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Glory to my bum ass proofreader: Solare.
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John's eyes widened for a heartbeat, before a wild grin carved itself across his face.
It was not polite, nor was it grateful. It looked like something sharp and delighted and just a little unhinged, like someone had just handed a pyromaniac the keys to the fireworks warehouse.
Gideon visibly did not appreciate it.
The line of his shoulders stiffened and under the helm, something in his posture pinched, tiny muscles going taut. John couldn't see his expression, but he could feel the grimace.
In his mind, Marika reacted almost the same way he did, appreciating the prideful man's wounded ego..
But it was hard for her to revel in Gideon's suffering as much as he did, her mind twisted with a few millenia old disdain.
"Ah…" She murmured, a wry edge in her voice. "So. It seems 'tis time to meet those wriggling wretches once more."
She folded her arms, gaze going half-lidded, disdain creeping in. "A lifetime of imprisonment away from their needling whispers, and yet the notion of requiring them again… still leaves a foul taste upon mine tongue."
John's grin faltered for half a second. '...Hm?'
He'd filed the Two Fingers under "weird hand-things that run tech support for Grace" and roughly assumed they were Marika's divine customer service line. Ymir, that old freak from the Cathedral of Manus Metyr, had made it sound like they were her guides, her "interpreters" of the Greater Will.
Though, in that same breath, he also implied that they were blinded from the beginning, so he was entirely unsure what to think.
But the way she just called them wriggling wretches…
He quirked an eyebrow inwardly, curiosity pricking.
'Bad blood there, huh?' He thought. 'Thought they were on your side of the office.'
He felt her gaze cut sidelong to him, amused and unimpressed in equal measure.
He shook his head the tiniest bit, filing it away to ask later. Preferably when not being actively watched by the Order's resident NSA.
Right now, there was a performance to put on.
He pushed his bench back and stood, his joints didn't even pop. He rolled his shoulders on instinct, though he stopped a moment later when something else clicked.
The room looked… different.
'I don't know how it didn't click before, but… Am I taller now?'
The table was lower than he remembered. Or rather, he was higher. Gideon, who'd always been comfortably tall, now barely came up to his upper chest. John realised with a subtle amusement that he had to actually look down to meet the man's helm.
He did a quick mental estimate and landed at a foot and a half, easy. Enough that it was exactly the right angle to be obnoxious.
Excellent.
"Well~…" John drawled, letting his grin spread slowly and lazyly. "If you insist~…"
He practically sang the last word, smug amusement dripping from every syllable. Anyone in earshot would've heard how little he was taking this as an order and how much he was classifying it as entertainment.
From inside Gideon's helmet came the faintest of sounds, like someone was grinding a handful of gravel between their molars.
John's enhanced hearing caught it perfectly.
'Pfft…' He thought, delight fizzing. 'Is he actually grinding his teeth?'
He swallowed the laugh trying to climb out of his throat and turned away before it got him stabbed with a cane.
He glanced at his table, eyes finding Melina first, he winked at her mischievously.
Her eye widened immediately, the faintest sigh leaving her lips as she realised exactly what brand of insolent bastard he planned on being.
Exasperation warred with amusement on her face, but she did not tell him to behave.
He called that an absolute win.
"All right." John said, pitching his voice to them rather than Gideon. "Don't worry about me. I'll go humour the human sized fingers and be back as soon as I can."
Millicent snorted a laugh and slapped the table. "You better not take too long, or we're starting the party without you~!"
Roderika, who'd been staring up at Gideon with round eyes, blinked rapidly and turned back to them.
"W-Wait…" She squeaked. "We're… we're going to have a party?"
"Duh?" Millicent said, giving her a look like this should be obvious. "Johnny over there just became a Demigod. What better reason do you think we need?"
The word Demigod landed like a dropped shield.
Corhyn flinched, just slightly. His fingers flexed on his prayer beads, discomfort obvious. His mouth opened, clearly groping for "that's not how we define Demigods within the Golden Order", but then he visibly remembered the Pillar of Grace, the very dead Godrick, and the new Shardbearer sitting three feet away.
He shut his mouth with a quiet sigh and let it slide.
"…Perhaps we may all… give thanks, in our own ways." He muttered, earning a delighted giggle from Millicent.
Solaire slapped his gauntlet on the table, delighted. "A celebration? Marvelous! A feast in honour of a newly ascended Lord? Say no more! I, for one, shall require a tankard the size of my helm!"
"I am always in favour of free food and other people being distracted." Patches added from his corner, already calculating the odds of profit. "Count me in."
Melina did not object, her expression stayed thoughtful, gaze flicking once toward the direction of the inner hall where the Two Fingers waited. Her hand had drifted to the edge of the table, knuckles pale.
She didn't say I want to come with you.
She didn't have to, he knew.
"I'll be fine." John said quietly as he gave her a small, reassuring smile. "Promise. Just have the food ready for when I get back."
She studied him for a beat, then nodded once, trusting.
He turned back to Gideon.
"I'd ask you to lead the way, oh All-Knowing, but I know you just must be far too busy to do such things." John said pleasantly as he, because he was who he was, decided to continue the ragebait.
He stepped in close enough to clap a hand on Gideon's armored shoulder in what, from a distance, looked like a friendly gesture. Up close, his fingers squeezed just enough to be irritating as he leaned in, voice dropping to an almost-conspiratorial murmur.
"Careful with the teeth grinding," he said. "They'll crack, and I'm not sure they do dental here."
He straightened before Gideon could respond.
If his goal had been to calm the man down, it had the exact opposite effect. Gideon's grip on his staff tightened enough to make the wood creak. His breathing hitched under the helm, the faint rasp audible only to John's boosted senses.
John lifted a hand and waved over his shoulder as he walked away, cloak flaring slightly.
"Good work, buddy~!" He called out. "You're dismissed."
If anyone claimed they saw the way his grin stretched wide and a little manic as he turned his back, well… John would be obligated to call them a liar.
He passed through the archway out of the mess hall, leaving the growing swell of voices and party planning behind, and let his feet carry him toward the inner hall.
The path to the Two Fingers was etched into his brain from the game: past the round table itself, down the side corridor with the faded murals, up the stairs to the sealed door that he knew would block him out until he proved himself worthy.
Now, the Grace in his chest tugged him the same way the map had.
He usually tuned that pull out, relying on his own knowledge and instincts. This time, he let it hum at the edge of his awareness, a low, guiding pressure.
'So…' He thought as he walked. 'You and the Fingers. Got any problems there I should know about?'
Marika chuckled, the sound was like music to the ears. "I suppose even a woman of mine stature will start becoming readable with enough time. Thou art not entirely witless."
A glow of gold flared at his side. She appeared walking beside him, her bare feet making no sound on the Roundtable's stone, gown trailing in an invisible breeze.
"We and the Two Fingers have rarely seen eye to eye. In the days when I yet sat upon mine throne and the Ring was whole, arguments about the world's state and the shape of the Golden Order were… frequent."
Her lip curled slightly as she went on. "Oft they felt like petulant children. Clinging to Father's words like a drowning man clings to driftwood. They refused to leave the cage they had built of his decrees, even when that cage strangled the world."
The beautiful planes of her face twisted into a strangely enticing mix of disdain and old hurt. Her golden eyes hardened; the line of her jaw drew tight. The divine, untouchable goddess looked, for just a breath, like a furious woman remembering a long, bitter argument.
John was suddenly very, very glad his Dexterity was high.
If he'd still been at base-level human reaction speed, he might've made a complete idiot of himself right then and there.
As it was, his heart skipped a beat in his chest anyway.
'Oh, that's… huh. That's dangerously hot.' He thought, then instantly winced internally. 'Brain, shut up. This is not the time to admire how beautiful she is, you already have Melina.'
Her annoyed expression froze, then cracked into that familiar, amused, predatory smirk.
She turned her head slowly to look at him, golden eyes gleaming.
"Thou art thinking unbecoming thoughts again, mine champion~..." She purred. "A mere week together, and thou still forgets I hear every stray spark that crosses that skull of thine."
He scratched his cheek, not bothering to deny it.
She sighed theatrically, but there was laughter under it. "Still…" She said, voice lighter than it was a moment before. "Thou hast lifted mine mood from thinking of those useless tumors. I suppose I should thank thee."
She leaned in slightly with a teasing smirk. "Though one ought not be so… aroused by mine annoyance and disdain. 'Tis most indecorous."
John snorted.
"Please…" He said under his breath. "This is entirely your fault. You've been conditioning me. Maybe if you weren't so stupidly hot while ranting about theology, I'd behave."
Marika stared at him for half a second, then she broke as a genuine laugh bubbled out of her, bright and unrestrained in a way it almost never was. She brought a hand to her lips, shoulders shaking.
"Mine daughter was right!" She said between giggles. "Thou art truly a pervert~, mine champion~!"
"Hey, look on the bright side." John said, grinning. "I'm a really lucky pervert. I get to be an absolute degenerate about two gorgeous women and still be alive."
He nodded toward her and, by implication, the invisible string that tied him to Melina. "That's gotta be some kind of cosmic achievement trophy."
Her laughter only increased, soft golden light sparking in the air around her like falling petals.
"Aye…" She conceded. "In this, thou speakest true. Few men could boast such fortune."
They turned a corner.
Ahead, at the end of the corridor, two massive double doors loomed. Each one was carved with intricate reliefs of roots, sigils, and the stylised form of a hand, fingers raised in benediction.
The entrance to the Two Fingers' inner sanctum.
Marika's giggles slowly faded to a softer smile.
Johnathan Pendragon stared at the doors, trying his best to ignore the sickeningly warm feeling that shot through him at the sound of her free laughter.
John lifted his hands and set them against the seam of the great doors.
Or tried to, as the instant his fingers were about to brush the carved wood, the doors shuddered and swung inward on their own with a low creek.
He blinked.
"…Awfully dramatic doors." He murmured as he shrugged and stepped through, and let them close behind him with another rumbling boom.
The inner chamber of the Two Fingers was just as he remembered from the game, if slightly more suffocating in person.
A raised stone dais dominated the far end of the room, an altar carved with the same root-and-sigil motifs that ran like veins through the Hold. Upon it lay the Two Fingers themselves: massive, pallid digits, thick as tree trunks, protruding from a larger, unseen hand. They twitched faintly, nails cracked and yellowed, skin puckered with age and something older than age.
Beside the altar, hunched on a modest stone seat, sat the Finger Reader, Enia.
Her back was bent by years, thin hair pulled back, eyes clouded white. She held a gnarled staff in both hands, knuckles liver-spotted and trembling.
As John approached, she straightened with surprising poise, lips moving in the preamble of some well-rehearsed speech.
"Ahh… a Tarnished of no renown…" She began, voice rolling into the familiar cadence. "Come to offer-?!"
Her words died in her throat as her milky eyes, which had been fixed roughly in John's direction, suddenly seemed to… shift. Not quite away from him, but past him. Beside him.
Her breath hitched as on the altar, the Two Fingers twitched violently.
The whole mass of flesh flinched, a ripple running from base to tip. The nails scraped against the stone with a dry, scraping sound. The air in the room thickened with a subtle, unseen pressure, a soundless vibration that made John's teeth ache.
He didn't need Marika's soft intake of breath in his mind to put it together.
'They can see you. Or atleast sense you. Like the Crucible Knight did.'
"Aye." Marika murmured, gaze narrowing. "They always could, to a degree. It seems they have not grown entirely duller in mine absence."
"Y-you…" Enia whispered, still staring at the empty air to John's right. Her staff clattered from her hands as she slid bonelessly off her seat and onto her knees. "Ahh… ahh… I-I… I can… barely glimpse…"
She pitched forward, palms smacking the floor as she prostrated herself fully.
"My Goddess…" she breathed. "F-Forgive mine eyes… I can barely glimpse the visage of Thy divine form…"
John exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Right," he said. "So, just to confirm—"
He pointed between the air beside him and the altar.
"You can see her. And they can sense her. Yeah?"
Enia trembled.
"Yes, Sir Johnathan." She said at once. "I… I see Her grace as if through a fog, and the Fingers…" She swallowed. "They… they shudder at Her presence."
On the altar, the Two Fingers convulsed again.
Marika's gaze slid to them.
"Speak." She said, voice dropping, all amusement from the corridor gone. "Thou hear'st me, do thou not? Then speak, tumor."
The Fingers trembled. The air around them thickened further, the unseen vibration rising to a pitch that made John's ears ring.
Then they sang.
It wasn't a sound he could truly parse as speech. It was a layered, warbling series of tones and clicks and raw, scraping vibrations, like someone playing a harp out of tune while a storm howled through broken glass.
It bored under his skin, set his Immortal Heart stuttering for a beat.
"'Tis the only tongue they ever had." Marika said coolly, eyes never leaving the twitching digits. "They admit they can hear me. And that they knew, the moment thou didst set foot in the Hold, that I walked with thee."
John let out a low breath.
Honestly, it made sense. If anything in the world was wired deeply enough into the Elden Ring's back-end and the Grace network to notice a rogue goddess hitchhiking in someone's soul, it'd be the giant fingers plugged into the cosmic modem.
Marika, apparently, had a slightly different angle. "'Tis not merely their attunement, though that is part of it. Consider, mine champion: their… knowledge. Their connection to the world's underpinnings. Their Insight, one might say. The higher it climbs, the more they perceive the hidden. The more they see what ought be unseen, and hear what should be unheard."
John's eyes narrowed, INSIGHT.
His gaze flicked inward briefly, memory flashing back to the new stat on his sheet, to Helios' Bloodborne jokes, to the way only certain beings so far had been able to perceive Marika at all.
'Right, of course. The Insight stat is the same stat that decides whether or not you'd see most eldritch bullshit in Bloodborne. Helios, you smug bastard.'
He dragged his focus back outward and looked at Enia.
"So, what's the official reason the Fingers called me in?"
Enia flinched at being addressed so directly, but she forced herself up onto her knees, hands still pressed flat to the floor.
"T-the Fingers…" she stammered. "They… wished to gauge your measure, Sir Johnathan. To learn your goals for the Great Rune you have claimed and the path you intend to walk within Their Grace."
"Of course they do…" Marika muttered with a sigh. "Still prattling on about 'intention' when they cannot grasp their own."
She glanced at John, lips curling. "Make her be silent a while. Bid her read mine mouth instead."
John blinked. "You want to speak to them directly. Finger reading's part of your repertoire too?"
Marika's smirk was pure smugness. "Did thou truly think such a crude art beyond me? Go on. Indulge me."
He shrugged and looked back at Enia. "All right, you. I want you to stop listening to the Fingers for a minute and watch Her."
He pointed to the space beside him where Marika hovered in a faint golden haze only Insight-touched beings could really pick out.
"Focus on her mouth. Whatever She says, you obey. Not them."
Enia hesitated.
Her blind eyes turned, squinting, as if trying to bring something into focus that her vision wasn't designed to catch. The fog parted just a little for her, enough that the faint outline of Marika's lips became visible.
Marika leaned forward slightly, making absolutely sure Enia could see.
Then she enunciated, slow and clear, each syllable like a hammer tap on stone.
"SILENCE, WRETCH."
Enia yelped.
"Y-yes, Goddess!" She squeaked, pressing her forehead even harder into the floor. Her mouth snapped shut with audible force.
John clamped a hand over his own to keep his grin in check.
'God, I love her.' He thought, a little horrified at himself and a lot amused.
Marika turned back to the Two Fingers.
Golden light pooled behind her like a stormfront.
"Now, listen well, tumor. I care not a whit what thou intend for mine champion. Thy 'plans' died the day He went after my daughter's destiny." She spat the word without naming the Creator. "To murder her body, to take my son's soul as collateral for His stagnation."
The Two Fingers twitched, trembling harder. The soundless vibration they emitted rose, like some undersea creature's distress call.
Then the scraping, layered tone came again, harsher this time, echoing weirdly against the walls.
Enia flinched as if struck. She lifted her head just enough to translate, voice shaking.
"Th-they say… That is… h-heretical talk, Host. The Creator's will must be followed eternally, without question. The Empyrean spawn… should have accepted its purpose. What happened was… unfortunate, but not… within the Creator's intended designs."
Marika's face twisted.
It was no longer just disdain there. Something that could be equated to maternal rage, if one were so inclined.
"Do not presume to parrot 'will' at me, parasite." She hissed. "Thou, who hast never once borne the weight of a single mortal's heart. Do not throw stones when thou couldst not understand a soul if its grief were carved into thine flesh."
The air around her thrummed. The Fingers shuddered with every word like they were being pelted with invisible rocks.
"For eons, thou and thine kind clung to the husk of a god who ceased to look upon this world." She went on, voice rising as she spoke. "Thou lectured me on Order while rot spread and madness festered. Thou condemned mine choices without once opening thine own eyes to see what the world had become."
She took a step forward, every word a hammer blow.
"So answer me, tumor." She said, voice suddenly quiet and deadly calm. "Ever once, in all thine existence, hast thou truly been connected to the so-called Greater Will thou worship? Hast thou, even for a singular moment, seen the truth without relying on a god who was not truly guiding thee?"
Her eyes narrowed, predator-sharp.
"If thou refuse to answer… I shall see to it that mine champion here makes everyone in this Hold intimately familiar with how low thou and thine kin have fallen."
The threat hung in the air like a guillotine as the Two Fingers shook subtly.
The scraping tone that followed was different, it was slower. It dragged through the chamber like something heavy being pulled across stone.
Enia's breath came in short pants. She listened, face draining of colour, then forced herself to speak.
"T-they… Confess…" She whispered. "That the Mother… Metyr, Mother of Fingers… hath been disconnected from the Creator for longer than their own births. That the Fingers, all of them, were… are… truly blind from birth."
She swallowed, voice cracking. "They have been… following the guidance of a god that can no longer truly guide them."
The words hit her like a hammer. Her shoulders slumped; her fingers trembled as if the foundations of her entire faith had just been kicked out from under her.
John felt nothing, as he already knew this from the start thanks to Ymir's ramblings in the Cathedral of Manus Metyr.
For Enia, this was shattering.
But for Marika… it was something else entirely.
Her hard mask cracked, then it broke as she threw her head back and laughed.
It was not the soft, amused chuckles John had coaxed from her in private. These were loud, raw, and triumphant; elated in a way that bordered on vicious.
"Aha-haha-ahh~!" The sound spilled out of her, echoing off the chamber walls in golden peals. "Ohh, sweet, sweet vin-di-ca-tion~!"
She savoured every syllable of the word.
She reined it in after a few breathless seconds, laughter subsiding into a wide, bloody smile. Her lips parted just enough to show a hint of a sharp canine, one you wouldn't normally notice unless you were close.
And John was very, very close.
"Blind, senile growths clinging to a god that long since abandoned them." She murmured, voice honey-thick with satisfaction. "Just as I thought."
She leaned toward the altar, eyes alight. "Hear me, tumor. From this moment forth, thou shalt remember thy place. Thou and thine blind brethren are nothing but leeches fattened on the echoes of mine work. If thou wouldst keep thy lofty perch in this Hold, thou wilt extend full, unrestricted support to this man and his people."
Her hand lifted, gesturing gracefully at John. "Thou wilt grant him and his companions room and board without limit."
She went on. "Thou wilt provide what resources he requests from thy stockpiles. Materials, knowledge, relics, you will provide as he requires them. Thou wilt not hinder him, nor question him, save where his path directly shatters the Ring thou clingest to. Else…"
Her smile thinned, turning razor-sharp. "…I shall have him whisper a single truth."
The Fingers twitched violently again, Enia whimpered.
"In a Hold full of desperate Tarnished…" Marika whispered sweetly. "How long, think'st thou, would thy authority persist if they learned thou wert blind guides following a dead light? How long before they seek… other hands to follow?"
The scraping tone returned after a few moments, frantic now. The invisible pressure in the room spiked, then wavered, like an off-key chord dying in the air.
"T-They… agree." Enia choked out after a few seconds of horrified processing.
After all, she could barely understand half of the conversation from reading her Goddess' lips and context clues. "They… will support you, Sir Johnathan. Fully. Unreservedly. The Roundtable's resources… are at your call. So long as you do not… break the Elden Ring beyond repair."
John watched all of it with unabashed admiration, and something less noble. 'Fuck… Why's she so hot when she's being that demanding? Is this my type? Oh, who am I kidding. Of course it's my type.'
The thought did not go unnoticed as Marika cut him a sidelong glance, the corner of her mouth twitching upward in a smug smirk.
"You grow more honest with thyself by the day, mine champion."
Enia, still trembling, turned her head toward him.
"S-Sir Johnathan." she said, voice unsteady but earnest. "The Fingers… and I… we shall remain in contact. If you have need of aught, be it boons, knowledge, or relics. come, and I shall intercede. It is the least… the least we can offer."
She bowed low, pressing her forehead to the stone again.
"And… and Goddess…" Her voice broke. "Forgive this old fool for clinging so blindly…"
Marika's expression softened just a fraction.
"Live, old one," she said. "Open thine eyes at last. That shall be penance enough."
Enia sobbed once, quietly.
John cleared his throat, feeling suddenly like he'd walked in on a three-thousand-year-old family therapy session.
"Right," he said. "So. That went well."
A faint shimmer of Grace gathered at his hip.
He glanced down in time to see a new weight settle into reality: a leather pouch embossed with subtle rune-work, slotted neatly onto his belt.
[TALISMAN POUCH ACQUIRED]
…Neat.
"Thanks." He said to Enia. "I'll… keep in touch, I guess."
She nodded vigorously, still not lifting her head.
"Go with Grace, Sir Johnathan." She whispered. "And… go with Her."
He turned toward the doors as they began to swing open behind him, drawn by some invisible cue.
The gate closed with a final, heavy thud as he stepped back into the corridor.
He walked a few paces, the strange pressure of the sanctum falling away. Then he stopped and let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding.
Marika appeared before him in a wash of soft gold, arms folded, smirk firmly in place.
She looked… downright pleased with herself. Like a cat that had not only eaten the canary but also framed the dog for it.
She tilted her head, clearly waiting. Waiting for him to say it.
Well… Never let it be said that Johnathan Pendragon was above shamelessly flattering a beautiful woman. Especially when she'd just strong-armed a cosmic bureaucracy into backing him.
"So…" He said, lips twitching with amusement. "How do you want to celebrate your… schadenfreudic victory over those parasites? Shall I go make a guitar and start singing songs in your honour, thy Majesty~?"
She snorted before dissolving into chuckles.
"Pfft… heh… hehehe~…" Marika shook her head, golden hair shimmering. "Thou art completely right, Johnathan~! We should celebrate it all~!"
She pointed to him with a haughty and radiant flick of her hand, still riding the high of being right after millennia.
"I am clever, am I not?" She demanded. "Am I not?"
"Yep." John said immediately, without hesitation. "Brilliant, the greatest genius of every generation. Outplayed them in one scene."
Her hand came to rest atop her blessed chest.
"And I am intimidating, right?" She pressed, leaning in slightly.
He chuckled as they started back down the hall toward the mess.
"Mhm. Terrifying. Very much so."
Her smile softened into something warm and wicked all at once, and John did not think about the way his heart did that stupid little flip again as they walked back toward the sound of growing laughter and the promise of a very well-earned party.
As John walked away from the Two Fingers' sanctum, the echo of Marika's laughter still ringing pleasantly in his head, curiosity finally won.
He flicked open his System with a thought and tapped the new tab pulsing at the edge of his vision.
[MEDIA]
The interface shifted.
[MEDIA]
[All media the User has consumed in their previous life has been catalogued and archived within the System.]
[However, until more Shards of the ELDEN RING are recovered, only a fraction of the full Media Archive is unlocked.]
Underneath, several greyed-out categories hovered, their icons faint:
[Movies] – LOCKED
[Anime] – LOCKED
[Books] – LOCKED
[Manga] – LOCKED
Only one glowed properly.
[Music] – UNLOCKED
John tapped it, and a list exploded down the page.
Rows and rows of titles, each tagged with artist, album, and runtime, scrolled beneath his fingers. It was like someone had cracked his skull open and neatly sorted every song he'd ever vibed to into a personalised list.
He nearly tripped; his Dex might've been insane now, but even that struggled to keep up with the gut punch of pure nostalgia.
"Careful, mine champion." Marika chided lightly beside him, amused. "Thou wilt dash thine own brains upon the floor if thou walkest and readest at once."
He barely heard her.
"Holy shit," he whispered. "It actually… kept all of it."
He flicked through the list, eyes racing:
["Through the Fire and Flames" – DragonForce]
["Paper Moon" – Richaadeb]
["Cruel Angel's Thesis" – Amalee]
["Devil Trigger" – Casey Edwards feat. Ali Edwards]
["Killer Queen" – Queen]
["She Bangs" – Ricky Martin]
["Bad Apple!!" – Bullet Hell]
["Free Bird" – Lynyrd Skynyrd]
["Legends Never Die" – Against The Current]
["Bloody Stream" – Coda]
["Numb" – Linkin Park]
["Just The Two of Us" – Grover Washington]
The list went on.
Childhood theme songs. Edgy teenage-phase tracks. Hype playlists, sad playlists, that one compilation he'd looped while grinding bosses at 3 AM. It was all there, neatly categorised.
"Is this… music?" Marika asked, peering over his shoulder, golden brows furrowing slightly as she tried to parse the alien labels. "These… are the 'songs' thou wert so fond of? Mortal sounds from thy other world?"
"Yep…" John said, grinning like an idiot. "This is… this is all of it. Or at least a chunk. Looks like it's only giving me some until I snag more Runes."
His chest tightened unexpectedly.
He remembered late nights with cheap earbuds, his apartment window cracked open as city lights smeared across rain-wet streets. Sitting there, half-burnt out from work and half-buzzed from caffeine, letting songs wash over him until the world felt survivable again.
He hadn't realised how much he'd missed just listening to music.
"Someday soon…" He muttered, more to himself than anyone. "I'm finding a cliff, or a rooftop, or something. And I'm just gonna sit there and let this stuff play."
Marika's gaze softened, intrigued. "I would hear them. Thy mortal hymns. Thy battle-songs and laments. I would know what shaped thee, before mine world took thee in."
"Deal!" John said with a wide grin. "We'll have a Marika-curated playlist night."
She tilted her head. "I do not know what that means, but I approve."
He chuckled, thumb still idly scrolling as he walked.
By the time he reached the archway that opened into the Roundtable's main mess hall, his smile had settled into something warm and quiet.
The hall, in contrast, was loud.
The earlier excited buzz had mutated into full-blown celebration. Tables were packed. Tankards clinked. Someone was arguing loudly about whether Radahn could beat Godfrey in a fist fight. A group of Tarnished near the far wall had started a drinking game where you had to chug every time someone shouted "GRACE" for no reason.
John folded the MEDIA tab away with a thought and took it in.
Rogier had reappeared, cloak a little neater, staff propped beside his seat. He was engaged in animated discussion with a pair of sorcerers over the theological ramifications of Great Runes exchanging hands and a Divine Tower's activation.
At another table, Nepheli sat leaned back on her bench, a tankard of beer in hand, listening intently as Solaire gestured broadly with his own mug, presumably explaining either Lordran or Why The Sun Is Great (Again).
Millicent spotted him first.
"Oi!" She yelled, waving her mug in big, sloppy arcs. "Johnny! Over here!"
A few heads turned at her volume, then shrugged it off. Celebrations were noisy places.
Melina, at the same table, turned at the sound of Millicent's call.
The subtle worry that had been lingering in the set of her shoulders melted the instant she saw him. Her lips curved into a genuine, relieved smile.
"Welcome back." She said as he walked up.
Before anyone could comment, he leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to her forehead.
Her breath hitched; colour rushed into her cheeks. She accepted it, though, tilting her head up, eye closing briefly as if savouring the contact.
"What'd I miss?" John asked, straightening and dropping onto the bench beside her, cloak settling around him.
"N-not much, we were just talking and eating." She said, still a little pink.
"Lovey-dovey time can wait till you get a room…" Millicent groused, though the grin on her face completely undercut the complaint. "Spill it, Johnny. How'd the meeting with the finger-meat go?"
John smirked and grabbed a piece of bread, tearing into it.
"Marika carved out her territory. Bullied the tumors. We're officially VIP now."
Millicent blinked. "Vee… eye… what now?"
"I'm guessing it's good?" Millicent then asked, squinting at John's expression. "Judging by the smug."
"Pfft… hahaha~!" John laughed. "Yeah. It's good."
He sat properly, accepted a refilled bowl of stew from a passing servant, and let himself slide into the flow of conversation.
Roderika told him, shy but proud, that she'd comforted a shaken knight who'd seen the Grace pillar up close and thought the Erdtree was falling. Nepheli admitted, grudging and impressed, that even the famously stoic Redmane veterans would probably gossip about tonight when news of Godrick's death got to Caelid.
John ate and talked and drank, letting the warmth seep into his bones.
At some point, his gaze drifted down the table toward the spot where Patches had been holding court earlier.
It was empty.
For a split second, his brain supplied a comical dotted white outline of a sitting bald man on that empty bench, labelled: [SUSPICIOUSLY MISSING THIEF].
His bullshit sensor spiked.
"…Huh." He said aloud.
Millicent paused in the middle of mocking Solaire's poetic adjectives.
"What's wrong?" she asked, turning to him.
John narrowed his eyes.
"I feel a disturbance in The Force…" He muttered, tone grave. He turned slowly to meet her gaze. "…Where the hell did Patches go?"
It was at that exact moment that the most aggravating, off-key voice in the Lands Between decided to assault his ears from behind.
"I'm a bitch, my name's Johnny~"
The words were sung, sung, in a wobbly, tuneless chant.
"Such a bitch, whose name is Johnny~
I'm a bitch, yeah I'm a bitch~
I'm such a fucking bitch~"
The entire table went still.
John very slowly turned his head.
At the far end of the hall, someone had cleared a makeshift "stage". It looked like a low platform of pushed-together crates and planks. On top of it, one foot perched on a barrel like he thought he was a bard, stood Patches.
He held no instrument. Just a tankard in one hand and the raw, weaponised power of humiliation in the other.
His gaze was locked on John with an unblinking, smug stare.
"I have no hopes, I have no dreams~" He warbled, entirely off tempo.
John's eye twitched.
"…Who the fuck put him up to this?" He asked very calmly.
Behind him, Roderika made a tiny, mortified noise.
"Um.." She said, giving him a helpless smile. "Millicent… bet him the runes he owed her-" Millicent shot her a betrayed look "-for being right that you and Melina would get together… that he couldn't improvise a whole song about, and I quote, 'Johnny being a bitch'."
Roderika rubbed the back of her neck. "And Patches, ah…"
Up on the stage, Patches lifted his free hand and brought thumb and index together, he held them apart into a little "tiny" gesture, and continued triumphantly.
"And a tiny little peen~
And it doesn't even function anyway~
Because I have erectile dysfunction~"
"Took offence to that." John finished dryly. "Yeah. I gathered."
He turned his head slowly to Millicent.
She was biting her lip so hard it looked like it might bleed, shoulders shaking.
"O-Okay." She wheezed. "B-But you can't say he isn't totally killing it up there, r-right?"
"So take me as I am~
Just tiny little bitch of a man~"
John's lips twitched.
Around them, several other Tarnished failed spectacularly to pretend they weren't listening. Snorts, strangled laughs, and one outright cackle broke out along nearby tables.
Millicent lost it as she folded over, clutching her stomach and cackled loud enough to draw attention from the other side of the hall.
Rogier hid a smile behind his cup. Nepheli pinched the bridge of her nose, torn between amusement and second-hand embarrassment. Solaire looked personally offended by the quality of the singing but strangely impressed by the commitment.
"Don't encourage him!" John barked at Millicent, veins standing out along his temple in exaggerated outrage as he slammed the table.
It took Patches a solid minute more to scrape the bottom of his insult barrel.
He eventually trailed off with a final, "Johnny is a biiiiiitch~" and a deep, mock-theatrical bow, soaking in the mixture of laughter, groans, and a few scattered claps.
That was about as much as John's dignity was willing to tolerate.
He stood up, rolled his neck once, and walked over to the stage in a deceptively relaxed stride.
"Ah, Johnny!" Patches said, hopping down as John approached. "See? Just a bit of banter between friends, eh? No need to-"
John grabbed him by the collar.
The shriek that followed was, frankly, spectacular.
Patches' legs kicked uselessly in the air as John administered what would go down in Roundtable Hold legend as the most catastrophic wedgie of the last two centuries. Several Tarnished winced in sympathetic pain. Someone in the back yelled, "DEAR GODS."
John only released him when Melina's small, pitying voice drifted over.
"J-Johnathan!" She said, hand half-covering a very not-pitying smile. "You're going to break him."
Patches crumpled to the floor, hands cupped protectively around his wounded pride and bruised head, making high-pitched whimpering noises.
"Consider your debt paid, in full." John told him.
The hall roared with laughter; the incident instantly transmuted into story-fodder.
The celebration rolled on.
Time blurred a little: more food, more drink, Solaire clapping him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth, Rogier asking careful questions about how the Two Fingers had reacted, Nepheli promising to challenge him to a proper spar when the celebrations were over and they find the time.
Eventually, the chaos mellowed as tankards emptied and plates cleared.
John found himself back at the big table, leaning back on the bench, one arm stretched along the backrest behind Melina.
Melina had been quiet for most of the party as she sat at John's right, elbow on the table, cheek resting just barely against her knuckles. Her eye moved from face to face, following the conversation, but he could feel the weight of it come back to him every few breaths like a pendulum.
Finally, she straightened.
"Johnathan…" She called out softly, but with that particular firmness that meant she'd decided to say this twenty minutes ago and just waited for the right opening.
The nearby chatter dimmed a little. Millicent glanced over. Rogier, two seats down, looked up from his cup with politely veiled curiosity. Even Nepheli tipped her head towards them to listen in.
Melina's gaze met his. "Earlier, you told me again that you are 'Not a Hero of Justice'. That you don't care for such things."
He shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah. Because I'm not, and I don't."
"And yet you act as one, repeatedly." She continued, not letting him dodge the question. "Castle Morne. The Weeping Peninsula. Stormveil. That girl in the courtyard…" Her fingers tightened minutely at the memory of Sakura. "You keep saying you are not a hero. But when given the choice, you behave like one. Every time."
She tilted her head slightly, studying him. "So which is it?"
Silence settled over the immediate circle of the table.
Millicent raised an eyebrow. Solaire looked between them with open interest. Roderika looked nervous, as if she'd stumbled into a family argument and wasn't sure if she was allowed to hear it.
John poked a crust of bread through the last smear of gravy on his plate, then leaned back and let out a long breath.
"All right…" He said. "You want my philosophy? Fine, lemme think..."
He tapped the side of his head with one finger. "If you think about it… Life's a crazy bag of marbles."
Millicent squinted. "…Marbles?"
"One big crazy bag of marbles." John affirmed with a solemn nod. "Blue marbles, red marbles, half-transparent marbles with a fun little swirl in them."
Around the table, expressions shifted rapidly into a shared "what the hell is he talking about now" face.
Rogier's brows drew together. Corhyn wondered if he should be offended on principle. Patches looked intrigued specifically because everyone else looked lost.
John held up a hand, palm-out, like he was teaching a class.
"Some marbles are even more interesting. Some marbles you think are going to be limited edition, with king designs. And then, it turns out they're the equally limited but much more surprising female king marble."
"Some argue that's debatably rarer." John mused as he leaned back to stretch, eyes flicking up to the rafters as if consulting the ceiling for wisdom. "I argue that's anxiety-inducing."
His tone was light, but there was a hollowness in his eyes that didn't match the joking lilt.
Solaire blinked slowly, clearly trying to map this onto any of his known metaphors about suns or knights, and failing. Nepheli just stared at him, somewhere between bemused and concerned.
"And some marbles like to kill smaller marbles." John continued, dropping his gaze back to the table and even though his joking tone didn't change, the content did.
"Then, you gotta kill that marble and its friends. Because it and its marble buddies committed a genocide big enough to make a mountain of marble corpses, so it doesn't really matter that the marble suffered before that, or after. You still have to break it."
The words landed heavy and Millicent's smirk faded while Melina's fingers curled on the tabletop, her eye dropping briefly. Castle Morne's beach of bodies flashed, unbidden, across both their minds. The screaming Misbegotten, Edgar's shaking voice, John cutting through hoards of Misbegotten without a second thought.
He rolled his shoulders like he was shaking dust off.
"Marbles sure are random, huh?" He said lightly, but he didn't give them a chance to respond.
"Especially when you're forced to kill marbles that should've lived freely. Turn whole marble streets into marble ash, enter a standoff with a howling marble prophet who makes you watch as they burn to cinders in your fire, clawing at their own marble skin, laughing while they peel. And you can't look away, because you're the one who chose to do it all. So you're obligated to watch while they breathe their last little marble breath…"
His voice had gone very quiet by the end.
The laughter and clink of dishes from farther down the hall felt, for a moment, like it was happening in another room entirely.
Millicent swallowed.
"…Johnny…" She asked, half-joking because she didn't know how else to ask it, half-serious because of the look in his eyes. "Did… marbles hurt you?"
He looked at her, then smiled.
It was a good smile, one that felt warm, crooked, and familiar. But it just didn't quite make it to his eyes.
"No, kiddo. I hurt me."
He took a sip of his drink, swallowed, and set it down.
"I also hurt marbles." He added. "...I feel worse about the marbles."
Melina's breath hitched.
Roderika's hand crept toward her cup, fingers white-knuckled.
Even Patches, of all people, looked momentarily uncomfortable.
On her cloud of Grace at the edge of John's vision, Marika stared at him, utterly flabbergasted.
"…We are required to find thee a specialist at the mind. For even with all mine knowledge and experience, I do not think I could unravel what thou just said."
Melina stared at him for a long, uncomfortable beat after his "marble" monologue.
"…Please elaborate." She exhaled slowly, after a few moments. "Because that… 'explanation' did nothing but worry me."
A few nervous chuckles fidgeted around the table. John rubbed his thumb along the rim of his mug, then set it down and propped his chin on his knuckles, staring at the grain of the wood for a moment.
"All right, fine, fine…"
He tapped his fingers once, thinking.
"I guess, what I actually want…" He said slowly. "What I wish for is pretty simple."
He lifted his head, looking at each of them in turn. "In the end, I just… want to chase my own happiness."
The words were quiet, but they landed like a thrown stone.
Rogier's brows shot up. Nepheli blinked. Millicent tilted her head, thoughtfully intrigued. Solaire's expression shifted into something contemplative, like a knight considering a foreign creed.
Corhyn looked like someone had slapped him.
"Happiness…" He repeated, a bit too loudly. "Thy sole ideal is… thy own happiness?"
He shoved back his bench and surged to his feet, scandalised.
"Such a… such a hedonistic creed." He said, fingers tightening on his prayer beads. "To make Joy itself thy Highest Aim? That is- That is-!"
"Sinful?" John supplied, one eyebrow arched.
Corhyn's jaw worked. "…Aye!"
John barked a laugh.
"Hah! You've defined Joy itself as a sin?" he said, amusement sharp. "It's astonishing how much you've twisted it."
He took a lazy sip from his drink and, just to be an ass, glanced over at Marika's hovering form out of the corner of his eye.
She met his look with a small, amused smirk and a tiny shrug, neither confirming nor denying.
He snorted, turned back to his mug, and swirled the liquid around.
"What kind of philosophy finds Joy itself a Sin?"
The simple question was like someone'd pulled a rug.
It made people pause.
Rogier's eyes went distant, academic mind turning. Nepheli frowned faintly, remembering the joy of battle, of victory, and wondering who decided which joys were allowed. Millicent stared into her drink, thinking about how after suffering alone in that church for so long, it felt good to simply… not be in pain sometimes.
Even Solaire's head tilted, as if comparing it to his own sunlight-obsessed theology.
Corhyn opened his mouth, then closed it with his lips pressed thin. For all his doctrinal horror, he couldn't quite make the words "Joy is Evil" come out of his mouth in front of a table and in a hall full of people who'd lost everything and still found reasons to laugh tonight.
John shrugged. "Look, as far as I'm concerned, chasing your own happiness is a base instinct for humans. For… people, I guess." He gestured vaguely. "We're wired for it. We pull our hands off hot stoves, we move toward warm fires. Instinct."
He lifted his shoulders again.
"And what's wrong with following your instincts?" he went on. "If no one else is getting hurt, why abstain? Why make yourself miserable on purpose, just to score points with some invisible scoreboard?"
Corhyn's fingers twitched on his beads.
"…If no one else is harmed," he murmured reluctantly, "then perhaps… there is less… wickedness… than I thought…"
He cut himself off, clearly not ready to concede the whole field, but equally unable to refute the logic.
John let him stew and kept going.
"But even then," he said, "it's not a sin to follow an ideal just because it's beautiful."
He leaned back on the bench, the wood creaking under his shoulders. "That's why I don't blame or look down on hero types, I get why they are who they are. If 'saving people' is what gets you out of bed and helps you sleep at night, cool. Who am I to judge that?"
Millicent's eyes lit faintly at that—unknown to most of them, "hero" was a word she'd always secretly wanted to wear herself.
Solaire's spine straightened, almost glowing at the very mention; heroism was the language he lived in.
John shook his head, though, a small, crooked smile tugging at his lips.
"But that's just not me. In the end, I could never be a Hero of Justice."
The silence around him hummed for a heartbeat as Millicent nodded slowly.
"I kinda like the 'Hero' thing myself." She admitted with a wishful smile. "But yeah. 'Justice' sounds like it has too much work and thinking involved."
Solaire laughed brightly. "To strive for justice is a noble path, but each man's heart must choose his own Sun to follow."
Melina leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin resting lightly on her hands. Her eye was fixed on him now, enraptured in that quiet, intense way she had when she was truly listening.
"So…" John continued, meeting her gaze with a smile of his own. "I just… choose to chase my own happiness."
"And if I can get there by helping other people reach their happiness? Then that is good, too." He added, shrugging. "It's a win-win. But I'm not going to sit back and drown myself in guilt forever to prove I'm sorry enough. If I ever feel like guilt is chaining me in place, I'll cut it away and walk on as a free man."
Corhyn stared at him, stricken.
"How… couldst thou…" He whispered, his voice shaking. "...Live with that so easily? With such… ease?"
John turned his head to look at him fully. His smile this time was small and subtle, the kind that almost hid the tiredness tucked deep behind his eyes.
"Who said it was easy?" He asked gently as he lifted his mug, then set it down again untouched.
"People can't change the past. We can't undo what we did. All we can do is accept our own actions. Own them."
He paused, the weight of his own words brushing his ribs where his Immortal Heart thudded.
"If you still want to be burdened by your sins after that, then let it show in your future actions." He went on softly. "Not in how loudly you hate yourself, but in what you do from here on out."
The words sank into Corhyn like stones in deep water.
He stared down at his hands, clutching his beads, mind racing through every compromise, every time he'd chosen doctrine over kindness, every moment of quiet doubt.
"I…" He croaked. "I shall… think on this, Sir Johnathan. Deeply."
He sank slowly back onto the bench, shaken but not shattered.
Around the table, people exhaled.
Millicent's shoulders loosened; she popped a piece of bread into her mouth, giving John a look that told him she thought what he said was confusing but kinda badass. Nepheli nodded once, respect smoothing some old tension from her posture.
And Melina…
Her expression softened.
She didn't agree with every part, not entirely. But she understood him better now. Understood that the flippancy, the jokes, the stubborn refusal to wallow were not signs that he didn't care.
If anything, he cared so much he'd built this whole crooked philosophy just to keep from breaking.
She felt some tight knot in her chest loosen.
At least now she knew where his steps were aiming. She could walk beside him without worrying she'd be tugging in the opposite direction.
John clapped his hands once, the sharp sound cutting through the lingering heaviness.
"All right! Enough overcomplicated nonsense!" He called out. "Philosophy hour's over. We can go back to drinking cheap wine and bullying Patches."
A ripple of relieved laughter went around the table.
Conversation slowly split and reformed: Millicent immediately turned to Nepheli to argue about whether "Hero of Justice" sounded cooler than "Champion of Justice". Solaire launched into a mini-speech about joy as a form of worship.
John leaned back, letting the noise swell around him again.
When the table's attention drifted away, he tilted his head slightly.
'Hey, Marika.' He thought. 'I got a weird ask.'
She appeared more clearly at his side, curiosity bright in her eyes.
"Hm? Already thou demandest more boons?" She teased. "Thy greed grows apace with thy power, mine champion."
"Guilty as charged. Question: can you tap into the Grace running through this place? Like… not just for teleporting. For broadcasting something."
She frowned thoughtfully, gaze drifting up toward the unseen lattice of energy woven through the Hold.
"This Roundtable is but a pale echo of the true chamber I once held. Yet it was indeed wrought by piggy-backing upon mine own Roundtable's Grace lines." Marika mused as she tapped a finger against her lips. "Given that… aye. With a little effort, I could seize its threads. Make its walls… speak."
"Why?" She asked as her eyes narrowed back on him.. "What mischief nestles now behind thine eyes- Ah."
She stopped when she saw the System window flicker up in his vision.
He flicked back to the MEDIA tab, thumb scrolling quickly past long lists of songs until one caught his eye again:
["Radio" – Bershy]
[Play?]
"Well…" He said as a satisfied grin slowly unfurled across his face. "You wanted to hear mortal songs."
Marika's lips parted in intrigued delight. "Very well then. Shall we give thy little den of Tarnished a… concert?"
"Hell yeah…" John muttered to himself with his signature excited grin as he pushed himself to his feet and stretched.
"Bathroom!" He announced to the table at large. "Don't let Millicent bet away my cutlery while I'm gone."
"We make no promises!" Millicent called after him.
He slipped out of the hall and into one of the quieter side corridors.
With Marika's murmured guidance, he found a knot of Grace: a point where the Hold's pale gold threads converged in the stone, not quite a Site of Grace but close. He knelt and pressed his palm flat against it.
"Feel it." Marika said. "Not as light, but as… pathways. Like the veins thou once traced beneath thy skin."
He breathed out, closed his eyes, and reached.
The System's [Music] tab hovered in his mind; the Grace-lines pulsed under his hand. There was a moment, a wobbling second, where they felt like two different programmes fighting for the same port.
Then something clicked and a channel opened.
Sound was not there yet, but the potential for sound threaded itself into the Grace like wire easing into an old radio.
"There, I have it." Marika said. "When thou pressest that little 'Play', the Hold shall hear it."
"God, I love magic. And also, we're absolutely committing at least three violations of cosmic copyright." John muttered as he stood, dusted himself off, and made his way back.
Ten minutes after he'd left, he walked back into the mess hall.
It was a little looser now: more slouched shoulders, more flushed cheeks, more quiet clusters of conversation. A few people had started nodding off against their tankards, the post-battle crash finally catching up.
John stepped to the middle of the floor, just beside their table, and stopped.
He brought the System window up again, no one noticed him standing there except Melina.
She caught sight of him standing there, alone, not heading straight for the table. Her eye narrowed as she waited for him to approach, or say anything, only for him to look at nothing visible with a quirk in his lips.
Her eyebrow arched in question as his smirk returned.
He tapped [Play].
For a heartbeat he wondered if it actually worked, before a faint crackle drifted through the air.
It was like static, like an old radio trying to tune in, buried in the walls.
Conversations stuttered and faltered as people's ears twitched when the crackle sharpened—
["Radio" by Bershy – Playing!]
{A/N: seriously, play it too, for the full experience.}
—and a voice spilled into the hall, clear as if the singer stood in the center of the room.
"I wake up exhausted, even in the morning
Like I'm made out of decaf, I'm barely running"
Heads turned as people looked up at the vaulted ceiling, at the walls, at each other. A few reached instinctively for weapons, then paused when it became clear this wasn't an attack, just… music.
"Oh, and I hate parties
It's just too many bodies
I don't like small talk, I'm always leaving early"
Someone near the back muttered, "Mood." under their breath.
John huffed out a laugh and lifted a hand, curling his fingers in a "come here" gesture toward Melina.
She looked at his hand, then at him, then at the chaos around them..
Understanding dawned as her face cracked into an amused, helpless smile.
"You… fuckin' lovable moron…" She murmured as she pushed back her bench and stood.
"Then I met you and my eyes changed
And now you're in my eye range, I'm gunning for you"
John cackled outright, the lyrics hitting a little too on the nose.
"But you love me all the more for it~!" He called as she walked toward him through the slowly parting crowd.
"You changed my heart in a big way
Now every day's a celebration and I wanna say"
She reached him and thumped him lightly in the side with her fist.
"Don't get too cocky, or I'll have to beat it out of you." She warned, a tipsy heat in her eye.
He made an exaggerated "oof" and grabbed her by the hip, pulling her gently but firmly against him.
"Oh, you don't wanna do that~..." He whispered heatedly, leaning down so only she could hear. "People have been calling me a degenerate a lot today. It might turn me on."
Her face twisted into a heated smirk, the alcohol she'd been steadily nursing all evening lowering her usual walls. The music swelled around them, the rest of the hall fading to a softer blur.
"When you're around, it's already alright
Already alright, like a radio"
"Perv~" She purred, fingers splaying over his chest as she rose up on her toes, closing some of the height difference.
"Yeah…" He purred back, grin turning softer. "But I'm your perv, right?"
"I'm tuning into you"
She rolled her eye.
"Shut up~"
And then she kissed him.
The song played on, reverberating through the Roundtable's stone, but for a little while, neither of them heard anything except the rush of their own blood and the quiet, incredulous happiness hammering in John's Immortal Heart as the Lands Between's newest legend held his maiden close, tuning into something he'd never really let himself have before.
His own happiness.
THE SPEEDRUNNER'S GUIDE TO THE LAND'S BETWEEN
ACT 1: FLEDGLING
FIN!
------------------------
Author's Note:
You should give me your stones.
The MEDIA tab is fully introduced! If you've been a loyal reader for a while, you'd have noticed that I abstained from adding in songs to each chapter, this is why. It's gonna be an in-fic thing, so I decided to wait to make it official.
Feel free to give your own song recommendations and when they could play in the comments, and they may feature in a future chapter!
(I saw all those comments that wanted porn to be in the MEDIA tab immediately, and I may or may not be cooking up an Omake in my head about it :3)
In other news, the next chapter is the first smut scene… like more 300k words in, we reached 450k in the stockpiled chaps. Where, curiously enough, the second smut chapter has been written and is nearly twice as long lol
…
Next Chapter Title: (NSFW Interlude) A Night of Passion.
…
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