>>5735433Perhaps you were overdue on checking up on the results of the ‘Grey Oath’ which you had instructed Sir Ewald to pass along and administer. By the time you arrive upon the doorstep of their monastic warrior-hall (a half-open, cathedral-like structure upon a cliffside overlooking the city, where they breed, house, and tend to their gryphon mounts) you find it guarded against you by two stern-looking holy knights. The grey-haired man-at-arms who you earlier defeated stands outside, without his shattered sword or even hsis hining armour, looking rather dejected.
“Ssir Ewald,” you greet him, looking past him for a moment to the paladins barring your way. “What’ss going on?”
“I’ve been cast out, Dragon” he says, simply. “Deemed unworthy.”
“Then the oathtaking went… Not sso well?” you hazard a guess.
He scoffs, and shakes his head.
“Perhaps they are right,” Sir Ewald mutters, staring down at his empty sword-hand. “My Holy Avenger shattered. I’d thought it was a testament to a divine plan, which you were part of… But maybe that’s not it. Maybe the gods saw weakness and unworthiness, and forsook me, leaving me to your ‘mercy’.”
“You ssay ‘merccy’ asss if I DIDN’T show you it,” you counter. “Yet here you ssstand, alive, sspared.”
“Destroyed,” he corrects sternly, glaring back at you. “Destroyed as surely as if you ran me through. Stripped of my title, my arms and armour, my place in the world and my eternal rest, most likely.”
You cannot speak to that last part, obviously, but Ekaterine will be Queen of Hawksong soon enough, and you imagine you can correct the rest of this.
“Wait,” Infiltartor Halel chimes in belatedly, ‘wait, WHAT? You mean this… This PALADIN knows? KNOWS knows?”
Sir Ewald seems to take note of the two ‘women’ wth you for the first time, and then does a double-take at—
“DAME ALBACETE?!”
Albacete raises a finger to her lips with a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and shakes her head.
“Not anymore,” she says, “and not REALLY, ever, as I suppose you now know, Sir Ewald.
"...Nor am I 'Sir' Ewald anymore, milady, I suppose."
