===Godrick===
“LET ME GO, YOU ANIMAL!”
Marquess Grasso’s terrified scream echoed across the battlefield as Godrick dragged him through the blood-soaked earth by one swollen ankle.
The noble clawed desperately at the churned mud, his jeweled fingers digging useless furrows into the ground while his enormous body bounced violently over broken shields, discarded weapons, and the countless dead left behind by the battle.
When Godrick’s halberd had struck the man he believed to be Grizrig, the necromancer’s concentration had shattered along with his body.
Whatever spell he had been weaving died with it, and in the next instant every reanimated corpse collapsed where it stood, lifeless once more.
With the undead no longer a threat, Godrick had resumed carving his way toward where his halberd had landed, only to discover that Grizrig and the mysterious fourth General had already escaped.
The only one left behind was Marquess Grasso himself, sprawled helplessly in the dirt as he struggled in vain to push his enormous body upright.
“No!” the Marquess had shrieked when Godrick reached him.
The young knight had offered no response.
He had simply wrapped one massive hand around the noble’s thick ankle, turned without the slightest hesitation, and begun dragging him across the battlefield toward the ridge where Lancelot and the remnants of Camelot’s army had regrouped.
Grasso’s cries became increasingly frantic as every yard of ground punished his body.
His tremendous weight made it impossible for him to twist clear of the debris scattered across the valley, and jagged stones tore through his fine clothing while shattered spear shafts and broken armor scraped bloody furrows across his flesh.
At one point his free leg snagged beneath the splintered remains of a wagon wheel, and the sudden jerk was accompanied by two sickening cracks as both his knee and hip gave way.
The Marquess released a scream so shrill that even weary soldiers turned to look as Godrick continued onward without slowing in the slightest.
His suffering only grew worse when they passed what remained of his son.
The young noble’s body had been trampled beyond recognition beneath the countless boots of infantry and the iron-shod hooves of charging cavalry.
Armor and flesh had been flattened into the muddy ground until little remained that resembled a man, and Grasso’s horrified scream dissolved into broken sobs as he was dragged past the mangled corpse.
At last they reached the ridge where Lancelot stood with General Noel, the two speaking quietly while the surviving soldiers reorganized their battered ranks.
Anthrax sat nearby upon a large boulder, his injuries forcing him to remain still while Noel watched over him.
Hearing Grasso’s desperate screams, Lancelot turned and smiled broadly.
“My good Marquess,” he called cheerfully, spreading his arms wide.
“How kind of you to join us.”
Godrick released the noble without ceremony, letting the man collapse heavily at Lancelot’s feet.
“The lovely Noel was just telling us all about you,” Lancelot continued, glancing toward the former enemy General before returning his attention to Grasso.
“She and her husband have proven far more cooperative than you ever were.”
His expression hardened.
“They’ve also informed us that the Warlord is waiting in the seaside town of Tyddewi, preparing for the next stage of her campaign while she awaits word from this battle.”
“How dare you speak of her!” Grasso shrieked, his face flushed with rage as he looked between Noel and Anthrax.
“Traitors! Both of you! When she hears of this, she’ll torture you for years before she lets you die!”
The tirade ended abruptly as Godrick stepped forward and drove a single heavy punch into the Marquess’s jaw.
The man’s head snapped violently to one side before he crumpled into the dirt, unconscious before he struck the ground.
Godrick glanced toward Anthrax, silently questioning why the man who had served the Warlord so faithfully would betray her so completely.
Lancelot finally broke the silence, his hand resting upon the pommel of his sword as he faced Godrick.
“I must return to Camelot with these two and deliver this news to King Arthur,” he said.
“You, however, still have unfinished business.”
His gaze shifted toward the distant lands belonging to Marquess Grasso.
“The city must be destroyed.”
Godrick gave a single nod.
“But once that is done,” Lancelot continued firmly, stepping closer until he was looking directly into the young knight’s eyes, “you will stay where you are. Do not ride south. Do not seek the Warlord alone.”
His voice left no room for argument.
“I mean it, Godrick. Do you understand me?”
Godrick lowered his head in acknowledgment.
Satisfied, Lancelot gave a faint smile.
“Good. Your chance will come. I promise.”
He turned toward his horse before rummaging through one of the saddlebags and producing a thick coil of rope.
Without another word he tossed it toward Godrick, who caught it easily.
The silent exchange required no explanation.
Godrick knelt beside the unconscious Marquess and securely bound the rope around both of the man’s swollen ankles.
As though sensing what was about to happen, Grasso groaned and slowly opened his eyes.
Confusion quickly gave way to horror as he looked from the rope around his legs to the other end, already secured to the rear of Lancelot’s saddle.
Lancelot met his gaze without a trace of pity.
“Forward.”
“Don’t you dare!” Grasso screamed.
The rope snapped tight, and a loud pop echoed across the ridge as both of the Marquess’s damaged hips shifted violently out of place, his scream becoming an agonized wail as he was dragged helplessly after the advancing horse.
Jagged stones ripped through his ruined clothing, leaving ribbons of blood in the dirt behind him while every yard of ground stripped more flesh from his back.
No one moved to help him.
After everything he had done to Camelot and its people, there were very few among those gathered who believed the Marquess deserved a kinder fate.
===
By the time Godrick reached Marquess Grasso’s city, the sun had already begun its slow descent toward the western horizon, casting long shadows across the abandoned walls.
Reining in his horse just beyond the main gate, he sat silently for a moment, studying the fortress before him while wondering whether the gemstones embedded throughout his armor had gathered enough energy to accomplish what he intended.
The battle earlier that day had filled them with an incredible amount of stored force, every blow he had delivered and every impact he had endured feeding the enchanted crystals.
Whether that power would be enough to erase an entire city in a single release remained to be seen.
With a quiet sigh, he swung down from the saddle and began walking toward the entrance.
The gate stood eerily silent.
No challenge came from the battlements, no arrows were nocked, and no guards rushed to defend the walls.
Those who had once manned this place had almost certainly died on the battlefield only hours before, leaving their home to await the judgment marching toward it alone.
Finding no one to open the way, Godrick reached down with one hand and wrapped his fingers around the heavy iron portcullis.
His muscles tensed beneath his armor as he lifted the enormous barrier from its grooves with surprising ease before throwing it up into its housing with a deafening crash that echoed throughout the empty streets.
He then approached the massive oak doors behind it, already knowing they would be barred from within.
Knock, knock, he thought dryly.
Instead of knocking, he drove one armored boot into the center of the doors.
The impact split the thick wooden beam securing them from the inside with a thunderous crack before both doors were ripped free of their iron hinges, crashing inward in a shower of splintered timber.
In another city the noise would have sent soldiers running, but here only silence answered him.
He stepped through the ruined gateway into empty streets that had once bustled with merchants, craftsmen, and nobles.
The city itself had been built in great concentric circles around the central castle, its broad avenues leading ever inward toward the seat of Grasso’s power.
Godrick walked those streets without haste, his heavy footsteps echoing between empty buildings as he searched for any sign of life.
Occasionally he caught movement from the corners of his vision.
Men and women lingered in narrow alleyways or behind broken shutters, disappearing deeper into the shadows the moment they saw the towering knight approaching.
He could not see what they had been doing, nor did he particularly care.
Artoria’s agents had spent weeks quietly smuggling innocent families from the city before Camelot’s army had marched.
Those who remained had either served the Warlord willingly or had chosen to stay despite every warning they had been given.
Godrick took no satisfaction in what was about to happen, but neither did he question it.
He remembered something one of Camelot’s older knights had once told him during training.
“Some of us cross the line… to make sure the line is still there when morning comes.”
The words stayed with him as he continued toward the castle at the city’s heart.
Its towering gates proved no more of an obstacle than the city’s entrance.
Godrick seized one enormous door, tore it from its hinges, and cast it aside before ripping the second free with equal ease.
The echoes rolled through the keep as he stepped inside, his armored boots sounding against the polished stone.
Even by noble standards, the castle was lavish.
Gold leaves decorated the walls alongside deep crimson banners embroidered with Grasso’s crest.
Thick blue carpets stretched the length of the hall, while priceless paintings, gilded statues, ceremonial armor, and ornate weapons displayed the Marquess’s wealth at every turn.
White marble pillars spiraled upward toward an immense vaulted ceiling where chandeliers of crystal hung high overhead, their candles now long extinguished.
Dozens of fireplaces lined the walls, though none had been lit since the city had been abandoned.
At the center of the hall stood something that immediately drew Godrick’s attention.
A massive black steel pillar rose from a large square pit cut into the marble floor, the surrounding stone replaced with packed earth stained dark from years of use.
Heavy chains hung from the top of the pillar, each ending in iron shackles meant to bind wrists and ankles alike.
The metal itself bore faint scorch marks, while dried flecks of old blood still clung stubbornly to its surface despite countless attempts to scrub them away.
Godrick’s jaw tightened.
‘Bastard.’ He thought.
He walked past the grim monument without another glance and climbed the steps leading to Grasso’s enormous stone throne.
As he looked upon its grandeur, he allowed himself a rare moment of reflection.
What would his life have been if he had been born to Artoria instead of being born into slavery?
Would he have laughed more as a child?
Would he have feared less?
Would the nightmares still have followed him?
Camelot already treated him as one of its princes.
The people admired him, the knights respected him, and Artoria loved him as a son.
Yet deep inside, part of him still remembered the frightened boy torn from a burned village.
That child had survived because someone stronger had chosen to save him, and no matter how much armor he wore or how many victories he claimed, he sometimes wondered whether he would ever truly become anything more than a slave who had been forged into a weapon.
In the end, the thought no longer troubled him.
Whatever blood flowed through his veins meant little compared to the family that had chosen him.
Slowly, Godrick gave a faint shake of his head, pushing the impossible questions aside.
Then he reached down, gripped the massive block of carved stone beneath him, and tore the entire throne free from the dais.
Without a sound, he hurled it across the hall.
It slammed into the great steel execution pillar, reducing the throne to rubble while bending the thick iron column nearly in half.
Silence settled over the hall once again.
Godrick walked to the great square of packed earth surrounding the ruined pillar, believing it to be close enough to the city’s center for what he intended.
Planting the butt of his halberd firmly against the stone floor, he closed his eyes and reached inward, feeling the strange connection he shared with the enchanted armor Morgan and Merlin had created.
He raised his left hand and studied the crystal embedded within his gauntlet.
Wisps of deep blue smoke curled lazily from its surface, the magical energy within almost eager to be released.
One by one he felt the other gemstones awaken across his armor, each resonating with the others until they hummed with barely restrained power.
Godrick slowly closed his hand into a fist, and the blue light vanished.
For a heartbeat…
…nothing happened.
Then the world exploded.
A deafening shockwave erupted outward from his body, annihilating everything within the hall before racing through the rest of the castle.
Marble columns shattered into clouds of stone dust.
Walls burst apart as though struck by the fist of a giant.
Towers collapsed inward before being blasted outward again, while every chandelier, tapestry, painting, weapon rack, and suit of armor was ripped apart and hurled skyward.
The destruction did not stop at the keep.
It surged into the surrounding city like an invisible tidal wave, tearing buildings from their foundations, flattening streets, uprooting ancient trees, and reducing homes, markets, and workshops to splintered ruin in mere seconds.
The roar continued for what felt like an eternity before gradually fading into an eerie silence.
Dust drifted through the air where a thriving city had once stood.
When it finally settled, Godrick remained exactly where he had been standing.
The enchanted armor had absorbed the tremendous force directed into it, protecting him from the devastation it had unleashed.
Around him, however, nothing recognizable remained.
The castle had ceased to exist, and the city that had stood for generations had been erased from the landscape in a single overwhelming release of power.
Only the cracked stone beneath his boots had endured, fractured but still intact, while the ruined remains of an entire city stretched endlessly around the lone knight standing at its center.
Looking over the shattered remains of the city, Godrick felt an unexpected pang of sorrow tighten in his chest.
The outer districts had survived the devastation for the most part, spared from the full force of the blast save for the enormous chunks of castle masonry that had crashed into rooftops and streets.
Everything between the castle and those distant edges, however, had simply ceased to exist.
Homes, markets, temples, and workshops had all been reduced to broken stone and drifting dust in the space of a heartbeat.
It had once been a beautiful city, but evil had poisoned it long before he had ever arrived, and now there was nothing left but silence.
His task was finished.
It was time to leave.
As he made his way through the ruins, his gaze caught on something half-buried beneath the rubble to his right.
It was an iron door set into the ground, partially concealed beneath shattered stone as though someone had desperately tried to hide it.
Curiosity slowed his steps before eventually overcoming him altogether.
Walking over, he drove the butt of his halberd through the metal with a single crushing blow, then hooked the weapon beneath it and tore the heavy hatch free from its hinges, revealing a narrow staircase that disappeared into complete darkness.
Without hesitation, he descended.
The deeper he walked, the colder the air became.
There were no torches, no light of any kind, only the stale smell of damp stone mixed with filth, blood, and sickness.
Then he began to hear soft whimpers echoing through the darkness, followed by muffled sobs that seemed to come from every direction.
Godrick tightened his grip on his halberd before raising it overhead.
With one powerful swing, he carved a long gash through the stone ceiling, and sunlight burst through the opening, spilling down into the underground corridor.
The sight before him made his blood run cold.
Iron cells lined both sides of the passage as far as he could see, each one packed with frightened prisoners.
Most held women and children pressed tightly together, though a handful of exhausted men sat among them with hollow expressions.
Their faces were caked with dirt, bruises darkened their skin, and many bore scars both old and new.
Several children instinctively hid behind their mothers while the adults shrank away from the towering armored knight, unable to know whether another captor or their executioner had come for them.
Godrick slowly approached the nearest cell and planted his halberd upright in the center of the corridor before raising both empty hands to show he meant no harm.
Even then, the women recoiled further into the corner, trembling as they watched him.
Saying nothing, he reached down, wrapped his fingers around the heavy iron lock, and tore it apart as though it were made of soft clay.
The cell door swung open with a loud groan, yet not a single prisoner dared move.
Leaving the door open, he continued down the corridor, breaking every lock one after another until every prisoner had a path to freedom.
Only after the final cell had been opened did he retrieve his halberd and slowly back toward the staircase, allowing them to decide for themselves. Get faster updates on g.com.
For several long moments, nobody moved.
Then one small child stepped into the hallway.
A woman followed, clutching the little girl against her side, and soon another family emerged behind them.
Before long, the entire dungeon had emptied, and dozens upon dozens of frightened prisoners cautiously followed the silent knight up the stairs.
The sunlight blinded many of them after so long underground.
Gasps spread through the crowd as they emerged into the open air and saw the city…
or rather, what remained of it.
The castle was gone.
Streets had vanished beneath mountains of rubble.
Entire districts had been flattened into fields of broken stone.
Whispers spread through the survivors as they looked from the destruction to the enormous knight standing quietly before them.
None of them had witnessed what had happened, but it was not difficult to guess who had brought an entire city to ruin.
Some took that realization as their chance to flee, sprinting away without looking back, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the silent giant as possible.
Godrick made no effort to stop them.
If they wished to leave, then they were free to do so.
The rest remained.
Most were women with children clinging to their hands or carried in exhausted arms.
They exchanged uncertain glances before instinctively falling in behind him as he walked toward the city gates.
They had nowhere else to go, and despite everything they had witnessed, something about the silent warrior inspired a strange sense of safety.
Before they reached the gate, however, a group of roughly ten armed men emerged from between several damaged buildings and blocked their path.
Their clothing was ragged, dried blood stained their faces, and fresh wounds suggested they had somehow survived both the battle and the city’s destruction.
One man stepped forward, leveling a knife toward Godrick.
“You the one who did all this?” he demanded.
Godrick remained silent.
The man’s expression darkened at the silence.
“Answer me, you bastard!”
His eyes drifted past the knight and settled on the frightened women behind him.
The hunger in that look told Godrick everything he needed to know.
One of the other men, his arm slung around an injured companion, sighed heavily.
“Gerald… enough. Let’s just leave.”
“Shut your damn mouth,” Gerald snapped.
“I asked him a question.”
He barely finished speaking.
Godrick’s halberd descended in a blur.
The heavy hammer struck Gerald’s skull with such force that his entire body collapsed into the stone beneath him, leaving little more than a crimson smear where he had stood.
The remaining men froze for only a heartbeat before several screamed and rushed him while the others immediately turned and fled.
The injured man was discarded without a second thought as his companion shoved him aside in his panic and sprinted toward the gate.
Godrick met the first attacker with his left hand, catching the man’s wrist before driving a punch straight through his chest.
Flesh, bone, and armor exploded apart as the force scattered blood across the others.
Without releasing the severed arm still clutched in his grip, he swung it like a club into another attacker.
The broken humerus crushed the man’s skull with a sickening crack, dropping him instantly.
The remaining four charged together.
Godrick swept his halberd across them in one devastating strike.
Two simply ceased to exist beneath the monstrous blow, while the remaining pair escaped only because they slipped on the blood-soaked stone and fell beneath the path of the blade.
One tried to scramble back to his feet.
Godrick seized him by the chest, lifted him effortlessly into the air, and drove him down across his raised knee.
The crack of his spine echoed through the ruined street before Godrick ended his suffering by hurling him into the ground hard enough to shatter both stone and skull.
The final attacker collapsed backward, terror replacing every trace of courage.
“P-Please…” he stammered, crawling away.
“Don’t kill me…”
Godrick looked down at him for only a moment before bringing his halberd down in a single merciful strike.
Silence returned.
Only the injured man remained alive, abandoned by the companions who had fled moments earlier.
He lay trembling where he had fallen, tears streaming down his face as he stared at the towering knight.
Godrick regarded him for a long moment before lowering his weapon.
Without another glance, he simply turned away.
The women and children quietly followed him from the ruined city, staying close enough that they almost seemed like ducklings following their mother.
He did not object.
If anything, it reassured him.
More than anything else, Godrick wanted people to feel safe in his presence rather than fear him.
Still, Artoria’s lessons echoed through his mind.
A king cannot always be gentle.
Sometimes kindness protects the innocent, and sometimes cruelty does.
Both had their place.
Near the city gates, one building still stood largely intact.
It was an armory, and after forcing open its doors, Godrick motioned for the survivors to enter.
Though confused at first, they soon understood.
One by one, each woman armed herself with whatever she felt capable of wielding.
Most chose daggers or hatchets, while a handful selected short swords or spears, determined never to be helpless again.
Together they traveled another mile before Godrick finally stopped atop a gentle rise overlooking the ruined city.
Raising one armored hand, he pointed north toward Camelot.
The survivors exchanged uncertain looks.
“I… I think we’d rather stay with you, Sir Knight,” one young woman admitted softly as she stepped closer.
Godrick slowly shook his head before pointing north once more.
“And where will you go?” she asked hesitantly.
This time he turned and pointed south.
Toward Tyddewi.
Toward the Warlord.
He had no intention of challenging her, not yet.
Lancelot’s orders were clear, and for once he intended to obey them.
Artoria would come soon enough with a force worthy of ending this war, but before then there was one final stop he intended to make.