Before we started our march, a group of three rushed at Galus carrying a black wooden box with golden filigree on it, one of the foot soldiers who were buzzing with an explosive energy held up a hand and Galus instinctually took a step back, he didn't feel like getting exploded again like he did in the game many many many times before, but apparently that wasn't on their mind as the soldier who lead the group opened the case and revealed a sword made of dark metal, brilliant golden amber sparkled on the blade, guard and pommel and even the sheath. The soldier leading the smaller foot soldiers spoke. "Lord Miquella had this reserved for the shield sir."
Galus looked over the new sword, the craftsmanship was in the Carian style much like his armor which was made from what seemed to be the same metal. "If I'm not mistaken, Loretta was the one who oversaw this swords creation?"
The soldier nodded. "you're exactly right, our smith created it with advice and directions from her."
Galus unsheathed it and looked over the blade. "Send my compliments to the cooks then."
The soldiers nodded and Galus looped the sword into his belt, and took off his hound fang sword, he had a horrible habit of collecting weapons and not using them, the three or four swords hanging unused from his saddle attested to that, he'd maybe hang the old hound sword over his mantle.
He stood and moved his finger in a circular motion to gesture everyone that it was time to get a move on, he looked up at three statues, depicting two children embracing a woman, he couldn't tell if that was Malenia and Miquella when they were younger embracing Marika, or if it represented Miquella and Trina embracing Malenia, he shook his head, he didn't have time to admire architecture.
The army split in two Lattena leading the left and Galus the right, he lead them back down to the ephael brace, they marched through the rampart walls, he'd have liked to have tempest with him, marching had a tendency to kill his feet, that was why his first few days in the lands between had been so absolutely hellish, when he'd bought his horse it'd easily been the best investment he had ever made, it'd been about thirty minutes until they came across the first tree guardian which oozed with scarlet rot from the pitcher plant like hole in it's not head.
He looked at the soldiers, they didn't look very alarmed. "Shield wall, these are one of the creatures we will be fighting."
A couple of the soldiers grumbled protests, at least until the creature raised it's massive staff and brought it down on the nearest person, that being him. Galus side stepped the blow and swung his new sword, he didn't know why but his sword actually felt like a part of his body, like he could actually feel the sword, it was damn weird, he'd have to rendezvous with Selen and ask her about this, she might want to see it, he wondered if Nepheli could use her storm hawks like messenger pigeons. He shook his head, he should focus. He sent some of the mana energy into the sword and to his considerable surprise it did something else than the sword in the game, it acted rather like the Carian spell blade magic, a long curved golden ethereal blade in the shape of his hound sword, it was like his blade summon ability only... Magnified, and to his surprise it didn't add any weight to his sword like the summoning ability did.
He swung the large sword in q downward arc and it cut the guardians staff in half and then brought it back up while taking a step forward and it went under it's armpit and it slashed through it's arm, it backed up and clutched it's stump (pun intended) and stumbled back, it seemed confused as to what it should do without it's weapon, he didn't know how he could discern this from a creature without a head much less a face. In that moment of thought on his part the massive wooden creature leapt into the air, rancid water leapt out of it's neck hole. He cursed, summoning a large discus hoping to have it act as an umbrella. Well, it worked... Kinda, he could see the rot slowly eating away at the discus, unalloyed gold or no, the rot was not something to be trifled with. He tilted it to the side hoping to make it cascade off away from him. He swung his sword and the ethereal extension of his old blade appeared again and gashed a long streak in it's torso, apparently it's body was hollow, and like the elevator scene from the shining, rotten water spilled out of it's wound in a Torrent as it sloshed on the ground, she saw a volley of bolts slam into it's body. He was glad the soldiers were realizing that this creature wasn't their friend.
He summoned another discus and stepped onto it flying above the quickly spreading pool of rot. "Stay away from the water!" He shouted down at the soldiers, though evidently he didn't need to say anything because they were already quickly backing up.
He decided to test his hypothesis, the rot from the clean rot Knight's blood smelled highly of kerosene and most creatures with scarlet rot in elden ring had a weakness to fire, maybe...
He sent a Torrent of slumbering flames down at the rotten substance and saw it catch flame immediately, it all burst into purple flames that spread all around the liquid and it turned into clear water. It trailed up to the tree guardian and the mushrooms and Rot burned away, he watched as it stumbled back and then fell, he couldn't tell if it was asleep or if it was dead. But he moved his discus down in a nose dive and leapt off of it and rolled it cleaved the thing in half. He turned to the soldiers. "Bring torches, unlit, we're going to purge the rot from the tree, you see so much as a mushroom burn it."
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Lattena looked at the entrance to the ants nest at the back of the tree, she had a bad feeling about this something about the trail here made Lobo's nose itch, the entrance had him sneezing and growling. She knocked an arrow and it lit with blue light as she pulled it back and released the string launching into the darkness revealing a few ants, both picking up a pair of bodies of scouts from the ground that came here, the group of four she'd sent had lost two and retreated back to her and the group. The arrow landed a few feet away from the ants and illuminated the pair, she prepped two more arrows and shot them into the ants heads, their eyes dented inward with a popping a sound, they shrieked though they didn't die immediately they thrashed and charged at them, she slung the bow and Lobo charged as she took the spear from it's latch on the saddle.
Lobo leapt over its jaws and she brought her spear down on it's thorax, which had the thickest carapace, unfortunately for the ant, the troll smith did good work and the long straight blade cut the thick carapace with the ease of a baker breaking particularly crispy bread, a little bit difficult but manageable. The ant shrieked again and Lobo leapt off, the spear tearing out with a rip and a crunch, the sticky yellow mucus-like Hemolymph dripped from her spears blade, she flicked it to the side and Lobo growled, she could hear the skittering from deep within the depths of the tunnels. she nudged Lobo's flanks and he turned away from the frontline and went to the back, she was an archer and their commander, she had no business on the front lines. "Shields." She ordered and they formed up in a shield wall, spears sticking out.
She saw the massive ants creeping out of the darkness beyond, more worriedly some were walking on the ceiling. "Crossbows!" she shouted pulling her bow from where it was slung. she shot the first one with three magically guided arrows. A cranks until after three seconds a flurry of Crossbow bolts crashed into the ants, their bodies falling from the ceiling one landed near the frontlines.
She thought it was a good start and then realized that they all shot their bolts all at once. "I'm going to die here if this keeps up... Hey, you and you." she said pointing at every other person in the ranks. "We're gonna fire in a checkerboard pattern, while one man shoots the other reloads, aim before you fire."
they proceeded to do just that, every man reloading their crossbows and every other man took a few seconds to aim and shot their bolt, then while they reloaded the other men shot, it was almost rhythmic and she smiled. "That's better." She looked over to the frontline which was holding their large tower shields and skewering the giant ants, their spears heavily scarring the ants large thick heads, the ants attempted to scuttle over the shield wall, as soon as they tried to stay upright and as one flattened a pair of shield men a knight decapitated it in short order before grabbing a pair of soldiers handed them the shields and pushed to the front shoving a second ant back with skewering one of it's eyes as they drove it back, it hissed and put its abdomen under it's thorax and sprayed a torrent of acid at the mens shield, the leather covered iron didn't fare well as a large two foot wide hole formed in the shield and the leather practically withered and the metal rusted, the creature rushed forward and tried to pierce at the shieldsmen with it's stinger right through the hole.
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Lattena watched in horror as the man who it stung rapidly grew fungus around the wound and screamed like a runebear was using him as a scratching post. She pulled back her bow and shot an arrow at him, hoping to put him out of his misery, the arrow pierced his head and he went limp, she shot a second shot at the ant and it shrieked as the arrow dug into the center of it's head and into it's ant brain. but the damage was done, the gap that was sealed was gaping like a wound. "Back up and reform the wall!"
the soldiers retreat and formed back up. "Knights, form up behind the shields, kill anything that gets through." Lattena shouted. She wasn't naïve enough to believe that they wouldn't win without death, the least she could do was give their deaths meaning. she watched as the ants ran up to the frontlines and many got stabbed by the frontline's spears.
The spears ran through the creatures heads and thoraxes, however, eventually that front line did fall leaving the knights, what she didn't expect was for as soon as the soldiers got pierced by their stingers or clamped in their jaws, was for them to drink a potion and suddenly explode, she sat on her wolf, her eyes wide with horror as the soldiers screamed for Miquella's return, she shook her head watching the creatures get thrown off the side of the tree, it was effective and gave their deaths meaning, that's what mattered. The knights held far faster than the soldiers, and it was practically like watching a tide crash into a dam, their shields were sturdier than the mass produced tower shields the soldiers used, unfortunately the creatures corpses stacked up, so they had to move backwards. it got to the point that they had backed out onto the long limb of the haligtree. "Crap, we're making no progress..." she cursed.
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Galus Marched with his troops, his white and gold cloak wrapped around his armor, they marched over into a room where the cleanrot knights should have been, they weren't there, this was deeply confusing to him, then he remembered the pair of cleanrot knights he killed on the tower not too far from here. he winced, he wasn't sure if he overreacted to that, if he wasn't mistaken, the scarlet rot was unlike any other outer gods force, as far as he knew any cleanrot knight aside from fenlay was a threat.
they continued through the building and found the second tree guardian. it wasn't a exactly a long fight, but the crystalians proved a far greater challenge.
the army found themselves face to... sculpture, with three glintstone statues who stood between them and the next part of the haligtree. Galus wasn't going to risk his men, sure the army had the three outnumbered but they were also magically inclined, which became clear when the one in the middle raised it's staff and crystals blasted through the air, Galus produced a large discus and blocked the attack, the crystal buckshot did put a crack in the disc, he gritted his teeth, he'd be fighting a creature who used glintstone which on many occasions had proven as a foil to his abilities, he remembered Blaidd's attack had torn through his attacks like tissue paper, but that sword, formerly his own had been modified by the great smith Iji himself, so it was bound to be a near perfect weapon, Iji had made many masterpieces of weapons including Blaidd's old sword, the frozen needle, Loretta's glaive and the moonveil katana was all but confirmed, Iji however had much more finesse focused on making every part of a small thing perfect, a sword only needs to kill, but a whole glintstone warrior, they were bound to have a flaw that the creator all but needed to overlook, he pondered using a blunt weapon, they seemed pretty vulnerable to blunt force trauma as they were crystalline, but a He didn't have anything that fit the bill, so he was in it for the long haul. he got into a stance and waited as a torrent of crystals blasted into the discus shield. he saw the spear wielder go around the shield and Galus threw a discus at it, but it's spear slashed it out of midair, he watched it split down the middle and shatter like glass, he ducked it as it hopped forward with the spear and swung at it's leg, the sword bounced off only chipping the purple and rust orange crystal, he leapt back as the spear crashed down to where he was, and went in and tried to kick at it's knee to move at an odd angle, only the knee was held together with kinetic magic of some kind, not the cartilage and bone like a humans so all it really did was a whole lot of nothing, he stepped back trying to regain his balance from the kick but fell down tripping over a loose stone he looked up as the thing raised it's crystal spear and a war pick crashed into it's Egyptian esc face breaking off a good chunk. he looked to the side and saw a soldier swing his pick with the hammer side this time, and smashed it into the nose, and it cracked apart and the crystalian fell to the ground, the man raised the pick end again and slammed it into the crack opening it's head and orange and purple shards flew everywhere, the cracks spread to the rest of it's body, Galus saw another soldier join the first and then a second all three of which started attacking the crystalian at once, slamming their swords and picks down into the creatures torso one even breaking off it's spear arm and eventually exploded in crystal, luckily for them neither Galus' nor the soldiers armor didn't give way to the creature's sharper pieces of it's body. One of the soldiers reached a hand out to Galus and just as he took it a flash of purple and orange showed the man's head rolling. a he saw it embedded into the wall, a discus, though this one was solid and made from actual material, not magic, it rattled in the wall a second before flying back to the second crystalian, he rolled to the side as it caught it and sent it rolling across the floor like a wheel, before recalling it again, he watched it conjure from seemingly nowhere a pair of smaller versions of the discus and throw them, he dodged to the side but they were faster than he thought and it seemed to have the same control over them as Galus did his. The discus scraped across his pauldron, was this what it was like to fight himself... wait, Galus conjured a discus, and then tried to shrink it, it became the size of the crystal discs, he gave it a mental command and it zipped around as he controlled it to, it was fast really fast, he shot it at the crystalian and it slammed into it's crystal, though it took a few seconds for it to dig in deep. the crystalian threw it's large disc, Galus shot three more into it's chest, eventually the crystal had a small glowing spots in it's body, and Galus decided to give it a mental command to expand. they did, and the creature exploded from within. Galus was surprised that it worked, he unsummoned those discs and turned.
One of the soldiers tapped him on the back. "Sir, your pauldron."
Galus looked and saw an orange rust spreading. He conjured a violet flame and pressed it to the metal, the rust flaking away.
He shook his head, then felt a spike of panic shoot through his head, he looked back and saw his shield was a second from being destroyed, how had he forgotten about that? "Shields!" He shouted, as the discus exploded and the crystal torrent streamed through the hall toward his soldiers who managed to raise shields just as it blasted into them. Galus rushed forward and created another shield behind him in front of the soldiers, he rushed and attacked the creature, he hadn't believed that it hadn't occurred to him before, he activated his sword with his summoning ability and the familiar hound's fang sword took ethereal shape and sliced through the creature's torso, it hopped back, letting out a blast of crystal, though he summoned a second discus shield and blocked it, and attacked again this attack landing and cutting off it's arm, not the one with the staff unfortunately. Galus attacked again, his sword coming close to cleaving it's head, he watched it dodge backward and raise it's staff, he dashed back as a rain of scarlet crystals blasted into the ground and he threw his discus shield at the crystalian, it cleaved through it's chest after a second of a high pitched grinding noise like a surgeons powered bone saw. he sighed closing his eyes, listening to it explode. he unsummoned the shields and got to his feet. He shook his head and winced at the slight pain which he found odd because he used at least seven or eight discs that fight, did the smaller discs use less focus? or perhaps his focus pool was growing larger, he'd been unable to get cerulean tears potion so the only way he could gain more was through sleep, he had a guess that had something to do with Trina.
either way it seemed he'd need to do experimenting but he could do that after he destroyed Mohg and rescued his lord. He scorched the decapitated body of the soldier with slumbering flames, it seemed to work fine, though he had a feeling it wouldn't work on living creatures only the dead, if curing scarlet rot was that easy Miquella would have cured his sister a long time ago. He gestured for his troops to march and they sent started forward again, when they got to the waterfall of rot Galus could smell a strong smell of rot and Kerosene, he decided to test it out and sent a volley of violet flames into the water and it lit up like an oil rig under the Obama administration. He smiled as the fire spread and he saw Rotkin pests screeching and writhing until they fell unconscious from the flames, when the fires went out it had cleansed the water out completely, it was clear, with many silver flowers poking from it, he watched as the flames climbed the tree setting the entire thing ablaze burning the fungi and lichen that grew from the tree.
Galus motioned toward the pests. "Make sure to shoot them with crossbows, they're carriers of the rot so likely bet is that their blood is a contaminant."
most of his crossbowmen of which there were few because he'd given most of them to Lattena, climbed onto rocks and out of the clear water, each picking a target before shooting and each hitting their marks. He saw a butterfly flittering about it's wings still glistening with a scarlet powder, it landed on one of the sldiers fingers as they held out a hand, their gloves leather immediately started to rot away and the metal started rapidly rusting, his hand became practically withered and started to spread to their wrist, Galus quickly cut the arm off at the shoulder before it could spread, he knew that amputating a diseased limb was a myth but it was all he could try to do to stop it.
The butterfly, the 'harmless' little butterfly fluttered away almost smugly, Galus swung his sword cutting it in half, his new sword was really damn sharp, he wondered if that was from an enchantment or if Carian smithing was just that good, it was more than likely both. "Be careful of the butterflies, they're carriers of the disease." He said, spraying the air around him with sleep mist, and many of the butterflies landed in the water hopefully drowning. "Treat his wound, make sure it doesn't get infected!"
A pair of soldiers looked at the wound and started applying pressure to the stump with rowa cotton and started bandaging it.
Galus looked up at the hollow halig tree, he gripped the sword and continued walking. "take him somewhere safe."