A Tarnished Hero

Chapter 35: The Last Stretch

After leaving the corpses, Izuku, Katsuki, and Torrent continued on their journey. As his spectral steed's hooves clopped against the stone road, Izuku couldn't help but think back to their aggressors earlier. They wore the standard equipment of those that served the late lord of Stormveil Castle, but their insignias, the tabards that they wore were gone.

Did that mean that the soldiers had rebelled once their lord no longer lived? Or was it something else?

Actually, now that he thought about it, the soldiers' attack patterns were vastly different from the last time he had fought them. Were they not the soldiers that roamed the Stormveil Castle and their surroundings, capturing Tarnished left and right for their Lord?

Refreshing his memory, he tried analyzing one soldier's face that was not rotting in the distance, all the while Torrent continued trotting along the path. Katsuki behind him was silent, and every now and then, he could feel the ash blond quivering just a tiny bit.

Ignoring Katsuki for a moment, Izuku thought long and hard about the soldier. He looked just like any mentally degraded being on this godforsaken land. Furrowing his brows, Izuku thought deeper, trying to remember the soldiers under Godrick he had faced and killed.

His eyes opened wide, and a metaphorical lightbulb over his head. Snapping his fingers, he finally had a clue as to why they seemed so different.

The soldier he had killed earlier was gaunt. Gaunter than even the gauntest of Godrick's soldiers. He recalled the feeling of stripping the corpse, down to its clothed bits and the corpse compared that to one of the weakest soldiers of Godrick he had fought in the past.

There was no mistaking it, that wasn't one of Godrick's. In fact, they felt similar to the bandits he had fought back in the cave where he first saw Patches. At least Godrick's soldiers had the sense of knowing how to use and wield a sword effectively, but the ones they just fought felt like a bunch of kids swinging around lumps of metal.

Now wasn't that funny. Because they lost their Lord to him, the soldiers that once populated Limgrave were gone, replaced by bandits who had thought it was the best time to strike while the iron was hot.

A bunch of mentally degraded people they may be due to their sanity being lost over a couple centuries of dying and reviving — possibly reaching millennia from what Melina says — staging an uprising and causing havoc amongst the remaining dregs of Godrick's once proud army.

Then again, even Godrick's soldiers were barely holding on to their sanity at this point, so maybe losing their Lord was the tipping point.

Anyhow, that wasn't important. It was nice knowing that those he may encounter here were reduced to bandits playing knights and soldiers because of the gear they stole, making Limgrave easier to traverse, but it was an afterthought.

What was more important was getting to the Dragon Communion Church in that island before sundown, and at the rate they're going, it might take half a day without stopping just to reach the shore where the tunnel connecting the island and Limgrave could be found.

"Torrent, can you go faster?" Izuku leaned down towards his spectral steed's head, he free hand coming to stroke his flowing mane. "I want to reach the cave before the sun goes down. I know I'm already pushing you with your pace, but I don't want this trip to extend another day because we might run into some stupid shit just like earlier."

Torrent snorted a bit, as if offended that this pace could even remotely affect him. Then again, he had experienced first hand that Torrent could go hours upon hours of running without being the slightest bit winded. But that didn't mean he wanted to treat Torrent like that.