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Glory to my bum ass proofreader: Solare.
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"...Marika's tits! You must be 'ungry!"
John needed a moment to respond.
Not because he did not understand the question, but because every scrap of his concentration was currently occupied by the divine emergency happening just over his shoulder.
Boggart stood there with that big iron pot steaming between them, waiting for an answer like this was a perfectly normal transaction.
Marika, meanwhile, seemed to be undergoing some sort of internal collapse after hearing her bountiful chest invoked as roadside profanity by a crab merchant in a swamp.
John swallowed once, steadied his expression with visible effort, and finally managed a short nod.
"Yes…" He said, voice just a little too tight around the edges. "I am, in fact, absolutely famished."
Boggart gave a firm, approving grunt at that, as if John had just passed an important moral test.
"See? Knew it." He stepped forward, took the runes from John's hand without a shred of ceremony, and seized his wrist in a rough, callused handshake. "Good choice, that. Never met another crab lover I didn't like or trust."
That was apparently a complete philosophy of life for him.
John let the man shake his hand, still fighting for his life internally.
Behind him, Marika had finally recovered enough to speak.
"Kill him."
The words came out hoarse at first, almost disbelieving.
John's shoulders jerked.
Boggart, thankfully, had already turned away and was trudging back toward the cauldron, muttering to himself about portion size, proper seasoning, and whether this one customer was about to clear him out of house and home.
Marika, however, was only getting started.
"No truly, I am ordering thee." Her voice sharpened with every syllable until it rang in his skull like a golden commandment hammered into stone. "As thy patron Goddess. As the mother of thy lover. Kill this blasphemous bastard at once."
John bit down so hard on the inside of his cheek he tasted blood.
'Pffft-!! N-No…' He turned slightly away from Boggart under the pretense of looking out over the swamp and pressed the heel of one hand briefly to his face. 'I don't think I will.'
Marika made a sound of pure outrage.
"Now is not the time to be disobedient, mine Champion!" She barked, floating at his side in a wash of furious gold. "Kill him!"
John's spine shook once.
Behind him, Boggart had hooked some giant set of tongs into the cauldron and was hauling up slabs of crimson shellfish meat big enough to count as a war ration. Steam rolled up around him in thick clouds carrying salt, butter, spice, and that deep, rich smell of perfectly boiled crab.
He packed each serving into rough waxed cloth and old paper wrappings with the efficiency of a man who had done this a thousand times and trusted food more than people.
Marika had not moved on.
"Johnathan." Her voice went dangerously calm, which was somehow worse. "I am serious."
'That's the problem.' He thought, shoulders trembling again. 'You are entirely too serious about this.'
"I have endured Dragons, Demigods, Outer Gods, and thy endless shamelessness. I will not endure a common marsh-rat shouting 'Marika's tits' in mine hearing and continuing to breathe!"
John made the mistake of imagining how that probably sounded from her perspective. Eternal Queen of the Lands Between. Architect of Orders. Divine figure of worship. And then some crab-seller in the swamp casually swearing by her chest like she was the patron saint of tavern vulgarity.
That nearly ended him.
He doubled slightly at the waist, covered it by pretending to adjust one of the straps at his side, and exhaled very hard through his nose.
Boggart turned back around just then, arms full of wrapped boiled crab.
"Oi." He jerked his chin. "Come grab it, then."
John let out a low sigh, dragged a completely serious expression back over his face by brute force, and turned around.
The sight that greeted him almost broke him again.
Boggart stood there with enough crab to feed a small militia, looking gruffly generous. Marika hovered just past him like wrath made woman, her face deathly calm, her eyes glowing with tiny golden starbursts of murderous divinity, silently ordering execution with every inch of her posture.
Kill him.
Kill him now.
John walked forward with what he hoped looked like dignity and not the stiff-legged gait of a man one wrong word away from hysterics.
"Much appreciated." He said, and accepted the bundles from Boggart one after another.
The pile was honestly ridiculous. Great heavy parcels of fragrant boiled crab disappeared from John's arms as he shoveled them into his inventory in flashes of system-light, one packet after another vanishing into the invisible storage space with a soft shimmer.
Boggart paused halfway through handing him another.
The big man's thick brows lowered beneath the rim of his helmet.
"Huh…"
John took the next package.
Boggart looked at his now-empty hands, then at the place the crab had gone, then at John.
"Well…" He muttered after a moment, with the philosophical resignation of a man living in the Lands Between long enough to stop questioning most things. "S'pose everyone knows some fuck-ass magic nowadays."
That did it.
John's entire body locked down like a man holding the gates of a city against invasion.
Marika's stare became so severe it felt physically hot on the side of his face.
"Now there are two reasons." She said in a thin, strangled voice. "Kill him twice. Kill him. I shall grant him mine Grace temporarily. Then I shall remove it. And you will kill him… again."
John drew in one slow breath.
"Pleasure doing business." He managed.
Boggart grunted.
"Come back when you're hungry again. Got prawn too, when the catch's good." He gave John one last appraising look, then nodded with the solemn respect only one crab enthusiast apparently owed another. "You've got good instincts. I respect that."
John put a hand to his chest. "Means a lot."
Marika looked moments away from smiting the entire marsh.
John turned away before his face could betray him, stepped back from the shack, and summoned Torrent in a spiral of pale spectral light. The steed appeared beneath him with a snort and a toss of the head, already impatient to be moving again.
John swung up into the saddle and lifted a hand in parting.
"See you around, Boggart."
"Yeah, yeah." The man waved him off with one broad hand. "Don't get eaten by nothin' stupid."
'Little late for that.' John thought, remembering the dragon heart currently settling into his new budding Mana Core.
Torrent leapt forward, spectral hooves splashing through the shallows as they took off across Liurnia's wet, ruined expanse.
John lasted perhaps ten seconds.
Maybe twelve.
That was how long he managed to ride in silence before the pressure inside his chest turned unbearable.
He cleared his throat shakily and kept his gaze forward on the flooded roads and mist-dragged waters ahead.
"So…" He began, already hearing the crack in his own voice. "Why exactly are you this irritated?"
Marika, who had been hovering at his side in a state of murderous grandeur ever since they left the shack, snapped her head toward him.
"Why?" She repeated in utter disbelief.
John's mouth twitched.
"I mean…" He tried, though now there was laughter trembling through every word. "Are you… self-conscious about your magnificent… 'Marika's'?"
That was the wrong thing to say.
That was, in fact, the exact perfect thing to say if one's goal was to finally break the last of a goddess's restraint.
Marika damn near growled.
It was not loud, not in the normal sense. It was a regal, furious, incandescent sound dragged up from somewhere deep in her chest, and it made her look offensively beautiful in her annoyance. Golden hair whipping behind her, arms folded tight beneath her very blessed chest, eyes bright with indignation, she looked like a saint in a painting moments before smiting an entire civilization.
"...I am fully aware that my breasts are magnificent." She said with lethal precision.
John made a strangled noise.
She pointed at herself with wounded, royal authority.
"That is not the issue!"
That strangled noise became much worse.
"The issue…!" Marika continued, voice rising. "...is that not every common Mongrel with a cookpot and a vocabulary unfit for livestock is permitted to speak of them in vain!"
John broke.
He exploded into laughter so hard it nearly knocked him sideways out of the saddle.
It came out of him in full, helpless, unrestrained belly-laughs, great ugly bursts of joy that doubled him over Torrent's neck while the spectral steed kept sprinting through the swamp with all the patient long-suffering of a mount already used to carrying disasters. John clutched at the front of the saddle with one hand and at his ribs with the other, shoulders shaking violently as tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.
Marika stared at him in utter outrage.
That only made it worse.
"He said it so casually–" John wheezed, barely able to get the words out between laughs. "He just looked at me and– and said 'Marika's tits, you must be hungry'–!"
Another livid sound tore out of her.
"Stop repeating it!"
John could not.
That was the true problem.
He tried. He genuinely tried. But every attempt to stop only gave his mind another second to replay the exact expression on Boggart's face, the total sincerity of it, the absolute working-class confidence with which he had invoked the Eternal Queen's chest as a unit of emphasis.
Torrent bounded over a low stone wall and splashed down into another stretch of shallows. John nearly folded in half laughing.
Marika floated alongside him like an offended sun.
"This is not funny."
"It is!" He gasped, laughing so hard he had to wipe at his face. "It's so funny. You don't understand, that man had no idea—"
"Exactly!" She snapped. "That is the offense!"
John laughed harder.
Somewhere in the distance, birds took flight from the reeds at the sound of it. The morning mist dragged pale over the flooded fields. Raya Lucaria glimmered far off in blue arrogance. And through all of it, Johnathan Pendragon rode forward howling with laughter while Queen Marika the Eternal fumed beside him over the unsanctioned worship of her regally resplendent chest.
It was, all things considered, a pretty good start to the day.
And so, John rode Torrent hard through Liurnia's wet morning while the last of his laughter slowly bled into a lingering, stupid smile.
The marshland rolled past in long silver-blue stretches of water, broken causeways, sunken walls, and leaning trees whose roots drank from drowned roads older than most kingdoms.
Torrent's spectral hooves struck the flooded earth in soft, quick beats, carrying him northward through the mist while the looming shape of Raya Lucaria watched from afar like some great glintstone citadel waiting to be challenged.
For a little while, John just rode. Then the obvious thought finally caught up to him.
'...Right.'
He glanced sideways at the empty air where Marika's presence hung just beyond sight and cleared his throat.
"Hey," he said, not without caution. "Is there a way to contact Melina from far away through that Grace connection thing?"
Marika, still carrying the wounded dignity of a woman whose divine chest had just been turned into a swamp merchant's preferred expression of surprise, did not even dignify him with an immediate answer.
When she finally did, her voice came with all the frosty, regal petulance of a queen choosing pettiness on purpose.
"There is."
John waited, but she did not continue.
He snorted softly. "...And?"
"And I shall not be helping thee." She said primly. "Consider it punishment for disobedience."
John barked a quiet laugh and leaned a little farther forward in the saddle as Torrent bounded over a shallow ridge of broken stone.
"Right. Fair enough, I guess."
Marika folded her arms somewhere just out of sight.
"I gave thee a direct order," she reminded him. "Thou refused. Repeatedly."
"Yeah, well…" He grinned to himself. "I stand by that one."
"I am aware."
John let the matter go after that, mostly because arguing would only make her dig her heels in harder. Instead he turned his focus inward, toward the thing Melina had shown him before.
The line of Grace. The thread that ran between them. The subtle, warm pull that never truly vanished so long as she remained tied to him as maiden, partner, and whatever else they had become to one another over the last chaotic week.
He reached for it carefully.
At first he found nothing but the usual sensation; the soft, directional awareness that told him where she was in relation to himself. It was there, faint and distant, stretched across Liurnia's wet breadth like a golden string humming somewhere under the skin of the world.
'Okay… so that's the line.'
Torrent splashed through a broad flooded road while John furrowed his brow and prodded at the connection with all the delicacy of a man attempting magical long-distance communication while also riding a ghost horse through a swamp.
'Do I just… tug it? Think louder at it? Knock?'
Marika said absolutely nothing. He could feel how badly she wanted to.
For the next few minutes, John fumbled.
He tried focusing on Melina's face. Then her voice. Then the feeling of her hand in his. He tried imagining the Grace thread as a literal cord and then as a river and then as one of those old wired headphones from his first apartment, because apparently his brain refused to stay on theme even while working with divine magic.
None of it worked properly.
A few times the line twitched and gave him a flash of something almost there before slipping again. Once he thought he heard a low hiss, like wind over a distant microphone. Another time there came a brief screech that made him flinch in the saddle.
Then, quite suddenly, something connected.
The sensation shot through him in a crackle of warm static. The Grace-thread tightened, vibrated, and then opened just enough for sound to leak through in pieces.
At first all he heard was interference.
Then Melina's voice emerged through it, faint and compressed, speaking to someone else.
"...not saying we should split yet, only that there may be tracks farther uphill if we—"
Millicent's voice answered from farther back, just a little blurrier.
"Tracks are nice and all, but if something big shows up I'm stabbing first and apologizing never."
John's grin widened at once.
"Melina?"
There was a crackle. A pause.
Then the line jumped.
"Johnathan?" Her voice came through sharper for a heartbeat, then fuzzed again. "Johnathan, is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me." He laughed under his breath in relief. "Hey."
The connection hissed. He could hear her breathing, could hear movement behind her, the distant wet sounds of Liurnia's flooded village, and underneath it all that steady note of concern that had probably been sitting in her chest since Margit dragged him away.
"Oh, thank goodness…" Melina said, and even through the bad connection the warmth and relief in her voice reached him whole. "I am so glad you're safe."
John's chest tightened pleasantly.
"I'm good, completely fine."
"I cannot hear you properly," she interrupted, her voice warping around a burst of static. "The connection is poor. Ask Mother for advice on strengthening it."
That nearly ended him again.
John choked on a laugh, half-coughed into one hand, and kept riding while Torrent took the path toward the drowned remains of the Academy Gate Town.
"Oh, that's rich." He reached for the line again and tried to push his thoughts through it more cleanly. "She's refusing to help me because I wouldn't kill a man for speaking of her 'magnificent breasts' in vain."
There were a few moments of silence after that.
It was not total silence; the line still crackled. He could hear wind, boots through water, and some faint rustling in the background. But from Melina came nothing at all for a long enough moment that John knew exactly how hard that sentence had hit her.
When she finally spoke, her voice came out flattened by confusion and disbelief both.
"...What?"
The word broke in the middle from static.
John laughed helplessly. "Hehehe~ Long story…"
"I gathered that much." She paused, then the line shifted. He felt rather than saw her focusing, likely touching the same current from the other side with far more grace and competence than he had managed. "Hold still. You are pulling too hard on the strand."
"I'm on horseback."
"You know what I mean."
"Fair."
She guided him through it after that in the same patient, faintly exasperated way she had guided him through incantation fundamentals. He felt her hand on the thread from far away, not physically, but in the shape of her attention.
Where his approach had been clumsy force and hopeful prodding, hers was cleaner. She smoothed the fraying points, steadied the tension, and helped him fold the connection into something narrower and stronger.
The static lessened.
The next time she spoke, her voice came through almost clearly.
"There. That's better."
John blinked. "Oh, wow. Yeah, way better."
"Mm." He could hear the small thread of satisfaction in her tone. "Now answer properly. Are you all right?"
He smiled.
"I'm fine. Better than fine, actually."
"What happened?"
John rolled one shoulder and let Torrent slow just a little as the path opened out over the lower waterlogged sprawl near the Academy Gate Town. Broken rooftops and drowned walls rose through the lake ahead.
"Well…" He grinned. "I kind of became allies with Morgott."
There was another pause as she processed that. This one held a very different kind of weight.
"...Are you serious?" Melina asked, very carefully.
"Shockingly, yes."
He could practically hear her trying to sort that into reality.
"You are not joking."
"I'm always joking," John said cheerfully. "But not about that part."
A faint breath left her. Not quite a sigh. More the sound of someone rapidly reevaluating how the morning had gone.
"That is…" She paused. "Surprising."
"Tell me about it."
Then, to his absolute delight, warmth crept into her voice.
"But it is also good. Very good, if true. I am proud of you."
John's grin softened.
She continued before he could get too smug about it.
"You managed diplomacy in place of yet another catastrophic fight. You actually spoke things out with a Demigod rather than slandering him, escalating the situation, and somehow surviving the consequences through stubbornness alone."
John nearly choked.
At his side, Marika put one hand over her face.
John bit the inside of his cheek so hard he saw stars for a moment, because the reality of what had actually happened stood in such violent contrast to Melina's version of events that it took everything he had not to burst out laughing and ruin the moment.
"Y-Yeah," he managed. "Something like that."
Marika's silence at that point was almost holy.
He steadied himself and asked, "What about you two? What happened at the village?"
Melina's tone changed at once, settling into something calmer and graver.
"We found more than we expected."
As John rode through the flooded outskirts of the Gate Town, she told him.
She spoke of the hidden path up through the overhang, of the Albinaurics dead in the road before they even reached the heart of the village. She told him of Nepheli waiting there among the bodies, of the burned houses, the massacre, the survivors they managed to heal and gather.
Her voice dipped lower when she spoke of the Depraved Perfumer, of the interrogation, of the medallion the killers had sought. Then came Albus, old and dying, and the truth of the Haligtree Medallion, and the task he had placed in their hands.
When she told him about the Omenkiller, her voice flattened with controlled disgust.
Millicent cut in once or twice from the background, usually to add details Melina had skipped.
"He was a real piece of shit," Millicent said at one point, sounding quite pleased with herself despite the context. "Talked like slaughtering the village was some high noble philosophy instead of butchering disabled people in hiding."
"We killed him, eventually." Melina said.
John winced reflexively. "Good."
There was a brief pause.
"We also killed the two hounds." Melina added.
"Great work."
"And the perfumer lost his head."
John blinked. "Interrogation went that well, huh?"
"That was Nepheli's contribution," Millicent called from the background, with no trace of apology.
John laughed once through his nose.
By the time Melina finished, his expression had gone thoughtful. The path before him widened into broken streets drowned beneath shallow water, the Academy Gate Town's ruined skeleton spread all around.
"There's more to this," Melina said at last. "Far more. I want to remain here and investigate. The Haligtree medallion, the cursemongerer they mentioned, the forces moving through Liurnia…" She paused. "I would know how deep this rabbit hole goes."
John hummed in approval. "That's fine by me."
"Good." Relief threaded through the word. "Then I shall–"
"I'm heading into Raya Lucaria."
That changed her tone immediately.
"No."
John smiled.
"Melina–"
"No." She repeated, more firmly this time. "The investigation can wait. I will come to you."
From farther back, Millicent's voice rose at once.
"What? Academy? Hold on, I'm coming too."
John laughed softly.
"Both of you, relax. It's fine."
"It is not fine," Melina said. "You are going alone into the Academy of Raya Lucaria, seat of glintstone sorcery, in pursuit of a Great Rune. That is not fine."
John scratched at his cheek with one finger and guided Torrent around a half-toppled archway jutting from the flooded town.
"I'm gonna be diplomatic about it," he said, in the most innocent voice he could muster.
Marika snorted.
Melina did not sound convinced. "Your definition of diplomacy is becoming increasingly suspect."
"That hurts."
"It should."
Millicent spoke up again. "I still wanna come."
John sighed, though there was no real frustration in it.
"There's no need for all of us to be in the same place. You and Millicent are already on your first real solo adventure without me. I'm not about to drag you away from an active lead just because I'm going rune-hunting."
Melina hesitated.
He pressed the advantage while he still had it.
"I'm serious. Investigate. Follow the medallion lead. Figure out what's going on there. I'll handle the Academy."
"That is precisely the sort of thing you say before doing something reckless." She replied.
"Okay, rude, but not entirely unfair."
It took a while after that.
He had to reassure her three separate times that he was functionally immortal. Then he reminded her that he could teleport away if something beyond him showed up. Then he promised, with actual sincerity, that he would not stay and fight something he truly could not handle just to prove a point.
Millicent did not help matters much.
"Tell him to swear on your tits or something…" She muttered in the background.
Melina choked. "Millicent!"
"What? I heard men love swearing on boobs. It makes them honest."
John barked a laugh while Marika made another faint, offended sound somewhere off to the side, still clearly not over Boggart.
Eventually, though, Melina relented.
Only a little.
"Very well…" She said slowly. "But if anything appears that you cannot handle, you leave. Immediately."
John smiled. "Deal."
"And if you do not–"
"I know. You'll be mad."
"I will be devastated."
That sobered him instantly. His smile softened, and when he answered this time, there was no teasing in it.
"I know."
The line went quiet for a second before he spoke up again.
"Same goes for you. If something like that appears for you and Millicent, you run. Then you call me."
Melina exhaled through her nose, already tired of how reasonable he was being because it made arguing harder.
"…Fine. I promise."
"Good."
There came a rustle on her end, and then Millicent's voice, a little closer now.
"Tell him if he dies in a school full of weird nerds I'm taking his stuff."
"I heard that!" John said.
"Good!"
He laughed.
"All right. I should go." He said when the Gate Town appeared fully before him now and the Academy's approach not far ahead.
Melina was quiet for a beat before she answered.
"All right."
"I'll be home by sunset."
She huffed in that familiar way of hers, the sound so gently exasperated and fond that it almost felt like being touched.
"I am going to hold you to that."
"Fair."
"And do not make me wait again."
That drew a softer smile from him than he had meant to show.
"I'll do my best."
"You had better."
He slowed for half a breath, then added more quietly. "Thanks for caring."
The line carried the small silence that followed so clearly he could almost picture her face.
Melina gave another one of those adorably reluctant little huffs, but this one was warm all the way through.
"Someone must."
John closed his eyes briefly and smiled like a man who had already lost every important war to her and knew it.
"All right, Princess. Talk later."
"L-Later."
The connection folded shut after that, gently rather than abruptly. The thread of Grace remained, warm and present in the background, but the active line faded with a final little whisper of static and distant breath.
John kept riding with the same smile on his face for several long moments afterward.
It was not smug this time, without a hint of teasing or cockiness. It was just soft.
Smitten, really.
Marika appeared beside him with a look of such open disdain that it would have destroyed lesser men on contact. One hand rested on her hip. Her mouth was set in a line of exhausted judgment.
The stare lasted all of three seconds before it broke down into a sigh.
She could not seem to hold onto annoyance very long when he looked like that.
It was pathetic, really.
John, of course, noticed.
"What?" He asked lightly.
"Nothing." She grumbled at once.
"That sounded like a loaded 'nothing'."
"It was an exhausted one."
He grinned, and that only made her look away with a small, defeated shake of the head.
By then Torrent had carried him to the edge of the Academy Gate Town proper, and the sight before him was enough to pull his attention forward completely.
The place spread out in ruined, flooded tiers beneath the weight of Liurnia's endless water. Once it had likely been a proper town; a thriving gate settlement built to serve and guard the great approach to Raya Lucaria. Now it stood drowned and beautiful in the melancholy way only old places could manage.
Rooflines jutted out of the water at broken angles. Stone bridges, half-collapsed and algae-slick, linked islands of old masonry and shattered homes. Statues leaned from submerged courtyards, their faces worn smooth by rain and time.
Stray magical lights glimmered faintly in the mist like lost thoughts too stubborn to die. Far beyond it all rose the Academy itself, immense and blue-white, perched above the lake with its towers and arches catching the pale daylight like sharpened glintstone.
It was a scholar's fortress. A magician's citadel. And a place built by people far too convinced of their own intelligence.
John approved immediately.
Marika appeared more fully beside him, looking out over the drowned town and the distant Academy with a more measured expression now.
"And what happens to be thy plan?" She asked with obvious contempt.
John glanced at her.
She lifted one perfect brow.
"I have doubts that the sorcerers, soldiers, and Cuckoo knights of Raya Lucaria shall be won over by thy wit, thy grin, or whatever absurd confidence currently possesses thee." She continued dryly.
That brought a cocky grin straight back onto his face.
He turned in the saddle just enough to look at her properly.
"Well…" He let the word linger. "You and your daughter were, weren't you, my Queen~?"
Marika scoffed at once and flicked her hair back over one shoulder with all the haughty splendor of a woman refusing to acknowledge how dangerous a line that was.
"As thou wishest, thou sexual deviant."
John chuckled and turned his gaze back to the drowned town.
"Might as well try."
She sighed.
"Oh…" Marika muttered, watching him, the Academy, and the shape of the incoming catastrophe all at once. "This is going to end well…"
…
The Cuckoo soldiers stationed at the flooded edge of the Academy Gate Town had, over the last few days, developed a rather understandable problem.
Namely, there was entirely too much to gossip about and far too little else worth doing.
The war had long since ceased being clean. Liurnia had been unstable for years, half-drowned, half-haunted, and fully infested with every sort of petty danger that could nest in old magic and stagnant water.
Ruins groaned. Sorcerers muttered. Albinaurics skulked in the marshes. Wraiths wailed in forgotten corners. The Academy stood aloof above all of it and the Cuckoos, as ever, were left to guard roads, bully stragglers, and pretend any of this still resembled order.
So when the news had begun rolling in from the south like a storm made of rumor, every soldier with a mouth had naturally started using it.
Two such men now sat atop a fallen pillar half-submerged in the shallows near one of the outer streets, helms tilted back, spears laid across their laps, and all the tired boredom of underpaid armed men settling into their bones.
The older of the two was named Harl. He had a narrow face, a patchy beard, and the permanent squint of someone who had spent too many years glaring through rain, smoke, and poor command decisions. The younger was Oswin, broad-shouldered and still young enough that his moustache looked like it might retreat from his face if pressed too hard.
Between them sat a loaf of stale bread, half a skin of weak beer, and the complete absence of urgency.
Harl took a swig, wiped his mouth on the back of one glove, and grunted.
"I'm tellin' you, it's all gone wrong down south."
Oswin looked sidelong at him. "You say that like the Lands Between have ever been right."
Harl gave him a flat stare. "You know what I mean."
Oswin did, unfortunately.
Everyone did.
Stormveil had fallen.
Godrick was dead.
A Great Rune had changed hands and lit the Divine Tower of Limgrave like a second sun. That alone would have been enough to keep every lord, knight, scholar, sellsword, and piss-drunk campfire liar talking for a month.
But then came the rest of it.
Castle Morne taken. Dragons dead. Caravans rerouted under new banners. Leyndell itself was said to be stirring. Stories sweeping northward faster than riders could reasonably travel.
It was, in military terms, a nuisance.
In gossip terms, it was a feast.
Oswin leaned back on the pillar and squinted out over the ruined town where shallow water reflected the broken roofs and leaning walls of the Gate Town in rippling fragments.
"So what do you suppose he looks like, then?"
Harl scratched at his jaw. "The new one?"
"The only one people won't shut up about."
Harl grunted.
"Well…" He stared vaguely into the mist as if trying to build the image from scraps of hearsay alone. "Big."
"Big?" Oswin echoed.
"Aye. Has to be. Can't be storming castles and killing dragons if he's some scrawny little rat."
Oswin nodded along with all the seriousness of a man discussing battlefield logistics.
"Yeah, big makes sense."
"Also ugly."
That got a laugh out of the younger soldier.
"Ugly?"
"Has to be. Men that dangerous are always ugly, or strange-looking enough to make up for it. Missing half his face, maybe. Burn scars. One glowing eye. Something like that."
Oswin considered it.
"Hm. I heard he had dragon eyes."
"That counts."
"And white hair."
"Then he's definitely ugly."
Oswin snorted into his sleeve.
The older man gestured with the beer skin.
"And horns. Probably."
"Horns?"
"Why not? If he's eating dragons or whatever it is people say, horns feel right, no?"
"That's not how eating things works."
Harl gave him a deadpan look. "Neither does lighting a Divine Tower by stealing a demigod's birthright, and yet here we are."
Oswin couldn't argue with that. He shifted, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees.
"I heard from a courier that he tore through Stormveil with fire in one hand and a giant sword in the other."
"That's normal enough."
"I wasn't finished. Supposedly he laughed the whole time."
Harl chewed that over. "Mad, then."
"Oh, definitely."
"With white hair."
"Aye."
"And horns."
"Maybe."
"Dragon eyes."
"Glowing ones."
Harl nodded solemnly. "And ugly."
Oswin's grin widened. "I also heard he was nine feet tall."
The older soldier gave that appropriate consideration. "Nine's too much."
"What's your number, then?"
"Seven and a half. Maybe eight if the storyteller was drunk."
Oswin tore off a piece of stale bread and ate it while thinking. "Do you think he's got scales?"
Harl shrugged. "Few, mayhap."
"Teeth?"
"Everyone's got teeth."
"No, I mean dragon teeth."
Harl looked at him. "That's just horns again, but lower."
Oswin laughed outright.
Their mood, already lightened by the sheer ridiculousness of trying to estimate the physical dimensions of a rising demigod from tavern rumors and panic reports, only grew worse from there.
By the time a few minutes passed, they had given the man wings, a voice that made dogs miscarry, the ability to smell gold underground, and an appetite for dragons, knights, and virgins in roughly that order.
"I heard that he can smell fear." Oswin said, lowering his voice dramatically.
Harl scoffed. "Everyone can smell fear."
"No, no. I mean really smell it. Like a hound. Supposedly if you panic near him, he starts grinning before he even turns around."
"That's stupid."
"That's what I said."
"Hm."
Another beat passed before Harl spoke again with complete seriousness. "Do you think he really eats dragons?"
Oswin opened his mouth.
A low thud landed behind them.
It sounded heavier than a mere footstep. Something between a landing and a body deciding gravity was optional until the last possible second.
Both soldiers went still and very slowly, very carefully, they turned around a few moments later.
And saw him.
For a moment neither man understood what he was looking at. Their minds simply refused to process the proportions all at once.
He was huge.
Not nine feet, no, and not a horned giant from drunken nonsense, but still far larger than any ordinary man had a right to be.
He was tall enough that the ruined street behind him seemed smaller for his presence. Broad through the shoulders. Thick through the chest. And very clearly built like the closest approximation of a Greek statue.
Long black-peppered hair spilled to his shoulders in damp, wind-tossed waves, the white strands buried through it here and there. A rough stubble beard shadowed his jaw and mouth, giving his face a harder, older edge than rumor had managed to capture.
And his eyes…
Oswin felt his throat close.
They were slit, draconic eyes that glowed.
They did not merely glow red. Though, that would have been frightening enough. No, they were a deep, burning crimson wrapped around an incandescent core of gold, like furnaces banked behind living flesh. Eyes that looked less seen and more survived.
His arms had twisted partly out of human shape, draconic in form, black-scaled and wrong in a way that made instinct recoil from them. The claws at the ends flexed once with quiet, awful ease.
He wore a loose white shirt, open enough at the chest that the two soldiers could see dark, jagged scales spread over his sternum and ribs, and beneath them something seemed to burn. A molten pulse glowed under scaled flesh where his heart should have been, as though there were magma caged inside him.
He looked like a rumor made flesh.
He also looked considerably less ugly than Harl had hoped.
The man tilted his head slightly and smiled.
It was not an entirely kind smile.
It was, however, amused.
"You know…" He said in a warm, conversational voice that somehow made the whole thing worse. "Talking about someone behind their back is rather rude, don't you think? Especially when they're listening in."
The two soldiers stared at him in absolute, frozen horror for one stunned heartbeat.
Then both of them screamed.
They were not dignified battle-cries or martial shouts befit of soldiers of the royal Cuckoo Order. They were filled to the brim with raw, high, and undiluted panic.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!!"
They threw themselves off the pillar in opposite directions, boots splashing through the shallows as both immediately forgot about pride, formation, and the concept of acting like trained military personnel.
"DEMON!"
"IT'S HIM!"
"RING THE BELL!"
"WHY'S HE SO BIG?!"
Johnathan Pendragon threw his head back and laughed.
It came out loud, full-bellied, and entirely too joyous for the circumstances, the kind of laughter only someone deeply entertained by other people's survival instincts could produce.
The two Cuckoos had managed perhaps three wet, scrambling strides each before he moved.
One moment he stood where he was.
The next, he was there.
A draconic hand caught the back of Harl's neck. The other seized Oswin the same way. Both men yelped as they were hauled bodily off the ground like disobedient kittens, boots kicking uselessly above the floodwater while John held them at arm's length and laughed harder.
The older soldier flailed so violently he lost his helmet. It splashed into the shallows and immediately began floating away.
"PLEASE DON'T EAT ME!"
"I'M STRINGY!"
"I HAVE A FAMILY!"
"I DON'T, BUT I COULD GET ONE IF YOU GIVE ME A CHANCE!"
John was laughing too hard to answer for a second.
The men squirmed in his grip, legs bicycling through empty air, spears long gone, all military professionalism drowned beyond recovery.
Harl tried to pry the claws off his neck and failed miserably.
Oswin, in what was perhaps the worst panic-driven logic of his life, blurted out. "Please, my lord, I'm sure we taste terrible! Eat one of the dragons instead, like you usually do!"
That made John stop laughing, not fully, but enough that the laughter cut off with a sharp, incredulous bark and both soldiers felt the shift instantly.
He stared at them.
The good humor in his expression remained, but it sharpened into something wounded and offended in a way that only somehow made him scarier.
He lowered them just enough that their boots skimmed the water again, though he did not let go.
"That…" He said with deep personal injury. "...is a very hurtful rumor."
The soldiers blinked.
John leaned in slightly, his molten chest pulsing once beneath the scales.
"Who the hell spread that about me?" He asked with dangerous calm and a smile that showed too much fang to be a Human's.
The two men looked at each other in helpless terror, then back at him, then at each other again.
Oswin swallowed so hard his whole throat jumped.
"T-The south?" He squeaked.
Harl nodded frantically. "The Peninsula too!"
"Stormveil!"
"Taverns!"
"Caravans!"
"Old women!"
"Everybody says it!"
John stared at them a few heated moments, then groaned as if personally betrayed by the entire concept of word-of-mouth storytelling.
"Oh, come ooon~!"
One of the soldiers, still trembling in his grip, dared to speak again.
"S-So… you don't eat people?"
John gave him a long look.
"I eat Dragons." He explained patiently, as though explaining a very obvious dietary distinction to idiots. "Sometimes other horrible things, depending on context. Regular people are not on the menu."
Both soldiers sagged in visible relief.
"...Usually, anyways. I'm not against making some occasional distinctions." John added a few seconds later.
They screamed again.
--------------------------
Author's Note:
Stones, please!
How hurtful of them to say such mean things about Johnny Boy! Clinically insane Demigods have feelings too, y'know!
On another note, I got Fanart!!! A glorious man in my Discord Server has started making Fanart for SG, including Marika porn!!!
It's all in my server, and I will share it all with you in time, but for now, behold Morgott getting Lobstered by Johnathan Pendragon in full HD lol
https://imgchest.com/p/agyvownk978
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Next Chapter Title: The Great Academy's Honoured Guest (Read: Invader)
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