, sir." John said.

The twentier shook his head and waved John off.

"Enough with you for now."

The twentier turned to the rest of their twenty doing their own spars.

"Men, at attention."

All the men stopped their spars and quickly organized themselves into formation in front of the twentier as commanded.

"You may have heard, but while you have been enjoying the light of the Erdtree up here with me, down below our men have been hammered by an unending tide of misbegotten.

"Our men's superior equipment and marital ability has prevented many casualties, but the constant attacks have caused them to finally start reaching crimson tear saturation. If they are not given time to rest, they will start to fall quickly.

"So we irregulars are done with the fun and games up here. Tomorrow morning us irregulars are to go below and begin taking over the defense until the regular garrison has recovered. Now is the time we'll see if you have really learned anything.

"I want you all to be fully rested tomorrow morning, so I'm cutting training here for the day. Go to the quartermaster to get all yourselves golden flasks and get yourselves healed up. Spend the rest of the day girding yourselves for tomorrow."

With that, their twentier left them to their own devices. Most of the men went to the barracks with the fiviers of the irregulars going over to the armory and war supplies section of the castle where the quartermaster spent the day.

As they started approaching they saw people transporting broken weapons and damaged armor up from below and unbroken weapons and armor back down into the corridors.

As they got close they passed some blazing hot rooms where a small number of smiths hammered away repairing broken and bent armor and weapons. But their work piled up faster than they could get it done.

Thankfully, the castle was meant to supply five times as many soldiers as they currently had, and do it in the long term, so with lack of men, the supplies would last far longer. Actually, now that John thought about it, that wasn't actually a good thing.

Anyways, the fiviers had already been getting their men small doses crimson tears for days now, so they didn't even have to bother the quartermaster, who was no doubt as busy as his smiths were, to find the clerk who was managing the crimson tears supply. Instead they just directly went to a specific supply room being run by a soldier acting as a clerk.

"Irregulars finish early today?" He said as they approached, his words not really being a question. "I heard that was gonna happen.

"Tomorrow you get blooded huh? Well, I'll get you all your tears for the day, and while I'm at it, get you your fives' flasks as well, now that your training is over and we know you won't use it to recover from the day's training.

"I've already told you all what to do. Pass that onto your men. I will not tolerate tears being wasted."

And so that is what the soldier clerk and his civilian helpers did. The fiviers of each twenty were all given five crimson flasks filled to the brim each for them to keep and distribute among their men, along with a single extra flask for training recovery that their entire twenty was to share and then immediately return.

When they handed John his flasks, he was tempted for a moment to tell them he already had one back in the barracks, but he kept him mouth shut.

Right now they were allies, but after all this was over and he joined up with the Chosen Tarnished, Godrick's forces would become his enemies. Any extra resources he could grab from them now would only be a good thing later.

John then headed back to the barracks with the other men. The barracks was actually a whole multi-floor section of the castle just filled with rooms of beds with a small wooden chest at the foot of each. Each twenty had their own room.

Once back in their room and everyone had been given their recovery dose, John sat down with the other men in his five and gave them all their flasks. Despite John knowing all their names, and they knowing his, all of them used nicknames based off their professions.

"So this is it huh? Tomorrow it is going to be your guys' first battle." John said to them.

"I don't like to say it, but I'm quaking in my boots." said Baker, the tallest among them.

"You never been a in a real scrap in your life, Baker? I've taken three knives to the gut over the years. Take it from someone who knows, it won't be nearly as scary now that I've got a knife as big as theirs now. 'Specially now that they've given us the magic juice." said Hauler, the one among that was the stockiest but also the shortest.

"We know Hauler. We've heard you mention it every chance you get. If it wasn't for the scars I'd have thought you were making it up." said Cobbler, the one whose skin was so heavily tanned it resembled brown leather.

"Shut up Cobbler. I know for a fact you haven't been in a scrap either. All those little white marks on your arms are from your own sloppy work," shot back Hauler.

"Being boneheaded enough to manage to get yourself stabbed in three different muggings before the scars have time to fade isn't a feat to brag about Hauler." said Butcher, the last of John's four squadmates, a man with enormous sideburns and a thick mustache.

"Teaming up on me with Cobbler, are you Butcher?" said Hauler, "Well, I can't say you're wrong. If we want to know what the fighting we'll be doing tomorrow is like, we'll have to ask Scholar. Anything we ought to know?" Hauler looked at John.

John thought for a moment.

"Prepare your stomach. Seeing the guts spill out from a stomach when the owner is still moving around just fine is not pleasant. Butcher might have it easier from his work. Or maybe it might make it harder for him. Watch out to make sure you don't trip over any bodies on the ground or slip on blood or guts on the floor.

"We've been practicing fighting each other and other fives, but the misbegotten will be much shorter, and won't defend themselves nearly as well. They will see the men next to them to be struck down and use that as an opportunity to strike at you.

"Don't assume they won't do something stupid. Most of them are untrained so they are much more unpredictable and may take suicidal risks not knowing what they are doing. If we run into some trained misbegotten, they may climb on top of one another so two can attack at once, so make sure to watch out for that as well.

"Besides that, just make sure to put what we've been doing this last week into practice. What will decide everything that will happen is our training, how well we stick to it in the heat of battle, the skill of our twentier, and luck."

His five asked him some more questions which he answered and eventually it turned into John giving them an account of the battles John had had in Clifftown.

They spent most of their time productively but after they ran out of useful things to speak of, the conversation devolved into funny stories, mock insults, verbal jabs, and snickering.

Once the time came, they went to the mess and ate.

After that John spent another hour with them in the barracks to make sure they didn't get up into anything that would get him into trouble, as he was in charge of them as their fivier.

After that, he left them to their own devices to go speak with Kalé who he met in his room.

"Tomorrow we're going down below to fight the misbegotten," John told him.

Kalé nodded.

"Yes. I had already heard of this in the mess."

"Well, they gave me a second golden flask. Here, take my first. Keeping it around might cause problems if someone found it in my chest." John handed Kalé his original flask that just had a mouthful or two of tears left in it.

Kalé held it and looked at him.

"Should you not keep it for yourself?"

John shook his head.

"Someone can only take a single full flask of crimson tears before the tears stop working for a period of time. That's why the flasks are the size they are. And Morne's purse strings are loose. They will be stocking us up every time between battles."

"Very well." Kalé put the flask away on his person. "You truly insist on going to battle? I can see any attempt to convince you will prove no more effective than my last few. Instead I will say this: never not stop growing.

"I know you, John. Often you will improve yourself until you are satisfied and then stop. I have seen you do so with many things since we have met.

"If you will be continuing on the path of battle from now on, even after this siege, I ask that you never be content. It will be but a matter of time until you face a foe who can best you, and in the Lands Between we all are eternal. There are many who live who could easily do so.

"I already know from what you have told me that the leonine misbegotten, as you call him, is insurmountable for you at the moment. Continue until that is no longer the case, so the next time you meet another leonine misbegotten, they shirk from battle with you."

John bowed his head in acknowledgement. He could see what Kalé was getting at, and he couldn't refuse the accusation. He'd settled for good enough in most things. His cooking, his hunting, his craftsmanship, and before this all started his spearmanship.

The only thing he hadn't let lay had been learning to hallow himself. Turning runes into strength. It could very well be the reason he had made it this far, and not been just another one of those men who had already fallen.

If he was gonna meddle in this game between the gods, he'd have to get even more serious than he had been.

Radahn could stop the stars and didn't die after being nuked by an outer god. And with only one life, one try, John couldn't stop improving himself until he could help the Chosen Tarnished fight such foes.

After a few moments of seeing that John had taken what he had said seriously, Kalé continued.

"Onto something more trivial, I did see Rabbit today. Her handler was quite flummoxed when she refused to follow him and tried to follow me instead. Their struggle had her drop all the supplies she had been carrying. They must not have been working her hard enough, because she was very vigorous-"

From there their conversation turned to less serious topics. As they spoke, just like every other time they talked since that night a week ago, John waited for questions to come, but they never did, and their conversations between them continued on like they always had.

It seemed Kalé was going to let the topic lay. He didn't even seem to be mad at John for whatever he had concluded about John's part in all this had been. He probably didn't realize quite how deep it went.

But if Kalé was fine with leaving it, so would John for now. He'd talk to his friend about it if they made it through this alive.

They talked until it was time for John to go back to the barracks.

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"Get up men! It's time!" shouted their twentier as he banged the bottom of a pot with a mallet, the sound of something similar echoing from other rooms in the corridor.

John shook his head at the racket of noise as their twentier woke them up unapologetically.

It didn't take the men more than a minute to equip themselves and stand at attention, having been keeping most of their gear on as they slept as they were in an active siege.

After looking them all over, their twentier led them down into the bowels of Castle Morne. As they descended they passed teams of civilians carrying up supplies into the castle proper from the lower levels of the basement.

"Alright men, our forces have been overextended trying to defend too many corridors at once. To correct this, over the past week we have been performing a slow fighting retreat towards a small handful of chokepoints while the townsfolk have been evacuating any useful supplies.

"Our job will be to take over and relieve the regulars who have been holding fast. We will continue the fighting retreat in one of the corridors, giving the townsfolk time to evacuate everything and then moving father back." said their twentier as they made their way down.

As they marched down the corridors and staircases, John noted how different the corridors were from the streets he had fought on. The streets had been mostly wide open but the corridors were so cramped that only five or six men could stand next to each other at a time.

Even standing in the middle of the corridor, John would barely have enough room to swing his spear around, and even swordsmen on the edges would be obstructed by the walls.

As they continued heading down, John could hear the telltale sounds of steel clashing against steel and echoes of the dull roar of battle. As they got a little further down the corridor the others began to hear it too, and John could see a ripple of unease spread across the men.

Their first real battle was fast approaching.

They kept running closer and closer, and then they turned down a particular corridor and came upon the sight of battle.

The corridor in front of them was completely filled.

There were two twenties of regulars that took up one half of the corridor and the other half was filled to the brim with misbegotten. So many that the tide of misbegotten actually stretched to the end of the corridor, past the turn, and out of sight.

Despite being heavily outnumbered, the cramped hallway made the defensive line of the formation denser, and heavier, and therefore more effective, canceling out the advantage of the misbegotten's great numbers as they could not flank the regulars in the corridors like they could in the street.

They reached the back of the two twenties of regulars, both fringefolk knights unlike the irregulars' twentiers, and John's twentier began shouting at the other two twentiers over the roar of battle bouncing off the walls around them.

"We're here to relieve you!" John's twentier told them.

The twentier spent a minute talking to the other twentiers and arranging their relief, John only making out bits and pieces through the sound filling the corridor. Their twentier turned back towards them.

"Men, form a tunnel and let the rear twenty through," he ordered.

John and the men pressed themselves to the sides towards the walls and a pass through their formation. The first twenty of regulars made their way single file through. Once the entire twenty was on the other side they retreated away from the corridor. This left only one twenty of regulars, making four layers of defensive line from their four squads of five, between the misbegotten and John's twenty.

"Men! Line formation. Swords front, then partisans, warpicks, and greatswords," said John's twentier, arranging them in the same way as the remaining regular twenty, four rows of five, each made of a five of a particular weapon.

They quickly arranged themselves with organized movements, the results of their week of training. They were acting the part even if the look on many's faces was unease or fear, instead of the steadfast grimaces of the more experienced regulars.

"Advance to the back of the regulars and make a gap!" John's twentier ordered.

They marched forward as ordered and it only took moments to press up against the regulars' backs.

Seeing this, the regular's twentier gave an order.

"Greatswords, retreat!" ordered the regular's twentier of his back row.

The regular's greatswords backed up and slipped themselves between John's twenty's shield wall in the gap they made.

"Warpicks, retreat!" the regular's twentier ordered next.

The rest row, the warpicks, made their way between them.

There were just two rows of men left between them and the misbegotten. Already John could see through the men in front of him to see misbegotten fighting at the front in their sloppy and frenzied manner.

Just like before most were using cleavers, but some had makeshift clubs or weapons scavenged from fallen soldiers and John saw a couple with bits of armor on them.

The twentier shouted, and the partisan regulars retreated through the gap. Another shout and last of the regulars, the swordsmen, retreated. The gap in the shieldwall slammed closed behind them as John's twenty finally met the misbegotten face to face.

Seamlessly the misbegotten slammed into the shieldwall. The force of their many bodies pressed back against the front line, but John's five and those behind him pushed back on the men ahead of them, equalizing the force.

And then the thick of the fight was upon them. Immediately their twenty showed that while the irregulars were better than the misbegotten, they were far from the equals of the regulars.

Where the regulars had been as an unbowing wall of steel to the misbegotten, John's twenty were like a rickety wooden fence. You could feel and hear the groaning as pressure was applied.

But they held.

John and his five in the second row of the line, their spears were too large to swing around, so they could thrust and thrust between the shields of the men in front of them. Any misbegotten who got past their spears were cut down by the swords of the men in the front row.

As the misbegotten fell, their bodies were shoved to the side or just climbed on by their fellows.

As they fought, the men's unease and fear quickly melted into the crush of battle. Thought left them, and all that was left was to execute on their relentless drills.

As the first few minutes of battle went on the swordsmen took some minor injuries, but nothing that a quick sip of tears didn't fix.

Then their twentier shouted an order.

"Begin pulling back! The townsfolk have sent word! They are done with the hallway they were working on! We are clear to retreat to the next corner of the corridor! It will relieve the pressure on us!"

So they began moving. One step at a time, when they could, as the misbegotten hammered and hammered at them with their bodies, cleavers, and the occasional arrow. But no matter what the enemy threw at their twenty, almost all of it was deflected off their shields and armor. Like a prickly turtle they moved down the corridor slowly and punished any who got too close or attempted to strike them.

As they surrendered more of the straight stretch of the corridor in their falling back, the pressure on them built because the misbegotten could press more bodies into them.

When they neared the corner, a group of nearly ten misbegotten with partisans made their way to the front of the misbegotten. Seeing this, their twentier, standing in the center of their line, reacted.

"Greats-CHLHH!"

John glanced back to see their twentier topple over with an arrow sticking out of his throat as the men around him froze, uncertain. A lucky shot for the enemy, having made it between all their shields and the men in front.

John instantly reacted, not pausing for even a moment.

"Warpicks!" he ordered, "Pull back and treat the twentier! That arrow isn't anything some crimson won't fix! Greatswords, advance to the front! Counter those spears! Swords, fall back when the greatswords reach the front!"

Hearing orders, the men unfroze. None of the men hesitated to do as John ordered, the warpicks immediately began dragging their twentier back and pulling out flasks, while the greatswords started making their way to the front.

Despite John taking over as leader until their twentier recovered, John could just feel that the men around him had been shaken from that arrow, even as John kept thrusting his spear into the enemy's men. They had even stopped backing up.

"We hold men!" John yelled. "If we fall, this whole section is lost to the next strongpoint! WE HOLD! Now, another step!"

And so the men took another step back, and their battle continued raging.

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