Galus sat on a rocking chair in the middle of the flower field of his dreamscape, he looked at Miquella who looked at him, Galus shook his head throwing down his cards aces and eights, dead man's hand. "This is impossible to do when your opponent can see your hand."

Miquella looked insulted. "Are you implying I am cheating?"

Galus nodded. "You literally love in my brain."

"Yes, and you're the one who configured the deck, you know the order in which the cards are placed, I think you're the one cheating."

He sighed, looking at Korne who hung from the damn claymore sized pike, calling it a needle was an insult honestly. "How about you?"

The hanging merchant tossed his hand down onto the table. Two threes, and two kings. "You're out of touch boyo"

Galus looked at his hound, who was in the process of eating his hand so he skipped him and went on to Trina, who put down a flush.

Galus sighed and finally fixed his gaze back on Miquella. "Gonna share with the class?"

He put down a royal flush which sent everyone into groans except for the dog who just whimpered. Before it spat out it's cards revealing three of a second royal flush and Galus could not help but laugh. "Looks like you're tied with Cuchulainn here boss."

The young empirean raised an eyebrow. "That's a mouthful, Cu who lane? Couldn't you pick something... Less Garbligoop?"

Galus nodded. "The name Cuchulainn means hound of Culainn, a blacksmith once raised a truly massive wolf hound who would tear apart invaders and robbers alike who would try to take his money and other valuables, or maybe foreign invaders who would want to burn his house and pillage what remained, this hound was as strong as six men and could bite a man's head off, this hound was murdered by an eleven year old boy, with a hurley stick."

Miquella looked confused. "Hurley?"

Galus shook his head. "A game kids would play, hit a ball back and forth with a stick." He demonstrated it by showing one to him. "Anyways, This boy was known as Setanta, son to the warrior god Lugh, his strength and agility made him a force to be reckoned with, but one day while playing his uncle rode by and invited him to the blacksmiths house for dinner, he said he'd follow him after the game and the uncle rode on, so they arrived late and the smith released the hound into the yard and his uncle forgot Setanta was coming, so when he came to the smiths house the hound attacked and was killed, now, the blacksmith was distraught but it luckily had puppies, still, it would be a while before they grew up, so the boy offered to be the man's hound until they could sufficiently grow into the same type of killing machine as it's late parent, the boy learned to stay up all night on the man's porch and watch for invaders."

Miquella looked at him. "Is that how you see yourself? A hound loyally serving a master? I mean, I do remember you calling yourself the unalloyed hound."

Galus actually nodded. "I know giving yourself monikers is a bit... On the dumb but uh, I think it's fitting..."

Miquella's eyebrows furrowed. "You like dogs huh?"

Galus barked a laugh. "Not the ones in the lands between, they're ugly little bone bags. No, give me a nice healthy saint Bernard or a German shepherd, something that can track something that can kill, but can look damn good doing it."

Miquella nodded. "Then, that..." He gestured to the hound. "Makes a lot more sense, when he takes over he seems to narrow in and focus solely on the object of his rage."

Galus held up a hand. "Woah woah woah, hold on a sec, takes over?"

Miquella raised an eyebrow. "You didn't notice?"

Galus thought back to those times that he lost control of his temper in recent times, it wasn't quite taking control but more akin to his anger rising, Miquella must have seen the look on his face because he said. "Yeah, not quite taking over, but more akin to turning your anger up higher."

Galus looked at the dog then to the boy. "I don't want it higher than when I killed that noble in castle Morne, that's the golden number right there, no higher."

Miquella chuckled. "You still don't realize it do you? He's been here the entire time, the hound is just the physical manifestation, your rage has always been there. When you brought that piece of shit noble to his death he was there with you, it's only now that you're seeing it for yourself, it's not much different save for a boost in your strength and speed that he gifts you."

Galus glared. "Only thing he asks for in return is me being all but shoved out of the driver's seat."

Miquella shakes his head. "No, you are in control, he is a part of you, you cannot bury him, you can control him if you give it time and effort toward adaptation to him."

Galus closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. "I have to adapt to him, which means I have to let him take control more often?"

Miquella nodded. "Think of it as trying in a new leather boot, it might be tight and uncomfortable at the beginning, but eventually you get used to it and it forms to be more comfortable around your foot it might take a couple days but it can be done, you won't be muffled by the static and emotion of your anger but instead be in complete control."

Galus thought about it. "That's a lot more comforting than what I thought it was."

Miquella nodded. "It can be a destructive force true, but when harnessed it can be used to better things."

Galus nodded. "I guess I'll have to get used to it."

---------------

Hours later, Galus stood on the edge of the broken bridge in liturgical village, waiting for that right moment when sun rises and the Haligtree is visible through the fog.

Galus saw the orange and purple of the sun rise and the shadow projected on the fog. It was a beautiful view, he was sad they might need to start over.

Lattena padded up beside him on Lobo. "Beautiful view." Lattena sighed. "Let's have Irina stay here with the others, Lyrina should stay here with her... Looks to me like it'll just be you and me."

Galus shook his head. "It will be just me and Nepheli, Lobo isn't made for jumping branch to branch over thousands of feet in the air above q damn ocean."

She looked at him. "This is our capital city, there shouldn't be any combat period, unless we're fighting giant termites."

Galus sighed. "Not far off actually, ants, and Pests, ever heard of the scarlet rot? Yeah, that's what you'll be fighting if you come with."

Lattena glared. "You think I can't fight a couple of ants?!"

Galus raised his hands. "That's not what I meant."

Her icy glare all but blazed to life like a phoenixes flame. "What did you mean!"

Galus backed up a step, but took a calming breath. "Lobo, Lobo cannot go wading through scarlet rot on his own, hell, I'm not even going to do that, my goal. Is float harmlessly above the rotting waters of the rot, which takes a lot of energy and intense focus, imagine trying to carry you me Neoheli and Lobo, I can't make my discs that big not without a migraine that will debilitate me, we will kill everything."

Lattena shook her head. "I am coming with you, good luck trying to stop me."

Galus sighed. "You stay with Loretta when we get there, end of story."

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

She looked like she was about to have Lobo bite him in the family jewels. Lobo gave a low growl and she looked at him shocked. "You cannot be agreeing with him Lobo." To which he gave a bark. She glared at Galus. "He's just informed me that if he does not want to go wading through scarlet rot, so I guess you win."

Galus sighed. "I'm sorry I'm sidelining you, but uh, when we get back we'll be hunting a shardbearer, you up for the hunt of your life?" He asks, a little smirk playing on his face.

She thought about it, then grinned. "Deal."

Galus nodded and looked around. "Is uh, Nepheli awake?"

She shook her head. "She uh, kinda caught a cold, coupled with the hangover..."

Galus groaned. "I told her to get warmer clothing..." He grumbled before saying. "I guess 't is just you and me then." He says emphasizing the words 'it is'.

Lattena sighed. "Well, we don't have all day, let's get going."

Galus nodded, and what he could only describe as a golden version of the bifrost from Thor. A beam of energy formed into a bridge and they started walking... And walking... Eventually they came across a stone pillar with a pair of those statues on each side and lighting them caused a second beam to go continue straight ahead. And they continued, they'd repeated the process about seven more times, and eventually arrived at the top of one of the outermost towers the ephael brace.

Galus saw as he walked over, a pair of clean rot knights, classic duo, one with a spear the other a scythe. He heard their raspy breathing and their slumped postures combined with their sounds made them look more like rabid beasts than the noble knights they once were, he never thought to draw a comparison between the knights of Malenia and General Radahn but this confirmed his theory that heightened aggression is one of the symptoms of scarlet rot, the scarlet rot is possibly one of the most volatile diseases he's ever seen and it seems even more Gastly when you're not behind a screen, because here you don't have a little bar to fill up to not contract it and it won't go away once you do get it, a single drop of the stuff could spell your death, and worse still you can contract it from just cutting this guy, their blood, their breath, anything that comes from their rotten body can and will kill you slowly.

The scythe bearer swung and a disc of light propelled at him, he countered it with a discus shield that blocked it, to his shock the shield held up, he experimented with his discs collision before, but they just seemed to noclip into eachother, but he was sure that Selen could probably tell him what's going on with that.

He unslung his crossbow and backed up a couple steps before running and sliding on the ground beneath the shield and enemy's spinning disc and then shot the ring bearer clean rot knight with his crossbow and dropped the crossbow, to his surprise the bolt hit the knight in the face through the barred visor which would usually be used to protect the eyes from swords or spears and it dropped limply to the ground. turned to the spear heater who was holding his spears head in front of him, Galus was confused, then looked down and saw a straight line of pale gold light streaming towards him, he cursed and rolled out of the way just in time to not get turned into a pin cushion, and Lattena was already out of it's range, she knocked an arrow and fired hitting it directly in the face guard and it fell. She looked at him. "Tried a new kind of arrow, no longer using a wood shaft thought I'd use lead instead, gives it more weight and more of a punch when it hits armor, thought after that Niall character and his tendency to wear heavy armor it might prove beneficial to get something with more oomph if we fight more people with heavy armor."

Galus winced and she looked at him worriedly. "No I'm not hurt, just, in my land we used alot of lead a long time ago, from pipes to paint, and then learned it can cause a really bad sickness if only from proximity, I'd recommend going for raw iron next time, it's a little lighter but also doesn't break as easily as lead, it also won't make you grow tumors, or get lead poisoning."

She blanched, and Lobo gave a rapid shake as if to shake off the lead like rainwater. "And you kept using it?"

Galus shook his head. "Only for hyper specific jobs like making molds for casting metal, but we aren't making lead paint or pipes or pencils."

Lattena shook her head and Lobo started forward, carefully walking around the puddles of festering blood. He could actually see caps and bulbs of mushrooms growing from the orangish brown liquid. He blanched at the smell, something between manure, iron, and oddly enough kerosene.

Though Galus quickly did pick up both spear and scythe careful not to touch the wet spots, he put them back down and summoned them in his hands as glowing projections, if he was honest this was easily the most useful ability Miquella had given him so far.

They walked down the stairs and walked out onto the ramparts, they had not taken three steps before a pair of soldiers stopped them, they didn't unsheathed their swords but their hands were on their hilts. "Hold, who are you?"

Lattena looked like she was about to chew the guards a new one but Galus held up a hand and casually reached into his satchel, pulling out the flower. "I am here to help save the Haligtree, as I am sure you know, there's a sickness known as the scarlet rot, I'm going to see if I can't alleviate the disease."

The soldiers looked at eachother, before snapping to attention. "What can we do for you sir?" They said in unison.

Galus nodded. "For starters, tell me what you guys were doing when Miquella was captured, was it soldier game night?" He asked in the most serious and yet sarcastic manner he could.

One of the guards looked confused. "Miquella was captured?"

This gave Galus pause. "You... Didn't know?"

They shook their heads. "We were forbidden from going down to the root basin of the Haligtree, Only Finlay has been down there, and that was because Malenia was so incredibly injured she couldn't get over there herself."

Galus sighed. "That... Makes way too much sense..." He looked at the guards. "Last question, how did you let a twelve foot tall Omen sneak past all of you?"

The guards looked nervous. "What makes you think they snuck past us?"

Galus gestured around. "There's no sign of a large scale struggle, there's no destruction to the structures, no bloodstains no dead bodies."

One of the guards sighed. "Follow me, sir..."

Galus closed his eyes and nodded. "Alright then."

They followed the guard toward the towering tree, atleast you didn't need a welding visor to look at this tree, and he honestly liked the contrasting colors of red and brown and the grey of the buildings, so much better than the endless amount of gold that Leyndell seemed utterly colorblind to, gold this, and golden that... Frankly he was looking forward to watching someone add a little more color to that towering tree of golden narcissism, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be him who would light that flame as much as he wished to.

The four of them walked occasionally passing other soldiers who Galus ordered to inform the rest of the army of his arrival and to gather on the nice big platform near the treetop village.

After about an hour of walking they came across the cemetery. "This is what we've had to do after that omen snuck through and silently killed thirty percent of our troops, one survived just long enough to tell us how he did it, he could turn to blood, and pull people under like a damn shark."

Galus suddenly looked excited. "There are sharks here?!" Everyone gave him weird looks, clearly not the moment he was in a cemetery after all, he had a love of sharks, he even used to have a shark jaw but he somehow lost it. Galus looked at the grave he was nearest, he knelt down in front of it and brushed a bit of moss off of the stone, there was a name on it but it was in the strange script.

Lattena read it aloud. "Blake Rogers."

Galus blinkedm "How... How long has this been here?"

The soldier looked at the grave. "About... Hundred years I'd say, strange never met him, it was here long before I was ever here."

Galus walked over to the next grace stone that looked older than the others scraping off moss. "Lattena?"

She read. "Jessica Jacobson... Weird name."

Galus' eyebrows seemed to clump together with how hard he was furrowing them. "They're not weird where I come from, in fact that's a pretty common one."

He got up and Lattena looked at him. "What does this mean?"

Galus smiled. "It means, I might have made the right choice in master." He said kneeling before a third tombstone and wiping away some dirt.

She read it. "Adam Greyson."

This gave Galus pause. "Can you... Please repeat that?"

She looked at him. "Adam Greyson."

Galus closed his eyes, he felt something warm run down his cheek as he pressed his hand to the tomb stone. She tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you... Okay?"

Galus opened his eye. "Yeah, but I know what these are now, they're not tomb stones, they're memorial monuments."

She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

Galus brushed off his greaves and straightened the white leather cape. "We need to address the men, come on." Galus said, walking off toward the village, he knew there was no body beneath that stone, he would have to have a long talk with Miquella about that last tomb stone.

She followed him, looking back at him. "Galus, did... You know any of them?"

Galus grunted. "I don't want to talk about it."

She nodded. "Let me know when you do."

He waited a second before nodding.

It took a while but after walking climbing and alot of stairs, he managed to get to somewhere familiar, a church well, a chapel really, to his surprise he found it empty save for a lone clean rot knight, helmet off revealing a woman red hair obscuring her face, she sat silently muttering prayers, well... She wasn't trying to kill him, so he took that as a good sign, so he approached cautiously and reached a hand to grab her pauldron, but her cubicle clatter to the floor, her hand snapped out, slapping his arm to the side and a palm strike into his midsection caused him to stumble back into a cubicle, she knelt down picking up a scythe and estoc, he saw her face now, fungus growing out of puffy patches of irritated skin as their immune system fought a losing battle against the foreign entity. He blinked hoping to dispell the dizziness, it did jack all. "Can we just... Not?" He said, groaning as he got to his feet.

She paused, and looked over toward Irina, who was aiming her bow at the woman, and the soldiers who had their hands on their hilts. "Sorry, I... Lost control there for a second... Who are you?"

Galus outstretched a hand. "I'm Miquella's new shield, name's Galus."

She took his hand. "Finlay, and uh, sorry about earlier."

Galus sighed, waving it off. "It's fine, I'd have a better time counting who hasn't punched me at this point."

She nodded. "So, you'll be the one commanding the army?"

Galus looked at her, and it clicked. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

She looked at him like he just said the moon is made of cheese. "No... I almost died many times on my way here but I haven't been in any danger since I got to the Haligtree."

Galus nodded. "Sorry, must have been hard."

She nodded. "Had to fashion a harness out of old chains and bow strings to carry Malenia back here."

Galus nodded to the door. "Care to come and line up with the other troops? You're technically under Malenia's command so the choice is up to you."

She thought about it before nodding. "I won't form up into the ranks but I'll sit at the side and watch."

He gave her a curt nod and the lot of them walked up to the large platform.

Well, when they got up to the platform the troops were lined up and he gestured the pair who had followed them to go join them. They rushed over to the end and Galus stepped in front of them, he looked around and spotted Loretta sitting on her horse, he waved her over. She trotted over on her horse and Galus looked up at her. "How are you so damn huge?"

He couldn't see her face beneath the helmet so she looked something akin to a massive metal death machine, she looked at him. "That armor, it's old Iji's work."

Galus nodded. "We've made an alliance with the Carian royals." He couldn't see it but he sensed a glare.

She spoke in a rather icy tone. "The Carians hunted us like magots in their bread, if you think we can have any meaningful alliance with them then you're a fool."

Galus looked at her blankly. "That's funny coming from the person who lead them in those hunts."

She raised her glaive and he summoned a replica of a sword and blocked the strike, he felt his bones rattle from the impact but he managed to stay on his feet.

Galus gritted his teeth. "Is this really the time or place for this Loretta?"

She shook her head. "We can finish this later, but if you ever say something like that again I will throw you off of the highest branch of this tree."

Galus nodded. "Deal."

Galus looked at the Battalion. "Right, we have two problems, I want two teams on it, team alpha lead by Lattena here and team beta who will be lead by none me. Team alpha, you will be split into two squads, one will kill any of the giant ants that come out onto the branches, the other will figure out where they're coming from, and report to the rest of your team, once you find the nest pull back and wait for team beta to be done with their operation."

Lattena looked at him. "I thought you said-"

Galus smiled at her. "Come on, you didn't really think I'd waste your talents like that did you?"

Galus walked to the middle of the battalion. "Form a line."

They split like the red sea and Galus looked to the right, knights in front soldiers behind them and foot soldiers at the back. He pointed to the ones with spears and then to the ones with swords. "Everyone with a spear go to the left, everyone with a sword come to the right."

They did so and now the lines were lopsided he shook his head. "Reverse that order, people on the left I want you all to go get spears and shields, you'll be running around tight tunnels with massive ants, you'll want a phalanx position with spears and pikes, swinging swords could just end with them bouncing off the walls or the ceilings or worse hitting your fellows, you will want something that can thrust."

He looked the right. "We'll be fighting pests, big ugly fuckers with pikes and can make webs like a spider that are razor sharp, we're going to drive them out, they're making the scarlet rot worse, now this is just dealing with the symptoms of the scarlet rot, to deal with the rot itself I was ordered to bring Malenia with me to rescue our lord so he might fashion her a new unalloyed golden needle."

They stood there and Galus waved at the right side. "Armory, now."

They moved down toward the ephael brace Lattena following them, and Galus gestured for his men to follow him, he saw the massive statue of Miquella and Malenia built at the inward most edge of the platform. He gestured them to follow him. He unsheathed his sword as he marched toward the ephael brace. He wasn't sure how he was going to get these troops across but he had an idea, he just hoped it worked.