Galus woke with a start as Selen slammed a few heavy books down on the table he was chained to.

She looked at him with her piercing eyes, he was starting to wonder if they had the ability to drill through his skull and into his mind, it certainly felt like it. She sighed and unlocked his shackles. "We have a deal, I'll watch the girl and teach you, but you 'will' keep your end of the deal."

Galus nodded, rubbing his wrists. "Yeah, I will. So, what's with the books?"

Selen looked down, before handing the books to him. "They're for you to study while you travel, I'm not going to go easy on you, it'll be up to you to decipher the pages."

Galus opened the top book, and realized he couldn't read the script.

Galus looked up at her. "I... Cannot read."

He could see that Selen was about to blow up at him. "Marika this is going to be a rough one..." She said, rubbing her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm a foreigner to this place, our script is kind of different, a bit cruder than anything you guys write." Galus says, then thinks for a second, "hey, you happen to have a blank notebook I might be able to use?"

Selen sighed "that's the bottom book of the stack, it's noting down you studies, but if you must, you can take... Creative liberties, some academy scholars are artistically inclined."

Galus nodded, grabbing up the books, realizing he had no bag for this stuff and he looked at Selen, who once again sighed and tossed a leather satchel, funnily enough the strap landed around his neck and he nodded in thanks, he started putting the books in the bag. "I'll be back in a couple days." Irina looked over to him, she had apparently been united while Galus was asleep. He sighed and put his hand on her shoulder. "I will be back, if it's two days or seven, I'll be back."

She nodded, and he took his hand off of her shoulder and she told him to stay safe. He grabbed his sheathed sword that was leaned up against the doorframe.

He walked out of the room, and past the massive beast that was sitting down against the wall. He always wondered what they looked like under the massive brass pumpkin. He'd be sure to get that thing off one of their heads if he ever got the chance to.

He got out of the Barrow and breathed in the toxically sweet air. And started walking once more.

He walked down to the road looking around, and saw a familiar figure walking down the road, a tall armored figure with a fur cloak, and of course, the head of a wolf, Blaidd, James remembered he was one of his favorite characters in elden ring, mostly because of the general can do attitude he exuded as well as his loyalty, loyalty was something very important to him.

Galus waved to him, and to his delight the half wolven warrior waved back. He waited for Blaidd to catch up. As he approaches he looks down at Galus, and he was reminded again just how tall he was, if he had to guess, he'd say Blaidd was eight foot five inches. Galus snapped his fingers, he felt bad about the deception but he felt that he could use the help if possible.

Blaidd's ears twitched. "Kale sent you? What do you need?"

Galus nods, looking up at the large wolf guy. "Well, my friends father is too foolhardy and is trying to keep control of castle morne with a very small amount of troops who are still alive, I'm hoping to get some help with that, I'd be willing to help you with anything you might need."

Blaidd looked at him an appraising look on his doggo face. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not sure if you'd be too much help in fighting, but I could be wrong, let's see what You've got. I'm pursuing someone who is rather dangerous, if you can help me track and kill him I'll help you with your endeavor. Name's Blaidd." He holds out a gauntleted hand, and Galus takes it, giving as firm a shake as he could. "Galus."

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Galus looked up to him, both figuratively and literally. "So, where are we going exactly?" Galus asked, crossing his arms, not in an accusatory manor but more because his trousers had no pockets to put his hands in, he wondered why it was so cold all of a sudden, the sun was out and it hadn't been cold until Blaidd had gotten near, he remembered that his sword had a chilling aura around it and that was why Blaidd wore a thick fur cloak.

Blaidd looked embarrassed for a moment, noticing Galus' eyes going to his sword. "I know, I honestly can't stand the thing, but it's a show of faith to my mistress." Galus nodded, before Blaidd continued. "We won't be going far, word is my quarry trapped himself inside of an evergaol thinking it would keep him safe, but it's only cornered the poor sod. Now this is where you will come in, I need somebody to let me out of the evergaol once I've gone inside, think of it like a fishing trap, you can go in easily enough but escape is impossible, unless of course somebody from the outside disarms the trap."

Galus nods, but stops nodding abruptly giving himself a slight headache as his brain crashed into his skull from the abrupt stop. "And... How exactly would that test my metal?"

Blaidd laughed, patting him on the shoulder and Galus let out an Oomph as the hand big enough to hold a his head like ball like an apple crashed into him. "I'll do that afterwards, I appreciate that spirit though."

Blaidd pointed to a branching path from the main road near where he and Irina had gotten water before. Galus gulped nervously knowing that it might have been within the dragon's territory. "Uh, Blaidd, there's a dragon roosting on a nest over on that cliff, me and my friend saw it, it's feeding on the larger animals, you might want to be careful, us little humans might not be worth the energy of catching and consuming us but an eight foot five wolf man might be a different story."

Blaidd looked over at him, then to the cliff he was looking toward, it's nesting was visible along with the large grey dragon that was lying in it. he saw a large majority of the forest was on fire over there, if he had to guess, Godrick wanted it dead and probably wanted it's head, it clearly had not ended well for the soldiers who were charged with murdering it. "Yeah, but it's the only way to really get up there, atleast for you, I can climb stone surfaces easily, not long ago did I climb up a stone tower to scout mistwood."

Galus smiled, as he walked along the road, remembering the time he had a rune bear knock over the tower Blaidd was on because he hadn't figured out the snap emote. It hasn't exactly worked because the base of the tower wasn't destructible. "Well, I'll do what I can, but uh, how do I get you out of the evergaol? You didn't explain that part of the plan."

Blaidd put his hand over his eyes and laughed. "Ah, right, I forgot about that! Ha... Just calling my name while pressing your hand on the glowing central stone should be enough."

Galus raised an eyebrow at the 'should be' in that sentence, and it was not missed on Blaidd. "If that doesn't work then use this." He hands him what looks to be a cuckoo Glintstone chunk. He looks it over in his hand, aside from Selen's lab he had never seen Glintstone before. "Uh, hey, what do I do with it?"

Blaidd looked down at him. "Just break it."

Blaidd looked ahead and Galus looked ahead as well, looking at what looked like a large stone inch worm.

Galus chuckled, looking at it, they always reminded him of cocoa puffs. "So uh, what're these guys for?" Galus asked, poking it with the end of his sheathed sword.

Blaidd shrugged, clearly he didn't know either.

They finally got to the top of the hill and Galus sat down on the edge of the inverted dome, he could see the ghostly form of the bloodhound knight. Blaidd walked into the center of the circle and got down on a knee and put his hand on the glowing stone, and he immediately became ghostly as well.

He dashed forward the bloodhound knight moved in a blur, just barely being blocked by Blaidd, and he used his sword to open the knights guard and raked his gauntleted claws along the knights helmet and they hooked into the helmets many breathing holes and with a heave he tore it's hemet off revealing what looked like a coyote with scurvy only scarce brisled hair dotted around it's head and more heavily down it's neck, it reminded Galus of a razor back hog. He watched it rush backwards and saw it stop with it's metal claws deeply cutting into the ground. It was eerily quiet for how much it's mouth was snarling, it's canines pronounced and it's yellow eyes, made it a rather intimidating creature.

It rushed except this time it moved fast enough that it looked like teleportation, Galus spotted three large gashes appear on Blaidd's arm and saw it screach to a halt literally given its claws dragging him slowly to a stop and he could see the ends glowing from the friction burn. The bloodhound knight swung it's long curved blade and it connected with Blaidd's back leaving a large gash, Blaidd turned in a sweeping strikes only to find it gone and another three slashes appeared on his arm, he uses the momentum of his large sword to quickly redirect it to go behind his back his forearm next to his head and he felt the impact of the knights sword being deflected off of his blade. he turned attempting to hit them with his sword, it's end leaves a long gash on the knights stomach, and Galus saw that there was some ice growing in the wound. though the knight managed to do another one of it's bullshit attacks it was a lot slower than it was before and he could see it as it ran, Galus watched as it Blaidd caught it's off hand with the large claws as it tried to slash at his arm again, an unstoppable force meets the immovable object, turns out it ends with it really sucking for the unstoppable object. He watched as the whiplash caused his arm to be popped out of it's socket, along with the creature being yanked right off it's feet, it remained silent but it gave it's token effort to try and scream, it's mouth open silently shrieking, it hit the ground with a clank of its armor and a crack of its head. Blaidd stepped on his sword arm and brought the point of his sword down on the hound knights chest, the wound immediately icing over in a spray of red and white. Blaidd tore his sword out the body breaking in half and he knelt down, grabbing it's sword.

Galus walked over to the glowing stone at the middle of the evergaol he knelt down pressing his hand on it and said Blaidd's name, when nothing happened Galus remembered the crystal and held it, he'd try one more time, saying Blaidd's name again, nothing happened, he sighed holding the Glintstone over his head and brought it down on the evergaol's stone, it cracked and a blue light came from it, he hit it again and it shattered, leavinf some less than pleasant cuts on his hands, he'd wished the merchant gave him gloves, the thing exploded with a blue light and he saw standing there was one of the holograms he'd seen before in Ranni's rise, and who elses projection but his favorite megalomaniac, Seluvis.