I am Lena Wolf, Lena's life as it happens Options

[Lena Wolf]

21 Sun's Dawn, 4E203 - Memories of another world

"Moonglow is only found by night," Lena repeated Scorpio's phrase as they set off to walk the roads of the Shivering Isles. "Yes, I remember. A huge party... a huge wild party... well, Sanguine was staying here, so you can imagine," she smirked. "Too much felldew and all kinds of brandy. Then someone pushed me against a statue... or something... don't remember really... but it was a portal, and the next thing I knew I was lying on a beach and this huge dark shadow was hovering over me. The shadow spit fire, frying those people who were still standing..."

"And you..?" Scorpio prompted her as she paused.

"Well, I was having none of it. Still high on felldew and whatnot. Saw a sword on the ground, grabbed it, went after the shadow... Which turned out to be a dragon!" Lena gave a short laugh. "A great big full grown fire-breathing beast of a dragon! Ha!"

"Welcome to Gransys," Scorpio grinned.

"Yeah... The next thing I knew the dragon flicked his tail and everyone still standing at that point, was thrown to the ground, myself included. Then I saw the dragon's face quite close, his eyes lighting up, he was saying something... But I could not understand a word."

"You would understand it now though," Scorpio put in. "Dragonborn."

"Dragonborn? Oh yes, of course, I am Dragonborn, but it hadn't come through yet at the time. Besides, those are not the same dragons, are they?" Lena wasn't sure. She could understand the dragon later, it was true, but she always thought it was because the dragon spoke her language. But what if... "Is that why he picked me, you think?" She raised her eyes to Scorpio.

"No, he picked you because you were the one to pick up a sword against him. Everyone else just froze or else ran and hid! And with a good reason."

"Yeah, probably. So there I was lying on the sand again, this time not able to get up, and the dragon so close, he could have just squashed me like a bug... He could have squashed everyone like bugs, come to think of it, but he didn't do that. He damaged some structures and some boats, and some people died, sure, but rather because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time - he didn't target anyone. I always thought he was just trying to make an impression... It was working, too."

"The dragon visits all parts of the land, looking for the next Arisen. Someone somewhere does what you did - stands up to him, futile as it may be. And that's the person he picks."

"Mmm... He slashed my chest open with his claw and removed my heart! Stuck it onto his claw like a skewer! Then swallowed it! Just like that! While it was still beating! And I was still alive!!" Lena went red with fury. "The impertinence of it!"

"Yeah, he picked the right person, all right," Scorpio grinned.

"I woke up in the village sickhouse a couple of days later," Lena continued. "Overheard two people talking about me - that my wound had closed but that they could not hear a heartbeat inside. I squeezed my hand to my chest - nothing. It was... disconcerting. 'Ill magic', a man's voice said."

"But you did not recognise their voices, did you?"

"No, I didn't know anyone there - I had fallen through a portal just a before that, remember?" She smirked. "But they were talking about me as if I'd always lived there, called me 'cousin' and such. Mass hypnosis, I think."

"False memories, probably," Scorpio agreed. "Except that one old woman, she knew you weren't from there."

"The one in the textiles shop?" Lena could not remember her name. "Yes, she knew what was going on, too. She said it was all in the scripture, and if you listened to the priests carefully, you would have known what to expect all along."

"But people don't listen to the priests, do they?" Scorpio shook his head. "They think that faith is nothing more but a bunch of fairy tales... Yet they go to the chapel, offer their prayers. It's very odd, if you think of it."

"People are odd, generally," Lena agreed. "But after the initial shock wore off, I was quite pleased with my fate - for a little while at least. It was nice to have so many 'cousins' all of a sudden. It was nice to belong somewhere."

"Except that your life which you didn't have, was already forfeit," Scorpio said grimly.

"Yeah... It didn't take long, and Rook appeared. Out of a vortex - as if he was summoned. I looked around for a mage, but there was no one."

"Rook has the worst job there is - he's a babysitter," Scorpio shook his head. "One of those of us who is sent to greet a new Arisen and accompany him or her for a while at the start. Show him or her the ropes, so to speak."

"He was helpful..." Lena nodded and smiled. "The Chief of the village encouraged me to follow Rook's instructions. I think the Chief knew full well what was going on, just wasn't saying it out loud. He just said something like: 'Why don't you take him, perhaps you'll learn aught why he came here?' They speak a bit odd there, like that."

"That Chief was a wise man," Scorpio agreed. "Whether he realised you were not from there or not, it was a good advise anyway. You had to figure things out for yourself, and Rook was there to help you."

"Mmm..." Lena was lost in memories. "And that voice from the Rift... Politely asking me to prove my worth... I was about to send them packing, but Rook started saying something... He basically distracted me until that cyclops showed up."

"It's always a cyclops to begin with," grinned Scorpio. "They are not that hard to kill, actually, if you aim for the eye. But they are impressive. And of course you could not leave that well alone," he laughed.

"How could I? A cyclops? Don't be silly," Lena laughed too. "And apparently that was the test. After that I was invited to touch the Rift stone which turned out to be a portal... Not sure to where, but they told me I should select my 'pawn'. My what? I didn't understand at first, but they asked: 'Male or female?' Then I knew I had to select a companion." She looked at Scorpio fondly and squeezed his hand. "And after a few questions, they showed me pictures of men answering my description... As if you can tell what a man is like from a picture! But I liked the look of you and picked you."

"You were trouble from the start," Scorpio grinned. "You had to delve into every cave, climb onto every cliff, pick a fight with every goblin! Crazy! Rook was saying he hadn't had that much fun in a long time..."

"Well, I had to get my bearings," Lena grinned back. "Until we started running into bandits - gosh, bandits there don't joke, do they? Really tough guys to defeat."

"Well, they've got to be tough, otherwise they wouldn't last long," Scorpio thought it was reasonable. "But I still think the worst thing were those spear-wielding alligators in the well."

"What a nightmare!" Lena exclaimed with a little shriek. "How many times did we try to take them on? A dozen, perhaps? May be more? At least they didn't pursue you if you had to run for your life..."

"Yeah, you had to have a full squad, and loads and loads of healing potions for everyone. Protect Rook so he could heal us all and enchant our weapons with fire."

"It was tough," Lena nodded. "Daggers don't do much damage to that tough alligator skin, it wasn't until we got that big guy with a claymore that we finally prevailed. What was his name? I can't remember."

"I can't remember either," Scorpio agreed. "There were so many others that joined us along the way... Most of them were other Arisen's pawns, this is how it works. A rift in time is opened and a pawn is pulled away from his own Arisen to join your party. They walk with you and hopefully learn something new, so that when you release them and they return to their original master, they bring new knowledge and ideas. Mind you, because of that rift in time, the original master never notices that his pawn had left his side at all."

"Were you picked a lot while you were with me?" Lena suddenly realised that she never thought of that possibility. A pang of jealousy spread in her belly.

"I was picked a fair few times, yes," Scorpio nodded. "But I didn't think it would have been wise to tell you about it," he winked. "Didn't you ever wonder how I knew what to expect in some of those caves?" He grinned. "But you didn't bar me from being picked, and once picked, a pawn cannot refuse..."

"I did not know I could bar you from being picked!" Lena exclaimed with indignation. "No one told me I could bar my pawn from being picked! I didn't even realise how the whole thing worked until much later! I never knew where those pawns were coming from! I thought they were 'reservists'! Arrgh!!!"

"Not reservists, no," Scorpio shook his head, grinning at Lena's reaction. "Pawns in current service are always offered first, such are the rules. It's only if an Arisen gets very choosy, that other pawns may be called - the ones in service of the Pawn Legion itself, but never ones whose Arisen had died. Which means that once your Arisen dies, you are written off forever. And since we don't die... It's a long time to whale away."

"Suddenly Rook's babysitting job doesn't look that bad," Lena said more calmly. "At least he is not written off."

"But he can never be picked, either. Never get an Arisen of his own. Never learn new skills. No, I'd rather wait in the void."

They walked in silence for a while. The night was quiet and Dementia was still. Even grummites seemed to be asleep. They walked into Passwall and Lena automatically went to Dylan's house, then realising where she was headed, stopped abruptly and turned back. "Let's stay at the inn, shall we?" She shot a heavy glance at Scorpio and he nodded.

Drehwen woke up briefly to serve them food and drink, then went back to "resting her eyes". She didn't mind that it was early hours of the morning, she was asleep on her feet most of the time. Lena and Scorpio sat down for their meal, be it a late dinner, a midnight snack or an early breakfast, they didn't try to figure it out.

"We shall walk this land until Dylan returns the same way as we walked the land of Gransys over and over again," Lena said firmly. "It won't be that long either, if that Mazken guard is to be believed. But I won't leave until Dylan is back." A pang in her belly gave her pause. "Unless..." she stroke it. "Unless this baby decides it's time to make its appearance in this world..."

"It won't," a stern voice answered quite unexpectedly, startling Lena.

"Relmyna? What are you doing here?" Lena was looking at Relmyna with suspicion.

"I am visiting my baby," Relmyna said defiantly. "What did you think? The Realm is back to normal, and the new Gatekeeper needs me to look after him. Lest some mundane soul like yourself decides to destroy him in order to gain entry into my Prince's Realm!" She hissed and walked up the stairs into her room.

"And good morning to you too," Lena said after her. Life was definitely getting back to normal.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Revelations by the Lake

"Walk with me," Lena touched Scorpio's arm, beckoning him to follow. She walked towards the lake by the camp, then continued on along the shore until they were not only out of earshot of the others, but also out of sight, with rocks and vegetation hiding them from view. There she picked a spot by the water and sat down. Scorpio sat next to her. "I am worried about the task before us," she said to the lake.

It had been a few weeks since Lena appeared in Gransys and found herself made into an "Arisen". She longed to return to her own world, but first she had to get her heart back from the dragon that took it, and also she had to figure out how to return. The portal that brought her there, was gone. Scorpio was to be her companion, she picked his picture from a stack she was shown. He was hers to shape, they told her, determine what skills he should learn and how he should behave... She felt uneasy about that. But such were the rules.

Scorpio was glad to finally be picked, but also apprehensive as to who his master would turn out to be. Such was the fate of the "pawns" that weren't in service of the Pawn Legion - that is, the vast majority of the pawns. They would drift through the Rift without sense or purpose until an Arisen somewhere would pick them. They would then walk with that Arisen and serve him or her until the Arisen faced the dragon. Should the Arisen die, the pawn would be "written off" - left to drift in the Rift for the rest of Eternity, as no one could be picked twice. What happened during the encounter with the dragon, remained a mystery as each pawn was sworn to keep his Arisen's secret.

It was only the encounter with the dragon that was to be kept a secret however, other experiences could be freely shared. Scorpio knew from the other pawns that humans did not see pawns as equal, pawns were often seen as servants or slaves of an inferior race. It were humans who gave them that name - pawns. After all, didn't the Arisen have the power to shape his pawn in any way he wanted? Pawns had no feelings, no will of their own... such was the notion. Was that true or were they simply meant to act as if it were true?

Scorpio was very careful to maintain the expected image, certainly at first. But Lena was different, she was like no other Arisen he'd heard of, and the other pawns that joined them along the way, only confirmed it. She didn't treat pawns as pawns. If anything, she treated some townspeople as pawns... in particular, knights and nobility. That was most perplexing. And now she wanted a private talk... Why wouldn't she rather ask one of her own kind?

"You have nothing to worry about," Scorpio couldn't quite think of what to say. "It's just a bunch of goblins, from what I hear."

"With a cyclops or two thrown in, yeah," Lena smirked. "It isn't the monsters I'm worried about. It's that one of you pawns falls in battle and I won't be able to get to you in time."

"But... but we cannot die," Scorpio was confused. "You know that, right?" He looked at her sideways. "We simply return to the Rift. We are expendable."

"No, you are not!" Lena exclaimed hotly. "What rubbish!" She was angry but could not think of anything to say that would make sense in that world. She was thinking of Dylan - he was a daedra, and so he too would not die "forever", he would be reborn eventually... But Lena never let him die. "I..." she shook her head, there was so much she wanted to say, but where to start? "Why do you think I stick close to you in battle?" She decided to start with something simple.

"So that I could protect you, of course," Scorpio raised an eyebrow. "A pawn must guard his master with his life."

"No," Lena turned to look him in the eye. "I stick close to you so that I could protect you." She paused to let that sink in, then just as Scorpio was about to object, she continued. "You are the mage in our party now, so you need protection." She smiled, noting a new wave of confusion in his face. "And before that, you were the fighter in our party, and I protected you then as well..."

"You are not making any sense," Scorpio shook his head.

"No, I guess not," Lena agreed. "What I'm trying to say..." This was harder than she expected, she suddenly ran out of words. "You are the most important person in this world for me."

"What..? Why?" This was the last thing Scorpio expected to hear. He was completely at a loss. What did she mean by that and what did she want of him? Some of the things he'd heard of and some of the things he'd seen with the other Arisen, did not bode well.

"Because I am not of this world either," Lena said simply. "I am stuck here, I cannot get back, my heart was stolen, and I don't care for any of the people living here. I picked your picture out of a stack, and for better or for worse, you are stuck with me now. And as for your immortality... It is never that simple, is it? I know, I've been there myself... I was a vampire once..." She smirked, recalling the painful experience of death and resurrection - she could never quite get used to that. "You are never reborn the same as you were before death," she looked at Scorpio sideways and noticed him growing pale. "I shall always do everything in my power to protect those who walk with me."

They sat quietly for a while, then Scorpio said as if to himself: "So I was right - this Arisen is indeed not like the others."

When he turned to look at Lena a few minutes later, she was silently crying, tears running down her cheeks, her face set in stone. What was he to do? What was a pawn to do to console his master? No, what was a friend to do?

Scorpio moved closer to Lena and put an arm around her shoulders.

"So," he said, casting aside the prescribed neutral tone. "We'll go through it together. Goblins today, chimeras tomorrow, harpies, golems, whatever else this world chooses to throw at us. It is all a part of a grand test for the Arisen. Oh yes, you are in the thick of it. I don't know the ultimate meaning, they keep that a secret. We'll figure it out together, that's what friends are for."

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Shadow Fort

The Shadow Fort was taken over by goblins. A group of knights was standing in front of a locked gate.

"Our tactics are simple," their Captain told Lena. "We mount an all-out frontal assault. There is just a small snag: the gate is blocked. Barred from the inside. Which is where you come in: go through this tunnel that we dug out, enter the courtyard, find the lever and open the castle gate. Then we'll come in and root out the goblins! Ser Arisen," he added with a smirk.

Lena nodded without a word and descended into the tunnel.

"What did I tell you? Simplicity itself," she told Scorpio quietly. "They are sending us to certain death. Is the Duke trying to get me killed, you think?"

"The Duke was an Arisen himself," Scorpio replied equally quietly. "No one knows how he defeated the dragon in his time, although the pawns that walked with him, must be out there somewhere. But I never met them."

"Why am I not surprised," Lena smirked and prepared for battle.

...

"Watch out for that ballista!"

"Cyclops!"

"An armoured cyclops!"

"Goblin hurling Dragon Spit!"

"Fire, lend thy kiss!"

"Hobgoblin!"

"Aaarrrghhhhh!!!"

The battle in the courtyard was beyond ferocious. The reason why the brave knights did not descend into the tunnel became evident almost immediately: the courtyard was swirming with goblins and hobgoblins, two cyclopes were swinging giant clubs, and a ballista from the opposite wall was hurling exploding cannon balls.

"Those cyclopes aren't half dumb - they keep to the blind spots of the ballista!" Lena noted, taking cover behind a ruin of a wall to catch her breath. "We have a choice: try the other ballista on our side or go for the cyclopes on the ground. Ideas?" She looked at her three pawns.

"Ballista!"

"Ground!"

They said in chorus.

"Right." Lena smiled. "We'll try the ballista first, and if that doesn't work, we'll go on the ground. We still have to find a way to open that gate somehow."

They climbed up onto the upper terrace by the gate expecting to find a ballista there, but that one was broken. Goblins were dancing around it, perhaps it was their doing. There was nothing of interest there.

The terrace on the other side of the gate had a lot more goblins and several hobgoblins on it. The ballista there was in good working order, and there was a socket in the wall.

"This is supposed to have a lever in it for opening the gate!" Lena swore. "Damned goblins! Now, what did they do with the lever?" She looked around but saw nothing that would fit into the socket. Several goblins attacked her at once, she didn't even have a chance to draw her sword and was swept away to the ground. "Daggers next time," she thought, trying to protect her face from goblin clubs. A bolt of lightening came out of nowhere, striking the goblins - Scorpio. The battle had begun in earnest.

They tried using the ballista, but the goblins on the other side had two working ballistas rather than one, so every shot that Lena made, was answered by two blazing cannon balls sweeping them off their feet. They quickly abandoned that strategy. At least goblin crowd on the ground had gone down from two or three dozen to a single dozen, plus two cyclopes...

"We'll take on the cyclopes first and foremost, and any goblins that get under our feet, but don't worry about the ones staying further back for now," Lena looked at her pawns. "Stay together and don't wander off - I am not losing any of you this early in the battle!" She loaded poisoned arrows and drew her bow. "Let's go!"

Where one cyclops is really bad news, two of them are a disaster, in particular when they are armoured. Poison and magic always gets through but the effect is limited on such collosses, and until the armour is rent, sword strikes have hardly any impact. The cyclopes were stomping their crushing feet and swinging their enormous clubs that killed on impact - not surprising, given their size. Lena and Scorpio were circling the cyclopes and each other - was the mage protecting the archer or the archer protecting the mage? Lena was raining poisoned arrows on the cyclopes and Scorpio was casting healing spell upon healing spell, trying to keep them all alive. Payne and Scarlet, the two hired pawns, a warrior and a fighter, took the heat of that battle, climbing onto the towering monsters in order to get their helmets off and eventually get to the one sensitive spot - the eye. A fall from the top of a cyclops would kill on its own right as well... And Lena had to dash a number of times to revive her fallen pawns. Goblins would swarm around her every time, only to turn to a bloody mess in a twirling wind of her daggers.

Finally the cyclopes were slain, but the ballista was still raging and a new wave of goblins filled the courtyard.

"They did send us to certain death!" Lena was getting angry and switched to her sword. "Where is that blasted lever that opens the gate? At this rate the brave knights outside will have no goblins left to play with!" She hissed, slicing through several goblins in one circular motion. "There - look, what's that building? We've got to investigate."

The door to the small building in the courtyard was barred from the inside... naturally. Circling around it, they found a ladder, climbed up under the cannon fire from two ballistas, dropped down, fought waves of goblins coming out of a hole in the ground, all the while keeping a keen eye out for any crates, chests or boxes, and finally they found a big stick that looked like it could have been a gate lever in its previous life. "Well, let's hope that'll still fit into the socket!" Lena grabbed it and dashed for the terrace by the entrance, cutting a bloody path through a crowd of goblins.

The stick fitted and the gate was opened, the knights poured into the courtyard, ferociously fighting off the remaining few goblins that somehow escaped Lena's wrath. The ballista fired another shot narrowly missing one of the knights and causing them all run for cover, goblins or no goblins.

"We have to get rid of that ballista!" The Captain looked bewildered. "Arisen, Ser, there must be a way into the depths of the castle!"

"Well, it may be so," Lena stopped, propping herself on her sword. "But the ballista is on the upper terrace. What good would it be to delve into the underground dungeons?"

"Err..." Clearly, the Captain didn't have all the answers.

A fresh wave of goblins emerged from the tunnels, attacking the knights huddled together behind the building. Anger was building inside Lena, for being sent to certain death, for doing someone else's work, for the much too small a group of knights sent to clear that fortress - there was no way they could have done it on their own. Her sword was spinning faster and faster, goblins falling to it fast and thick, yet her stamina was not running out, she felt strong, she felt... familiar, somehow. The night had fallen and the ground in the courtyard was red with blood.

Suddenly the remaining goblins started hammering on the locked doors of the inner fortress. "Open up!!" They shouted. "Come out and help!!" The doors opened and a large group of hobgoblins joined the battle.

Hobgoblins were significantly stronger than regular goblins, they were bigger, sturdier, quicker, they wore better armour and had better weapons, and were generally much harder to kill. "Aaarrrghhh!!!" Lena screamed, her anger turning to rage.

"The dragon is here, I think," Scarlet winked to Payne. "Does she breathe fire as well, I wonder?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," he smirked, following Lena into the inner fortress and up the stairs to the upper terrace with the ballista.

But the goblins had another surprise in store - the ballista was guarded by another armoured cyclops.

"I swear this one is stronger than the other two!" Scarlet was attacking it with all force, but without any visible impact. The cyclops was swiging his giant club, stomping his feet, trying to grab his attackers... Wham! And both Scarlet and Payne were knocked out. Lena was shooting arrow after arrow from cover, arrows dipped in posion, torpor or blindness inducing solution, even sleep draft derived from the pinions of mountain harpies... The cyclops became sluggish but didn't give up. Lena was blocked in a corridor with several hobgoblins appearing out of nowhere, she had to switch to her sword, giving pause to the cyclops - she could not do both. Scorpio took over shooting lightning at it to keep it subdued, but that meant that Scarlet and Payne had to scramble to their feet on their own and restore their health with medicine instead of Scorpio's spells. They managed, just about. Lena finally shredded the goblins around her and returned to shooting arrows at the cyclops. Her stamina ran out once or twice, she nibbled on a mushroom to restore it, but otherwise she felt a surge of energy... how strange. How familar. The night was dark, with only the fires giving illumination.

Wham! Another blow of the cyclops' club threw Scarlet and Payne on the ground, hard. Stomp! Scarlet was squashed. The cyclops seemed to grow frenzied as he was nearing death. He took another swing with his giant fist and threw Payne off the terrace down to the ground. A fall from that height meant death.

With two pawns down and the cyclops raging on the terrace, a fresh wave of goblins and hobgoblins emerged from yet another secret passage... Lena and Scorpio took a deep breath and redoubled their efforts. Scarlet's body was under the cyclops' feet, but Scorpio managed to grab her and bring her out, bring her to Lena, so that Lena could revive her. But Payne was on the ground, going after him would have meant leaving the others behind, leaving the cyclops to recover... What was it that Scorpio said? "But we cannot die... We are expendable." She didn't believe it, but what was she to do? Payne was too far away for any of them to reach. Lena gritted her teeth and continued shooting at the cyclops.

...

The cyclops lay dead on the terrace covered in bodies of goblins and hobgoblins that came to help. The ballistas stood silent and the knights in the courtyard finally ran out of their cover, celebrating victory. "Victory is ours! Glory to the Duke!" They shouted. Lena smirked and continued on into the fortress, following a few goblins she saw run for their lives. There, in the far chamber of the fortress that had become the goblin lair, the goblin king greeted them, swinging his mace.

"You humans, your time is up!" He shouted. "You've won this battle, but you lost the war! The dragon has come, he will burn all life! Prepare to die!"

But no, he didn't mean die immediately. Instead of attacking, he rushed to the window, jumping out of it and disappearing into yet another tunnel. No, Lena would not go after him. You cannot kill every goblin. Her task was done. Glory to the Duke, was it?

...

"I shall send my report of our victory to the Duke," the Captain looked particularly smug. "And of your help in the matter," he added and blushed. "Thank you. It is appreciated, truly. Here, take this, we won't be needing it now." He gave her a satchel with various medicines and other useful things. Lena thanked him, thinking that he probably realised she would not get any reward from the Duke for this mission.

"Time to head back," Lena turned to Scarlet and Scorpio. "I am sorry I could not get to Payne in time..."

"He knew what he signed up for," Scarlet replied. "He is back in the Rift."

The dawn coloured the sky golden. Lena felt her strength and stamina drain. Was she merely tired from the battle? Or did the sun have something to do with it? She pushed away that thought and headed towards the camp to rest.

[macole]

Whew, what a battle that was. Poor Payne, even though you know the companions cannot actually die it still hurts when you lose one.

[Lena Wolf]

Yeah, it was one of those hard choices... It was actually a real dilemma. In Dragon's Dogma, companions learn as they walk with you - they learn not only how to fight various foes, but most importantly they learn to work as a team, they learn about each other. So when you lose one of them, you can never get him back fully because that knowledge and adaptation to the other members of your party is wiped out on death. That game is great on so many levels.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Bandits, harpies, wolves

"Could I have a word, Ser Arisen?" Someone touched Lena's arm in a busy area of the capital of Gransys, Gran Soren. His voice was calm and words refreshingly devoid of disdain. "Your duties have you travel up and down the country, and I have a favour to ask. I am searching for a magic book - Salome's Grimoir. It was lost in the most recent fire in the Council Library... Oh no, I don't mean burnt - the fire was quickly put out, it is the looting that followed that saw most valuable volumes disappear, the Grimoir I'm after among them. Should you find that book... Bring it to me."

The man standing before Lena looked bookish and serious, and something else... "A scholar," Lena thought. "A practicing scholar," she corrected herself. "He's a sorcerer and seeks to augment his magic. Look at the paleness of his face... A necromancer, perhaps. Should I be helping him?" She wondered. Then said aloud: "What are you offering me for that book?"

"Oh pray, let's speak of recompense once you have found it..."

That was all she was going to get out of him. Well, she wouldn't be scouring the land in search of it exactly, but should she come across it, she'd bring it along, she said.

"The easiest way to get started on this, is to ask around," Scarlet said to Lena. "Someone must know what happened during that looting."

Lena nodded. The only likely place was the apothecary in the square - she already knew not to ask the smith after he told her repeatedly that he had no love for magic of any kind, that iron and steel honed to an edge was all a man ever needed. And then offered her staves and magic bows. Right.

"What? Salome's Grimoir? We don't deal in that sort of magic tomes here!" The apothecary seemed a bit offended. "We are an honest business!" She pursed her lips. Definitely offended. "Such tomes are much too rare and valuable to ever be genuine, it will be either a forgery or else stolen property! And forged magic is the worst kind!"

"Forged magic?" Lena couldn't quite figure that one out. "How's that?"

"Salome's Grimoir isn't just a book for reading," the apothecary softened her tone a bit. "It contains incantations, aye, but most importantly, it is enchanted. Don't know with what exactly, but seeing how Salome went mad in his old age, it can't be anything good!" She shook her head and rearranged a few bottles on the shelf. "The Council Library was looted in the last fire, so if anyone has got that book, it will be a thief. Aye, now there's a fair notion: why not ask a thief?" She smiled contentedly and convinced Lena to buy herbal remedies for the road.

...

"There are several groups of thieves in Gransys, master," their new warrior, Clarke, was trying to be helpful. "An unfriendly lot."

"You don't say," Lena smirked. "We've met a few of them already."

"No, what I meant, there are two particularly prominent groups that are worse than the rest," Clarke corrected himself, not taking any offense at Lena's sarcasm. "There's an all-male group to the South and an all-female group to the North. The women are far worse than the men, I hear..." He looked sideways at Scarlet, somehow feeling more apprehensive of her wrath than of Lena's. But then again, Clarke hadn't seen Lena angry yet.

"Oh yes? A group of feisty women?" Lena grinned. "Well, why don't we pay them a visit then."

"Err..." Clarke had something else to say but he wasn't sure how to put it. "Well... they attack men on sight, you see," he coughed. "You might be better off getting a female pawn instead of me..." He coughed again. "And... err... Scorpio... err... you can't leave him behind, so... you know..."

"What?" Lena was amused. "Shall we just..?"

"NOOOO!!!!"

Lena's and Scarlet's exploding laughter had them nearly roll on the ground. When they finally calmed down, Clarke looked very guilty and tried to hide from Scorpio behind Scarlet.

"I've heard of them," Scarlet managed to say between recurring bouts of laughter. "Not the brightest, it seems. You don't need to... you know... do anything permanent. Scorpio just needs to wear a dress and they'll take him for a woman."

"Scorpio is already wearing a long kilt, is that not good enough?" Lena looked at him, thinking that he wasn't fooling anyone regarding his gender.

"No, not good enough, lots of mages wear kilts like that," Scarlet shook her head. "But you can buy a set of women's clothes, we'll pad them in all the right places, it's not just a matter of wearing a skirt and a corset, you need to get the right shape to your figure, you know..." She started giggling.

"No!" Scorpio protested, his voice even, with unmistakable steel in it. "I am NOT wearing padded ladies' garb!"

"All right, all right, no need to raise the dead!" Lena thought they'd had enough laughs at his expense. "No disguises. Perhaps we should try those male bandits first."

...

Lena wasn't going to chase after any bandits just because a necromancer wanted a magic book. They'd come across it, sooner or later, and she didn't care which. Her duties were taking her North, into the territory that even bandits didn't care to cover.

"How come I have duties to the Duke?" Lena was still trying to make sense of something that happened about a week ago. She was walking down the street in Gran Soren minding her own business, when a knight from the Duke's Guard stopped her and handed her a "Wyrm Hunt License" declaring with much pomp that the Duke had heard of her deeds and deemed it acceptable to allow her to take orders from him and give herself up for the Wyrm Hunt. She was to report to the Castle Grounds to a certain Ser Maximilian for her duties.

"What..?" Lena was looking at the knight in bewilderment. "He found me worthy to take orders from him, did he?"

"The Duke is most generous and benevolent!" The knight briefly stood to attention, then abruptly turned around and marched off, leaving Lena staring at the Wyrm Hunt License in her hand.

"I am allowed to die for the Duke," she summed it up. "Gods forbid I should die without his permission." She smirked and stashed the parchment away. It looked less like a joke in the Shadow Fort however, where Lena very nearly died many times, and where Payne was lost to the cyclops. And now Lena had new duties.

"You didn't have to actually go see that Ser Maximilian, you know," Scorpio said casually. "Not every Arisen follows it all through, that's why the dragon has to keep trying."

"So what - those Arisen just give up?" Lena found that baffling.

"Yes," Scorpio nodded. "No one can force you to actually go after the dragon, not even the Duke," he smirked. "You have permission to do it, but no obligation... Of course that would not get your heart back."

"And therein lies the catch," Lena sighed. "I want it back. I think I do. Do I?" Lena was getting confused. Her heart was missing from her chest, but she could still almost feel it beating... She was alive, she didn't feel any different, except for being in a strange world in the middle of something she couldn't quite figure out yet. What if she too just gave up? Let the Duke defeat the dragon again, hadn't he done it once already?

"The Duke is not the one who must face the dragon now," Scorpio shook his head. "You don't just walk up to the dragon, you know. He'd burn you to a crisp. Err... But the Duke survived that encounter in his time, obviously, so... Umm... It doesn't add up, does it?" He looked at Lena.

"No, it doesn't," Lena was glad she wasn't the only one confused about it. "Ok, never mind that now. Here's an ancient tablet that we've got to decipher. The brightest minds of Gransys haven't been able to pick out anything more than just a few words: 'dragon', 'arisen', 'heart', 'scar', and so obviously it's got everything to do with me. 'Pawn' is missing though," she grimaced. "How am I supposed to decipher something like that? The other words are written in a different script... which is strange."

"Well, why don't we ask around town?" Scarlet smiled. "Perhaps someone knows something."

...

"What? Decipher an old tablet?" A greengrocer was looking at Lena in bewilderment. "And you're asking me?" He surveyed the vegetables on his counter. "How should I know?"

They tried other tradesmen, shopkeepers, innkeeper, knights and nobility, even the priests at the Cathedral, but no one had a clue how to decipher it. Lena was getting desperate, and started asking random people. The working girls in the lower town didn't know. The forger couldn't be sure but offered to make a copy. The knights "patrolling" the working girls area wanted to see Lena's Wyrm Hunt License or else arrest her then and there. The thief that cut Lena's purse didn't know either, but returned the purse in exchange for his life after Scorpio froze him solid. In the commotion Lena bumped into someone running past them, nearly knocking him on the ground.

"Look where you're going!" He wasn't happy about being knocked down.

Lena apologised and on a whim decided to ask him about deciphering the tablet. She'd been asking everyone already anyway, so why not that fellow.

"What? An ancient tablet? Let me see," he was interested. "Hmm... it's got to do with that old man on the hill."

"What..?" That was making even less sense than anything they got so far. "What old man?"

"Provincials!" The man rolled his eyes. "All of Gran Soren knows about the old man on the hill!" He looked down at Lena and her companions, but changed his tone, having noticed a sorcerer's staff in Scorpio's hand. "Well, it's a famous landmark - a drawing of a man on a hillside. You can only make it out from above though, like if a harpy grabs you, you can see that drawing as you're being carried into the harpy's nest to be served for dinner," he grinned. "But they say that if you go there, you'll be able to decipher that tablet. Beats me how," he added with a shrug, turned around and took off before Lena could say anything.

"Well, it's a start," Lena sighed. "Let's go see the man on the hill."

...

"Goblin!"

"Harpy!"

"Direwolves!"

"CYCLOPS!!!"

The road going North was called the Conquest Road, and it soon became obvious why. A group of goblins and hobgoblins was lounging on large rocks by the cliff edge, to get you started. If you decided to leave them alone and continued walking, more concerned by a flock of snow harpies looking for a snack, you'd soon find yourself driven right into the goblins and would have to deal with both groups at once. For some reason it was humans that the harpies wanted, may be goblins didn't taste right. The smell of blood however would attract wolves, or rather direwolves - the white-haired variety, a much stronger and more dangerous type than the brown wolf of the South. So there you were, lulled to sleep by the harpies' voices, frozen solid by their breath, burned and poisoned by goblins' Dragon Spit and ripped to ribbons by the wolves' fangs... And then you'd sleepwalk right into a cyclops. What a conquest indeed.

...

"Perhaps we could avoid further combat?" Their new mage, Cicero, was dusting off his robes. When they set off on that path originally, with Scarlet and Clarke as melee fighters, they found themselves at a severe disadvantage against the harpies that were circling just above their heads, out of reach of their swords and impossible to hit by arrows, as Lena discovered. Only Scorpio could get to them, burning their wings with his magic. So, they retraced their steps and swapped their warrior for a second mage. "I am a healer, not a fighter," Cicero was bathing them in healing magics. "And you've got a sorcerer already, why do you need me?"

"You've done alright for yourself burning those harpies," Lena grinned. "Healer." She patted his arm. "We do need a healer. Scorpio is too busy summoning poisonous fog and splitting the earth and such. Someone's got to keep us alive while Scarlet and I try to avoid combat by eliminating the foes early on."

"Right," Cicero shook his head in desperation. "Of all the Arisen out there, I had to get summoned by an Assassin."

"Assassin?" Lena stopped dead, staring at Cicero. "How did you know..?" She didn't tell anyone of her occupation back in Tamriel, she didn't think it mattered.

"I've walked with a fair number of your kind," Cicero said quietly. "My Arisen... well... he doesn't care for battle much. So I stay in his service, as is our destiny. It's been a long time, Arisen. A very long time."

They walked up a grassy hill, the path was marked with large stones. A man in a toga was sitting on top of a rock, watching them. He said something, staring into the distance. They walked on. The path led to a cave, another man in a toga stood by the entrance.

"I have been expecting you, Arisen," he said to Lena. "You can see me, right? Come in."

They entered the cave, the man who spoke sat on a throne, the other man stood by his side.

"I am the Dragonforged," said the man on the throne. "Forged by the dragon. I know him as he knows me. The tablet you were given, has no meaning, other than to bring you here. Ask and I shall answer."

Lena stood there, looking at the Dragonforged, confused. She had so many questions... too many. She couldn't think of anything to ask. The Dragonforged seemed to have understood it.

"Come back when you know what you want to know," he smiled.

...

The way back to Gran Soren presented them with more direwolves, harpies and goblins, but fortunately no cyclopes. Lena went straight to Ser Maximilian to report that the tablet she had to decipher, had no meaning.

"Really?" Ser Maximilian was confused. "It doesn't make sense..." He shook his head. "It came from the Duke himself, they say..." He gave Lena a long look. "But it is not my place to question Duke's orders," he added firmly. "You've got more duties, here's the list. Which one will you take on next?"

...

"Why am I getting the feeling of being pulled deeper in with each new task?" She looked at her pawns in turn over dinner. "We are not finding any answers, only more questions..."

Cicero was watching her for a while, but remained silent.

"It is your journey, you shape it as much as it shapes you," he finally said. "You will come to know yourself in the end... should the end ever come..."

He did not say anything else, reminding Lena of the man on the hill, the one that sat on the rock at first and stood by the side of the Dragonforged later. Who was he, she wondered. What if..? She had her first question, but didn't judge it wise to ask.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Assassin

"We'll stay here a bit longer," Cicero signalled Scarlet to sit back down when Lena got up from the dinner table, with Scorpio following her. "We'll see you in the morning. You take the room upstairs, why don't you."

The inn in Gran Soren had some private rooms as well as a common dormitory downstairs. The private rooms were rather small however, and would be too cramped for four people. Or at least that's what Lena told herself that Cicero meant. She was too tired after their arduous expedition to see the old man on the hill, and all she could think of at that moment was sleep.

They entered the room and found it to be larger than expected, and although it only had one double bed, it also had a bath tub.

"Gran Soren does live up to its reputation," Lena smiled. "Modern plumbing. Wow."

She opened the tap and clear warm water came out of it as if by magic.

Scorpio stood by the door, not sure what to do. Lena paid him no mind at all, stripped off her blood-encrusted armour, kicked off her boots and peeled off her shirt and tights, taking some of the skin with that as well. "Bah! It's all stuck to the skin, now it's going to bleed again!" She threw it into a corner. "These clothes have been sliced into strips! We'll have to buy all new stuff tomorrow."

"You are bleeding all over," Scorpio said, ignoring the pile of what used to be Lena's clothes and removing his cape and coat in one movement. "Let me close your wounds." He prepared to cast a spell.

"Thanks, but that won't be enough," Lena stood still for the healing magic to work, the wounds closed at first, only to reopen momentarily. "This needs traditional healing."

The tub was full of warm water by then. She closed the tap and cast an ice spell into the water. The top froze over, and ice cubes formed underneath. She broke the ice and stepped in. Scorpio was watching in bewilderment.

"Assassin," he said, mostly to himself. "That's what Cicero said. You are an assassin."

"I am, or rather I was," Lena nodded. "In my world." She submerged under the ice and Scorpio noticed magic being cast. Considering how long she stayed under water, it must have been water breathing spells. Finally, she emerged and stepped out of the bath, her wounds were no longer bleeding.

"This isn't the first time you find yourself covered in blood," Scorpio noted.

"No, some targets put up a fight," Lena smirked. "But do not worry, I have no plans to take up that occupation here. Monsters and bandits will keep us busy." She straightened up, looking at dried blood on Scorpio's shirt. "You got hit a few times yourself," she pointed at the large stains, some still wet. "And you are still bleeding. Strip off," she returned to the tub to refill it, then noticed Scorpio's hesitation. "Modesty will get you killed," she said. "It is a luxury we cannot afford. Strip off and get into the tub." She hit the water with an ice spell.

...

Even though Lena was very tired and needed sleep, it was more important to tend to the wounds first. It took them a while longer to bandage some of the larger cuts, applying dressing soaked in herbal solutions.

"Arisen don't tend to their pawn's wounds normally, you know," Scorpio said when they were finally finished. "The bleeding stops eventually."

"Arisen don't do a lot of things that decent people would do, from what I hear," Lena snapped. "Even assassins, like myself." She sighed. "Sorry, that was uncalled for," she was cooling off. "Do you want to be released?" A thought suddenly struck her. "I'm sure if I kicked up a fuss, they'd allow me to pick a different pawn. I don't want you to be stuck with me against your will or your morals." She looked at Scorpio sideways and noted his perplexed expression.

"Released?" He was confused. "My will? My morals? We don't have any of those, we are pawns..." He broke off.

Lena turned to face him.

"You don't say." Her gaze was piercing. "I don't believe a word of it."

"I..." Scorpio seemed to be fighting an internal battle, Lena must have hit a nerve. Then he sighed and his face was set in resolve - he made a decision. "I do not wish to be released, no," he said. "That is my will."

"So," Lena smiled. "I see. I was right," she gave a short laugh. "What else are you not supposed to have? Oh, yes, emotions. Well, you gave up that myth a while back already, as I recall a certain conversation by the lake..." She sat down, pouring herself some wine. "You're also not supposed to have any spark, or drive, or zeal, or anything, but one look at Scarlet picking a fight with an ogre, and that myth flies out of the window too. You don't fool me, my friend." She raised a toast. "We're equals, Scorpio. Please call me Wolf, I am not your master."

...

"Those two still need to get acquainted," Cicero told Scarlet when Lena and Scorpio were out of earshot. "Scorpio had been waiting in the Rift for too long, heard too many things about the other Arisen, not all of those things true..."

"Well, not everyone is willing to air their master's dirty laundry in public, you know," Scarlet scoffed. "Some prefer to only say nice things."

"Like yourself?" Cicero squinted. "You don't say much about your Arisen at all."

"What is there to say?" Scarlet shrugged. "She's an Arisen. I'll be back with her sooner or later, and she'll never know I'd been gone. You know how it works."

"She doesn't care about you," Cicero nodded, calling for another steak pie. "Is that why you are constantly picking things up as we travel? Herbs, mushrooms, animal flesh? You don't really have to, I've never had that many vials of remedies in my bag as I do with this Arisen."

"An Arisen is not supposed to care for us pawns, you know," Scarlet shook her head. "So yes, I have to pick my own medicines. Or fall in battle. Then wait in the Rift..."

"Did you get picked up from the Rift this time?" Cicero's face lit up in comprehension.

"Yes, actually..."

"I see," he nodded. "Is your Arisen even trying..?"

"To go after the dragon? No," Scarlet shook her head. "So I am well and truly stuck..."

They sighed in unison.

"This here is one unusual Arisen," Scarlet said slowly. "See this cuirass I'm wearing? Her gift. The cloak also. The sword as well. All enhanced and upgraded, too. Even though she'll never get these items back, as they belong to my Arisen now. I said so, but you know what she replied? 'Your Arisen is not the one wearing them.' So no, I am in no rush to leave."

"I wonder how far this Arisen will go," Cicero was musing into his mead. "When she will give up. Whether she will give up..."

"I wonder whether I could quit my Arisen," Scarlet said very quietly.

"Sshhh, don't say such things," Cicero replied equally quietly. "Walls do have ears..."

...

"Need new clothes, dear?" The smith's wife measured up Lena with one glance and started rummaging in her boxes and cupboards producing shirts, tights and other garments, all female. "For him as well?" She raised an eyebrow when Lena pointed out that they needed male garments too. "You can... you know... if he's a bother..."

"What?" Lena asked coldly.

"Well, I would not know exactly, I only got a husband, not a pawn," the smith's wife tried to turn it into a joke, but the smith wasn't finding it funny. "What I'm saying is... you hear things... Apparently, if he falls in battle, you don't have to pick him up again... you know, at the Pawn Guild... or however you normally do it." She laid several items of male clothing on the counter with a smack. "Women need their independence. You don't always want a shadow following you around, do you?"

...

"Unbelievable!" Lena was fuming when the four of them had left the town square. "What she was suggesting..!"

"Happens often enough," Scarlet remarked quietly. "It's true, you know. You can simply leave your pawn behind."

Lena stared at Scarlet in disbelief. Then opened her mouth to ask something, and closed it again. They had met Scarlet walking aimlessly around town, they needed a fighter and Lena thought why not, let's try this girl. She had a spark, she thought, although no armour and barely any clothing, with only her shield for defence.

"Why are there pawns walking the streets here?" Lena asked, looking at the three of them in turn. "Why are pawns walking the roads of Gransys? Why do they gather at the Encampment? Shouldn't they be with their own Arisen instead?"

"The Pawn Guild summons pawns with suitable skills to walk around in the areas where an Arisen is likely to dwell," Cicero answered. "In case that Arisen requires assistance." He paused, but saw that Lena wasn't satisfied with that and continued. "A few of those pawns are in service of the Pawn Legion itself, some are called away from their Arisen... and yes, the others had been left behind. As they are technically still in active service, they qualify..." He stopped talking, slightly shocked by Lena's mounting rage.

"That does it!" She hissed. "If I ever meet any of those Arisen..!"

"You won't," Cicero replied quietly. "The Pawn Legion sees to that."

"Arrgghhhh!!!!"

"Don't we have a chimera to slay?" Scorpio decided to diffuse the tension. "Or perhaps an ogre or two? I distinctly recall you picking up some job notices for that. Come on, master." He motioned her towards the city gates. "Let's go, Wolf," he corrected himself, taking her by the arm. "Before you get yourself arrested for violent and disorderly conduct within the city bounds. Follow me."

Lena nodded and followed. There was nothing like a good fight to calm the nerves.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - To catch a thief

"Arisen, Ser, His Grace the Duke saw it fit to grant you an audience," Ser Maximilian told Lena when she came to report on yet another errand. "This is a great honour, see that you do not take it lightly. You will be required to drop any tasks you have lined up as well. Are you ready to go see the Duke?"

"Drop everything and go see the Duke?" Lena mused. "This is very tempting, you know... But on the second thought, there's still the matter of a village thief that requires my attention, and I'm still short of a few rabbits for the smith, oh, and someone wanted forty crows shot, not sure why, but I'm nowhere near forty yet, and... Well, you see, Ser Maximilian, I am dreadfully sorry, but I am still tied up with various tasks that require an Arisen's superior combat skills." She bowed and walked away, noting Ser Maximilian's grin out of the corner of her eye.

"Showing your disdain for the gentry will earn you enemies," Cicero said when they were out of the castle grounds. "This may not be wise. Some of them are actually pretty good with the sword."

"Better than me, no doubt," Lena nodded. "But I know other tricks. Besides, we still have rabbits and crows to slay."

"Not to mention golems and cyclopes," Scarlet put in. "Where to next?"

Next Lena wanted to return to Cassardis, the fishing village where she started off. Something was calling to her there, she couldn't quite put her finger on it, and it wasn't the matter of a village thief.

...

"Please, cousin, we cannot manage without you," Pablo the innkeeper looked at Lena pleadingly. "You deal with golems and cyclopes, what's a petty thief to you, right? Easy peasy!"

Lena was about to explain that catching a sprinting village thief was nothing like fighting a sluggish cyclops, that she was really not good at sprinting, that her trade was that of a deadly shot, not a simple grab and tackle, that... But Pablo's face told her that none of that mattered. She was the Arisen, their Arisen, and therefore she could do anything.

"All right, what's the plan?" Lena conceded, dreading that she would bitterly regret it.

...

"Here, hold this," Lena started stripping behind a screen in Pablo's inn. Scorpio held out his hands to receive her chainmail jacket, leather cape, thigh high boots, sword, bow, daggers, six quivers with various types of arrows, a bag of potions, a satchel of poisons, a pouch of flammable powder, several detonators, a box of poisoned darts and shivs, an oil lamp, several bottles of oil, poison flasks, throwing knives, a bundle of skeleton keys, and a rather large sack with herbs, fruit, nuts and animal rests that they picked up along the way.

"Do you really need all this stuff?" Scorpio was watching with mounting bewilderment. "Explosive powder too? And how many poisoned shivs..?"

"It goes quickly when you get surrounded," Lena replied. "Yes, I do need all this stuff. For battle, not for catching the thief!" She stood in her vest and tights, seeing what else she could shed. To have a chance with the thief, she needed to be as light as possible.

"You are not built for speed," Scarlet put her head in, looking Lena over. "Look at the muscles on you! Those wide shoulders! You're too top heavy and not tall enough. You look comfortable in heavy armour..."

"I am," Lena nodded and sighed - that was an echo from another life. "But it's the wrong skill for catching that thief."

...

It took Lena several attempts, but eventually she managed to intercept that thief in a narrow alleyway and grab him. He was ever so sorry for his sinful ways... Yeah, right. But Lena left it up to the villagers to decide what to do with him, after all they were the people he robbed. She was just glad to get back into her gear.

...

The night was dark, with the clouds hiding most of the stars, making oil lamps lighting the streets stand out more than usual.

"What's that at the end of the pier?" Lena saw a light there as well. "Is that a new lantern?" She asked one of the villagers.

"That... Umm... I dunno, cousin," he shrugged. "Someone fishing at night, perhaps?"

She had a feeling it wasn't just someone fishing at night. She checked her gear once more and signalled her pawns to follow.

As they approached the end of the pier, they realised it was a young woman with a lantern.

"Arisen?" She greeted Lena. "Can you see me?"

Lena felt a tug at where her heart used to be, and thought of the man on the hill who greeted her with the same question. Was this another Dragonforged?

"Yes, I can see you," she replied. "You have need of me, don't you?" Another tug at her absent heart told her that this young woman was going to pull her in so deep, that she might never come out. And that felt bittersweet, somehow.

The young woman took them to the Bitterblack Isle, a place of sorrow and despair, where the air itself seemed to weep. The sky was dark, and moonlight bathed everything in blueish light.

"This is odd," Lena said to Scorpio quietly. "I see no moon. Where does the light come from?"

"Nowhere," he replied. "It's like in the depths of the Rift - the light just is, it exists here, it doesn't come from outside."

"Sadness seems to just exist here as well," Lena noted.

But they weren't there for the sake of sightseeing, and so she turned to the young woman to find out how she could help.

"I am but a shadow of myself," the woman said. "I have lost all my memories. Yet I feel that they are here, that my heart is here, something is calling to me... I would ask you to explore the depths of this Isle and to help me regain my memories. I feel it is so much more than just what I cannot remember..."

Lena shot a glance at Scorpio, he seemed to see right through the woman. Scarlet and Cicero wandered off, poking into the rocks or peering into the sea. Everyone seemed ill at ease and rather subdued. They could have just left... But somehow Lena felt the need to go in.

...

Bitterblack Isle turned out to be a labyrinth. It was a mix of ruins and open spaces with many levels, and one cold never be sure just how many more levels there still were or where the exit was, exactly. The creatures inhabiting the ruins were similar to the creatures in Gransys - wolves, goblins, cyclopes, skeletons, undead knights... but all were stronger and far more dangerous, as if they were cursed.

Lena was hearing voices, too. Desperate cries welcoming death as a relief. Death came, relief didn't.

"Aah, hello friend," Lena felt a dagger at her throat as they entered yet another hall. "Three days, a week at most, that's how long I think you'll last here, dear Arisen. It's a game of mine, to guess how long someone would last in these halls... But pay it no mind, for not once did I get it right." The blade was removed, Lena turned around and saw a man with golden stilettos wearing light but excellent quality armour, someone not unlike herself... "Baroch is the name," he introduced himself. "I've been here half an age... This place is a magnet to the Arisen. They mostly perish here, it's their voices you heard - too stubborn to accept defeat and move on. I was an Arisen myself at some point... Still am an Arisen, I guess," he smirked.

"Then where is your pawn?" Lena looked at him coldly, not caring for his familiar tone.

"Oh, that..." Baroch made a disdainful gesture. "I have no need of him here."

Lena was about to turn around and walk away, but Baroch stopped her.

"Regardless of what you think of me, you need me," he said with uncharacteristic urgency. "This place is a death trap for the Arisen, and I can help. I am an alchemist, you see, a bit of a smith, too, without me you will perish. I was drawn here the same as everyone else, but I embraced it. You have to see for yourself what you make of this Isle."

...

"What do you wish to do, Master?" The pawns huddled together around Lena, they seemed very ill at ease. But Lena could not leave, not yet.

"We shall explore it here a bit," she said, trying to look reassuring. "Try not to die now."

The courtyard where they met Baroch, had several doors, all apparently locked. Eventually they found one that would open, and entered. It was a ruin of a fort, they had to pick out their way carefully, fighting skeletons and undead along the way, but none of it was any different than in Gransys. They started to relax. There were crates, barrels and chests everywhere, some containing unusual items, some valuable weapons or pieces of armour. Lena was getting into the spirit of adventuring, much helped by the fact that apart from the disembodied voices of dead Arisen, the fort ruin felt completely normal.

Another hall, another horde of skeletons. The fight was fierce and short, the hall was cleared, or so they thought... They dropped their guard...

"NOOOOOO!!!!"

Lena lay dead.

The bones of skeletons that they had scattered around, assembled themselves anew, and one of the skeletons was twice or three times the size of a man, carrying an equally huge claymore. One hit, and Lena lay dead.

...

Bright light. Blindingly bright light. Searing pain in every joint, in every sinew. The feeling of levitation. Cold numbing every inch of the body. Spasms, convulsions. Paralysing searing pain.

Lena opened her eyes and saw Scorpio standing over her, crumbling a stone in his hands, letting the dust fall onto her motionless body on the floor of a fort ruin.

"No, not like this, not here!" He was saying. "Awaken!"

The sound of explosions erupted all around her, suddenly breaking the silence. She heard Scarlet's swears and Cicero's incantations - the fight was still in full swing. Another wave of searing pain, and she could move. She jumped to her feet, the huge skeleton was swinging its enormous claymore, narrowly missing Scarlet who kept attacking its ankles, completely undaunted.

"You brute!" She shouted. "DIIIIEEEE!!!!"

If shouts could kill, he would have been dead already.

Lena jumped to her feet, shutting out the pain. Quick, explosive powder. Daggers. Charges. She danced around the ankles of the skeleton brute, covered his bones in powder and flicked her daggers setting them ablaze. Scorpio joined in with fire of his own, giving Cicero a chance to cast a healing spell...

...

When the skeleton brute finally collapsed to the floor, they took no chances and scattered his bones wide. Of course he would rise again, but they hoped not on that day.

"Baroch gave me a wakestone when you walked away," Scorpio said in an unexpectedly calm voice. "He thought something like this would happen. But we have no more wakestones! So try not to die again."

Lena nodded. Resurrection was a painful ordeal.

After that encounter, they became a lot more careful. Just because a hall had been cleared of monsters and undead, it didn't mean it was safe! This was definitely not like in Gransys. The weeps and laments of the dead Arisen now struck a chord.

"What are we looking for, exactly?" Scarlet turned to Lena after yet another battle. "Are we even looking for anything in particular?"

"I do not know," Lena had to admit. "Something is calling to me... from the depths... I cannot explain it."

"Then we follow," Scarlet nodded. "Let us pawns fall in battle. You must survive."

None of them realised just how quickly that would come to pass. They opened a chest, one of so many. They looked inside. A huge tentacle shot out of it, knocking them on the ground. Red mist enclosed them. Cicero fell from the walkway into the water that flooded the lower levels. The water turned to blood - he was taken by the brine. Lena came to just in time to see Cicero perish, to realise that red mist was swallowing Scarlet and Scorpio too, her head was spinning, it wouldn't take long and she would be taken as well...

"You must survive!" Scarlet's voice echoed in her ears. "Let us pawns fall in battle..!"

"Not if I can help it!" Lena forced herself up. The tentacle was the source of the red mist, and Scorpio was already completely engulfed in it. Scarlet fell slightly further away, and Lena had been behind her. "I'm the furthest away from that thing, and hence I still live," Lena quickly concluded. She grabbed Scarlet's body and ran back as fast as she could, out of the circle of red mist.

She ran, but in fact her movements were painfully slow. She kept looking back at Scorpio, he didn't move, and the red mist around him was getting thicker and thicker... She turned away and ran.

...

"What happened?" Scarlet opened her eyes when Lena finally put her down, hoping that they were far enough from the tentacle.

"The boys are dead," Lena said quietly. "I could not save them."

"We need to find a riftstone," Scarlet was getting up. "You need to get Scorpio back. And no more opening chests!" She looked at Lena sternly. "Not today, anyhow!"

"Oh, I think I've had quite enough treasure to last me a lifetime," Lena nodded.

They retraced their steps to the entrace of the fort ruin, trying to walk through the same halls that they had cleared earlier and hoping that no new skeletons were there to greet them. There were a few, but they managed. Their potions were running out, and they had no mages with them to restore their health or to grant fire to their weapons.

Then Scarlet stopped suddenly in front of a pile of rubble.

"This is a riftstone," she said. "Or rather, this was a riftstone. It crumbled with time and disuse, but you can restore it. It takes rift crystals - those shards you've been picking up... And it also takes a little of your soul, if you will... Or else we try to find a way out of here on our own. Then you can use a proper riftstone at the Pawn Guild."

"I am not waiting that long," Lena took a handful of rift crystals from her pack. "Is this enough? What do I do?"

"You just have to will it..." Scarlet took a step back, and Lena crumbled the crystals over the broken riftstone, thinking that no pawn should be left behind...

She felt a wave of warmth and opened her eyes. The riftstone stood as good as new among the rubble of the fort. She touched it and stepped into the Rift.

...

"I could not find Cicero," Lena said to Scarlet when she and Scorpio emerged back in the fort. "I hope he's alright..."

"He's alright," Scarlet smiled. "He is probably back with his Arisen. You worry too much."

Lena didn't think so, but didn't argue. It was time to leave.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - The witch

Back in Gran Soren, Lena finally decided it was time to go see the Duke. She could not delay it indefinitely, really. As she entered the castle hall, a jester jumped up and put a jester's hat on her head, then pushed her in. The gentry parted, letting her walk up to the Duke to everyone's derogatory laughs. Oh, she would remember that moment.

The Duke insisted she should keep her "crown", and Lena did not protest. Her time would still come, she thought; she needed to understand where things stood first. The Duke took a sword and "knighted" her, yet he did not name her a knight. That concluded the audience. Lena was perplexed. What was the point of it, besides the humiliation?

Once she was out of the castle however, she was approached by the Duke's chamberlain who explained that the purpose of the audience was to move her up in the hierarchy of soldiers and knights, and that now she would take orders directly from the Duke... well, almost. She would take orders from the chamberlain, and those orders came straight from the Duke, he assured her.

"The Duke is very unwell," he said quietly. "This is why your audience was a bit odd. But I shouldn't say anything else on the matter. I've got assignments for you."

...

"It's a nest of vipers," Lena spit when she stood outside the castle gate. Entry into the castle was by invitation only, and pawns were not invited. Nay, more than that - they were explicitly and categorically prohibited from entering the castle. Lena wondered what the Duke was so afraid of, seeing how he'd been an Arisen himself in his day...

She really didn't care about that however, and brushed the question away.

"I have a list of duties - again," Lena shook her head in disbelief. "Some are official, others unofficial. One is a personal favour for Ser Maximilian... Well, not for him personally, he wants me to investigate a skeleton plague. This seems like a worthy cause." Skeletons plaguing the suburbs of the capital seemed like a serious problem, and Lena was unsure why it didn't make it to the list of official duties and why Ser Maximilian asked her to keep it a secret... Things just didn't add up.

"Who of you has seen the dragon?" A man suddenly started shouting in the street. "Who of you has seen it ravage a village?" A small crowd was gathering before him. "Who has seen him slash open a person's chest and remove their heart?" Lena rubbed the scar on her chest. "Arisen is a myth! She is a fraud! The dragon is naught but a fairy tale and you are all fools for believing it!"

"Let's go," Scorpio tugged at Lena's arm. "Pay him no mind..."

"Hear yee, hear yee!" A herald was reading from an official scroll on the main square. "The dragon has attacked our land! His Grace the Duke is calling on all able men to join the Guard to fight the dragon! An Arisen has appeared and pledged her arms to the Duke as well!"

"I have done no such thing!" Lena started saying, but again Scorpio tugged at her arm and pulled her away.

"Leave them be, you will only get arrested. It won't stop the talk," he reasoned.

"The witch in the woods summoned the dragon, that's what," they were passing a group of townspeople at the market. "Aye, it's all her doing! The wicked witch!"

"She communes with the dragon, no less!" Someone agreed. "Burn her!"

"To the woods! We'll burn the witch!"

The crowd dispersed, but Lena was concerned that someone would make good on that threat. There was but one person living in the dense woods of South Gransys - a young woman named Selene whose grandmother recently passed away. Lena knew this because she'd been there, accompanying one of the healers from the fishing village ravaged by the dragon, another young woman who was hoping to ask the old witch how to get Lena's heart back from the dragon... Selene however had no knowledge of that. "Gran said that the Faith shrouds the truth of the dragon and that I would be in danger from them if I knew anything more... Gran wanted to protect me..." But the crowd in Gran Soren didn't know the finer details and didn't care, they were set on killing the "witch".

"We have to go and see to Selene's safety, first and foremost," Lena was worried. "Skeletons and other assignments can wait!"

...

"Burn the witch!"

"Burn her!"

There was a small crowd with torches and pitchforks surrounding Selene's cottage in the woods. They were hammering on the door and trying to pry open the window shutters. But just as Lena and her companions entered the clearing, one of strange rock formations on it started to move. It rose up, straightened its back... It was a golem. The crowd with pitchforks dropped everything and broken into a run. The golem looked for anyone left standing, it did not distinguish friend from foe...

Unfortunately for that reason it had to be put down. It wasn't an easy fight, but Lena couldn't very well leave an activated golem roam the woods. When it was subdued, they noticed a wooden gate it was guarding. Since Selene did not appear to be in the cottage, she must have slipped away through that gate. They followed.

The tunnel behind the gate led them to a different part of the woods, there was a path which they took, and at the end of it there was a lonely grave. Selene sat by it, it was the grave of her grandmother.

Just as Lena approached, a ghost of an old woman appeared by the grave. Selene seemed to talk to the ghost. Lena stopped, but Scorpio pushed her gently to go ahead. He and Scarlet seemed to have understood what was happening.

"Arisen, I greet you," the ghost said to Lena. Then in so many words she explained that she had been an Arisen herself, but was now dead of old age, and Selene used to be her pawn, but was now fully human. "Bestowal of spirit, is what I call it," the ghost said. "Look how she resembles me. I gave her a part of my soul, and she can now lead a human life in my body... Well, almost. With your help."

This made no sense at all. Lena looked at the ghost and at Selene, and apart from them both being female, she saw no particular resemblance. Selene was mumbling something incomprehensible about not having a will of her own, not being able to make decisions, not having her own voice... And Lena thought that she knew quite a few "proper" humans with the same inability. It had nothing to do with being a pawn. She shot a glance at Scorpio, but his expression was impenetrable. Clearly, this was the case where the pawns felt it was up to Lena to decide what to do.

"My pawn print... it no longer glows," Selene stared at her hand in bewilderment. "This means... this means I am no longer a pawn!" She lifted her eyes to Lena. "I will be with you now, Arisen. I shall live with you."

"What?!" Lena was about to protest, but a quick jab from Scorpio stopped her. So instead she asked: "What do you mean by that, exactly? I am an Arisen, I am going against the dragon. My life is a constant battle. If you come with me, you will die. Permanently, for you are no longer a pawn."

No, that wasn't what Selene meant, exactly. She didn't know what she meant. She now had a will and a voice of her own, because her grandmother said so, but it didn't mean that she knew what to do with it... Lena was watching Selene and thinking that she didn't change at all. She was like a child, she couldn't survive on her own...

"Come with me," Lena sighed. "We'll take you to Cassardis. You can live in my house... It's no good staying in this cottage in the woods all by your lonesome. The people in Cassardis will take care of you." Just another soul to join the village, Lena thought. As long as they didn't tell anyone that Selene had been a pawn, all would be well.

...

"You've done the right thing, Master," Scorpio said after they'd escorted Selene to Cassardis.

"Master?" Lena looked at him with scorn. "That again?"

"Yes, that again," he nodded. "We might not be quite such empty shells as the Legion will have you believe, but you are still the one in charge."

"All right," Lena sighed. "Now, what did you think of that tale that the ghost was telling - 'bestowal of spirit' or some such?" She looked at her pawns in turn, but they both had a closed expression.

"We do not know," Scorpio replied. "The Legion guards that secret very closely. You hear stories of pawns becoming human, and you saw Selene's mark disappear... But is she human for truth? I couldn't say."

"The answer may well lie on the Bitterblack Isle," Scarlet said quietly. "I too feel the call of it now. I think it calls to pawns and Arisen both."

Lena nodded. The sea was quiet, the sun still high in the sky. If they wanted to return to the Bitterblack Isle, they would have to wait for the night. They bought provisions and made camp on the beach.

"You gave up your house then?" Scarlet observed.

"It's Selene's house now," Lena shrugged her shoulders. "If her grandmother thought that I would just bind myself to Selene for some reason, she badly miscalculated. It's her luck that the house has never been mine anyway since I am not from here, but otherwise it is nothing but insolence to simply throw yourself onto another person like that. I choose my own bonds."

The conversation died down. The three of them were looking into the sea, each thinking different thoughts. If they were to survive on the Bitterblack Isle, they would have to revamp their party. Lena would want another mage, she would also want a heavy warrior, but Scarlet was only a fighter. "This Arisen is an Assassin," Scarlet was thinking. "She is good with daggers, sword and bow, but she is too light a fighter herself... What will she do? If I were her, I'd replace me..." She sighed. She did not want to leave.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story of Selene as well as the concept of pawns and humans and the ultimate meaning of life, is a bit of a problem in Dragon's Dogma. I was utterly confused by it when I first played it, and I finished every bit of the game... Turns out, I am not alone - the story contains large gaps and inconsistencies. I therefore feel completely justified in providing my own interpretation and changing the "lore" to fit my story.

[macole]

4th Era, Year Unknown - The witch
... changing the "lore" to fit my story.

It's the only way to go.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - The witch
... changing the "lore" to fit my story.

It's the only way to go.

Sometimes I feel that the story writers of Dragon's Dogma tried to fit too many concepts into it and to tie them to a sequence of events that could be made into a game. There are a number of threads of narrative that are only hinted at and not developed. So in my mind, I simply discarded those bits that I didn't like and filled in the gaps in a way that made sense to me. Like with Selene: you save a girl from a mob, and all of a sudden you are married to her? Err... umm... Lena Wolf prefers men, for one... And this is just a small thing, bigger things are still to come.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - A day on the beach

"Shall we go?" Scorpio touched Lena's shoulder, waking her up. "To the Bitterblack Isle? The night is nearly over."

They had been sitting on the beach waiting for the night to fall, for it was only at night that they could be transported to the Bitterblack Isle. But the warm sand and gentle breeze lulled Lena to sleep. Lena sat up and looked around. Scorpio looked sleepy, he clearly made an effort to stay awake. Scarlet was asleep by the embers that were their fire before.

"Leave it for tomorrow night," Lena shook her head. "Look at us - we are exhausted. Let's take a day to rest." She stretched out on the sand and immediately fell asleep again.

...

The sun was already quite high above the horizon when Lena woke up to the smell of grilled fish. She opened one eye and saw a pile of armour, she looked with both eyes and realised it was Scarlet's. Scarlet herself was splashing about close to the shore while Scorpio was tending to the fish. Lena also saw a basket of eggs and a jug of milk ready to be made into an omelette, as well as bread rolls, pies and other foodstuffs in a large picnic basket.

"Where's all the food coming from?" She sat up, surprised.

"Pablo from the inn," Scorpio answered without taking his eyes off the fish. "Came here in the morning, brought that basket with food. I think he fancies Scarlet, actually."

"No!" Lena laughed. "Does he know she's a pawn?"

"Oh yes," Scorpio nodded, keeping his voice down and making sure that Scarlet was still out of earshot. "He seems to have a very different attitude towards us from most humans."

"Yeah, and Scarlet's bikini had nothing to do with it," Lena grinned. "Perhaps if you weren't wearing a coat and a full length kilt, Aestelle from the general store would have a better opinion of you."

"No."

"Didn't think so."

It was proving to be a most pleasant morning.

...

"Well, I've got stuff to do," Lena declared after breakfast. "You two can have a day off. Relax, enjoy the beach, who knows when we'll have another chance to relax like that..." She added a bit wistfully.

"What 'stuff' are you going to do?" Scorpio looked at her with suspicion.

"Preparations for the Bitterblack Isle," Lena said somewhat grimly. "I intend for each of us to carry a bag full of various remedies for all sorts of misfortunes which are bound to befall us there. To which end I'll need to convince Pablo to surrender his kitchen to me for the day, as alchemy does not mix with food very well. I might need Scarlet's help with that," she winked.

"This is where having your own house would have been handy," Scorpio said quietly. "Perhaps you should move back in with Selene?"

"No."

...

"But of course, cousin, you can use my kitchen!" Pablo was all smiles. "As long as none of that poisonous stuff gets into the food..." He looked concerned for a moment, then brightened up again. "But that's what you've got your man for - to watch out for you, right?" He grinned. "So you won't be needing Scarlet then? No? Great! Do not rush, take all the time you need! Where is she? Beach? I'm out of here!" And he was out the door before Lena could say anything.

"I think you were right about him," she winked at Scorpio. "All right, how's your alchemy skill? Mmm? This isn't exactly a lab, but it will have to do..."

...

"This smells interesting," Benita put her head in. "So unlike Pablo's cooking... Oh hello, cousin!" She smiled. "Brewing medicine, eh? I could tell you knew what you were doing when you got me those flowers so quickly... You know, just after the dragon struck, and your wound just only closed, and you were already out and about, and... gosh..." She sighed, looking at Lena and seeing someone else. "It's all a bit of a haze, really..." She shook her head. "You had another pawn with you then... Rook, was it? Whatever happened to him?"

"Rook?" Lena was taken by surprise. "Oh, he's still around, we see him sometimes. He..." She paused, wondering what brought that on. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Benita smiled and blushed. "I'll see you later," and she was out the door.

"Did someone spill love potion all over this village?" Lena grinned.

"I wish Aestelle got doused in it," Scorpio scoffed.

...

It took them the rest of the day and most of the evening to finish brewing everything that Lena had started, using up nearly every flask and bottle in Cassardis, to great satisfaction of Aestelle who sold Lena her entire stock of glassware. "You are always welcome here!" She exclaimed cheerfully, but still glared at Scorpio, who, it should be noted, dutifully glared back.

The night had already fallen when Pablo finally reclaimed his kitchen and convinced them all to sit down for dinner.

"You don't want to go anywhere tonight," he said firmly, looking at Lena. "You've been up on your feet all day, you must be tired, cousin! You've given up your house, I know, but you can always sleep here. Come rest a moment!" In Pablo's parlance a "moment" normally meant all night. Scarlet blushed for some reason, Lena stole a glance at Scorpio who smirked, but truth be told, she was actually tired.

"So be it," she said. "We'll take another day off."

...

The following morning Lena woke up rather late, partly because their evening meal was followed by nightcap drinks which were followed by a midnight snack which was followed by... she couldn't quite remember. She also couldn't recall how she got into bed on the top floor of Pablo's inn. She shook her head and looked around. Scorpio was lying next to her reading a book, but Scarlet was no where to be found.

"She's off swimming again," Scorpio said, noticing that Lena had woken up. "You don't hold your liqueur very well, Arisen," he grinned.

"What did I do?" Lena sighed.

"Oh nothing, actually," Scorpio gave her a long look. "But you talk in your sleep. I didn't think it was anyone's business, and so I brought you here. You also seem to sleepwalk, so I had to keep watch... The people here don't need to know that you used to bite necks in the past."

"Thanks," Lena shot him a grateful glance. His neck was red. "Did I..?" She touched the bruise, it was hot and swollen, but the skin had not been punctured.

"You tried to," Scorpio nodded. "But you haven't got the fangs."

"Yeah..." Lena blushed deep. "I should be far more careful with Pablo's whiskey in the future..."

...

A swim in the sea helped Lena to clear her head. She wasn't a vampire, but she still remembered how to be one... This was most disconcerting. Scorpio's attitude towards her didn't seem to change, and Lena wondered just what he'd seen and heard of the other Arisen if he wasn't worried about her attempt to drink his blood. She shuddered and pushed that thought away. It was time to focus on the trip to the Bitterblack Isle and who she would want to join their party.

...

"Pablo, do you have our trunk?" Lena wondered whether the Duke's service would extend to Cassardis - she was promised that her belongings would be forwarded to the inns and rest camps where she'd stay during the Wyrm Hunt.

"Aye, the soldiers brought it in," Pablo nodded. "It's over there."

The trunk was enormous. Lena retrieved a full set of heavy armour that she had put together previously, three heavy maces, four different swords, a huge magic shield, as well as Scorpio's old armour, sword and shield from when he was the fighter in their party.

"Suit up," she told him. "It's time to train."

No, she didn't want Scorpio to take up sword and shield again. Instead, she aimed to refresh her own skills of moving in heavy armour. "I am not losing Scarlet," Lena thought. "Which means that I should be the one with the mace."

Maces in Gransys were nothing like maces in Cyrodiil, they were much larger and much deadlier. They were also very heavy and required skill to handle. They came with magic shields, and Lena had the right to carry one now, since she had been "knighted" by the Duke. The shield was almost as big as herself. "How am I supposed to handle this?" She swore silently, but Scorpio seemed to have noticed.

"Plant it into the ground in front of you like a wall," he started explaining. "Cast a spell... Yes, they come with spells - they are magic shields, right?" Gosh, how did he know? Pawns were prohibited from becoming knights...

They trained all day, to much amusement of the villagers, but by the evening Lena was moving a lot smoother in her armour, was actually using her shield and even managed to hit a seagull with a spell from her staff.

"Ok, we are leaving for the Isle tonight," she decided. "The first few halls are not too difficult there. We'll see how it goes. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done with that place," she added with confidence, but neither Scorpio nor Scarlet were fooled by it.

...

"I am looking for a mage," Lena touched a riftstone on the Bitterblack Isle. "One that isn't afraid of creepy places," she added. "A healer and a fighter in one. Needs to know fire enchantments and be of strong constitution... Poison is a problem here," she recalled that just about everything was poisonous there. "Has to be a nice guy, too... Yes, no women, please..." The clerk was ticking off her wishes on a list. "Oh, and one that keeps an eye on the fight rather than on the loot... err... whom have you got?"

"There aren't many pawns that fulfil your requirements," the clerk looked into a crystal ball. "Let's see now..."

He started summoning. The first pawn to appear was a middle-aged man with a belly bigger than Lena was tall. He claimed to be a sorcerer, but when Lena said she was looking for a mage, he corrected himself. "I can do it all, Arisen," he smiled. Lena moved on.

The second pawn was but a child... "What are you doing here? Where is your mum?" Lena nearly asked but then caught herself. Pawns had no age, and looks were deceptive. But she didn't think a child-like pawn would fit in their group.

The third one was... a woman. "But I said no women?" Lena turned to the clerk.

"There are no men left that answer your other requirements," the clerk replied. "Unless you are willing to pay for the service? We accept rift crystals."

So that's how it worked. Of course.

"All right, I'll pay for it."

Promptly, several mages walked in, with skills and manners that Lena had asked for. She talked to them, they were all willing to join her, up until the moment she mentioned that they'd be going to the Bitterblack Isle. Suddenly they all got urgently called back to their own Arisen. All except one: Cyril. "I should be honoured to travel with you," he said politely.

"So be it," Lena found their mage.

...

"Hello, Cyr," Scarlet greeted Cyril as he and Lena emerged from the Rift. "Wandering the Rift again?"

"No actually, I was specifically summoned this time - against payment," Cyril replied defiantly. "What are you doing in this party?" He squinted at Lena and Scorpio appraisingly. "Aren't they way above your level?"

"Well, obviously I've got something they want," Scarlet scoffed. "We'll see how long you'll be sticking around..!"

"So glad you two know each other," Lena cut in. "Skills and attitude trump level in this party," she said authoritatively and motioned them to follow. She could have sworn that Scarlet stuck her tongue out at Cyril behind Lena's back.

It was time to leave petty squabbles behind. The Bitterblack Isle beckoned.

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Jan 25 2023, 11:15 AM

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Malice

"The deeper in we go, the more I sense malice... or something like it," Scarlet shuddered uncomfortably as they were descending into the Garden of Ignominy on the Bitterblack Isle.

"And to think that this is just the beginning," Lena nodded. "It is a cursed place for sure. And who named this garden, anyway?"

The Garden of Ignominy was the first area of the labyrinth that was the Bitterblack Isle. It was in fact a courtyard garden, it had a fountain with a once attractive sculpture in it, and it was infested with wargs, goblins and a cyclops. A huge shade with a scythe appeared every now and again, and the only thing you could do then, was run...

"No, we are not going to fight Death literally, not today and not ever," Lena said sternly when Scarlet dashed to challenge it. "Come back here, Scarlet! It's not your time yet." Sometimes being in charge had its advantages.

"Coming, Master," Scarlet replied automatically and sheathed her sword. It was the first time that Scarlet called Lena "Master", Lena noted.

The Garden of Ignominy led to the Duskmoon Tower which was another misnomer. The area was in fact another enclosed garden or park, a really nice one actually, filled with medicinal herbs and flowers and inhabited by nothing more sinister than rabbits and deer. The ever-present moonlight did give it an eery feel though, and the sounds of the wind high above and the water running somewhere close, gave the impression of sad and weeping music playing constantly...

"Do you hear it?" Lena thought she was going slightly mad. "The music? Or is the place playing tricks with my mind?"

"I hear it too," Cyril confirmed. "It must be a trick though, for who would be playing it? Flute and violin... that's what I hear."

"Wind and water is what it is," Scarlet said dismissively. "Mages..! Always imagining things..."

She broke off as they entered the Ward of Regret and saw zombies crawl out of the ground and bones assemble themselves into skeleton knights. Last time they ran for their lives after the knights killed each of them several times over and all Lena could do was dash between her pawns reviving them, all the while dodging the knights so as not to die herself, permanently. But this time they were better prepared, and Lena forced herself to remember to use her shield...

The skeleton knights were still a problem though. They wore heavy armour and had shields of their own, they charged with enormous force, knocking Lena to the ground, shield or no shield. The shield protected her from the worst of it though, so when Scarlet attacked the knight from behind and he turned around, Lena managed to scramble to her feet and swing her mace, hitting the knight square across his back, first staggering and finally shuttering him into pieces. His armour, shield and weapon vanished - they had been conjured. Scarlet was rising from the floor heavily - her attack was a sacrifice, it caused no harm to the knight but was meant as an opening for Lena. Of course Lena's first move had also been a sacrifice with the same purpose...

"Two sacrifices per knight is too much," Lena said as she and Scarlet were swallowing medicine while being bathed in Cyril's healing magics. "We need a better strategy."

"Leave them alone?" Cyril suggested. "Why did you have to pick a fight?"

"We didn't!!" Lena and Scarlet cried in unison. "They attacked us!"

"No, they were standing there minding their own business until you decided to clear out that room..!"

Their argument was cut short by a huge explosion that set them all on fire. After the knights, they had skeleton magi to deal with.

"Insolence!" Scorpio swore when his conjured firestorm failed to reach the magi but bounced from the bars in the archway, adding to the burns on their own party. "How come they can shoot through the bars but I can't?!"

"Curse this accursed place..!" Scarlet dropped the potion she was drinking and took off down the corridor, with Lena closely following. They had to find a way around the archways blocked by iron bars that the magi could shoot through from the other side but that were completely impenetrable for any attacks from the side our party was on...

"This is magic of the darkest kind..!" Scorpio kept cursing, and Lena wondered whether this was his way to prepare a spell to be cast the moment he had a clear line of sight to the magi.

They ran down some steps, took several turns, and it felt like they should now be on the same side of the arcade as the magi, just through that archway ahead... Lena raised her mace ready to crush the skeletons, ran through the archway... and found herself floating in a thick viscous goo that bound her legs and arms, she moved, yet made no progress... The magi were casting more spells, so close, yet impossible to reach... She felt her strength fail her, her mace was too heavy to lift, her armour was crushing her, it pulled her down, she fell... Scarlet lay beside her, struggling to lift her sword...

"I have it!!" A huge flaming explosion and an enormous ice spike erupted where the magi stood, crushing and burning their bones into dust.

"Strength in numbers, Arisen," Cyril said as if nothing of note had happened, bathing her and Scarlet in healing magic again.

"I didn't know you could cast giant ice spikes," Scorpio was wiping the soot off his fingers on his dark-coloured kilt.

"I didn't know you tossed combustible powder into your firestorms," Cyril grinned. "Where to next, girls?" He smiled, putting away his staff.

...

The Ward of Regret connected to a large circular stairwell - the Midnight Helix. It was a tall tower without intermediate floors, they could see the ceiling far above when they looked up from the ground. The stairs ran along the walls. A giant armoured cyclops was chained to the wall, his enormous club towering in the middle of the floor.

"This cyclops is much larger than anything we've seen so far!" Scorpio watched it in fascination. "Will be far stronger too!" He hit it with a bolt of lightening and the cyclops reeled.

"No!" Lena tugged on his coat. "Leave it alone! It will squash us the moment its chains are rent, and they don't look all that solid!"

"Are you sure?" Scorpio sounded disappointed. "Could be fun..."

"No!"

Lena was about to says something else, but a fireball coming from nowhere knocked her off her feet. Several pools of fire appeared along the walls of the stairwell - skeleton magi. The time for discussions was over.

They ran up the steps, jumping over gaps and trying desperately not to fall off the crumbling rocks to their death. About half way up they realised that large chunks of the stairwell were missing, and fragile looking rope bridges were spun from one side of the stairwell to the other, offering numerous new opportunities to fall to your death.

"Where are we going, exactly?" Scorpio breathed out, catching Lena as she slipped.

"Up!" She pointed at a group of skeleton magi on a platform above them. "To shut them up!"

"Umm... And when we get there, we'll see another group even higher!"

"We'll see! One at a time! Arrgghhh!!!" A shower of bone fragments rained from the platform as Lena swung her mace.

...

"Phew... How many skeleton magi?" Cyril caught up with them on the upper platform. "Good grief! And for what?"

"I'm still working on that bit," Lena was looking around for anything of interest. Was there any point to all this fighting? She couldn't see any...

"What is the point of it all?" She heard a nervous weeping voice. "Leave me alone!"

"Who said that?" Lena spun around. The voice was coming from a corpse, clutching a key. Lena snatched the key and started a careful descent.

...

When they finally stood in the Duskmoon Tower garden again, Lena marched off to the nearest locked door and tried the key - it didn't fit. She tried the next door - no. She kept going until she found a door that accepted the key. She turned around and looked at her three pawns in turn.

"Behind this door lies another section of the labyrinth, I have no doubt," she said. "Do we even want to bother with it? Why are we doing it?"

"Because we've come too far to leave, and yet we haven't arrived anywhere," Cyril said quietly. "Because this place resonates with each of us, we all feel its call, yet we know it calls us to our doom. It is a binding curse, Arisen."

"That young woman who called us here, she has an aura not unlike your own," Scorpio said equally quietly. "Yet also not the same. Similar to Selene too, but also different... It is most disconcerting."

"We have to understand what is going on here," Scarlet joined in. "We haven't found any clues yet. I say we go in."

"So be it." Lena opened the door.

...

The Vault of Defiled Truth connected to the Gutter of Misery that led to the Shrine of Futile Truths. By the time they got there, their potion supply was more than halved.

"This looks familiar," Lena noted as they looked upon a huge circular stairwell. It wasn't the same kind of a stairwell as the Midnight Helix - this one was much, much larger. The spiral walkway along its walls was wide and had an arcade along its inner side. There was no danger of falling off it, except if you purposefully stood on the edge. "This is just like the Everfall," Lena turned to her pawns. The Everfall was a structure under Gran Soren that was believed to be directly connected to the Rift. A permanent group of pawns were guarding it, or tending to it, or whatever else they were really doing. None of the decent townsfolk would come near it, mind. But since the dragon's coming, tremors could be felt coming from it, and so Lena and her companions had to go and investigate their cause. Something was wrong, that something nearly ate them alive, but they escaped... almost... It took them several attempts to get to the bottom of the structure, and each time pawns fell to the monster that had awakened within. Everyone shuddered.

"It is the same structure," Scarlet observed, carefully looking down from the arcade. "What is it doing here, I wonder?"

"There's a monster down below," Cyril pointed at something purple dwelling near the ground. It looked like a huge ball of goo. "I don't like it."

He wasn't alone in that. Their voices must have attracted attention of the monster, who suddenly sprouted long tentacles and started rising through the stairwell towards their level. It turned, and a giant eye looked right at them. Instead of eye lashes, the eyelids had teeth.

"Oooooh I don't like the look of that foul creature!!" Scorpio shouted, charging a spell.

"Noooooo!!! Let go, beast!!!" One of the tentacles grabbed Scarlet, but her frantic resistance made it loosen its grip, and Scarlet was propelled through the air, landing a good distance further down, but still on the floor of the arcade rather than all the way on the bottom. Scarlet had been knocked out, but Lena still had a chance to get to her. She bolted, and as she ran, tentacles were sprouting from the floor, spreading red goo, casting spells, trying to eat you... Exactly the same tentacles that swallowed pawns whole back in the Everfall.

Lena got to Scarlet, helped her up. The way up and down was covered in tentacles. Scorpio and Cyril were still alive, but barely...

"Time to go," Lena fumbled in her bag, fetching a polished stone. "Live to fight another day..!" She tossed it into the air, a vortex opened sweeping them in, there was a flash of light, and they stood by the entrance to the labyrinth where the young woman that had brought them there, was sitting reading a book.

Lena's first impulse was to leave for Gransys immediately. But they still had a lot of potions, and they had not found any clues as to what was going on. She should not give in to her fear, she told herself. She wasn't leaving until she found a clue of some sort, and that was final. Her resolve must have been showing, for the pawns looked at her, nodded, and walked back into the labyrinth.

[Lena Wolf]

Now that I play Dragon's Dogma on PC, I can offer you pictures. Here are a few snapshots in Gran Soren, the capital of Gransys.

Exploring the city from the rooftops

"What, you want to go out NOW?" - "Yes, NOW."

Wolf, Scorpio and Reynard the favourite peddler



And a few other pictures. There will be more in future posts.

The Everfall. Also the Shrine of Futile Truths on the Bitterblack Isle. It is huge.

Ogre!!!

Incoming!

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Jan 29 2023, 01:47 AM

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - A test of resolve

Lena touched a riftstone in a fort ruin. Once again, she had lost Scorpio. The portal opened and she entered the Rift.

The ground was covered in mist, as usual. You could see for leagues, yet the horizon was completely bland and featureless. There were no light sources, yet it wasn't completely dark. A single riftstone shone with diffuse blue light behind her - the portal back.

Pawns started appearing in the distance, they walked towards her, bowing in greeting. Some came quite close, others stayed back. She looked at them briefly, only to nod a greeting of politeness, she didn't come for them. "Scorpio should appear any moment now," she thought. She waited. He wasn't coming.

Lena started to panic. Was he actually dead this time? Was it even possible? And for what? The Duskmoon Tower on the Bitterblack Isle had many doors leading into the labyrinth, and one of those doors led to a round chamber - Rotunda of Dread. It looked to have a corridor going further in, but it turned out to be nothing but an arena. The corridor at the far end led to an abyss. Another abyss flanked the arena on the right, immediately as you came down the steps from the entrance.

What happened there? Lena could not tell. The first time they entered, Cyril quickly spotted another purple blob monster floating near the ground, and they turned around and left, not having a death wish just then. After a while they decided to take another look, saw no purple monsters, and descended into the arena. Before they knew it, they were attacked by half a dozen skeleton knights... The fight was ferocious, the knights skilful. Suddenly Lena felt her heart fall... or rather, she felt a tug in the empty space in her chest where her heart used to be. She looked around and couldn't see Scorpio.

When the fight was done, he wasn't there.

"What happened? How could he have vanished like that?" Lena looked at Scarlet and Cyril in desperation. "Surely, if he took a hit from a skeleton knight, he would have called, like you always do?"

"Not if he fell into the abyss," Cyril said softly. "That's what the knights were aiming for. There is no return from there, neither for an Arisen, nor for a pawn."

"No!!" Lena could not believe it. "But you cannot die!!"

"Do you believe everything that the Pawn Legion tells you?" Cyril's smile was sad.

"No, I do not," Lena nodded, a heartache spreading in her chest. "But not this. I refuse to believe it. He is in the Rift, he must be. I shall get him back." She marched towards the exit, with Scarlet and Cyril following.

...

"Hey!!!" Lena was banging her fist against the riftstone. "Open up!! I need to speak to a clerk!!" She was confused, always before all she needed to do was simply touch the riftstone, and the clerk would appear. But not this time.

"You might need to select a different pawn," one of the pawns touched her shoulder. "If yours had perished."

"He cannot!" Lena turned around. "You cannot die."

"We don't, normally," the pawn nodded. "But there is nothing that cannot happen."

"No!" Lena was adamant. "I do not accept it!"

She walked into the emptiness of the Rift, leaving the pawns and the riftstone far behind. She turned left, she turned right, she walked and walked, but the space was empty. The riftstone became no more than a speck of light on the endless horizon.

Lena stopped. Not accepting Scorpio's death wasn't working.

"All you have to do is to will it," she recalled Scarlet's words about restoring a broken riftstone. "All it takes is a few riftstone shards and a small part of your soul..." Lena took out her pouch of riftstone shards, grabbed a handful. "I will my friend to come back!" She said into the Rift. "Scorpio, come back!" She opened her palm and let the riftstone shards fall to the ground, let them dissolve in the mist.

A few minutes had passed, Lena was not moving from her spot. Nothing.

After a while, she started walking slowly towards the speck of light on the horizon that was the riftstone. Was her will not strong enough to bring Scorpio back? Did she not offer enough of her soul? Was she ready to choose another companion? Would she prefer to be transported back to Tamriel instead?

That question came out of nowhere, as if someone was talking inside Lena's head. She stopped dead. That was the real test. Just what did Scorpio mean to her?

For a split second she hesitated. To return to Tamriel, back to her life, to find her friends again... That was worth giving up a pawn, right? And her heart? Surely, she didn't need it at all...

"No," Lena said into the Rift. "No. Not now. Not like this. I want to go home, but this is not the way. I started something here, I met people... I met pawns that I care for. Scorpio and I have a job to do, and we are not done yet. I need him back."

"You might not get another offer to go back," the voice replied. "Choose wisely."

Was it all worth it? She did not know, but she felt that there was only one choice for her - she could not have lived with herself, had she chosen differently.

"I choose to stay here," she said. "Take what you will of my soul, I do not want another pawn. I want Scorpio back."

"We do not need your soul, we already have your heart," the voice replied. "You made your choice, Arisen."

The voice fell silent. Lena peered into the void. There was a flash of light in the distance and she felt her heart flutter. "Err... something where the heart used to be," she corrected herself, having pressed her hand to her chest and not feeling any heartbeat. She started walking towards the flash, then broke into a run. They promised. They must!

...

The pawns still stood near the riftstone, waiting patiently for the Arisen to return. She would have to choose another pawn, what else was there to do? One of them noticed a flash of light on the horizon. "This Arisen is not like the others," he said, pointing it out. "She brought him back." The other pawns turned to look where he was pointing, but there was nothing to see yet.

...

Lena was running towards the spot where she had seen a flash of light. At least she hoped she was running in the right direction, since all directions looked the same in the Rift. After a while she saw faint blueish light, and ran towards that. The light was growing stronger.

"Nooooo!!!" Lena saw the riftstone and the pawns gathered around it - that was the light she was running towards. She felt betrayed.

She stopped, thinking frantically what else she could do. Was that another test? A test of resolve, perhaps? The Legion certainly liked its tests. Insolence! She'd give them a piece of her mind now! Where was that blasted riftstone?!

The pawns watched in amazement an embodiment of fury run up to the riftstone and plant her dagger into it. "Liars!!!" She bellowed.

"A touch would have sufficed, Arisen," a calm voice said inside her head, as her dagger slid out of the riftstone, leaving no trace. A vortex opened and Scorpio stood before her.

...

"You don't see that every day," the pawns were walking away, but kept looking back at an Arisen and her pawn locked in a tight embrace. "That is one unusual Arisen. She will go far, that one..."

[Renee]

It's really slow at work. Time to read some Wolf. Now... where the heck am I? Ah, Page 9, Post 167. Cool, I remember this. She's about to enter some sort of weird Daedric-inspired arena fight.

"Focus!" - she told herself angrily. "There's nine of them still to come! You won't get far this way!"

Whoa, seriously? She (you) had to do a bunch of fights at once like this? She keeps using poison, too. Good thing. Sounds like she's got a lot of poison.

"Whoever said that axes were blunt, never felt one on their own flesh"

I've always taken this to mean the end of the shaft which holds the blade, not the axe's blade itself. 🪓 Otherwise, yeah, this caused a lot of controversion in OB, the fact that axes and blunt weapons were now in the same skill...

Anyway, This is a crazy fight. Oh cripes, she's down??? Good gosh. Saved by Sanguine and Dessos.

9/173

[Lena Wolf]

The Tournament of Ten Bloods is a really tough quest. In reality she was down quite a few times... And yes, you have to walk out of there on your own, it isn't enough to beat everyone. Boethia is a tough Prince to please, I think you have to be at least level 20 to do it. And there's a reason for that!

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Bonds

"You found something there," the young woman at the pier on the Bitterblack Isle spoke first when Lena approached her. "I could feel it, you uncovered something."

"We have?" Lena was surprised as they didn't find any clues to the meaning of the Isle. "How?"

"By being here, I guess," the woman smiled. "My name is Olra, I know it now. I also know that I am bound to this place somehow..."

"Are you bound to this very spot or just to the Isle?" Lena squinted at her. If Olra had questions that needed answering, then why did she need someone else to delve into the depths of this cursed place looking for those answers?

"I... I do not know," the woman confessed. "The Isle... I've wandered the halls, but found no answers."

"And no monsters?" Cyril asked quietly.

"Monsters?" Olra seemed genuinely surprised. "There are dogs and forest beasts, yes, but they leave me alone..."

"Cursed wargs and goblins, more like," Scarlet squinted in suspicion. "Skeleton knights and magi, walking dead of all kinds, gargoyles, cyclopes, maneaters, gazers..." She broke off, as the only reaction from Olra was surprise and incomprehension.

"She is one of them," Cyril said to Scarlet. "She carries the same curse. The same as Barroch, nothing touches him either."

"Was that what he meant when he said he embraced the Isle?" Lena wondered. Barroch was the person they met in the Duskmoon Tower garden, he was an alchemist and a smith, and he'd seen many Arisen come and perish on that Isle. He had been an Arisen himself once (or perhaps was still an Arisen), and like so many, he was drawn to the Isle, but unlike the others, he became one with it. Lena had so many questions for him, but, just like with the Dragonforged, she couldn't think of a single question to ask.

"We are leaving now," Lena said to Olra. "Please transport us back to Gransys."

"Ser!" Olra looked dismayed. "If that is your will..." Lena nodded.

...

The sun was setting when they stood on the pier in Cassardis. Their foray to the Bitterblack Isle left them exhausted in more than one way.

"Pablo's inn is straight ahead, Scarlet knows the way," Lena turned to Cyril. "Rest up, you two," she looked at them. "You too, Scorpio, why don't you," she turned to him. "We are not going anywhere tonight."

"I am not leaving you on your own," he said, squinting. "There is no telling what foolish things you are planning."

Lena grinned. She wasn't planning anything, and she could tell that Scorpio's words were just an excuse.

They walked through the village, the air was warm, the sea was calm and the whole place felt sleepy and content. The light in the textiles shop was on, so they entered.

"Back to your old mischief, minnow?" The old woman stood up from the loom. "You look well, child."

"Thanks, Iona," Lena smiled. "We're just..."

"You had your bond tested," Iona observed, looking them over. "An Arisen is bound to the pawns. The dragon always comes around, sure as the seasons. The Chief and I still remember the last time..."

"Last time?" Lena spun around. "Last time what?"

"Last time the dragon came around, of course," Iona smirked. "Happens every fifty years."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing happened," Iona shrugged her shoulders. "Someone was made an Arisen, the same as you, but not in our village. 'Take up arms and face me, Arisen,' isn't that what the Wyrm says?" She squinted at Lena. "But you don't have to, really. You get used to living without a heart soon enough. The last Arisen didn't even bother with a pawn of their own, as far as I know. Refused to play the game. The dragon leaves after a while all on its own, and life goes back to normal for another fifty years. Simple as that."

"But then..." Lena was confused. "But then why... The Duke is assembling an army to fight the dragon... But if last time the dragon just went away, then why does he bother now?"

"Because of you, of course," Iona looked at Lena and Scorpio in turn. "Because you cannot leave it well alone. Because you are going after the dragon. Because your bond is stronger than most. How old do you think the Duke is? He was an old man last time, he must be ancient now..." She shook her head. "I've said enough. The rest is for you to discover." She gave Scorpio a long and penetrating look, looking into his eyes, as if reading his soul. Then she nodded and returned to her loom.

Lena and Scorpio walked up the path towards the chapel that stood on a high rock overlooking the village. A lawn in front of it ran up right to the edge of the rock, looking out into the sea. The village, the beach, the fishing boats, the ruins of an ancient temple sunk into the sea - it was all before them.

They stood near the edge, watching the lanterns light up as the evening progressed, then watching the lanterns being extinguished as the night deepened. They did not want to go anywhere, talk to anyone, the meaning of what happened in the Rift was slowly dawning on them. Finally Lena broke the silence.

"The Pawn Legion is bound to the dragon," she said quietly. "They are one and the same."

"Not quite one and the same, for the Pawn Legion has pawns, and we are not the dragon," Scorpio objected. "Yet there is someone or something that directs us. May be that is the dragon?"

"Or may be the dragon is in service of the Legion as well?" Lena shuddered, that thought was uncomfortable. "Who was it that spoke to me, I wonder?"

"Barnaby," Scorpio answered flatly. "You remember, the pawn who met us at the Pawn Guild in Gran Soren. He lends the Legion his voice."

"How?"

"Beats me."

"Hmm."

The night was dark, yet the sky was clear, and the stars shone the more for it. They sat down, finally realising that there would be no sleeping that night.

"Where were you?" Lena suddenly asked. "Why did you not come forward?"

"I... was dead," Scorpio said with some hesitation. "Not dead dead like you would be if you were to jump off this cliff," he smirked. "But I was... hmm... held in a sort of purgatory, I guess..."

"Purgatory?!" Lena spun around to look at him. "Waiting for what?"

"For what would come next," Scorpio shrugged. "Phantoms, spirits, the undead - where do you think they come from?" He looked at Lena sideways. "An immortal cannot die, so a transformation was bound to happen..."

"The undead..?" Lena sounded stunned. "I thought they were people who... umm... well... apart from vampires... I thought some evil sorcery raised them somehow..." She was getting very confused, she never gave zombies and skeletons any thought before.

"Some of them, yes, but that's temporary, while the sorcerer's spell lasts," Scorpio nodded. "Reanimated corpses are not proper undead. Undead are immortal. Some mortals become undead if they are too stubborn to leave this world upon death... There is a way into immortality for everyone," he added, his voice sounding hollow.

Lena was feeling cold. She shivered, and Scorpio unclipped his direwolf cape, draping it over her shoulders as he pulled her close. She rested her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. A heartbeat... something she never gave a thought before either. She pressed her hand to her own chest - nothing.

"Let's not talk about the undead, it's not good for you," Scorpio said quietly. "Look, you are growing cold. Come closer." It may have been the duty of a pawn to protect his master with his life, but was it also his duty to prevent his master from slipping into immortality?

"But I took the cure..." Lena whispered. "The witch had promised..."

"That you would become mortal again," Scorpio nodded. "Did she also promise it to be permanent?"

No, she did not.

...

The rays of dawn coloured the sky gold, but Lena and Scorpio were still sitting on the grassy rock overlooking the sea and the village below. Scorpio's coat and cape were wrapped around them as Scorpio cradled Lena so as to keep her warm. She wasn't sleeping, but her consciousness was floating in that space between worlds that every soul must cross.

As the sun appeared above the horizon, her skin started to burn and she started to shake slightly. Scorpio pulled the coat and cape over her head to hide her from direct sunlight, holding her closer still. An hour or two have passed when Lena opened her eyes. She felt warmth spreading into the tips of her fingers, her face no longer burned, her heartbeat was steady... "Not my heartbeat," she sighed. She started moving, unwrapping herself from the coat and cape, yet not letting go of Scorpio, so she could still feel his heartbeat as her cheek was pressed to his chest.

"We'll get you your heart back," he said softly into her ear. "It's an arduous journey, but I'm with you for the long run." They sat quietly for a while longer, watching the fishermen take their boats out into the bay, then return with the catch; they watched the fish being cleaned and hung to dry and the seagulls hungrily circling around the boats, the fishmonger's tables and then the buckets with discarded waste. The sun was at its full height when Lena declared that watching all that made her hungry herself. It was time to return to the village.

As they walked into Pablo's inn with Lena talking about lunch, Scarlet looked at Lena's  flushed face and sparkling eyes and noted dark pressure patches on Scorpio's neck and upper chest. She grinned, winked and was about to make a witty remark, when Cyril touched her arm and said softly: "No, can't you see - their bonds are stronger than that."

...

"Three chimeras, two ogres, two golems, three cyclopes, ten sauriens, ten phantoms, forty-five undead warriors, twenty harpies and a drake," Lena put a stack of work notices on the table once the lunch had been cleared. "We've got work to do."

"A drake?" Scarlet picked up one of the notices. "As in: a small dragon?" She raised her eyes to Lena in worry.

"I don't know about small, we'll see," Lena nodded. "But yes. A dragon."

"There's room in my bag for more potions!" Scarlet demonstratively dropped her bag on the table. "It's madness."

"No, it's training," Lena objected. "Suit up."

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Salvation

Gran Soren was bustling with life when they returned after another round of training. Lena had insisted that they should stay out for several days, fighting both day and night, since undead warriors would never appear in sunlight. Forty-five undead warriors was a tall order, as it turned out. Oh, there was no shortage of undead crawling out from under the ground at night, but most of them were "ordinary" undead - townsfolk and farmers, some still bearing their hammers and hoes. Undead warriors were rare, it would take many a night to encounter forty five of them.

"Why is it that undead knights and magi do not count as warriors?" Lena was complaining. "They fight well enough! Far better than the rest of them, in fact!"

It was odd, but her pawns didn't have an answer.

"At this point, I couldn't care less," Scarlet yawned. "We haven't slept in three days. Inn." She marched decisively towards the inn, ignoring Lena's protests that they should eat first.

"Sleep is most important now," Scorpio chimed in. "Come on, Wolf. Ice baths and bandages can wait till tomorrow," he caught her by the arm as she tried to go see the apothecary.

"Ice baths and bandages?" Cyril stopped dead in astonishment. "Haven't heard that for a while... Say... why would you need an ice bath when I'm here to heal your every wound?"

"Because she gets into more trouble than we can deal with," Scorpio smirked. "But I give it to you - none of the wounds are bleeding."

"I should hope not!" Cyril scoffed.

"Sleep. Now!" Scarlet rounded them up, dangling two sets of keys to the private rooms of the Union Inn. "Cyr, you're sharing with me. You'd better not snore."

...

"We meet again, friend," a man with a foreign accent stopped Lena in the street.

"We do?" Lena squinted - she did not recognise him.

"Mason is the name, if it pleases you," he said and bowed. "I have another favour to ask."

"Umm..." Lena couldn't recall doing any favours for him before, or even seeing him before. What was he on about?

"Salvation, naturally," Mason continued, not giving Lena any time to think. "They have an agent in the Castle now, it seems, and I would ask you to track him down. I know, skulking in the shadows is not your style, but please put your chivalry aside this once, and watch for him at night, then follow, carefully, mind, and unseen. Give your findings to Airsmith, friend." Mason bowed again, keeping one hand behind his back in an elegant gesture, then turned around and walked away.

"Err..." Lena started saying something, then changed her mind. "Another Assassin," she thought, noticing a selection of daggers discreetly arranged about his person, including two or three behind his back, where his elegant bowing gesture made them instantly accessible. "All right," she said out loud, and Mason nodded without turning around.

Her three pawns were staring at her with different degrees of incomprehension.

"What is going on, Master?" Cyril finally asked, calling Lena "Master" for the first time.

"It's a bit of a covert mission, this one," Lena looked at them in turn. "Much of what Mason said was a screen, pay no mind to that. I'm going to have to release you for now - we can't very well tail someone with a group of four people and remain unnoticed, can we?"

"So you actually understood it," Cyril gave her a long look.

"Yes," Lena nodded. "Well... in as much that there's someone that I need to tail discreetly and see where he goes. I expect to learn more as I do so."

"But who is Mason?" Cyril wasn't giving up.

"I've never met him personally before, so I don't know," Lena answered. "But it seems that we might belong to the same organisation... err... to the same sort of organisation," she corrected herself, realising that there was no Dark Brotherhood in Gransys.

"Hmm," Cyril squinted and shrugged. "Takes one to know one, I guess."

"Quite," Lena grinned.

It was still morning, leaving plenty of time before Lena had to take up a position in the Castle Grounds to watch for anyone acting suspiciously, besides herself. Yet there wasn't enough time for any further training, and they were still tired from the previous session, so she released Scarlet and Cyril and allowed Scorpio to make her sit in cafes sipping coffee for the most part of the afternoon.

When the sun set, Lena got up to go to the Castle Grounds, and Scorpio got up with her.

"I need to do this alone," Lena said.

"No."

"Yes. You cannot be seen."

"I have no intention to be seen. I'm just another pawn walking the streets of Gran Soren."

"People know you."

"People know you!" Scorpio said with emphasis. "I don't think anyone looks at the pawns that walk with the Arisen."

"Anyway, it'll be easier for me to do this alone," Lena was not giving up. "Even if... well... it goes sour."

"Stop arguing. I'm not letting you go alone."

It was no use. Lena shrugged and went to the Castle Grounds with Scorpio following at a discreet distance, yet not letting her out of sight. He did look the part of yet another bored pawn aimlessly walking the streets of Gran Soren, and Lena wondered just how many times he'd done exactly that.

The Castle Grounds were far from empty, despite the late hour. People were mostly walking around enjoying the cool evening air, stopping to chat, then moving on again. Some came to visit the Cathedral, and soldiers kept going in and out of the Castle Gates. Suddenly an unnaturally dark shadow by the Castle Wall caught Lena's eye.

Slowing her step to examine a particularly fascinating bit of the pavement, she kept watching the shadow without coming too close. A Ducal knight walked up to it, and in the light of his lantern Lena could see that the shadow was in fact a person dressed in a dark shapeless robe that made him blend with his surroundings. The person gave something to the knight, who carefully put it away before turning around. Lena thought it could be a piece of parchment or a small scroll. "A message of some sort," she decided. "This knight is the one I need to follow."

The knight took a leisurely stroll through the city, turning around and practically bumping into Lena at some point. He struck up a conversation making it clear that he understood the purpose of her being there, but that he wasn't all that alarmed. "Damn, I should be more careful," Lena cursed herself. Perhaps she was being too harsh though, after all, everyone knew who she was.

In the lower town things got easier. With all the women standing around and all the knights strolling slowly among them, it was easy to disappear from view, yet to keep the one knight in question in sight. He appeared to be going into an abandoned house - a previously abandoned house, it had to be said, as it now had lights on and sounds of activity were coming from within. Lena wanted to listen in to the conversation.

"Just what is it worth to you?" She heard the voice of Madeleine, a traveling merchant that she'd met previously. Lena carefully peered through an open window - this was getting interesting.

Madeleine was holding a folded piece of parchment which she stuck into her impressive cleavage while twirling around the knight. He grimaced and snatched it from her, without removing his armoured gloves or touching any part of Madeleine. He read the message and put away the parchment.

"Good work," he said, tossing a heavy coin pouch to Madeleine. She caught it with a smile.

"Is there... anything else... I can work for you?" She ran her fingers up his suit of armour, but he stopped her before she could get to a part of him that wasn't clad in steel.

"I bid you good night," he said forcefully and turned to the door, making Lena jump back quite energetically. She didn't think that another encounter would be advisable. She'd seen what she needed to see, and although she did not understand the meaning of the messages, it couldn't be anything right and proper.

"What is Salvation?" She wondered, remembering Mason's words. She turned to go back to the upper town, when a group of hip swaying laughing women caught her eye. Not the only group in that street by any means, and it weren't the women that attracted her attention, but the person they were trying to charm. Instead of a usual knight, they surrounded Scorpio. "Well, he's certainly making sure to avoid suspicion!" Lena smirked to herself. "No one sees a pawn, right! No one indeed." On a whim, she walked up to them, put her arm around Scorpio's waist which made him jump, and declared: "Sorry, ladies, this one's engaged for the night! You can have what's left of his purse in the morning." The women started to protest when one of them noticed Lena's daggers, signalling the others to switch their attention to a different customer.

"Are you jealous?" Scorpio grinned.

"No, but we're still twenty-odd undead warriors short, so you can't have a night off yet," she grinned back.

...

"So, you are the Arisen," a voice came from the darkness, somehow cutting through Lena's shouts and Scorpio's incantations right in the middle of a major battle with a dozen of various undead. "Our arch-enemy," continued the voice, making Lena stop for a moment, undead or no undead. "Prepare to die!"

"Aarrrgghhhhh!!!" She charged whatever she could make out in the firestorm that Scorpio had summoned around her. When the flames died down, the undead were once again temporarily dead, and Lena could see half a dozen or more pools of light - spells being intoned. Somehow she didn't think those were healing spells.

"Insolence!" Scorpio's angry voice sounded behind her - he too was intoning a spell. But he was one sorcerer against so many.

Instinctively Lena grabbed her bow, started shooting at the pools of light. She interrupted one or the other incantation, but the darkness was hiding the casters, and most of her arrows missed their mark. Some of the spells had blossomed - she was poisoned, petrified and slowed all at once. Her defences were lowered and her skills stifled. "What's next - set me on fire or freeze me solid?" She cursed, frantically swallowing potions from her bag, not bothering to read the labels. With most debilitations cleared, she extinguished her lantern and attacked.

It was a moonless night and the sky was covered in clouds, so not even the slightest star light illuminated the battlefield. Flashes of fire-enchanted daggers were seen near the pools of light, a cry was heard and the light went out, then the same was repeated with the next pool of light, and the next. It would have appeared an effortless run of elimination to a casual observer, but it was far from it. The sorcerers did not need light to know Lena's position, so even though she was methodically taking them out, there were always more of them lined up to poison, petrify and debilitate her. She kept grabbing potion after potion, herb after herb from her bag, until no potions were left to grab, and there were still - again! - half a dozen of pools of light gathering strength in the dark. There was nothing else for it but to keep going.

Scorpio had been taking out the sorcerers with directed fire spells. His fireballs were effective, but they took time to intone, and they were not always immediately deadly. He needed a better strategy. Extinguishing his own lantern and moving to what he thought was the centre of the circle of sorcerers, he hoped Lena would hold out on her own for a while, and started intoning a complex spell.

Lena took out another sorcerer, and noticed that she had run out of poisoned shivs and was nearly out of combustible powder. Not having the help of her tools to eliminate an enemy in one hit was going to be a problem. There was no time to poison her daggers. She ate the last mushroom and charged the next pool of light.

Suddenly the pool of light wasn't there. She heard wind sweeping through the area with an enormous force, she ducked to avoid impact, then stood up - she was in no danger. Scorpio had summoned a tornado.

The wind died down after a minute or two, and Lena saw Scorpio light up his lantern. Another pool of light was gathering in the distance, and Lena silenced that with a poisoned arrow. "A lucky shot," she thought. But the battle seemed to be over. They walked from corpse to corpse trying to understand who those sorcerers were, for they were no simple bandits. They all wore the same dark shapeless robes that made them practically invisible at night - the same robes as worn by the person who gave the knight the first message. One of the corpses had a scrap of parchment in a pouch tied to his waist, there was but one word on it: Salvation.

[Lena Wolf]

4th Era, Year Unknown - Prison, again

Lena pushed a door from one part of the sewers into another and was not met by a fresh conglomerate of poisonous spiders and snakes. This could mean one of two things: either she was out of the dungeons, or she was back in. Although the dungeons of Gran Soren had a large and firmly established rat population, they did not have snakes.

"Three days," she heard a familiar voice. "I could locate you by smell alone at this point."

"Not in here," Lena grinned, hugging a suite of chimeric plate that didn't smell of roses either. "Everything smells the same in the sewers."

"Let's hope Asalam will let us back into the inn," Scorpio coughed, and Lena thought that perhaps she did need a bath.

"Were you waiting long?" She discarded her prison rags and pulled on an unassuming set of everyday clothes that Scorpio handed to her.

"Three days, like I said," he shrugged. "When you did not return from the castle within the hour, I figured you took up residence in its lower chambers," he smirked. "Just what did you do?"

"Beats me," Lena shrugged. "Must've offended someone..." She looked sideways.

"Never mind," Scorpio dismissed the topic. "Let's go."

...

Lena's duties to the Duke were taking her to the castle every so often, and being her curious self, she decided to explore the grounds a bit before going to the Great Hall. There she got into an argument with the gardener who got offended and ran off, and the next thing she knew, she was being arrested and thrown into the dungeons, quite literally. She hit her head on a rock (or was hit on the head with a rock), and woke up on some straw in a cell, her belongings stripped clean and wearing a set of prison rags. "How on Nirn did I get out of my clothes and into these rags, I wonder..?" She asked herself, but that question was too uncomfortable and she brushed it away. Her cell had no shortage of sticks and small bones dragged in by the rats that made a nest in the corner, and for once Lena was glad of their presence. Here were the tools to make some lockpicks and some shivs and see about leaving.

It didn't take her too long to unlock the cell door, only to be met by a guard in the corridor.

"Five thousand in gold will buy you freedom," he said with a grin. "Which includes your gear. Can't be fairer than that."

"No thanks," Lena shook her head. "As you can see, I have no money on me at the moment, so couldn't pay you even if I wanted to."

"Oh you are no fun at all," the guard snorted and returned to his post, not even making the slightest attempt to get Lena locked up again.

"Well..." she followed him with her gaze, amazed. "He's nothing like the guards in the Imperial Prison..." That was true; however, she was also never hit with a rock on the head by the guards of the Imperial Prison. "I wonder where is my gear?" She looked around, and the only chests that she could see were near the entrance, with the guard presiding over them. "Ah, the bribe request now makes sense," she sighed, shrugged and decided to look for another exit first.

One of the locked cells had a big hole in the wall that led into the city sewers. Breaking several lockpicks on that lock, she entered the cell and dropped into the hole, and after wandering through the narrow and dark corridors for a while and having killed a dozen or more poisonous spiders and snakes, she finally found a barred door that led out of the dungeon sewers and into the far more civilised city sewers, also known as the slums. Besides rats, these sewers also housed people. There Scorpio had been waiting for her for the last three days.

"I didn't think you'd be leaving by the front door, somehow," he grinned when Lena inquired how he knew where to wait for her. "The first thing you did when we arrived in this city, was to investigate the slums and the sewers, and to commit them to memory. As this here was the only locked door, and as it was right below the castle... Well, obviously, that's the one you'd be coming out of," he concluded with satisfaction.

...

"I started to get worried," Scorpio's tired and hoarse voice greeted Lena as she pushed the same door out of the dungeon sewers for the second time. "A week?" He exhaled sharply and held his breath as Lena squeezed him in a hug.

"I need a bath, I know," she said, letting go of him. "I've been through a bit of an ordeal this time..."

...

"What happened?" Scorpio's voice sounded angry as he was rubbing oils into dark bruises on Lena's back, legs and arms once she had washed off the sweat and dried blood. "You didn't get these in a fight."

"It's a vipers' nest," she grimaced and cursed. "The lot of them. Duke and all."

"Explain."

"Last time when I got thrown into the dungeon..." Lena sighed. "Well, yes, I saw the gardener run off, but before that I bumped into the Duke's wife in the gardens, and she was all smiles and flirts..."

"The Duke's wife?" Scorpio stopped rubbing oil. "Not good."

"No... well... especially just how friendly she got..." Lena shivered. "Complimenting me on my strength and chivalry and gods know what else... as if I was a man... I was completely dumbfounded by it, you know."

"Some women..." Scorpio started.

"I know!" Lena cut him off. "Never mind that. I just ignored it, I guess," she sighed. "And so yesterday... err... a week, you say?" She whistled. "Well then, last week, when I went to the castle again, her maid begged me to meet her in the gardens after dark to hear some special message from the Duke's wife... The maid was all flirty as well, and suggested that it could be ill-construed by some, that the Duke's wife would be paying attention to a warrior such as myself... big and strong and stuff..." Lena shook her head. "Big and strong? And male? Me???"

"Not last time I checked," Scorpio grinned, looking her over. "But that obviously made you too curious to refuse..."

"May be that was the point of it..." Lena nodded. "Anyway. I stayed and went to meet the maid in the gardens at night, and guess what - the message was an invitation to visit the Duke's wife in her bedchamber at night."

"No!!" Scorpio roared with laughter. "And you went?"

"Of course I went," Lena grinned. "But not for the reasons you're thinking. Something was odd about that request."

"Like you not being male?" Scorpio was still laughing.

"Yes, that too... Didn't fit with the compliments and insinuations that they were making... Like it was rehearsed for a man, but I turned out to be a woman, and they didn't have a chance to change the script..." She shook her head. "It just didn't add up and so I went to the Duke's wife's bedchamber at night."

"Which carries a death sentence," Scorpio said gravely.

"Does it now?" Comprehension dawned in Lena's eyes. "Murder by Ducal Executioner," she grinned. "Effective."

"But it didn't happen," Scorpio resumed rubbing oils into Lena's bruises, taking Lena by surprise.

"Ouch! That's still tender," she complained. "Anyway, the Duke's wife started out all flirty, something about me saving her, running away together, whatever... I got so confused. And then the door flung open and the Duke stood there, with his jester pointing the way."

"The spy."

"Obviously."

"And?"

"I hid behind a screen," Lena winced as Scorpio started on a new bruise. "And then the strangest thing happened... A thunderstorm started... The Duke sent the jester away, and as soon as the door was closed, there was another flash of lightning and the Duke threw his wife on the bed and started strangling her."

"Understandably so," Scorpio replied dispassionately.

"No, not in a fit of rage or anything," Lena shook her head. "I looked from behind the screen... The Duke's face was cold... He was drooling... His eyes... I'm not sure... He looked like a zombie," she shivered. "And he hadn't seen me yet at that point."

Scorpio continued rubbing oils into Lena's bruises without saying anything. He seemed to have made a mental connection though. Lena turned to look at him, then continued.

"His wife was struggling for breath, he was going to kill her... So I jumped out from behind the screen, kicked him..."

"Typical," Scorpio muttered. "The Duke is twice your size."

"...and he straightened up, his face cleared up, he looked around, looked at his hands... Like he couldn't understand what was happening, what he was doing there..."

"Mmm."

"And his wife... The..." Lena swore. "She jumped off the bed as if nothing happened, started screaming, accusing me of breaking into her chambers, attempting to... err... there she got into trouble because what she was about to suggest wasn't biologically possible..." Lena cursed her again. "But she kept screaming and calling the guards... The rest you know."

"Dungeons, yes," Scorpio nodded. "But it doesn't explain these bruises."

"The guards weren't treating me as a lady," Lena scoffed. "I might have bitten one or the other in retaliation..."

"Bitten?" Scorpio looked up.

"My hands were tied, my feet too..."

"Fangs?"

"No."

"Thank goodness for that."

...

"Why did you switch to a sword and shield again?" Lena woke up and watched Scorpio put on a chimeric half plate cuirass over chainmail sleeves and clip on a golden bastard sword that they received as a reward for one of those monster slaying contracts. "I thought you enjoyed summoning meteors for every wolf we encountered," she grinned.

"You're making fun of me practicing, I've had enough of that," Scorpio pulled a face at her. "Also, I need to keep my sword arm strong, and I am getting out of touch with heavy armour. This will be slowing me down somewhat, and it shouldn't. I am not just a mage," he added defiantly.

"No, you are a Mystic Knight," Lena noted as Scorpio picked up a magic shield. "Aren't pawns prohibited from carrying those?"

"We are."

"But?"

"Let them try and stop me," he grinned.

...

"You are getting confused," Lena turned to Scorpio as he was trying to figure out how to block with the magic shield while holding the staff with both hands to intone a spell. "It's either the staff and no shield or the shield and a sword or a mace," she took the staff from him. "I had the same problem when I tried it last."

"And you can't swing your sword while blocking," Scorpio noted, hitting his own shield with his sword.

"Well, you're still better at it than I am," Lena observed. "I hardly use the shield at all."

"Not even that extremely overpriced cross-shaped one with a zombie head on it," Scorpio winked.

"Not even that. You know the Black Cat has all that fancy gear..."

"And all of it cursed," Scorpio nodded.

The gear sold at the Black Cat was on average an order of magnitude more expensive than even the best gear sold in regular shops, and all that special stuff had apparently been forged in dragon breath by some Arisen from the past, or belonged to some Arisen from the past, or else had special properties against a particular beast. Also, it looked ferocious.

"If goblins were dropping dead from just looking at you wearing, say, Chaos Armour, then it would have made some sense at least," Lena was looking through the catalogue. "But considering the protection that armour gives you, the only person dropping dead would be you."

"Which is why I stick to my chimeric plate," Scorpio smoothed out his pteruges. "It is a bit too heavy for me at the moment, but the pteruges are long enough not to need any greaves, and if I just wear leather boots and gloves instead of iron ones, I should manage."

"You forgot pants." Lena was watching him with interest. "Your direwolf cape doesn't cover the same area."

"A warrior does not wear pants under his kilt!" Was her answer. Did pteruges count as a kilt? Obviously. They were wide and dense enough to cover the body completely, it had to be said, but Lena just couldn't resist.

"Suit up and let's go find some goblins before Asalam throws us out of here for thrashing the walls," Scorpio straightened up. "I want to see you use that overpriced shield of yours since you insist on going practically naked," he smirked.

"I can't help it that this 'robe' is nothing but two flaps of material on the front and back! I wear other stuff too! I wear pants! They are enchanted!"

Never argue with a woman about her choice of armoured garments, you just can't win.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is another example of a lapse in story in Dragon's Dogma. The quest with the Duke's wife was clearly written for a male Arisen, and not just male, but tall, wide-shouldered, a warrior and never a mage or an archer. When you listen to the comments the Duke's wife and her maid are making, that's that picture that is being painted. But the Arisen can be anyone... such as a smallish Breton woman who happened to be an assassin... Umm... The comments still work, technically, but the impression becomes completely garbled. I decided therefore that Duke's wife must have planned this well in advance, but didn't know who the Arisen would be, then fell into the same trap as did Lydia in Skyrim where she expected a gorgeous tall Nord to become her thane and got that same shortish Breton female assassin instead...

The second part is my gripes with Mystic Knight. Dragon's Dogma works with vocations - you have to choose sword and shield (fighter), bow and daggers (strider) or a mage's staff (mage) to start with, then you can upgrade those to a two-handed warrior, a ranger with a longbow or a sorcerer with a special staff. Finally there are hybrid vocations that are only available to the player: Assassin (sword, shield, daggers, bows - shield for an assassin???), Mystic Knight (sword, mace, mage's staff, magic shield) and Magic Archer (magic bow, mage's staff, daggers). Pawns cannot have a hybrid vocation, and I wondered why. Fortunately there's a mod to fix that.

When I tried to make Lena a Mystic Knight, I kept getting confused with her weapons. So I decided to see if the computer can do any better and made Scorpio a Mystic Knight. And lo and behold! He was as confused as Lena. The computer kept switching from one skill to another, not being able to make a choice! Ha! That made me feel so much better... So the plan is now to let Scorpio figure it out. I'll be removing extra weapons from him so that the choice of associated skills would be limited, and I'll see how he does. Then I'll try to follow his strategy, because Mystic Knight is a useful vocation in theory, just a bit too confusing in practice. The good thing however is that pawns are programmed to learn to use their new skills and equipment, so that even if in the beginning he is in fact hitting his own shield with his sword, I hope that he'll learn to do better and then I can watch and hopefully learn it too.