By the time Gawain left the Smoldering Church, night had fully descended. The only light came from the roaring braziers of the camp. Storm Knights and a few Radahn soldiers stood watch around the perimeter, while the distant, guttural wails of unknown creatures echoed through the dark.
He ran into Elsa, who was approaching to check on the situation. She glanced toward the church interior, noting the two figures within, but said nothing of it.
"I'm continuing toward Redmane Castle at daybreak," Gawain said. "Once the follow-up supply caravans arrive, send that maiden back to Stormveil. And tell her... the man she was waiting for stopped by."
"It's a complicated story, isn't it?" Elsa asked.
"Very. But for now, it doesn't directly involve us."
Elsa didn't pry further; to her, she was just another Finger Maiden. Instead, she looked out at the scarlet-stained horizon with a complex expression.
Truthfully, that first skirmish had left a deep impression on her. She had seen firsthand how persistent the Kindred of Rot were. Looking at such a vast expanse of polluted land, she couldn't fathom how long it would take to bring it under control.
"You'd best find a solution quickly," Elsa warned. "I checked the area earlier—even if you burn the surface clean with fire, the scarlet corruption creeps back from the surrounding soil the moment you look away. Right now, we're entirely dependent on the Smoldering Wall to keep it from spreading."
Gawain nodded. He was already mulling over potential strategies. Many of the "obvious" solutions he'd thought of previously now seemed entirely unfeasible in practice.
"I'll find an answer as soon as possible," he promised. "In the meantime, I'm leaving the security of the road from the castle to this front line in your hands. If anything comes up that you can't handle, call me back immediately."
At dawn, after giving a few final instructions, Gawain mounted Torrent and galloped down the Caelid highway.
Unlike the relatively safe environment of the game, the highway was now infested with all manner of grotesque rot-creatures. Pale, verminous abominations writhed in the middle of the road.
He passed charred ruins and wrecked Flame Chariots. Tattered Redmane banners fluttered in the wind, silent testaments to the desperate stands once made here—positions that had long since been overrun.
While the scenery was a form of psychological torture, the actual threat was minimal. Torrent's speed and agility were more than a match for even the fastest silk threads the Pests could fire.
More importantly, both Gawain and Torrent were essentially immune to the Rot. One was a spectral steed unaffected by physical status ailments, and the other was an Ashen One sustained by an inner Ember. The Scarlet Rot could try to take root all it wanted; the fire within would simply burn it away.
He charged through the landscape, gathering a storm of flame-laced wind around him. He looked like a low-budget version of the Ghost Rider, scattering Pests and the occasional marionette soldier like dry leaves in his wake.
Passing the Caelem Ruins, he bypassed Fort Gael, opting for a route that took him along the edge of the Swamp of Aeonia to observe its state.
Using a telescope, he scanned the interior. Even from the outskirts, the sight made his skin crawl. The rot within the swamp appeared to be boiling. Massive clumps of flesh undulated beneath the surface; it was terrifying to imagine what kind of horrors were being gestated in that soup.
Just as he approached the site of the Cathedral of Dragon Communion, he witnessed something unexpected: a tattered, rotting dragon was pursuing a lone figure. Without a second thought, he spurred Torrent forward to intervene.
Philia was running at the absolute limit of her endurance. She had no idea how she had managed to offend this thrice-damned dragon.
She swore that if she survived this, she would never be so greedy again. She shouldn't have ventured into dragon territory just to scavenge rare materials. She should have quit while she was ahead, but regret was a luxury she couldn't afford right now.
She clutched a satchel tightly to her chest—the sum total of her dangerous scavenging expedition, including a significant discovery. If she lost it now, it would all be for nothing.
The dragon was normally a stationary guardian near the Cathedral, but today it had lost its mind. Despite having wings so rotted it could barely fly, it was relentlessly hounding her. She was just a traveling perfumer passing through!
A stray root caught her foot, and Philia stumbled. As she slowed, she let out a strangled yelp. A pack of rot-maddened husks was crawling toward her from the brush.
Gritting her teeth, she pulled out her last bottle of Spark Aromatic. Driven by pure survival instinct, she dodged several lunges with a nimbleness she didn't know she possessed, then hurled the bottle behind her.
This was her custom blend, far more potent than the standard issue. It was meant for exactly this kind of emergency. Ahead lay a cave she had scouted; if she could just reach it, she was confident she could lose the dragon. As for the other rot-creatures, she had ways to deal with them.
Suddenly, the heavy, thundering footsteps behind her stopped. Philia couldn't help but look back, only to see a bitter smile cross her face. The dragon, Decaying Ekzykes, had finally stopped its pursuit to gather a massive cloud of rot-breath. It was about to unleash a localized apocalypse right on top of her.
Calculating the distance and spread, she felt a sense of hollow acceptance. Well, there's no dodging that. Might as well spend my last few seconds hoping for a quick death.
She closed her eyes as the rot-breath began to descend. She waited for the end... and waited. Something felt wrong. Why wasn't it hurting?
Opening her eyes, Philia was stunned to see a shimmering wall of light standing between her and the dragon, refracting the lethal mist harmlessly away. A loud shout from behind snapped her out of her daze.
"If you don't want to die, get back! I'll handle this!"
"Oh! Right! Thank you!"
She caught a glimpse of a warrior in polished Banished Knight armor. She didn't know who he was, but the fact that she wasn't currently being dissolved by rot was enough. She sprinted for the cave entrance she'd marked as her refuge, only stopping to look back once she was safe.
As he brushed past her, Gawain noted her attire: a Traveler's Set, typical of a wandering perfumer.
He remembered finding a similar set on a corpse in a ruin near where the Meteorite Staff was located in the game. He wondered if he had just saved the person who was destined to be that corpse, or if she was simply a similar traveler.
Focusing back on the enemy, he looked at the dragon, Ekzykes. The creature was a tragic sight, entirely consumed by the Scarlet Rot. In the lore, this dragon could have flown away when the corruption first arrived, but its hatred for Dragon Communion practitioners had kept it anchored to the Cathedral.
Ekzykes had stayed to slaughter anyone who dared hunt its kin for their hearts. That was likely why the Cathedral was such a ruin in the game—the dragon had vented its fury on the structure.
Now, after years of infection, its wings were nothing but malformed slabs of rotting meat, and its scales were covered in weeping pustules. It was beyond saving, a hollow shell driven by a single, lingering obsession. Even its dragonfire had been replaced by a cloud of pure corruption.
Gawain recalled its mechanics from the game. Aside from the rot-breath, its biggest "features" were an absurdly large health pool and hilariously low resistances.
He suspected this was due to the nature of the Scarlet Rot itself—it granted a twisted, hyper-vitality that made the host harder to kill, but at the cost of opening up numerous elemental weaknesses.
Let's make this quick, he thought.
Ekzykes seemed to scent something familiar—yet different—on the human before it. Under the influence of the Rot, its remaining consciousness flared into a primal rage. It unleashed a rot-breath far larger than the previous one.
Gawain didn't even bother to block. A surge of flame and storm erupted from his body, clashing with the incoming mist. With the advantage of pure elemental superiority, he forcibly pushed the rot-breath back into the dragon's throat.
The Pyromancy flame in his left hand roared to life. He was going to end this with a bang.
"Try this on for size! Profaned Flame!"
The flame from the Profaned Capital—a fire said to burn only life and never go out—instantly engulfed the dragon. No matter how much it thrashed, the fire clung to it. Countless scarlet, fungal growths attempted to sprout and flee the heat, only to be chased down and incinerated by the Profaned fire.
Gawain watched silently as the figure within the inferno was reduced to cinders. He knew that if this had been a healthy, mobile dragon, the fight wouldn't have been this easy.
But there was no "Abyss" here to sustain such a creature. He had simply infused a bit of Dark Souls-style Profaned Flame into the strike—a skill that, much like Amaterasu, could be escaped if the target had enough wits left. Clearly, Ekzykes had none.
Finishing the job, he hurled a Great Lightning Spear at the dragon's head. The massive body erupted in a final, violent explosion, leaving nothing but charred fragments scattered across the scorched earth.
Once the area was clear, Gawain looked back. Sure enough, the perfumer was peeking out from the distance, observing him.
"It's safe now," he called out. "You don't need to hide. I can see you."
He wondered what she had done to provoke such a relentless pursuit.
In theory, all perfumers—whether legitimate or renegade—came from a lineage of herbalists and healers. They had originally served the nobility in the Royal Capital before the Shattering. During the war, they had scattered across the Lands Between, concocting everything from medicines to war-poisons.
Gawain just hoped he hadn't rescued a "Depraved Perfumer." He had a personal distaste for those who specialized in addictive, heretical aromatics.
Philia stared, dumbstruck. The dragon that had nearly ended her life had been dispatched with terrifying ease. She had briefly considered slipping away while the warrior was occupied, thinking it unwise to trust a stranger.
But she quickly abandoned that thought. If he wanted to catch her, she couldn't outrun someone who could kill a dragon like that. It was better to cooperate. Perhaps she could even find a powerful patron to ensure her safety.
She removed her hood. While dodging the rot-husks earlier, it had been snagged and torn, and it was now stained with the scent of corruption.
Her clothing was specially treated to resist the Rot, but the hood hadn't been as durable. After tying back her disheveled hair, Philia emerged from her hiding spot and walked toward him, eyeing the charred remains of the dragon with a mix of awe and terror.
"Thank you for the help," she said. "If not for you, I'd be dragon food by now. My name is Philia. I'm a traveling perfumer, as you can see. I only arrived in Caelid a short while ago."
She paused, noting the unfamiliar crest on his cloak. She couldn't place which faction it belonged to.
"I didn't expect to run into someone of your caliber in a place even Misbegotten avoid. Let me guess... you're here for the combat festival at Redmane Castle? I've seen a few knights passing through lately."
Gawain nodded. It seemed the word really was out. He might run into more than a few familiar faces at the castle.
Up close, he realized his initial assessment was slightly off. He had rescued a woman, and a fairly young one at that. Her appearance matched his mental image of a seasoned traveler, far from the male "hollowed" models used for NPCs in the game.
In the Lands Between, female perfumers were common, which made sense. The craft required a meticulous attention to detail and a steady hand for mixing delicate aromatics—traits well-suited for battlefield nursing.
"So," Gawain asked, "mind telling me how you ended up with a dragon on your tail?"
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